---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Whitney, Orson F.
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 19
number: 8
published: 1916-06
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: "Orson F. Whitney, \"The World's Debt to Joseph Smith,\" *Improvement Era* 19, no. 8 (June 1916): 718–719."
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1908unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera1908unse
start_page: 718
end_page: 719
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1916-06)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1908unse
  publication_year: 1916
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1916, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# The World's Debt to Joseph Smith

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The World's Debt to Joseph Smith

BY ELDER ORSON            F.   WHITNEY, OF THE QUORUM OF THE
                               TWELVE APOSTLES

       No man ever lived who taught the principles of the
gospel more plainly than the Prophet Joseph Smith.                  God
sends    all   great    men    into the world   —   poets, philosophers,

painters, musicians, inventors, discoverers, all              good and
wise teachers       ;   but the most important mission that can
rest   upon a human soul is the mission of a Prophet who
comes with the divine message of salvation.
       The world was full of poets, painters, sculptors and
musicians, on that great day of Pentecost, when the con-

scious-stricken multitude cried out:                 "Men and breth-
ren,   what shall we do?"          But the poets could not answer,
the sculptors and painters could not answer, not even

Caesar upon his throne could tell men what to do to be
saved.

       But there stood up a man who could and did give a
definite,      positive   and true answer       to the question.    He
was not an educated man             ;   he was an unlettered fisher-
man, but nevertheless, a Prophet of God, and he                     told

them just what they must do to be saved.                 He was, there-
fore, the      most important man of his generation            — Peter,
the Apostle of Jesus Christ.

       For the same reason the Prophet Joseph Smith was
the    most important man of             his generation.     Some day
he will be honored by the whole world as a man who re-
stored the lost knowledge of the true and living God, and

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answered anew the all-momentous question             :   "What must
we do to be saved?"
        May the Lord of heaven give to us, and to all man-
kind, a     knowledge of the truth, and a testimony of the
mission of Joseph the Prophet.   It was he who taught the

doctrine, a    new and strange doctrine to his generation,
that husband and wife need not part forever, .when death

separates     them.       Among many other         precious     gospel
truths, he proclaimed the eternity of the           marriage cove-
nant,    when formed in obedience to the law of God, and
showed that there were sacred ties by which husband and
wife may be united eternally: the wife to her husband;
the husband to his wife; the- parents to their children,

and the children to their parents, forever.          This is one of
the most comforting of Joseph Smith's teachings.                There
is   no need that death should be an eternal parting          —none
whatever,     if   those united under God's law and by his
authority perform their part.
       Let us strive to come to the realization of the truth,
that Jesus Christ is the world's Redeemer, and that with-

out him there       is   no salvation.     If he did not rise    from
the dead, our hope         is   vain.   But it is my testimony that
he did so rise, and that he is the author of salvation and
eternal life to all who will believe and obey him.

      And I testify that Joseph Smith was a prophet of
God, raised up to restore the everlasting gospel, the only
plan of salvation.        By means of this gospel all men may
be saved, and those who are saved will be rewarded ac-
cording to their works, and inherit celestial, terrestrial, or
telestial   glory, in the       many mansions of our Heavenly
Father.