Part 38: CES Letter Testimony/Spiritual Witness Questions [Section B]
by Sarah Allen
Last week, I spoke about the progression of ideas I see in the CES Letter and how dangerous I think this section is. Jeremy Runnells isn’t just targeting other flawed human beings or messy historical events without much documentation this time. He’s not talking about controversial statements or doctrines, either. He’s directly targeting a member of the Godhead and the way in which our Father and Savior speak to us. If he can cast doubt on that, if he can make you think that They don’t speak to us the way we’re taught They do, then the easier it becomes for him to convince you that They don’t exist at all.
I truly believe that’s at the crux of this. There’s a reason why some former members of our church don’t join another church when they leave and instead become atheist or agnostic. Things in our church are often presented as all or nothing. Last week, we went through several scriptures that taught that we can either choose the things of God or the things of Satan. Either our temple covenants are necessary for exaltation or they’re not. Either the Priesthood was restored to the Earth or it wasn’t. Either Joseph Smith knelt in a grove of trees, saw God the Father and the Savior, and later spoke with a resurrected Moroni face to face, or he didn’t. Either the story he told us surrounding the coming forth of the Book of Mormon is true, or he’s a liar. Either the Book of Mormon is a genuine ancient record translated by revelation, or it’s made up. There’s no in-between. Even the Savior Himself told us that if we’re not with Him, we’re against Him.
While that concept isn’t true for our testimonies (it’s normal if we don’t have perfect faith in everything right away, or if we have to build our testimonies brick by brick), it’s true for a lot of things in the Gospel and in the Church. And if Jeremy can make you doubt enough of those very basic, fundamental cornerstones of your faith, eventually, he’ll make you doubt whether God is even real.
But God is real. The Savior is real. The Holy Ghost is real. And the way that They speak to us is through the Spirit. Regardless of whatever doubts Jeremy tries to sow, we are not alone. They did not abandon us to find our own way without Their help. We just have to ask for it.
Daniel C. Peterson (PhD, UCLA) is a professor of Islamic studies and Arabic at Brigham Young University and founder of the university’s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative. He has published and spoken extensively on both Islamic and Mormon subjects. Formerly chairman of the board of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) and an officer, editor, and author for its successor organization, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, his professional work as an Arabist focuses on the Qur’an and on Islamic philosophical theology. He is the author, among other things, of a biography entitled 
Rebekah Clark is co-author of the book Thinking Women: A Timeline of Suffrage in Utah and works as a historian for Better Days, a nonprofit public history organization dedicated to expanding education about Utah women’s history. She holds a law degree from the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University, studied as a visiting student at Harvard Law School, and practiced law in Boston for four years. She graduated with a degree in American History and Literature from Harvard University, where her honors thesis focused on Utah women’s activism in the national suffrage movement. She has worked at the LDS Church History Department and taught as an online adjunct faculty member at BYU-Idaho. Her work has appeared in journals such as the Utah State Historical Quarterly, the Journal of Mormon History, BYU Studies, Pioneer Magazine, and BYU Law Review and in podcasts by the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Church News, What’s Her Name, Zion Art Society, and the Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. In addition to her work with Better Days, she currently serves on the board of the Mormon Women’s History Initiative Team. Rebekah lives in Highland with her husband Andrew and their five children.
