“Exactly what is a testimony?”

Answer/Brother Jeff Holland

An exact definition would probably sound something like “evidence or attestation in support of fact,” but that sounds as if Perry Mason were replying and probably misses completely the spirit, if not the letter, of the question. So let me suggest a less precise but more useful definition.

I think it is important to realize that when a Latter-day Saint has a testimony, he must have something more than his combined enthusiasm for the Word of Wisdom, tithing, all-Church basketball, and the ward picnic. If it is to be that same saving strength that we once possessed in our premortal existence (see Rev. 12:11), our most essential and fundamental testimony must be that God lives and that Jesus is the Christ. We must be able to give personal “attestation in support of [the] fact” that Christ suffered and bled and died for your sins and mine, and, because of that redemption, it is only through him that we can find the definitive joy for which we were individually created.

Moreover, in this dispensation we must come to know that through the boy-prophet Joseph Smith, Christ restored the fullness of his gospel (including the Book of Mormon, legitimate priesthood, saving ordinances), and that he continues today to learn and direct his church through living apostles and prophets. Many, many other important “facts” follow as a consequence of these few, not the least of which is our own importance as a child of God. But these seem to me to be the most crucial ones, and we must be able to bear them to all the world.

I am guessing that implicit in your question is that slightly more frustrating one, namely, “How do I know when I’ve got a testimony?” In reply to that, I like President Harold B. Lee’s answer: “When your heart tells you things your head doesn’t understand, you have a testimony.” Notice, President Lee doesn’t say that we are not to use our heads in getting a testimony (Alma in the Book of Mormon says to “arouse your faculties,” and that includes our mental processes), but he does say that the final witness is a spiritual statement from within the depths of our soul. Service and study, prayer, fasting, and faithfulness—these are some of the ways to enlarge our capacity for receiving such a message.

And we shouldn’t be too surprised if our testimony comes so carefully that for a while we don’t realize we have it. After being thrown into jail for a little honest missionary work, Jeremiah said that he wasn’t about to say another word for God or the gospel to anybody. “I will not make mention of him,” he said, “nor speak any more in his name.” But something had been happening of which he had been completely unaware. All his struggling and praying and teaching and serving had had their inevitable effect, and when he tried to act as if he didn’t have a testimony, Jeremiah found that the spirit and message of the Lord “was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.” (Jer. 20:9.)

The truth is that a testimony comes from the Holy Ghost, whose role it is to testify of God and his plan and goodnesses. When we have that testimony, we feel as if it were part of us, as if it were a part of our heart and bones. More readily than any other way, a testimony may be discerned by the life it makes us live.