Chris Wise

Russian historian visited the US studying the history of great Americans and American institutions. One journalist asked him: “In your study of great Americans…which of them do you consider to be the greatest?” He answered, “You have only had one truly great American, one man who gave to the world ideas that could change the whole destiny of the human race—Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet.” Leo Tolstoy, the Russian historian, later reported: “The Mormon people teach the American religion; their principles teach the people not only of Heaven and its attendant glories, but how to live so that their social and economic relations with each other are placed on a sound basis. If the people follow the teachings of this Church, nothing can stop their progress—it will be limitless. There have been great movements started in the past but they have died or been modified before they reached maturity. If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known.”