Jeffrey R. Holland

“[Joseph Smith’s] life asked and answered the question ‘Do you believe God speaks to man?’ In all else that he accomplished in his brief 38 and a half years, Joseph left us above all else the resolute legacy of divine revelation—not a single, isolated revelation without evidence or consequence, and not ‘a mild sort of inspiration seeping into the minds of all good people’ everywhere, but specific, documented, ongoing directions from God. As a good friend and faithful LDS scholar has succinctly put it, ‘At a time when the origins of Christianity were under assault by the forces of Enlightenment rationality, Joseph Smith [unequivocally and singlehandedly] returned modern Christianity to its origins in revelation’ [see Richard L. Bushman, “A Joseph Smith for the Twenty-First Century” in Believing History (2004)]” (“Prophets, Seers, and Revelators,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2004, 8).