Testimony of Christ

Elder M. Russell Ballard recently suggested that members of the church could use the internet to share the gospel. And so I created a seperate blog with the sole purpose of sharing my understanding of, and thoughts and feelings toward, the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think it appropriate to use my first entry to explain how I know that the gospel is true--how I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior.

My parents are faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I was raised to believe in God and in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I suppose I accepted what they taught me about the church just as I accepted what they taught me about washing my hands after using the restroom, always saying "please" and "thank you," and looking both ways before crossing the street. But there came a time when I realized that religious beliefs were different. My friends at school did not share them. Neither did my teachers. Religion, I learned, was a matter of faith.

As I grew older, I developed a desire to know whether the church was really true--if for no other reason than to find out whether there really would be consequences for doing forbidden things like lying, stealing, and skipping church. That desire matured into a desire to know why I was born, where I came from, where I was going after death, and if life really had a purpose. The way I chose to live my life and a very sense of identity depended on that knowledge. And so I prayed. I asked God, Himself, if the gospel principles my parents had taught me were true. In a very personal and powerful way, I received an answer. Yes.

Years later, as I was serving as a full-time missionary in Long Beach, California, my faith was tried. I came face to face almost daily with people that passionately disagreed with my beliefs. They accosted me with one reason after another for why they believed the LDS church to be false. My first instinct was to make an appeal to intellectualism. I wanted to prove to myself intellectually and philosophically that the church was true. But such an approach is contradictory to the nature of the gospel. The first principle of the gospel is faith, and faith would not be necessary if gospel truths could be proven with logic. I learned that "...your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God" (1 Corinthians 2:5), and that "...the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirits of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14). This seemed almost like an emperor's new clothes ploy. As if Paul was saying, "Don't use your intellects or you might find out that I'm not telling the truth." But I remembered the powerful feelings I had experienced that told me the gospel was a good and important part of my life. And I read other scriptures that told me how to go about finding out if the gospel was true.

"If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God..." (James 1:5)

"Behold, I say unto you they are made known unto me by the Holy Spirit of God. Behold, I have fasted and pryed many days that I might know these things of myself..." (Alma 5:46)

"And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost." (Moroni 10:4)

After a great deal of pondering, scripture study, fasting, and prayer, I recieved a powerful spiritual witness of the truthfulness of the gospel. I knew, by something much greater than the finite logic of humankind, that Jesus Christ lives, that He is my Savior, and that He has restored the fullness of the gospel through a prophet in our time.