With December being the Christmas season I feel like we often get so caught up in celebrating the birth of Christ that we overlook the birth of the second greatest man in history – the Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., born December 23, 1805. This year I wanted to take a day and celebrate his birth as well. Second only to the Savior, the Prophet Joseph is worthy of all the admiration, respect, and honor the Saints give him. This article was written to highlight some of the many ways that the Prophet Joseph was a paragon of Christianity, worthy of learning about, learning from, and following the example of in our lives.
Tag: The Martyrdom
The Mormon Pioneers Were Refugees and Illegal Immigrants
Pioneer Day is today. Celebrating the first time a company of Saints entered the Salt Lake Valley to permanently settle there, it is the closest thing we Latter-day Saints have to our own church holy day (holiday.) But there is a lot to this story that we don’t tell on Pioneer Day, a lot of our history and precious truth that we leave on the cutting room floor. For example: The pioneers weren’t really pioneers. They were really refugees illegally immigrating into Mexico in order to escape the decades of pogroms, ethnic cleansings, exterminations, and genocide they had suffered in the United States. This article is an attempt to tell this story of our spiritual and literal ancestors so that we can apply to real lessons of our history to the world we live in today and make it a better place, a more Christ-like place, a Zion-place.