Come and SeeThe Early Restoration

Part one of the site · The Book

Come and See

The story of Joseph Smith and the Restoration

“Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.”John 1:46

This is the story of a farm family in New England and New York, of a boy who read a verse in James and went into the woods to pray, and of what he said happened there and afterward. It is told as a narrative, from the records the people themselves left: Lucy Mack Smith's history, Joseph Smith's own accounts, letters, journals, and the Church's published histories. Where a scene detail is imagined, the book says so with a small mark (†) and a note.

It is written for Latter-day Saints, for friends of other faiths, and with special tenderness for Jewish readers, whose prophets Elijah and Malachi run through these pages. No one is asked to agree. The invitation is Philip's: come and see.

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The grove west of the Smith farm in Manchester, New York, known to Latter-day Saints as the Sacred Grove, photographed about 1907.
The grove west of the Smith farm in Manchester, New York, known to Latter-day Saints as the Sacred Grove, photographed about 1907.George Edward Anderson (1860–1928), photograph, about 1907. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Chapters

  1. 1A Famine of HearingFrom Tyndale's cell to a Passover table and a Vermont farmhouse: the long wait for heaven to speak again.
  2. 2Seeds in Stony GroundSolomon and Lydia Mack, Asael and Mary Smith: two plain New England families and the seeds they planted.
  3. 3Lucy and JosephA wedding gift, a lost fortune, a covenant made on a sickbed, and a son born in Sharon, Vermont.
  4. 4The Boy Who Would Not Be BoundA boy who would not be bound, a year without a summer, and a mother who brought her children west.
  5. 5A Pillar of LightA verse in James, a grove of trees, and a pillar of light in the spring of 1820.
  6. 6The Last Words of MalachiAn angel quotes Malachi, Alvin dies, Joseph marries Emma, and the plates are entrusted to him.
  7. 7By the Gift and Power of GodLost pages, a schoolteacher scribe, priesthood by the river, witnesses, and five thousand copies.
  8. 8Come and SeeA church organized in a log house, a knapsack of books, and a gathering to Ohio.
  9. 9The Lord's HouseThe Kirtland Temple is built, dedicated, and visited by Elijah at Passover in 1836.
  10. 10The Refiner's FireKirtland's trials, the Missouri war, the ice of the Mississippi, and the jail at Liberty.
  11. 11A City BeautifulNauvoo rises from a swamp: healing, baptism for the dead, the Relief Society, and a prayer in Jerusalem.
  12. 12Carthage, and the Work Rolls OnCarthage, the martyrdom, and a work that rolled on.

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Each chapter has its own endnotes. The pictures are public-domain engravings, lithographs, paintings and period photographs of the real people and places, each credited with its source. Where no fitting historical picture exists, the chapter goes without one. No picture shows the faces of God the Father or Jesus Christ.