Nauvoo, USA - The lights went up and the mayflies swarmed as Latter-day Saints flooded the stage, with the silhouette of the sacred Nauvoo Temple rising from the hallowed bluff behind them.
Then Prophet Joseph Smith appeared, parting a sea of actors and recounting the life and ministry, sacrifice and resurrection of their savior Jesus Christ.
"Isn't that what all the prophets have taught?" Smith asked as he strolled downstage.
"Yes, Brother Joseph. All the prophets from the beginning of time," the narrator responded. "And such a prophet we found."
As the Mormon Church, officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, celebrates the bicentennial of its founding prophet's birth, members from around the world are descending upon Nauvoo, a city that has come to symbolize the meteoric rise and fall of their prophet.
There, immigrants from other nations flocked to be part of a new expression of Christianity, built a temple and created a prosperous and powerful city. And from there, thousands of Mormons were forced to flee across the frozen Mississippi in the dead of night after the murder of their leaders.
For 29 years Nauvoo has hosted a pageant to showcase the city's history. This year, the pageant has been rewritten and recast to highlight more boldly the doctrine and teachings that Smith laid down for the Latter-day Saints. Church and town officials expect the pageant to triple the town's population of 1,100 during its monthlong run through Aug. 5.
In this anniversary year, Mormons are reflecting on Smith's legacy, which to some degree has been downplayed for fear that outsiders would mistake their reverence for the prophet as if they were worshipping him as a God.
"If one can not square with Prophet Joseph, we have nothing as a church," said Elder Donald Staheli, church President Gordon Hinckley's liaison to Nauvoo. "If Prophet Joseph and his mission are true, then the church has everything. If it's not true, we become a fraud."
The prophet, who lived only to age 38, also is experiencing a rebirth in the minds of scholars who may not accept his claims of a divine role but recognize his significant contributions to the nation's political and religious landscape.
Though Mormons consider themselves to be Christians, the church is founded on the belief that Smith at 14 received a revelation from God that the original church of Jesus Christ had to be restored. His revelations came during a time of religious upheaval called the Second Great Awakening, a series of revivals that swept across New England to renew the purity of early Christianity.
Smith's parents had been fervently religious but did not subscribe to any particular denomination. According to Mormon history, Smith had been praying to God for guidance on which denomination to choose when the first revelation - God the Father and his son Jesus Christ - came.
The church teaches that a subsequent revelation led Smith to dig up gold plates embossed in what the Mormons call "reform Egyptian," which he translated and published as the Book of Mormon. The church considers the book to be a companion text to the Bible or "another testament of Jesus Christ."
"Of all the religions or variations of Christianity that were developing, only Mormonism provided its followers with a Bible book, a holy scripture, and that makes it very special," said Robert Remini, a University of Illinois-Chicago professor who wrote a biography of Joseph Smith in 2002. "It's no wonder he had a great impact and influenced so many individuals."
As Smith gained followers, they moved from New York to Ohio, on to Missouri and then to Illinois. There Smith, a savvy businessman, negotiated the purchase of a swath of swampland on a bend in the Mississippi, and in 1839 the Mormons founded Nauvoo - Hebrew for "beautiful." After draining the swamps and surviving malaria, cholera and typhoid, they would build 2,000 homes.
Smith acted as mayor, formed a militia to fight dissidents and eventually ran for president on a platform of religious freedom. Before long, the Mormon missionary zeal had drawn enough immigrants to the western Illinois town to rival Chicago in size and political clout.
When Smith and his brother Hyrum were charged with the destruction of an anti-Mormon printing press, they surrendered to authorities in nearby Carthage, Ill., and were shot there by a mob in 1844.
Envy of the surviving Mormons, who wielded enormous political power in Illinois, escalated into anger, and in 1846 then-Illinois Gov. Thomas Ford ordered them to leave. Thousands followed their new prophet Brigham Young to Utah, where church headquarters remain today. Last year the Illinois Legislature issued an apology.
Mormons believe that, like Young, living prophets receive ongoing revelations. They also say time on earth is just one stage of life; people continue to develop after death and are reunited with their families to reach the ultimate goal of "God-hood."
"We can make people live an eternal life like God does," said Richard Bushman, a Mormon professor at Columbia University who has written a biography of Smith to be published this fall. "That is a great message of hope and excitement for human potential."
Such beliefs rile evangelicals and other Christians who do not believe Smith was a prophet and consider the Mormon church an apostasy. As thousands of Mormons converge in Nauvoo through early August, so have demonstrators who distribute literature to pageant spectators every night.
Nauvoo Police Chief Don Faulkner has called in extra officers to patrol during the pageant and paid his annual visit to Colleen Ralson, a well-known former Mormon who runs a Nauvoo storefront dedicated to proving Mormon doctrine is a fraud.
David Warner, a Mormon who serves as director of music and cultural arts for the church, insists the pageant will illustrate to Christians how much they share with the Latter-day Saints.
"Many people familiar with the Christian tradition will come in here and hear things they already know and hopefully that will help them see the commonality that we have," Warner said.
"It's about families who come here to this area seeking the most American of ideas - religious freedom," he said. "It's important to realize they were doing something that has been done for centuries - following someone who spoke for God."
What Mormons and other Christians do not have in common, however, is the Book of Mormon, which millions believe is not just a work of art but prophetic.
"You do have to say he's some kind of genius if not inspired as a prophet," Bushman said of Smith. "They have to take him seriously as a force. Any religion that grows to 12 million people - even if you don't believe his theology at all, he was an influential person that has to be admired."
Bushman said intellectual forces aligned against religious miracles have diminished Smith's significance in the fabric of American history.
"They see him in the history of fanaticism in the 19th century," he said. "We need to make larger comparisons, let our imaginations roam a little bit and find other ways to look at Joseph Smith."
Remini does think Smith was a product of his own time who sincerely believed he had a divine calling.
"I like to believe that he was conditioned to believe that he could be an instrument of God and then began to see or hear or experience what you would call divine apparitions," Remini said.
Elder Marlin K. Jensen, director of the Joseph Smith Papers Project in Salt Lake City, said the church's mission of organizing Smith's letters and journals for posterity is "the single most important historical project for the church to undertake."
"Our beloved prophet Gordon Hinckley is fond of saying almost everything in the church is the lengthened shadow of Joseph Smith," he said.
The pageant is a part of that legacy, Jensen said.
"Without a strong memory of who we are, where we've been, what we've come through," Jensen said, "we can't live in the present with the kind of fullness we otherwise could."