Chapter I.
At the Edge of the World, Where God Hasn’t Picked a Church Yet

1771.
The New World isn’t America yet.
It’s a jitter in a cartographer’s hand, the crinkle of stinky treaties, a void between prayer and an axe.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony—oldest of the English outposts in New England, where hell is called “sin” and heaven is “working till dark.”

Out here, at the forest’s edge—where no doctrine has tamed the woods—live people who believe God is more real than England itself.

England?
A rotting theater of illusions, just ink on a page now.
And the king? A tin figurine—good for the mantelpiece, if you want someone praying for you while you freeze.
But here, across the ocean, the king doesn’t bring bread. Doesn’t keep wolves away. Doesn’t scare off devils in your dreams.
So, what’s the point of a king?

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In one of these homes—where the forest and faith rub shoulders—an old man in a linen shirt holds a Bible.
He doesn’t know Hebrew.
Doesn’t know Greek.
But he knows dreams.
And he knows something got lost across the ocean.
The Word.

This man is Asael Smith. He has a dream.
In his dream, there’s a city—not of stone, but of gold. A city built by ancient Hebrews before they melted into the woods, switched languages, and became the people the new arrivals would call “savages.”

He doesn’t see himself in that dream—he sees a future descendant who’ll find a forgotten book.
Not the Bible—it’s been translated a thousand times and lost its spark.
Not the Torah, not the Gospels. Something else.
Buried in the ground.

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Back then:

No Constitution here yet.
Not even a United States—still years away.
There was only land and people who believed God’s word could drop from the sky… or bubble up out of clay.

That’s the mood where a myth was born.
And a boy who’d hear it—Joseph, son of Joseph.
But before an angel spoke, there were dreams, old superstitions, and a magic stone—in a hat.

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The Future Prophet’s Family

Mother

Lucy Mack (1775–1856)—a daughter of times when the United States were just an idea and England still thought it had things under control.

The Mack home buzzed with the feeling that God was just outside the door.
In their Protestant world, it wasn’t about rituals—it was about real presence, homemade mysticism that outpaced church sermons.
The Macks swapped dreams, believed in prophecy, and talked about God like most people talk about the weather.

In that house, work was prayer, mercy was just a reflex, kindness the price of admission.
Helping the weak didn’t need declarations—just an open door.
Kids learned that God speaks through dreams, through crying, through conscience—and sometimes just by sitting quietly next to someone.

Lucy Mack walked away from that home convinced she didn’t need a middleman to talk to God.
The voices she heard weren’t madness—they were a chance to brush up against something bigger than the world.
And she taught her son that faith wasn’t something to hide—even if the neighbors stared.

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Father

Joseph Smith Sr. (1771–1840) was cut from similar cloth, just differently tailored.
Raised in a family just as soaked in mysticism—prophecy, stories, and dreams were real ways to dial God direct.
At the Smiths’, prayer was more personal than most dinner-table chats, and spiritual searching was as routine as paying the bills.

Joseph Sr. spent his life dodging poverty and chasing something just out of reach: a new start, hidden treasure, some meaning always hiding around the next corner.
He dreamed more than most: trees of life, rivers of light, angels in the orchard.
He told these stories to his son, passing on the wild belief that the invisible is just as real as the dirt under your feet.

Smith Sr. wasn’t great with logistics—he counted dreams, not debts.
But when Joseph Jr. started talking about voices and visions, Dad didn’t send him back to the fields, didn’t laugh or shut him down.
He sat him down and said one thing that stuck for generations:

“Son, if those voices are from God—don’t be afraid.
And if they’re not—you’ll find out.”

That’s a kind of foundation you don’t see in the history books.
Without it, Joseph Jr. might’ve ended up just another crazy on a hill.
With it, he became a prophet.
Because in this family, mysticism wasn’t shame—it was heritage.
When it came time to launch a new faith, Joseph Sr. became the first patriarch.
He didn’t need a title—he’d always been the one who never turned away from mystery, even when it left him empty-handed.

That’s the Smith family legacy:
Work, dreams, deep faith, and the gut-level certainty that God didn’t stop talking to people—He just sometimes picks the least obvious candidates.

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