Wentworth Letter - Significance

Significance

The Wentworth Letter is significant for several reasons.

First, it connects the message of what Mormons believe to be the Restoration with the history of said Restoration: "By these things we know..." (Doctrine and Covenants 20:1-17)

Second, it emphasizes the First Vision as an essential part of Latter-day Saint message.

Third, it contains the Standard of Truth, the mission statement for missionaries:

“Our missionaries are going forth to different nations . . . the Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.” (History of the Church 4:540)

Fourth, it ends with the statements which later became the Articles of Faith. B. H. Roberts said of these,

“These Articles of Faith were not produced by the labored efforts and harmonized contentions of scholastics, but were struck off by one inspired mind at a single effort to make a declaration of that which is most assuredly believed by the church, for one making earnest inquiry about the truth."

"The combined directness, perspicuity, simplicity and comprehensiveness of this statement of the principles of our religion may be relied upon as strong evidence of a divine inspiration resting upon the Prophet, Joseph Smith.” (B. H. Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, Vol.2, Ch.47, p.131)

And finally, the Wentworth letter re-establishes Joseph Smiths teachings that the Lamanites are the principal ancestors of the American Indians. In the Wentworth letter we read,

"They were principally Israelites, of the descendants of Joseph. The Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the inheritance of the country. The principal nation of the second race fell in battle towards the close of the fourth century. The remnant are the Indians that now inhabit this country." (Wentworth Letter )