PERSONAL TESTIMONIES AND BLESSINGS

A TESTIMONY. I declare unto you in all candor, and in all earnestness of soul, that I believe with all my heart in the divine mission of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, that I am convinced in every fiber of my being that God raised him up to restore to the earth the gospel of Christ, which is indeed the power of God unto salvation. I testify to you that Joseph Smith was instrumental in the hand of the Lord in restoring God's truth to the world, and also the holy priesthood, which is his authority delegated unto man. I know this is true, and I testify of it to you. To me it is all-in-all; it is my life, it is my light; it is my hope, and my joy; it gives me the only assurance that I have for exaltation, for my resurrection from death, with those whom I have loved and cherished in this life, and with whom my lot has been cast in this world—honorable men, pure, humble men, who were obedient unto God and his commands, who were not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, nor of their convictions or knowledge of the truth of the gospel; men who were made of the stuff of which martyrs are made, and who were willing at any moment to lay down their lives for Christ's sake, and for the gospel, if need be, which they had received with the testimony of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. I want to be reunited with these men when I shall have finished my course here. When my mission is done here, I hope to go beyond into the spirit world where they dwell, and be reunited with them. It is this gospel of the Son of God that gives me the hope that I have of this consummation, and of the realization of my desire in this direction. I have staked all on this gospel, and I have not done it in vain. I know in whom I trust. I know that my Redeemer lives, and that he shall stand upon the earth in the latter days, and, as Job has expressed it, "Though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God."—Oct. C. R., 1907, pp. 4, 5.

THIS IS GOD'S WORK—A TESTIMONY. My brethren and sisters, I desire to bear my testimony to you; for I have received an assurance which has taken possession of my whole being. It has sunk deep into my heart; it fills every fiber of my soul; so that I feel to say before this people, and would be pleased to have the privilege of saying it before the whole world, that God has revealed unto me that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Redeemer of the world; that Joseph Smith is, was, and always will be a prophet of God, ordained and chosen to stand at the head of the dispensation of the fulness of times, the keys of which were given to him, and he will hold them until the winding up scene—keys which will unlock the door into the kingdom of God to every man who is worthy to enter and which will close that door against every soul that will not obey the law of God. I know, as I live, that this is true, and I bear my testimony to its truth. If it were the last word I should ever say on earth, I would glory before God my Father that I possess this knowledge in my soul, which I declare unto you as I would the simplest truths of heaven. I know that this is the kingdom of God, and that God is at the helm. He presides over his people. He presides over the president of this Church, and has done so from the Prophet Joseph down to the Prophet Lorenzo, and he will continue to preside over the leaders of this Church until the winding—up scene. He will not suffer it to be given to another people, nor to be left to men. He will hold the reins in his own hands; for he has stretched out his arm to do this work, and he will do it, and have the honor of it. At the same time God will honor and magnify his servants in the sight of the people. He will sustain them in righteousness. He will lift them on high, exalt them into his presence, and they will partake of his glory forever and ever.

It is the Lord's work, and I plead with you not to forget it. I implore you not to disbelieve it; for it is true. All that the Lord said concerning this latter-day work will come to pass. The world cannot prevent it. The blind that will not see, the deaf that will not hear, cannot prevent the work from going on. They may throw blocks before the wheels, they may ridicule, they may malign, they may stir up the spirit of persecution and bitterness against the Saints, they may do all in their power to deceive the people and lead them astray; but God is at the helm, and he will lead his people to victory. Men and women may be deceived by the craftiness of the adversary and by the spirit of darkness that is in the world; they may be deceived with Christian Science, with hypnotism, with animal magnetism, with mesmerism, with spiritualism, and with all the other man-made and demon-stimulated isms which exist in the world; but the elect of God shall see and know the truth. They will not be blind, because they will see; they will not be deaf, because they will hear; and they will walk in the light, as God is in the light, that they may have fellowship with Jesus Christ and that his blood may cleanse them from all their sins.

May God help us to realize this. May he deliver us from secret combinations, and from the snares that are set to entrap our feet and to win our affections from the kingdom of God. I repeat what I have said scores of times, the kingdom of God is good enough for me. This organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints meets all my wants, and I have no need to fly to organizations that are gotten up by men for the purpose of making money. I pray God that his kingdom may be sufficient for you, that you may abide in the truth, and not be led away by those deceptive spirits that have gone forth in the world to lead men astray.

Spiritualism started in the United States about the time that Joseph Smith received his visions from the heavens. What more natural than that Lucifer should begin revealing himself to men in his cunning way, in order to deceive them and to distract their minds from the truth that God was revealing? And he has kept it up pretty well ever since. May God bless Israel, and preserve us in the truth. May he bless our president, prolong his years, and continue unto him the strength of body and mind that he possesses this day, and even more vigor as the years roll by. May the Lord have mercy upon our beloved brother, President Cannon, who is absent from us, and return him once more to his home, and to the bosom of the Church, if he has not willed otherwise. This is my humble prayer, in the name of Jesus. Amen.—Apr. C. R., 1901, pp. 72,73.

A TESTIMONY. There is no salvation but in the way God has pointed out. There is no hope of everlasting life but through obedience to the law that has been affixed by the Father of life, "with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning;" and there is no other way by which we may obtain that light and exaltation. Those matters are beyond peradventure, beyond all doubt in my mind; I know them to be true. Therefore, I bear my testimony to you, my brethren and sisters, that the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth, that he lives and that his Son lives, even he who died for the sins of the world, and that he arose from the dead; that he sits upon the right hand of the Father; that all power is given unto him; that we are directed to call upon God in the name of Jesus Christ. We are told that we should remember him in our homes, keep his holy name fresh in our minds, and revere him in our hearts; we should call upon him from time to time, from day to day; and, in fact, every moment of our lives we should live so that the desires of our hearts will be a prayer unto God for righteousness, for truth, and for the salvation of the human family. Let us guard ourselves so that there may not come into our souls a single drop of bitterness, by which our whole being might be corroded and poisoned with anger, with hatred, envy and malice, or any sort of evil. We should be free from all these evil things, that we may be filled with the love of God, the love of truth, the love of our fellowmen, that we may seek to do good unto all men all the days of our lives, and above all things be true to our covenants in the gospel of Jesus Christ.—Apr. C. R., 1909, p. 6.

THE PLEDGE OF MY LIFE. I feel happy, this morning, in having the privilege to say to you that in the days of my childhood and early youth, I made a pledge with God and with his people that I would be true to them. In looking over the experiences of my life, I cannot now discern, and do not remember a circumstance, since the beginning of my experience in the world, where I have felt, for a moment, to slacken or relax in the pledge and promise that I made to God and to the Latter-day Saints, in my youth. And if there is a man, or a woman, in the world that can point out to me an instance, in all my life, where I have been untrue to my pledge, or promise, or covenant, I shall be glad to receive that information from that man or woman. As an elder in Israel I tried to be true to that calling; I tried to my utmost to honor and magnify that calling. When I became a seventy, I felt in my heart to be true to that calling, and I strove, with all the intelligence and fervor of my soul, to be true to it. I have no knowledge nor recollection of any act of mine, or any circumstance in my life where I proved untrue or unfaithful to these callings in the priesthood of the Son of God. Later in my life, when I was called to act as an apostle, and was ordained an apostle, and set apart to be one of the Twelve, I strove to honor that calling, to be true to it, and to my brethren, to the household of faith, and to the covenants and obligations involved in receiving this holy priesthood which is after the order of the Son of God. I am not aware that I ever violated one of my obligations or pledges in these callings to which I have been called. I have sought to be true and faithful to all these things. I have endeavored to be true to my family; and if ever I have violated one pledge or promise, or neglected one obligation that rests upon me in these relationships, I do not know it. And when I have made pledges to the people of God, or to the world, if ever I have violated those pledges I do not know it. Furthermore, I do not believe there is a man living who does know it, who can truthfully testify that I ever did violate those pledges.

I stand before you today, my brethren and sisters and friends, on the ground that I have tried to be true to God, to the utmost of my knowledge and ability; that I have tried to be true to my people, to the utmost of my knowledge and ability; and I have been true to the world in every pledge and promise that I have made to the world, notwithstanding there have been men who have shown a disposition to make it appear that I was a hypocrite, that I was two-faced; that I was one thing to the world and another thing in secret. I want it distinctly understood that those who have conveyed such an idea as this to mankind have been wilfully injuring me, wronging me, and falsifying me and my character before the people, and I want it distinctly understood those things must stop. They must stop at least among men who profess to be members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I can endure to be maligned and persecuted by my enemies, who are also enemies of the Kingdom of God, but I do not want to be maligned and belied by men who profess to be members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, neither intentionally nor otherwise. Now, I trust that you understand clearly what I mean. I do not know how I can make it much plainer or clearer, with the knowledge that I have of language. Then, I repeat, as the Lord has helped me in the past to be true to my covenants, that I have entered into with him and with you, with my brethren, and with, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so by his help and by his blessing I propose to be true throughout the future of my life, whether I am permitted to live long or short; it matters not to me. While I live, I hope to be a true man, an honest man, a man who can face all mankind and, at last, who can stand before God, the judge of the quick and the dead, and not quail for what I have done in the world.—Oct. C. R., 1910, pp. 2,3.

A BLESSING. I bless you with all my soul, because you love the truth, and you manifest it. There is nothing in God's world that draws men and women so near to my heart as that they love the truth and that they love God, that they love the cause of Zion and are devoted to the interests of the Church. This endears men and women to my heart; I love them when they love this work and when they show their interest in it. It lifts my soul to heaven and fills it with joy unspeakable.—Oct. C. R., 1908, p. 97.

A TESTIMONY. My brethren and sisters, I know that my Redeemer lives. I know, as I know I live, that in person he has visited man in our time and day, and that we are not now dependent alone on the history of the past for the knowledge that we possess, of which record is borne by the Spirit of God, shed abroad in the hearts of all who enter into the covenant of the gospel of Christ. But we have the renewed and later witness and manifestation of heavenly visions and of the visitation of God the Father and Christ the Son to this their footstool; and they have in person declared their entity, their being, and they have manifested their glory. They have stretched forth their hands to accomplish their work—the work of God, and not the work of man—and while those who have been faithful shall be crowned with glory and honor in the presence of God, the honor and the glory, the credit and the praise, for the continuance and for the advancement and growth of the kingdom of God in the earth, will be due to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, whose power and whose agency, whose influence and purpose, have been behind the work of God every moment since it was first given to man. It is by his power that it has grown and continued, and has become what it is, and it will continue to grow and spread, until it shall fill the earth with the glory of God, and with the knowledge of the Father and of the Son, whom to know is life eternal. This is my testimony to you, my brethren and sisters, and I bear witness of it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.—Improvement Era, Vol. 12, September, 1909, p. 914.

I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVES. I know that my Redeemer lives. We have all the testimony and all the evidence of this great and glorious truth that the world has, that is, all that the so-called Christian world possesses; and in addition to all that they have, we have the testimony of the inhabitants of this western continent, to whom the Savior appeared and delivered his gospel, the same as he delivered it to the Jews. In addition to all this new testimony, and the testimony of the holy scriptures from the Jews, we have the testimony of the modern prophet, Joseph Smith, who saw the Father and the Son, and who has borne record of them to the world, whose testimony was sealed with his blood and is in force upon the world today. We have the testimony of others, who witnessed the presence of the Son of God in the Kirtland temple, when he appeared to them there, and the testimony of Joseph, and of Sidney Rigdon, who declared that they were the last witnesses of Jesus Christ. Therefore I say again, I know that my Redeemer lives; for in the mouths of these witnesses this truth has been established in my mind.

Besides these testimonies, I have received the witness of the Spirit of God in my own heart, which exceeds all other evidences, for it bears record to me, to my very soul, of the existence of my Redeemer, Jesus Christ. I know that he lives, and that in the last day he shall stand upon the earth, that he shall come to the people who shall be prepared for him, as a bride is prepared for the Bridegroom when he shall come. I believe in the divine mission of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and I have every evidence that I need—at least enough to convince me, of the divinity of his mission.

I am proud to say that I have accepted, and have tried to keep and honor, every word that has proceeded from the mouth of God through him. As it is written, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," no one will dare to accuse me of side-tracking from or refusing to obey any doctrine taught by or revealed through the Prophet Joseph Smith.—Improvement Era, Vol. 14, 1910, p. 73.

TESTIMONY. Now, there are many other things, but I cannot tell them all to you. I begin to feel that I am getting to be an old man, or rather a young man in an old body. I think I am just about as young as I ever was in my life in spirit. I love the truth today more than I ever did before, because I see it more clearly, I understand it better from day to day by the promptings and inspiration of the Spirit of the Lord that is vouchsafed to me; but my body gets tired, and I want to tell you, sometimes my poor old heart quivers considerably.—Oct. C. R., 1917, pp. 6, 7.