May I refer to a modern “last days” testimony?
When Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum started
for Carthage to face what they knew would
be an imminent martyrdom, Hyrum read these
words to comfort the heart of his brother:
“Thou hast been faithful; wherefore thou
shalt be made strong, even unto the sitting
down in the place which I have prepared in
the mansions of my Father.
“And now I, Moroni, bid farewell until we
shall meet before the judgment-seat of Christ.”
A few short verses from the 12th chapter of
Ether in the Book of Mormon.
Before closing the book, Hyrum turned down
the corner of the page from which he had read,
marking it as part of the everlasting testimony
for which these two brothers were about to
die.
I hold in my hand that book, the very copy
from which Hyrum read, the same corner of
the page turned down, still visible.
Later, when actually incarcerated in the jail,
Joseph the Prophet turned to the guards who
held him captive and bore a powerful testimony
of the divine authenticity of the Book of
Mormon.
Shortly thereafter pistol and ball would take
the lives of these two testators.
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?
Never mind that their wives are about to be
widows and their children fatherless. Never
mind that their little band of followers will
yet be “houseless, friendless and homeless”
and that their children will leave footprints
of blood across frozen rivers and an untamed
prairie floor.
Never mind that legions will die and other
legions live declaring in the four quarters
of this earth that they know the Book of Mormon
and the Church which espouses it to be true.
Disregard all of that, and tell me whether
in this hour of death these two men would
enter the presence of their Eternal Judge
quoting from and finding solace in a book
which, if not the very word of God, would
brand them as imposters and charlatans until
the end of time?
They would not do that!
