“The Testimony of Three Witnesses Will I Send Forth of My Word”
Doctrine and Covenants 5:11–18
11 And in addition to your testimony, the testimony of three of my servants, whom I shall call and ordain, unto whom I will show these things, and they shall go forth with my words that are given through you.
12 Yea, they shall know of a surety that these things are true, for from heaven will I declare it unto them.
13 I will give them power that they may behold and view these things as they are;
14 And to none else will I grant this power, to receive this same testimony among this generation, in this the beginning of the rising up and the coming forth of my church out of the wilderness—clear as the moon, and fair as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.
15 And the testimony of three witnesses will I send forth of my word.
16 And behold, whosoever believeth on my words, them will I visit with the manifestation of my Spirit; and they shall be born of me, even of water and of the Spirit—
17 And you must wait yet a little while, for ye are not yet ordained—
18 And their testimony shall also go forth unto the condemnation of this generation if they harden their hearts against them;
President Joseph Fielding Smith wrote:
“In giving the world the testimony of three witnesses in addition to Joseph Smith, the Lord fulfilled the law. We are called upon in this life to walk by faith, not by sight, not by the proclamation of heavenly messengers with the voice of thunder, but by the proclamation of accredited witnesses whom the Lord sends and by whom every word shall be established. The Lord made the promise that the testimony of the three should go forth with His words that were given through Joseph Smith, and this should be declared to all the world. These witnesses should know that these things are true and ‘from heaven will I declare it unto them,’ said the Lord [D&C 5:12]. The testimony which they have given and which is recorded in each copy of the Book of Mormon in the most solemn language, has gone forth to the four corners of the earth, in fulfillment of the promise made in the Book of Mormon. (See 2 Nephi 27:12–14.)”
(Church History and Modern Revelation, 2 vols. [1953], 1:40.)
