Testimony of Joseph Smith The Prophet

Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith
Delivered April 16, 2026
Centennial Academy

Well, good morning! It is sure nice to see you folks today. I am glad you know that song—it is a song, too, not just a reading. ¹ We are grateful for the insights that the gospel dispensation has brought to us. The scientists are barely catching up now that “there is no end to space.” What they miss is that there is no end to virtue. We will work on that with them as long as they will work with us.

I come today with a task that should be simple. I want to help convince you all of the greatness and glory of the gospel and the things about it that we love so much. It is important that we have knowledge in our lives. I think Joseph Smith described it: “We can be saved no faster than we gain knowledge.” And why is knowledge so important? Even Jesus—the Lectures on Faith ask what did Jesus propose to do when He proposed to save us? He said it was to make us like Himself. And how can we make ourselves like Jesus if we do not have enough information to know who He is, what He looks like? We have little insights in the gospel—it says, “This is life eternal: to know Jesus—to know God and Jesus Christ, who He has sent.”

To think we can get through life in ignorance—number one, it is a mistake—but, number two, what we are looking for in our lives are the things that give us courage. The things that give us traction—the things that make us get up in the morning, the things that make us choose good instead of evil. Today, there will be ten thousand opportunities to be sloppy and marginal in our behavior. What we are looking for are those things that say,

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• 1 - Prior to Brother Knudson speaking, the Readers Theater class presented W.W. Phelps’s “If You Could Hie to Kolob”

“Hey, there is something worth far more—far more than the foolish things of this morning.” Brigham Young described it saying, “I am willing to take this handful of clay, and manage it in such a way to make it so I can exchange it for an eternal world.” And we need to think that way. The little, simple things of today are not supposed to deprive us of the eternities. Everything about the gospel—every honorable emotion, every honorable passion in our lives—there is an honorable way to have those things in the work and in the teachings of Jesus. That should give you a great deal of courage. We worship a God with a body, and parts, and passions, and what we celebrate about Him is He manages them consistent with virtue, growth, and development.

Mary said she passed out a card with one of the primary features I would like to talk about today. We are unique in the world at large in that we have some knowledge about God—how He became God, His grand hope—His grand hope when He sent us to the earth was—in the words of Joseph Smith: “What was the design of the Almighty in making man?” This should burn in our hearts every day. Why did God send us here? And the Prophet Joseph responded, “It was to exalt him to be a God.” As you look at the great plan of salvation, you will find that every facet and feature of it is designed to help us take this mortal body and turn it into a vessel that is pleasing to our Father in Heaven. Why do we want to please Him? He is the prototype of all saved beings. We delight in His example. We delight in His teachings. My personal experience is that the teachings of our Heavenly Father are not grievous. He has not given a command to mortals that was not designed for their happiness, their joy, their fulfillment—to make sure they have an eternity of joy. We do not want to spend time looking backward with regret and remorse. We have built-in mechanisms in the gospel to learn, to grow, and to correct, because we want to grow line upon line, and precept upon precept until we come to a fullness of appreciation for what God is trying to do to us—do for us. The design of the Almighty is to exalt man to be a God.

Perhaps that sounds like too great a step. The very essence of the gospel is that we are supposed to learn it “line upon line, and precept upon precept.” God put us in this world in a (perhaps I should say) frail condition. Weak. Relying on our parents—full of difficulties and troubles if we are not careful. He knows that. He helped design this whole creation. He did not invent it from scratch because it is a series of Gods and planets, and Gods and planets, and Gods and planets. He does not have to create too much. But every time a child comes forth with agency—in that moment there are a new set of experiences for us and for God. I imagine He is watching with interest to see what we are going to do with our genetics and our body, and whether we are going down a pathway that will help us become like He is.

So, the first two or three things I want us to notice: number one, God understands the problem. (If I turn off the mic for a moment, I will tell you the truth.) He caused the problem. He put us on this earth in mortality knowing perfectly well the problems and difficulties it would create. He also knew that if we did not start at that baseline of a mortal child, that time and space would not have the effect He needed them to have on us. One day, He would like to exalt us to be a God of some far earth. He wants to know how we will do in an environment without direct supervision—total agency—how we will deal with His grandchildren. He cares about these things. He puts us here, in this weak mortal condition in our mother’s arms, and tries to get us to take our body and develop our spirit as fast as our body, girls and boys. Because our bodies are leaping forward, and we may not be keeping up spiritually, with judgment, as fast as our bodies are growing.

So, God gives us resources. He gives us parents. He gives us teachers. He gives us preachers. He gives us all the things it takes to make sure we can succeed at this great endeavor. He did not send us here to fail. In fact, He is so brave that He said, “I’m going to save all the workmanship of my hands.” There is a caveat there: to what degree, or glory, or salvation can He save you? If He took me in a crummy, mortal condition—not managing myself—and shoved me into the celestial kingdom, it would be, to me, a hell. Joseph Smith said the opposite. He said, “If they send us to hell, we’ll throw out the devils and make heaven of it.” Because good people create heaven. And you cannot do anything for bad people. If we are going to be bad, we are going to suffer in that space until we learn a lesson, make a change in ourselves, and move forward.

The great plan of salvation is so wonderful. First of all, just recognize God is trying to save you, not fail you. It is not like your teachers—trying to fail you until you cannot graduate. God wants you to win. He wants you to win today. Every day. And if you win, He wins. This wonderful information Joseph Smith gave us about the nature of God. He is intimate—He is with us, He cares about us. The Prophet Joseph described it one day, saying, “God is like a doting father to us,” and his intention is not to fail us.

His intention is to return us back into a place where the lessons of life can convince us that His plan is better than what the Devil offers us each day. That is the great news. The whole purpose of God is to take you from a spirit without a body and transform you. We graduated with high honors in the heavens as spirits. Now, He said to our wispy little spirits, “We’ve got to give you a body.” If you do not have a body, every spirit in creation can come and impinge on you. If you have a body, you know what? You have supremacy over any spirit that does not have a body. So, we came to this earth in an exalted condition, but we have to be tested and proved to see if those strengths and capabilities our Heavenly Father gave us are going to exalt us, or whether we are going to use our body and our disposition to self-destruct. He has given us all kinds of pointers on how not to do that.

This scripture I asked Mary to produce for us, I want us to understand it very carefully. The history of this creation goes way back in time. For God to bring forth a planet, populate it with humans, and give those humans a chance to become like a God and return to where He is, a set of resources was required. Here are the resources: “The everlasting covenant was made between three personages before the organization of this earth….” For the Creation of this earth to be secured, the resources pertaining to this planet had to be populated in a manner that all the steps necessary to return to our Father could take place. These personages relate to “their dispensation of things to men on the earth….” Now this language is striking in describing the gospel story and why these personages came, what they did, and what their responsibilities are: “[These] personages…are called God the first, the Creator; God the second, the Redeemer; and God the third, the Witness or Testator.”2

Let us go back to this description: it “relates to their dispensation of things to men on the earth.” God the first, the Creator—we have some knowledge of Him. Consider how new this doctrine was. For thousands of years, the world was in ignorance about the nature of the creation and the responsibilities of these three Gods.

In the first instance, God our Eternal Father, the Creator, helped create this earth. He built it, He designed it, and watched over it for billions of years to make sure it was perfectly ready. I sometimes tease the ladies. God knows what He has to do. He has to go down to an earth, He has to people it, and He says when He’s ready, “Hey, Eves—are you ready to go down?” And she says, “I see dinosaurs…they look mean.” God sighs and

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2Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 190.

says, “Jehovah, we’ve got to clean this place up a bit.” So, the dinosaurs are gone. Then He goes back, “There’s no mean things.” She says, “I see saber-toothed tigers. There are bad things on this earth! I’m not going to go down unless someone looks like me. Two legs, standing up, not losing the fight with the saber-toothed tiger.” He says okay. Cleans it up. Finally, they all say, “It still looks like an unhappy place to go.” He says, “Okay. We’ll build you a garden. We’ll build you a wall around it. You’ll have a perfectly safe place if you’ll just abide by what it takes to stay in the garden.” So, they go down. Probably kicked their way out of the garden, okay? Because this is the tendency—these are our parents! They kicked their way out of the garden. Celestial beings were placed in the garden and evil engendered. It requires constant diligence to make sure we stay on the right side of that line.

Here we have this wonderful Father of ours. After helping create the earth and trapping—tricking—Eves to come down with Him into the garden, He then rested from His labors as God the Creator for almost a thousand years to be with us, His children. For a thousand years, He was here with us. He walked and talked with us. He helped us grow and develop. He gave us the gospel. He taught us how to use it. He put our feet firmly on the pathway to become like Him. Scriptures say He was here nine hundred and thirty years to make sure we had every chance and opportunity to be well established. Every time we remember the sabbath day to keep it holy, we are remembering that on the seventh day God laid down His work and labors as a God and came here as our father, Adam. To me, that is a very, very big deal. Every week, we remember. We relish it. We celebrate it—on the seventh day, God Almighty laid down His work as the Creator and came down and lived with us. Hence, it “relates to their dispensation of things.” And in His dispensation, that was His job—to lay down His work and labors as a God, come down here, and start the human race, be with and strengthen them.

Then we come to Jesus, God the second. He came in the fullness of time to accomplish a work that had to be done. What was that work? It was the consequence of this great covenant that was made between these three personages. We had to have God the Creator to start this work. We had to have God the Redeemer, to come down and perform the sacrifice it took to provide a plan to get back into our Father’s presence. A very critical step, He had to do it. We join with Christians everywhere to celebrate the work and

labors of Jesus Christ. He is one of the three creative elements that justified this earth coming into existence, and He did a fabulous work. And we are all indebted to His labors. What we love about Him is He has a body just like ours. Paul the Apostle said Christ was of the House of Israel, born of woman, and He made it! And I want you to know, that is glorious news. He made it. I was born of woman, of the House of Israel. If He made it, I can make it. So, Christ performed this great work in the meridian of time in His day relating “to their dispensation of things to men on the earth.”

After His work was done, the gospel was spread all over the earth by His apostles, very faithfully as He told them to do, but then it began to fade. In the first dispensation with our Father, He gave us laws, He gave us covenants, He gave us instructions—He gave us a pathway to get back to where He is. By the time Christ came along, that had faded away so far that Christ needed a new covenant. The old covenant provided that all of God’s children who were faithful and diligent could return to His presence, and it was gone from the earth by the time Christ came along, and so Christ offered us a “new” covenant, and through that new covenant—by laboring with Him, and accepting rights, responsibilities, and authorities from Him—we can inherit from Him the old covenant.

Thousands of years later of darkness, we come to our day and dispensation, and the third member of the Godhead had to come here and continue again this great work and labor. He brought forth the “new,” which was Jesus’s covenant, and the “everlasting,” which was Adam’s covenant, and delivered it to you. We celebrate and rejoice that we are inheritors of the blessings of the New and the Everlasting Covenant. We have it all. That was the purpose for this, the final dispensation—to make sure you have every blessing, every opportunity that the gospel can possibly bring to you. We are not one whit short of living outside the garden with Father Adam or walking the streets of Jerusalem with Jesus. We have it all! It is being offered to us freely, carefully, line upon line, and precept upon precept, and we can have it all.

So, we come to our day and dispensation—this dispensation of the fullness of times. It took someone of the caliber of Joseph Smith—someone who had entered into this covenant, and who would come and do the work necessary to reestablish all of those good things and prepare for a full consummation of the gospel, the whole plan of the earth—to bring, again, Christ. To bring, again, God, and to do the closing-up scenes of the old

world and open up a new celestial existence to be inherited by Christ and all His faithful brothers and sisters. It is a critical matter. It could not be done by just anyone. It had to be a member of this Godhead that entered into that covenant.

Now, if you think about it, if that covenant had not existed—if those personages had not agreed to do each of their jobs in their day and dispensation—there would have been no reason to bring this earth into existence. Hence, these words: before the creation of this world, eternal covenant had to be entered into by these three personages—to make creation come into existence, to create a savior for it, and to have it established in its fullness in our day and time. We rejoice in these things. This is the kind of knowledge we need so we can have the courage, the stamina, and the ability to meet the criteria of the gospel. The commandments of God are not grievous. We can meet the requirements if we keep our focus and try to do it.

So, here is the entity I want us to celebrate today. It “relates to their dispensation of things to men on the earth.” These personages include God the third, the Witness or Testator. If you think about this, the Christian world is ignorant of Adam or Michael, our Father. They are ignorant of Joseph Smith. You know what that leaves them? It leaves them deprived of the knowledge necessary to make the changes in their characters so they can meet our Father in Heaven. They are deprived of the information He provided for us. This is a wonderful luxury, and I encourage you to lean your hearts and affections toward it. He did incredible things for us.

Take yourself back into this milieu of the spirit world, before the foundation of the world when these three personages were designated their jobs and made this covenant. We were there. Our spirits are eternal. “At the first organization in heaven, we were all present, and saw the Savior chosen and appointed, and the plan of salvation made and we sanctioned it.”3 We received it with joy and rejoicing. The Lord even told Job that all the sons of God shouted for joy, and the morning stars sang together when the foundations of this earth were laid. This is our plan. We own it. It has been handed to us very gently so that we have a fullness of light, truth, and knowledge. We are able to receive every good thing that our Heavenly Father has in store for His children. We should rejoice in that.

I am so grateful for the clarity that Joseph Smith brings to the gospel. The Christian world is ignorant of Jesus. They like to say they celebrate Him, but they are ignorant of Jesus without the input and the clarity that Joseph

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3Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 181.

Smith brought. What was Joseph Smith’s job? To be the Witness of the Father and the Son—to be able to testify about this great covenant that was created in the eternities. When you look at His work and His labors, you will find His very first job. “Oh, how lovely was the morning”—His first job was to go into the grove and meet the Father and the Son, so He could come back to ignorant Christendom and say, “Actually, there was a Father and a Son.” Christendom thinks there is only a Son. Is Joseph competent and qualified to testify of this? Yes—His first set of activities on this planet with God was to meet the Father and the Son and receive their instructions.

I want to read a couple things if you can abide it. This is from the Pearl of Great Price in the “Joseph Smith—History.” You all have a copy of this. Let’s look at a couple things. He came out of the grove and told folks what He knew. It’s kind of interesting—He went to His mom and said, “You’re wrong.” He went to His dad and said, “Your scriptures are inadequate.” A great way to make friends and influence people, right? So, He writes this:

I soon found, however, that my telling the story had excited a great deal of prejudice against me among professors of religion, and was the cause of great persecution, which continued to increase; and though I was an obscure boy, only between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and my circumstances in life such as to make a boy of no consequence in the world, yet men of high standing would take notice sufficient to excite the public mind against me, and create a bitter persecution; and this was common among all the sects—all united to persecute me.

It caused me serious reflection then, and often has since, how very strange it was that an obscure boy, of a little over fourteen years of age, and one, too, who was doomed to the necessity of obtaining a scanty maintenance by his daily labor, should be thought a character of sufficient importance to attract the attention of the great ones of the most popular sects of the day, and in a manner to create in them a spirit of the most bitter persecution and reviling. But strange or not, so it was, and it was often the cause of great sorrow to myself.

However, it was nevertheless a fact that I had beheld a vision.4

Not only had He beheld a vision, but it was the most important vision since Christ left the earth. The most important vision—that He could look into

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4Pearl of Great Price, “Joseph Smith—History,” v. 22-24

the face of the Father and Son, and they talked with Him, they taught Him, and they told Him his job description.

I had actually seen a light, and in the midst of that light I saw two Personages, and they did in reality speak to me; and though I was hated and persecuted for saying that I had seen a vision, yet it was true; and while they were persecuting me, reviling me, and speaking all manner of evil against me falsely for so saying, I was led to say in my heart: Why persecute me for telling the truth? I have actually seen a vision; and who am I that I can withstand God, or why does the world think to make me deny what I have actually seen? For I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it, neither dared I do it; at least I knew that by so doing I would offend God, and come under condemnation. ⁵

So, you mathematicians, that was two hundred years ago. Two hundred years ago. Brigham Young, feeling macho one day, said, “I’ll bet we can save this people in half the time it took Enoch to save his people.” Enoch walked and talked with the people and with God for three hundred years, and was able to take his whole city and go to the terrestrial kingdom. Three hundred years. Brigham said, “I bet we can do it in half that time.” That would be a hundred and fifty years. That has come and gone. We are still waiting for a people that will rise up, meet the criteria, establish righteousness in the earth, and be competent to receive the return of the City of Enoch and the Second Coming of Christ. We have not met the criteria, and we have gone past this hopeful expression of Brigham Young that we might be able to do it in half as much time. Because we are so smart—that is what is helping us, right? Because we are so smart that we can become better people faster than the City of Enoch. I notice things like that on occasion.

A little farther in, an angel was sent to Joseph Smith. “He called me by name, and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Moroni; that God had a work for me to do….”And here is the part I want you to notice. “…and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people.” ⁶
Two hundred years ago, a little boy comes out of the forest at fourteen years old, and an angel says, “By the way, everyone is going to hate you, or love you. Every nation, kindred, tongue, and people is going to know your name and have it for good, or for evil.”

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⁵ Pearl of Great Price, “Joseph Smith—History,” v. 25.

⁶ Ibid, v. 33

Now, obviously, our mission is to have it for good. We should cherish it. We should respect it. We should rejoice in it. We should champion His name because He is our champion. His doctrines exalt us, and yet, two hundred years later, this fourteen-year-old boy is still being mocked. You historians—two hundred years ago, who was the president of the United States? … The typical person couldn’t say. But they know Joseph Smith! They do not know enough about Him even to lay on Him the blame they assign to Him. And yet, we are His people. We exist because He existed. We are born because of principles that He established. We of all people should respect and revere this great God the third, the Witness and Testator. That is the message I want to make sure we come to. Joseph Smith is God the third, the Witness and Testator.

We have another little mistake that we make. We think we are great students and great journalists, and so we do not ever just say, “God is good.” We want to hear the opposite. Who says God is bad? Let’s include that to balance it. We do not have to do that. We can have an absolute conviction that the truth we are given is accurate, and valid, and useful to us. The only testimony I want about Joseph Smith, Jr., is the testimony that God and the Holy Spirit give me, and the testimonies left by those who worked with Him—who lived with Him, who loved Him, who received, with gladness, His testimony. We have been left magnificent testimonies of the Prophet Joseph. The greatest people we know of since His time bear testimony of His glory and His magnificence. Not only did the world hate Him, but they hated Him sufficiently to organize and kill Him—and they accomplished it. And yet, we cherish these wonderful testimonies.

The particular one I want to read to you is from the 135th Section.

To seal the testimony of this book and the Book of Mormon, we announce the martyrdom of Joseph Smith the Prophet, and Hyrum Smith the Patriarch. They were shot in Carthage jail, on the 27th of June, 1844, about five o’clock p.m., by an armed mob—painted black—of from 150 to 200 persons. ⁷

By this time, Joseph Smith had offered his name as a candidate for the president of the United States. So, this is late in June of a normal election year. He was a candidate for the president of the United States, and a mob of religious and political enemies killed Him. That should disappoint and

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⁷ Doctrine and Covenants, Section 135:1.

distress you. This should make us sure that there are those, like us, who speak well of Him, and who revere and celebrate His life.

This is the testimony that John Taylor left us.

Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it. In the short space of twenty years, he has brought forth the Book of Mormon, which he translated by the gift and power of God, and has been the means of publishing it on two continents; has sent the fulness of the everlasting gospel, which it contained, to the four quarters of the earth; has brought forth the revelations and commandments which compose this book of Doctrine and Covenants, and many other wise documents and instructions for the benefit of the children of men; gathered many thousands of the Latter-day Saints, founded a great city, and left a fame and name that cannot be slain…*8

And in your presentations here over the last few weeks and months, you have talked about some of the glorious things that He has accomplished—among them, the city he mentioned here.

He lived great, and he died great in the eyes of God and his people; and like most of the Lord’s anointed in ancient times, has sealed his mission and his works with his own blood…

…hence forward their names will be classed among the martyrs of religion; and the reader in every nation will be reminded that the Book of Mormon, and this book of Doctrine and Covenants of the church, cost the best blood of the nineteenth century to bring them forth for the salvation of a ruined world; and that if the fire can scathe a green tree for the glory of God, how easy it will burn up the dry trees to purify the vineyard of corruption. They lived for glory; they died for glory; and glory is their eternal reward. From age to age shall their names go down to posterity as gems for the sanctified.

They were innocent of any crime, as they had often been proved before, and were only confined in jail by the conspiracy of traitors and wicked men; and their innocent blood on the floor of Carthage jail is a broad seal affixed to “Mormonism” that cannot be rejected by any court on earth, and their innocent blood on the escutcheon of

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⁸ Doctrine and Covenants, Section 135:3.

the State of Illinois, with the broken faith of the State as pledged by the governor, is a witness to the truth of the everlasting gospel that all the world cannot impeach; and their innocent blood on the banner of liberty, and on the Magna Charta of the United States, is an ambassador for the religion of Jesus Christ, that will touch the hearts of honest men among all nations; and their innocent blood, with the innocent blood of all the martyrs under the altar that John saw, will cry unto the Lord of Hosts till he avenges that blood on the earth. ⁹

He is our hero.

He created the environment in which we live. He restored the gospel in a manner that gives me courage. It excites me to do well. It excites me to establish the work and kingdom. It excites me to come here, in spite of the rest that I was going to have this morning, to try and convince you that He is our solution. He is our advocate with the Father. In His day, Jesus did a great work for us. Today, Joseph Smith is the leader of our work. If there is a crisis in the kingdom, like in 1886, Joseph Smith had to come back with Jesus to make sure the priesthood continued on a straightforward path. And any time you see troubles or difficulties, He is there. This is His dispensation. And that is to our honor and to our glory.

Brigham Young went so far as to say that he had been ordained an apostle of Jesus Christ, and he said, “I am an apostle of Joseph Smith.” I concur with that. I am ordained an apostle of Jesus Christ, and I am an apostle of Joseph Smith, Jr. I invite you to turn your heart and affections to Him. Nothing has changed. Every time you hear someone disparage Joseph Smith—two hundred years later—they are proving that the information He received from that angel is still right, and they are still wrong.

So rejoice in the gospel. It is designed to save us—to exalt us. It is designed to bring us forth eternally, to the benefit, blessing, and glory of our holy Father. He is an active participant in our lives to this hour. Rejoice in it.

This is my testimony of Joseph Smith, and I give it to you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

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⁹ Doctrine and Covenants, Section 135:6-7.