Ultimately, we must have faith
There are many who want to believe in the church. However they feel challenged by the anti-Mormon critics. Perhaps they have a faith built from prayerful study, but don't know how to reconcile the critics with the testimony they have. This information will allow them to have the information to quench the "fiery darts of the wicked."

Some of those who make it their mission to attack the church believe that they are honest. They take the stand which they believe their conscience requires. There are many more, who feel that the Mormon church deserves their contempt. These people do not feel constrained to stick with the truth. Many misrepresentations and falsehoods are deliberately used if it achieves their objective of further discrediting the LDS church.

Many people do not feel that a just God would allow some of the evils which are so prevalent. Or they may also question why a loving Father doesn't answer our questions in a more straightforward and direct manner. But they overlook the essential ingredient in the Plan of Salvation, that we need to choose for ourselves what is right. And that choice can not be too simple or we haven't actually chosen, we have simply picked the obvious. How we choose will be built upon faith that we are doing the right thing. Hugh B. Brown has said, "Man cannot live without faith, because in life's adventure the central problem is character-building--which is not a product of logic, but of faith in ideals and sacrificial devotion to them."

I believe that the Lord continues to keep the information we have balanced. If the opposition is getting too strong then he will reveal additional knowledge that will build faith. If a testimony can be built only on logic, then he will allow the adversary to add some additional information to encourage study, soul searching and prayer. The type of knowledge we gain may also be geared to our level of understanding. The stronger challenges might come to those who have the stronger testimonies. There are those who have as their goal to present attacks against the church that will be stronger than the testimonies of those to whom they are speaking. It is my goal to provide an answer to those critics. Let us realize that the critics will be there, but we need to be balanced in our understanding. Many criticisms can actually build faith if they are correctly understood. With the information available we can either build faith or create doubt depending on the perspective we use to analyze the data.


Boyd K. Packer.
From a talk at a Brigham Young University Education Week devotional on 17 August 1999.
February, 2000 Ensign.

Some wait for compelling spiritual experiences to confirm their testimony. It doesn’t work that way. It is the quiet promptings and impressions of ordinary things that give us the assurance of our identity as children of God. We live far below our privileges when we seek after signs and look “beyond the mark” (Jacob 4:14) for marvelous events.

We are children of God, for we lived with Him in the premortal existence. From time to time that curtain is parted. There comes to us the intimation of who we are and of our place in the eternal scheme of things. Call that memory or spiritual insight, it is one of those testimonies that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true. Such revelations come when we are teaching.

I once heard President Marion G. Romney (1897-1988) say, “I always know when I am speaking under the influence of the Holy Ghost because I always learn something from what I have said.”
 
 

"Though argument does not create conviction, lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish."
Austin Farrer, "The Christian Apologist," in Light on C.S. Lewis, ed., Jocelyn Gibb (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965), 26; cited in Stephen D. Ricks, "Fides Quaerens Intellectum: The Scholar as Disciple," Expressions of Faith, ed., Susan Easton Black (SLC: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1996), 172-3.