Joseph Smith — "I have been called of God to lay the foundation of a great work."
I have been called of God to lay the foundation of a great work.
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Details
History of the Church, Vol. 1, p. 17 (First Vision account, recorded later)
Date: 1820 (recorded later)
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Found in 1 providers: grok
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Understanding this quote
What it means
The speaker believes they were personally chosen by God—not through personal ambition—to begin something of enormous, lasting consequence. It frames action as divine appointment rather than self-determination: the work belongs to God, the speaker merely initiates it. This positions the speaker as an instrument rather than originator, implying the work will outlast any single individual and carry authority beyond what any person could claim alone.
Relevance to Joseph Smith
Smith claimed God and angels appeared to him beginning in 1820, directing him to restore Christ's original church after centuries of apostasy. He translated the Book of Mormon, founded the LDS Church in 1830, built communities in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, and died a martyr in 1844. This quote captures his entire self-conception: a modern prophet whose divine calling justified extraordinary doctrines, plural marriage, and constructing a new religious civilization from scratch.
The era
The Second Great Awakening (1790s–1840s) swept America with intense revivalism, collapsing denominational authority, and widespread belief in direct divine revelation. Frontier Americans distrusted established churches and demanded personal spiritual experience. Smith's prophetic claims fit this cultural ferment precisely. Simultaneously, Manifest Destiny ideology normalized narratives of providential national founding. His assertion of a divinely mandated 'great work' was radical yet comprehensible to an era already primed for grand, God-ordained beginnings.
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