Redo armature without stacking modifications? I'm making my first attempted at rigging and animation. I have a model which I just finished rigging and weight painting, and now I am ready to begin animating. However I quickly realized that my armature got disconnected from my mesh somehow...Looked around and found that I accidentally applied the armature modifier on my mesh (while the pose was changed) and lost the armature. 

Here is what it looks like, taken in edit mode

as you can see, the arm bones are bent downward which is how I originally made them. But then i posed the arms and added the armature modifier by mistake.

Here's what it looks like back in pose mode

Here they are matched together, but they aren't physically connected, when I move the bones the mesh doesn't move.

I thought I could fix this by adding an armature back on, but then this happens

It appears that the raising of the arms has doubled, as to add the modification - twice. The modifications are stacking. 

How can I fix this?
Thanks!
You need to apply the new pose of the armature as its rest pose before adding the modifier to the mesh. The mesh is deformed by the armature by using the difference between the armature's current pose (what is set in pose mode) and its rest pose (what you see in edit mode on the armature).

In pose mode, under the "Pose" menu, select "Apply Pose as Rest Pose". This will make the pose mode position of your armature become its edit mode position.