testimony

As with thousands of other religions, a "feelings" based revelation system is very unreliable. I have no idea why God would choose such a way to reveal His will or to testify of truth. What is interesting is that LDS members seem to think they have a patent on a "testimony." In truth, almost ALL religions use a feelings based testimony or "witness" system as the way God reveals things to them. And almost all of the religions claim that God has revealed that their religious beliefs are "true."

When I ask an LDS member how his "testimony" differs from the "testimony" of someone from another religion, I often get the response: "Well mine is true and theirs is false." Since I found many inconsistencies with the concept of a testimony, I conducted my own observations and study on the matter.

One of the first things I found is that LDS members are really not very spiritual. If you look at other religions, they are often filled to the brim with the "spirit" – often speaking in tongues with arms raised and witnessing about miracles and God's power. Those in the Islamic religion have serious respect and prayer for their deity and their "testimonies" of their religion are very strong indeed.

In comparison, the Mormon church testimony meeting is dull and boring. Half the people are faking attention. Some have perfected the "looking-but asleep" mode. The average LDS member relates their "testimony" in an uninspiring semi-robot style – often just repeating the same phrases as everybody else as if hypnotized or drugged.

"The Church is true. Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. The Book of Mormon is true. President Hinckley is the prophet on the earth today." Over and over again it goes. I would guess that more than half that blurt these common phrases are just saying it without really "knowing" it at all. Most Mormons struggle to get that "witness" feeling – the burning bosom. But they feel if they say it enough, they will eventually get it and believe it. Over and over they say the same things. Frightening things to witness are when very small children stand and are fed phrases by adults to say over and over. They have no idea what they are saying. HUGE brainwashing red flag there.

The whole "burning bosom" warm feeling is not uncommon in daily life for people of any and all religious backgrounds. I felt it when, in the Lord of the Rings Movie, Gandalf pounds down his staff and declares in his authoritative voice, "You shall not pass!" It raised the goose-bumps some. Likewise, even atheists feel that "tingling, warm sensation" in many activities. You take a nature lover who climbs to the top of a mountain and looks out over the valley with a setting sun and – wham – the tingles start. The patriotic person who listens to a rousing rendition of the National Anthem gets the shivers.

All of these experiences can cause the "burning bosom" regardless of religion. That is because they are "emotion-based." Whether something is meaningful to us is the result of our past experiences and belief system. While an American would feel the tingles during the National Anthem, a visiting Frenchman may not feel anything at all – except a little nausea, maybe. Why? Because the American Anthem has no meaning for him.

Almost all Mormons agree that the tingles and "burning bosom" can result from emotions and feelings within us, but they also claim that these feelings can come from God as a way to reveal truth. But there is a HUGE problem with that. How do you differentiate between the two? Answer: you can't.

Some LDS members would argue that they can tell the difference. Of course that's not true. Even Joseph Smith couldn't differentiate. As I studied the Mormon journals and writings, I came across the experience of Joseph Smith who received a revealed truth from God that they would sell the copyright to the Book of Mormon in Toronto, Canada.

Smith sent Hiram Page and Oliver Cowdery on this mission. But the mission completely failed and they didn't sell a thing and came back without any money. They asked Joseph why the Lord revealed they would sell the copyright, but they failed. Joseph didn't know, so he went alone to his room and inquired of the Lord why the mission failed. The Lord responded to Smith that "some revelations are of God: some revelations are of men: and some revelations are of the devil," which implied that that particular revelation must not have been from God. (David Witmer: An Address to All Believers in Christ, 1887)

If Joseph Smith can't differentiate between revelation from "man" (his emotions) or from God, then how can the lay member of the LDS church? In addition, Smith throws another twist in the puzzle. He said that the Lord told him that the devil, himself, could cause these feelings or revelations.

Now we truly have an impossible situation which was reiterated again by Elder Boyd K. Packer in an address that was printed in the 1983 LDS Ensign magazine in an article titled "Candle of the Lord" as follows:

"Be ever on guard lest you be deceived by inspiration from an unworthy source. You can be given false spiritual messages. There are counterfeit spirits just as there are counterfeit angels. Be careful lest you be deceived, for the devil may come disguised as an angel of light.

The spiritual part of us and the emotional part of us are so closely linked that it is possible to mistake an emotional impulse for something spiritual. We occasionally find people who receive what they assume to be spiritual promptings from God, when those promptings are either centered in the emotions or are from the adversary."

The poor LDS member. They have a hard enough time getting ANY type of "witness" at all and now they have to somehow differentiate between whether it comes from God, their emotions or the devil. To make matters worse, Elder Packer in his address offered no way to discern between them.

I believe this address from Elder Packer was prompted by many letters to the church concerning "false positives" of the spirit. I've seen this happen many times in my area. One incident in particular stands out. There was a returned missionary in my ward who fell in love with a woman shortly after returning home from his mission. They dated for a time and then he prayed and asked God whether she is the "right one" to marry. He got a very strong tingly feeling that confirmed, in his mind, that God revealed that she, indeed, was the right one. They married.

Not a few months passed when it was discovered that his wife was having an affair with another man (who just happened to be a bishop of another ward with a large family). He was also shocked to learn that she was having affairs with this man all during their dating and courtship including the time he was praying about marrying her. He was devastated and had the temple marriage annulled.

I've had people bear testimony in church and to me personally about things that were obviously not true. One was about the temple and another was about Joseph Smith and polygamy. These members "knew" that what they were saying were "true" because they had received a confirmation of the spirit as such. Yet, they were false. "So . . . God revealed to you that Joseph Smith never had teenage wives, huh?" Hmm.

I remember the stories of Paul H. Dunn who wrote, for example, how God protected him as enemy machine-gun bullets ripped away his clothing, gear and helmet without ever touching his skin and how he was preserved by the Lord. The "spirit" was strong, yet the whole thing never happened. So what exactly was the "spirit" testifying to? Obviously it was an emotional reaction based upon those riveting lies and Dunn was a master of manipulating the "spirit" to testify of things that were not true. What I found even stranger was that the LDS Church tried to suppress the exposing of Dunn's lies and BYU even fired the person responsible for exposing it. I'll reflect more on cover-ups and deception in the LDS Church later.

I feel that if God wanted to devise a system to reveal truth to man, He would certainly not use a system whereby a person's own emotions could so easily be mistaken for it. Worse yet, He wouldn't use a system whereby Lucifer himself could so easily mimic it and use it to deceive. It doesn't make any sense. If you receive a "feeling" that something is true, how do you know it's from God? How do you know it's not from your emotions? Or the devil?

My conclusion with my observations and study is that ALL "burning bosoms" are emotion based and they stem from meaningful situations based upon our experiences in life. That is why the many thousands of different religions can have their own "witnesses" to their beliefs. That is why even atheists can have "tingling" feelings. That is why some testify to obvious falsehoods. That is why some get "false positives." That is why some can lie and still produce the "spirit." I don't believe God is so confusing and unreliable that He would use such a poor system of revelation.

Because of my conclusions that God doesn't intervene and answer prayers and that testimony is nothing but emotional reactions, it eliminates the two most frequently used LDS techniques to determine if the LDS Church is true. Therefore, for me, it would serve no purpose whatsoever, for me to pray and ask for a testimony of the truth. It is also completely meaningless for a person to claim their prayers were answered or to testify to me. This is an important conclusion since the whole LDS religion is based upon those two key things.