Holy Ghost / Guidance and Direction

Dr. George H. Brimhall's Miraculous Testimony against Sophistry

Published October 20, 2026 at 12:06 AM

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Young Woman's Journal Research

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While working in a mining camp, young George H. Brimhall was influenced by an apostate employer who used legal sophistry to challenge his faith. Brimhall felt his belief slipping. Recalling his parents' teachings on prayer, he prayed aloud in a grove of cedars. The following morning, his employer attempted further argument, but Brimhall was suddenly filled with the Spirit of the Lord, enabling him to bear a powerful testimony that caused the man to tremble.

In Their Own Words

“At that time I said to myself: ‘Is it possible that my father and my mother have been deceived?’ I was believing the man. He had leaned me over towards him, and was just ready to put around me the arm of a condor and carry me away. I felt that I was slipping. I went out into a grove of cedars, and I said: ‘I must pray aloud tonight,’ and I asked the Lord for just what I wanted to know. The next morning, I went to my work, and my employer came down into the shaft, just after dinner, and began his argument with a smile, expecting a victory; but instead of my leaning towards him, I was braced, and we had a battle royal. He said, ‘Who has been stuffing you?’ I turned and bore my testimony to that man, and told him what I knew, and he trembled in my presence. That was not the boy, G. H. Brimhall, alone; it was the boy plus the Spirit of the Lord.”

— George H. Brimhall, The Young Woman's Journal

Sources & References

The Young Woman's Journal, vol. 23 no. 8 (August 1912). L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University digital collections. https://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/digital/collection/YWJ/id/16318 (account extracted verbatim from the collection's page-level OCR; research confidence: high) Full first-person account: The Young Woman's Journal, vol. 23 no. 8 (August 1912), p. 455 https://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/digital/collection/YWJ/id/16318

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