For seven years, Keith Erekson directed the Church History Library, the official archive of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and home to more than 20 million records. He holds a doctorate in history, spent years as a tenured professor in Texas, and wrote the go-to book for members who want to engage their own history honestly. Once people learned what he did for a living, they kept asking him the same thing: did anything in those archives ever shake your faith? The question confused him at first. Nobody had asked it when he taught secular history. The answer he landed on surprised even him, and it had nothing to do with facts.

In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Keith to trace a testimony that grew long before he ever set foot in an archive. Keith shares the priesthood blessing that healed him as a sick boy in Baltimore, the witness that came at twelve when his family finished the Book of Mormon, and a woman in Brazil whose dream taught her the plan of salvation before the missionaries said a word. He explains why prophets point people to Christ and never to themselves, and he describes the morning a letter from Joseph Smith passed into his hands and filled an archive room with the Spirit. Church history, Keith says, did not give him his testimony, so he cannot see how it could ever take one away.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who wonders if hard questions about Church history have to cost them their faith. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

Follow the Why We Believe Show:

Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6T9DjmWBXJZPFyIFXUCdhm

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-we-believe/id1751537256

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/

Follow Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Follow Keith Erekson:

Website: https://www.keitherekson.com/

Twitter/X: https://x.com/KeithAErekson

Dr. Justin Top has spent his life chasing one question: how does the grace of God actually reach us? He has looked for the answer in places most people never see. He lived his junior year of high school in Jerusalem. He served a mission in South Korea. He taught seminary for seven years, then traded the classroom for a Navy uniform, deploying twice in the War on Terror and later building a spiritual fitness program for the Marine Corps at the Pentagon. He has sat with the dying as a hospice chaplain and with the hurting as a psychologist. Everywhere he has gone, he has watched grace show up in the dark.

In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Justin to trace where that grace has met him. Justin tells of an ICU patient who had not let herself be happy for twenty years, since the day her daughter was kidnapped, and a priesthood blessing where words he never planned came out of his mouth. He shares the mission companion he once begged God to fix, only to feel God turn the request back on him. He revisits the night he was ready to quit, when an Elder Holland message found him in the dark. Through all of it, Justin keeps arriving at the same witness: God's grace is with us even when we cannot feel it.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to be reminded that God's grace is with them even in the dark. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

Follow the Why We Believe Show:

Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6T9DjmWBXJZPFyIFXUCdhm

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-we-believe/id1751537256

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/

Follow Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Follow Justin Top:

BYU Profile: https://religion.byu.edu/directory/justin-top

Brent L. Top spent 34 years teaching the gospel at Brigham Young University, where he rose to Dean of Religious Education and wrote more than 30 books. For years he had counseled students to cast their burdens on the Lord. Then the relentless weight of leading a mission brought him to a breaking point, and he had to find out if he truly believed what he had taught.

In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Brent to trace a faith tested across a lifetime. Brent shares the witness that came to him at 18 in the Austrian Alps, the discouraging Denmark mission that quietly became his own great conversion, and the embrace from Elder Uchtdorf that finally taught him how to offload his burden onto the Savior.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear that the Savior's strength is made perfect in our weakness. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

Follow the Why We Believe Show:

Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6T9DjmWBXJZPFyIFXUCdhm

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-we-believe/id1751537256

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/

Follow Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Follow Brent L. Top:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brent-l-top-8b24198b/

Craig Ostler has spent more than 40 years teaching the Restoration. He taught seminary and institute for 15 years, then 28 years at Brigham Young University, and co-wrote a 1,200-page commentary on the Doctrine and Covenants with Joseph Fielding McConkie. He has photographed and walked nearly every sacred site in early Church history, and he lived in Jerusalem with his family twice. With all of that study behind him, he will still tell you a testimony is not built from books. It is felt. He felt it at seven years old, kneeling on a porch when his dog had gone missing. He felt it on his mission, the night God told him in every fiber of his being that he was His son.

In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Craig to trace the moments his faith stopped being inherited and became his own. Craig describes the gentle change of heart he felt in the mountains before his mission, when he knew he had been forgiven. He shares the promise he had to make to a man facing prison and ruin, and the night he walked away and fell apart because the cost of belief had become real. He remembers watching his young children kneel to pray in the Sacred Grove, and standing in the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem contemplating the resurrection. Craig has never seen a resurrection. But he has felt the joy of forgiveness, and so he trusts that the rest is true.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear that the joy of forgiveness they have felt is a witness that the resurrection is real. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

Follow the Why We Believe Show:

Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6T9DjmWBXJZPFyIFXUCdhm

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-we-believe/id1751537256

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/

Follow Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Follow Craig Ostler:

BYU Faculty Profile: https://religion.byu.edu/directory/craig-j-ostler

What happens when a photographer feels prompted to delete every song from his computer and throw away all his art books? Mark Mabry did not know it then, but those quiet impressions were preparing him to create Reflections of Christ, the first mainstream photographic depiction of Jesus Christ.

In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Mark to hear how his bishop arrived unannounced one afternoon to set him apart as a photographer for an art form that had never been done and was not even allowed in the church handbook at the time. Mark shares the promise from that blessing that millions would one day see the work, and how that promise came true exactly as foretold. He also opens up about waking up one morning in 2016 with no faith at all, the car ride to the temple where his wife wept as he told her he no longer believed, and the spring afternoon walk through Hobble Creek Canyon where Elder Uchtdorf's voice brought every layer of his testimony rushing back. "Repentance works. That is where I find my testimony."

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone walking through their own season of doubt! Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Follow the Why We Believe Show:

Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/

Follow Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Follow Mark Mabry:

Instagram (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/itsmabry/

Instagram (Reflections of Christ): https://www.instagram.com/reflectionsofchrist/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/itsmabry/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmabryjr

Website: https://reflectionsofchrist.org/

Marcus Martins joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1972 at age thirteen, six years before any Black member could hold the priesthood or enter the temple. He stayed anyway. He believed anyway. In June of 1978, when the revelation came extending the priesthood to all worthy male members, Marcus was nineteen, working as a construction inspector in Rio de Janeiro and engaged to be married. Weeks later he became the first Black missionary called by the Church in the 20th century, the son of Helvécio Martins, who would become the Church's first Black general authority.

In this episode of Why We Believe, Marcus shares the conviction he held at seventeen when a leader told him a relationship with his future wife would cost him the celestial kingdom, the ordinary June day he came home from work and found his parents had been crying, and the prayer he offered on a dark mountain road outside Petropolis the week he was first ordained to the priesthood. He shares the moment in the Recife temple when grieving members stopped him in the foyer, each carrying a story about his father he had never heard, and the six words from the Book of Mormon that became his anchor: in Christ come all good things.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear that in Christ come all good things. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

Follow the Why We Believe Show:

Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/

Follow Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Follow Marcus Martins:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DrMHMartins

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mhmartinspg/

BYU Hawaii Profile: https://about.byuh.edu/directory/marcus-martins

A teenager with no religious background walked into the Mesa Arizona Temple visitor center and felt something shift. That single visit led to baptism, a mission to Georgia, and a return home determined to finish college. But Aaron Franklin had flunked out with a 0.96 GPA. What changed wasn't just his academics—it was him. He came home from his mission transformed, finished with a 4.0, and became one of the world's most influential nanotechnology researchers. Today, as a Duke professor studying light at the quantum level, he's discovered that physical light and spiritual light operate by the same principles.

In this episode of Why We Believe, Aaron shares the miracle that unfolded during his mission when his stake president's prophecy came to pass in ways that defied logic. He explains how yielding everything to God didn't just change his grades—it changed his capacity. And he reveals what years of studying light have taught him about Jesus Christ as the light of the world. Aaron doesn't compartmentalize his lab work and his testimony. The gospel principles that govern light in the quantum world mirror the principles that govern light in our spiritual lives.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear how faith and science can strengthen each other. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

Follow the Why We Believe Show:

Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/

Follow Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Follow Prof Aaron Franklin:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfranklin/

Website: https://www.aarondfranklin.com/

Dave Lindsay has spent more than 25 years telling other people's faith stories on film, including Front Man: The Alex Boyé Story and four seasons of Come Follow Up on BYUtv. But the testimony that anchors his work began with a sophomore-year bribe. His mom's cousin was his seminary teacher and made him a deal: skip every class, just promise to read the Book of Mormon. Dave took the bribe to dodge a year of seminary. He didn't expect to find a testimony of Christ. By the time he got to Alma, he was rushing home from school to read more.

In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits with Dave to trace the page-by-page foundation of his testimony of Christ. Dave shares the Rapid City, South Dakota mission that humbled a cocky young elder, the quiet 1992 decision he and his wife made about an R-rated movie that's shaped their marriage ever since, the family-event conversation that launched his 25-year filmmaking career, and what producing four seasons of Come Follow Up on BYUtv taught him about the gospel as a map for life. His witness lands on a truth he learned page by page: testimonies are earned, not inherited, and the Lord prepares His servants long before the calling arrives.

Loved this episode?Hit Follow and share it with someone who needs to hear that a testimony of Jesus Christ is built page by page. Leave a review for Why We Believe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Your support helps us bring more inspiring conversations like this to listeners everywhere!

Visit WhyWeBelieve.com to download Your FREE guide on 13 Strategies to Increase Faith in Jesus Christ, to support you as you strengthen your own testimony of Jesus Christ.

Follow the Why We Believe Show:

Website: https://www.whywebelieve.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhyWeBelieveShow

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/why-we-believe-show/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whywebelievepodcast/

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-we-believe/id1751537256

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6T9DjmWBXJZPFyIFXUCdhm

Follow Nathan Gwilliam:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangwilliam/

Follow Dave Lindsay:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-lindsay-69b6638/

Avalanche Studios: https://avalanche-studios.com