"All things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth,
and all things that are upon the face of it...and also all the planets which
move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator. -
Alma 30:44
We were all driving in the car this last Thursday when the
area got hit by a MASSIVE storm. Lightning struck the ground not 30 feet from
us, and the vibrations from the impact shook the car. Scared the living
daylights out of us. I was surprised to see that the thunderbolt was strangely orange,
not the white-yellow we see in movies.
Also this week I did the baptismal interview of one Sister
Sifford. Later on she asked me to actually perform her baptism this
past Sunday, so I had the great pleasure of performing that ordinance for
her. It was an unexpected blessing that I was dearly grateful for.
***
We had a lesson with a few college students this past week.
We were talking to them about the Book of Mormon and they were having trouble
accepting it. "Jesus appearing to people in the Americas?" they said.
"That's ridiculous! That's impossible!"
"Do you believe the Bible?" I asked them.
They responded that yes, they did.
"In that case, you believe that 1) man was literally
made from dust, that 2) the entire earth was literally covered with water at
one point, and that 3) there was a man who could not only walk on water but
actually rose from the dead, something that no one else in the history of the
world has ever done before or since. Is it that hard to believe, then, that God
could speak to people in America?"
They couldn't really argue with that one.
I followed up with another question: "How do you know
if God is real?" My purpose in asking them that question was to see how
they'd gotten a testimony in the past and thus compare that to how they'd get a
testimony of the Book of Mormon. Their response was a halfhearted "Oh,
well, just look at the earth around us. Obviously a God had to have made it."
"See, you look at the earth and you see that it is
evidence there is a God. But an atheist looks at the very same earth and says
that it's evidence that there is no God. With every piece of evidence that we
see, there is always a faithful explanation for it and a doubtful explanation.
It's the same with the Book of Mormon."
They still did not seem to get it, so we left them with
that.
***
Later on, Elder Arnold asked E. Mastin and I the
same question in companion study. "How do you know if the Church is true?
How do you know if God is real?" It was interesting to see the different
answers we gave. Mine was more based on logic, while E. Mastin's was more based
on feelings and E. Arnold's was based on evidences he has seen for it to be
true. I'll include a little bit of the main points of my testimony
for you to consider:
1. The life of Jesus Christ. While I may indeed cry
watching Sam carry Frodo up the mountain in Return of the King, the power
of that story does not have the life-changing power of the story of Christ.
There is something else there that motivates men to believe and to
change.
2. The story of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Would
a liar have put up with so much persecution? Could any person have written the
Book of Mormon on his own?
3. The story of the Church. Would something that was a fraud
have survived under such conditions and flourished for so long as the Church
has done?
4. The improbability of it all being false. Could all the
modern-day prophets from Joseph to President Monson have been false? They
testified of Jesus Christ; was He false, or just made up? He
testified of Old Testament prophets; were they just made up? The
improbability of so many good men being liars seems ridiculous to me.
5. My birth. Why am I the person I am? Why was I born Daniel Fisher in
'93, and not in 493 or 1301 or 1967? There is no other explanation besides the
Gospel as to why I am who I am: a loving Heavenly Father sent me at this time
to my family.
Those are just main parts of my testimony that God is real
and that the Church is true. I love you all. Hurrah of Israel!
Elder Fisher
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