Live from LDS General Conference and the Newly Built “Meganacle”

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2 Timothy 2 .15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

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Alpha and Omega Ministries presents the Dividing Line radio broadcast. The Apostle Peter commanded all

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Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give this answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Your host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, you can call now by dialing 602 -274 -1360. That's 602 -274 -1360.

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Or if you're out of the Metro Phoenix dialing area, it's 1 -888 -550 -1360.

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That's 1 -888 -550 -1360. And now with today's topic, here's

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James White. And welcome to the Dividing Line. My name is James White, and if I sound a little bit strange, it's because I'm on the cell phone, again, here in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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And we are standing outside the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. It is an unusual conference, indeed.

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This is the opening of what we have dubbed the Meganacle. It is the new meeting house for the

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LDS Church, located north of Temple Square, if you've been up here to Salt Lake City.

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There used to be a parking lot over there, back when we first began doing this kind of work.

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It was just an open parking lot. Now it is a massive granite structure.

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Actually, it's reinforced concrete faced with the very same granite. They went to the same place that they got the granite for the

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Salt Lake City Temple. And it is a large, very large, gray building that seats 21 ,000 people, instead of the little over 6 ,000 people they said that could be seated comfortably in the old tabernacle.

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And the result of that, we sort of knew what it was going to be. But the result of that was at about 12 .05,

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between 12 and 12 .05, when the first session let out. There's three sessions here, between 10 and noon, and then one just started at 2 o 'clock, between 2 and 4.

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And then there's a priesthood session this evening between 6 and 8 p .m. When that first session let out, three times as many people as normal came streaming across North Temple, headed toward Crossroads Plaza and the places to eat.

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And there we stood with our little tracks, a small band of us, and about 21 ,000 hungry

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Mormons. It was an interesting experience. There were times when you could barely turn around to try to, even to get a track out very far.

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The crowd was just so huge. We are here across North Temple at what's called the

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North Gate, the North Gate of the Temple. There are some people, the regular protesters that are here every time that we're up here.

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Thankfully, they're across over next to the building, the new building, so we're not having really to worry much about them.

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There are some anti -abortion protesters and some others that show up. We've had to sort of fight with them for a number of years, and our track distribution has suffered as a result because you're near these people.

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One fellow I'm looking at right now is dressed all in black camouflage gear with a black hat and a black cloth across his face.

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And that's not going to encourage track distribution for anybody within 50 yards of him. So we're over here at the

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North Gate, and a small group, we had some of the folks that were going to be coming up with us. Unfortunately, we're not able to make it, and so we have a small group of folks, a couple folks from up here in Salt Lake City.

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One of our regular callers doesn't have to call in today because Brandon is standing here in front of me reading something that was just handed to him by somebody.

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Is that a Christian track or something? It is. It is a Christian track, good. And Rich is on the other line on his cell phone, so we can do some interviews with some of our folks up here and also know if anyone's calling in.

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And I'd like to ask you to help me, our regular listeners and maybe new listeners to The Dividing Line, you can help me by calling in today and being a part of the program, 1 -888 -550 -1360 and 602 -something or other is the local number, 274 -1360, there you go, are the numbers.

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Hey, I'm standing next to a road, you know, with lots of people going by. Actually, things have finally quieted down here.

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The next session has just started, and this is the quietest it's been since 12 noon.

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But for the past two hours, it has been an absolute zoo, we've been distributing a lot of literature. We haven't had a lot of conversations yet, because everyone's rushing to get into the new building, and that's a big thing we want to do.

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But you can help us by calling in today with your questions about the work we're doing up here. Any questions you have on Mormonism, any questions you have about what it's like to distribute literature to be a group of, we have,

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I think we have six here right now, to be a group of six amongst more than 20 ,000, what that is like, please feel free to call in and we'll have the opportunity of talking to you and answering your questions live from up here in Salt Lake City.

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I also want to give you a report on what took place last evening. I think

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I may have mentioned last week, I'm not sure, I've been so busy recently I can't remember what I've mentioned or what

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I haven't mentioned, but this was an unusual trip up here to Salt Lake City, because we came up,

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I taught a class Thursday night, went straight to the airport, and flew up to Salt Lake City, got in very, very early yesterday morning about 3 a .m.,

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and then last night at Christ Presbyterian Church, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church here in Salt Lake City, Jason Wallace is the pastor there, we had a, well, it was a debate of sorts with the local instructor, the local

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RCIA instructor, and those of you are familiar with RCIA, is the

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Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, that is, it is the instruction class for people who join the

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Roman Catholic Church. And Dr. Don Schaefer, who is a former

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Protestant, a former conservative Baptist pastor, a graduate of Talbot Theological Seminary, who converted to Roman Catholicism over a decade ago, was my opponent, and the discussion was on justification by faith, or that was the general topic that we were supposed to be addressing, and it was a little bit of a more informal type of debate than we normally would have, it wasn't quite as specific as, for example, the debate we'll be having on the 18th of May with Robert and Janice in Long Island on the same topic, and, in fact,

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Dr. Schaefer went first, and it was fascinating, he basically asserted that the

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Reformation had worked, and that the Roman Catholic Church had adopted the teachings of Roman Catholicism, I'm sorry, of the

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Protestants. And so that was, to hear someone affirming sola fide and sola scriptura, even said scripture alone and so on and so forth, yes, yes,

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I was just reminded that even so far as to say that Martin Luther is a saint, and that you can pray to Saint Martin Luther, which

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I think I'll have to mention to some of my Roman Catholic apologists friends, and then step back for the explosion, but it was a most interesting evening, and I think the gospel of grace and the fact that we are justified by the imputation of the perfect righteousness of Christ alone was clearly presented, and during the cross -examination period, my opponent only used about four minutes of his time, and the only question he asked me was, if we keep arguing about theology, how is there ever going to be any unity?

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And then when my time came, I had 15 minutes to cross -examine him, and that turned out to be very interesting, and asking,

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I would read from the Catholic Catechism of the Church, the 1994 Universal Catechism, and say, do you believe that?

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And, well, you know, purgatory might be more like a, it's a state, you know, and it's instantaneous, and so on and so forth.

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So it was an interesting experience, but we had a very good turnout. We only decided to do this,

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Pastor Wallace decided to do this about two weeks ago, and so it wasn't like it was something that could be very well promoted or anything like that.

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We saw a very good turnout there, and I hope that the Lord was glorified in what took place.

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We hope to have the tapes, and it was videotaped very nicely as well.

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I'm not sure if Rich is aware that there is a videotape of that that's hopefully going to be made available, so we will have that available as well.

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So, to start off with something interesting, dealing with Roman Catholicism in Salt Lake City, and one of the constant comments that I got from folks is, man, this just doesn't happen up here.

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This area is so very much focused upon Mormonism and the conflict with Mormonism that the idea of having theological dialogue and discussion of such things as justification by faith, and that kind of thing is just very, very difficult for people to realize could take place, but I think the people who attended were very encouraged by what did take place, encouraged to think about the importance of the

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Reformation, that those issues are not unimportant, but they continue to be important even when you're surrounded in a culture that is heavily soaked with what is, in reality, a polytheistic religion.

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Still, the other issues remain just as important. So, it was an excellent opportunity to share the

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Gospel with folks, and we hope that there are many who were blessed. But now, today, we shift gears and we stand out here.

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One of the tracts we've been passing out is a tract entitled, Grace Plus Works is Dead, Being Meaningless, and it's a tract on the grace of God, and so one of the lines that we use, in essence, as we have people walking by, is we say things along the lines of, would you like to read about the grace of God, or something like that.

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And Rich was telling me that one of the people who walked by him made an amazing comment when

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Rich said, would you like to read about the grace of God? The response was, that's okay, we can get along without it.

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And we'll make it without it, I think was the specific terminology. But we've also been passing out to the

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Christian message tract, Men Is Not God, a couple of the other tracts that we have specifically written for distribution out here.

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In fact, I just saw a fallen warrior land upon the ground over here. I'll have to have someone, maybe

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Brandon can go get the fallen warrior that's laying there on the ground. A fellow

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Mormon fellow picked it up, maybe he'll be nice enough to return it. But we call a tract that is taken and then dropped upon the ground or ripped up or in any other way disposed of, we call that one of our fallen warriors.

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Because we do trust these tracts will have an impact. We recognize, of course, as in any distribution situation, that a large number of these tracts are going to be thrown away.

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I mean, when we go out to Mesa and we distribute literature out there, as we will this year, beginning,

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I believe, April 14th, the 14th and the 15th, and then the 18th through the night before Easter, I guess, there's a number of tracts that are thrown away.

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There are missionaries who make it their goal in life to go get those tracts and to try to get them out of people's hands, for example.

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But there are others, I was pointing out to someone today, there was an elderly gentleman that had just taken a tract from one of our volunteers and he stuck it into his coat pocket.

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And I said, I'd like to see that happen, because that means that a tract is going to make it home, probably.

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In fact, it may even get read weeks or months later. Someone pulls out a suit jacket, and I've certainly had this experience, you pull out a suit jacket, you put it on, and during the course of the day you reach into the pocket and go, oh, what's this?

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And here's the tract, and it can be read in a context where there's not any type of emotional pressure upon the person.

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And it's in that type of situation that the Lord can use that message to start a person thinking, maybe doing some research.

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It has been our experience over the years that that's what happens. I'm standing here right now just noticing a number of Japanese Mormon people coming by.

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I've been given to understand that the ticket distribution to this first meeting in the new meeting house was very heavily weighted toward individuals outside of the

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United States, the ones that are the farthest away, or the ones that had the better opportunities. So I've been seeing a large number of people from far away.

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I was just informed that they have 800 ushers, 800 ushers at this event.

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We've noticed there is just a huge presence of not only police, but all sorts of folks.

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I cannot imagine the telecommunication setup that these individuals have here.

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The people running around with things, with earphones in their ears, and not even a visible radio for many of them, moving entire blocks of people around, groups of 200 across the street here, across the street there, all trying to fill up this new building, which isn't completely done.

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The front of the building is completely done. And they've even, and this is amazing to me, talk about the fact that you have a situation here where the

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LDS Church has quite the relationship with the city government. They have a little river, well, not a river, a stream type, a bubbling stream that goes all the way down.

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And since North Temple is on a fairly steep bank, there is a bubbling stream that goes all the way down in lieu of the sidewalk right next to the road.

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And then the regular sidewalk is inside of that. And they've finished the front of the building, and the main side of the building.

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But if you go around the back, as I did, there's still exposed concrete that has not yet received the plates of granite that are all along the front part of the building.

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But you can certainly see it from a long ways off, and it is amazing to compare what downtown

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Salt Lake looks like now with what it did when we first attracted our first general conference in 1984, and what it looked like then.

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Tremendous change, and what it represents is a huge expansion of the

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LDS Church itself. They are still using the tabernacle, as I understand it, for overflow.

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So if you have 21 ,000 inside, plus an extra, I heard the

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President Gordon Hinkley talking about an extra video area inside that seats 1 ,000 for airing of film they're using.

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That's 22 ,000, and then the Harley gang. You know, someday they'll put mufflers on those types of motorcycles.

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And then you've got 6 ,000 over here. You can be doing 30 ,000 here locally on an easy basis.

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And I just happened to notice that a couple of our folks are now in a conversation with an

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LDS person, talking probably about the gospel of justification, the gospel of grace, I would assume, and they're sharing with him.

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And we've been a little disappointed this trip. Of course, we didn't know what to expect. We were primarily just trying to figure out how we're going to handle this entirely new situation.

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But we've been a little disappointed so far in the fact that we've had very few conversations. And the reason why we've had very few conversations is readily apparent to us, and that is everyone that is passing us has someplace to go.

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They've been told that if they don't take their seats by such and such time, it's sort of like an airline flight. If you're not in your seat half an hour early, your tickets are canceled, and they bring in standby passengers, in this case, standby attendees.

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And so everyone's basically all excited about getting in a new building, and they're more excited about getting in a new building than they are about talking to anybody else.

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So we're sort of hoping that over the next couple of hours, even during this program, there'll be a few more conversations like this, because the individuals who are out there, the individuals who are walking along and coming into the conference, maybe don't have to get in there quite as early.

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Hopefully there'll be people who maybe have attended the conference session this morning. They're not attending this one.

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They're waiting for the priesthood session tonight, and therefore they don't really have any place to go. And so when we hand them a track, they may stop, and we're able to share with them and talk to them about the grace of God, or about who the one true

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God is, issues such as that. So that's what we're doing out here. There's a small band of us, and it is my hope and desire that those of you in the audience who have some questions concerning Mormonism, questions on how to share the

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Gospel with the LDS people, maybe just a word of encouragement to us. We're out here right on the front lines, sharing with people and distributing literature that you'd give us a call.

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We'd hopefully be able to hear you fairly clearly and talk with you directly from Salt Lake City here.

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The number is 1 -888 -550 -1360. If you're outside the Phoenix dialing area, maybe even listening on the

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Internet, who knows? That's a possibility. And if you're in the Phoenix dialing area, 602 -274 -1360 is the phone number that you can dial.

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And as I understand it, the folks there at the station will be able to get a hold of Rich Pierce, who normally would be manning the controls, but at this point is doing little more than manning the cell phone.

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Just a couple yards from me here, and the folks there at the station will let him know who's on the air, who's online, and we'll be able to talk with you and hopefully answer your questions and hear what you have to say on the dividing line.

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I realize I have to keep a close eye on my own watch here, so I know when breaks are coming up and how the program is going.

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We are distributing literature today that is both LDS -specific as well as generic, and what

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I mean by that is some of our tracts are specifically written for Mormon people, but I've been distributing a lot of what

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I would call generic literature today, and that is just simply literature on the doctrine of grace, on the doctrine of justification, that is applicable to anyone who is involved in a works salvation system.

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And I think that for me, obviously, part of that is because right now I'm very excited about the doctrine of justification, writing the book on that subject, and so it's what's on my heart and mind, and that's what

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I was sharing last evening during the debate with the Roman Catholic gentleman here in Salt Lake, and it's really the message that one must share with anyone in any type of situation in regard to what the gospel really is.

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These individuals have been given a false hope, a false message, and while the word gospel will probably be heard dozens and dozens and dozens of times during the conference sessions today, the fact of the matter is that it is a false gospel.

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It's a gospel that cannot bring salvation. Well, we have a caller, as I understand, online, and we're going to find out now just how well the marvels of technological science work, but Joe's on the line.

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Joe, are you able to hear me? I can hear you just fine, Jim. How are you? Well, you know, it's a beautiful day out here,

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Joe. We miss you. Well, we're sorry we're not there. Did you get my email? Yes, Rich shared your email.

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You have been, to use the proper terminology, providentially hindered from being with us, but Joe, you had some other folks who have come with you.

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You've been doing some training, some preparation for sharing with the LDS people, but you're still going to get a chance to do that because there's a little something called the

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Easter pageant coming up right around the corner. Yes. Well, we're looking forward to doing that, and I just wanted to call and let you know how encouraged we were to hear you speak today, and it's exciting.

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I kind of have a visual picture of everything you're describing there, not the finished meganacle or whatever you call it, but we've been praying for you, been thinking about you throughout the day.

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We'll continue to pray for you, and we'll pray for more conversations this afternoon, so I just wanted to call and encourage you.

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Well, I appreciate that, Joe, and I think you could probably, if you'd like to take the biggest rush that you've ever experienced at Southgate and triple it.

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That's what it was like for about 45 minutes to an hour at the

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Northgate as all the people streamed out of the building, and in fact, we want to try to get a picture of this.

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Rich was mentioning this to me. You saw it six months ago? Yes. I'm not sure how much of it was done then, but basically, it's sort of hard to see looking straight at it, but basically there are tears.

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There are levels of stares that come down the front of this building, and it was fascinating in the midst of the huge crowd to see just these streams of people coming down the side of this building and heading toward you, and they're all hungry.

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They all want to get to Crossroads Plaza. I think the food court down there did a year's worth of business in the space of two hours today.

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It must have been quite the sight down there, but it's quite the experience, and I'm really hoping to get a little larger group of people together for the

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October conference because of the fact that in reality, as I'm looking at it, I think we're going to be able to cover as far as distribution of track in this area just as effectively as we could

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Temple Square. It's sort of like the Mesa situation. You've only got a certain number of corners that people are going to be going through, and so I think it's going to be actually an advantage to us in being able to distribute literature and to share with folks, and hopefully in the future, folks won't be in quite as much of a hurry once the newness of the building is worn off, and so we'll be able to get into more of those types of conversations, but keep those verses memorized because as Larry Vondra announced last week on the program, there's two extra nights of the

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Easter pageant this year, and we're going to be out there. I'm sorry? Terrific. Yeah, it starts early.

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It's going to be seven full nights out there in Mesa, and so we'll need all hands on deck for that, so thanks for the encouragement,

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Joe, and I hope everybody gets to feeling better on your end of things, too. Thanks, Jim. All righty, thanks for calling.

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Bye -bye. 602 -274 -1360, 1 -888 -550 -1360.

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Hey, you know, I've been on the Marty Minto program many, many times, okay, and they have the numbers right there prominently displayed, but you can see them, and I know that Marty Minto looks at them at the numbers, too, so the fact that I remembered most of them when there aren't any numbers here at all,

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I think is probably something that's good, especially in light of the fact that my schedule is a little bit messed up at the moment, shall we say, as far as knowing what's going on.

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So we invite you to participate in the program today. If there's any questions you'd like to ask about the outreach that we do out here, the tracts we're distributing, maybe some of the recent conversations that just took place, conversations we've had in the past, what's going on with Mormonism in general, give us a call, and we'd be glad to talk to you about that.

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I was mentioning before we took our phone call that a lot of the tracts that I've been distributing are focused upon the

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Gospel, and again, it's so out of step with our culture.

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In fact, this came up last evening as well. One of the things that was asserted was that you're not saved by theology.

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You're saved by knowing Jesus, and it was very interesting that that was being said in the context of saying, well, so we have some differences about what the

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Gospel is. That doesn't really matter. You're far too narrowly focused upon things that are not definitional of the faith.

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And that's really what the society tells a lot of us these days, that whether you're justified by faith alone, or faith plus some works prompted by grace, or whatever else it might be, those things really don't make any particular difference, do they?

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Well, they did to the Apostle Paul in the Book of Galatians, they did to the Lord Jesus, and they have to to us as well.

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And I just would encourage everyone in the audience who is aware of what the issues are in dealing with Mormonism, or the

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Watchtower Society, or sharing the Gospel with Roman Catholics, or dealing with the Church of Christ and its view of baptismal regeneration and things like that, do not be discouraged by the fact that we seem to be in such a major minority in regards to a love for God's truth.

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Many people who begin to appreciate God's truth and begin to understand the beauty of the

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Gospel become discouraged when they realize how very few people there are that share with them.

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So I hear the music in the background, we'd like to hear from you, give us a call, and we'll be back right after these words.

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And welcome back to Dividing Line, my name is James White, and if you hear that big green semi -truck in the background going by, that's because we are live, currently standing on the sidewalk outside the

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North Gate of Temple Square. And this year is an unusual year, this is my 31st trip up here to the

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General Conference, and now there's something that certainly wasn't here when

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I came here the first time, it is the new, I guess they're calling it a meeting hall, they've got to come up with something better than meeting hall,

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I mean, come on. Meeting hall? It doesn't even look like a hall, it's bigger than America West Arena, it seats more people at America West Arena, and is larger than America West Arena physically, and that's what

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I'm staring at at the moment across the way. I also heard Gordon B.

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Hinckley saying this morning that they have trees and running water on the roof, and I'm not sure why you'd want to have running water on a roof, but that's the way it's designed, and that's what's over there,

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I can see some of the shrubbery, I wonder if they said that they sent people on a crusade to get shrubbery or something, it's a little inside joke, only a few people in the audience got it, but anyway, it is a large place, and it is currently filled with approximately 21 ,000

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LDS people, listening to the prophets and apostles of the LDS Church teaching and preaching today, and as normal, we are here to share with folks, and over on his cell phone is the president of Alpha Omega Ministries, Rich Pierce, who normally would have to be filling in for me if I was gone or something like that, or arranging the program, and someday,

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Rich, you may have to, if we can put Rich on the air with me, you're going to have to, you may have to do this type of program all on your own on a cell phone sometime.

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Well, the question is, if you ask them, they might actually say, we're both gone.

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We're both gone, that's right, well, okay, I'm actually not being able to hear you, I hope you're on the air with me, but that's alright, we'll trust that you're sonorous tone.

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I'm here now. Now I can hear you, okay, I got you now. What I was saying is, if you ask a lot of people that have gone by us today, they would say that we're both gone.

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That is generally how people treat you, is when you ask, would you like to take a track, the majority response of most people is that you are not there, no, you did not say the words to me, would you like to read about God's grace, so that's the old looking through routine.

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But was I overestimating the amazing rush that took place?

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The thing that struck me about it is, somebody, one of the Mormons who was standing there chit -chatting with me before this whole thing started, felt that there was 21 ,000 people in there, and they were all coming out while there was another group about that size coming, going in the other way for the two o 'clock conference.

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So I'm not sure, but I have to say it was the most tracks in one spurt that I have ever gotten out here at one time ever, and it is by far and away the largest crowd

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I have ever seen up here. Well yeah, it is huge, even as I came in yesterday listening to the radio, they were talking about warning people out of the downtown area as far as traffic, because it was conference weekend and it was going to be really busy down here.

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It must have happened to you since you said you got a number of tracks out, but I had the experience again of one of those weird situations where you get a group coming by you, and the first person in the group takes a track from you, and they basically take it in such a way that they think they're supposed to be taking this from you.

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And then everybody afterwards thinks they're supposed to be taking it from you too, and you can wipe out an entire handful of tracks in just a matter of seconds because everyone's running by going, oh

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I'm supposed to take this from you, maybe it's something I need to get into the conference or something like that. I think about the fact that I looked at this building and we're standing down here,

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I 'm on North Temple, and I've stood on North Temple so many times and it's always been slow, there's hardly been anybody up here, and you just kind of stand here and stare at the sidewalk, and here this huge crowd of people is down on the ground level and they're pouring across, all the traffic's been stopped, and I'm looking up at the levels at the ladders or the stairways and the platforms, and they're literally filled with people and they just keep coming and coming and coming, and I'm like, goodness, how many people are in there?

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You know? I don't know how the folks down there at Crossroads Plaza survived the rush of hungry

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Mormons, but it was quite the experience. You did have, we also had some folks, and I'm not going to give any free radio advertisement, but from a website that showed up out here, a pro -LDS website who were quite aggressive in getting their...

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Quite aggressive, I found myself in a situation where I was talking with a gentleman just briefly trying to give him a track, and this gal took her little bumper sticker and stuck it right out in front of my face, and started talking with him, and I'm just kind of blown away, you know?

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Yeah, they were very straightforward, now we have a family with us, we have a little girl who has been helping to pass out literature,

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I couldn't help but think of my own daughter Summer as she distributed literature last year in Mesa, but this young 'un's about, how old is she?

32:44

About five, six? Maybe four. I'm not sure. Larry says six, and she's such a little thing that she's just freezing to death out here.

32:55

It's probably up to about 62 or 63 degrees now, but the wind is such that it's just nice and through the poor little thing, but she's gotten a number of tracks out, and Mommy and Daddy are here with her, of course, and they regularly distribute tracks at the shopping malls and stuff here locally, so it's not like she's not accustomed to this, but I don't think any of us were accustomed to what we saw with that rush, or what we'll experience again here in approximately an hour and 22 minutes.

33:25

And the thing is, as we were trying to plot out how this was all going to come together, this is definitely ground zero.

33:33

Northgate has become the crossing point for the entire event, even to the point, and this was something

33:40

I never imagined, and that was that the gathering place was actually on the temple property, and then they would be taking people in lines, two by two, if you will, over to the new property, and of course, who's on each side of those lines?

33:54

We are, with our tracks, smiling as folks are going by. Yeah, they still have to work out a lot of the details there, but I just don't think they have enough external space, as I'm looking at it right now, to line people up over there on their property there.

34:11

They're sort of hemmed in a little bit, and so they had to be using the temple square property for their standby lines and things like that, so they'd be taking groups of 200 at a time across the street, and you and others were standing right there, which

34:27

I agree about God's grace, which I agree about the First Vision, distributing tracks as they're going out. We may not have our normal afternoon experience of running the priesthood line, but then again, where else would the priesthood line go?

34:43

It's already interesting to find out. It really is hard to say what's going to happen, but this seems to be like an all -new experience up here with how things are geographically happening.

34:53

Yeah, it's new for us, sort of like the first couple of times we came up here, because the first time we ever tracked it here, and this was even before you and I had gotten together,

35:02

Rich, Mike Belliveau, myself, and Dave Warner came and drove up.

35:08

I knew Dave then, he was never the same. Sadly, that's exactly the case.

35:13

He was never the same, because people were not accustomed to our doing this, and so we literally had lines of people waiting to talk to us, right here at the north gate, right where we're standing right now, actually about 10 yards over that direction, and at one point during that,

35:28

I was just having a grand old time, and all of a sudden I heard, Jim! I looked over, and here's

35:34

Dave, he's up against a pole, one of those poles over there that supports the gate, and he's got about five or six guys around him, and they're just throwing stuff at him right and left, and I waded into that group and got him out of there, and he stayed in my hip pocket the rest of the day, and so that was the first time, but my things have changed a lot over the past 16 years, since we did that, it really changed a tremendous amount.

36:01

Well, you know, Rich, I think what I'll have you do is I'll have you hand the cell phone there over to one of our young volunteers here, who's been just wondering how he was ever going to get on the air other than calling into the program, and you know what?

36:16

You're still calling into the program, Brandon, it's a terrible, terrible thing, but you're still on the phone. Oh, I'll never get away from it, that's okay.

36:23

Brandon is, I'm not going to say how old Brandon is, because that would be embarrassing, but let's just say that Brandon has significantly more hair than I do on his head, and he keeps reminding me of that as we're up here, but you helped pass out tracks last

36:38

October, right? Right. And then you were enjoying a cruise. Not Brandon, you weren't, well, speaking of the cruise, no, no, no,

36:47

I won't put the plug in there, but, and then you're up here, you were at the debate last night.

36:54

Yes. And so you've sort of gotten accustomed to the way we do things and some of the stuff we're up to, but you haven't gotten as many conversations today as you wanted to have had.

37:05

You know, I don't understand how any, when there's that big rush, there's just no way you could possibly have a conversation, because the person that tried to stop to talk to you would be getting pushed as hard as you're getting pushed, right out of your spot.

37:17

Yeah. It's really, it's, that's one of the reasons I think we need to, maybe once we have some more folks up here, see what the

37:26

Southgate looks like and see if it's any less crazy or something along those lines. I just don't know how it's going to end up working out.

37:34

But now you're up here from, you live here in Salt Lake City. Right, I live out in West Jordan. And in fact, it wasn't all that long ago that you were on the other side of this dividing line, weren't you?

37:46

Oh, definitely. I've attended conferences quite a few times going in and, you know, it's a little different to be actually barred from the property and have the security guys keeping an eye on you.

37:58

Yep. No on your face. So did you ever attend one of the priesthood sessions? I didn't.

38:04

I didn't. I attended a lot. I attended this, I went to the Salt Lake Temple a lot of the times to do the

38:11

LDS baptism for the dead. And I went, I even went to the funeral of Howard Hunter that they had up here.

38:23

I just never expected to be on this side of it. Well, then something called grace caught up with you, huh?

38:29

Right. The same stuff that they reject and grab tracts from us and throw on the ground.

38:36

Well, yeah, actually. Now, did someone try to get your tracts today or was it Rich they tried?

38:42

Yeah. Tried to get Rich's tracts and tried to get my tracts too. But now did, in the times that you would go in here, did you ever see folks out here?

38:50

No, actually, I had no idea that you've been doing this since I was around. Okay. Now, let's see you get out of this one,

38:59

Brandon, since we weren't two years old. Actually, you said earlier today, one.

39:05

And since I've been doing this for 16 years, let's see if people can do a little addition while they're at it. But anyway, so, well, we're also glad to have folks up here involved with us.

39:16

And of course, we stay in contact with you via the chat room, which we don't get enough visitors to.

39:24

So that's right. We need to get more folks in that chat room and we'll be doing that.

39:30

I figured the music would be coming up just a second. We'd like to hear from you. One, triple eight, five, five, zero, 13, 60, six, zero, two, two, seven, four, 13, 60.

39:39

Give us a call and we'll be back after these messages. Welcome back to the

39:44

Dividing Line. My name is James White and we were just talking to one of the security guards that we know very well.

39:54

I've been sort of wondering if I was going to see him. And he just came walking across from the new building.

40:00

And we just missed by just a couple of seconds being able to, you know, I wonder if Larry would have gone on the air with us.

40:07

You think he would have gone? I don't think Larry would have. He might have been a little bit reluctant to do that. Yeah, I probably would have gotten in a little bit of trouble.

40:13

But he's been doing security here at Temple Square for many, many moons. And it does tell you that we've been up here a long, long time.

40:20

When we know the security guards by first name, they know our faces well. You know, it's been a long time ago.

40:26

They used to take our pictures every time when we came up here. And they, I think they got, we got older or something. They stopped taking our pictures.

40:32

It must have been a thing where they wanted young people or something. And after a while, they decided to not take our picture anymore because we weren't young anymore.

40:40

In fact, I have a picture of Larry taking a picture of me. There you go. When I think Carol was up here, she got a picture of him taking a picture of me.

40:48

And years ago, we first started doing this. We were at the Westgate. One of our people asked one of their security folks who were taking the picture.

40:57

Hey, what do you, what do you, why do you take those pictures? And the response was somewhere along the lines of, so, so that when, when the

41:08

Mormon church rescues the nation, when it's about to collapse, we'll know who was who.

41:14

And it was like, oh, okay. All right. I figured they were taking my picture to throw darts at or something like that.

41:19

But yeah, they don't do that anymore. Or either that, or they've gotten so high tech.

41:25

We're being watched. We're being watched right now. We're listening to the telephone conversation.

41:31

Who needs, you know, a 35 millimeter camera to film in it? That's the old tech way of doing it.

41:38

Well, we're live in Salt Lake City. If you're just now joining us, if you are just tuning in the program, we are live outside the,

41:45

I believe, if I'm calling correctly, 170th

41:50

Semi -Annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. I heard it this morning while I was circling the airport, waiting to pick you folks up.

41:59

And every six months, the LDS Church has a general conference here in Salt Lake City. And this year, it is very unusual because they have opened their new meeting house, which is able to handle more than three times the number of individuals that they could seat before.

42:19

And we saw exactly what that results in when they all get out at the same time. Three times as many people heading straight at you.

42:26

And that's going to happen again here in an hour and nine minutes approximately.

42:33

The doors will open yet once again. And 20 ,000 some odd folks will be heading toward us.

42:40

And we'll be here to pass out our tracts and to share with folks. And we hope that you would pray for us during that period of time.

42:47

We haven't, because the flight got in so late this morning, we haven't even stopped for a break yet, haven't had a drink of water or anything to eat.

42:55

And we're looking forward to that here in a few minutes when we finish the program. We're going to grab some refreshment and get ready for the afternoon of ministry, of distribution of literature.

43:07

And someone might ask, though no one has, someone could call in and ask at 1 -888 -550 -1360 or 602 -274 -1360.

43:17

They could call in and ask, well, why distribute literature? Why not maybe just hold a big old sign?

43:25

We've a couple times had street preachers out here, not with us. But we've had street preachers who have stood here.

43:33

And we do hold signs when we do things with Jehovah's Witnesses. Why not do that here? Well, the reason is fairly simple.

43:40

LDS people, A, do not respect sign holding. And B, there are a significant number of LDS people who will take literature and who will stop and speak with you and talk to you.

43:53

And therefore, since 1984, there has always been a presence from Alpha and Omega Ministries here at the

44:01

General Conference sharing with the LDS people. Of course, we deal with many other areas as well.

44:07

But if you want to talk to a large concentration of Mormons all at once, where else in the world would you want to be than right where we are right now where there are

44:17

Mormons everywhere at this particular point in time? It's a little bit quiet at the Northgate right now because the lines have not started for the priesthood session.

44:29

But if you want to see the maximum number of white shirts, dark ties, and dark pants in one location, if you want to see

44:40

JCPenney's dream, that will be taking place here in just a short period of time.

44:46

And in fact, I'm just seeing, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six. I just saw a group of six young men that I can guarantee you will be heading into the priesthood sessions later on just walk by.

45:01

And that's going to become very, very common here over the next couple of hours. Many young men. And that's when we pass out tracts like what is your authority and attest to the

45:12

Aaronic priest and men is not God. I don't,

45:17

I don't hear you, Rich. Maybe. Nope.

45:22

That's because you're got two people on hold. Excellent. Well, we got some callers. We'll try to sneak him in real quick here.

45:32

Let's let's go George first. George, you on the air? Hello, George. Maybe Jeff.

45:39

How about either George or Jeff? Either one. James. Yes, Mr. White. Yes, sir.

45:45

Can you hear me? I can hear you. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty good. Is this George or Jeff?

45:50

This is George. Hi, George. How are you doing? Good. How are you? Just wanted to call and say what a great encouragement you folks are doing up there.

45:58

It's a great encouragement to me. And my question was last year or the year before you had a preparation type of class before you went out to the

46:09

Easter pageant in Mesa. Will you be doing that again this year? Well, we would I'm looking at Rich and Rich just gave this really strange looking face.

46:21

There are a couple of people who requested that. And so we just may need to put some extra pressure on Mr.

46:27

Pierce and see if we can't arrange something like that because the

46:32

Easter pageant is real late this year and we have until the 14th. So we may try to do something like that.

46:40

But we've also been trying to do some of that on the program and covering some of the issues that normally come out out here come up out in Mesa as well.

46:49

So we'll see if we can't put something together. If the Lord gives us the ability to do so maybe some just make people feel a little more comfortable when they get out there to distribute some literature.

47:01

That's great. All right. Thanks for calling, George. God bless. Thank you. God bless you as well. And let's see if we can squeeze

47:07

Jeff in real quick. Is Jeff on the line? Yeah. How are you doing? Hey, doing pretty good, Jeff. What's up?

47:12

Good. I want to know, is there any other groups that are up there witnessing to the Mormons? I've seen one fellow across the street distributing some flyers, but I don't know who he's with or really what his perspective is or even if he's from a

47:29

Orthodox Christian church or not. But other than that, no. It's just us. How many of y 'all are up there?

47:36

We have three from the Phoenix area and three from the Salt Lake area. So there are six of us here right now.

47:43

We were going to have as many as there have been four or five others, Rich, four or five others, but they were not able to make the trip this time.

47:52

Okay. Well, we're encouraged by you like the last caller and just let you know that we're keeping you in our prayers.

48:00

Well, we really do appreciate that. We appreciate the fact there are folks listening and the folks thinking about us while we're up here.

48:06

I pray that we'll be given divine opportunities to share the Gospels, folks. That's the important thing.

48:12

We will. All right. God bless. I'm right now looking over at a

48:17

Mormon fellow who has a statue of Moroni, and he's the same one who earlier walked by and said,

48:24

I said in front of a bunch of Mormons, Hey, put that back. And all the Mormons laughed because I was talking about the temple, the

48:30

Moroni Temple. What I was going to say was that the gentleman that I encountered, it really is a sad commentary that the

48:39

I handed the grace or handed out the grace plus works as dead track. I said, May I share God's grace with you?

48:45

And the gentleman's response was, No, thanks. We're taking care of that on our own.

48:51

Such a sad commentary, but it is accurate, really when you study the Mormon doctrine. Yeah.

48:57

If you understand Second Nephi 2523 and what Mormonism actually teaches about grace, that is exactly why we're here and why we want to have divine opportunities of sharing what grace really is, the true

49:10

God who can have that grace rather than a God who himself was dependent upon grace, a kind of grace, to gain his own salvation and exaltation from another planet, which is really what we're dealing with when we deal with Mormonism.

49:25

So next week on The Dividing Line, we will continue in our preparation for the work out in Mesa.

49:32

And so we hope you'll be listening to us at that time. And please be with us at that time at 2 o 'clock here on APX Tune.

49:40

It's going to be great for us. We're going to continue our ministry out here and we'll be traveling back, Lord willing, this evening.