The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that Christ's original church was restored through the prophet Joseph Smith, with the Book of Mormon as another testament of Christ, living prophets, temples, and eternal families.
The Restoration began in 1820, when Joseph Smith, a farm boy in New York's burned-over district, reported a vision of the Father and the Son and, later, golden plates from which he translated the Book of Mormon. Persecuted from New York to Missouri to Illinois, where Smith was killed in 1844, the Saints under Brigham Young trekked to Utah; today the church he founded counts members on every continent and sends out tens of thousands of missionaries.
Ultimate Reality
God the Father is an exalted, embodied being, once as we are now in the church's boldest teaching; Jesus Christ is his literal firstborn Son and a separate being, and the Holy Ghost a third. Matter is eternal, creation is organization rather than creation from nothing, and human beings are God's spirit children with a divine potential written into their nature.
The Human Condition
Before birth, all lived with God as spirits; earthly life is a probationary state entered by choice, in which agency is exercised and experience gained. Adam's fall was a necessary and even blessed step in the plan of salvation — mortality is not a catastrophe but a curriculum — while personal sins, forgiven through Christ's atonement, require repentance and ordinances.
Knowledge and Truth
Revelation continues: the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price form an open canon, and a living prophet receives God's word for the church today. Knowledge is also personal — the Holy Ghost confirms truth to the sincere seeker (Moroni's promise) — so Latter-day Saint epistemology joins text, prophet, and testimony.
Right and Wrong
The Articles of Faith state the path: faith, repentance, baptism by immersion by priesthood authority, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, followed by enduring to the end. Temples extend the ordinances to the dead by proxy and seal families for eternity; the Word of Wisdom (abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea), tithing, chastity, and family home evening order the practical life.
Human Destiny
Salvation in its fullness is exaltation: eternal life in God's presence, in families sealed forever, inheriting the celestial kingdom — with lesser kingdoms of glory for nearly all, since God's mercy reaches almost everyone through Christ. Hell (outer darkness) is reserved for the finally defiant few. Eternal progression — becoming more like the Father — is the plan's horizon.
The Conversation
Latter-day Saints ask historic Christianity how an apostasy total enough to require restoration can be squared with Christ's promise that the gates of hell would not prevail — and historic Christianity asks in return whether the God who was once as we are is the God of Abraham's creeds. The conversation turns on the plainest of questions: is the canon closed, and who may say so?