Do you think Joseph Smith Jr. was a true prophet of God?

Very few people believe he was anything but a con man. The ones who do believe are almost all born into the Mormon church and don't know anything else about him but what they've been carefully taught. Why on earth would God wait 2000 years between prophets and then choose a con man who eventually started polygamy to conceal his philandering, started an illegal bank that fleeced many of his followers (just like Madoff), and illegally destroyed a printing press that was going to expose his heinous behavior to his own followers in Nauvoo?

The guy was a classic fraud.

It is hard for people to believe in a living prophet - it has always been hard. People prefer dead prophets. It is hard to rationalize the direct commandment of God given through a living prophet.

It also makes it harder to tell which prophets are true prophets and which ones are not. Jesus taught that we can know a true prophet by their fruits, but few people want to take upon themselves the responsibility of determining which prophets have good fruits.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.