Engaging & Refuting Mormonism w/James R. White

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and tonight I am happy to be joined with Dr.

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James White. He is the president of Alpha and Omega Ministry, or?

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Director, director of ministries. There we go. President, richest president. There we go. I'm not sure about the official terminology, but he's over there at Alpha and Omega Ministry, and I'm sure everyone is familiar with his work, his debates, which

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I have lost count, but I'm sure he'll remind me in just a few moments if he remembers. I don't know, he's - 181, 181.

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181, that's insane. I'm convinced that you are a cyborg, and you don't go to sleep.

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I'm an old Scotsman now, that's all. All that you require is just to be plugged in and charged until the green light goes on, and then you're sent back out to the mission field.

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I wish, I wish. That's right. So if you're amazed at all of the work that Dr. White has done and is doing, he does that without coffee.

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So right there is evidence for the existence of God, for you atheists who might be listening. But just real quick, so before we jump into our topic,

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I just want to let folks know I've been reached out, folks have been reaching out to me expressing interest in learning presuppositional apologetics in a more formal way.

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There are many different resources that folks can check out. For example, there's

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Dr. White's material, of course, Jeff Durbin's material on the Apologia Studios YouTube channel.

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And I participated in their academy, which you can check out. There's five, 20, 23 minutes or so lectures that I give on unpacking the ins and outs of presuppositionalism.

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And I have a five -day or five -week course that I teach on my website that folks can sign up for if you go to revealedapologetics .com.

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You can click the Presupp U menu and you can RSVP for the course that I offer there.

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That's a way to learn presupp more formally and it's a way to support the ministry as well. So that'd be greatly appreciated if folks check that out.

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That's at revealedapologetics .com. All right, well, without further ado, let's jump into our topic for this evening.

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We're gonna be talking about Mormonism, how to engage Mormonism. We're gonna talk about that generally and then make some presuppositional application with respect to Mormonism a little bit later in this discussion.

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So Dr. White, folks who know you know that you got into apologetics very early on and you always talk about your story of those

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Mormons that, was it Reese and what was the other? Elders Reed and Reese.

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Reed and Reese, very good. So I'm sure folks would already be familiar with that, but folks know that you have a great experience in this area.

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Why don't you unpack for beginners? I'm a teacher, so there might be some students who'd be listening as well. What is

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Mormonism? And then we'll kind of go from there and move a little deeper into the discussion. Well, most people are familiar with the

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Mormons from the two young men that come knocking on your door, maybe two young women too, actually. That's true.

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But Mormonism is one of the largest American originated religions, officially founded

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April 6th, 1830. So it is really a very

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American religion in the sense that it has struggled to become super global.

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It's not that there aren't Mormons outside the United States, but the vast majority are within the

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United States. They've had some areas of growth like some of the Pacific Islands, Samoa, places like that, that they've had some odd foothold that they've established there.

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But really in many ways, it remains an American religion.

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It is of course famous because of some very well -known Mormons, Mitt Romney, other

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Romney that was, I think the governor of what was it, Michigan, I think something along those lines. Anyways, Mormons have always emphasized service in patriotic duty.

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And so there've been a lot of Mormons in the military services, in government, things like that.

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But the key issue for Mormonism is it claims to be the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

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Saints. In fact, the current prophet doesn't want their people to use the term

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Mormon or Mormonism. That's not gonna work.

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It's too late. I mean, you have the Book of Mormon, one of their four canonical books of scripture.

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They're not gonna get rid of that name, but that's the current push anyways. And they're based, the primary church is currently based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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There are probably 200 to 220 offshoot groups. Most are very small.

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The largest is called the RLDS Church, but even they've changed their name recently. They were infected by Protestant liberalism and now are just sort of falling apart.

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But when I first started studying the Mormons, they were in a period of rapid growth.

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They went from about 3 million around 1980 to currently around 18 million.

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And in the mid -1980s, the average

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Southern Baptist church had 274 members. And in an average week, 273

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Southern Baptists became Mormons. So when you figure that out, that's one church.

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How many? Can you repeat that number again? How many? Southern Baptist? In around 1984, 1985, the average

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Southern Baptist church had 274 members. And in an average week, 273

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Southern Baptists became Mormons, converted to Mormonism. So that's one church wholesale, 52 churches worth per year were converting to Mormonism.

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Those numbers have dropped significantly over the past 20 years.

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And we could speculate about a lot of the reasons for that. I know what a lot of the reasons for that are. But Mormonism is struggling now to identify itself.

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When I first started witnessing the Mormons, when we first started going out to the

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Easter pageant of the LDS Church in Mesa, Arizona, I can show you a great picture.

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In fact, I may since I have the ability to do these things now. There is the, we do have the technology.

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Yeah, I realized that you don't, and I don't want to make you feel badly about this at all, brother.

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I could show pictures if I wanted to. It just takes a little work. I'm not very computer savvy, even though many people think

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I am. Oh, okay, well, if you say so, there we go.

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I just need to de -maximize something I do wanna show you a little bit later on. But just a matter of week, a few weeks ago,

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I had the opportunity having come back from Salt Lake City where we did a debate up there.

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Did you see the debate on, is ethics possible without God?

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Yes, I did. That was excellent, and Jeff did an excellent job as well.

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And keep in mind, Jeff's mom's lung had collapsed the night before, and he had just changed his flight plans to rush home the next morning, and she died a few days later, and he had the opportunity of leading her to the

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Lord during that time. That's awesome, praise God. That was incredible, and I just thought he was on fire.

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He was. I love that man. I'm so proud of the role I've had in his life and was so proud to have that opportunity to do that with him.

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But here I am with my two oldest granddaughters.

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Cadence is on the left there, and Clementine's on the right, and we were out at the

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Easter pageant passing out tracts to the Mormons. I am very, very proud to mention that last year

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I saw a picture of Clementine witnessing to an LDS police officer out there in Mesa, and I was up in Cedar City, Utah, delivering a,

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I just delivered a lecture on the Trinity there in a very, very, very

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Mormon area, and it had gone really, really well, and I talked with a family that had come out of Mormonism because of Alpha Omega Ministries and Apology of Church, and I was super encouraged.

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We're really seeing the fruit of 40 years of ministry now. This is Alpha Omega's 40th year, and I'm just meeting more and more people who have come out of Mormonism, out of Jehovah's Witnesses and other things over those years, and it's truly a blessing.

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But I saw this picture of Clementine speaking to this police officer, and I started running some numbers, and I realized she was only 12 years younger than I was when

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I first stood on that corner and witnessed to an LDS cop at the LDS Easter dinner.

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That is an awesome full -circle moment there, I'm sure. That is a full -circle moment where your heart is just full.

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It really, really, really is. So to say that I'm proud of my grandchildren is, well, and my daughter and son -in -law who are raising them in the fear and admonition of the

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Lord is a fantastic thing. So Mormonism claims to be the restored church of Jesus Christ.

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Now, I've written a number of books on Mormonism, Letters to a Mormon Elder, Is the Mormon My Brother? I've witnessed more than 5 ,000

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LDS missionaries personally face -to -face over the years, both at the General Conference of the

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Mormon Church, which is first weekend in April, first weekend in October. For 18 years, we went up there for all of those before the

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King James only shot us down. They're the ones that ended all of that.

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Their billboards are probably bigger than everyone else's. I'm sure they make a very, a lot of noise.

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They poisoned the atmosphere, and you can't expect the Mormons to differentiate between them and us.

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And they literally would stand there. I listened to them. I have video of them standing there, and there's lines of Mormons going into the

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General Conference, and they're yelling at them. It shouldn't be Mormon. It should be moron.

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And they think that's witnessing. Okay. Um, so it just became, you know, it was a lot of effort to either drive or fly all the way to Salt Lake City and to be there and stuff like that.

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They just ruined the opportunity. And so we did get a chance to do it in October of 2019.

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And we were really looking forward to April of 2020 because that was going to be the 200th anniversary of the supposed first vision of Joseph Smith.

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And we were really excited about that. But there was no General Conference in April of 2020. The Mormons went into hiding during COVID.

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And they went totally electronic and nobody met. And so we didn't get a chance to do that type of thing.

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Um, but anyway, the LDS Church claims that the

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Christian Church ceased to exist within a generation or two of the apostles.

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That the apostles have been given a special priesthood authority. They did not somehow pass that on to the next generations.

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So the Christian Church went into apostasy for over 1700 years.

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And then on a spring day in 1820,

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Joseph Smith was concerned about which church he should join. He had visited and been a member of the

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Methodist Sunday School, the Presbyterians. And according to the

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LDS Scriptures, a revival was going on in upstate New York at that time.

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And there were many revivals in upstate New York then. And he was very much desirous of knowing what church to join.

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And so he went out into what today is called the Sacred Grove. And he began to pray.

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And a force of darkness overcame him. And then he struggled against it.

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And as he looked up, he saw a pillar of light. And he saw two beings in the pillar of light.

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And one motioned to the other and said, this is my beloved son, hear him. And so he asked what church he should join.

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He was told he should join none of them. All their creeds are an abomination. All their professors were corrupt. And that he would be visited and told what to do.

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Over the next couple of years, he receives a visitation from an angel Nephi or Moroni, depends on which story you read.

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And he is led to golden plates. He is given spectacles by which he can translate these golden plates.

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These become the Book of Mormon, which is printed in I think late 1829, as I recall.

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And this leads to the founding of the LDS Church, April 6th, 1830, which by the way, according to Mormon belief, is also the actual date of the birth of Christ, not

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December 25th. Just thought you might wanna know that. And then to talk about. Yes, so the

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Book of Mormon, then Mormonism begins to spread. The Book of Mormon is their primary revelation.

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But then Joseph, as a prophet, claims to be able very, very much into tongue speaking and healings and things like that.

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And he claims the ability to receive revelations. And so they begin writing down these revelations that he gets.

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And at first they're called the Book of Commandments, first published in 1833. And that then in 1835 is changed to the

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Doctrine and Covenants, which is the name that it bears today. And you need to understand that the modern church, the modern church is very different from the original

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LDS Church. It has changed a lot in my lifetime. When I first started witnessing to Mormons, the 12 -year -old kids would come up to me and argue theology.

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They knew what they believed. If I was wearing a cross on my lapel or something like that, they would come up and say, if your kid was stabbed to death, would you wear a bloody knife around your neck?

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Because they don't use the cross. If you've ever looked at the top of the Mormon War Chapel, there's no cross up there.

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Sure. But they knew what they believed. They knew they believed in the plurality of gods and they knew how to argue for it.

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As I said, Mormonism really has changed a lot. And so when

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I talk about what Mormonism teaches, I'm talking about the orthodox, quote unquote, orthodox

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Mormonism that is contained in the LDS scriptures and the

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King Philip funeral discourse that Joseph Smith delivered was taught in the LDS temple ceremonies and was consistently taught through the 1990s.

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That's when things started changing. It's not that they have officially changed doctrine, but they have fundamentally changed the emphasis of their doctrine starting around that time period.

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Would you say, Dr. White, because of cultural trends? Are they trying to adapt to the culture around them?

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Well, everyone's having to deal with that. I've honestly, just in passing, happened with Mormonism was they made the decision to try to mainstream their faith.

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And so instead of having everybody go to BYU and get their PhDs from BYU, they started sending their people out into Ivy League schools and Princeton and so on and so forth.

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And then bringing what they've learned back and to teach at BYU and University of Utah and places like that.

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What they didn't realize, what they wanted to do was to see how smart our people are, all this stuff too.

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We're not the backwoods crazy people with 47 wives that you thought we were. What they didn't realize is they were injecting strychnine, cyanide directly into the bloodstream of Mormonism.

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Because those people went out, they learned how to analyze things critically.

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And the fact of the matter is Joseph Smith cannot survive critical examination.

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The Book of Mormon, which claims to be a historical record of the ancient inhabitants of this hemisphere cannot withstand historical examination.

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The Book of Mormon literally claims that the Mesoamericans had horses and chariots and swords and bows and arrows and gold coins and silver coins.

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None of these things did they have. Jade and cocoa beans was the primary things they traded with.

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They did not have swords, they had war clubs. They did not have bows and arrows.

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They did not ride horses with armor. Joseph had made this all up from what he knew of Rome and things like that, being ignorant of what was actually going on in Mesoamerica.

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In the same way, the Doctrine and Covenants has been changed over the years and edited and expanded.

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And so when you analyze manuscripts and things like that, you discover the Book of Mormon has been edited and changed and the

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Doctrine and Covenants has been edited and changed. And we'll look a little bit later if we have time at the Book of Abraham. The point is these people have come back and Mormonism has begun changing as a result.

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Fundamentally, the Salt Lake City Council is proud that every one of their members is

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LGBTQ. The entire city council is LGBTQ. Utah is becoming absolutely blue as far, and you think, well, how can this be?

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Especially when it comes to issues such as gender and things like that. They have a gendered God.

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They believe God is an exalted man. I'll get to that in a second. How could this be?

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How can these changes be? And the fact is that years and years ago,

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I wrote something called the 100 Verse Memorization System for Dealing with Mormons. I wrote this thing probably when you were about three.

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And so it's old, but it's still very, very useful. And the first section of that 100

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Verse Memorization System is how to deal with the subjectivity of the

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Mormon testimony. They have a testimony. They've prayed about it. Moroni 10, four and five. Pray these things.

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The Holy Spirit will testify the truth of these things. And that was something you had to deal with.

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So there was always a level of subjectivity at the very foundation of the

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Mormon experience. And even though they would say that they had an objective revelation from God, the fact was that of their four books of scripture, the

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King James Version of the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, those four books, these correct this, and these can be added to.

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And so the idea of an objective truth, an unchanging concept of revelation was never firmly grounded.

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And in fact, one of their arguments that they thought was the strongest was that they received continuing revelation from God in the general conference.

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They didn't canonize it. They still called it continuing revelation. That really led to a lot of confusion on the part of a lot of Mormons when you would press them on the contradictions between scriptural revelation and what they claim is scripture.

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They struggled very much with that. And I think that's also part of the reason why there is so much change going on in the emphasis now in Mormonism.

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So they have the Bible, but these other sources can be added to, and they can correct the

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Bible? Theologically, but there hasn't been a revelation since June 8th, 1978, technically.

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Well, that's what I'm trying to get. So they say they have an objective revelation, but that objective thing over here can be added to and change, which makes it not as objective as one might think it seems.

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And the only way to actually interpret it is by the living prophet. Right, which is very subjective. Very, very subjective.

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Right, okay. So their objective revelation, they play with very subjectively.

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Yes, yes, very much so, yeah. All right. Now you did say something real quick, and I apologize for interjecting here, and I noticed this is kind of common in the cults, where you have

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Mormonism and Jehovah's Witness, and even Islam, this idea that the true message is lost.

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Is that something that is used as a tool so as to open the door for some of these really, really different teachings that these cults bring?

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Is that, you think that's an intentional point there? Very, very much so. All the groups need to have a door opener.

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So Jehovah's Witnesses will use things like the shape of the cross, or the date of Christmas, or birthdays, or things like this as a means of separating you from your religious tradition and getting you to look at your religious tradition critically while accepting their message.

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The Mormons are claiming latter -day revelation and a continuing revelation.

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They believe that their very, very, very, very, very, very elderly prophet is a prophet, that he is an apostle of Jesus Christ.

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There are currently 15 living apostles of Jesus Christ on earth.

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So you have, in Mormonism, you have the prophet and his first and second counselors. So you have what's called the first presidency.

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They're all prophets, revelators, and seers, and they're apostles.

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Then you have the council of the 12 apostles. They are also apostles, just as Paul was, or Peter was, or anybody else.

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So there's 15 there. Then you have the 70. And this forms the hierarchy of a massive

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LDS church. I mean, they have billions and billions. They're very, very wealthy. And so when the prophet dies, then he is replaced.

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And by the way, I can guarantee you Joseph Smith did not intend it to work this way. But Mormonism is stuck with a system now that guarantees them a leader who is always just about to die.

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They can't have a young leader. It's not possible. Why is that? Because it has to be, there is a seniority, a ranking system, and that means the prophets just keep getting older and older.

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I think the current guy is 95. And the guy that I think will replace him is 93. So it's been this way for a long, long time.

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That's not what Joseph Smith intended. Now, when they call themselves apostles, would you say that they see these people as apostles with like a capital

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A? Like literally like Paul? Just like Paul, Peter? Like they can write scripture? Yes.

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Wow, okay. Yes, they don't. That's, see, that's the inconsistency is the original thrust of Mormonism was a living voice of God, a prophet on earth today.

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We have guidance from God. The Holy Spirit speaks at every general conference, but then there's no revelation.

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That sounds like it's usually like papal infallibility. Yes, yes, exactly.

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It is very much that way. They will talk about it being revelation, but then they don't put it into their scriptures.

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Interesting, okay. So that creates a two -tiered system. And like I said, even when on June 8th, 1978, the

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Mormon church gave the priesthood to blacks because Brigham Young had taught that the day that the blacks received the priesthood was the day the church went into apostasy.

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Brigham Young had taught that the blacks were the offspring of Cain. They had been less valiant in fighting in the heavenly war before we came to earth.

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And as a result, then they are cursed as far as the priesthood.

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So when Stanford started to boycott playing BYU, all of a sudden a revelation was received giving the priesthood to the blacks.

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But what's interesting is it wasn't put in the doctrine and covenants as the next revelation, section 139 or something like that.

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It was made a general announcement and put into the Pearl of Great Price. So it wasn't even handled in the same way.

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And so the church is absolutely terrified of the idea of somebody getting a revelation.

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That would upset the status quo. And I think the Mormon church is rife right now for a charismatic leader to come along.

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I think of a charismatic prophet -like leader came along, could split that church right down the middle even more so.

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Because there are a lot of Mormons that I knew back in the 80s and they're sitting here looking at the church today going what on earth happened?

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This isn't the Mormon church I grew up with. And so that could really happen.

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Now, I'm going way, way, way, way too far out into the woods and haven't given you what you really need here.

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Let me, I'm sorry. No, I said, okay. So if you wanted to move into something, you wanted to share something on the screen, that'd be perfectly fine.

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Yeah, let me, now this isn't, doesn't. I know you're just flexing your technological ability, but that's fine.

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The clarity here isn't as good as I would like. It's a PDF that I pulled up. If I did it with this keynote, it would probably, this will need to be good enough.

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Let me give you the world's fastest run through on LDS theology, okay?

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Okay. This is called the eternal law of progression. And the diagram

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I'm gonna show you, I always use this as the illustration.

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I'm a Trekkie. And so one of the things that Star Trek had to deal with in the original series was, why do all aliens speak

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English? Especially when we've met them only for the first time. And so as you know, what they came up with was what's called the universal translator, which by the way,

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Google has pretty much already invented, which is an interesting thing to think about. But the idea was that when the alien comes up on the screen, there's a computer gadget that is translating whatever they're saying into English and vice versa.

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And that's why you can get around that plot problem in the situation.

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So this is my universal translator. This is what I designed to be the universal translator to explain as briefly as possible the central core of LDS theology, okay?

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So let's take a look at it. You tell me if you can even really make sense out of it here because I can -

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Let me see if I can do this. Let's see if I can do, let me see if I could change the screen. And bring it up full screen?

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Yeah, I'm gonna try to at least make it bigger, maybe something like this, no.

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No, it's just - It only seems to want to do you. Yeah, that's odd. Okay, so I'll just keep it the way it was.

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I can see it. Okay, well, actually here,

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I can zoom in on stuff like this. There we go. That makes it a lot better.

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That makes it a lot better, doesn't it? Oh yeah, much better. Okay, all right. So let's look back here for a second.

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This is the whole thing. Starting up here with intelligences of matter, spirit children, mortal probation, baptism of the dead, paradise, celestial, so on and so forth.

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So this is the whole, and what you need to sort of figure is this is supposed to be circular. So you have spirit children here and you have spirit children here.

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So this is a cycle and you go through all of this, okay? So let me zoom in on a section of it up here, up at the beginning.

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These are the two eternal things in Mormonism, intelligences and matter. Intelligence is a matter.

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God cannot create matter. There is no creatio ex nihilo. There is no creation by divine fiat.

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God in Mormonism can only organize pre -existing matter, which means matter is...

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What? Now, I apologize for interrupting because I will have questions as you move through it. Is it okay if I kind of just -

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Which means this is going to be a three hour long frame. I want you to understand that right now. Okay, I'll let you finish. Go ahead.

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I'm just telling you, but if you want to ask a question. I know how this goes. Go ahead. Well, you might be able to answer it very simply.

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You said, so it starts there with the intelligences. Is the Mormon view of reality, that ultimate reality is impersonal or personal?

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Are these intelligences personal? The intelligences are personal. What their origin is, is not known.

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And intelligences would include sort of the basic form of God, men, and angels, because God, men, and angels are all the same order of being in Mormonism.

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Gotcha. All right, you can keep going. I'm sorry about that. Okay, no problem. So from the realm of intelligence, there's gonna be a bunch of questions that I'm not gonna address because we just don't have time to.

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But if you want to address them, ask them. From there, you go to the realm of spirit children. Now, how you get spirit children,

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I will have to explain at a later point. You just have to, for the moment, accept the idea that in application to this world, and there are an unlimited number of worlds, according to Mormonism, what you have is a situation where we all existed as spirit beings prior to our birth here on earth.

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We were the offspring of a heavenly father and a heavenly mother. They both have bodies of flesh and bones, but no blood.

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Interesting, okay. But they have offspring that are made of spirit, but spirit is actually material.

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It's just more refined, and hence is not visible to physical eyes. I'm just giving you the

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Mormon explanation here. I can't necessarily take too much time there.

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So let's go down from there. See, here's the spirit children. So let's zoom in on the next section.

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And that is, this is a PDF right here. So here's spirit children. Notice the line goes down to the mortal probation.

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That's where we are now. Okay. We are in the mortal probation. We lived as spirit children, and then we were born in the mortal probation.

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Now, you might ask a quick question. Why don't we remember the spiritual pre -existence? There isn't really a dogmatic answer to that question, but a lot of Mormon women used to theorize that, see, spirit children have what we would call physical bodies.

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So you're born as a little spirit baby. You've got spirit diapers. You grow up and you play spirit games, and then you become a six foot tall spirit child.

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And then you're born into the mortal probation, and the idea was the shock of being so big and being compressed down to a baby causes you to lose your memory.

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Interesting. That's how you get here. Now, so this is where we are, and then you'll notice there is a line right here going upwards next to an

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A and a B that goes to paradise. This is the way Mormons leave mortal probation, and they go up to paradise.

34:48

Now, what's the A and the B? Well, the A and the B, I will need to scroll down here.

34:54

There they are, the A and the B. A is called the four fundamentals of the gospel, the four fundamentals of the gospel in Mormonism, faith, repentance, baptism, and laying on of hands.

35:07

So faith and repentance, you'd think that sounds just like what we mean, but once we get through this, you'll realize it's defined very, very differently.

35:17

Baptism is by immersion, but it has to be performed by someone who minimally holds the

35:23

Aaronic priesthood, which was restored to Joseph Smith in 1829. And no one else's baptism is valid.

35:31

And then laying on of hands to receive the Holy Ghost has to be done by someone holding the

35:36

Melchizedek priesthood, which Peter James and John gave to Joseph Smith as well.

35:43

John the Baptist was the one that restored the Aaronic priesthood for some reason. Those are the four fundamentals.

35:49

You have to have those to enter into paradise. But then B is continued obedience to gospel rules and principles.

35:58

So this is continued faithfulness. It's very much what we would call a work salvation system.

36:05

But here is, that's how the Mormons get to paradise. But the vast majority of people who die aren't

36:12

Mormons. Right? So where do the Mormons go? Well, I'm sorry, where do the non -Mormons go?

36:18

Well, if you look here, I'm not sure if I zoomed in on this. This chart is super helpful.

36:27

I think, to be honest with you, I think the PDF is at aomin .org.

36:34

I think if you searched for eternal law of progression, this, a much higher quality version of this pops up.

36:42

I think. So the vast majority of people go from the mortal probation down here to the spirit prison.

36:55

So I remember very, very clearly. Well, I'll tell a story. Everybody who isn't a

37:02

Mormon when they die goes to the spirit prison. And I see this little line right here. It comes down and it's coming from this line that goes up to paradise.

37:11

You gotta give the Mormons one thing. They are missionary minded because in Mormonism, Mormons come from paradise down to the spirit prison and proclaim the gospel to the spirits in the spirit prison.

37:25

And they tell you how you can get out of the spirit prison. Now think about it.

37:31

If you have four fundamentals of the gospel, faith, repentance, baptism, laying out of hands, a spirit can have faith and a spirit can repent, but it's very difficult to baptize a spirit by immersion.

37:42

And it's impossible to lay hands on that of the spirit because your hands will just go through. So this line right here is for anyone in the spirit prison who believes can be released from the spirit prison by baptism for the dead.

37:58

Now, Dr. White, they don't know who believes in the spirit prison. And so that's why they baptized for the dead like anybody?

38:06

Right, right. They baptized for as many people as they possibly can. So they're not saying that by doing that in the place of these individuals, that they are automatically removed from the spirit prison, but they are providing the means that if they believe and repent, and then someone does the baptism for the dead for them, which includes laying out of hands to receive the

38:29

Holy Ghost, then they can get out via baptism for the dead. They go up to paradise as well with the rest of the

38:36

Mormons because they've become Mormons after death, basically. But you'll notice that's still a fairly small number of people.

38:42

There's a larger line that goes from the spirit prison to terrestrial and celestial levels of glory.

38:49

So over here, you have the top level of glory, the celestial level. Here you have the terrestrial level and then the telestial level.

38:57

Now, if you've never heard of the term telestial before, it's because Joseph Smith made it up. He looked at 1

39:03

Corinthians chapter 15, and 1 Corinthians chapter 15 says, there is a glory of the sun and the moon and the stars.

39:11

And that says there's a heavenly glory and there's an earthly glory. And Joseph Smith figured that the translators had gotten something wrong.

39:20

And so these are levels of glory. And so the King James had celestial and terrestrial for levels of glory, which essentially means heavenly and earthly.

39:29

The King James wasn't consistent in how it translated those Greek terms because in the gospel of John, it said heavenly and earthly.

39:37

And so he figured something was missing. So he took the first two letters of terrestrial and slapped them on the last part of celestial and came up with a new word called telestial.

39:49

Literally, that's how he did it. That's how Joseph Smith did exegesis. And so this is the glory of the sun.

39:56

This is the glory of the moon. This is the glory of the stars. Now, see this little light green line right here?

40:04

It's marked resurrection. Resurrection. So this line crosses that.

40:09

And that means the people from the spirit prison that do not accept baptism for the dead are resurrected.

40:16

They receive a body and then they are judged as to whether they'll go into the terrestrial kingdom or the telestial kingdom.

40:26

Now, I've been told that I will go to the terrestrial kingdom because I'm a nice guy. The people that go to the telestial kingdom are drug pushers and murderers and glory.

40:36

In fact, Joseph Smith said that if you saw the glory of the telestial kingdom for even a moment, you'd commit suicide to get there.

40:44

So why would I say they're damned? Because all theological words have different meanings in Mormonism.

40:51

And you're damned up in your progress to become a

40:56

God. Only those in the celestial kingdom have the opportunity of achieving godhood.

41:03

People down here do not. So they're damned. So in essence, their bodies that are resurrected are neutered.

41:11

They can't have children because one of the powers of godhood is the ability to have offspring, spiritual offspring.

41:19

And so the powers of God are the powers of the priesthood and the power of procreation, according to Mormonism.

41:26

So can I just clarify something? So terrestrial and telestial are nice places in Mormonism, but you're damned in the sense that you cannot have spiritual offspring.

41:39

And that's seen as - And hence become a god. Okay, but you're still, but you're not damned in our sense, like, oh my goodness, damned, like you're eternally separated from God.

41:47

But it's still a nice place to be if you're anywhere. Okay.

41:52

Yes, definitely, definitely. Right. Now I should mention, you see this little light line here?

41:57

It's marked Satan and the demons. And it goes down here to hell. And it does not cross the green line.

42:06

But there's a little, little B line right here and a little, little B line right here. What does that represent?

42:13

Well, very quickly, these are apostate Mormons who received a testimony of the

42:19

Holy Ghost that Mormonism is true and then denied it. They go to the spirit prison, but they don't have an opportunity of going back up this way.

42:27

And then they come out of the spirit prison. They do receive their bodies back, but they go to hell.

42:35

The only people on earth who will ever be in hell are former Mormons and Satan and demons.

42:43

But - What is hell for them? Is it, I mean - It would be a place of punishment. The rest of them seem pretty cool.

42:49

Is hell really bad on their view? Yes, yes. Yeah, it's a place of punishment. Okay. And so, but what's fascinating is because the apostate

42:59

Mormons got farther in the eternal law of progression and they get their bodies back, they rule and reign over Satan and the demons in hell.

43:08

Hmm. Because they got farther in the eternal law of progression. That's why demons want to inhabit physical bodies according to Mormonism, is because they,

43:20

I'll make application in a second. So up here, you go into the celestial kingdom, but just because you're in the celestial kingdom does not make you a

43:27

God. You had to have been sealed to your wife or wives for time and eternity in the

43:36

Mormon temple. A secular marriage precludes you from becoming exalted as God.

43:43

So - You have to be married in the Mormon temple. Right. And if you are not, then you become an angel.

43:50

Oh, okay. You become an angel. Doesn't sound that bad. Okay. So if you are a worthy

43:59

Mormon male married to your wife in the temple, you die, your priesthood authority is the means by which she's resurrected, by the way, that introduces an interesting dynamic.

44:11

And you then go to the celestial kingdom. You organize your own planet. You begin having spirit children.

44:17

There's where the spirit children are. You raise them up. You organize the planet. You create an

44:23

Adam and Eve person. And you are now, you will now be worshiped as God, the father of that planet, just as God, the father of this planet was once a man who lived on another planet and went through this whole process himself.

44:40

Now I have a question, Dr. White. Yeah. Okay. So if we are made in the image of father

44:48

God, according to Mormonism, correct? Which is why we have a body of flesh and bone.

44:54

Right. So if someone - God has a body of flesh and bone. If someone becomes a God of another world and creates, does the creation, or if they create beings, like living beings, do they have to look like humans?

45:09

Or does a God of his or her own planet have the ability to create other creatures and have them be the main inhabitants?

45:18

Remember - So on their view, are there other humans in these other worlds, or can there be other -

45:24

Universes are filled with humans, yes. But there's, but, but the, so for example, if I was a God of my own planet,

45:30

I can't make like, okay, these green creatures are the ones that'll, it'll have to be like after my own kind.

45:36

Okay. All right. Just checking. Yes. All right. It's interesting. Okay. Let me add, no, no, no. Here's a, here's a quiz for you,

45:42

Eli. Let's see how Eli does apologetics. Let's see how well Eli does his research. Ready? You feeling a little nervous?

45:49

Well, you know what? I go for it, man. Just remember, you're just sitting to a talk.

45:56

You're talking to a guy sitting in front of an RV parked in prior Oklahoma. Okay. Yes. Okay. It can't be all that, it can't be all that tough.

46:07

Okay. Battlestar Galactica. Oh boy. I'm a

46:14

Star Wars guy. I don't know any of this other stuff. Did you ever see the original

46:20

Battlestar Galactica? No. No? Give me a lightsaber.

46:25

That's all. Okay. Okay. Well, for, for more broadly cultured people,

46:36

Battlestar Galactica was a, yes, I'll let you come to any conclusion you want. Battlestar Galactica was a science fiction program

46:44

I watched when I was a kid. It was on the 1970s. And it was, it was

46:50

Lorne Green played the leader of the humans. Adama was his name. And his son,

46:56

Apollo, was the real burly man type guy. He had a friend named

47:02

Starbuck, which was before Starbucks came along. And they were being chased through the galaxy by the

47:11

Cylons, who were these cyborg type things. And they were searching for their home planet called

47:22

Kobol. And it was, it was a sort of cool program.

47:29

My uncle, who served in World War II in the Pacific, was watching it with us one night.

47:36

And on this particular episode, and you can find this on YouTube, or it's available on -

47:42

I'm gonna look up some images. Maybe I have seen it. You keep going. I'm listening. I was gonna see if - Yeah. Look some up.

47:49

In this one episode, these glowing creatures capture Starbuck and Apollo.

47:56

And they take them to their ship. And when they're on their ship, they're all white and pure looking.

48:03

And they actually raise Apollo from the dead, I think. I think he was killed somehow. And this glowing creature comes to them.

48:12

And this is what the creature says to them. As you are, we once were.

48:19

And as we are, you may become. And my uncle starts quoting the prophet

48:26

Isaiah to the TV. Before me, there was no

48:32

God formed and there will be none after me. And I just figured my uncle had lost his mind.

48:37

No, he was just a Christian man. Yes. And minister and recognize something I didn't recognize or could not know.

48:45

I found out years and years later, every single writer of the original

48:50

Battlestar Galactica was a returned Mormon missionary. And Adam rules over a council of the 12.

49:02

They have eternal marriage ceremonies. That phrase, as man is, God once was, as God is, man may become.

49:09

Eliza Snow, fifth president of the Mormon church. It was everywhere in Battlestar Galactica.

49:19

It was a purely Mormon show. Interesting. And so when

49:25

I describe that in Mormonism, well, here's the key.

49:33

In Battlestar Galactica, the homeworld they were looking for was called Kobol. Or Kolob.

49:40

No, Kobol. But in the LDS scriptures, God lives on a planet that circles a star named

49:47

Kolob. They had just switched the letters in the name and every Mormon in the audience knew it, but the rest of us had no earthy idea what the world was going on.

49:56

That's fascinating. Yeah. So God, the father in Mormonism is named

50:02

Elohim. This is not really what Joseph Smith believed, but since 1901, this is official

50:09

LDS doctrine. God the father is Elohim. His first born spirit child is

50:15

Jehovah, who is Jesus. Then he has a spirit son called

50:21

Lucifer. So Jesus and Lucifer are spirit brothers in Mormonism.

50:29

God the father has many wives, many, many wives. He is a polygamist. He has billions of offsprings, billions of spiritual offspring.

50:40

And once enough of them had matured to organize planet earth, a council was held and two different plans were presented to the council.

50:55

The one plan representing Elohim was presented by his eldest son, Jesus, who is

51:01

Jehovah. And in it, men would be given free agency to choose whether they wish to become gods.

51:14

Then Lucifer came forward and he presented his plan where he would force everyone to be

51:20

Calvinism. Calvinism. Calvinism in our nation. You got it. Lucifer was a Calvinist.

51:25

That's why Mormonism. Lucifer was a Calvinist. Adam was an Armenian and that's how it works. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Oh boy.

51:31

A vote is taken. One third of God's spirit children vote for Lucifer's plan

51:40

He convinces them to then fight in rebellion. There is war in heaven.

51:47

Lucifer and the demons are cast out. There are also others of Elohim's offspring that do not fight valiantly against Lucifer and they are cursed to be born with a black skin.

52:00

That's right. That was the teaching of the LDS church up until June 8th, 1978 anyway. Certainly the teaching of Brigham Young and the church in Utah.

52:12

So you were a spirit child of Elohim and one of his heavenly wives.

52:18

You can go into any LDS war chapel today, pick up the hymnal and I can show you the hymn that talks about our heavenly mother.

52:28

And when time came, your spirit was placed in your body. You're now being tested to see whether you'll be worthy to return back to live with heavenly father and become a

52:36

God yourself. And to do that, you need to be a member of the LDS church. And the power that will cause you to do that is the power of the priesthood, which is only available in the

52:48

LDS church. Right. Okay. So there's a really, really, really fast run through.

52:57

There's so much more. There's an awesome quote. There's an awesome quote that I run through that really lays all this stuff out to help you as well.

53:07

But when I present this to people, I try to warn them. I have just simplified everything.

53:14

I've tried to be accurate. Now a Mormon's gonna go, well, I wouldn't put it that way. And I wouldn't say that. And I don't think that's accurate and stuff like that.

53:22

But be aware of the fact that the Mormon, a lot of Mormons, they don't even know some of this stuff.

53:31

Sure. Like I said, in the 1980s, the 12 -year -olds knew all of this. Today, you can talk to adult

53:40

Mormon males who've been to the temple and they don't know half this stuff. It's stunning what has happened along those lines.

53:49

Just a few weeks ago, when I was in Mesa, I was talking to a young Mormon man, a returned missionary.

53:55

And he was talking to one of our folks from Apologia. I walked up and he said something along the lines of, well, we're all baptized.

54:03

We're all Christians. So we're all baptized. God accepts your baptism. And I'm looking at him going, you don't believe that?

54:10

And he's like, what do you mean? He says, he wasn't baptized by someone holding minimally the Aaronic priesthood.

54:17

That's not a valid baptism. And he wasn't even aware of what I was talking about. Now later, a more knowledgeable Mormon, I was talking with him and I mentioned that.

54:26

And he says, yeah, it's sad. Well, it's unfortunate, Dr. White. This is also true in the church. I was at a church where they were giving out communion, the juice and the bread.

54:38

And there was a Catholic present at the church. And one of the elders who were passing out the elements were like, here, it's just giving it to this person.

54:46

And the person was like, no, I'm Catholic. I can't, I'm not gonna take it. I'm just here to visit. And he's like, oh no, no, no, it's all the same. And I'm thinking,

54:52

I'm scratching my head. I'm like, ah, it's actually not. Actually, the Catholic had the right idea on that one.

54:58

Yeah, it's not. And so you still, you have this problem in the Christian church as well. I mean, I'm not that, I mean, I'm 40. When I was a kid, in the context that I grew up in, we knew the

55:06

Bible and modern context. I mean, I work in a Christian school. There are a lot of younger generation

55:12

Christians that they're just woefully ignorant of the scriptures and just have kind of a passing knowledge in terms of the general stories.

55:19

I think this is a problem, not just in Mormonism, but even in Christianity, unfortunately. Yeah, but it's happened so quickly.

55:26

And since, you know, back in the 80s, they still, most of Mormons up to the early 1980s did not call themselves

55:34

Christians. While they said they were the true Christian church, they differentiated themselves. They didn't call themselves Christians.

55:39

Now they all do. Right. And the more missionaries I talk to now are absolutely clueless.

55:46

Now it's not that I didn't encounter clueless missionaries back then, but I encountered a lot of missionaries that really knew what they believed.

55:52

Not anymore. They just do not know so much of this stuff.

55:58

They do not know, for example, and I have an entire chapter on this in my book, is the more of my brother, that in LDS theology,

56:06

God the father fathered the physical body of Jesus. That's why

56:11

Jesus could rise from the dead, because he already had the gift of immortality because his father was immortal.

56:18

Now think that one through for just a second, because what was Mary? Mary was one of the offspring of Elohim.

56:26

So Elohim had sexual intercourse in his physical exalted body with the

56:33

Virgin Mary to create the body of Jesus, which is why he could be resurrected from the dead. Now that was plainly taught by the

56:41

LDS leadership. And I can show you books that were used in family home evening up through the 1970s that had stick figures showing this.

56:49

It was that clear. Wow. 95 % of your Mormons today had no idea it was ever taught.

56:56

None. Very fascinating. Now, let me tell you a quick story. I was at the Westgate in the

57:01

Mormon temple during the general conference. We were passing out tracts during the conference. This Mormon comes walking up very quickly and he grabs a tract and he flips it around and looks to the back and his shoulders sort of drop because he realizes it's anti -Mormon literature.

57:18

Sure. And as he's still walking, he stops and he looks at me and he says, you know what's wrong with you people?

57:25

Now I've heard that a few times outside the Mormon temple. So I wasn't sure what answer I was gonna be getting, but you know what's wrong with you people?

57:31

You don't believe that God the Father could have sex with the Virgin Mary to create the body of Jesus. That's why this is the true church and you're not.

57:38

And he walked on in. And that was one of the few times I was left saying they're going, wow, okay.

57:49

Hmm, all right. Well, that's one of the reasons why I can't believe Mormonism. He got it right. He's not wrong.

57:55

Yeah, yeah. Wow. Now let's shift gears because we're at the top of the hour here. How might we begin to crack the wall, so to speak, and kind of engage in the conversation and then of course refutation, working our way towards refuting

58:12

Mormonism. Is it possible to refute Mormonism simply? Do we have to kind of go through a bunch of weeds first?

58:19

How do we engage someone with the intention to say, hey, I wanna crack one of the lenses in their worldview because we love them, not because we're trying to be mean and get into arguments for argument's sake.

58:33

How might we engage Mormons and in a way that is loving and gentle, but very, very specifically aimed at destruction of strongholds and worldview?

58:44

Right. When I met with Elders Reed and Reese, I had 167 verses memorized.

58:53

Within six months when I met with them again, I had 654 verses memorized. Oh boy.

58:58

And I was 19 years of age. And so most of those conversations, if you have scripture memorized, you will be in control of the conversation.

59:11

If you're always trying to look up the 28th book of the New Testament called Concordance to find something, you're not.

59:17

So, hadn't heard that one before, huh? I've heard second hesitations, turn to the book of manipulations.

59:26

I've never heard of - 28th book of the New Testament called Concordance, yeah. Well, so I wrote,

59:33

I mentioned it earlier, the 100 verse memorization system for dealing with Mormons. It's available at aomin .org.

59:39

I just highly recommend, I mean, scripture memorization is a tremendous discipline.

59:45

Let me tell you right now, if you're a younger person, do it now. It gets harder and harder and harder the older you get.

59:53

And when you were 19 and you were doing this, you were obviously reading your scriptures, but you intentionally, like, this is a verse

59:59

I'm gonna memorize, and you put it on a flashcard. Like, what did that look like for you? Oh yeah. I still have my index card file that I created during those many years of seeking to memorize as much scripture as possible to be able to deal with Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and others like that.

01:00:17

And it requires review and all the rest of that stuff. But like I said, do it if you're young, because I'm trying to,

01:00:25

I have actually managed to memorize a section from Ignatius in Greek, but it's taken so much more time than it used to when

01:00:34

I was so much younger. So just be aware of that. So get the 100 Verse Memorization System.

01:00:40

I've written two books on the subject of Mormonism. Letters to a Mormon Elder is a book that people have used evangelistically ever since it came out in 1990.

01:00:49

It's been passed out to just an amazing number of Mormons and has been beloved by the

01:00:56

Lord so much because it's written as letters to a Mormon missionary. And so it gives you the idea of how to present this information.

01:01:07

And so that's the Bethany House edition. There's a - There's a multiple one. Yeah, and there's a

01:01:13

Mormon Brother, right, right. Now that's much more on the doctrine of God and LDS scripture.

01:01:19

Goes very much in depth on those subjects. Those books are obviously gonna be very helpful to you. We have done debates.

01:01:26

Jason Wallace, the OPC Church in Magna, Utah for over 20 years now has been working with us and arranging debates up there.

01:01:33

Up until the Mormons finally said, stop debating them and they won't do debates anymore.

01:01:41

Hey, quick question though. When is this coming out on audio? I see that you have a -

01:01:47

Well, the problem is that's now published by a very small publisher. It's no longer with Bethany House.

01:01:53

And audio books, I have no control over those. I do actually have a friend on Twitter that does audio books.

01:02:02

And if they wanted to do letters and is more of my brother, I'd be happy to do that. Well, just to give people a quick teaser.

01:02:13

So I reached out to someone who has access to the publishing folks here for this book.

01:02:18

And I'm working towards, hopefully doing the reading for this. Wow. Cause this is my, in my opinion, this is the best book on presuppositional apologetics.

01:02:27

And it's, it should be also an audio version given that there are a bunch of other stuff out there. So I love to read and do those sorts of things.

01:02:36

And so, you know, hopefully in the future I can do some books that are not available and would be useful for people.

01:02:43

So just throwing that out there. I'll let folks know how far we get with that if it happens. So, but go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.

01:02:49

Yeah. So be aware of the fact, this is how

01:02:56

I've likened it. When I first started studying Mormonism, I was unguided.

01:03:01

I did not have anyone to assist and to give me any guidance whatsoever. I read all the

01:03:08

Christian books on Mormonism and then nobody told me to do this, but thanks be to God.

01:03:15

I decided, you know what? If I'm going to do this, I need to read their books. I need to know what they actually said.

01:03:21

Not just read what Christians said they said. And so I started going to the LDS bookstore and I've got all sorts of funny stories about that and building a huge, huge LDS library and reading

01:03:31

Mormon Doctrine by Bruce R. McConkie and Doctrines of Salvation by Joseph Fielding Smith and Marvelous Work and a

01:03:39

Wonder by LeGrand Richards. These are all books, Articles of Faith by James Talmadge. These are all books that the missionaries would be given to read themselves.

01:03:46

That gives you a commonality. The problem is that what you need to be aware of,

01:03:55

Mormonism is a wide, wide field. You've got the

01:04:01

Book of Mormon, you've got Book of Mormon archeology, you've got... I just froze up there,

01:04:09

Dr. White. You have got so much stuff. So it's very wide.

01:04:18

Jehovah's Witnesses are that, like this. Very narrow, but you need to know it very in depth.

01:04:27

So that's the difference between the two. What you need to know about Jehovah's Witnesses, much smaller spectrum, but you really need to know it well.

01:04:37

Mormonism, you need to have a general knowledge in a much wider area. That's helpful.

01:04:43

But we're also dealing today with so many Mormons that sadly what you have to do is you have to get them to be

01:04:51

Mormon before you can convert them because they don't even know what they believe, but they think they do.

01:04:58

And so they're almost inoculated against the gospel because they think we all believe the same stuff. And so it can be really challenging.

01:05:07

You'll run into Mormons who really know their stuff and they'll challenge you and they'll throw stuff out. And then the next Mormon you talk to, you know far more about Mormonism than they do.

01:05:17

So that can be tough. You are encouraging people to memorize scripture. So that's obviously going, you're right.

01:05:25

And I've had experience with this. I mean, I have much more scripture that I could memorize, but the more scripture you know, you are in control of the conversation and that's very useful.

01:05:33

But also reading their material, and whether it's Mormons or Jehovah's Witness or even atheists, what would be your advice for people as to how to navigate that since we are battling, right?

01:05:44

It's not just an intellectual battle, it's a spiritual battle. We are battling the forces of darkness. How does someone navigate filling their mind with that content while still staying firm and grounded in the truth?

01:05:56

How would you speak to that? Yeah, you really have to have an idea of who it is you're trying to reach.

01:06:06

So if you're being called to church plant in Utah, then you need to know this stuff. So you view that time you spend reading falsehood as part of your service to God.

01:06:18

You know, if you're being called the Middle East, you better read the Quran. You better familiarize yourself with the

01:06:24

Hadith, or you're not gonna be able to talk to anybody. You're going to Brooklyn, New York, you better start reading the

01:06:30

Watchtower. So if it's a part of what God's calling you to do, if you know that, or if you're in a situation where you have a relative that converts, or you have a next door neighbor that you find out as LDS and you really feel a burden to reach out to them, well, then you invest the time to familiarize yourself.

01:06:50

And you have to determine how deep that is. Obviously, I wanted to reach the

01:06:56

Mormons in total. So no one needs to build a huge LDS library and read thousands and thousands and thousands of pages.

01:07:04

But I'll be honest with you, put yourself in the Mormon shoes, okay? If you go up to a

01:07:11

Mormon, and Christians do this all the time, if you go up to a Mormon and say, hey, do you know you're in a cult?

01:07:18

And they go, have you read the Book of Mormon? No, I've never read the Book of Mormon. How much credibility do you have in their eyes?

01:07:26

Yep, zero. Zero. You know, when someone comes up to us, sees us reading the

01:07:31

Bible and says, ha, Christianity, it's a cult. Ever read the Bible? No, but my uncle converted from Christianity, so I know.

01:07:40

How much credibility? None. Right. So what

01:07:46

I suggest to people, like when we used to, when we'd go up to Salt Lake City, we'd train people beforehand to be, you know, we just didn't bring them up there and throw them to the wolves.

01:07:57

And I would say, what you might wanna do as you start this is like read 3rd

01:08:02

Nephi in the Book of Mormon. It's just one book. The Book of Mormon is not that long, but 3rd

01:08:08

Nephi is the story of Jesus' visit to the Nephites and so half of it's the

01:08:14

Sermon on the Mount anyway. So read 3rd Nephi. And so when a

01:08:19

Mormon says to you, have you read the Book of Mormon? And they will ask you that. You can say, you know,

01:08:24

I haven't read all of it, but I did read 3rd Nephi and I've got some really interesting questions about what

01:08:30

I read in 3rd Nephi. You've now opened the door to be able to talk about the difference between the Mormon Jesus and the biblical

01:08:36

Jesus. Okay. Without having invested a massive amount of time in the process.

01:08:41

Right. I've seen that really work. I think that's a sort of effective way of getting around some of that.

01:08:48

But obviously if you're moving to Utah, you need to read the Book of Mormon, Dr. Carver's program price. It's just sort of a basic level situation.

01:08:55

Yeah. Excellent. Thank you for that. Well, let's, if it's okay, if we can take some questions, there's not many questions.

01:09:01

A lot of people are just enjoying the conversation. The chart you gave is super helpful. It kind of helped simplify a lot of things.

01:09:09

So let's take a couple of questions and then we'll wrap things up. Does that sound okay? Sure. All right.

01:09:14

So let's see here. It's the beauty of the chat.

01:09:21

I just have to question. No, there's an odd question here.

01:09:26

So Mormonism is American, right? Why? It's American because it started in America.

01:09:33

But if you want to speak to that, is there anything more? Well, and it also focuses upon the events in the

01:09:41

United States. It creates an entire fictional history of the ancient people in the United States.

01:09:46

And it does make reference to the constitution of the United States. So it's

01:09:53

Yankee. There is a connection to the whole

01:10:02

American situation. So yeah, it was there. Yeah, there's more to the question here. So wait, Mormonism is

01:10:07

American in origin, right? Why does the Book of Mormon use King James type of English? Do Americans in the 1830s speak like that?

01:10:17

No, but that was how Joseph Smith made the Book of Mormon sound like it was scripture.

01:10:24

That was the only scripture that he knew. And so that's how he made it sound like scripture.

01:10:32

And he made the Book of Mormon sound like the King James version of the Bible. That was his intention. There's no question about it.

01:10:40

Well, I mean, and the Book of Mormon quotes 17 chapters, for example, the

01:10:45

Book of Isaiah verbatim. So yeah, it was an attempt to make it look like the same thing.

01:10:52

Let's see here. Slam RN says, do all their wives go with the man when he becomes a God and populates another planet?

01:10:59

How does that work with the multiple lives? Do they just kind of, you know, the man dies and becomes exalted and his wife, one of his wives die and does she become exalted and the rest just come along as they pass away and go into the next stage?

01:11:15

Right. Obviously this is changing right now.

01:11:22

Mormonism is terrified that Obergefell will result in the legalization of plural marriage.

01:11:30

What they wanted for a hundred years, they're now terrified will actually happen because they already have all sorts of cult groups in Southern Utah that are polygamists that they have excommunicated.

01:11:47

So they are scared to death that's gonna happen. But if you're sealed to a woman for time and eternity, you can be sealed to more than one woman, including those who are dead.

01:11:56

If you're a single Mormon gal and you die young, you'll be sealed to a man you've never met before, but he will be your husband in eternity.

01:12:07

Wow. It's a very - How did that work out? Do you just love him?

01:12:12

Like, how does that work out with the relationship? It's like, I've never met you, but - You submit to your priesthood leaders.

01:12:17

That's just how it is. Okay. You gotta realize, think about, what's heaven for a Mormon woman? It's never seeing your feet again because you'll be eternally pregnant.

01:12:29

I was like, where are you going with that phrase? That makes sense now that you finished it. There we go. Oh boy.

01:12:36

Chris - By the way, by the way, there's the 100 Verse Memory System, 100

01:12:41

Verses for Witnessing the Mormons. If you just search for 100Verses at AOMN .org,

01:12:47

it'll pop it up. And it's a long, it's a big one. And it is a training course for witnessing the

01:12:55

Mormons. It really is. You just type in 100 - It doesn't just give you the verses, it gives you the context that you need to explain to the

01:13:03

Mormon so that they can understand why the verse is relevant to what they believe. Right. Let me get that up here before I forget, because I've heard you mentioned that and I was unable to find it.

01:13:17

I'll look for it later. Yeah, 100 Verses for Witnessing the Mormons, it popped up immediately.

01:13:23

The date on February 1st, 1988, if that makes you feel any better. You had hair back then.

01:13:29

I most certainly did. In fact, when you gave your age, I was thinking, well, my son just turned 37.

01:13:35

So I could almost be - Hey, I've watched some old debates when you had hair and you had the big glasses.

01:13:43

It was pretty cool, man. It's like, I like seeing the retro videos of yourself, R .C.

01:13:48

Sproul with his crazy jackets. Us old guys have been at it for a few years.

01:13:54

It's Alvin and Megan's 40th, this is our 40th anniversary year. So yeah. That's right. And I'm very grateful for that.

01:13:59

So Chris in Christ asked, is that now banned Mormon video, an actual video?

01:14:05

I don't know if you know this, but there's this video out there. It's a cartoon. It looks like those old Hanna -Barbera cartoons and it actually explains

01:14:13

Mormonism. It's super weird and creepy. Is it accurate? You don't know where that came from? I just watched it.

01:14:19

I watched it a long time ago. I don't know where it came from. It came from the first movie, Godmakers 1.

01:14:25

So you had Godmakers and Godmakers 2. And that video was in, I think it was in Godmakers 1.

01:14:32

It may have been in Godmakers 2. It came from the Godmakers film. And it's primarily accurate, yes.

01:14:39

But the way, if you watch it and you're just like, I don't know what Mormonism teaches, it's creepy.

01:14:45

It's not even like, hey, let me help you understand Mormonism. When you watch it, you're like, oh,

01:14:50

I don't want Mormonism at all. It's coming from a non, what they would call anti -Mormon perspective.

01:14:56

Okay. But it's primarily true. Okay. All right. That was my first interaction with kind of Mormon belief.

01:15:02

And then I was like, oh yeah, what's that all about? Interesting. Brian Sphere asks, I have a question.

01:15:08

We, yes. Thank you for the question. Mormon ontology postulates that the only eternal things are matter and intelligence, but what are their justifications for that?

01:15:18

That's not something Joseph Smith ever thought of. And that's been one of the biggest, greatest problems for LDS philosophers is the problem of eternal regression.

01:15:28

If there is an increasing number of gods today, then as you go backwards in time, there is a decreasing number of gods until you get to the first God.

01:15:39

And what was the first God before he was a God? He was a man, but now there's no deity.

01:15:46

Because remember, godhood is not eternal. God is not eternal.

01:15:52

It is the priesthood and the law of eternal progression that's eternal, but they do not give a justification for where that comes from.

01:16:00

Right. It's just eternal. It just is. Interesting. Emanuel Simon says, is there a connection between Mormonism and Platonism?

01:16:07

For example, both accept God created the world with preexisting matter in the Timaeus or that we can't remember our premortal life in the, is it

01:16:16

Fido, Fado? I don't know. Fado, yeah. Some people have theorized that Smith's, I think it was his uncle, he had access to a library.

01:16:31

He only made it through eighth grade, but he was literate. He could read, obviously. And so there has been a fascinating, a lot of speculation as to what the sources of Joseph Smith's stories were.

01:16:48

And certainly we've been able to identify some of his sources of what he came up with for the ancient inhabitants of the hemisphere, the

01:16:56

Nephites and Lamanites and stuff like that. But as to his doctrine of God, which by the way, when the church was founded in 1830, he did not hold this doctrine of God.

01:17:06

All this stuff I showed you came well after the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon doesn't teach any of this stuff.

01:17:14

This is stuff that developed, I would say, between 1838 and 1842.

01:17:20

In fact, and I didn't mention this earlier, I firmly believe that if Joseph Smith had not been murdered, and he was murdered inappropriately in the

01:17:29

Carthage jail, if he had not been murdered, if he had been given even two more years of life, there would be no

01:17:37

Mormonism today. His theology was changing so fast and so radically that if he had lived only a little while longer, nobody could have made heads or tails out of it and there'd be no

01:17:48

Mormon church today. So I think the men that murdered him in that jail are very much responsible for bringing about Mormonism.

01:17:59

Now, here's a speculative question. Do you think the origins of Mormonism is demonic or was it just a scam?

01:18:09

I'm gonna create a religion, get some benefits from it. What is your take on that and your opinion?

01:18:16

Lucifer uses means to get to an end as well. And Joseph Smith was a treasure seeker.

01:18:22

We have court records of his being brought up on charges of fraud, using a seer stone.

01:18:31

He was into all of a sudden, the Book of Mormon gives credibility to a lot of the magical worldview of what was going on in the 1820s in upstate

01:18:44

New York. Certainly as developed, and he gave himself these things and he accepted the role of prophet and he became a polygamist and he starts, he's married to 48 different women and all the things that come along with that and then started developing temple ceremonies, which by the way, and this is not an arguable point, he stole the

01:19:09

Mormon temple ceremonies from the Masons. Hmm. When I used to give the symbols from the

01:19:18

Mormon temple ceremonies that you would have to do and the handshakes, the sure sign of the nail and all the rest of the stuff, over and over again,

01:19:28

I had men come up to me in the classes I was teaching and say, you could have gone through certain levels of Masonic Lodge doing what you just did because those are our handshakes, those are our symbols.

01:19:38

And when Joseph Smith was shot in the Carthage jail, he was shot out a window and he was giving the

01:19:45

Masonic distress signal as he went out the window. Why would you be doing that? The men were dressed as American Indians.

01:19:51

Well, they weren't American Indians, they were Masons and he was killed for stealing their temple ceremonies. But those ceremonies have become very dark and yeah, it's not an either or.

01:20:07

I think it started off as Joseph Smith like telling stories and getting money for free.

01:20:12

Sure. But then that opened up lots of temptations and as he got farther and farther into it, it got darker and darker and darker.

01:20:19

Hmm, interesting. Oh, my last question, Dr. White, and then we can wrap things up. I thank you so much for your time.

01:20:25

This has been really, really, I mean, I've studied Mormonism, not in depth, but enough that I probably could interact with the

01:20:30

Mormonism pretty decently, but that chart definitely helped kind of put a picture in my mind as to how their theology works.

01:20:37

That was very helpful. But just my last question here is for some presuppositional application. When we often present the transcendental argument for the existence of God from a presupp perspective, we often speak of God being the necessary precondition for knowledge and one of the ways that we justify that is appealing to the fact that we believe in an omniscient

01:20:57

God who reveals. So from a Mormon perspective, we believe because Mormonism is false, as a worldview, it does not provide the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience and knowledge.

01:21:10

What is the Mormon view, and perhaps this can be a point of critique if anyone wants to use a transcendental argument if the context arises, what is the

01:21:17

Mormon view of divine omniscience in their conception of divinity? Could I run a transcendental argument on a deity on Mormonism because they're limited?

01:21:28

How does that work in terms of their knowledge? Sorry, I was looking to the left. I was looking for the, because I do know that that chart is on our website and I was gonna try to pull it up and let you know what the address was.

01:21:45

But I do know without question that it is up there because I know

01:21:51

Rich has told me that it's there. Wait a minute. Super helpful.

01:21:57

I mean, just, you didn't even have it, it wasn't even a fancy graphic. It was so simple. I'm like. No, it looks, believe me, you can tell that I pulled that out of PowerPoint.

01:22:10

But in Keynote, it looks a whole lot better. And it really, really does.

01:22:19

But yeah, 2008, I gave an entire 90 -minute presentation on that chart up in Anchorage, Alaska.

01:22:26

And it is linked in our stuff there. But anyway, the issue you're dealing with when in Mormonism at this point, most

01:22:35

Mormons have already been taught that when challenged on such things as the impossibility of eternal regression, all the inherent contradictions in polytheism as presented by Mormonism, that you're just simply to default to a, we don't know about those gods.

01:22:54

This is beyond the love revelation that we've been given. And so we just don't bother our minds with this.

01:23:02

Because people have provided excellent philosophical critiques of Mormonism.

01:23:11

And the only way that Mormonism has responded to that has either been to encourage our people not to engage with those type of folks, or when

01:23:19

Mormon philosophers have tried, they have inevitably gone down the path unorthodoxy.

01:23:28

Because Smith just simply did not have the intellectual equipment to, in any meaningful fashion, defend what it is he was saying.

01:23:40

He never, and in fact, given, like I said, if I'm correct that certainly no earlier than 1835 and probably 1838 is when he starts developing his polytheistic ideas.

01:23:53

He only has a few years left of life. And he's running an army during that time and having gun battles and being kicked out of one place and going to another place.

01:24:05

You don't have much time to be thinking through the ramifications of your position. And so the philosophers who've tried to provide some kind of philosophical defense have inevitably had to adopt unorthodox formulations of LDS theology.

01:24:23

It's just, there's been no way to avoid it. And so, yes, obviously there is an appropriate presuppositional internal critique of Mormonism.

01:24:37

And it's very obvious where it starts from because the

01:24:43

Mormon theology is internally incoherent.

01:24:50

And it's not just because it's trying to hold LDS scripture with the

01:24:55

Bible that it then contradicts. Or it's not only because of Joseph Smith's ignorance of the content of scripture and his just incredibly wild eisegesis of scripture.

01:25:10

It's found in the system itself because you are attempting to say

01:25:15

God, men, and angels are all of the same level of being.

01:25:21

They're just at different levels of exaltation. So you have - So they, so if people are familiar with Van Til, the basic metaphysical distinction for Van Til and the

01:25:32

Christian worldview is the creator -creature distinction. And so they don't make the creator -creature distinction in the same way we do.

01:25:39

And they run into some of these issues because God is at the same level as these other things. It's not only that they deny it, it is fundamentally rejected as a positive element of their belief.

01:25:54

Very fascinating. That's why their epistemology ends up being completely subjective.

01:26:01

And that's why I believe the Salt Lake City Council is now all

01:26:06

LGBTQ. They have a gendered God who has male anatomy, but they can't hold firm on this because they have no objective way of having an epistemology because they have no creator

01:26:19

God. Now, do they, just to answer the question I asked at the beginning, do they hold to God being or God's being omniscient or do they lack omniscience?

01:26:31

Not in the sense that we would, not in the sense that we would understand omniscience, no. They would say that God knows everything it's possible to know about his realms, maybe, but his realms are limited.

01:26:43

And he was once a man lived on another planet. He certainly doesn't know everything that the God before him knew. In fact, that actually is a part of dispute in modern

01:26:55

Mormon theology because Joseph Smith plainly taught that God continues to develop, but later

01:27:02

Mormon theology has had this go, no, God reaches a final point of development exaltation.

01:27:09

So there is a tension there as well. Interesting. Well, Dr. White, thank you so much.

01:27:14

This has been excellent and very informative for myself. And I'm sure there's looking at the comments, folks have found this to be very useful.

01:27:21

So I very much appreciate your time. I appreciate your ministry and your kindness.

01:27:27

Thank you so much. Been great to be with you. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, Chris, for your $2 super chat, wonderful ministry and appreciate you.

01:27:34

And Dr. White, thank you so much. It is a pleasure and a blessing to be able for myself to interview such great scholars like Dr.

01:27:40

White and others. And it's also a pleasure for me to teach when I have an opportunity to do that as well. So thank you so much for listening.

01:27:46

Well, until next time guys, that is it for this episode. Once again, if you're looking to support

01:27:53

Revealed Apologetics, you can do so by checking out the website. There's a donate button there, helps me out in terms of running backend parts of the ministry.

01:28:03

I also offer some online courses there. That's another way to learn some apologetics and also to support the ministry.

01:28:09

And go over and check out Alpha and Omega Ministry, the website. It's not just on YouTube. I know a lot of people go on YouTube to watch your debates and things like that, but there's a website.

01:28:18

And if I'm not mistaken, there's also an app, right? You have an app, right? Yes, yes. Yeah, so definitely download that if you haven't already.

01:28:25

Once again, I've been talking with Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministry on the topic of Mormonism. And it has been a great pleasure speaking with you,