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COLLIN - Was there orginally 14 articles of faith? If so what was the 14th one?
JOEL - In March 1842, John Wentworth, editor of the Chicago
Democrat, wrote a letter to the Prophet Joseph Smith
asking for a history of the rise of Mormonism. In
response Joseph Smith sent what is called the
Wentworth Letter (Joseph Smith, History of the Church 4:535-41) in which the
Prophet reviewed significant events of the rise of the
Church and added a summary of the Latter-day Saint
faith, expressed in 13 statements.
There were earlier unofficial lists of
the beliefs of the Church before the official
"Thirteen Articles of Faith" were cannonized into the
scriptures in 1880 along with the rest of the "Pearl
of Great Price".
Orson Pratt listed 19 paragraphs of
"faith and doctrine" in his "Interesting Account of
Several Remarkable Visions" (1840), many of which
begin with the phrase "we believe." The order of the
paragraphs in Orson Pratt's pamphlet is very similar
to the list of 13 in the Wentworth Letter.
At one point in time a church member named
James Flanigan(1849) and the Apostle Orson Hyde both
published other revised lists of the articles in which they (not Joseph Smith)
both added the extra article of faith(#11) about the resurection, to the
thirteen making the total fourteen. These other lists were
never meant to be anything more than statements of
information about the Church. Joseph Smith never wrote more
than the original thirteen articles, and it was his original list
that finally made it into the scriptures.
Article #10 in Hyde's and Flannigan's lists said the following:
#10. "We believe in the literal gathering of Israel, and in the restoration of the ten tribes, that Zion will be established upon the western continent, that Christ will reign personally upon the earth a thousand years, and that the earth will be renewed, and receive its paradisiacal glory."
The added article(#11) said the following:
"We believe in the literal resurrection of the body, and that the rest of the dead live not again until the thousand years are expired."
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