Joseph Smith the Prophet-Teacher
About this ebook
Did electricity exist before mankind learned how to utilize it? Of course.
Has every truth to be discovered, been discovered? No.
Is it possible that religious beliefs in the world today are incorrect? Yes!
There are truths in God's universe that are now existing, and have always existed, but man, as yet, has no knowledge of them.
So how does a person distinguish truth from error?
Joseph Smith defined truth in this way, “Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come."
As a prophet of God, who received revelation, Joseph Smith acting in the capacity of a teacher, taught the saints the truth of all things - clarifying misconceptions and false truths.
For example, against the sectarian dogma of the cessation of revelation, Joseph Smith proclaimed the reopening of the heavens. Against the doctrine that angels would no more visit the earth, he asserted the visitation of angels to him, revealing the existence of the Book of Mormon, a new volume of Scripture.
This book JOSEPH SMITH THE PROPHET-TEACHER, is a collection of truths taught by the prophet during his life. These topics include clarification on; revelation, heaven and hell, our relationship with God, the nature of God, man’s origin, eternal punishment, and the existence of good and evil, among many other topics.
It may be asked, “What historical American of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen?” And it is by no means impossible that the answer to that interrogatory may be thus written: Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet.
About the author
Brigham Henry Roberts was born in 1857 in Wolverhampton, England, of itinerant and soon separated parents. His convert mother immigrated to Zion when he was five years old, leaving him in the care of foster parents. When he was ten he too reached Utah, having walked nearly all the way across the plains. Once in Utah he moved from one mining camp to another, remaining illiterate until his mid-teens. His only formal schooling was one year at the University of Deseret, but added considerable self-education and became one of the most articulate and eloquent orators and writers in the Church’s history.
Roberts edited and published the seven-volume 4,500 page “documentary” History of the Church also known as History of Joseph Smith. Later Roberts authored and published the 3,400-page six-volume history of the first century of the Church, known as A Comprehensive History of the Church. In addition he authored the three-volume New Witnesses for God, which he regarded as “the fullest treatise on the Book of Mormon yet published.” This, he said in retrospect, was his “finest work.” He authored, in addition, more than fifty tracts, articles, and pamphlets revolving around the Book of Mormon, its origins, its content, its meaning, its purposes, and its power as a sacred document.
Robert’s multi-volume work made B. H. Roberts the foremost Latter-day Saint historian of the first century of the Church’s existence.
Roberts became a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy in 1888 at the age of 31. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1898 but was not allowed to take his seat because of the controversy over his involvement in polygamy.
Beyond the age of 60 he was a chaplain in America and France for Utah Soldiers serving in World War I during 1917-1918.
