July 22, 2016 Show with Jason Wallace on “Is the Church of Latter-Day Saints the Church of Jesus Christ? Mormons & their New Efforts on Ecumenism”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron wishing you all a happy Friday on this 22nd day of August of July 2016 and the reason

I said August is because I was staring at my calendar at the date where Todd Friel is going to be our guest on August 15th to discuss a book that I obviously need to read badly, stressed out, a practical biblical approach to anxiety and I am going through a very stressful day today.

In fact, as you know if you're listening, you heard a different rerun starting at four o 'clock and then we kicked in eight minutes later because there was a technical difficulty with the overseas server or something at Leading Edge Radio Network and we were not being permitted access to the live streaming for some reason that we don't know.

I don't know if anybody really knows but we are so thankful that the Lord provided this opportunity for the program to take place today even in spite of that technical issue in the beginning.

But we have back on the program my friend Pastor Jason Wallace who is pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, Utah.

It is a congregation in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and we are going to be discussing more of the issues that separate the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints from genuine Christianity. We began this topic earlier in the month and there was so much to cover.

In fact, I know we couldn't even cover, we wouldn't even scratch the surface after today's program.

There's so many things, there's so many reasons why Mormonism is not Christianity that we could go on and on.

In fact, it could be a regular program on that one subject. But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Jason Wallace.

Chris, great privilege to be back with you. And for those of our listeners who are discovering you for the first time, let our listeners know about the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church in general and also about Christ Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Well the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is a remnant of Bible -believing Presbyterians.

We've had a separate existence from the mainline for 80 years now. Professors at Princeton Seminary tried to take a stand for the historic faith and were not welcome.

I think we were given the Left Foot of Christian Fellowship back in 1936 for trying to take a stand for things such as the authority of the

Bible, the virgin birth, physical resurrection. And so they started the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We came out of the Northern Church. I'm from Georgia originally, but in God's sense of humor,

I ended up with the Yankees. We have fraternal relations with the larger

Presbyterian Church in America, which is the denomination of D. James Kennedy and R .C.

Sproul and some of the folks that folks may know better than the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church. But basically we believe the Bible is our only invaluable rule of faith and practice.

We're centered by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Amen, amen.

And my co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor, is a member of the PCA, Presbyterian Church in America, and I know that there's a lot of fellowship between those denominations, and I myself for those of you who don't know, am a

Reformed Baptist. So today I'm in the minority. It seems that Reverend Buzz and I go back and forth on who's the minority and who's the majority on the show.

So today I'm outnumbered, but the things that we have in common far outweigh anything else.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we would love to hear especially from Mormons.

I would love to hear from a Mormon if they are listening. And if you feel more comfortable remaining anonymous, if that's the case, that's fine as well.

But otherwise, please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And we hope to hear from you. Once again, the email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Well, we covered a lot of things last time you were on about Mormonism, and we aired some clips from some excerpts of the video that you have created, the documentary that you have created that Reverend Buzz Taylor and I had the privilege of participating in by doing some of the narration in the voices of famous Mormons, both those from the past, from the origins of the cult all the way up to the more modern -day apostles and prophets.

And tell us about this video again for those of our listeners who haven't heard you on the program and they are hearing this information about this video for the very first time.

Well, we've actually put together two videos, as I've described. The big one that I discussed with you before is a nearly two -hour outreach to Mormons called

An Earnest Plea to Latter -day Saints, and it tries to navigate the minefield.

Mormons have developed a storyline that makes it very difficult to reach them with any kind of criticism, and they've redefined biblical terms so much that many times people are frustrated in speaking with them because they think that they're agreeing with them, and they know that something's wrong, but they can't get to the heart of it in terms of, you know, they talk about God, they talk about Jesus, they talk about grace, but the reality is they've redefined all those terms, and so we've spent the first 45 minutes dealing with lies from history that the

Mormon church has told, and then the last hour and 15 minutes dealing with three lies compared to the

Bible. The three lies are that God is an exalted man, Adam said that man might be, and that the

LDS church preaches the restored gospel. But it's basically a challenge.

The Presbyterians are the only ones who get singled out. All churches are considered wrong, but Presbyterians get singled out.

In the Mormon scriptures, Joseph Smith tells his mother, I've learned from myself that Presbyterianism is not true, and so we basically are responding to that and showing that it's not

Presbyterianism, but Mormonism that's untrue. And then we followed that video up.

It's amazing to me how something so important people would consider an hour and 58 minutes to be too long to spend their time on, but we just did a 30 -minute video called

The God of Brigham Young, and in that we basically lay out his teachings about Adam being our

God and the only God with whom we have to do. That he was already a God when he came to this earth, and he took a body to himself and supposedly fell for us, and he's the physical father of Jesus.

And the reality is that the modern Mormon church has to claim their authority through Brigham Young, but they've disowned what he taught was his way of salvation, what he called the eternal law of God in terms of wax, and even throws out what he calls his

God. Yeah, the difficulty with speaking with people, not only of other religions, but even people who profess to be

Christian within evangelicalism, and perhaps are Christian, but have aberrant views or views that you just can clearly see that are not scriptural, things that you have come to learn are an error.

It is very difficult in a day and age of political correctness to bring these things up, because people automatically assume right out of the gate that you are arrogant, proud, that you are a bigot, that you have hate in your heart.

It's amazing to me how people, some that I know very well and love, are getting involved into very heated discussions about politics with me, and yet they think it's all right for them to judge my views on politics, and yet it is absolutely verboten for me to say anything critical about their religion or anyone else's.

Isn't it interesting how you can, in this culture, in fact it's expected of you, to have some kind of a side or a view when it comes to the political arena, but don't you dare begin to speak exclusively or in exclusive terms when it comes to Jesus Christ and your faith?

That's out of the question. Do you find this a challenge in your own life,

Pastor? Oh, most definitely. I received an email today in response to the video, the big video, where this guy was just going on railing about why we act like Christians, why can't we just get along because the world's falling apart.

I think I've actually got it here. He says, all Christian churches need to put aside their differences and unite, to some degree at least.

We are headed for hard times, and the world will make enemies and criminals of us all. Is this a time to be at each other's throats for doctrinal differences?

We cannot afford to bicker with each other anymore about who is right or wrong. We are all flawed, and we are, in capital letters, stupid to waste our time in this age pointing out each other's problems or arguing over someone's mistake or misquote, and he goes on.

And the thing that's interesting is he doesn't even recognize that he is pointing out something he believes is a mistake that you are committing.

Yeah, well, this is actually how we have to navigate the minefield of the first part of the video.

Mormons consider themselves victims all through history, but if anyone challenges anything they say, they say, we never attack anyone.

We never speak negatively of other churches. And of course, the reality is they do it all the time, but that doesn't count.

Now, when you say they do it all the time, as we were discussing, we began in our discussion last time we were doing an interview on the same subject, they have changed their public approach to evangelism, if they would even call it that, or even just telling the public about who they are and what they believe and what they're about.

And as I said, I bumped into those Mormon missionaries in the street who said to me, you've probably heard that we think that we're the only true church, but that's not true.

We're just another Christian denomination, just like you are. And that seems to be a 180 degree shift from the present approach.

It's a public relations campaign that they have. But are you saying that when they still criticize and even condemn other beliefs, is this something that they're doing privately?

Or I remember you were saying in the video that missionaries are doing it, at least overseas they are.

Where is this taking place, this criticizing of other belief systems?

Well, the primary focus of that is in the missionary discussions. Missionaries are going all over the world and they're sharing the first vision in which

Joseph Smith says that he went into a grove of trees in 1820 and asked God what church he should join, and God appears and answers him and says he should join none of them, because they're all wrong.

All their professors are corrupt and all their creeds are an abomination in his sight. Now, we have the exact same creed that Presbyterians had back then.

But when I say, so you believe my confession of faith is an abomination in the sight of God, they will say, well, no, no.

They'll dance all around it. But if you press them, it's like, well, we're just telling you what

God said. But if you respond and say that Mormonism is wrong, then you're attacking.

Yeah. Well, just to give a summary of what some of our listeners or perhaps many of our listeners have missed from our last interview, let's give a summary on how the

Church of Jesus Christ of Saints or the Mormons, as they are more commonly known, how they are in a polar opposite position to the

Bible -believing faith of Christianity that we and those who have historically followed the teachings of the

Reformers and so on, which is the teaching of the Scripture. How is this 180 degrees opposite?

I know that in one very serious and radical way is that they are not monotheistic, even though they, on earth, on this planet,

Mormons are praying to one God, but they believe in an infinite number of gods.

That's how they, I think, get around the charge that they are polytheists. If you could explain that.

Sure. Basically, Mormonism is closer to a Canaanite fertility cult than it is to biblical

Christianity. Despite all the language and trappings, the reality is they believe that God is a man who, through obedience to law, proves his worthiness to become a god.

Their view of a god is basically like Thor or Superman.

He is a super powerful man, but he is part of the universe.

He doesn't transcend it. They believe that matter is eternal and intelligences are eternal.

Through a process of evolution, of moving from eternal intelligences to becoming spirit children of Elohim, to getting bodies of our own, proving our own worthiness, and becoming gods ourselves, we are evolving up this chain of being within this universe.

The idea that God created all things from nothing, the idea that God transcends his creation, that he even created everything, is 180 degrees opposite of Mormonism.

Yes, so they are not creationists, as some might think, because they have much in agreement in regards to morality and other things with Bible -believing

Christians. Many people really just, in ignorance, think they're just another denomination.

The word Jesus Christ is in the name of their religion, so they just think, and they read the

Bible and so on, so they just think they're just one of us, but that's one thing that they are not.

I'm sorry, I was flashing back to last night's Republican convention.

A lot of people think if you vote Republican, you must be Christian. Wait a minute,

I missed what you just said. What was that? I was flashing back to the founder, one of the founders of PayPal, and it's like, you know, if he votes

Republican, does that make him a Christian too? Right, well apparently it doesn't at all challenge

Donald Trump's insistence that he's a conservative. I thought that that was a very odd choice, that here he is trying to convince everybody he's a conservative and then he does this, but actually

I guess it's because he's already won the primary, so now he's trying to Hillary's supporters to jump ship, but anyway it's just enough.

What you're saying then is that the Mormons have no real doctrine of creation, that everything was eternal already, and that God is just part of that.

Well he, no I don't think they believe God, well yeah. They don't even try to account for beginning, they just say that, what do you say, intelligences and the universe are eternal?

Yes. And don't they say he reorganized matter? Isn't that why we have trees and mountains and people and animals?

Yeah, the teaching now, you have to understand the second video we just did,

Brigham Young inserted Adam into this place and said that Adam was the one who reorganized everything and created this earth and is the father of us all.

That, when Brigham died after teaching it for 20 plus years, they got rid of that and went back to saying that Heavenly Father did that.

Oh really? Huh. Yeah, so I mean they don't even have the same God, I mean the question we start the new video with, is it important for which

God a prophet claims to speak? And then we go on to say the Bible says it does.

Well when you're saying that part of the reorganizing matter story that they have went from being

Adam to Father God, was Brigham Young speaking clearly as a prophet when he said it was

Adam, just like he did on the issues that we were discussing last time about the black race being cursed?

Oh yeah, he said it was a revelation from God. He taught it in general conference, he told people that it would be a matter of their salvation or damnation.

He incorporated it into the lecture before the veil when they opened the

St. George Temple. And I mean he was as clear as he could be.

The Mormons have developed this theory to basically be able to dismiss all the substance of what

Brigham taught while claiming he's still a prophet. They claim that that's not scripture and yet Brigham said any sermon that I have an opportunity to look over is as good as scripture.

And it's just amazing how they think that they can rewrite history like this.

I guess they just don't believe anybody's going to do any investigation. I think that's a safe bet in our generation for a whole lot of people.

Well, the other polar opposite views would be that Jesus Christ in their view is a spirit brother of Lucifer, right?

Yeah, that carries more traction with Christians than it does with Mormons.

Because you need to understand that they also think that he and Lucifer are spirit brothers as well.

So there's a young lady that's done a defensive Mormonism series on YouTube and I forget how she phrased it, it was really corny, but she said, so do we believe that Satan is our spirit brother?

Yeah, but sort of the icky kind that you don't like at family reunions or something, it was something stupid like that.

But yeah, in the video, the big video, Ernest Plato, Latter -day

Saints, we have, oh his name just escaped me, it's on the tip of my tongue, he's a professor back east and he's quoting

Orson Pratt that God, men, and angels are all of the same species.

And of course the other radical difference would be that the virgin birth is not really true because Mary, the mother of Jesus, had sexual relationships with Elohim?

Yes, that's stated really explicitly and we have that in the video.

Orson Pratt went so far as to say that he married, that Elohim married

Mary. Wow, that is interesting.

Oh my goodness, did Joseph know about that? Yeah, because it's interesting that they believe in polygamy, but it's always the male that has the multiple wives, not more than one person sharing a woman.

Well, they never held to that either. Joseph was sealed not only for eternity, but for time, meaning present reality, to at least 11 women who had living husbands.

Here's the quote from Orson Pratt, he's one of the original 12 apostles. He said,

God, the father of our spirits, became the father of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh. The fleshy body of Jesus required a mother as well as a father.

Therefore, the father and mother of Jesus, according to the flesh, must have been associated together in the capacity of husband and wife.

Hence, the Virgin Mary must have, for the time being, the lawful wife of God the

Father. He had a lawful right to overshadow the Virgin Mary in the capacity of a husband and beget a son.

Although she was a spouse to another, for the law which he gave to govern men and women was not intended to govern himself or to prescribe rules for his own conduct.

Wow. Well, I'm going to be playing some of the clips from the video and tell our listeners the name of this documentary that you have created.

We've done two. The big one is an earnest plea to Latter -day Saints, and that basically deals with history, but it's a presentation of the gospel.

It's an hour and 58 minutes. The newer video is the God of Brigham Young, which is focused on Brigham Young's teaching about who

God is. He said that Adam is our God, the only God with whom we have to do.

We show his teaching. We show how the

Mormon leadership has lied about that teaching and how the internet has now made it more clear that this is not just something that's been misquoted and how they're dealing with it now.

Basically, it's meant as a teaser for the big video. All right, well, I'm going to be playing a clip of something that was said by Sidney Rigdon, and he'll explain after we hear the clip.

Chris, before you play that, I think context is helpful here.

Mormons will often get up and say in very solemn tones, we're the only church that's ever had an extermination order issued against us.

You'll hear it from Glenn Beck. You'll hear it from general authorities. You'll hear it over and over and over.

What they ignore is that it was the Mormons who first threatened non -Mormons with extermination, and this is the second highest ranking.

This is the man just below Joseph Smith giving this oration.

Okay, here we go. We take God and all the holy angels to witness this day that we warn all men in the name of Jesus Christ to come on us no more forever.

For from this hour we will bear it no more. Our rights shall no more be trampled on with impunity.

The man or the set of men who attempts it does so at the expense of their lives, and that mob that comes on us to disturb us, it shall be between us and them a war of extermination.

For we will follow them till the last drop of their blood is spilled, or else they will have to exterminate us.

For we will carry the seed of war to their own houses and their own families, and one party or the other shall be utterly destroyed.

Remember it then, all men. Wow. Now was this before the

Mountain Meadows Massacre took place or was it after? Oh yeah, this is actually 19 years before the

Mountain Meadows Massacre. This is back in Missouri. Wow. The Mormons, we have clips showing how the

Mormon defenders, there's a professor from BYU that we have saying that the saints were not always wise in their dealings.

The reality is the Mormons were a doomsday cult and they were telling people that there was a judgment coming on the whole world very, very soon.

There's reason to believe they were looking towards 1890, but they were caught up in this whole kind of thinking that you see with William Miller and the

Adventists and things like this, but their spin on it was that the

American Indians were lost tribes of Israel and God was going to raise them up to slaughter all the

Gentiles. Here's the quote to give you context.

This is given in the same year by Parley Pratt, who was one of the 12 apostles.

He said, this is in response to a criticism that had been offered by Mr.

Sunderland. He says, all who will not hearken to the Book of Mormon shall be cut off from among the people.

And that too in the day it comes forth to the Gentiles and is rejected by them. And not only does this page set the time for the overthrow of our government and all other

Gentile governments on the American continent, but the way and means of this utter destruction are clearly foretold.

Namely, the remnant of Jacob, he's referring to the Indians, will go through among the Gentiles and Mormons are actually part of that and tear them in pieces like a lion among the fox of sheep.

Their hand shall be lifted up upon their adversaries and all their enemies shall be cut off.

This destruction includes an utter overthrow and desolation of all our cities, sports, and strongholds, an entire annihilation of our race, except such as embrace the covenant and are numbered with Israel.

Now, Mr. Sunderland, you have something definite and tangible, the time, the manner, the means, the names, the dates.

And I will state as a prophecy that there will not be an unbelieving

Gentile upon this continent 50 years hence. And if they are not greatly scourged and in a great measure overthrown within five or 10 years from this date, then the

Book of Mormon will have proved itself false. Wow. We're going to go to a break right now and we'll be hearing some more clips after we return.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Chris Arnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Whether you are a Christian, a Mormon, a Swedenborginist, an atheist, an agnostic, we would just love to hear from you with your questions when we return.

That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Jason Wallace and more.

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Chris Arnsin, and if you just tuned in to Iron Sharpens Iron, our guest today is Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, and he is discussing today his

DVD, or should I say his documentary, which is available free of charge on the internet.

It is called, what is the actual title of the documentary? An Earnest Plea to Latter -Day

Saints. An Earnest Plea to Latter -Day Saints, and the URL that you can watch it on is lds .video,

lds, which stands for Latter -Day Saints, dot video, lds .video, and before the break we heard a clip of a narration that was directly from the words of Sidney Rigdon, who was a high -ranking official in the

Mormon Church at that time in the 19th century. Would he have been one of the original group that Joseph Smith gathered around him?

Oh yes, very quickly after the Book of Mormon was published, there are people who speculate that he actually was involved in this creation.

There's nothing to definitively prove that. Rigdon was a

Campbellite pastor of a church in Kirtland, Ohio, and he had broken with Alexander Campbell, and when he reads the

Book of Mormon, basically brings his whole congregation in, and so fairly quickly Smith leaves western

New York and heads over to Kirtland, which is not far outside Cleveland in Ohio.

And did he remain with this cult until the very end, or did he ever break away and start his own group or anything like that?

He stayed as long as Smith was alive. There was a battle between him and Brigham Young for leadership after Smith's death, and so Brigham takes a large chunk of the group and heads west to Utah, ultimately.

But Rigdon tried to start his own group, and I forget how it all panned out.

Yeah, because I was almost certain that there's still a tiny sect of people who claim the

Book of Mormon that follows him as their leader from the past, obviously.

I'm not sure. There are a bunch of splinter groups out there that look to the

Book of Mormon. There's over 200 different groups. I mean, you'll hear sometimes about Warren Jeffs, the fundamentalist

LDS who still practiced polygamy, and there's at least 200 different groups out there today, and there have been others.

Sidney Rigdon, in 1844, he started the

Church of Jesus Christ of the Children of Zion, and that was in 1844, and apparently it dissolved in 1847.

And then there's some other groups that look through Rigdon. It looks like the

Church of Jesus Christ of Bickertonites. I think that's where Alice Cooper's family comes from.

I think that's what Alice Cooper grew up in. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, I think he was one of the

Bickertonite groups. There's three different ones I'm seeing here. Well, it worked out well for him.

There's only about 12 ,000 of the Bickertonites still left. Yeah, and I know that there's some

Strangite group. Oh yeah, there's a whole bunch of different ones.

Well, let me go to another clip, and maybe you could set this up just like you did the other one. This is a clip with a narration from the words of Dudley Leavitt.

Yeah, Dudley Leavitt was the, I think, great -grandfather of Mike Leavitt, who was our governor just a few years ago here in Utah.

He's describing after the Mountain Menace massacre, the Mormons killed over 120, maybe over 140 men, women, and children in cold blood, and they just left their bodies out there.

When the rumors started circulating, they tried to blame the Indians. There were some California troops that came in.

First, it was the U .S. Army came in, but then they were relieved by some California militia. They went down there, and they found the bones.

They gathered them all up, and they buried them under a heap of stones, and they put a cross on top, and burned into it,

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I have repaid. Well, a couple years after that,

Brigham Young is making a tour of the area, and Dudley Leavitt is describing what happens when he sees the monument to these people who were killed by Mormons.

Okay, here we go. This is Mormon Dudley Leavitt. I was with a group of elders that went out with President Young to visit the spot in the spring of 61.

The soldiers had put up a monument, and on top of that, a wooden cross, with the words burned into it,

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay. Brother Brigham read that to himself and studied it for a while, and then he read it out loud.

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I have repaid. He didn't say another word.

He didn't give an order. He just lifted his right arm to the square, and in five minutes, there wasn't one stone left upon another.

He didn't have to tell us what he wanted done. We understood. Yeah, that's pretty creepy, huh?

Yeah. This next clip is by Joseph Fielding Smith, and of course, these are modern -day individuals recording this, for those of you listening.

By the way, this is an acquaintance of both of ours, Lasseur Bradley, who has a voiceover.

Yes, he has a very unmistakable voice. You want to see? You want to set this clip up?

I actually don't remember offhand the context of this one. And Joseph Fielding Smith, is that Joseph Smith?

Is that the Joseph Smith? No, this is another part of the

Smith family. His father was Joseph F. Smith. I think they were cousins or something like that.

Once I hear the quote, I'll know the context, but when I sent it to you, I didn't look up the context.

Okay, well, here we go. I firmly believe that there will be some of that generation who were living when this revelation was given, who shall be living when this temple is reared.

I have full confidence in the word of the Lord, and that it shall not fail.

If you would like to describe that or explain that. Sure. This is in the section where we're dealing with Mormon claims to fulfill prophecy.

The one claim that Mormons all try to hold on to is that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God because he foretold the

Civil War starting in South Carolina. Now, the reality is, if you read what he actually wrote about it, he was describing the nullification crisis that was taking place at the time.

And the issues didn't go away. The Civil War did come, but it didn't fulfill what he said.

He said it was going to make the end of all nations. It tied into this whole destruction of the whole world that we referred to earlier from Parley Pride and Sidney Rigdon.

We go through and answer their claims of answered, of fulfilled prophecy.

Then we show them another prophecy that was made at exactly the same time, where Joseph Smith said that in that generation, they were going to build a temple in Independence, Missouri.

And for a hundred years, nearly, Mormon apostles, general authorities, they repeatedly said that temple would be built before that generation, then living, passed away.

And it's 187 years later, and it hasn't been built. And now we have,

I don't know who, what the first name is, Robinson. Who is Robinson? This is from the second video.

Robinson's a professor down at Brigham Young University. And we're giving his response that they can't really claim anymore that Brigham Young was misquoted.

We have admissions from Leonard Arrington in another quote that 15 % of Brigham Young's sermons on the

Godhead included this Adam -God teaching. And so they're just trying to spin it.

What do you make of your prophet not knowing who God is, according to your current prophet?

And I'm assuming this is a real clip of this professor. No, this is from a modern book.

We couldn't find it on audio. Okay. There is an audio book, but it was read by someone else.

Okay. Well, here he is. During the latter half of the 19th century,

Brigham Young made some remarks about the relationship between Adam and God that the saints have never been able to understand the reported statements conflict with LDS teachings before and after Brigham Young, as well as with statements of president

Young himself during the same period of time. So how do Latter -day

Saints deal with the phenomena? We don't, we simply set it aside.

It is an anomaly on occasion. My colleagues and I at University have tried to figure out what

Brigham Young might have actually said or what it might have met, but the attempts have always failed.

The reported statements simply do not compute. We cannot make sense out of them.

This is not a matter of believing it or disbelieving it. We simply don't know what it is.

If Brigham Young were here, we could ask him what he actually said and what he meant by it, but he's not here.

And even expert students of his thought are left to wonder whether he was misquoted, whether he meant to say one thing and actually said another, whether he was somehow joking with or testing the saints or whether some vital element that would make sense out of the reports has been omitted.

Wow. Uh, you want to follow up with any, uh, description of that? Sure. I mean, the

Mormon church claims to be the restoration of the one true church on the earth.

And contrary to what your missionaries are telling you that you mentioned before, I can show you modern clips of their general authorities getting up and saying, we are the only true and living church on the face of the earth.

I mean, it is, and yet they claim that they were answering all the questions that were dividing people back in the 19th century, like baptism, church government, things like this.

Um, what about people who die without hearing the gospel? Book of Mormon addresses all those various things.

See, we've, we've settled all your differences and yet they contradict each other. Right. Yeah. I'm sorry.

It's not just over a peripheral issue. It's over the most fundamental issue. Who is God? And we have in the video, uh, one of their apostles declaring what

Brigham Young unequivocally taught heresy. And he said that no one who believes such things is worthy of being saved.

Wow. That's interesting. Uh, and I, and I remember, uh, during the documentary, you had some very, very modern actual clips of Mormon conventions.

I don't know what the exact gathering title would be, but, uh, you had one individual very clearly identifying himself as the member of the one true church on earth.

Uh, he had, he had a foreign accent and his name escapes me right now, but, uh, probably something like that.

Okay. So, so this was to a Mormon audience. He said that even though that that's not what they're typically saying in public to the, the

Gentiles as they call us, right? Right. There's a schizophrenia where they put forward this face that we never speak negative with anyone.

We're, we tell everybody, bring all the truth you have. And we're just add to it. And you know, we're Christians too.

And yet it's as if Brigham Young and Joseph Smith died yesterday. On the other hand, they are the only true and living church.

They are the restored church and they have the living prophet. And though they, you may have to push them a little bit.

A whole lot of Mormons will tell you if you press them that we're, we're part of the church of Satan, but they're not speaking negatively of us.

It is interesting that unlike Jehovah's witnesses, uh, who will not stick around if you are praying because they believe you're praying to Satan, uh,

Mormons will invite you to pray. They are happy for you to even lead in a prayer.

That's kind of odd, isn't it? Yeah, well, they try to win and they try to be very winsome.

Um, there was a Mormon missionary I know of that he tried to help a white

Baptist pastor in Florida and the pastor just grabbed hold of him, gave him a bear hug and prayed over him that God would remove the scales from his eyes and show him the truth about Jesus.

And the kid ended up coming to faith. Really? Yeah. Wow. Cause if you recall, uh, in my encounter a few months ago with some young Mormons in the streets of Carlisle here,

I prayed and I prayed that the Lord would open their blind eyes and open, unstop their deaf ears and give them new hearts, remove their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh so that they can see that they are trapped in a lie and so that they can truly embrace the, the genuine

Christ of the scriptures and so on. And when I finished praying, they all said, amen, which was strange to me, but they did.

I didn't have the, uh, ending like your friend did. Uh, they didn't, uh, fall to their knees and cry out for, for repentance and Christians.

It wasn't the same day. Oh, okay. Um, I'm going to play,

I'm assuming this is Lorenzo snow. It says snow. So I'm assuming this is actually, um,

I believe his sister. It's okay. This is a song Mormons will often claim that Brigham Young was misquoted and they ignore how many times he taught this idea that Adam is our

God. His, his wife actually wrote a hymn that was incorporated into the church.

Hymnal celebrating Adam is our God. You mean Lorenzo snow's wife? No. Um, no.

Brigham Young's wife. Oh, okay. Who was, who was a snow by birth? Who?

I'm sorry. Say that again. It was a what? She, Eliza snow was a, was born a snow.

Oh, but she was one of Brigham Young's. Oh, I see. Okay. And, uh, all right.

Well, let me, uh, play, uh, and just to, just so people know who I was talking about, he was the one Lorenzo snow had that famous quote, uh, uh, as we are,

God once was as God is, we shall become or something to that nature. As man is now,

God once was as good man. If God is now, man may be. Yes. Okay. All righty.

Well, here is, uh, this, uh, Oh, wow.

She had a pretty voice, beautiful voice. And I'm wondering how difficult it was for her to actually sing those words.

Or was that actually a Mormon singing that? No, no Mormons don't sing that anymore.

Oh, that was actually a, a Bible church, uh, member that she said she felt like I didn't go watch her about that one.

I know the feeling. Why do you know the feeling stuff we had to read?

Oh, you mean, or, oh, you mean it's doing the, uh, the narration. Yeah. In fact, I don't know if you can, during a station break,

I don't have any of the clips that buzz narrated here. Uh, if you check your inbox, I do.

Um, well, I, I think that I just, uh, played every clip that you gave me. I did actually, there is none, there's no more.

I, let me see if it went through. And, uh, if the message was not sent because of an error,

I'll try this one more time. Okay. Yeah. Cause last time we played every one of the narrations that I recorded were primarily

Brigham Young, but there was also, I believe maybe an Orson Pratt thrown in there. Yeah.

That was actually our, our, uh, friend Bill Shishko who did that. Okay. But there was some modern, uh, president or prophet that I, or apostle that I, uh, voiced.

He was the, the one that was basic. Bruce McConkie. That's right. That's right. Bruce McConkie. Um, okay.

We, James White was actually with us for a conference this, this past week, and we had asked him to do one and we had to bump him cause in favor of the

Sidney Rigdon that you heard, I told him, I said, James, don't, don't take it as an insult.

You just don't come off as a psychopath. You just come off as an irritated

James White. All right.

Well, here is, here is, uh, a clip. Uh, if you want to set this up, this is a clip that our cohost

Reverend Buzz Taylor recorded in the voice of Herbert Kimball. Heber.

Heber. Okay. So that was not a typo, uh, Heber Kimball. And tell us about that.

Yeah. Heber Kimball was, I believe he was one of the original 12, but he was, he was one of the apostles.

And this is in response. We, we basically are trying to pit

LDS sources against one another. We have the modern people saying, Oh, we never speak negatively of other churches.

And then we show what they actually say. Okay, well, here we go. They are holy places and they will be held sacred even as Jackson County.

And there is not a man living there, but this day has the spirit of fear upon him and expects that he will have to March someday.

And to this day, no man has ventured to cultivate or build upon the temple block.

Joseph, the prophet dedicated that land and they felt the effect of that dedication and the blessings will remain and all hell cannot get it off.

And I shall yet see the day that I will go back there with brother Brigham and with thousands and millions of others.

And we will go precisely according to the dedication of the prophet of the living God. Talk to me about my having any dubiety on my mind about these things being fulfilled.

I am just as confident of it as I am, that I am called to be a savior of men and no power can hinder it.

You know, a thought just occurred to me. Can you imagine people who are tuning into iron sharpens iron later and they recognize

Reverend Buzz Taylor's voice and they're saying, see what happens when Buzz fills in as the host of iron sharpens iron in Chris's absence.

Look what kind of heresies. Follow up on that.

Yeah, I apologize. I actually confused that clip with a different one. I sent him in a bit of a hurry, but that was actually connected to the prophecy about building the temple in Independence, Missouri.

Right. And we had a friend of mine, a pastor in the Reformed Church in the

US, actually go out and take some pictures of the vacant lot where they had laid the cornerstone.

But that temple has never been built. And this is he stated this in 1857.

They kept saying it all the way up to 1931, I think it was or 1930.

Yeah, 1931 with the Joseph Fielding Smith clip we heard a few minutes ago. And this is nearly a hundred years afterwards, but they were still saying, well, there's people still alive.

We're alive now. Here we are 187 years later and it still hasn't been built. Well, you have to, the evangelicals can help out a lot here because we can keep extending the length of a generation, right?

We're good at that. Well, there's a website called fair LDS, where they try to defend

Mormonism. And they quote the dispensationalist saying, well, a generation can be 2000 years.

70 AD, there wasn't a stone left on another there. In fact, you just reminded me about something.

So perhaps we could settle something on the air for anybody who might be listening. As you know,

I was getting into a disagreement on the internet with an

Arminian or someone who was just vehemently opposed to Calvinism. And he was calling me a

Mormon and trying to equate Calvinism with Mormonism over and over and over again.

In fact, it wasn't just him. It was several people. And it was just totally bizarre because you can't get farther from Mormonism than Calvinism.

And what I was pointing out to this person, and thankfully, you eventually came in with a lot more artillery with the truth, that Mormons, the

Mormon apologists will use Arminian arguments and quote from Arminian commentaries and so on when they are debating evangelicals, don't they?

Oh, most definitely. Stephen Robinson, that we recreated the quote from him a few minutes ago, in his book,

How Wide the Divide, basically, if you want to sum up his argument, was that the only people who should have problems with Mormons are

Calvinists. And the implication wasn't who listens to them anyway. But yeah, they will explicitly call themselves

Arminian. Now, he really was under the opinion that nobody's listening to Calvinists when it seems to be the, at least in the academia, most of what you are hearing is from Calvinists today.

I mean, in that specific realm of the more scholarly Christians. Well, this was written about 1996.

That's 20 years ago, but there are not a lot of Calvinists in Utah.

Yeah, you would know. We're in the most cosmopolitan county in the whole state.

Our Protestant church membership in this county, ranging from lesbian

Episcopalians to the most out there,

Pentecostals, anything remotely considered Protestant, is just over 4 .5%.

Wow, where is it with the Calvinists? We're actually going to a break right now, and if you want to,

Pastor Jason, if you want to send me over some more mp3s, I'll be glad to play them. That's up to you. Okay.

And we're going to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

If you live outside of the USA, we're going to be right back with Pastor Jason Miles. Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio is sponsored by Harvey Cedars, a year -round

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That's The Thriving Story. Welcome back and I guess a lot of you found out something that you never knew before, that Charles Haddon Spurgeon was an endorser of Thriving Financial Services.

That was just a little error on my part, playing the same ad two times in a row and catching it just a little too late.

But if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address, as I said earlier, is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

We do have a listener in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, Tyler, who wants to know, is it true that Mormons have sacred underwear that no one is supposed to know about?

Well, I know that the first is true, but I don't know if it's supposed to be a secret. Is that supposed to be a secret, Jason? Considering that I can look out my back window and see them hanging on my neighbor's...

Not that secret, I guess. I don't think they're a huge secret. No, they're not a...

Mormons would love to say, it's not secret, it's sacred. About all kinds of things, it's essentially simple, but...

I'm assuming that the only time you're ever supposed to see it is on a clothesline. Well, what is the story about them?

But yeah, they do have garments that they consider to be sacred, and you'll hear folk stories about how someone was in a fire, and they got burned everywhere other than where their garments were covering them.

They supposedly stopped bullets. Kind of like Superman's costume that his mother made, right?

Now, where did that come from? Who was that? Yeah, what is the purpose? It's kind of like the scapular in the

Roman Catholicism. Mormonism is obsessed with the external.

You know, you wear your garments. It's what godliness is, not drinking coffee, not drinking tea, but you can drink all the

Mountain Dew you want to drink. You know, it's about Phariseeism.

It's just an American form of Phariseeism. Who developed the underwear bit? Was that Joseph Smith, or was it

Brigham Young? I'm not that familiar with the history. There's an amusing story, though.

OPC guy came through here years ago, and he bought some on a whim.

He was a college student. This is before we ever got here. Then he ultimately gets married, and as a lot of wives do, they make their husbands get rid of their junk.

So back about 15 years ago or so, he decides to list a bunch of stuff on eBay, and he listed

Mormon sacred garments. He paid $5 for them. He got $68 on eBay.

So being like a lot of seminary students, he then goes online, finds some more for $10, and lists them.

It was front page news. It was the lead story on one of the

TV stations. I mean, it was on every TV station. eBay shut him down, closed his account, did all this stuff.

I mean, there was outrage that he was selling these Mormon undergarments. They didn't get the fact that he lived in Texas, but they did get the fact that he was an

Orthodox Presbyterian. So I literally had to track him down, and I told him,

I said, man, I'll buy them from you, but please just take them down. He said they've already pulled them off of eBay, and so yeah, it's a big deal for them.

Now, what do they look like? How are they different than your average pair of men's underwear?

I guess women have them too, right? Women have their own. Yeah, basically cut off long johns. So it's really just, what makes it sacred then?

Are they prayed over, or what is the... They've got some little insignia things on them.

I forget what it is. It's like a little talisman on them, basically. I haven't seen most of them.

I've seen pictures, but... And are all Mormons supposed to be wearing these at all times? And do they?

Yeah, I mean, Thelma Gere recounted the story of how her grandmother, when she helped take care of her, she would never fully take her garments off.

Even when she was bathing, she would take half off, wash one side of her body, and then put them back on, and then take the other side off, and wash the other half of her body.

Wow. Yeah, and I can remember even as a young boy with the

Catholic scapula going into the shower with it on, and all that nonsense. And Tyler from Mastic Beach, Long Island asks another question.

Why do you think Billy Graham Evangelistic Association took Mormonism off the list, a list that includes non -Christian religions?

Well, I heard Billy Graham with his own mouth on the Larry King show, and Larry King, for those of you who don't know, has a

Mormon wife, and he asked Billy Graham, what do you think of the Mormons? And Billy Graham said,

I have no problem with those people. And people, Christians, when I would bring this up, would try to defend

Dr. Graham and say, well, he was just saying that he doesn't have a problem with them, just like, you know, that we're supposed to be loving our neighbors and stuff.

I'm like, give me a break. The man was giving the clear seal of approval, and people looked to him as a great man of God, and that his opinion matters, and he was basically giving them a seal of approval.

Yeah, there's some stuff out there, I forget the argument that was made, but the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association tried to spin it that it was unrelated to his meeting with Romney that took place at the same time, when

Romney was the Republican nominee. But Billy Graham didn't, he hasn't had problems with sending people to the

Catholic Church for a long time, and so, you know, I think, what did he call the Pope, the world's greatest evangelist?

The irony is, I have his signature on my Master's of Divinity, but I'm not exactly a big

Billy Graham fan. Yeah, it's unfortunate, as we've been bringing up lately on this program, his name seems to be coming up.

Billy Graham, there's a lot to be admired in his life. He's an elderly man, and his ministry began as a fairly young man, and there has never been a scandal, there is no known, you know, problem that he's ever had in faithfulness to his wife, or financial abuse, like many televangelists and those who have rose to the limelight of evangelicalism, who have, many who have fallen in not only the sexual area, but financially especially.

He's had a pristine record in that regard, but Billy Graham long ago intentionally took the root of the liberal ecumenical movement in regard to his crusades, and so on, and it's a shame.

Yeah, that argument's been picked up by Richard Mao, the former president of Fuller Theological Seminary.

He's out basically trying to make the tent as big as possible for everyone.

He came here about a dozen years ago and apologized for all the lies that evangelicals have told about Mormons, and one of the first interviews

I did at a TV show was, I asked an instructor at the

LDS Institute of Religion, is this man correct? And he said no. He was denying that Mormons any longer taught that God was an exalted man and that we could become gods, but Mao doesn't care about such things.

I've reached out to him numerous times over the years. He's ignored everything that I've said. He's ignored everything that people who met with him face to face have said, and he actually just published an article a month or so ago in First Things called

Mormons Moving Towards Orthodoxy, and it's just a bunch of lies, and Mormons will tell you it's a bunch of lies, but Mao doesn't care.

He has some professors at BYU who tell him what he wants to hear, and so he goes out and tells everyone else that we're lying.

He's too nice to put it that way, but when we point out what the

Mormons themselves are saying, what they have in their own current teaching books, and what even leaders will tell him to his face, he just ignores them because he's got a couple of professors who tell him what he wants to hear.

Well, we have Lucy Smith is going to be the next clip that we hear, and Lucy Smith was his mother, right?

Correct, and this comes at the very end of the big video when we're pleading with them to read the

Bible for themselves. And Lucy Smith was not a Mormon. No, she became a

Mormon. Oh, she did? Yeah, this is basically showing the contempt that Joseph Smith had for the

Bible. But Lucy Smith eventually, though, did become a Mormon? Yes. Oh, okay.

For some reason, that slipped by me because she was being critical of him, so that's why

I was surprised. She's not being critical. She's just describing his youth, and these are two clips with her talking about Joseph's view of the

Bible, and she's saying it as a loving mother. Oh, you know, I thought that she was being critical of him.

Okay, here we go. Joseph, from the first, utterly refused even to attend their meetings, saying,

Mother, I do not wish to prevent you from going to meeting, or any of the rest of the family, or even your joining any church you please, but do not ask me to join them.

I can take my Bible and go into the woods and learn more in two hours than you can learn at meeting in two years, if you should attend all the time.

Now, that was when, well, she's saying this about the past, but she is referring to back in a day when she was

Presbyterian, correct? I don't know if she had been excommunicated yet.

They were dabbling in the occult. They had joined the Presbyterian Church, but they all got excommunicated, so I don't know.

I know that she had... Well, what I was speaking of is when Joseph refused to go to the meetings, that's what

I mean. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, that would have been when she was Presbyterian. Right, right. Okay, but they were involved in the occult.

That's interesting. Oh, yeah. Because I knew that Joseph had some kind of, with the seer stone and all that, that there was some kind of an occultic connection with that.

Yeah, there's some evidence. Some people have tried to make too much of it, and we've tried to avoid things that are possible, but not definitive.

We've tried to keep the video to things that are unassailable, but there was actually a cult in Vermont in which there's at least clear influences from that cult on Joseph Smith Sr.

and then also on, I think it was David Whitmer's father as well.

Who was one of the original apostles. But they were an end -times cult, and they were into money digging, and they believed that God was revealing treasures to them and such.

Well, here is another clip of a statement by Lucy Smith, the mother of Joseph.

I presume our family presented an aspect as singular as any that ever lived upon the face of the earth, all seated in a circle, father, mother, sons, and daughters, and giving the most profound attention to a boy, 18 years of age, who had never read the

Bible through in his life. He seemed much less inclined to the perusal of books than any of the rest of our children.

See, that was another reason I thought she was being critical, but I guess she was saying that it was amazing that he was so, like it was a supernatural thing he was so learned, even though he never read books?

Yeah, these folks were very much out of the mindset that reading books was actually detrimental to your spiritual life, that you needed direct revelation.

And so Joseph Smith is being contemptuous of the Presbyterian pastors that his mother would be hearing.

He says, I can get more out of going into the woods with my Bible for an hour than you could get out of two years of listening to those guys.

But the funny thing is, he never bothered to read it. You know, by his mother's own admission, he's contemptuous and says he gets so much out of the

Bible, but he never bothers to read it. One of the things that I was bringing up earlier that I want to make it clear, because it is a huge issue that separates

Mormonism from Christianity. It's not no trivial issue or no secondary or tertiary issue.

It is really one of the key things that separates us, is that they believe not only is there not one

God, although they pray to one God, that there are an infinite number of gods, because Mormons, if they are faithful, become gods.

And there are gods in many other planets that are innumerable. We don't even know how many other gods and so on.

Tell us about that, because people may think this is just right out of a science fiction movie, which is kind of interesting that Battlestar Galactica was written by Mormons, and it is based on Mormon theology.

But if you could. Yeah, remember Captain Adama? Right, Adama, Adam, right.

But this is like renaming

Baal Jesus and claiming that Baal worshipers are Christians. They can use the name

Jesus all they want, but when they're talking about a God who is a finite creature, who has not always been

God, but worked his way up to Godhood, and they're going to be just like him working their way up to Godhood over their own planet somewhere.

This is a totally different God, a totally different gospel.

And the idea that you can call this Christian, I mean this is like saying that if I, there's a fellow, his name escapes me, he's in Australia, that he claims to be

Jesus. Do you know of whom I'm speaking? No, I've heard of some

South American individual, but I'm not, the person in Australia is not ringing a bell with me.

Oh, John Miller, A .J. Miller. Okay. A .J. Miller claims that he's the reincarnation of Jesus and that his wife is

Mary Magdalene. And he has a bunch of followers, and he teaches completely unbiblical garbage.

But his followers say, we're Christians, we're following Jesus, there he is, right there.

And it's an Australian guy named A .J. Miller. You know, does it matter whether your trust is in the

Jesus of the Bible or Jesus Martinez? The Mormon Jesus has more in common in that his mother is

Mary, you know, 2 ,000 years ago. But as you go down the list, we're not talking about disagreement over peripheral issues.

This is not the creator of all things. This is not the one who was worshipped by angels.

I mean, well, they might claim that, but this is not the biblical

God. And basically, what do they actually call this?

I mean, do they call it deification, or what do they call, do they call it salvation? What is the language they use for that?

Because a lot of times they use the same terminology that we do, but have different definitions. But what do they call their main goal in life in regard to?

They would typically use the term exaltation. Exaltation, okay. Yeah, now the term deification, theosis, these are things from outside Mormonism that they'll sometimes claim, oh, that's just the same thing.

But it's not. Now, do they use this term just in order to have some greater harmony with us, just like they borrowed other terminology from Christianity?

Do they use the word salvation in any sense? Yes, but their view of salvation is resurrection from the dead.

Okay. And everybody gets salvation. Not everyone gets exaltation.

Now, I've heard, and I don't know if I get the whole story correctly, I'm not an expert on Mormonism, and I also have a tendency to forget things that I've learned, but I've heard that the only people who will actually be in hell are apostate

Mormons. Is that true? I believe that's outer darkness.

Hell is temporary, and then you get to go to the kingdom. Oh, so hell is almost like purgatory?

It's funny how that keeps resurfacing, isn't it? Yeah, well, it's ironic that Joseph Smith abhorred

Roman Catholicism, and yet there is a lot of connection as far as the use of images and artwork and all that kind of thing that's all wrapped up in their religion.

Yeah, there's a Christus in the North Visitor Center at Temple Square that I believe was originally carved by an

Italian Roman Catholic. Oh, yes, that's the famous statue of Jesus that's unrecognizable as a

Mormon statue now. I know what you're talking about. In fact, I was watching,

I don't even know why I was watching it, I think it was like one of those things when you're rubbernecking and you see a car accident, but I was watching

Jim Baker's television show where he has this very strange combination of a

Christian talk show combined with survivalist supplies that he sells on the television there, and he was giving away as a gift the statue of Jesus.

And I said, that's the Mormon statue, and I looked it up on the line, and sure enough, the exact same statue that he was holding up, obviously a tiny replica of it.

Yeah, and I actually misspoke. It was actually apparently Lutheran from Denmark.

Okay, because I had actually saw on the internet, I thought it was a Catholic myself, or it was purchased from Denmark, but no, it's the

National Cathedral of Denmark. Okay, but it was interesting, though, that they would use these images that are very similar at times to Roman Catholicism, perhaps not as gaudy as Roman Catholic, the relics and the artwork and the architecture of Roman Catholicism, like a lot of things are ornately carved in things, but it's like monotone, usually, or all white or whatever on the outsides of the buildings, right?

Yeah, you can actually see some of the Protestant aesthetic carrying through in some of the things.

In fact, I mean, they end up looking in a lot of their architecture, and some of the things they do, it's almost as if they're

Presbyterian or something. But we have to go to our final break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Jason Wallace, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Jason Wallace and more of our discussion on Mormonism.

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That's lynnbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned us in for the full two hours today, our guest is

Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is a congregation within the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination. And we are discussing Mormonism.

And before we return to our discussion, one of our sponsors has an event they want you to be aware of.

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And when we just left the break there, we were going through some more of the sharp contrasts that Mormonism has with Bible -believing

Christians. And another would be the inerrancy of the Scripture, wouldn't it?

Because don't they call into question the reliability of the

Bible, even though they do use the Bible? And I think they predominantly, if not exclusively, use the

King James Bible. But it's not something nearly as trustworthy as the

Book of Mormon or their other documents, right? Right. I mean, basically their articles of faith say they believe the

Bible insofar as it is correctly translated. Now, what they mean by that is not that they go back to the

Greek and the Hebrew. It functionally means wherever it agrees with them. Right, yes.

The reality is that Mormonism is not a religion of any book, including the

Book of Mormon. If you look through what their church has consistently taught, the living prophet trumps the standard works.

He's more vital than the standard works, as your chap Benson said. So the heart of Mormonism, to a great extent,

I mean, when you get past all the emotionalism and everything else, functionally, the authority is, shut up and do what you're told.

The prophet is the voice of God. There is no correcting the prophet from any previous prophet or any previous scripture.

So, I mean, this religion that people are really confusing as just another denomination of Christianity, you really can't get farther from Christianity than Mormonism, can you?

Uh, James White actually made a provocative statement in talking about Islam, uh,

Saturday night. He said, and I agree entirely with him, he said that actually

Islam is closer to Christianity by far than Mormonism is.

Yeah, at least they're monotheists, that's one. Well, they're theists.

It's not just monotheists. I mean, I love the argument of Aristides. He was one of the second century church fathers.

He said polytheism by its very nature is atheism. If your

God is Zeus hurling down thunderbolts, who's thwarted by Hera and Poseidon and Apollo and all these others, those are gods.

Those are superheroes. I sent you one more clip that I think you might enjoy.

There's a fella, I've never met the man, his name is Mark Cochran. He is a friend of a friend, and he did the voiceovers for Joseph Smith and did a wonderful, and there's one in your inbox right now, that we basically juxtapose what

Jesus said about whoever exalts himself shall be abased and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.

I don't know if you've got that handy there. Yes, I do. Contrast that with Joseph Smith.

Okay, so you want me to play this now then? Yeah. Okay, here we go. Come on, ye persecutors, ye false swearers, all hell boil over.

Ye burning mountains, roll down your lava, for I will come out on the top at last. I have more to boast of than ever any man had.

I'm the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me.

Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I.

Wait a minute, that's from the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump's speech. You've got this confused.

This is Donald Trump that we have here. I'm sorry. If you could comment a bit more on that.

Yeah, in Christianity, Christ is all.

He is our righteousness. He is our sanctification. He is our life.

In Mormonism, Jesus is our elder spirit brother who refinanced our debt and basically makes it possible for us to exalt ourselves.

He is not the end. He is a means to a good end. By the way, we do have a,

I don't know if he's a first -time listener, but he's a first -time questioner, Mark in Lexington Park, Maryland.

I tune in a bit late to the live stream and I hope my question hasn't been asked yet. But I have a question for your guests.

Given the seemingly clear record serious differences of doctrine between the

LDS church and historic Christian doctrines, how does your guest account for the growing acceptance of Mormonism as a legitimate expression of the

Christian faith by those who would otherwise be considered strong and devout

Christian believers? We have been addressing that actually, but it's interesting that our listener,

Mark, is saying that these comments are being made by people who would be otherwise considered strong and devout

Christian believers. I haven't heard anybody that I would respect as a

Christian leader say anything like that. I mean, obviously, I gave some accolades where they were due to Billy Graham, but he is not somebody that I go to for theological guidance by any stretch of the imagination.

But anyway, do you know anybody that would be more, you know,

Richard Moo or Mao is more of a liberal, is he not?

I mean, is there anybody more in the conservative evangelical realm? Well, I mean, Mao, evangelicalism is liberalism now to a great extent.

I mean, Mao was the president of Fuller Seminary, which was founded to be the bastion of neo evangelicalism.

Of course, the reality is that Fuller is a joke now. A lot of,

I mean, there's the fringe people, Joe Osteen says he accepts Mormons as Christians, but who doesn't he accept?

Oh, he actually came out and said that, huh? Oh yeah. Well, it doesn't shock me. I just haven't heard him say it.

But there are people who get swept up into this. Mao, as far as I know, his credentials are still in the

Christian Reformed Church, which was considered a conservative church up until 30 years ago.

I've seen a lot of evangelicals here in Utah who, they listen to this stuff and they want to believe it.

They want to believe that Mormonism is improving. And part of the reason, I don't know their motives,

I can't judge their hearts, but it sure seems like they just don't want to deal with it. Well, Mark in Lexington Park, Maryland, if you give me your full mailing address,

I've got a surprise for you since you are a first -time questioner. We are going to send you a free

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB, and we thank them for sponsoring

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New American Standard Bible for the support they have been to Iron, Sharpens Iron over the years.

And their website, by the way, is nasbible .com. But if you,

Mark, give me your full mailing address, we'll get that out to you very shortly, God willing. Compliments as far as the shipping is concerned of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com. They mail all of our listeners the free books and Bibles that they win by submitting questions.

So keep your eye out for a package from cvbbs .com. And we want to thank Todd and Patty Jennings also for helping us out by taking care of all the shipping costs of our winners items.

You know, Chris, related to that question, though, the world looking at Christianity, of course, they cannot distinguish between reformed, typically evangelical, liberal, you know, they kind of put us all together.

And when you consider the fact that in many circles, especially through the word of faith movement,

Christianity, in that regard has moved immensely towards Mormonism, as far as in fact, as I've heard, we've out liberaled the

Mormons in many respects by the teachings that we are, you know, we are gods now and so forth.

And that, you know, the name it and claim it group is, you know, specifically the ones I'm referring to. Oh, yeah, like, like Hagan and exactly and others dollar.

But when you consider that we've moved that far towards Mormonism, it can be very confusing to people looking on saying,

Well, you know, what is what is the difference between them? And of course, we know that their their, their whole goal, the

Mormon church is to become known simply as another denomination. But how are they actually succeeding as far as like, is the

Mormon church growing or diminishing? Do you have any stats on that?

I've got a variety of bits of information out there. It's either 60 or 40 % of their missionaries no longer have temple recommends within five years of coming in off their missions, which means that they're not able to go into the temple and do anything.

I hear numbers out of South America where sometimes participation rates down in the low 20s, 20%.

The Mormons basically went on this big program of baptizing everyone they could get to stay still.

And it's just, I get the impression that they've lost a lot of their inertia.

And the leadership is caving. They have. They've created this schizophrenia where they put forward a public face.

And yet they've tried to hold on to the past, but a lot of people are buying into the public face. And so they've become sort of universalist.

And they don't have the hardcore beliefs like they did 30 years ago with McCarthy and others.

They've caved on homosexuality, to a great extent. They were instrumental in the in the

Boy Scouts compromising. They sponsor like 37 % of all the Boy Scout troops. So the compromise of allowing homosexuals never would have gone through if not for the

Mormons. In the wake of the blowback they got from Proposition 8, they have been very vocal in sponsoring a state law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, housing or employment.

I get the impression that they are tossed about by the culture right now. Mormonism used to be very counter -cultural, and now they're very cultural.

To some extent, there was a blending of that with Romney. They saw him as a fulfillment of the

Mormon church coming in to save America when the

Constitution was hanging by a thread. That thread snapped a long time ago. And Romney didn't do so well.

Well, speaking of Romney, though, now, again, it's not a very good idea to try to fight error with error.

And so perhaps you can address the issue. I have heard, uh, I won't say whether it's a conspiracy or a conspiracy theory.

Maybe you could help out on that. That one of their goals is to take over the United States of America, and that they have a replica of Washington in the

Mormon temple. The Mormon temple in D .C. In D .C. and that, uh, you know,

Romney was just one step along the way towards that goal. Do you have any information on that?

Yeah, a lot of that I think has to do with the white horse prophecy, right? I'm not sure. But if you could, uh,

Jason. Yeah, it's bizarre. Mormons have gone from being very pre -millennial doomsday cult to now being somewhat post -millennial that they're going to take over everything.

I knew there was something wrong with you, boss. Be careful when you say that because now everyone is going to think post -millennials are

Mormons. No, no, no. Hey, for what it's worth, people accuse us of being closet

Romanists because we baptize babies. Yes. I'll try to stop doing that.

Thank you. Well, I tease, it's generally Baptists who say that, and I'm not

Reformed. But I tell them, it's like, well, you must be a closet Mormon because your, um, you know, the

Book of Mormon says that if anyone thinks that a child should be baptized, they're in the gall of bitterness. And if they die in the thought, they surely go down into the flames of hell.

Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day, right? I'm only kidding.

But what about those conspiracy theories about Mormons? I think there is a desire in that direction, but I don't believe that there's much beyond the conspiracies.

I mean, Mormonism is a big business. I mean, they're worth tens of billions of dollars.

They own, they're the largest private owner of land in the state of Florida, the state of Hawaii.

They're not politically neutral. But I think that a lot of people ascribe much more to them than they actually have.

Mm -hmm. Now, are the Mormons thoroughly pro -life?

I've heard some different responses to that. I have heard from some people who actually were

Mormons that your bishop may, under certain circumstances, rightfully counsel a pregnant woman to get an abortion.

I've heard other former Mormons from them that they've never heard that before. And there seems to be some kind of a different understanding about the beginning or the origins of when life begins in the womb and so on, if you could.

You need to understand the whole sense of authority in Mormonism. There is no scripture that's going to answer these things.

It's what your bishop tells you. An individual bishop may speak in accord with whatever he's being told from above.

Another one may say something differently. There is no objective right and wrong in the sense that we would have it that God has spoken and it's unchanging.

And so currently they're pro -life, but that could change.

I mean, everything else has changed. I would not be surprised if some bishops would counsel that.

I've heard some bishops counsel that molestation within the family is different than molestation from outside the family.

If it's in the family, it's not as bad. Wow. I don't want to par everyone with that same brush.

You hear all kinds of things, how much credence to give them, I'm not sure. But I've heard different bishops give very different advice.

And if you have a question, then you go to the state president and you just work your way on up until you get to the general authorities, basically.

We do have another listener who has a question.

We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who asks, in light of the fact that same -sex marriage is now legal,

I do not doubt that polygamy is right around the corner.

Do you think this may be guesswork on your part, of course, but do you think that the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints will return to polygamist marriage just like the fundamentalists are now practicing?

Not in the same way, at least anytime soon. I think that it's getting difficult for them, because on the one hand, they've tried to distance themselves from the

FLDS and the other polygamists out there. We have a section on that in our video.

They claim that the reason they don't practice it now is they're following the laws of the land. Well, it was against the law when they were practicing it in Nauvoo, Illinois.

They didn't care then. They did bend to the will of the federal government in 1890, sort of, kind of, and then more definitively later.

I think that polygamy is going to be the next logical step for our government.

Federal judge overturned Utah's law against cohabitation, which is basically the polygamy statute.

But then I heard that a larger panel upheld it, so now it's probably going to go to the

Supreme Court. I don't see how the Supreme Court can rule against polygamy, considering how they've redefined marriage already.

Right. I mean, in reality, I don't know how they could redefine many different aberrant types of marriage, like incestuous marriage.

I mean, there's really no leg for them to stand on, no ground to say one thing is reprehensible and wrong and evil and the other thing is completely wonderful.

You know, how can they make these kinds of decisions when they reject what the Bible teaches on the issue? Yeah, I don't see the

Mormons trying to lead a charge here, but I think that if polygamy becomes legal, they'll accept it, but they won't promote it.

One of the things that's mentioned in the video, there are people like Glenn Beck who, whether he knows better or not,

I don't know, but he's spreading lies that he says that they had to have polygamy because there were so many widows from all the people who were killed.

There were 20 people killed in the Missouri War. The Mormons killed over 120 in one day down at Mount Meadows.

There weren't that many widows and we have a citation from one of their own apostles who says there was never a surplus of women in the church.

It was all about power. I mean, Brigham I think had 56 wives. It was about control and power and I don't see that resurfacing in my lifetime, but hey,

I didn't see a whole lot of other stuff coming in my lifetime either and it's coming like a freight train. By the way,

I would appreciate you praying about this. I have the intention of trying my best to get, wow, his name just flew out of my head, the

Mormon political pundit that you just mentioned. Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck. I don't know how that slipped out of my head.

Maybe it should actually, but I'm going to try to get Glenn Beck to watch your

LDS video, lds .video, and invite him on the program to respond.

Now, of course, this may never happen. I know that a friend of mine, a

Christian friend, actually showed me on his blog how he was interacting with her and he was very upset that his

Christianity was being questioned and he said something to the effect of, okay,

I'm going to do this one more time and that's it because you seem to be sincerely asking me this question one more time.

Here it is, and he started going into an explanation of why he believes he should be accepted as a

Christian, and it basically was boiled down to the elements of, I believe that Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross was necessary for mankind to be redeemed from their sins, and therefore

I am a Christian, or something to that effect. It was something where he was using Christian language, and as you know, they have a different dictionary for the same words, but I would love to try to get him on the program to respond to and just have a comfortable conversation with him as possible without making him seem like he was ambushed or anything like that, but because of the fact that so many evangelicals revere him and even believe that he is a

Christian, I think that something like that might be helpful, especially I hope that he watches your video.

Oh, I've been actually, on my long list of things to do is to make up some postcards, not just for local use, but I've intended to send him one.

We made up a card to sort of tease them into watching it.

It looks like their nameplate, it's black with white lettering. It has an outline of the angel

Moroni and it says, the truth will make you free, www .lds .video. Well, we are out of time,

Pastor Jason, and I really thank you for being on the program, and once again for our listeners, that documentary you can see free of charge at lds .video,

lds .video, and the website for Christ Presbyterian Church is gospelutah .org,

gospelutah .org, and we can't wait to have you back on the program, Jason.

Thank you so much. Quick thing on the second video, we don't have it linked yet, but if you go on YouTube and just type in the

God of Brigham Young, it'll pull it right up. Great, and I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. Have a very safe, blessed, and joyful weekend, and Christ -honoring