Vanderhoven7 » It's good to have a healthy fear of being associated with a dangerous religious group in light of Jesus' warning about false prophets. Healthy fear causes people to take careful stalk before commitment.
At this point I don't see any reason to accept Joseph Smith as a true prophet of God...but I await your reasons that I should.
Why should people believe the claims of Joseph Smith? I can only speak for myself, but as I've said elsewhere, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only church in our time that meets all the requirements of a religion founded by God. Joseph Smith had nothing to gain by embarking on a career that would lead to persecution, severe hardship and ultimately death. Peter told the Jews of his day of the great “restoration of all things” that would come -- and that's what the LDS faith is, the foundation of the restoration of things. We know of the dire warning that before the great day of the Lord, a “falling away” (apostasia) would occur. Interestingly, in the early 1800s, a religious fervor struck the United States as a number of theologians realized that the first century church had apostatized and that a restoration was needed to set things right. Alexander Campbell was one of the most noteworthy ones, but though he and the Baptists appealed to many, his colleague Sidney Rigdon realized that the necessary authority was missing. Other small restorationist sects were started, but most fell into obscurity. Later, when Adventist churches arose, Charles Taze Russell and later, Joseph Rutherford, began what's now known as the Jehovah's Witnesses, but they also lacked divine authority to bind on Heaven and Earth.
Alexander Campbell was the writer behind what would become the churches of Christ, but Sidney Rigdon was the orator. Rigdon, however, was convinced that while Campbell's views on doctrine were sound, no man on Earth had the authority to act in God's name. So when he heard Mormon elders preaching that this authority had been restored, he became convinced that what they were preaching was true, but Campbell remained opposed to Joseph Smith and founded his own church, claiming it was the church Jesus started in the first century. But if so, Rigdon and others asked, who was the Christian who ordained Campbell, and who ordained him and so forth back to Christ? That niggling issue caused a divide in Campbell's group and he lost more than a few of his people.
Today, very few Christian movements even discuss divine authority. Ask any Jehovah's Witness elders where they get the authority to act in God's name and you'll be met with a blank look. Some will say they get it when they're baptized -- that they become ordained ministers. But this is absurd and is nowhere taught in the scriptures.
Peter spoke about the restoration of the gospel. As recorded in the book of Acts, he told the Jews:
Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. (Acts 3:19-21)
As LDS writer Milton Backman notes:
Like most Protestants, [the restorationists] held that priesthood was conferred not by the laying on of hands by those having authority but was a direct endowment from God to believers. Consequently, they were searching for principles and practices other Protestants had failed to recover. ...
In some respects, Joseph Smith’s quest for truth was more in harmony with that of Roger Williams than Alexander Campbell’s. Both Joseph Smith and Roger Williams believed in the disruption and vanishing of the true apostolic church. Both held that churches which they investigated taught correct doctrines and that a recovery without divine intervention was impossible. Both also sought a restoration of authority by heavenly messengers.
I obviously lack the time and space to make my point; however, here's a debate posted to a churches of Christ website between Bill Jackson, of the Southwest church of Christ and me (conducted in 1984). It explains why I believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God and the LDS Church to be the literal restoration spoken of by Peter. Remember that he said the Father would “send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you, whom the heaven must receive until the restoration of all things.” Jesus Christ came to Joseph Smith while he was still a young boy, and he was subsequently tutored by many of the prophets of the past from Adam to Peter.
Since that debate many other evidences have been discovered about the Book of Mormon that adds to its veracity. The bottom line is that the LDS Church has apostles, prophets, teachers, deacons, elders, bishops, priests, seventy and evangelists (patriarchs), receives revelation as the ancient church did, and it has the authority that was given to the ancient church. I know of no other church that meets the criteria of the ancient church.