Hank Smith: 00:02 Hello, my friends. Welcome to another followHIM Favorites. My name is Hank Smith. I’m here with the awesome John Bytheway.

  00:08 John, we’re getting down to the last couple of lessons in the New Testament. We’re in the Book of Revelation. Let’s take on a single question from this week’s Come, Follow Me lesson. This is from Revelation 12. Where it talks about the church overcoming the adversary, the dragon, with the word of their testimony. That’s in verse 11.

  00:28 The question is right from the manual. How do our testimonies of Jesus Christ help us overcome the adversary? What would you say, John?

John Bytheway: 00:36 Boy, isn’t that a great question? I love the idea that a testimony isn’t something we gain. We use that phrase all the time, but it’s something that we remember. We had that in the war in heaven. That was our weapon, our testimony in the blood of the Lamb it says in that verse you mentioned. We began to gain experiences of choosing the right and seeing the fruits of that.

  00:57 And sometimes we have really beautiful feelings in the temple or in a wonderful meeting. And sometimes we just look around and we see the fruits of the gospel in front of us and the kind of people that trying to live the gospel creates. And all of those things add to our testimony. And sometimes we hear things and they just sound familiar to us.

Hank Smith: 01:16 The scriptures tell us that the Spirit can show us things as they really are. And in the Book of Revelation, you have this dragon that speaks like a lamb, almost a counterfeit. I know you want to listen to the lamb, so I’ll pretend I’m the lamb. Yet a testimony through the Spirit can show you things as they really are.

  01:39 Perhaps that’s part of what a testimony is meant to do as we see here in the book of Revelation, is you can see the adversary for who he really is. The deception doesn’t work on you, the promises of freedom, the promises of happiness. You are able to look down that road and say, “I don’t think it works out the way you say it’s going to work out.”

  02:02 You can see the temptations that are offered to you are going to limit your happiness and freedom if you continue further down that road. I like what you’re saying here is it’s something that grows and maybe perhaps gives me the vision to see things as they really are.

John Bytheway: 02:17 I’m glad you used the word really. I know that there’s a definition of truth in Section 93. Things as they are, as they were, as they are to come. But it’s Jacob 4:13 says, “The Spirit speaketh of things as they really are.” There’s so much information out there in the world on social media and the internet and everything, but tell me the way things really are. Who does that? The Spirit does.

Hank Smith: 02:41 Yeah, and I have friends and loved ones I think who have been deceived because of the loss of the Spirit, and then they can no longer see things as they really are.

John Bytheway: 02:50 As they really are.

Hank Smith: 02:51 That’s something that the Spirit can return. It says, “The prodigal son came to himself.” Alma, the younger, saw things as they really are and able to make decisions to turn life around.

John Bytheway: 03:01 Prayer we can have in our heart to have the Spirit with us so that we can see things as they really are.

Hank Smith: 03:07 One of the keys here to our question is how do you overcome with a testimony? It’s the Holy Ghost that gave you that testimony is going to help you see the adversary for who we really is, and you won’t get caught up in that trap.

  03:19 We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcast. We’re in the book of Revelation again this week for a couple of hours, so come join us. We’re with Dr. Chris Blythe. You’re going to love him and his personality, his humor. And then come back next week. We’re going to do another followHIM Favorites.