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Your Witness

Many years ago, while serving as a missionary, I had an experience that has stayed with me and caused me to reflect and ponder.

 I was out one day with two stake missionaries. These were men with families who lived in the area and were volunteering to help us out. I don’t recall why both of them were with me, but the three of us went to a teaching appointment while my companion went elsewhere with other stake missionaries.

 We went to see a young man that we had taught once before. He had been welcoming and receptive to our message on the previous visit, but this time he was just the opposite. He was mocking, antagonistic, and resisted everything I was saying.

 I kept trying to reason with him, at one point bearing down in pure testimony of the truth of the Restored Gospel. What happened next is the reason I share this story.

 He looked at me and a wicked grin came across his face. He pulled from behind him a very large hunting knife and stretched it out towards my throat and said, “What would you say, if I told you, deny what you just said, or I will stick this knife in you?”

 Strangely, as though it was given to me, I felt no fear. I stared straight back at him and said, “Go ahead and stick!”

 He held the knife there for a moment longer and then with a mocking chuckle, he put the knife away. We terminated the meeting and left. Clearly, he was no golden contact. One of the older missionaries with me said to the other in my presence as we drove away, “What were we supposed to do if he stuck him?”

 I was willing at that moment to die for my testimony for that one rebel son, but fortunately that was not the Lord’s plan. I have been allowed to live and share my witness with many through what I have said and how I have tried to live. Only one witness has ever been perfect and unflawed. The Savior gave His life to seal His witness and it is binding on billions. There have been many since who were willing to die before they would deny or recall their witness, and blessed are they.

 But you and I have been asked to “stand as witnesses of God at all times, and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death.” (Mosiah 18:9) We are not called to die for our witness like Abinadi or Joseph, but to live it and share it until we die, like Alma or Brigham. It may be that our witness seems a bit more mundane than the martyr, but I assure it is just as essential in the plans and purposes of Almighty God.

 I hope you never let an opportunity pass to righteously stand and share the gift of your witness with a fallen world. Who knows who you may save?