Authors

David Allan Bednar (born 1952) is an American religious leader who has served as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 2004. Born in Oakland, California, Bednar earned a PhD in organizational behavior from Purdue University. He served as president of Brigham Young University-Idaho from 1997 to 2004, overseeing significant innovations in higher education including year-round enrollment and online learning initiatives. His teachings emphasize covenant-making, the role of technology in hastening the Lord’s work, and the connection between generations in family history work. He has spoken about how hearts turning to family history reflects the prophesied work of Elijah.

Heber Chase Kimball (1801–1868) was one of the original members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and later served as first counselor to Brigham Young in the First Presidency for over twenty years. Born in Vermont, he learned the potter’s trade from his brother and joined the Church in 1832 after hearing the preaching of missionaries. In 1837, Joseph Smith called Kimball to lead the first LDS missionary effort in England. Beginning in Preston, Lancashire, the mission baptized about 1,500 converts before Kimball’s departure in 1838. This established a pattern of missionary work that would bring thousands of British converts to the Church in subsequent decades. A physically impressive man and powerful speaker, Kimball was known for his faith and devotion. When the First Presidency was reorganized in 1847, Brigham Young chose him as first counselor, a position he held until his death in 1868. At Kimball’s funeral, Young remarked that he had known him for 43 years.

Hugh Brown Brown (1883–1975) was an attorney, educator, and Church leader who served in the First Presidency under President David O. McKay. Born in Granger, Utah, his family moved to Alberta, Canada, when he was fifteen. He served a mission in England from 1904 to 1906 and later married Zina Young Card, granddaughter of Brigham Young. Brown had a distinguished career before his general authority service, including military leadership in World War I, serving as president of the British Mission during World War II, and working as LDS Servicemen’s Coordinator. He joined BYU’s faculty in 1946 as a professor of religion. Called as an apostle in 1958 at age 74, Brown served as a counselor in the First Presidency from 1961 to 1970. He was known as a talented speaker and favored rescinding the Church’s priesthood restriction before it was changed in 1978. His address “The Profile of a Prophet” remains widely quoted for its articulation of the nature of prophetic authority.

John Taylor (1808–1887) served as the third president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1880 until his death. Born in Milnthorpe, England, he immigrated to Canada in 1832 and converted to the Church in 1836. Known as the “Champion of Liberty,” he edited several Church publications and served multiple missions to England and France. Taylor was present in Carthage Jail when Joseph and Hyrum Smith were martyred in 1844. Shot five times, he survived and was thereafter known as a “living martyr.” He is remembered for singing “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief” at Hyrum’s request shortly before the attack. As Church President, Taylor led the Saints during intense federal persecution over plural marriage. The Edmunds Act of 1882 forced him into hiding for the last years of his life, during which he established colonies of refuge in Mexico and Canada. He died on July 25, 1887, still maintaining his convictions about religious liberty.

Joseph Fielding Smith (1838–1918) was the 6th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving from 1901 until his death. He was the son of Hyrum Smith and nephew of Joseph Smith. Born in Far West, Missouri, Joseph F. Smith experienced the trials of early Church history firsthand. As a young child, he witnessed the aftermath of the Carthage martyrdom. At age nine, he drove an ox team across the plains to Utah with his widowed mother. At fifteen, he was called on a mission to Hawaii, where he had a transformative vision of the afterlife. He taught that Jesus’s work was not finished with his death and resurrection but continues until all who can be saved are redeemed. This expansive vision of salvation includes work for the dead and the promise that the faithful become saviors on Mount Zion alongside Christ.

Joseph Fielding Smith (1876–1972) served as the tenth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1970 until his death. He was the son of Joseph F. Smith, the sixth Church president, and the grandson of Hyrum Smith, brother of the Prophet Joseph Smith. By age ten, he had read the Book of Mormon twice. Smith served as an apostle for over 60 years, longer than almost anyone in Church history. He held positions as Church Historian, president of the Genealogical Society, and president of the Salt Lake Temple. As one of the Church’s most prolific writers, his works include Doctrines of Salvation , Essentials in Church History , and Answers to Gospel Questions . When he became Church President at age 93, he was the oldest person to assume that role. Though his presidency was brief, he led important administrative reforms that improved correlation of Church publications and brought the Quorum of the Twelve into more decision-making. He died peacefully on July 2, 1972, after attending church services that day.

Joseph Smith was born on December 23, 1805, in the quaint town of Sharon, Vermont. Emerging from humble beginnings, he would grow to become a prominent figure in American religious history. Joseph’s early years were characterized by an insatiable quest for spiritual truth, set against the backdrop of the Second Great Awakening. In the spring of 1820, at the tender age of 14, he experienced a miraculous visitation in which he beheld God the Father and Jesus Christ. This profound encounter set in motion a series of divinely orchestrated events, culminating in the translation of the golden plates and the subsequent publication of the Book of Mormon . Joseph’s steadfast commitment to his divine mission resulted in the founding of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830, marking the beginning of a new religious movement. Throughout his life, Joseph Smith faced tremendous challenges, including relentless persecution, violent mob actions, and unjust imprisonment. Despite these trials, he demonstrated remarkable resilience, guiding the Saints through adversity from Ohio to Missouri, and ultimately to the thriving community of Nauvoo, Illinois. In Nauvoo, he fostered a vibrant society, articulating profound doctrines about the eternal nature of families and the limitless potential of the human soul. Tragically, his life was cut short when he was martyred on June 27, 1844, in Carthage, Illinois. Despite his untimely death, Joseph Smith’s legacy endures, with millions of Latter-day Saints worldwide continuing to embrace the faith he restored.

Orson Ferguson Whitney (1855–1931) was an apostle, historian, and poet who articulated an early vision for Mormon literature. Born in Salt Lake City, he was the son of Horace K. Whitney and Helen Mar Kimball, connecting him to both the Whitney and Kimball families prominent in early Church history. As a young man, Whitney aspired to be an actor, but during his mission to the Eastern States he discovered his calling as a writer and speaker. He served as bishop of the Eighteenth Ward for 28 years and as Assistant Church Historian before his call as an apostle in 1906. He also served in the Salt Lake City Council and as a State Senator. Whitney authored The History of Utah and biographies of Heber C. Kimball and Lorenzo Snow. His epic poem Elias, An Epic of the Ages represents a major work of early Mormon literature. His 1888 sermon “Home Literature” was the first to articulate a vision for distinctively Mormon literary arts. He also wrote hymns including “Savior, Redeemer of My Soul.”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) was an original member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a mathematician, and a prolific writer for the early Latter-day Saint movement. The younger brother of Parley P. Pratt, he was baptized on his nineteenth birthday in 1830 and ordained an apostle in 1835. He became the last surviving member of the original Twelve. On July 21, 1847, Pratt became the first Latter-day Saint to enter the Salt Lake Valley, arriving three days before the main pioneer company. He preached the first sermon in the valley and dedicated it to the Lord. He and William Clayton also invented a precursor to the modern odometer to measure their journey. Throughout his life, Pratt pursued his strong interest in mathematics and astronomy. He published New and Easy Method of Solution of the Cubic and Biquadratic Equations and Key to the Universe. He served as Church Historian and Recorder, edited Church periodicals, and divided the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants into verses with cross-references.

Parley Parker Pratt was among the most talented and influential figures in the formative period of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Apostle, missionary, theologian, poet, polemicist, prisoner, explorer, polygamist, and finally, in the view of many, martyr. Pratt was born in central New York State to Jared Pratt—a weaver thrown out of employment in his trade by the Industrial Revolution—and his wife, Charity. Like the Prophet Joseph Smith, who was two years his senior, Parley P. Pratt grew up in a family on the margins of the rural economy. Jared Pratt moved from place to place as a landless itinerant laborer whose “means to educate his children were very limited,” although they did have access to what Parley later termed an “excellent system of common school education.” Notwithstanding their limited opportunities, two of Jared and Charity Pratt’s five sons, Parley and his younger brother Orson, would become distinguished among the first generation of Latter-day Saints for their intellectual and rhetorical powers. Parley compensated for the deficiencies in his formal education through an early and avid appetite for reading: “I always loved a book; . . . a book at every leisure moment of my life.” Prominent among these readings was the Bible, which Pratt began to study at the age of seven under the direction of his mother. From this literary self-education, Pratt derived a broad and ready general knowledge and an uncommon facility in writing and public speaking. Following his 1830 conversion to the Latter-day Saint faith (characteristically, through reading the Book of Mormon ), Pratt devoted the remainder of his life to Church service. Although he was frequently absent from Church headquarters on numerous missions in the United States, Canada, Britain, and Chile, he still managed to play a prominent role in many of the key events of early Latter-day Saint history: the establishment of a body of Church members in the neighborhood of Kirtland, Ohio, in 1830; the settlement of Jackson County, Missouri, in 1832, and the forced expulsion the following year; the Zion’s Camp relief expedition; the crisis attending the collapse of the Kirtland realestate bubble and the failure of the Kirtland Safety Society in 1837; the Missouri troubles of 1838–39 (as a consequence of which Pratt was imprisoned for eight months, a longer period than any other Church leader); the leadership crisis following the assassination of Joseph Smith in 1844; the expulsion from Nauvoo in 1846; and the westward migration to the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Most importantly, Pratt’s active pen generated a series of books and pamphlets that included the first and most influential systematic statement of Latter-day Saint beliefs ( A Voice of Warning , 1837), the defining Mormon persecution narrative ( History of the Late Persecution Inflicted by the State of Missouri upon the Mormons , 1839), and the foremost nineteenthcentury theological treatise ( Key to the Science of Theology , 1855). (Grow, Matthew J.; Armstrong, Gregory K.; Siler, Dennis J.; Geary, Edward A.; and Givens, Terryl L. (2012) “ Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism and Parley P. Pratt and the Making of Mormonism ,” BYU Studies : Vol. 51: Iss. 2, Article 13.)