This book provides the most detailed study yet of early Mormon thought about the "end times." Underwood shows how Mormonism from 1830 to 1846 was profoundly influenced by its views of an imminent second coming of Christ and millennial transformation of the earth. In particular, the book explores the ways in which early LDS interpretation of the Bible and the Book of Mormon affected, and was affected by, Mormon millennial doctrines.

The book represents the first comprehensive linkage of the history of early Mormonism and millennial thought, areas in which, before now, "cross-pollination has been occasional at best.".

The author also places Mormon millennial thought in the broader context of Judeo-Christian ideas about the end of the world. He shows, for instance, how Mormons rejected the predominant nineteenth-century American view that religious revivals and foreign missions, rather than the personal return of Christ, would usher in the millennium.

Probing LDS perceptions of the institutions and values prevalent before the Civil War, Underwood demonstrates how the early Mormons actually were quite moderate, contrary to earlier views of them as countercultural or even revolutionary. In fact, Underwood points out, the Mormons are an excellent example of a millenarian group that could level a withering critique at the world around them, yet remain very much a part of the dominant culture.