Editing First Nephi (section)

===The Great and Abominable Church===
{{main|Great and abominable church}}
Nephi sees the persecution of the apostles and their followers by the "house of Israel",<ref>{{lds|1 Nephi|11|35}}</ref> then later sees a "great church" that is, according to the description of the angel, "...most abominable above all other churches, which slayeth the saints of God, yea, and tortureth them and bindeth them down, and yoketh them with a yoke of iron...".<ref>{{lds|1 Nephi|13|5}}</ref>

The LDS teaching of a [[Great Apostasy]] implies that the Catholic church is no longer true. Early Saints believed that the "great and abominable church" described the Catholic church.<ref name=Young>{{Cite book |last=Young |first=Neil J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CgDWCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA87 |title=We Gather Together: The Religious Right and the Problem of Interfaith Politics |date=2016 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-973898-4 |pages=87–88 |language=en}}</ref> LDS [[general authority]] [[Bruce R. McConkie]] famously identified the "great and abominable church" as the Catholic church in his book ''Mormon Doctrine'' (1958).{{sfn|Salleh and Hemming|2020|pp=24–25}} After its publication, church leaders at the time recognized McConkie’s problematic claims and pushed for discontinuation of the book. When a second edition came out, many of McConkie’s opinions of Catholicism were moderated.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Adams |first=Stirling |year=2012 |title=The End of Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43201315 |journal=The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal |publisher=John Whitmer Historical Association (JWHA) |volume=32 |issue=2 |pages=60–65 |jstor=43201315 }}</ref> Official LDS publications discourage the identification of the great and abominable church with the Catholic Church, as well as with any other specific religion, denomination or organization. According to a 1988 article by [[Stephen E. Robinson]] in ''[[Ensign (LDS magazine)|Ensign]]'', an official magazine of LDS Church, "no single known historical church, denomination, or set of believers meets all the requirements for the great and abominable church... Rather, the role of Babylon has been played by many different agencies, ideologies, and churches in many different times."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Robinson |first1=Stephen E. |title=Warring against the Saints of God |journal=The Ensign |date=January 1988 |url=https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1988/01/warring-against-the-saints-of-god |language=en}}</ref>