gdemetz wrote:Drifting, are you assuming that if one gives his testimony that he will memorize it until it becomes a vain repetition, or what?!
I'm not assuming...I'm asking....but as usual, you aren't answering.
Why did Packer tell missionaries to keep repeating a testimony until they believed it?
“We look to not only the spiritual but also the temporal, and we believe that a person who is impoverished temporally cannot blossom spiritually.” Keith McMullin - Counsellor in Presiding Bishopric
"One, two, three...let's go shopping!" Thomas S Monson - Prophet, Seer, Revelator
It is when one asks amiss. Christ came to save people from their sins; not save them in their sins! "For if we sin willfully {by not keeping God's commandments} after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins."
gdemetz wrote:OK, Drifting, I will spell it out for you simply. A testimony is supposed to come from "the heart" and it is not memorized words spoken.
Thanks for spelling that out for me. Now...back to the actual question...why did Packer tell missionaries to keep repeating a testimony that they didn't believe until they started to believe it?
“We look to not only the spiritual but also the temporal, and we believe that a person who is impoverished temporally cannot blossom spiritually.” Keith McMullin - Counsellor in Presiding Bishopric
"One, two, three...let's go shopping!" Thomas S Monson - Prophet, Seer, Revelator
gdemetz wrote:Can you refer me to an exact quote for that?
Of course.
The skeptic will say that to bear testimony when you may not know you possess one is to condition yourself; that the response is manufactured. Well, one thing for sure, the skeptic will never know, for he will not meet the requirement of faith, humility, and obedience to qualify him for the visitation of the Spirit.
Can you not see that that is where testimony is hidden, protected perfectly from the insincere, from the intellectual, from the mere experimenter, the arrogant, the faithless, the proud? It will not come to them.
Bear testimony of the things that you hope are true, as an act of faith. It is something of an experiment, akin to the experiment that the prophet Alma proposed to his followers. We begin with faith—not with a perfect knowledge of things. That sermon in the thirty-second chapter of Alma is one of the greatest messages in holy writ, for it is addressed to the beginner, to the novice, to the humble seeker. And it holds a key to a witness of the truth.
The Spirit and testimony of Christ will come to you for the most part when, and remain with you only if, you share it. In that process is the very essense of the gospel.
“We look to not only the spiritual but also the temporal, and we believe that a person who is impoverished temporally cannot blossom spiritually.” Keith McMullin - Counsellor in Presiding Bishopric
"One, two, three...let's go shopping!" Thomas S Monson - Prophet, Seer, Revelator
OK Drifting, I will give you my opinion on that. I don't think that a person should bear testimony about something unless he has a true testimony to bear.
