Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days: The Standard of Truth: 1815–1846

So glad I bought this copy, this truly needs to be made Into a tv series! (Danites)A group sanctioned by the Mormon prophet to commit murder! What?! Must read…

This book helped to grow my testimony and dispel much of the confusion around church history. I love how every line is sourced.

This is an excellent book describing the efforts and difficulties which those who believed Joseph Smith had seen both God and His son and had been called by them to be a living prophet in being the instrument of the restoration of the true gospel of Jesus Christ in these latter days. It describes those who opposed this new church and the designs of evil men to destroy it. The persecution of the church was most vehemently pursued by those who had joined the church then fell away due to their own weaknesses in being unable to stand up to the doctrines of the church. All the events are rigorously upheld by much documentation from the individuals who went through these experiences and wrote them in their diaries and other histories. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in finding out the history of this movement as well as church members who wish to have a better perspective of the faith and difficulties which their forebears faced and worked through.

I've read every history I know of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - good, bad, anti-Mormon and apologetic. This is simply the best. It is a narrative history that flows and is written so that the average person can understand what is being covered.It covers the founding of the Church and what triggered the boy Prophet, Joseph Smith, to ask God as the Bible directs in James 1:5 better than any other work. It is amply foot-noted and covers the stops and starts of the founding of the Church without pretending that Joseph Smith, nor his early organization, were perfect.Narrative history means that the history book follows a time-line and explains and includes stories about people and occurrences as it goes along. Past, non-narrative histories tended to segregate happenings based on subject or geography which makes it hard to place when and where and what exactly was happening in the various Church locations.On a personal note, one of my great-great grandfathers, as a boy of 12, immigrated to Nauvoo from England and had just enough money to make it to the city and was left standing on the dock on the Mississippi River with no money, no food and nowhere to go. A man and his wife who had come down to greet the boat noticed the boy and invited him into his house where he remained to manhood. The man and his wife, Joseph and Emma Smith, are the main characters of this first volume of the 4 - volume work. Their incredible story, faith and sacrifices left me almost tearful.Another strength of the book is how well it described the years of the Church being persecuted in Missouri. I almost didn't want to read any more of it as the beatings, rapes and murders of the Saints by the Missourians went on and heartbreakingly on. And it's all here - warts and epiphanies included. The miraculous Book of Mormon, the friends who betrayed Joseph Smith, The beginnings of polygamy and the economic failures of the Church in Kirtland. The wondrous Pearl of Great Price and the visions and blessings at the temple in Kirtland. Sacrifices and sublimities. Rascals and heroes.I can't wait for the next volumes. I highly recommend this book to any serious student of the founding and early years of the Church of Jesus Christ. It sets a new standard for clarity and comprehensiveness that future historians must study and cite if they wish to have their works taken seriously. 5 Stars.

It's wonderful to read about stories familiar while seeing deeper intothe past. The Saints endured so much. For good people to be hunted, the work they were doing must be from God. Only Satanic forces would want to stop the good they were accomplishing.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in history. I love reading books that are about real people. What they think, what they do, why they do what they do. It’s all interesting.I haven’t made it a big secret that I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And the history of that has always interested me as well. But…I love reading fiction. Non-fiction books can be really hard for me to read. I don’t feel like I read them quickly and sometimes I get bored with them.Enter Saints. This is a brand new series written by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints about the beginnings of The Church. I loved the focus on the people involved. This is not a boring history book! This is a well-written, interesting account of how things happened. Through the eyes of those involved, the reader sees what happened and why.My husband and I were lucky enough to have gone to the book launch of this book. I loved listening to the people who put this book together about how it came to be.The first thing I noticed about the book is just how thick it is. It’s 700 pages long, with about 585 being the book itself! The rest of the book is the index and notes. It’s hard to imagine how many sources the people putting this one together would have had to have gone through to put this book together. Wow! And this is just the first of four volumes!I loved this book! It came out September 4th. I finished it for the first time on October 21st. That’s the longest it’s taken me to read a book in a while. I was using this one for my Sunday reading. And we’re also currently reading it as a family. As a family, we’re reading and talking about one chapter a week. That’s been really fun.I will admit that I wasn’t really surprised by any of the things that happened in The Church’s history. As a girl, I read The Work and the Glory series by Gerald Lund (links below). He did a really good job of making sure there was nothing overly surprising in Church history for me.If you’re as curious about history as I am, you’ll love this book!

Amazing story

After reading this book I could remember and comprehend everything that should happen so that we could have the Church of Jesus Christ with His Power again upon the Earth I recommend and encurage verybody to read and to know about this piece of history from the Church of The Lord.

Describes the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in a more realistic and complete perspective than any other book I have read so far

The best read. Go ahead and treat yourself.