"Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord." (Isaiah 43:10)

To be a witness is to have knowledge, understanding or wisdom. It is to attest to a fact or event or the action or condition of; being an observer of an event. Witness is also applied to the inward testimony of the conscience. When we bear witness we "show forth evidence of or as to an object of allegiance by faithful speech or conduct." Witness can also mean to furnish evidence or proof of something or to be a sign or mark of, or to betoken (Oxford English Dictionary).

Witness comes from the root meaning to look or to see. It also means the object of vision or to view. It has the sense of "someone who has firsthand knowledge of something" (The Roots of English).



In the scriptures and according to Jewish law, two or three witnesses were required to establish a fact. "In the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established" (Matthew 18:15-16). More importantly, however, is the obligation of the converted to witness both by word and deed their testimony of the Savior. When Jesus administered the sacrament to his followers in the New World he commended them: "Blessed are ye for this thing which ye have done, for this is fulfilling my commandments, and this doth witness unto the Father that ye are willing to do that which I have commanded you" (3 Nephi 18:10).

To be a witness in the gospel sense is to be completely committed. A sign that we are willing to accept baptism and "come into the fold," is that we will "stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places, that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God" (Mosiah 18:8-9). President Howard W. Hunter noted that "even in polite social situations we must be willing to stand as witnesses" (Ensign, May 1990).

When we testify, we are witnesses. But there is another sense of witness. When we promise to do something, we may witness, or "furnish evidence or proof," that we will keep the promise. When we partake of the sacrament, for example, we "witness ... that (we) are willing to take upon (us) the name of thy Son, and always remember him and keep his commandments which he has given (us)" (Doctrine and Covenants 20:77).

Though we may be witnesses in an individual sense, if we really are faithful, we join innumerable hosts of the faithful as collective witnesses. "Wherefore, seeing we are also compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses ... let us run with patience the race that is set before us" (Hebrews 12:1).

Joseph A. Cannon is editor of the Deseret News.