Stand as Witnesses

Yesterday the First Presidency announced a historic change related to who can act as witnesses to baptisms and sealings.  For baptisms the handbook previously said, “Two priests or Melchizedek Priesthood holders witness each baptism to make sure it is performed properly.”  In other words, only those who could perform a baptism could stand as witnesses of a baptism.  Now anyone who has received the ordinance of baptism, including children and women, can be witnesses; holding the Priesthood is not a requirement.  Though that will certainly feel different for those of us used to things done a certain way, it has never been officially taught that acting as a witness in these ordinances was equivalent to exercising of Priesthood.  In fact, the scriptures speak often of witnesses, but nowhere do they suggest that such witnesses would have to be holders of the Priesthood to perform their duties.  In our dispensation the Lord simply said, “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established” (Doctrine and Covenants 6:28).  The Prophet Joseph wrote about witnesses for baptisms for the dead, suggesting that there should be a recorder “who should be eye-witness, and also to hear with his ears, that he might make a record of a truth before the Lord.”  That recorder was to “some three individuals that are present, if there be any present, who can at any time when called upon certify to the same, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established” (Doctrine and Covenants 128:2-3).  This letter from the prophet did not state anything else about who could act as those witnesses other than the fact that they needed to be present to testify of the validity of the event.  Priesthood is needed to perform ordinances; but we can all be witnesses to those ordinances.        

               In a more general sense, not speaking specifically about ordinances, all disciples of the Savior have already been asked to be witnesses of Him.  For example, Alma told his people at the waters of Mormon that a requirement for baptism was to be a witness, for they were “to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death” (Mosiah 18:9).  Many years later in the midst of their tribulations the Lord suggested again to this people that they needed to be witnesses of Him: “I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter” (Mosiah 24:14).  The Lord told David Whitmer early in this dispensation: “That if you shall ask the Father in my name, in faith believing, you shall receive the Holy Ghost, which giveth utterance, that you may stand as a witness of the things of which you shall both hear and see.”  But that was not just for him, for the same revelation speaks generally about “whoso desireth to reap” and “whosever will thrust in his sickle” (Doctrine and Covenants 14:3-4, 8).  All members of the Church can receive the Holy Ghost and stand as witnesses of the things they hear and see. 

In the Book of Mormon there is an example where women and children were mentioned as witnesses to an extraordinary event.  After the Savior healed the multitude among the Nephites and blessed their children and prayed for them, they all saw angels come down from heaven and encircle their children as if by fire.  Mormon wrote, “And the multitude did see and hear and bear record; and they know that their record is true for they all of them did see and hear, every man for himself; and they were in number about two thousand and five hundred souls; and they did consist of men, women, and children” (3 Nephi 17:25).  The whole multitude, including women and children, were witnesses to the blessing of these children and the miracles of the Savior that united the people to Him.  Today we look forward to the fact that now women and children can stand as official witnesses of ordinances that similarly connect us to the Savior.