The following is excerpted from the Church News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE. 

Under premises such as “seeing is believing,” critics and cynics for millennia have said faith in the Savior Jesus Christ and His coming is “unreasonable.”

For Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the opposite is true: “I believe it is unreasonable to claim that faith in Jesus Christ is unreasonable,” he said.

In a Sunday, Aug. 28, devotional at the University of Utah Institute of Religion in Salt Lake City, Elder Bednar underscored Satan’s long-standing strategies of deception and spiritual destruction, and he highlighted five fundamental doctrinal truths taught by the Prophet Joseph Smith as support that it is unreasonable to suggest the Restoration of the Lord’s gospel and Church in the latter days as unreasonable.

The five truths “are but a beginning glimpse into the vast scope, depth, breadth and eternal importance of the restored gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ,” said Elder Bednar, who was accompanied by his wife, Sister Susan Bednar.

Her brief message — on having faith in the Lord, faith in oneself, faith in the future, and her witness of her husband’s apostolic calling — served as a fitting precursor to Elder Bednar’s instruction.

The Apostle explained the devotional was “Part 1” of a planned two-devotional series on faith and believing, with Part 2 to be presented in another university devotional later this fall.

Satan’s strategies of deception

The Book of Mormon contains valuable lessons about Satan’s strategies of deception and spiritual destruction — tactics used both then and today. Elder Bednar cited exchanges between Korihor and Alma and the example of unbelievers during the time of Samuel the Lamanite.

In Alma 30, Korihor the anti-Christ ridiculed the Savior, His Atonement and the spirit of prophecy while demeaning, disparaging and devaluing the faithful and their beliefs. He used statements such as “bound down under a foolish and vain hope,” “foolish traditions,” “a frenzied mind, “derangement of your minds” and “ye cannot know of things which ye do not see.”

“That one simple assertion denigrates any means of knowing other than seeing,” Elder Bednar said. “It falsely sweeps away all historical knowledge, all knowledge obtained through vicarious learning, all individual or collective intuition, all knowledge resulting from cognitive construction, and dismisses the existence of objects or places not personally seen.”

To read the full article, CLICK HERE.