The defining claim of the movement is not reform but restoration. Latter-day Saints hold that after the death of the apostles the fulness of the gospel and the authority to act in God's name were lost in a Great Apostasy, and that beginning in 1820 God restored them through Joseph Smith and his successors, who are sustained as prophets, seers, and revelators.
From this follow the tradition's distinctive features. Its canon is open: alongside the Bible it receives the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants (a collection of modern revelations), and the Pearl of Great Price, together called the standard works, and it teaches that God continues to reveal his will to living prophets. Its understanding of God is nontrinitarian: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are regarded as three distinct persons who are perfectly one in purpose, and the Father and the Son are held to have glorified physical bodies.
Salvation is worked out through faith in Jesus Christ, ordinances performed under restored priesthood authority, and covenant living. Among the teachings that most set the tradition apart are a premortal existence of every human spirit, the sealing of families for eternity in temples, vicarious ordinances such as baptism for the dead, and the hope of exaltation, becoming, through Christ, joint-heirs with him. These beliefs are set out here as the tradition itself states them.