The power of testimony

by Maurice Pujol
Published October 11, 2006

Testimony is a very powerful thing.

In court, eyewitness testimony usually seals the deal in the conviction of an accused criminal. When a traffic accident occurs, an investigating officer obtains testimony from those involved – and eyewitnesses when available – in order to reconstruct the events which led to the accident.

Even in medicine, one of a doctor’s key diagnostic tools is the personal testimony of the patient. What the patient says prompts the doctor to conduct the proper tests to determine what illness or condition is affecting the patient.

Testimony literally means the “story, or report, of one,” or one’s own story. Testimony is powerful because it is immediate, direct and personal. It isn’t a story about something or a report about what somebody else said or did. It is a personal description of one’s direct experience.

This is the key to testimony’s power. It is about a reality that is experienced. It’s not a story about something told in the third person, nor is it a theory or hypothesis.

The Christian faith, nearly 2,000 years old with two billion adherents worldwide, owes its very existence to the power of testimony. The movement started, of course, with Jesus Christ, who identified himself as the long-awaited Messiah, God’s Anointed One, sent to save mankind from its sins. In the gospels, Jesus left no doubt as to his identity as Son of God and Son of Man, co-existing for all time with the Father and Holy Spirit, yet born in flesh as one of us for a specific purpose.

Jesus taught in public for three years before his death, and here’s the key to everything he said: His testimony was from the Father. Jesus said he related only that which was given him by the Father and that those who knew him knew the Father. In other words, Jesus was one with God, giving personal testimony that was literally divine.

The next round of testimony came from the apostles and the disciples in the early church. The apostles, and others present at the time, were eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus. They spoke with him, ate with him and interacted with him for six weeks after his resurrection. The story they spread – their eyewitness testimony – was that Jesus is, indeed, God’s Anointed One. His resurrection was the ultimate proof of this. Through the power of his Holy Spirit, God had ratified everything Jesus said and did during his earthly stay.

The resurrection was the core doctrine of the early church. The apostles taught we are saved by faith in Jesus, who rose from the dead to conquer sin and death for all who would follow him. It wasn’t theology or Bible scholarship that set the world on fire for Christianity in its early days; it was the direct personal testimony of Spirit-filled believers.

What made this testimony even more powerful was the fact that eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus surrendered their lives rather than deny the faith. This ultimate testimony, the willingness to lay down their lives, was contagious. When persecution of the early church started in earnest, thousands of believers were martyred for the faith.

Saul of Tarsus, one of the early persecutors of Christians, had his own story to tell. Though he hadn’t walked and talked with Jesus during the initial weeks after the resurrection, Jesus paid him a special visit on the road to Damascus. Saul’s conversion story is one of the most powerful in the history of the church. Of course, after he recovered his sight, the newly named apostle, Paul, became a planter of churches throughout the Roman Empire and the first disciple to formulate a systematic theology for the new faith.

His writings, largely designed to guide new churches and to correct their errors, comprise about half of the New Testament and have stood for centuries as inspired, authoritative teachings. The basis for all of Paul’s zeal and commitment, however, came from his personal testimony about his encounter with the risen Jesus. Paul endured shipwrecks, beatings, imprisonment, all sorts of hardships and, ultimately, execution for the faith he received through a direct experience with Jesus.

There are all types of evidence that support the claims of the Christian faith, that the life of Jesus was a unique instance of divine intervention in human affairs and that he did, in fact, perform miracles and that he did, in fact, rise from the dead. Among the personalities of ancient history, the life of Christ remains one of the best documented of all time.

Many brilliant theologians have come along during the ensuing centuries both to defend and to define the faith. Many inspirational and anointed preachers have come along to lead others to Christ. God has raised up many great churches to serve as beacons in a dark world.

But the greatest force in the history of Christianity is still testimony. Mass evangelistic efforts are important, but the fact remains that most people are led to faith in Jesus Christ through a one-on-one encounter with a believer who shares his or her own testimony. All the theology and scholarship notwithstanding, the greatest evidence to the truth of Christianity is the testimony of millions of lives transformed, often overnight, through faith in Jesus Christ.

The best sermons ever given, even by the most gifted preachers, are those based on personal testimony. When one tells one’s own story of his or her encounter with Jesus, the hearers pay special attention and most often respond at a deep, heartfelt level. This beats all the theological explanations the wisest of scholars can muster.

And so it will be, until Jesus returns. Our faith will triumph in the end not because we have smarter teachers, better preachers, more money or bigger churches. Our faith will triumph in the way it always has – through the personal testimony of real people who have had real encounters with the risen Christ.

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