NARRATOR: Manchester, New York.
September 21, 1823.
As he settles into bed,
a 17-year-old farmhand
named Joseph Smith begins
to say his prayers.
Suddenly without warning,
an overpowering light
envelops his room.
And a robed figure appears.
According to Smith's
account, not only
was his robe exceedingly
white, but his whole person was
glorious beyond description.
Speaking from the
center of the light,
the angel, whose name is
Moroni, sent Smith on a quest
for several sacred texts
hidden near a local tree.
GREGORY BEIRICH: Upon
locating the tree,
Joseph dug and,
indeed, found the text.
But they recorded a language
which he could not read.
A second visitation from
Moroni told Joseph Smith
where he could
find what we might
call a device of
some kind that would
allow him to read the text.
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS:
Joseph Smith
was given this translating stone
[INAUDIBLE] with which he was
able to, not only
write down this text,
but also to be able
to translate it.
GREGORY BEIRICH:
He then translated
the texts into English which
become the Book of Mormon.
And it depicts,
among other things,
that after Jesus ascended into
heaven, he came to the Americas
and ministered to
the native peoples
here to convert them to his way
of life and that at some point,
the texts that become
the Book of Mormon
are deposited here so that
Joseph Smith could find them.
NARRATOR: Seven years later,
Smith publishes these texts
as part of the Book of Mormon,
establishing the Church
of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints,
a denomination with more than
15 million followers today.
Many religions worldwide
have been founded
with the help of angels.
Whether they're representatives
of Christian, Muslim,
or Buddhist gods,
these apparitions
are thought to be
a way that gods'
intervene on earth with humans.
But ancient astronaut
theorists suggest
that sometimes these
heavenly visions
and apparitions may
not actually be angels
sent by an omniscient god.
And curiously, the
so-called angel
that led Joseph Smith to the
sacred texts that would become
the Book of Mormon
did not profess
to have heavenly origins but
claimed to be from another part
of the universe.
DAVID WILCOCK: Now, Moroni did
not say that he was an angel.
He said that at one time
he had lived on Earth
but that now he came from
the Pleiades star cluster.
And he said there were
many others like him.
These extraterrestrials may
be giving these messages
to world leaders and
to prophets and seers
and mystics to let
us know that we are
the product of an
extraterrestrial interbreeding
and an ongoing contact
with these other people
who were not born on Earth.
And we have lost touch
with that history
only because we refuse
to believe the truth that
is recorded in our
historical books
and see what's right
in front of our faces
even now with the
encounters that are
happening in the modern world.
