Cloud of witnesses

“ But no other body can show such saints, no other body can produce so great a cloud of witnesses. It is certain that the lives and the deaths, the characters and the aims, of those who have trusted their all to Christ have made them what He bade them be, the salt of the earth. ”

“ Their Number furnishes us with a sufficient Cloud of Witnesses that attest the Truth of the Old Bible. ”

“ It is given46 us, that we may imagine the cloud of witnesses in heaven and earth, and see, as if they were now present, the souls of the righteous waiting for us; that we may conceive the great army of the inhabitants of heaven, and discover among them those whom we most desire to be with for ever; that we may be able to vision forth the ministry of angels beside us, and see the chariots of fire on the mountains that gird us round ”

“ For God hath His silent witnesses, like John the Baptist, by us shut up in prison and by us beheaded—but He calleth them to the witness-stand as pleaseth Him; and they live forever in dreadful gospels of love and doom, the latter sharing the power of the former's endless life. ”

“ The alms in our hand will be a witness for us. Our father at our head will be witness for us". "This is what I desire, this is what my soul wants. "When I ascend to the house of life and go to the light dwelling, when life queries me, witnesses will come and testify. True witnesses they are, true is all that they say." And life is victorious. ”

“ Hear how they are witnesses: The Spirit renews the mind, the water is serviceable for the laver, and the blood refers to the price. For the Spirit made us children by adoption, the water of the sacred Font washed us, the blood of the Lord redeemed us. So we obtain one invisible and one visible testimony in a spiritual sacrament, for “the Spirit Himself beareth witness to our spirit.” ”

“ There are, I say, witnesses that lived contemporary with him, who will continue to live and be able to bear a faithful testimony to the truth, until the kingdom can take care of itself, or God will take care of it. I tell you that light will come upon you pretty soon—the glorious light of heaven. Be patient, enduring—the sun will rise and darkness will flee away. By and by, true to the word of promise, the sun does rise, and darkness flees away; and the sun ascends to the meridian, and his rays illuminate the whole face of nature. ”

“ In the same way, a witness to the risen Christ tells the glorious truth to his son, a lad of fifteen, who at eighty tells it to his grandson. 'Do you realise,' said the magnetic young preacher, 'that the assurance of the Resurrection comes to you this morning by word of mouth through a scant three thousand witnesses—a living chain of less than three thousand links by which we may trace our steps back to the presence of the first witness—so that, in effect, we have the Resurrection on the word of a man who beheld the living Saviour this very morning? ”

“ There are three that bear witness on earth, as there are three that bear record in heaven—the spirit, the water, and the blood, bear concurrent testimony to our obedience on earth; for the want of any one, or all of these witnesses on earth, in our favour, there will be no registry of our perfect acceptance in heaven. ”

“ It is objected, Fifthly, that “the direct witness of the Spirit does not secure us from the greatest delusion. And is that a witness fit to be trusted, whose testimony cannot be depended on? That is forced to fly to something else, to prove what it asserts?” I answer: To secure us from all delusion, God gives us two witnesses that we are his children. ”

“ Suppose Jesus Christ and his Apostles and prophets all agree in bearing testimony, and foretelling the very order of things which we find to exist; also, its final end or termination, and the restoration of his Church and the reign of his Saints? Would not our own observations of what actually exists, confirmed by the prophetic declarations of such a host of witnesses, all testifying that it would be so, be a double assurance that we had opened our eyes to a snare in time to escape, and cause us to leap forward with a thrill of joy and faith to that which is to come? ”

“ Do these writers discover any marks of deception or fraud?
In no instance do the evangelists betray the least anxiety for fear what they relate will not be credited. Even when they pen the astonishing miracles of which they pretend to be eye witnesses, they make no pause to clear up any thing; but tell the whole as if the whole was publicly known. In a word, this history, this sacred testimony, carries its own competent evidence within itself. ”

“ Have ye forsaken the services of devotion, the sanctuary, and the prayer-meeting, for the society of open worldliness and ungodliness? Ye have not done testifying yet. God Almighty’s voice follows you, and rings in your ears, “Ye are my witnesses.” Your testimony may have been dishonoring to God; it may have been damaging to the cause of Christ; but God claims you as his witnesses, and will settle with you when he comes to review the testimony at the judgment-day. ”

“ The witnesses for God stand in His Light and behold what He created. Their silence is the sign that they have beheld God's Son, and in the Presence of Christ they need demonstrate nothing, for Christ speaks to them of Himself and of His Father. ”

“ Now, if you will examine these things carefully you will find something that is interesting. For instance, one of the witnesses in heaven is one that is a witness on the earth, even the Spirit, and when we are in the possession of this witness, having received it by the laying on of hands, we have a hope and a connection that reaches within the veil. We have the principles of eternal life made known unto us and our children, and we are heirs of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord. ”

“ So also in translating. -- The subject stands before his eyes in print, but it matters not whether his eyes are open or shut; he can see as well one way as the other.
You have probably read the testimony of the three witnesses appended to the Book of Mormon. These witnesses testify, that an angel appeared to them, and presented them the golden plates, and the voice of God declared it to be a Divine Record. ”

“ Thus "Rational Criticism" would explain away the testimony given by the Three Witnesses. The vision of the plates, of the angel, the glory of God that shone about the Witnesses, the voice of God from the midst of the glory—all was illusion, hallucination produced by mental suggestion, on the part of the Prophet. All was chimerical, a mental mirage!
But what of the testimony of the Eight Witnesses—all so plain, matter-of-fact, straight-forward and real? How shall that be accounted for? Here all the miraculous is absent. It is a man to man transaction. ”

“ How feeble the voice of the testimony of those monuments of the east to the authenticity and credibility of the Bible and the truth of the gospel, in comparison with the testimony found in the Book of Mormon—the voice of departed nations and empires of people speaking through their records for the truth of God—for the verity of the gospel of Jesus Christ—a voice sufficient to overwhelm unbelief and forever make sure the foundations of faith! ”

“ And the commencement is so far advanced, that now in all the churches of Europe either the witnesses of Christ are a killing, or the witness for Christ is in a great measure killed; either the followers of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful, are killed for their testimony, or fainting in their zeal, and falling from their first love, they are cooled or cajoled from their testimony. ”

“ Thus, the beast out of the bottomless pit does not seem to be the agent against the witnesses, till the three years and a half of their testimony are finished, though, as to their condition, they were in sackcloth. When the announcement of the last woe comes, heaven estimates it as the signal for the earthly kingdom coming ”

“ Again, we find that it is written in the New Testament, the words of Jesus on the same subject, that in the mouths of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. Indeed, is that so? Are two or three witnesses sufficient to condemn the whole world of mankind, and to leave them without excuse? ”

“ These very Elders and missionaries who have gone to the nations have kept their journals, and have recorded the miracles which God has wrought by their hands. These are living witnesses. Those who saw these miracles are still alive. ”

“ Wherever they went and people received their testimony and were baptized for the remission of sins, the Holy Ghost was poured out upon them through the laying on of hands, and they invariably obtained a testimony from God that they were accepted of him, and that he had in very deed re-established his Church on earth. There are now many thousands of living witnesses to the truth of these things. They are natives of various countries, speaking different languages, reared in divers religions; they are now brought to the unity of the faith; they have come to a knowledge of the truth ”

“ But we must take the evidence as it is. It was thought proper, in this case, to have select chosen witnesses; and we must now consider who they were, and what reason we have to take their word.
The first witness was an angel, or angels. They appeared like men to some women who went early to the sepulchre. If they appeared like men, upon what ground are we to take them for angels? The women saw men, and therefore they can witness only to the seeing of men. But I suppose it is the women's judgement, and not their evidence, that we are to follow in this case. ”

“ He was obliged therefore to depend upon the testimony of His chosen witnesses, fortified and confirmed by the evidence of miracles, of prophecy, and of the Holy Ghost speaking in them and working with them. All these arguments are most true and sound, and yet they fail to come home to many minds. They leave something to be desired. ”

“ In presence of the witness, Fire,
I give thee to this man away.
Once, and once only, have I given
My heart and faith—'tis past recall;
With conscience none have ever striven,
And none may strive, without a fall. ”

“ We have as great a testimony as any of the ancients in regard to the work in which we are engaged, and we have increasing testimony day by day that should convince the most sceptical. We see the hand-dealing of the Almighty from time to time, and the Spirit is bearing witness from day to day that this is the truth of heaven, and that we have the oracles of divine truth in our midst. ”

“ So that this is not another witness, but the very same that he mentioned before: the consciousness of our good works being only one branch of the consciousness of our sincerity. Consequently, here is only one witness still. If therefore, the text speaks of two witnesses, one of these is not the consciousness of our good works, neither of our sincerity; all this being manifestly contained in ‘the testimony of our spirit.’ What, then, is the other witness? ”

“ Such a testimony, as I have named, where a person can bear testimony to what his eyes have seen, and to what his ears have heard, concerning the Almighty, to what God has revealed to him, will condemn the world. Persons may pretend to be God's witnesses, and preach fifty, sixty, or four score years in the ears of the people ”

“ Who can measure the influence which the religion of Christ has gained in the world through this kind of testimony?—a testimony which the witnesses have given in when their eyes were suffused with tears, and earthly misfortunes pressed sore upon them—a testimony plaintively whispered in the dark midnight of affliction, from the couches of languishing, the chambers of bereavement, and the graves of the lost and the loved. It many a time seems that the Christian’s usefulness is gone, when he is no longer able to sing in the sanctuary and engage in active labors for Christ ”

“ If the apostles had wrought miracles, and said nothing of the resurrection, the miracles would have proved nothing about the resurrection one way or another. But when as eye-witnesses they attested the truth of the resurrection, and wrought miracles to confirm their authority; the miracles did not directly prove the resurrection; but they confirmed and established beyond all suspicion the proper evidence, the evidence of eye-witnesses. ”

“ The reliability of witnesses is a crucial question in the study of psychical phenomena and has for long been a bone of contention between spiritualists and their critics. If honesty, care, and intelligence alone sufficed to make a man’s testimony reliable the whole range of spiritualistic phenomena, including spirit photography, might long ago have been taken as proved beyond all possibility of doubt. ”

“ In that day, saith the Lord, there shall be a cloud over the land, and in the cloud a burning and a shape of fire, and out of the cloud shall issue forth my messengers; they shall run all together, they shall not turn aside ”

“ God can by a whirlwind clear the sky and air, and produce that serenity of mind which is necessary to our communion with Heaven. Yet this whirlwind was attended with a great cloud. When we think that the clouds which arise from this earth are dispelled and we can see beyond them, yet still there is a cloud which heavenly things are wrapped in, a cloud from above, so that we cannot order our speech concerning them by reason of darkness. ”

“ But so long as that danger is avoided, there are hosts of witnesses, most of them very good Christians, who have been suckled on the Gospel in Sunday Schools, and fed afterwards on the strong meat of the Word in churches and chapels, who will swear fast and loose after calling God to witness to their veracity. They ask the Almighty to deal with them according as they tell the truth, yet for all that they proceed to tell the most unblushing lies. What is the reason of this strange inconsistency? Simply this. Hell is a long way off, and many things may happen before the Day of Judgment. ”