"[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])."
