For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Paul Reid, and I have had the ability to spend the last few days at Youth Conference in Nauvoo, which was such an amazing experience for me, and I’m sure also for many of the other youth that attended. I met lots of new friends and I look forward to interacting with them more at other stake activities throughout the coming months.
One of my favorite experiences over the past few days was at Carthage Jail. It was a place where I could feel the Spirit very strongly as we toured the place where the Prophet Joseph and his brother Hyrum were martyred. We saw the rooms where the Prophet stayed, walked the same floors that he walked, and saw the same things that he saw while incarcerated there. Preceding the tour, we listened to a portion of Elder Jeffry R. Holland’s October 2009 conference talk “Safety for the Soul”, which I quote from now.
“As one of a thousand elements of my own testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon, I submit this as yet one more evidence of its truthfulness. In this their greatest—and last—hour of need, I ask you: would these men blaspheme before God by continuing to fix their lives, their honor, and their own search for eternal salvation on a book (and by implication a church and a ministry) they had fictitiously created out of whole cloth? … They would not do that! They were willing to die rather than deny the divine origin and the eternal truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.”
As I unfortunately cannot read his whole talk to you today, I encourage you all to read it on your own when you have the chance. Elder Holland’s divine testimony of The Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith reinforces my testimony, and I hope it does yours too.
I now bear my own testimony to you that Joseph Smith was a prophet ordained of God, and he really did see God and his son Jesus Christ in a vision, over 200 years ago. I testify that he translated the Book of Mormon using the same power of God that we are blessed to still have with us today, and he would not reject it for anything. I testify that this church, that he started, is the one and only true church of God. I bear this testimony today, in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior, amen.