We’re told that we need to have a testimony of the gospel. And we’re told that we can’t rely on anyone else’e testimony — we must develop our own witness of the truth. <\/p>\n
It’s a formulation which is surprisingly consistent with the legal guidelines on testimony that one gives in a court case. Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 802 is clear: “Hearsay is not admissible.” [subject to certain specified exceptions]. <\/p>\n
Thus, my testimony has to be based on a personal witness of the truth of a fact — I know that Jesus is the Savior, I know that the church is true, I know that the scriptures are true. If I defer to others — “Nate Oman told me that the church is true” — my testimony will be inadmissible under Rule 802. <\/p>\n
Of course, this approach does create a few wrinkles. For one, there are 20-odd exceptions to hearsay contained in the Federal Rules, and it’s kind of amusing to think how they would play (“No, this hearsay _is_ admissible — it’s a statement of then-existing mental state”). And a second wrinkle is that across-the-board application of the hearsay rule might exclude some legitimate testimony — for example, I might be excluded from saying “I know that God told Joseph Smith not to join any church.” <\/p>\n
But setting aside those wrinkles, I find the comparison apt in my own legally trained mind: <\/p>\n
Of course I can’t rely on anyone else’s testimony. That, after all, would be hearsay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’re told that we need to have a testimony of the gospel. And we’re told that we can’t rely on anyone else’e testimony — we must develop our own witness of the truth. It’s a formulation which is surprisingly consistent with the legal guidelines on testimony that one gives in a court case. Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 802 is clear: “Hearsay is not admissible.” [subject to certain specified exceptions].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}