The Only God Worthy of Worship

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Hey everybody, I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church. I want to thank you all so much for watching the content right here on Apologia Studios channel.

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What you're about to watch is a sermon, a message from Apologia Church's worship service. And again, I want to thank you all so much for watching, for liking, for commenting, for sharing the sermon itself.

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We truly believe that it's important for the Christian church to have an engagement in the public square with the word of God.

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So we thank you so much for partnering with us to send this out across the world. I just wanted to say something before you actually watch this, and that is that I'm not your pastor.

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Though I'd love to be, I am not your pastor. And it's very important as you're watching this, you know that it's

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God's design for individual Christians to be part of a local Christian church under the care of qualified faithful biblical elders.

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And so as much as we love all of you watching these sermons and we're thankful to God that God uses them to bless you, to encourage you,

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I do want to encourage you as a minister of the gospel to get plugged into a local body of believers, particularly

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I think important a reformed church would be best. But we want to encourage you to get plugged into a solid biblical church where you can fellowship, where you can worship, where you can serve, where you can be connected.

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That is vitally important and actually a biblical command. And so as much as again as we love for your participation, your partnership, and we are so thankful to God that he's using these in your lives, we want to encourage you to get plugged into a local church.

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You can though actually partner with Apologia Church as we proclaim the gospel and provide a defense of the biblical gospel all around the world.

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When you do, you help to make all of this possible and you get all of our TV shows, our after shows, and Apologia Academy, all of that.

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You can partner with us. And I want to say one last word about that. Do make sure that none of your giving and partnership towards Apologia Church interferes with your giving, your worship, your tithes, your offerings to a local body of believers in your area.

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So thank you again so much for watching these and sharing them. God bless you. Well, good afternoon,

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Apologia Church. I wasn't expecting to be here on Thursday.

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And then I got a phone call. And when Jeff calls, it's your duty to answer.

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Actually, given what you're going to be doing coming up in just a few weeks, the decision was made that it would be good if we, as a body, had some focus, especially in our prayers.

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Already, you have a reputation, clearly, amongst the

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Mormon people. It was not that many months ago that Jeff and I had our dialogue with a young Mormon man from BYU.

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How many of you saw that? Okay, then you saw a lot of the conversation that can take place.

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What you also saw in that encounter, whether you knew it or not, was how much

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Mormonism is changing. Because I can assure you that that conversation could not possibly have taken place on the first night that I visited the

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Easter pageant in 1983. So how many of you had not yet taken your first breath in 1983?

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Wow, okay. Well, where's my

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Geritol? You got some down there? Good.

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They still make that stuff, huh? All right, good. My short -term memory ain't what it used to be. I will never forget that evening when

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Kelly and I, at that time living out in North Phoenix, got on the back of a

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Kawasaki 440 and got on the 60, which ended at Country Club then.

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And I'm really dating myself here. Sorry, honey. I didn't mean to do this. And we ended up at the

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Arby's, which is now a parking lot. But the Arby's at the corner of Main and Hobson there.

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And we were amazed. Looked like a JCPenney convention. There were white shirts and dark ties everywhere.

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Lots of missionaries. And we were sort of overwhelmed with the number of people that were there.

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That began a process the next year. A man by the name of Wally Tope was with us. How many in here have any idea who

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Wally Tope was? You know, you put it up that fast. As you get older, the shoulder goes out, just so you know.

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And it's stuck. So it's a really bad thing. Just enjoy your youth, son.

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That's what I'm saying. Wally actually stayed with us when he would visit

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Phoenix. And in fact, I think he drove a cat of mine crazy. We had this little white

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Persian. Kelly likes white Persians. Don't give us a bunch of white Persians, please. But like white

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Persian cats. And we let Wally stay with us. And the cat was never the same after Wally stayed with us.

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But Wally Tope was how do you describe him? He was one of the most zealous, untiring witnessers to the

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Mormon people ever. And I learned a lot from him. I learned, for example, on next, not this coming

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Tuesday night, but the next Tuesday night, I will share with you what he taught me on how to effectively pass out a tract.

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Did you know that there are certain rules on how to do that? There are. And this guy was zealous.

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He was the last person to die in the LA riots. When the rioting began, he decided he was going to go witness to the rioters.

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And they beat him into a coma that he never came out of and died about two years later.

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He was the last person to die from those riots. But he was a man who loved to witness to the

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Mormon people. And that sort of rubbed off upon me. And so the year after that is when we began the full -on, a large group of people there in Mesa.

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And yeah, right around that time, I and two other brothers got into a

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Honda Accord. And, please don't do this, by the way.

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We left on Friday night. We drove through the night to Salt Lake City.

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We went to Gerald and Sandra Tanner's home. They allowed us to go downstairs and to change.

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We went to the temple. We stood there at the temple all day long. And it was a, this is,

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I'm afraid you're not going to have this experience because it didn't last long even in our days. But there was a line of people waiting to talk to each one of us.

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They lined up to talk to us. If you've been out to Mesa, you know how, that's not, that's not normal anymore.

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But in those days, 1983 -84, somewhere around there, they wanted to talk to us.

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We, I was hoarse by the end of the day. The poor young, one of the poor young guys that went with us, we were sort of training him on the way up.

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That's not necessarily the best way to do it. But at one point I heard, help. And he's backed up against the gate of the temple and there's like a feeding frenzy going on.

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And so I waited in and he just, he got in my pocket for the rest of the time that we were up there.

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But then when we got done, this was the dumb part, we got back in the car and drove back home.

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So Friday night, all, no sleep, standing all day Saturday, no sleep, get back in the car, drive home.

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I don't know how we got here. Obviously God is sovereign and he had other plans for us that we didn't end up wrapped around a tree someplace.

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But we pretty quickly realized that wasn't the wisest way to do it. But we also realized, wow, is there an opportunity here?

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Such an opportunity. Because these, when you go to Salt Lake City, you're talking to the leadership of the

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LDS church. You're talking to many of the people that really believe that they have all the answers that they know you need to know.

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So they're going to be willing to talk to you. They're going to be willing more than in Mesa. That's changed a little bit over the years.

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And you say, why don't you keep doing it today? Real simple. The King James only fundamentalists that you all know so well started showing up and destroyed any opportunity of continuing.

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We did it for 18 years, 36 times. We went to Salt Lake City because the general conference is the first weekend in April, the first weekend in October, like clockwork.

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And the Mormons tried to stop us, but they couldn't. Things changed up there.

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I'll talk about that on Tuesday evening, the things that have altered the ease with which you have access to people.

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But it was the King James only street screechers that showed up with their signs, literally yelling at people as they're walking by, it shouldn't be

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Mormon. It should be moron. That's what they think preaching is. And when people are offended, they think that that makes them spiritual and they're being persecuted for Christ's sake.

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Well, you can't expect the Mormons to differentiate between the people outside.

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Oh, we were dressed nicely. I would suggest that by the way. We were dressed nicely. We were respectful. We had never done that.

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But if you're walking out of the general conference and you see people yelling and screaming and we're standing anywhere nearby, you're going to just make the automatic assumption that we're all together and it just simply was no longer a worthwhile effort to make every six months, though we had for a very, very long time.

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Why? Why? Well, you read from Psalm 90 just a few moments ago.

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I want to return your attention to it briefly. You'll notice that it's a prayer of Moses, the man of God.

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A prayer of Moses, the man of God. And one of the verses, I have a article on our website at aomin .org

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called the 100 -verse memorization system. A little short on time to get that done for this trip, but it's a good thing to start on.

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A 100 -verse memorization system for dealing with Mormons and it's drawn from witnessing more than 5 ,000

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LDS missionaries and 36 times up to Salt Lake and all the rest of that kind of stuff. It's the verses that would be most useful and Psalm 90, verse 2 is on that list.

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Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting, and you're looking down, but I like to use hand gestures when

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I do this, from everlasting to everlasting, thou art

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God. Now, I normally do not quote from the King James version of the Bible, but when you're witnessing to Mormons, sometimes it's easier to not have to be dealing with the translation issue.

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Sometimes that's the very subject I'm talking about when I talk about the accuracy of the Bible, and so I'll do it something differently, but I memorized it in the

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King James so that there wouldn't be any issue, and the point was this is what makes us to differ from the

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LDS people. They're some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. Oh, have I not, have I been treated nastily by Mormons?

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Oh, yeah. Have I run into really arrogant Mormons that just, I mean, their nose is so far up in the sky that I'm surprised lightning didn't strike, and yeah, sure.

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But I've also encountered those types of people in every religious group. I have found Mormons in general to be very kind individuals, focused upon family.

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Many of them are homeschoolers these days. I bet you some of you homeschool moms have rubbed elbows with plenty of them in the various places where you all get together.

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When I first met my first two Mormon missionaries, I may not have had all the right motivations that hopefully

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I developed over the years for that first encounter. I guess my first encounter was actually on an outreach meeting for the

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North Phoenix Baptist Church. I was a junior in high school, and a Mormon kid had visited, and so I ended up talking to this kid's mom in his home, and talk about the blind leading the blind.

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I mean, I look back at that now, and I just go, oh, wow. We ended up arguing about 1 John 5 -7 the entire time.

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That's not where you want to be. I didn't know that at the time, but that had caused me to read a single book on Mormonism my junior year in high school, and it wasn't the best book on Mormonism either.

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By the way, not all books on Mormonism are created equal, just in case you're heading to the local

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Christian bookstore on that particular subject. And so, a few years later,

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I had just gotten married, and I was between my freshman and sophomore years of high school.

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So I was right around 20 years of age when I got a phone call about a month after Kelly and I got married.

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And it was Kelly's sister. Now, some of you don't know, but Kelly is an identical twin. And so, if you ever see two of them one day, don't worry, it's not you.

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That sort of freaks people out once in a while, but she's an identical twin, and her sister Shelly had been at home, and the missionaries had come by the house.

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And so, she called me because, well, I had memorized a lot of scripture in high school, and I was going to Bible college, and so why not?

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And so, I met with Elders Reed and Reese on Monday afternoon and Thursday afternoon for about two hours each time.

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In between Monday and Thursday, I read two or three books on Mormonism. Again, that's not necessarily the best way to do that, but I immediately recognized that there were foundational, fundamental issues, and yet we were saying the same words.

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It was so frustrating. In the last moments with Elders Reed and Reese—now, by the way,

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I actually invited them over to my place a few months later, and I remember, like I said,

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Kelly and I had just gotten married. We had this little teeny place, and I made, well,

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I thought were really good fried burritos for them. I'm not sure they really were, but they were good for me.

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I thought, at my age, I was pretty good. And so, I did talk to them later on, and we had some really good conversations, but the last things

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I said to them in that first meeting, interestingly enough, are the same things that I would want to be my last words to a

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Mormon over 35 years later. And over debates and radio programs and outreaches and all the hours and hours and hours

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I've spent in conversation with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, the very same words

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I said to them are still the last things I want a Mormon to hear today. And what I said to them was, gentlemen, someday you're going to need to know a

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God who does not change. Your God has changed. Your God once said this was necessary for salvation, but it's not anymore.

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According to your theology, He was once a man lived on other planets, and He has gone through the eternal law of progression, and He has attained the status and rank of Godhood.

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That means He's changed. He's evolved, as you believe you will if you are going to gain exaltation yourself.

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And someday, you're going to want to know the God who does not change.

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Because the God who changes isn't worthy of your worship. But the God who does not change, the one who is from everlasting to everlasting, you're going to need to know that God.

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And I hope at that point, if it's not me, it'll be another one of His followers and worshippers that you will be willing to go to, and that they will be able to introduce you to this one true

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God. And even though many decades now have passed since that happens, that's still the message that ultimately you want to be able to deliver to the

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Mormon person. Now, you might say, well, don't you just want to get to the gospel first? Think with me for a moment.

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What is the gospel based upon? How can we have any assurance whatsoever that the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ will avail for us that we can put our faith and trust in the one who rose to that empty tomb, if He's going to be evolving and changing?

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If God Himself is evolving and changing, the very certainty of the gospel is based upon the realization that God is truly

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God and does not change. You might say, well, everybody believes that. The Mormons do not. The Mormons do not.

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Instead, as you have, and I didn't bring it up here with me, that was brilliant, but as you have in your bulletin,

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I gave you a little quote from something that sounds really strange to most folks, but it's called the

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King Follett Discourse. It was actually a sermon at the General Conference, what's known today as the

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General Conference of the LDS Church, only a matter of months before Joseph Smith was murdered in a

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Carthage jail. It is the single most often cited sermon of Joseph Smith by the leadership of the

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LDS Church from that day to this. It's not a part of LDS scripture, but it's as close as you can get.

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It's as close as you can get. And in that discourse, Joseph Smith, who had over the years prior to this, beginning around 1838, he dies in 1844, so about 1838 or so,

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Joseph's theology starts taking a real hard turn off into some really strange things.

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In fact, I've said this before, but maybe you've not heard me say it, if Joseph Smith had not been murdered in 1844, if he had been given only two more years of life, there would be no

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Mormonism today. There would be no Mormonism today. You know why? His theology was changing so fast and becoming so self -contradictory that if he had been given just a few more years of life, no one would have been able to make heads or tails out of what in the world he was saying.

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And I don't think there would be a Mormon church today. It's amazing that the people, the men who thought they were ending a threat actually ended up creating a religion that today has approximately 16 million adherents around the world.

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But in that discourse, which was in honor of a friend of his who had been killed the month before by a tub of falling rock while making a well, he decided to explain who

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God was, and that God was a man like you and I that lived on a planet as you and I live upon a planet.

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But you'll notice the words that I quoted for you in the bulletin. He said, we have imagined supposed that God was

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God from all eternity. I will refute that idea and take away the veil so that you may see.

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And what you and I need to understand is that no matter how often they use the name

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Jesus, how often they speak of biblical concepts, when

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Joseph Smith uttered those words, he forever separated anyone who would follow him as a prophet from the

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Christian faith. If you do not have a God who has eternally been

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God, you are not a follower of Jesus Christ. Whatever Jesus you have is not the

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Jesus of history who was a person who taught plainly the truthfulness of Psalm 90, verse 2, or Isaiah 43, 10, or 44, 6, and 44, 8, and Jeremiah 10, 10 through 11, and all the other texts in the

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Bible that plainly teach the fact that there is only one true

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God. Which, of course, is also absolutely foundational to the

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New Testament revelation as well. And so you can't begin to understand the relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit until you have the definitional, foundational truth of the

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Christian faith, there is only one true God who has eternally existed as God.

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When Joseph Smith said, I will refute that idea, he forever separated his followers from the

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Christian faith. I'm often asked, do you think do you think Mormonism could have something happen to it?

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Like the worldwide Church of God had happened, where you had these weird teachings about the

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God family and all the rest of this stuff, and and then there was a, the founder died, and it sort of split into competing groups, and and there was one group that actually decided to go

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Orthodox. In fact, I was, I was the first person to preach on the

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Trinity in a worldwide Church of God church after that happened, back in the 90s.

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And so people ask me all the time, do you think that could happen with Mormonism? Well, obviously, the only way that Mormonism could ever embrace

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Orthodoxy would be to fundamentally deny every element of its history, beginning with Joseph Smith being a prophet, and every element of its theology, every element of its temples, it would require an utter repudiation.

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So far is Mormonism from biblical Christianity, so far that Mormonism actually posits in its most

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Orthodox forms, and I don't know what Mormonism is going to morph into, to be honest with you, but there has been no change on any of this from the leadership as of yet, 20 years from now,

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I don't know. But as of yet, the Orthodox understanding of the

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Mormon people, and hence probably even more so in Salt Lake City, since you're talking about the leadership of the church there, is that there is literally an infinite number of gods, an infinite number of gods.

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You thought the Hindus had a lot of gods, of 330 million gods? That's nothing. There is an infinite number of gods.

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There has to be. Just think of how many gods Mormonism itself is allegedly producing just on this planet.

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If every worthy Mormon male sealed in the LDS temple were to become a god, and then they go out and plant new home worlds, and they have children, and they are now worshipped by their children, and then they become gods, and just think of the massive proliferation over time that you would have as the number of deities.

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And they believe that's where Elohim, God the Father, came from. He was once a man who lived on another planet, and there were gods before him, and there will be gods after him.

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It is an amazing thought, and in fact, that's why I have said many times, and it wakes people up,

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Islam is considerably closer to biblical Christianity than Mormonism ever could be.

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Because the first definitional concept of religion is, do you believe there is one everlasting, unchanging

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God who's the creator of all things? Muslims believe that.

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Mormons do not. So if at the very foundation you have such a massive difference, then one of the things that frustrates so many believers who want to have conversations with Mormons, but maybe don't know enough about the belief system to be able to do the translation, is that we use the same words and fill them with completely different meanings.

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And so when you see Psalm 90 verse 2, from everlasting to everlasting, thou art

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God, we understand that to mean that God has eternally been God. The Mormon will see that and say, well, yes, intelligences have eternally existed.

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What? Intelli - what? Intelligences? Yes, you see, you and I existed as intelligences, and we're uncreated in that sense.

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And God has existed as an intelligence, and then he had his premortal birth, and they lived on a planet, and then he was exalted and became

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God. He just did that before you did, but you're all the same species. He's just farther down the process than you are.

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And so, yes, God has eternally existed, not in an exalted state, but he's eternally existed as an intelligence.

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And most Christians are left going, what do you say to that? If you've never heard something before, and if it's from a worldview and a system of theology totally foreign to you, it can be very challenging for us to think of how you can respond to that kind of a statement.

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And it can be very frustrating, because you can sit there, and you can talk to a Mormon, and you can talk about forgiveness of sins, and being saved, and resurrection, and all the

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Christian buzzwords that are going, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, until all of a sudden you start realizing you haven't been communicating anything at all.

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Oh, I've believed in Jesus Christ. So have I. I've repented of my sins.

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So have I. I believe I'm going to be in Christ's presence forever.

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Yes, so do we. And I believe I'm saved by grace.

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So do we. Well, why did that guy on Sunday say you guys were so far off?

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Because none of the words I just used mean the same thing for Mormon they mean for us. You see, for the

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Mormon, salvation is in a general sense and a specific sense. General sense is just simply resurrection.

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So everyone's going to be saved by grace. But individual salvation is exaltation, and that's not by grace.

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It's graciously provided, but it's not by grace. You have to go through the temple. You have to do all the endowments, worthiness, etc, etc, etc.

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But you see you're just, it's a lexical problem. We're using the same words.

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We're just going to a different dictionary to define what the words mean. And it all goes back to who

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God is. Now, when

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I first started speaking to Mormons, there was way too much of the young person on the battle line,

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I'm defending God's truth idea. Over time,

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Lord willing, when you get to see and know Mormons, then hopefully the

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Lord fills your heart with true compassion for those individuals. Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, the people that come to our doorstep.

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Once you really start realizing what their lives are really like, once you start realizing that nearly three -quarters of all

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Mormon missionaries, when they return from their mission, go inactive for at least six months afterwards, because they are burned out.

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The vast majority of missionaries do not have pleasant missionary experiences. They won't talk about that publicly, because it's part of your testimony that you just had that wonderful experience.

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But most of them are deeply disappointed. Most Mormons, the first time they go into the temple, are stunned.

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Especially if they were raised within the LDS church. They were raised, they were taught, this is going to be the most exciting spiritual experience of your life.

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And they go in there, and they wear these garments, and they put on these fig leaf aprons, and they do a bunch of masonic things, and they reach to the veil, and they whisper secret key words, and and then finally they go into the celestial room that has really nice chandeliers and really comfy chairs, and they walk out, and they know in their minds, they're absolutely expected to just be beaming and going, wow!

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And yet most of them will admit, especially those who've left the church, who come to know

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Christ, I was crushed. I could not believe this was supposed to be this high spiritual experience.

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And that may be the experience and attitude behind some of the people, that those of you who go to Salt Lake, and believe me,

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I'd love to go with you, but I'm speaking on scriptural sufficiency in northern California that weekend.

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But if we do it again in October, I'm keeping that one open. The people you talk to, they may be oozing to you, oh,

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I know the church is true, and I love the church, and I've got my testimony, but there's a really good chance that that's covering up for something else.

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There's a really good chance that's covering up for something else. There is no deep and long satisfaction in worshiping a

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God who is nothing more than a more highly evolved version of you. And though some

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Mormons argue this point, if Elohim, God the

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Father, was once a man lived on another planet, there are only two possibilities for his experience.

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Either he was like all the rest of us, and was in a fallen state, and was redeemed, or he was the redeemer figure of that particular planet.

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But there's only be one of them. So for 99 .99%, there's a 99 .99

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% chance that Elohim was once a man who was in a fallen state just like you and I.

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That's their God. That's who you're worshiping in Mormonism. And even when you worship

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Him, can you see the vast difference between how we worship

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God as creatures, recognizing that everything we have, every breath of our mouth, every thought of our minds, is dependent upon Him?

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You're worshiping a being who likewise is dependent upon something else.

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Because you see, in Mormonism, think about it. If there's an ever -increasing number of gods now, if you go back in time, what does that mean?

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There's an ever -decreasing number of gods. And eventually, logically, you've got to get back to what?

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The first God. Where did He come from? There is no answer to that in Mormonism.

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If any of you have seen some of the dialogues I've been doing over the past number of years up in Salt Lake City, the last one we did at the

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OPC church in Magna, Utah, with a man I've known now for 30 years,

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Alma Allred. He openly admitted, we do not have an answer to the eternal regression question.

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It is a mystery. But, even in their system, the laws of eternal progression and priesthood authority pre -existed the first God, because they're what made

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Him the first God. So there's something outside of God that actually sustains all of this.

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It's a completely different worldview. Never, ever known amongst

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Christians until about 1838, at least people who call themselves Christians.

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There is no deep satisfaction in that. They do not have the kind of assurance and foundation that you and I have.

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Their whole understanding of the gospel is based upon a purely Pelagian view of man

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Grace is not a necessity. Book of Mormon says, is by grace we're saved.

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Yeah, the whole quote is, is by grace we're saved after all we can do.

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You do your best, then God's grace meets you. Think about that one for just about five seconds.

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That's a mission impossible salvation system. How many here have done everything that you can do?

35:22

Yeah. If that's what you've got to do for grace to meet you, you're lost.

35:29

You're lost. Joseph Smith had no concept of God's grace.

35:35

He had no concept of justification. I remember once before going up to Salt Lake City, we were passing out a tract on the nature of the gospel.

35:45

And so I took some time to just look up in all, and I've got a huge LDS library, everything I could find on justification.

35:51

There was almost nothing. There was almost nothing. That doctrine does not thrill the soul of a

35:58

Mormon person at all. And there's a real obvious reason. Joseph Smith did his own version of the

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Bible. It's actually just the King James with him making some comments. But he did run across one passage that troubled him.

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The passage that says that God justifies the ungodly by faith.

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He changed it. God does not justify the ungodly by faith.

36:25

He put the word not in because he couldn't conceive of the gospel of grace.

36:33

He never understood the gospel of grace. And so Mormons don't understand the gospel of grace.

36:41

So they have a God who's basically just a exalted version of themselves. Jesus's blood does not cleanse from all sin and the atonement began in the garden of Gethsemane.

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The actual focus of the atonement is when Jesus sweat blood. Jesus sweat blood.

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There is no concept of an elect people being joined to him in his death. There is no concept of being in him in that way.

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And so you've got a different God. You've got a Jesus who was not virgin born. I won't go into detail right now.

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I did rather fully in a book I wrote called Is the Mormon My Brother? But he's not virgin born.

37:31

He is in fact the first spirit child of Elohim and one of his heavenly wives.

37:39

One of the next of his spirit children's named Lucifer. So Jesus and Lucifer are spirit brothers as are all of us according to Mormonism.

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There is a tremendous amount of confusion as to who the Holy Spirit is in Mormonism.

37:58

Is he truly a God? But if he didn't ever have a body then he didn't go through eternal law of progression.

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And so how can he really become a God? And so how does he dwell in us? And it's really tremendously confused.

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They don't have a gospel. They don't have justification. They can't understand adoption because I'm already

38:19

God's child. Literally. I was born in a spiritual pre -existence between Elohim and one of his many wives.

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He has billions of spirit children. Who by the way ladies take nine months of gestation in the spirit world to be born.

38:39

Isn't that exciting? I've often wondered exactly what women look forward to in Mormonism.

38:47

Because the honest reality is exaltation for a

38:53

Mormon woman is to look forward to being eternally pregnant. You'll never see your feet again.

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Someone's crying about that back there. That's a first time I've ever had that happen during a sermon, but seriously

39:12

I mean you there is a gestation period. You give birth. Now, I don't know how you do this because you have a body of flesh and bone.

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No blood. Can't get into it right now. But you have a body of flesh and bone. But you give birth to spirit children who have who have little spiritual diapers and a little spiritual doo -doo and the whole nine yards and and they grow up and they have spiritual hair and you have spiritual haircuts and and we all existed in a pre -existence before we came here to this planet.

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And then that memory is wiped away from us so we can be tested for our faithfulness when we take on this physical body to be tested whether we become gods or not.

39:48

And some of you are looking at me like I'm making all this up. I am not. I'm not. This is what

39:55

Mormonism offers to its people. Now, you and I have a message for these individuals not because we are better than them.

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We have to be very very careful. It's very easy to communicate the idea that when you come to someone and especially when you come to their place as Salt Lake City is in their mind, that you are aggressively saying we are better than you are.

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The attitude we must always have is I'm a redeemed sinner and the only reason

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I know the truth about these things is because God in His grace revealed it to me.

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In His word, His unchanging word, because I can assure you almost every conversation you'll end up having is going to come back to whether the scriptures are sufficient.

40:56

They will. I don't have time to cover that today. I'm just talking about what makes

41:01

Mormonism Mormonism and to explain to you why we should have deep compassion in our hearts because the only thing that is going to allow us to speak to them in the way that we need to do so to adorn the gospel is if we truly understand that were it not for the grace of God, there go

41:22

I. You're not better than them. You're not more spiritually insightful than them.

41:31

We can look at what they believe and go that is just so weird. But I'm telling you something.

41:37

I mentioned Alma Allred before. I've had some really spiritual experiences in doing missions work in Mesa and in Salt Lake City.

41:49

I don't talk about him a lot because I'm not one of those people that talks about that kind of stuff and tries to, you know, sell books on it or something.

41:56

I remember very very clearly one day at the North Gate. This was back before they built the meeting house across the street across North Temple.

42:03

I was at the North Gate and I saw this man walking out and I could I don't know how

42:09

I could tell by the way he was looking but I had a feeling I was going to have a conversation with him. It looked like he was heading straight for me.

42:16

So I'm like there are certain topics I want to talk about. I always say there are three things you want to communicate to the

42:24

Mormon in the mission situation. Who is God? Who is Jesus? What is salvation?

42:30

Those are the three things you want to communicate. Get to. Now you may have to take a circuitous route to get there because of the track you're passing out.

42:38

You may need to, you know, one of my favorite tracks is a track I wrote on the first vision. And so you might start off talking about the first vision but you use that as a way to get through to who

42:48

God is and make that contrast. Those are the things that you want to try to do. One area that I just it's not that I haven't read on it.

42:58

It's just not my forte or it's not my super strength or something. It's just not something that I normally would focus upon was

43:06

Book of Mormon Archeology. Book of Mormon Archeology.

43:12

I see some of you going that's what I want to learn. Yeah. I want to be ready to talk about Book of Mormon Archeology.

43:20

That sounds really cool. There's only two of you and you're really weird. But other than that It's an important issue especially because a believing

43:29

Mormon believes the Book of Mormon is a divine revelation and it is the history of the ancient inhabitants of this hemisphere.

43:34

It's not but they believe that it is. So here comes this guy.

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I did not hear an audible voice. We're not adding this to the canon of the New Testament. But I had a very strong impression that if this man stops and talks to me

43:55

I need to start talking to him about Book of Mormon Archeology. Totally against what

44:03

I normally would do. It was really strange. But I decided to go with it.

44:08

He stopped. Gave him the track. He did the Mormon thing. By the way those of you who go you'll all get to see this or if you've been out to Macy you've always seen this.

44:15

You hand somebody a track. It's the Mormon thing. It's an automatic genetic thing that they're born with their wrist. They automatically look at the back.

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See who wrote it. It automatically just happens. Who wrote it? Who's the publisher? Is this anti -Mormon stuff?

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Which group are you with? He looks and I'm like, I wrote it. So, oh, okay.

44:35

And so I followed the lead. It was the only subject that he ever would have stopped to talk to me about.

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Only one. That was his area of interest. That's what got it started.

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I don't know where that came from. Well, I do. I do. No audible voices, but there are times when you enter into a conversation with somebody and the

45:05

Lord just gives you the direction, but you have to be prepared to do it.

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Because the Lord could not say to me, talk about Book of Mormon archaeology, Lord, what's

45:16

Book of Mormon archaeology? That wouldn't have worked. I was prepared to do it. The more prepared we are the sharper the tool in the hand of the

45:29

Lord we can become. The more we can be used. He can use anybody. He can use someone who doesn't know anything about Mormonism.

45:37

But you do not want to limit him in that way. If you're going to go and be a missionary in a

45:43

Muslim land, it probably follows it'd be good to know something about Islam, right? We recognize that.

45:50

Well, if you're going to be ministering in Salt Lake City, it's good to know something about where the Mormons are coming from.

45:55

And of course, once you realize what they really believe, here's the important takeaway for us today.

46:03

Once you realize what they've been given and what a shallow, shallow substitute for the reality it is, if your heart is not filled with love for these people, then don't get me wrong.

46:17

I'm not saying this is for everybody. I'm not trying to put a guilt trip on everybody so we end up with however many hundreds of people we have in here, dutifully making your way north to Salt Lake City in a couple weeks.

46:30

I'm not trying to do that. We want people who will have a passion, have a love in their hearts.

46:39

And that's not just sentimentality. It needs to be a passion that comes first and foremost from your love of God's truth.

46:52

Why memorize verses about the fact there's only one true God? Because there's only one true

46:57

God and you love Him. And He wants you to make Him known to all the peoples.

47:04

And so here's a people who have been given falsehood on that issue. I want to be able to share that with you and do it effectively and knowingly and trust the

47:13

Holy Spirit of God will use that. There will be no situation you've ever been in where you are more aware of the fact that you must have the

47:27

Spirit working to accomplish anything. I've often said if you can talk somebody out of religion, somebody else would come along and talk them back into it.

47:38

It's not the wisdom of your words. It's not your abilities along those lines. If the Spirit of God is not active, you will accomplish absolutely nothing.

47:49

That's why all of us, I want you to pray for this outreach.

47:54

If you're going to go up there, make it worthwhile. There are people there who need to hear, and yes, over the years, wonderful stories, amazing stories of people who heard while we were there and have come to know

48:13

Christ. There is a church in Logan, Utah today because of our outreach at the

48:19

General Conference of the Mormon Church. But we didn't know it at the time.

48:24

We didn't know about it for about five or six years. I handed out a copy of my book,

48:30

Letters to a Mormon Elder. It led to a person's salvation 10 years later.

48:39

There's not a lot of Christians that go up there because these are hard people to talk to, and if you're looking for instant gratification in numbers, well, the wonderful thing is here at Apologia, we know, and you have to have this as an absolute bedrock conviction, you must recognize that when you have been faithful in presenting the truth of God in that situation,

49:10

God has been glorified no matter what the result you might see right now.

49:18

You have the theology to understand that. Sadly, most evangelicals do not, and that's why they either utilize literature and tracts that are not appropriate and will not have long -term benefit to the

49:34

Mormons, or they use methods of evangelism that actually end up turning them off, rather than speaking the truth and trusting the

49:45

Spirit of God to do what only the Spirit of God can do. We understand why that is.

49:52

We have that foundation, but please pray for them. Pray that those who go up there will be changed by the experience in a positive way, that their love for the

50:07

Mormon people will be increased, that they will be able to come back and explain to you, my goodness,

50:15

I saw these beautiful families, and they're so well -dressed, and they look so clean, and from the world's perspective, and then when

50:26

I realized the darkness that they're walking in, my heart was broken. I hope that's what you see, because that's what

50:37

I saw over and over again, and that's what keeps you going back again and again and again.

50:46

Now, let me make a transition here, because right down here we have the elements of the

50:59

Supper. Do you know how the Mormons do the

51:06

Lord's Supper? Bread and water. Bread and water.

51:16

Now, if you think about it for just a few moments, you can figure out why it happened. Historically, there were some issues about the elders and a little bit too much of the communion wine.

51:32

Emma wasn't happy about that, and when you have someone who can receive revelation, things can change overnight.

51:43

And so, how many of you have ever been to a Mormon ward chapel, actually sat through?

51:48

Okay, a few of you, okay. Now, I probably don't have time to mention this to you, but for a couple years, we actually, well,

52:02

Kelly, you all can ask her about her experience of this, but Kelly went with me the first time that we went to a

52:11

Mormon ward chapel, and I was, like I said, I was 20, she was probably 19, and we happened to go on the first Sunday of the month.

52:22

Now, what's the first Sunday of the month in a Mormon ward chapel? It's fasting and testimony Sunday. And so, what they do is they open up the pulpit for anybody who wants to come up and give a testimony.

52:39

And so, it just gets quiet. Well, not really quiet, because their family integrated, too. So, there's kids moving all over the place, and the whole nine yards, but there's no one speaking, and there's no one getting up.

52:53

And I remember Kelly was sitting right here, and I sort of did this, and she's already looking at me, don't you dare.

53:04

I'm sort of like, I'm thinking about it. And so, eventually, a few missionaries got up and did their thing.

53:12

And so, we left, and I was thinking about that. And I said, you know what?

53:18

That's what we've got to do. We're going back next month, and I'm going to have a special, I'm going to memorize verses on a certain subject, and I'm going to give my testimony.

53:30

And so, there were about five of us. I was teaching a class on Mormonism at North Phoenix Baptist Church at the time. So, about five of us went.

53:39

And so, the time came, and I'm like, okay.

53:45

So, I get up. Right then, somebody about two rows in front of me, over on that side, gets up, and they beat me to the front.

53:54

And so, I have to sit down next to the bishop. He's looking at me.

54:01

I'm not looking at him. I'm just listening, and he's looking at me. And so, that guy gets done, and I get up there.

54:10

Now, you've got to understand, and I just got quiet in here. I was going to use this as an illustration, but it's already happening.

54:16

There was movement, and there's kids, and I said, right, you know,

54:25

I said, thank you very much for this opportunity of giving my testimony, especially because I'm not a member of the

54:32

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. And honestly, it's like the little kids running underneath the pew, they just freeze in place.

54:49

It becomes silent. You could hear a pin drop in that place, because this has never happened before, ever.

54:59

And so, I started talking about justification by faith, faith alone.

55:05

I had gotten through about three verses when, I'm not going to fold up my hymns here, but this folded up bulletin, and this was so long ago.

55:13

It was the old mimeograph machines. Any of you old enough to remember mimeograph machines? You'd smell them. They had that really weird smell to them, you know.

55:20

Dating myself again. This thing folded up, flies over my shoulder, and lands on the pulpit, and it says on it, it's been scribbled out,

55:31

Brother White, our time is up. I had been there the month before.

55:37

I knew how long they had sat there before without anybody saying anything, and I knew my time wasn't up, but okay, your house.

55:46

And so, I finished up. I went and sat down. All the missionaries in the room lined up to give their testimonies, aimed right at me.

55:57

And then, as soon as the hymn was over, the first counselor to the bishop is right at the end of our pew, because they can recognize we're all visitors, right at the end of our peer.

56:07

The bishop would like to speak with you. And so, we all piled into the bishop's office, and one of the things that I'm thankful,

56:17

I'm getting older, my memory's not so good, but his name was Bishop Stanley Buell.

56:23

I remember that. That was a long time ago. Remember Stanley Buell? And we had, and that was the first time

56:30

I ever had a Mormon express to me that they were offended because I said all men had sinned, because he had heard the prophets say that there were perfect men on earth today.

56:43

Who knew that I had to memorize verses about the universality of sin? Now, I tell you that story because when you think of what these people are doing, this

56:58

Sunday, not far from here, we drove right past a Mormon ward on the way here. There's, I don't know how many there are within a few blocks of us here, and they passed around bread and water.

57:14

We're going to come forward, and we're going to take the unleavened bread, and we're going to dip it in the wine.

57:21

And you and I understand what this represents because we read the New Testament, and we realize

57:27

Jesus establishes this as a remembrance of him. And so, it's his broken body.

57:36

It's his shed blood. Water doesn't cut that because Joseph Smith just did not understand.

57:45

He never knew the gospel. He came up with something else in its place. But that's what they've had.

57:53

Think about those. I ran into an older Mormon lady recently in my neighborhood.

57:59

She taught, used to teach at BYU. I mean, we're talking lifelong Mormon, and I just could not help but think, what is it like to go through your entire life with the wrong

58:14

God the wrong Jesus the wrong gospel and yet dedicate yourself to promulgating that message.

58:23

What sadness. What sadness. As you come forward for the supper today,

58:32

I hope you will think about the grace that God has shed abroad in your life.

58:42

God did not have to lead you to the truth. He could have left you in darkness justly as a fallen son or daughter of Adam, but he did not.

58:53

And it wasn't because you're smarter or better. And now, here we have an opportunity once again.

59:02

And folks, the Lord has blessed Apologia's ministry to Mormons. You know that.

59:11

I don't know what it is because Jeff's beard should be a turnoff to all

59:16

Mormons immediately. Just automatically. I mean, what's that? But somehow

59:22

God gets over it. And you have had that impact and we've had the same type of impact with Alpha Omega Ministries.

59:33

We're working together now in this way. It's a glorious thing. There's going to be pushback and there's going to be challenges in the future,

59:42

I'm sure. But I hope and pray, especially as you come forward today, and you think about the deep richness of the supper that you will consider

59:54

God's grace to you and what he would have you to do to help as we reach out to these people.

01:00:02

There are a lot of Mormons that are wondering. There's a lot of questions going on in Mormonism right now. The back door is as big as the front right now.

01:00:08

They're really not growing anything other than natural growth right now. Mormonism is in trouble.

01:00:14

But the sad thing is when when false religions go bad, most of their adherents don't end up embracing the gospel.

01:00:23

Even when they leave, they end up just simply amongst the religiously abused. When the Watchtower falsely prophesied

01:00:30

Armageddon back in 1974 -75, over the next 10 years, a million people left the

01:00:36

Watchtower. 99 % of them never entered another church building in their lives.

01:00:42

They just were done with religion. That's happening with a lot of Mormons. We want to give them the truth.

01:00:49

We want to tell them, yes, you've been lied to, but that doesn't mean that everything is a lie. And that's what we want to be doing.

01:00:58

Pray for the outreach. Pray for the Mormon people. Pray for those that are going up there that they will be indeed blessed by that opportunity.

01:01:08

Pray for our meeting next Tuesday evening. I'll do everything I can to let you know about what what to expect, even though there's some things that are different since I was up there last.

01:01:18

And I'm so excited that you all have chosen to do this. And I want to be a part of it as well.

01:01:25

Let's close this time with a word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we do ask for this upcoming event,

01:01:33

Lord, that only you can open hearts and minds. Only you know who is going to be there, how to minister to them.

01:01:42

You know what conversations there are. May we in everything we do hold those doors wide open for those conversations, even in the distribution just of the tracts, that you would bless them.

01:01:56

Lord, we want to be used of you to be light amongst the Mormon people. And so,

01:02:03

Lord, bless this effort. And Lord, even here in the valley, as we have opportunity, as we meet people in our everyday lives, may we be people who are quick with a word of grace and a word of instruction.

01:02:17

May we be so grounded in the word that we will have confidence to speak your truth to a wide variety of people.

01:02:25

We thank you for the freedom that we have to be able to do this. We know that there are many people in other lands that would not have this freedom at all.

01:02:34

May we use it to your honor and to your glory. We pray in Christ's name.