From Deseret News archives:
Exhibit on Joseph Smith's life opens
Speaking after a press conference that opened a new exhibit in the Church Museum of History and Art highlighting Smith Friday, Elder Marlin Jensen of the Quorums of the Seventy said LDS leaders are "sensitive to the idea that we would somehow place Joseph Smith above Jesus Christ in our theology. Yet nothing could be further from the truth."
The museum exhibit, which opens to the public today, is largely composed of manuscripts and documents. It also includes a handful of personal items owned by Smith, including a watch and a book borrowed from a private collector. Replicas of medical instruments, like those used during a legendary leg operation Smith endured as a 7-year-old boy, are also part of the display.
The items are "something you can heft that tells you he was a real person."
LDS critics have often chided the devotion many Latter-day Saints have to the man who they believe restored Christ's original gospel and translated a new volume of scripture the Book of Mormon in part through direct communication with God and Christ.
Elder Jensen said that among the greatest accomplishments of the faith's founding prophet is the fact that he "cast so much light on Christ and God and on their true nature."
Smith taught that God has a plan for all mortals with Christ as the central figure in providing salvation and eternal life, he said.
"He didn't seek to aggrandize himself. . . . Consequently, there's been an effort to keep the celebration of this year in perspective.
"He is entitled to some honor and appreciation, but he is a man a great one, but a man."
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