My Testimony

As a child I was packed off to Sunday School by my parents who never actually went to church themselves so I eventually rebelled against that. It wasn't until my late teens that I started to wonder if there really might be a God after all. Without actually knowing it I was doing what Alma talks about with the tiny seed of faith. I was testing it out.

I figured there were two possibilities, either there was a God or there wasn't. So, I thought that just in case there might be I'd have a go at talking to him. It went something like "I don't know if you're there. And if you are there I don't know if you're listening. But if you are there and if you are listening I want to talk to you." It was a small start but from that I began to believe that he is there. Then when I believed that, I wanted to go to a church but had no idea which one to go to. I'd previously been sent to a Methodist Sunday School for no better reason than that it was just around the corner from where we lived. I didn't bother going back there.

My Dad was C of E but never went there. I thought maybe that was the best church because it was the official church of England. But I wasn't sure about it. I looked into Quakers but I didn't get all that silence. In complete contrast I attended an evangelical church which was so LOUD with its ‘Praise the Lord!’s and ‘Hallelujah!’s not to mention dancing in the aisles and very loud music with guitars and tambourines. It just didn't seem reverent.

On my mother's side of the family they were technically Baptist but there'd been no Baptist church in the village so they never went to one (the Methodist was regarded as the next best thing) so I checked out the Baptists and they told me they were right because they did full immersion baptism which was the only true way. But then the Catholics told me that they were the only church which could be traced back to St Peter and consequently to Christ and that no other church had the 'keys of the Kingdom' which had been passed down through successive Popes - so they were the only true church. (Regardless of things like the Spanish Inquisition and the sales of indulgences! Not to mention the vain repetitions of prayers which the scriptures warn us against, and the numerous idols which people seemed to pray to rather than to God.)

Then there were the 7th Day Adventists who claimed that every other church was wrong because they kept the Sabbath on the wrong day, a Pagan Sun worshipping day and they were the only ones who kept the true Sabbath, being the Saturday, the 7th day. Then there were the Jehovah's Witnesses who told me that celebrating Christmas was wrong because that was a Pagan festival and nothing to do with Christianity.

I sort of settled into being half Baptist and half Catholic because I could see the merits of both but neither seemed perfect and both seemed to have questionable bits. I was still checking out other churches and even at one time toyed with the idea that maybe Judaism was right and maybe Jesus hadn't been the Messiah after all but just another prophet who had been misinterpreted. Which led me to Islam in an odd sort of way because hey, maybe Mohammed was the last of the prophets. I found a lot that is praiseworthy in Islam, the moral code, the modest dress......

By the time I heard of Latter-day Saints, by working with somebody who was one, it was just another of a long line of alternatives and I was quite settled being a Catholic Baptist! However, being of an enquiring mind I read what I could find about this new discovery and asked my LDS colleague a lot of questions. I probably drove him up the wall. Every time I came across something which I'd never heard of anywhere else I would ask him questions. (I remember writing notes and one of them was entitled 'Mrs God????' He lent me books which I read avidly. I also came across anti-Mormon literature and read that too, which aroused my curiosity and I would ask more questions. Maybe that sounded to him like I was looking for the bad stuff but I just wanted to know what the truth was.

He suggested I meet the missionaries but I was firmly against that because I'd been told by a minister of another religion that Mormon missionaries are taught how to brainwash people and if I once let them start on me that would be it, I'd be lost! So I just wanted to read and ask questions. My friend gave me a copy of the Book of Mormon and once I'd got over the hurdle of not knowing how to pronounce people's names ( I thought it was pronounced 'Neffy') I couldn't put it down! Something about the book grabbed my attention and I wanted to keep on reading and finding out what came next.

Then I amazed myself. I realised I was reading Isaiah! Whenever I had tried to red Isaiah in the Bible I had given up in despair because I couldn't understand it, but here I was reading whole chunks of Isaiah as quoted by Nephi and I was understanding most of what I was reading. That puzzled me.

I did become acquainted with several missionaries because I worked in the bank where they had their bank accounts so I would chat to them too and ask them questions. I noticed something in their answers. Everyone else I had spoken to about their churches, be it Catholic priests of Baptist ministers had said "we believe" but these young men said "I know". How could they KNOW? How could they be so sure? I wished I could be that sure about something, about anything. If I could just be that sure about one church then I would know that was the one I would want to belong to.

One Elder bore his testimony of Joseph Smith and I remember thinking how brave of him to make such a wild statement about some obscure American with such a boring and common name as Smith. How could a young farm boy from a nondescript place be a prophet chosen by God? (How cold a shepherd boy with a harp and a sling be King of Israel?) If there was going to be a stumbling block for me where the LDS church was concerned it was going to be this arrogant claim that this bit of a kid saw God and Jesus in the woods! I admired how anyone who appeared to be so intelligent and well educated as this young missionary I was talking to could actually believe such a thing and not only believe it but tell me without a waver in his voice that he KNEW it was true. I didn't know anything was true. I didn't know full immersion baptism was true, but it sounded good. I didn't know having some sort of line of authority as claimed by the Catholic church for the Pope was true, but it sounded good. I wasn't even 100% sure that God listened to my prayers, but I wanted to believe it. Yet here was this young man telling me he didn't just believe, he KNEW. I wanted some of that!

But I was stubborn. I refused to be taught, or preached at, or brainwashed. I wanted to investigate for myself. I read everything I could lay my hands on. I asked questions. I studied. I pondered. The only thing I didn't do was pray. But then I was faced with two alternatives. Either it was true or it wasn't. Either the Book of Mormon was real or it was a fake. Yet if it was a fake it was a pretty audacious fake to have within it a challenge to pray and ask if it was a fake! I remember saying to my LDS friend that God couldn't possibly tell some people that the Book of Mormon was true and tell other people (i.e. the ones who wrote the anti-Mormon stuff and claimed to represent God) that it was a fake. How could he tell people contradictory things? His reply to me was to ask if the ones who wrote the anti stuff had ever read the Book of Mormon and prayed with a sincere heart to know the answer or had they just got preconceived ideas because someone else had told them it was false.

I decided to ask one guy who preached locally very vehemently against the Mormons and produced leaflets and literature to help people 'escape from the clutches of evil' - I asked if he had ever read the Book of Mormon and prayed to know if it was true. He was horrified that I would even suggest such a thing. Of course he wouldn't read such a vile mockery of scripture! How could I even suggest such a thing!?!

I became more and more confused. I was fairly sure by now that the Book of Mormon was exactly what it claimed to be. I had prayed about it and I had felt the reassurance that it confirmed the Bible, that it was a true account of people who had travelled across half the world and made a record of their experiences and their faith in Jesus Christ. I attended meetings at the LDS chapel and felt the spirit there. However, I was still half a Catholic and half a Baptist. There really wasn't any room to be half something else! And anyway I didn't want to be half something else. If I was going to make any more changes this time I wanted to be absolutely unshakably sure that it was the one and only true thing. If I was going to give up everything else I wanted to be sure that what I gave it up for wasn't going to be superceded several months down the line by something new that I hadn't even heard of yet!

So, one morning, there I was as usual, walking to work. I always walked unless the weather was really awful as I liked the fresh air and excercise to wake me up in the mornings. I was thinking about my dilemma and really wanting to know if I should commit myself to this. I didn't just want to believe I was doing the right thing. I wanted to KNOW.

I stopped in my tracks. I looked up to the sky (in the vague direction of where I expected Heavenly Father might be) and I gave him a sort of ultimatum. I demanded to know if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was all it claimed to be. If it really was the only true church on the earth today, if it really was the only church with the full Gospel, the only one with real priesthood authority handed down from the apostles who received it from Christ himself. I declared that I would not take another step down that road until I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt one way or the other. I was quite demanding.

I requested a burning bush with a voice like the voice which spoke to Moses. There were a few convenient bushes around so I didn't see why God couldn't set fire to one of them and speak to me from it! Of course nothing happened. I was a little bit annoyed but still persevered and said OK if there wasn't going to be a bush, not even a completely new bush in the middle of the road so as not to damage any existing bushes, I would accept instead an angel or two, or maybe a few hundred or a couple of thousand - Heavenly hosts with trumpets, clouds parting and all that. I looked at the clouds expectantly. And of course - nothing happened.

So I was getting a bit cheesed off by now. I mean I'd been trying out assorted churches for several years and been fairly committed to two for quite a while even though those two criticised and contradicted each other. I wanted to find 'the one'. I wanted to finally settle into a place I wasn't going to move from. I wanted to commit myself to one, but I wanted to be sure it was the right one. I didn't want to go through all the palaver of baptism and find out I'd made a mistake. I wanted to KNOW. I'd been told to pray about it. The scriptures say pray about it. I'd prayed about it. I WAS praying about it and I wasn't going to budge from that spot until my prayer had been answered!

How arrogant can you get? I was demanding that God should provide me with undeniable evidence (despite the fact that I had read about Laman and Lemuel who saw an angel and still went off the rails).

Then I said to God, "It's not fair. I really want to know. There are all these churches and I want to know which one to go to. When Joseph Smith was in this same situation and he prayed to you for an answer you didn't leave him in any doubt. You didn't just send angels you came to him in person and you spoke to him in person. He couldn't doubt after that. I want something as impossible to doubt as that."

Then I got my answer. It came as clearly as someone standing next to me speaking calmly and quietly. It said, "Why are you asking for an answer which you already have?"

And I realised it! I believed that Joseph Smith had spoken with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ face to face. I'd just told Heavenly Father that I believed that. If I believed that, then everything else fell into place. Joseph did have that vision, he was visited by Moroni, he did translate the golden plates, the priesthood was restored and there is a church on the earth today which has the full authority and the full Gospel of Jesus Christ. I knew it already. I just didn't realise that I knew it!