Joseph Smith, Jr., born on December 23, 1805, was the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, more commonly known as Mormonism – which has been thrust into the limelight to a significant degree recently as a result of Mitt Romney, one of the Republican Party’s nominees for President of the United States of America, being a supporter of this particular faith.
As for Joseph Smith, he began to develop a not-insubstantial following after he proclaimed that, beginning in the early 1820s, he had a number of encounters with an angelic entity named Moroni. So the story went, Moroni visited Smith (on some occasions while he, Smith, slept) and directed him to a book – inscribed on a set of golden plates – that supposedly detailed a visit of Jesus Christ to the Americas.
The book, we are told, was buried on a hill near Smith’s home (in Manchester, New York), which was variously referred to as Cumorah Hill and Mormon Hill. The same book was eventually translated and published under the title of the Book of Mormon. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was duly born.
How curious that more than 120 years after Smith’s experience, a man named Truman Bethurum underwent a series of astonishingly similar encounters. His 1952 liaisons, however, were with alleged extraterrestrial entities – rather than an angelic one – and occurred atop the similarly-named Mormon Mesa, which is situated in Nevada. Just like Smith, Bethurum’s first encounter began when his sleep was disturbed by the sudden presence of a superior being – or beings, in Bethurum’s case.
Read More: http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2012/02/from-mormonism-to-ufos/
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