Russell M. Nelson

President

17th President of the Church, 2018–Present

Testimony of Joseph Smith

“During decades prior to my call to the Twelve, I . . . have been to the place of the Prophet's birth in Vermont and to the vicinity of his childhood, where he was operated upon without the mercy of an anesthetic. I have trod their farmland in the State of New York and have reverently entered that grove made sacred by his First Vision in 1820. I have climbed Cumorah’s Hill as well as the steps of Kirtland’s Temple inwardly rejoicing in the experiences he had there. I have wept for him at the jails of Liberty and Carthage. Now, I do know for myself that these things are true. The Lord God has manifest them unto me by the power of his Spirit. This is the witness of revelation which is in me.

“I testify not only to the reality that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, that this is his church restored in these latter days, but I fervently and sincerely declare that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God foreordained from before the foundations of the earth to the mission assigned to him, for which he paid with his life” (“At the Heart of the Church,” in The Prophet and His Work: Essays from General Authorities on Joseph Smith and the Restoration (1996), 64–65).