The following is excerpted from LDS Living. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
To bear has at least two meanings. It means, first of all, to possess, in the sense that a man or woman possesses or bears responsibility or burdens.
Second, it means to express, convey, or declare to others. Spiritual things can be known. We need not apologize for things we know by the power of the Spirit, for they are as real (if not more so) than the things we perceive in the physical world through the five senses.
“I know with a witness that is more powerful than sight,” President Harold B. Lee said to Brigham Young University students just three months before his death. “Sometime, if the spirit prompts me, I may feel free to tell you more, but may I say to you that I know as though I had seen, that He lives, that He is real, that God the Father and his Son are living realities, personalities with bodies, parts, and passions—glorified beings. If you believe that, then you are safe. If you don’t believe it, then struggle for that witness, and all will be well with you.”1
An episode in the book of Alma illustrates the potential power of testimony. A little more than eighty years before the coming of Christ, Alma the Younger, the chief judge or governor, seeing that wickedness was spreading among the …, even to members of the Church, felt the need to resign from his role in government and devote himself full-time to ministry (Alma 9–18).
“Now this he did,” Mormon wrote, “that he himself might go forth among his people, or among the people of Nephi, that he might preach the word of God unto them, to stir them up in remembrance of their duty, and that he might pull down, by the word of God, all the pride and craftiness and all the contentions which were among his people, seeing no way that he might reclaim them save it were in bearing down in pure testimony against them” (Alma 4:19; emphasis added).
This very significant verse is a companion with another of Mormon’s comments that, again, attests to the power of the word of God.
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.