Joseph Smith Jr. was a very religious and God-fearing man. He founded the Latter-day Saint movement, better known as the Mormon Church. He was persecuted by some and adopted by others as well. He is one of the most controversial men in history today, due to his beliefs and teachings. They were different for his time and still very strange for our time. Joseph Smith Jr. was born December 23, 1805 in Sharon, Vermont. His father Joseph Smith Sr. and mother Lucy Mack Smith were poor, uneducated farmers. Shortly after his birth, the Smith family moved to Western New York, where they continued farming near the town of Palmyra. Joseph had five brothers and three sisters. There he spent the next four years of his life as a child, before moving to Manchester. (Book of Mormon: History of Joseph Smith Ch.1) Smith had little involvement in religious organizations during his youth. He read and studied the Bible and had his own religious views. It was influenced by the common folk religion of the region. Most people at that time were of the Methodist faith. The area where Smith grew up was also an area of ​​intense revivalism during the Second Great Awakening. (Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia: 2008 Early Life of Joseph Smith Jr.) Smith worked primarily in the fields with his father and brothers and did not have time for a formal education. In 1820, at the age of fourteen, Joseph Smith Jr. was faced with the decision to join a church. Not being a man without formal education or religious organization, he went to a grove of trees to pray and ask God which church was the right one to join. Smith said that God and Jesus appeared to him as "two figures whose brilliance and glory defy description." (Book of Mormon: History of Joseph Smith, chapter 1, verse 17) They told him that none of the churches were right and that he should not join any of them. Shortly after the “First Vision,” Joseph Smith, Jr. was in the company of a Methodist preacher who was very active in revivalism. As the two discussed religion, Smith mentioned his stories with the Father and the Son. The preacher treated him lightly, but with contempt, saying that he was the devil. The preacher concluded that visions were not happening in today's age and that such things stopped with the apostles and would never happen again after that..