On Monday, November 5, 2018 at 2:50:49 PM UTC-7, Gary Harnagel wrote:

So your claim that an angel "explained the truth" to Joseph Smith is
egregiously incomplete and misleading. He claimed the Father and the Son
visited him. When he asked which church he should join, he was told none
of them. And he didn't run off and start a religion after having an
experience MUCH more profound that Mohammed.

He started a denomination, if not a religion. Although one could claim that
Christianity is a sect within Judaism, so it's not clear to me that this is an
important distinction.

He started a group of people with a particular set of beliefs, distinct from
everyone else. How closely their beliefs might be related to some other people's
doean't seem to me to be a significant factor.

Also "after having an experience" implies that you accept his claims for what he
had experienced. Why would anyone be even remotely inclined to do that?

John Savard