“From the historic point of view Jesus is to be regarded as a direct successor of the Hebrew prophets. His teachings are synonymous with the highest spiritual aspirations of the human race. Like the prophets, He lays the chief stress upon pure conduct and moral ideas, but He goes beyond the prophets in His absolute indifference to theological speculations and religious rites. It has been commonly said that the Jews rejected Jesus. They did so in the sense in which they rejected the teachings of the earlier prophets”
(Joseph Fielding Smith, The Signs of the Times, p. 62)