The Only God Worthy of Worship

The Unchanging God and the Foundation of the Gospel

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. What you're about to watch is a sermon, a message from Apologia Church's worship service.

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Ministry to Mormons and Why the Outreach Matters

Well, good afternoon, Apologia Church. I wasn't expecting to be here on Thursday. And then I got a phone call. And when Jeff calls, it's your duty to answer. 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.

Already, you have a reputation, clearly, amongst the Mormon people. It was not that many months ago that Jeff and I had our dialogue with a young Mormon man from BYU. How many of you saw that? Okay, then you saw a lot of the conversation that can take place.

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

In.

1983. So how many of you had not yet taken your first breath in 1983? Wow, okay.

Well,.

Where's my Geritol? You got some down there? Good. 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 Kelly and I, at that time living out in North Phoenix, got on the back of a Kawasaki 440.

And.

Got on the 60, which ended at Country Club then.

And.

I'm really dating myself here. Sorry, honey. I didn't mean to do this, but and we ended up at the Arby's, which is now a parking lot, but the Arby's at the corner of Main and Hobson there. And we were amazed.

Looked like a JCPenney convention. There were white shirts and dark ties everywhere. Lots of missionaries.

And.

We were sort of overwhelmed with the number of people that were there. 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 Wally Tope was?

You know, you put it up that fast, as you get older, the shoulder goes out, just so you know. And it's stuck. So it's a really bad thing. Just enjoy your youth, son. That's what I'm saying. Wally actually stayed with us when he would visit Phoenix.

And in fact, I think he drove a cat of mine crazy. We had this little white Persian. Kelly likes white Persians. Don't, don't give us a bunch of white Persians, please. But like white Persian cats. And we let Wally stay with us.

And the cat was never the same after Wally stayed with us. But Wally Tope was, how do you describe him? He was one of the most zealous, untiring witnessers to the Mormon people ever. And I learned a lot from him.

I learned, for example, on next, not this coming Tuesday night, but the next Tuesday night, I will share with you what he taught me on how to effectively pass out a tract. Did you know that there are certain rules on how to do that?

There are. And this guy was zealous. 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. And they beat him into a coma that he never came out of and died about two years later.

He was the last person to die from those riots. But he was a man who loved to witness to the 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, in Mesa. And yeah, right around that time, I and two other brothers got into a Honda Accord.

And,.

Please don't do this, by the way. We left on Friday night. We drove through the night to Salt Lake City. We went to Gerald and Sandra Tanner's home. They allowed us to go downstairs and to.

Change.

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

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

And so I waited in and, and he just, he got in my pocket for the rest of the time that we were up there. But then when we got done, this was the dumb part, we got back in the car and drove back home. So Friday night, all, no sleep, standing all day Saturday, no sleep, get back in the car, drive home.

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. But we pretty quickly realized that wasn't the wisest way to do it.

But we also realized, wow, is there an opportunity here? Such an opportunity. Because these, when you go to Salt Lake City, you're talking to the leadership of the 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.

So they're, they're going to be willing to talk to you. They're going to be willing more than in, in Mesa. That's changed a little bit over the years. 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. We did it for 18 years, 36 times. We went to Salt Lake City because the general conference is the first weekend, April, the first weekend, October, like clockwork.

And the Mormons tried to stop us, but they couldn't. Things changed up there. I'll talk about that on Tuesday evening, the, the, the, the things that have, that have altered the ease with which you have access to people.

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 Mormon. It should be moron. That's what they think preaching is.

And when people are offended, they think that they're, that makes them spiritual and, and they're being persecuted for Christ's sake. Well, you can't expect the Mormons to differentiate between the people outside.

Oh, we were dressed nicely. I would suggest that by the way. We were dressed nicely. We were respectful. We had never done that. 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. Why? Why? Well, you read from Psalm 90 just a few moments ago. I want to return your attention to it briefly.

You'll notice that it's a prayer of Moses, the man of God. A prayer of Moses, the man of God. And one of the verses, I have a article on our website at AOMN .org 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. A 100-verse memorization system for dealing with Mormons. And it's drawn from witnessing more than 5 ,000 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. 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 I do this, from everlasting to everlasting, thou art 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. 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 King James so that there wouldn't be any issue. And the point was, this is what makes us to differ from the LDS people. They're some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. Oh, have I not, have I been treated nastily by Mormons?

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. 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. 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.

When I first met my first two Mormon missionaries,.

I.

May not have had all the right motivations that hopefully I developed over the years for that first encounter. I guess my first encounter was actually on an outreach meeting for the 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. 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. 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.

By the way, not all books on Mormonism are created equal, just in case you're heading to the local Christian bookstore on that particular subject. And so, a few years later, I had just gotten married,.

And.

I was between my freshman and sophomore years of high school. So I was right around 20 years of age when I got a phone call about a month after Kelly and I got married. 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. 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.

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

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.

It was so frustrating. In the last moments with Elders Reed and Reese, now, by the way, I actually invited them over to my place a few months later, and I remember, like I said, Kelly and I had just gotten married.

We had this little teeny place, and I made, well, I thought were really good fried burritos for them. I'm not sure they really were, but they were good for me. 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 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 Mormon over 35 years later.

And over debates and radio programs and outreaches and all the hours and hours and hours I've spent in conversation with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the very same words 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 God who does not change. Your God has changed. Your God once said this was necessary for salvation, but it's not anymore. 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.

That means He's changed. He's evolved, as you believe you will if you are going to gain exaltation yourself. And someday, you're going to want to know the God who does not change. 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. And I hope at that point, if it's not me, it'll be another one of His followers and worshipers that you will be willing to go to, and that they will be able to introduce you to this one true 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 Mormon person. Now, you might say, well, well, don't you just want to get to the gospel first?

Think with me for a moment. 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 from that empty tomb, if He's going to be evolving and changing?

If God Himself is evolving and changing, the very certainty of the gospel is based upon the realization that God is truly God and does not change. You might say, well, everybody believes that. The Mormons do not.

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

I gave you a little quote.

From something that sounds really strange to most folks, but it's called the King Follett Discourse. It was actually a sermon at the General Conference, what's known today as the General Conference of the LDS Church, only a matter of months before Joseph Smith was murdered in a Carthage jail.

It is the single most often cited sermon of Joseph Smith by the leadership of the LDS Church from that day to this. It's not a part of LDS scripture, but it's as close as you can get. 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, Joseph's theology starts taking a real hard turn off into some really strange things.

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 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.

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.

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

I will refute that idea and take away the veil so that you may see. And what you and I need to understand is that no matter how often they use the name Jesus, how often they speak of biblical concepts, when Joseph Smith uttered those words, he forever separated anyone who would follow him as a prophet from the Christian faith.

If you do not have a God who has eternally been God, you are not a follower of Jesus Christ. Whatever Jesus you have is not the 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 Bible that plainly teach the fact that there is only one true God.

Which, of course, is also absolutely foundational to the 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 Christian faith, there is only one true God who has eternally existed as God.

When Joseph Smith said, I will refute that idea, he forever separated his followers from the Christian faith. I'm often asked, do you think, do you think Mormonism could have something happen to it, like the worldwide Church of God had happen?

Where you had these weird teachings about the 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 orthodox.

In fact, I was, I was the first person to preach on the Trinity in a worldwide Church of God church after that happened, back in the 90s. 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 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. So far is Mormonism from biblical Christianity, so far that Mormonism actually posits in its most 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, I don't know.

But as of yet, the orthodox understanding of the 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.

You thought the Hindus had a lot of gods, of 330 million gods? That's nothing. There is an infinite number of gods. There has to be. Just think of how many gods Mormonism itself is allegedly producing just on this planet.

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 worshiped 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. 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. It is an amazing thought, and in fact, that's why I have said many times, and it wakes people up, Islam is considerably closer to biblical Christianity than Mormonism ever could be.

Because the first definitional concept of religion is, do you believe there is one everlasting, unchanging God who's the creator of all things? Muslims believe that. 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.

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

What?

Intelli what? Intelligences? Yes, you see, you and I existed as intelligences, and we're uncreated in that sense. And God has existed as an intelligence, and then he had his premortal birth, and he lived on a planet, and then he was exalted, he became 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. And so, yes, God has eternally existed,.

Not.

In an exalted state, but he's eternally existed as an intelligence. 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.

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 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.

Oh,.

I've believed in Jesus Christ. So have I. I've repented of my sins. So have I. I believe I'm going to be in Christ's presence forever. Yes, so do we. And I believe I'm saved by grace. So do we. Well, why did that guy on Sunday say you guys were so far off?

Because none of the words I just used mean the same thing for Mormon they mean for us. You see, for the Mormon, salvation is in a general sense and a specific sense. General sense is just simply resurrection.

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

But you see, you're just, it's a lexical problem. We're using the same words, we're just going to a different dictionary to define what the words mean, and it all goes back to who God.

Is.

Compassion, Discernment, and the Mormon View of Salvation

Now,.

When I first started speaking to Mormons, there was way too much of the young person, on the battle line, I'm defending God's truth idea. Over time, Lord willing, when you get to see and know Mormons, then hopefully the Lord fills your heart with true compassion for those individuals.

Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, the people that come to our doorstep. Once you really start realizing what their lives are really like, once you start realizing that nearly three-quarters of all Mormon missionaries, when they return from their mission, go inactive for at least six months afterwards, because they are burned out.

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. But most of them are deeply disappointed.

Most Mormons, the first time they go into the temple, are stunned, 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.

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!

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

I was crushed.

I could not believe this. This was this was supposed to be this high spiritual experience. 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, I'd love to go with you, but I'm speaking on scriptural sufficiency in northern California that weekend.

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, 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.

There's a really good chance that's covering up for something else. There is no deep and long satisfaction in worshiping a God who is nothing more than a more highly evolved version of you. And though some Mormons argue this point, if Elohim, God the Father, was once a man lived on another planet, there are only two possibilities for his experience.

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. But there's only be one of them. So for 99 .99%, there's a 99 .99 chance that Elohim was once a man who was in a fallen state just like you and I.

That's their God. That's who you're worshiping in Mormonism. And even when you worship Him, can you see the vast difference between how we worship God as creatures, recognizing that everything we have, every breath of our mouth, every thought of our minds, is dependent upon Him?

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

There's an ever-decreasing number of gods. And eventually, logically, you've got to get back to what? The first God. Where did He come from? There is no answer to that in Mormonism. 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 OPC church in Magna, Utah, with a man I've known now for 30 years, Alma Allred.

He openly admitted, we do not have an answer to the eternal regression question. 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 Him the first God. So there's something outside of God that actually sustains all of this. It's a completely different worldview.

Never, ever known amongst Christians.

Until.

About 1838, at least people who call themselves Christians. There is no deep satisfaction in that. They do not have the kind.

Of.

Assurance and foundation that you and I have. Their whole understanding of the gospel is based upon a purely Pelagian view of man. Grace is not a necessity. The Book of Mormon says, is by grace we're saved.

Yeah, the whole quote is, is by grace we're saved after all we can do. You do your best, then God's grace meets you. Think about that one for just about five seconds. That's a mission impossible salvation system.

How many here have done everything that you can do?

Yeah.

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

You're lost. You're lost.

They have, Joseph Smith had no concept of God's grace. 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. 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, there was almost nothing.

There was almost nothing. That doctrine does not thrill the soul of a Mormon person at all. And there's a real obvious reason. Joseph Smith did his own version of the Bible. It's actually just the King James with him making some comments.

But he did run across one passage that troubled him. The passage that says that God justifies the ungodly by faith. He changed it. God does not justify the ungodly by faith. He put the word not in.

Because he couldn't conceive.

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

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

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

He is in fact the first spirit child of Elohim and one of his heavenly wives. One of the next of his spirit children was named Lucifer. So Jesus and Lucifer are spirit brothers as are all of us according to Mormonism.

There is a tremendous amount of confusion as to who the Holy Spirit is in Mormonism. Is he truly a God? But if he didn't ever have a body then he didn't go through eternal law of progression and so how can he really become a God?

And so how does he dwell in us? And it's really tremendously confused. They don't have a gospel. They don't have justification. They can't understand adoption because I'm already God's child.

Literally.

I was born in a spiritual pre-existence.

Between.

Elohim and one of his many wives. He has billions of spirit children who by the way ladies take nine months of gestation in the spirit world to be born. Isn't that exciting? I've often wondered exactly what women look forward to in Mormonism because the honest reality is exaltation for a Mormon woman is to look forward to being eternally pregnant.

You'll never see your feet again. Someone's crying about that back there. That's a first time I've ever had that happen during a sermon but seriously.

I mean.

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. 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.