I can't identify how many times I've doubted the Savior. Not just whether he would be there for me, but whether the whole religion thing is necessary and, if so, whether Christianity is the "right" belief system in a world with so many views and experiences.
It wasn't until a few weeks ago, though, that I ever doubted the reality of Christ's resurrection. And, this time, the doubts were different. Not logical like before, when I'd safely considered Bible stories in the context of the things I was learning about atheism, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism, etc. All of a sudden, because of an interesting idea I heard expressed in a movie, it felt like I'd been punched in the gut. Like, what if all the Bible witnesses were wrong? What if Christ didn't actually come out of that tomb on the third day? What if his miracles were all just stories, myths?
The thoughts didn't keep me up at night. I wasn't seriously doubting my faith, I thought. It was just a poorly-made movie, I told myself. Yet, the doubt persisted, and I didn't do anything my religious training has taught me to do. I didn't pray about it, search (any) scriptures about it, or even really acknowledge the doubt outright. As if, in ignoring it, it would just go away and I would magically return to being as sure about Christ's existence as I was when I preached His gospel in the streets of Guatemala or felt his healing power guide me to relief from a health problem as a young wife.
Thankfully, I also didn't do anything my religious training has taught me not to do in times of trials or uncertainty. I kept going to church, reading the scriptures, serving others, and talking to (sometimes, at) God in prayer. That was how my answer came.
One day - I think I was doing dishes or something, while a part of my brain passively reviewed those doubts about Christ's resurrection that had come from the movie - when, BAM, all of a sudden all of my brain jerked to alertness. I stood up straight and almost said aloud, "But Joseph Smith saw him!"
And, suddenly, I was filled with an exuberant gratitude for Joseph Smith for reasons I'd never considered before. That feeling came alongside with gratitude to God, for keeping his word: "In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established" (2 Corinthians 13:1).
That movie had made me question the accuracy of the Bible, and with it the testimonies of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, Stephen, and the hundreds at Pentecost who saw the Risen Lord. Had I faced the doubts it introduced head-on, I might have remembered Nephi, Jacob, Moroni, the brother of Jared, and the other Book of Mormon prophets who testified of, and in some cases gave their lives for, the Savior.
I didn't face my doubts head-on, though, and who knows where they would have taken me had the Holy Ghost not caused me to remember what I have worked hard to know is true: that God's true church began to be restored to the Earth in 1830. That 14-year-old Joseph Smith walked out into nature 10 years before that to say a prayer and came away with way more than he ever bargained for: an in-person answer from the Father and the Son. Say what people may about him, criticize his character though they might, no one can convince me that a farm boy in nineteenth-century New York wrote the Book of Mormon on his own. That book was translated. It contains scripture, and it comes from God. I know it.
I came to know it because I believed in Christ and I knew the Book of Mormon contained the Savior's words (2 Nephi 33:10-11). If anything, my testimony of Joseph Smith and the restoration had been weak throughout my life, buoyed up by my faith in Christ. Never before that moment in the kitchen had I felt that the later depended on the former.
But when it did, I was so grateful for both. For Christ coming to Earth at a time when his teachings, miracles, and resurrection could be recorded in a record that would be passed on to people for centuries, regardless of the number of translations that may have diluted the message. And for Christ coming back to Earth after a long apostasy to reorganize his Church and proclaim his testimony in the modern world, in civilization as we know it, at a time and in a place so much closer to my own, and for giving us access to another record, another testimony of his life and another account of his ministry.
Christ lives. If you doubt it, read the Bible. If you doubt that, read the Book of Mormon. If you doubt that, pray.
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