LaMar C. Berrett: 'My Testimony Is Built on a Study of the Prophet Joseph Smith' (1952-1992)

LaMar C. Berrett (1924-2007) served a forty-year professional career in the Church Educational System and in Religious Education at Brigham Young University (1952-1992). In a long life of painstaking historical labor, he charted and preserved the sites of Church history and the records of the Restoration. When asked about the fruit of so many years of study, he announced, 'My testimony is built on a study of the Prophet Joseph Smith. I'm a believer.' His life is a faith-promoting witness that honest and patient study of the Prophet's life does not erode faith but builds it, and that a scholar may spend a lifetime in the archives and yet, at the end, bear the testimony of a believing Saint.

Fuller account of this event (the complete account as preserved in LaMar C. Berrett, interview by Alexander L. Baugh, Religious Studies Center, BYU):

My testimony is built on a study of the Prophet Joseph Smith. I’m a believer and I pray this shows in the way I act and in the way I treat other people.