The Life Story of Brigham Young

He took two years to decide to be baptized. Once he did, he never looked back. He sought out Joseph Smith, the translator of the Book of Mormon, the book that changed his life. He found the Prophet while he was in his common work clothes chopping wood. From that inauspicious moment on Joseph and Brigham became close confidants. The key to Brigham's life was he never felt he was Joseph Smith's successor. Instead, he felt he was an apostle of Jesus Christ andJoseph Smith. In 1838, when the Mormons were forced from the state of Missouri, whendissenters gave the militia of the state the pretext for Joseph Smith to be jailed for alleged treason, Brigham Young was thrust into the role of leading the Saints to safety on the Illinois shores of the Mississippi river. This and other tests fully qualified him to lead the Saints to theWest that Joseph predicted. Friend and foe alike may have called Brigham Young the "American Moses." True, he led the largest forced migration in humankind's history, yet he always knew that Joseph was his Moses.