To Follow Jesus You Must Count the Cost

Apologia Utah

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Demonstrates how God saves us. But again, the church, the

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LDS organization, is teaching that you are saved by faith after all you can do, which is a direct contradiction of what scripture says.

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And that's part of the reason why we're out here as Christians sharing the gospel with people, is because the

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Bible says that if you add anything to faith in how you're saved, any works of law, that you're accursed.

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Accursed means eternally separated from God, right? Is that Galatians? Galatians 3.

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Galatians that talks about that. So I care about my LDS neighbors enough to share that with them and say, listen, this is a contradiction of scripture.

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And according to scripture, the Bible says that if you add anything to grace, you're not saved.

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In fact, you're eternally separated from God. So I want to share that message with my people on the street, let them know, because that's a big concern, right?

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Like, to think maybe your whole life you're headed in the right direction, right? You're following God.

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But can someone share scripture with you, and they're like, wait a second, if you say, and I say, because I believe that scripture is the absolute truth and word of God, and the church is teaching something that contradicts that, then we've got to reject that.

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And we need to come return to scripture, return to what the Bible says, return to God's word, because that is the absolute standard of God's truth.

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The only infallible rule of faith, the practice, right? God's word. So I want to share that with you guys.

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Maybe you would think about that, meditate on that. I want to give you some literature about that. And if you have questions,

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I can give you my contact. We go to a, we're a part of a Christian church up in Sandy, Apologia Church.

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And yeah, if you have any questions on that. So all people, so no one goes to hell?

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Because if somebody goes to hell, that means not everybody's safe. Right? So there's a problem there.

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At least not.

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And then whether or not you go to heaven or hell is kind of a different situation. Have faith, repentance, be baptized, make covenants, and endure to the end.

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Is that optional if you're striving to receive exaltation in your system?

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Right. And what's the third article of faith say?

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All mankind may be saved through obedience to the laws. Very good.

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Very good. Yeah. So that's kind of what Dusty's saying here is that there's a clear delineation of even when we use terms like salvation, we're not saying the same thing.

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So when he says salvation, he means being saved from sin and the consequences of sin.

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But in the Mormon church, there really isn't anything to be saved from except for being limited in your potential to progress.

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You see how that's a different message? Because what he talked about here, did you hear him mention anything about exaltation or anything like that?

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So if I were to say, you know, hey, you guys are both Christians, but he says, you know, we have a different gospel.

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Would it be fair to say that we're kind of speaking a different language? Would that be fair?

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Yeah. So like the distinctions are important. Right. So that's what we mean by salvation is we need to be saved from our sins and the consequences from our sins.

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Right. Right. So when we're talking about salvation, we don't mean salvation from physical death. We mean salvation from the wrath of God and eternal punishment because Jesus preached about hell more than anybody else.

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Right. And so when you think about that, you go, huh, that's kind of weird because Jesus never talked about exaltation, making covenants in the temple, keeping those covenants so that you could have an eternal posterity, seal your family to yourself.

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He didn't teach on that. He actually taught on hell and he taught repent and believe. Right. So what do you think about that?

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Does that sound like the, you know, the Mormonism that you guys maybe grew up in? I just think of some words.

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Sure. And I think that, and so if that means that your definition of good and salvation, that is a little bit more of like a trigger.

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But I think that with salvation, are we saved by only faith or by works alone?

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I just can't like, when I think of being saved, I almost think of my mom as well.

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And how like, oh, if I stub my toe, my mom comes and helps me pick it up. But she doesn't save me from everything that I feel.

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That's like a process. And so I think that's kind of how

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I have to think about like God and Jesus Christ because I personally haven't ever seen them.

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So I have to relate them to things that I have seen. And so with like this scenario,

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I believe that like Jesus Christ does come and save us and care for us and help us like get back on our feet.

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That's also like kind of the goal that we need to.

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But do you think, and saved from your sin.

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So what I'm saying is the Bible clearly defines faith that saves us alone from hell is our faith in Christ, not anything else.

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So there was Judaizers saying at circumcision, you have to be circumcised and believe in order to be saved.

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And the council, Jerusalem council comes together and says, no, no, it is clearly by faith in Jesus Christ alone that you are saved from sin, receive the gift of eternal life.

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That is it. So what I'm saying is, is the scriptures over and over.

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You're talking about like examples to look at. We have many examples in scripture that's in the book of Acts and also in relations where it's like, let's add something to faith for our salvation.

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People coming in and saying that and they're like, no, no, no, no, no. If somebody comes in and adds anything, tells you anything to add, they should be accursed and eternally separated from God because the scriptures are so clear on being saved by grace through faith alone.

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And they want to continually knock that in your head through Romans, through Acts, throughout the

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Bible, through relations. I just feel like, sorry. No, it's okay. Go ahead. I just feel like that's so absent.

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I feel like there's a lot more gray areas that we have to take into account.

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That's so like, so absolute. And I feel like God does look at those gray areas a little bit more.

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Give me an example. Because we are talking about something big like salvation.

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We're not talking about like, you know, what I do in living out my faith for salvation in his scriptures, in his

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Bible. You define how someone is saved and how they are.

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I think, yes, he's able to define that. But I think he also is a

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God. Maybe he has these definitions. And maybe we don't understand everything that he's put into us into heaven.

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So I guess if I demonstrated from the Bible, multiple scriptures, different places, different writers,

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Jesus' words, Paul's words, the Apostle Paul. If I demonstrated to you over and over that we're saved by grace, through faith alone, no words involved, nothing we can do to be saved, our works are but filthy rags.

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Would that be enough to persuade you and say God is intelligent enough to clearly communicate how one is saved, how one is not saved?

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And he wants us to know that. Front pocket. Front pocket on the back.

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Is it necessary to be saved before we're good? We're good as a fruit of our salvation.

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So we do good works as a result. Right? So God loved us so much that he gave his life for us.

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Right? That is justification, salvation through faith. Right?

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That's the roots in the ground. That's the tree growing up out of the ground. Right? And the result of that, the fruit of being saved, having a regenerate heart, being saved by grace, is that we do good works unto others.

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It is not what saves us, but it is a result of being saved. And to kind of piggyback off that point,

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I don't know if you guys have the Gospel Library app, but if you want to look it up, in Isaiah 64 6, what

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God says about our righteousness, our good works, it actually says that they're filthy rags to God.

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That's how he regards them. But in the Hebrew, it's actually a little more blunt. It says that it's like a dirty menstrual cloth.

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So in the modern vernacular, it would be like us giving a used tampon to God. That's how God regards our righteousness.

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So it's not that we engage in righteous deeds to earn credit, favor, brownie points, however you want to think about it, with God.

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And likewise, what Dusty is not saying here is the type of person who says, I believe in Jesus, but I go home and I watch pornography and I lie to my wife and I steal from people, but I say

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I'm a Christian. The Bible condemns that. They say that that is the peak of hypocrisy. And in James 2, where it says faith without works is dead, that's the kind of person he's talking about.

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The people who are all talk, no walk. Does that make sense? So when we delineate how works matter, the first thing you have to understand is they don't matter at all in terms of being reconciled with God.

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Because right now, if you guys aren't in Christ, you don't have peace. So to maybe solidify the point, if both of you, you know,

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God forbid, got hit by a car on your way home and you guys stood before God, could you say with full confidence right now you have 100 % forgiveness for all the sin in your life?

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All of it. How about you? Why not? I guess.

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Does that concern you? That is an interesting point.

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I feel like you're saying Christ does forgive all sins.

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Right. What it actually says in Romans is that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

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And so the person of who Christ is, is really important. Because if we get who

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Christ is wrong, then the solution to our sin, which ultimately, like Dusty's been saying, is peace with God.

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So it's the judge basically taking his robe off. He writes a check, completely pays your fine, takes care of your past sin, your present sin, and the sin you haven't even committed yet.

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But that you will commit until the day you die. That's the beauty of what grace actually is.

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And what's different about this is that grace is defined as an enabling power to help you obey the commandments.

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But the problem is you've already broken the commandments. So renewing your covenants on Sunday during sacrament, really you guys aren't renewing anything because you never kept it to begin with.

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Right? So I've heard the analogy that it's like fire insurance kind of thing. You're renewing your premium.

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That's not how grace works. What it says in the Bible and Ephesians is that it's literally a down deposit.

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You are sealed to the Holy Spirit, and it's a one -time transaction. And it is so powerful and so sufficient, it takes care of everything, including the stuff that you guys haven't even committed yet.

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So all the secret sin and your heart and your mind, all the stuff nobody sees, nobody knows about,

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God knows. But his grace is so amazing that he pays for all of it. But you have to have the right Christ.

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Does that make sense? The Bible says where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. That means it's continually covered.

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Now, that's not a license to continue to sin. After that says, shall I go on sinning so that grace may abound?

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Certainly not. Right? But the good news and the peace of the gospel message is that Jesus said it is finished on the cross.

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That is fully satisfying for the wrath of God placed on the

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Son who our faith in him is how we are saved. Nothing else required.

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And that is a peaceful message, right? That's like, man, when you said

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I stand before God, I don't know. I know. Not because I think so, but because of what the scriptures say.

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That the wrath of God was poured out upon Jesus for his people and through faith in him is how

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I'm saved. Once saved, always saved. But Jesus, God will lose none, it says.

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None of his sheep. His sheep will know his voice and they will follow him and he will lose none.

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And that's the good news of the gospel message that is consistent with scripture. One, that you're not hearing.

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And that is why there isn't that peace, right? It's like, I don't know, when I stand before God, hopefully

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I go to heaven. That's not true peace. That's not the peace that comes with trusting in Jesus.

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That is possible peace. Plus all of my works. And that's why

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I don't want y 'all to have that extra yoke on your shoulders. If the scriptures say, my yoke is light, my burden is light.

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It's because of what Jesus did. He carried that yoke. He carried that burden. And it's through faith in him that you can be saved apart from your works.

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And I hope that that message permeates with you enough and God reveals to you enough that you would come into that true faith and that true peace which is not being taught to you.

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What you're saying is definitely. Like, if I repeat it, basically you're saying

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Christ has saved all of us. Well, to clarify, we're saying

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Christ saves those who place their trust in him. But how that actually works is it goes beyond simply saying

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I believe in Christ and that's all there is to it. Because there are people who have a lot of false ideas about who

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Christ actually is. For example, there's a guy in Siberia. His name is Vissarion. He literally claims he's

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Jesus reincarnated on the earth. He's written books and stuff. He claims he's God in the flesh.

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But you and I, I think we would be able to fist bump each other and be like, that dude's not Jesus. He's not speaking according to the

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Bible. That's total nonsense. But in the same way that he's not Jesus, the

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Jesus that Joseph Smith presented to the world by saying he was an eternally God, he's the brother of Lucifer, and he presented a plan at the council of the gods in the preexistence, the

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Bible knows nothing about that because it teaches in John 1 verse 3 that Jesus created everything that ever came into being.

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So logically, that would include our spirits, matter, Satan, heaven, earth, everything else.

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So immediately, we recognize you guys say words like Jesus, faith, grace, salvation, and we have a lot of similarity in the meaning and the application.

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But if you have Jesus wrong, the message we just gave to you won't make sense. And that's why

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I'm bringing it up. So the Jesus of the Bible is the creator of everyone. The point of this life is not to pursue exaltation because we're not going to be able to become gods and goddesses someday.

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It's just not going to happen. Isaiah 43 .10 says it's impossible. It says, Before me there were no gods formed, neither shall there be after me.

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But Joseph said, There were gods formed before God, and you can become one someday.

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So right away, we have a contradiction in terms of who God is and how he gets saved. So the issue is we want the both of you to have real forgiveness, real peace with God.

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But if you don't know who God is, you're not going to be able to have that. Maybe you'll get a false idea or like a false feeling that you have peace with him.

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But really, you need to know who God is so you can understand how you get that peace. Does that make sense? And when he referenced

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John 1, the verses in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the

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Word was God. Speaking of Jesus, right? This is the gospel message of Christ, right?

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And it says later that all things were created through him and for him, right? So we're talking about God, the eternal

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God, Jesus, through faith in him is how one is saved eternally, always, once and for all, peace with God.

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So we're presenting you with some contradictions, right? And that's important to us because wrong gospel, wrong

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Jesus, wrong God, that's a faith that cannot save, right?

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You have to have God right, you have to have salvation right. If you have those two things wrong, you have a faith that cannot save.

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You may think that you're saved, but how do we check these things?

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How do we check right God, right gospel message? Well, the Word of God, like you said, when we first started talking the

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Bible, and all we're quoting to you, we're not adding things to it, we're not quoting doctrines of covenant, we're not talking about the prophets, we're saying the

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Word of God is clear. The Holy Bible is clear on who God is and how you are saved.

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And we would say it's clear in the same way that when God says thou shall not lie, that that's clear just like there were no gods before God and you can't become one one day.

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We would say that both are equally clear because God is not a God of confusion, but of peace, right?

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And so the call of the gospel from Christians like us is to repent and believe. And you might say, well,

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I've already done that. And I would say practically for faithful, sincere Mormons like yourselves, really what that would mean is you would have to abandon the idea of God, Jesus, salvation, grace, faith, and works that the church presented to you, but they distorted the message just enough so that it seems to be

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Christian. It seems to have substance and power. But at the end of the day, it's out of alignment with God's Word and there's not a way to reconcile it because it's another message.

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And Paul and Jesus, both of them, they warned the early church about false Christ that would come in and deceive people.

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In Matthew 24, 2 Corinthians 11, there were warnings of false Christ. Now, that doesn't mean that they're literally walking around like that guy

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Vissarion, although he's sort of an exception, right? What it means is there's a lot of false teachings about Christ and belief in them leads people to hell.

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So when we say we love you enough to be firm and say repent and believe, which means you have to abandon your

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Mormonism, and I understand that that's a huge ask because if you guys have family like I did on my mom's side where everybody's

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Mormon, everyone you grew up around was Mormon, you might lose friendships, you might be disowned by your family, you might lose job opportunities.

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It's a huge cost, right? It's a big ask. But Jesus says, you know, if you will not take up your cross and follow me, you're not worthy of me.

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He also says, if you love mother or father more than me, you're not worthy of me. If you love brother or sister more than me, you're not worthy of me.

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So we would challenge you guys, you know, count the cost, think about the gospel message because, look, we're not trying to like steal your faith and like ruin your night.

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We're saying we want you guys both to have the peace that surpasses all understanding so that if your time is up tonight and you meet

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God, that all you have to do is hide in the blood of Christ and say, I know

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I'm not worthy, He paid the price for me, and I am forgiven because of Him. And that's it.

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There's no renewing of covenants. There's no enduring to the end. There's none of that. You can cast all of that away, but that's the call of the gospel is there's a tradeoff.

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You have to be willing to let go of what you currently have so that you can grab on to the true Christ because, look, you know, you got a backpack on, think about skydiving, right?

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We're all going to die, right? We're not going to make it. And unless you put on the

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Lord Jesus Christ as your parachute for the jump to come, you're not going to make it, right? And that's why we also are saying that if you'd like someone to continually talk with you, if you have questions, if you want to get connected, because we know it's a big deal, right?

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We're talking about your whole family makeup possibly, all of your friends, all of these things.

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But the Bible also says, what good is it for a man to profit the whole world but lose his soul?

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So all of those relationships, all of those things, I'm not saying that they're not important, but in comparison to the gospel message of how you are saved, not ending up in eternity in hell, but in comparison, not comparable, because we're talking about your eternity.

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So that's why we say with this message, what questions, how can we help you continue to walk through this?

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Can we change contact information? Because I understand it's more than just a conversation on the sidewalk and then a walk away and go back to my life.

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It's like, it's going to require more. If you take this, check it out, it has some scripture references, some of which he explicitly referenced.

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Check it out, see if what we're telling you is actually legit. Would you want to trade some information, contact, or find out more about our church?

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I don't know. I can give you a contact. Yeah, this is a contact, this goes directly to our pastor, and this is also a phone number.

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But yeah, I understand it's a lot to take in, but again, this is the most important message, and this is why we're giving up our time to be here to speak with people in an uncomfortable conversation, but God requires it, right?

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He says, you love me, you'll obey my commands, you'll go and make disciples, and that's what we're trying to do, is to share the truth.

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And it's not so that you'll join our church and tithe and do all the things. It's so that you'll have right standing before a holy

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God. The Bible says you can go to directly for your faith in Christ and pray to and speak to and have trust in salvation, and you don't need to add anything, you don't need to, whatever you need to do in the temple, none of that.

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It's about, it's your relationship with Christ, and then there are some things that we can talk about, you know, about following Christ, and being in a church of believers, and studying the scriptures, and praying, and those things.

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But it's not even specifically like, we want you guys to be members of our church, I want you to hear the true message of the gospel, so that you'll have salvation and faith in Christ.

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You guys have been great to talk to. My name's Craig. Hayden. Good to meet you,

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Hayden. Craig. Craig. Craig. Nice to meet you. Good to meet you. Yeah. Thanks for talking with us, appreciate you.