The Unknown God

While I was serving as a missionary in Paraguay, I knew of many missionaries who liked to study the Bible intensively, looking for ways to support the Book of Mormon and the Restoration of the Church using Bible verses. The idea behind this focused study was to better understand where our investigators would be coming from, the scriptures they already believed in, and to build off of the knowledge they already had. We have been told, after all, that we don't come to tear down other beliefs but to build upon the truths they already have.

But I was always disappointed by how little it actually helped people to accept the gospel and be converted.

In Acts 17, Paul had a similar experience. We find him and Barnabas in Athens, trying to preach the gospel as they have always done. The Greeks are a tough crowd, though, and Paul tries appealing to the beliefs they already have--he begins by declaring to them the Unknown God, whom they have included in their pagan worship, and whom Paul identifies as God the Father. He then quotes their own poets, that we are offspring of God. He teaches them profound doctrine in logical terms their philosophical and secular minds would find familiar--and they reject him.

The lesson for me, too late to help me on my mission but timely enough to help me in the rest of my life, is that the gospel is best preached not by reason or logic, but by pure testimony. People don't make the kind of significant changes that the gospel requires simply because you show them that God wants them to do basically what they're already doing, but at the Mormon church; people change their lives when they feel the Spirit testify of truth, and the Spirit accompanies the pure and simple testimony of faith.