Edward Stevenson's personal testimony of the Three Witnesses

Edward Stevenson, a lifelong Church member and missionary, testified throughout his life to the veracity of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, specifically detailing their personal experiences and visitations which they recounted to him directly.

Fuller account of this event (in the witness’s own words):

I have often heard him [Oliver Cowdery] bear a faithful testimony to the restoration of the Gospel by the Prophet Joseph Smith, and the visitation of the angel Moroni, and the hearing of the voice of God, and the plates, the leaves of which he had turned over with his own hands, and that the glory of God shone round about him. . . . David Whitmer is now just past 81 years of age. I have often heard him relate his experience in the woods with Joseph Smith, and hear the voice of the angel, and see the plates, as did also Martin Harris, who left Kirtland in 1870, and at the American House, where he met me, he bore a testimony of the visitation of the angel, etc. I have been favored with a personal acquaintance with each of the three witnesses, and have heard them all bear their testimonies to the truth of the Book of Mormon. . . . In the year 1870, I visited Martin Harris in Kirtland, Ohio. He was then 88 years of age. He said: 'I want to say to you that as the Lord lives I do know that I stood with the Prophet Joseph Smith in the presence of the angel, and I know that he held the plates in his hands, and I saw the engravings upon the plates with my natural eyes.'

In an 1886 article for the Millennial Star, Stevenson recounted a specific incident from 1870 where Martin Harris was pressed by acquaintances to deny his testimony over wine. When asked if he truly believed he saw an angel, Harris replied, 'No, I do not believe it,' explaining to the stunned group that his belief had been 'swallowed up in knowledge' because he stood with the Prophet in the presence of the angel in the brightness of day. Stevenson also noted in his 1893 book, 'Reminiscences of Joseph, the Prophet,' that he personally assisted in emigrating Martin Harris from Kirtland to Utah in 1871, a journey spanning over 2,000 miles during which Harris shared several intimate accounts of the early days of the Church.