The Holy Ghost and Revelation

By Elder Jay E. Jensen Of the Presidency of the Seventy

 

Jay E. Jensen, “The Holy Ghost and Revelation,” Liahona, Nov 2010, 77–79

The Holy Ghost is the third member of the Godhead, and with the Father and the Son, He knows all things.

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As a young elder, I had been in the mission field about one year, and while reading scriptures and words of the latter-day Apostles about revelation and the Holy Ghost, I had a stunning awakening. I did not have a testimony of my own, specifically of the Father and the Son. I went on my mission living on the borrowed light of my wonderful parents. Never doubting their words, I had not thought about seeking my own spiritual witness. On a February night in San Antonio, Texas, in 1962, I knew that I had to know for myself. In our small apartment I found a place where I could quietly pray out loud, pleading, "Heavenly Father, are You there? I must know for myself!"

Sometime later that night I came to know for myself for the first time in my life that God and Jesus are real. I did not hear an audible voice nor see a heavenly being. I knew in the same way you too may have come to know—which is "by the unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost" (Alma 58:11).

From that experience I witnessed the results of Alma's counsel to "awake and arouse [my] faculties … to [conduct] an experiment upon [His] words" (Alma 32:27). These words or seeds have grown into trees, indeed giant trees of testimony. The process continues with more experiments upon the word, resulting in additional trees of testimony, now a veritable forest based on revelation through and by the Holy Ghost.