The Dividing Line - Agnostic Mormonism?

And welcome to The Dividing Line on a Friday morning, doing things all completely discombobulated today. We were going to be doing things completely different than we're doing it now. I was in Tucson this morning and I will be in Tucson this afternoon.

Those were apologies to my little car, which I try to not put extra miles on, but nothing I can do about it today. I'm gonna be riding an Altura Tucson tomorrow and it looks like it's just going to be really bad.

It's going to be ugly, it's going to be raining. And when you put 9 ,000 people on bikes on wet streets, you can tell it my biggest concern for tomorrow.

Wanna borrow my mountain bike?

Almost, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have zoomed back here to Phoenix to switch out bikes. I have more than one bike, thankfully, and I have a bike that has like 30 ,000 miles on it and it's made of metal rather than carbon fiber.

So if I do end up biffing it, it's got a better shot at survival than my carbon fiber bikes do, which tend to not handle that kind of thing really well. So it did solve our problem of trying to figure out how we were gonna do the dividing line today because voila, here I am.

But we're only gonna do an hour. I was gonna do a little bit longer than that, but I've got to get back down there and get stuff done and pick up my packet and do all this kind of stuff. So it's a bit of a pain.

So we're going to be doing, if I could have gotten Mutato to sing for me for today, maybe I would never ask him to do this, but maybe we can get him to sing, we thank thee, oh Lord, for the prophet who communed with Jehovah, a famous Mormon hymn, but we could do Radio Free Salt Lake City or Provo or something like that.

We haven't done anything specifically on Mormonism in quite some time, but it's time to do so. I listened to someone in Twitter, this is a program brought about by a tweet, one of many that have been brought about by tweets, someone tweeted me and I'm sorry, I don't remember who it was and my Twitter stuff isn't coming up very fast here, tweeted me a link to the November 15th, Issues Etc program.

Now I've been on Issues Etc a number of times over the years. And so the tweet was a little bit opaque, it really wasn't clear as what it was saying and I almost didn't click on it, but I'm glad I did because I downloaded the program and the president, Mr. Gordon of Fair Mormon, which I think I'm pretty certain is the old Fair LDS.

Now I had a lot of interaction with F-A-I-R, Fair LDS back, oh, late nineties, early part of this century. And they were an excuse organization, that's the only way to put it. There was a guy associated with them by the name of Kerry Schertz, who had written some of the most, well, anybody who writes anything trying to defend the book of Abraham is going to be really stretching it because the book of Abraham is utterly indefensible.

We still have, in fact, here's our little track, Men Is Not God, it's available on the website, but there it is. I mean, oh wow, I haven't looked at this for a while. We actually distributed this, huh?

Must have been to the young men at priesthood meeting who can read things with this font size.

We tended to target the, well, not the younger ones. We avoided that because it was kind of, there's a, I don't know what rating you would put on that, but you don't give that to kids, that's for sure.

Well, for some reason, the back is not, the inside's bold, I can read that. The back isn't bold for some reason, and I, oh wow, that's amazing. Anyway, wasting.

So Barry Lynn wouldn't be able to read that for sure. No, no, definitely not.

Wow, that was, that's bad. Anyways, they were involved in making up excuses, and they still are, to basically defend the Mormon testimony. You can keep believing, we'll find an excuse for archeology in the Book of Mormon, we'll find an excuse for the Book of Abraham, we'll find an excuse for false prophecies.

It's an excuse-making organization for the Mormon church. Well, I haven't kept up with FAIR for a long, long time, and there have been a lot of changes up in Salt Lake. Look at what happened with farms, it gets absorbed by the church, and then all the big names and farms get canned.

This mainstreaming stuff is just on full bore. And as I listened to this program, I was absolutely shocked. I was hearing agnostic Mormonism. Well, we don't, as man is, God once was, as God is, man may become, that first part, we don't, we just don't know much about it.

And I'm sitting here going, how can you say things like this? The Mormon kids in the mid -1980s knew about it. They knew, they had read Mormon doctrine, they had read Doctrines of Salvation, they had read Articles of Faith, they read their priesthood manuals, they, even if they hadn't gone to the temple, I mean, once they've gone to the temple, the missionaries, they've seen this stuff being presented, they see the polytheism, Elohim sends down Jehovah in company with Michael, and all that.

And I'm sitting here going, how does this guy get away with this? Because anyone knowledgeable about Mormonism, any knowledgeable Mormon who has read Joseph Smith, has read any of Brigham Young, has even thumbed through the Journal of Discourse, which is all 26 volumes, but who even just keeps up with the priesthood manuals, is sitting there going, seriously?

You say we don't know? And then when he describes the first vision, I'm just like, I mean, I have spoken with thousands of Mormons. I mean, I sat down once or figured it out. We went up to Salt Lake City for 18 years, twice a year, plus the Mormon Easter pageant.

The Easter pageant got as long as, what was the longest they did one year? I mean, it got pretty long. It was like 10 days. Yeah, it was huge. I mean, we were exhausted by the end when they made it so long.

You put all that together, and the number of people we talked to over all that time, I'd say about 5 ,000 missionaries and at least 5 ,000 non-missionaries. And I'm sitting here going, 99 .9 of these people would sit there and they would listen to this man speaking going, what is he talking about?

And he's the president of FAIR, and he's on a national Lutheran talk show. Now, thankfully, right at the end of the program, the host mentioned that they were gonna have Bill McKeever on the next Monday to respond to this, which is great.

I'm glad they did that. But I was absolutely amazed at the lengths to which this man would go. And you can hear him, and I'm not making fun of the man, sort of stuttering and stammering. I think he's stuttering and stammering, not because he has a problem speaking, but because he knows what he's saying could be so easily refuted.

And it's the feeling of the person who knows that the people on his side who are listening to him are going, dude, you're fudging that. You know, come on, man. I mean, when you say the biggest thing that comes out of the First Vision was Joseph Smith's sins are forgiven?

Really? I mean, I can't tell you how many Mormon missionaries I've talked to, and they'll start, and back then they started the missionary presentation with the First Vision. And it wasn't about Joseph Smith's sins being forgiven.

It was about God the Father and Jesus have physical bodies. They're separate and distinct physical entities. And he never even mentions that as part of the First Vision, just amazing. Absolutely amazing.

So what we have here is one of the most incredible examples of the vain attempt to mainstream Mormonism. Now, if Mr. Gordon believes all this stuff, if he really goes, I don't know, some people go, well, that's good.

It's good to get Mormons. I mean, now they're not openly affirming the worst parts of Mormonism. No, I don't think it's good at all. It's dishonest. I mean, the facts are the facts concerning who Joseph Smith was.

The facts are the facts concerning what Joseph Smith taught. The facts are the facts concerning what's found in the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price. And you cannot repair Mormonism. You have to abandon Mormonism.

There's no repairing it. And these people like Richard Mao, the former president of Fuller Seminary, were running around trying to patch this thing up. It's just utter foolishness, utter foolishness. You have to abandon it.

You can't repair it. It's a false belief. But anyway, we need to listen to what was said here. And I only got the first portion of it marked up, but the second part, we have to play all of it anyways.

So we're not gonna get done today. But just so you can hear what was being said, let's start off with some of the questions that were asked.

I believe the truth claims of Mormonism.

What do you think is the biggest popular misconception about Mormonism in general?

Sure, there are several, but the biggest one probably is we're not Christian. Many times there are books out, and there are many popularists who try to make us as something other than Christian. Granted, I would agree that we're not traditional Christian in many ways.

But as far as do we believe Jesus Christ is our Savior? Do we believe in the Bible? Do we believe in the foundational beliefs that other Christians believe in? Yeah, we're very much Christian.

Now, I have entire videos out there addressing this very issue. Fundamentally, let me repeat something I've said many times before. Islam is considerably closer to biblical Christianity than Mormonism ever could be.

Islam is. You say, but Islam denies that Jesus is the Son of God. The Mormons believe he is. Yeah, they do believe he is, along with you and me and the devil, because God the Father has many wives and lots of kids.

Billions of them. Because God the Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as any man. Doctrine and Covenants section 130 verse 22. Because God the Father wills the man to live on another planet, he became a God, and there are an unlimited number of gods in the universes.

So everything you just heard there, well, he's our Savior. What does that mean? He's later on gonna admit, well, yeah, a lot of Mormons think that God the Father sort of did what Jesus did on another planet, okay?

So Mormonism is the single most polytheistic religion that has ever been dreamt up by man. Unlimited number of gods. I mean, even the Hindus only have about 330 million. Unlimited number of gods. And so to say, the core beliefs, we believe all those things.

No, you don't. No, you don't. You have a completely different God, a completely different Jesus, a completely different spirit, a completely different gospel. Atonement's completely different. Starts in the Garden of Gethsemane.

How it is availed, how it is obtained, completely different. You have an open canon of Scripture. You have other books of Scripture. And even when you talk about that, but he never quotes the eighth article of faith in here.

It's like historic Mormonism has disappeared for these guys. Well, we accept the Bible as far as it's translated correctly, but the Book of Mormon is the most correct book of any on earth. I mean, I haven't done anything in Mormonism for a while, but this stuff just flows back out.

I did it for so many years. I've got all this stuff memorized. And so does he. So this was the most dishonest misrepresentation of Mormonism I have ever heard in the public sphere from a person who calls herself a Mormon.

Absolutely amazing. Absolutely amazing. Continues on with some of the alleged misunderstandings.

A lot of misconceptions or things. Well, one that most people, comes to mind for most people is the Mormons are polygamists, so we have more than one wife. And while it is true that back in the 1800s, polygamy was practiced for a select few.

Select few, all right.

Currently, if someone who is Mormon or LDS currently were to have more than one wife or more than one husband for that matter, they're instantly excommunicated. It's a quick way out of the church. So then people say, well, what about all those Mormons practicing polygamy in southern Utah and northern Arizona?

And my answer is they're not Mormon. They haven't been Mormon for close to 100 years. These are groups of people who were excommunicated from the Mormon church. It would be very much like saying, you know, asking those people to be Mormon, it'd be very much like saying, you know, Lutherans are still Catholics.

They're not. Lutherans are not Catholics, but it's just confusing to people when people say that those groups practicing polygamy down there are Mormons.

Now, that's the official line. I'll give him that, that's the official line. He knows it's not true, but that's the official line. What do I mean by that? Well, even after polygamy was officially abandoned so Utah could become a state, everybody knows that.

What you did is you went down to Mexico and you married your wives down there. But I remember not all that many decades ago now walking around with a gentleman in Salt Lake City outside the temple and he made the comment to me.

He said, if you could wear special glasses that would reveal polygamists to you, you would be shocked at the proportion of people walking through these gates right now.

That are actually polygamists. And he was right. I will never forget the conversations that I had with Grant Wadsworth standing on the south gate of the temple telling me about his three wives that he married all three of them in that temple.

And that as long as he didn't go around.

Making it public to the, he was fine. That's right, as long as you don't make a stink, they will close their eyes. You better believe it. You better believe it. And everybody in Salt Lake City knows it.

And I think Mr. Gordon knows it as well.

Let's see, misconception about believing the Bible. We're very fundamental Bible believers. Most times I have friends who are pastors and we sit down and read the Bible and occasionally we'll say, how do you interpret that?

And I'll tell them and they'll say, wow, that's how I believe it too. So we're very fundamental Bible believers. Sometimes that misconception comes up because we do believe in an open canon, which means we do have additional scripture in addition to the Bible.

And that would be the Book of Mormon. And that's where we get our nickname Mormons. And notice, he doesn't even mention the Doctrine and Covenants for Earl Grey Price. Doesn't even mention.

I mean, he's going to say when he talks about the central message that we have prophets today, but he doesn't then come along and say, well, that means we can receive revelation at any point in time. They are not fundamental Bible believers for crying out loud.

The first people who ever pressed me on alleged errors in the Bible were Mormon missionaries. That's not fundamental Bible belief. Eighth article of faith, we believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly, which for the vast majority of Mormons means it has been corrupted.

Even the Book of Mormon says, many plain and precious truths have been removed from the Bible, right? So why not say that, especially when you know you're on a conservative Lutheran talk show where that's what people need to know.

Soft cell, right, left, and center here. Absolutely amazing. And don't tell me you sit down with regular Christians and, well, that's how I interpret it. Really? So you've read through the stuff and said, yeah, well, we interpret this to mean that God the Father is the one God named Elohim and Jehovah is a separate God from Elohim.

And, oh, yeah, that's how we interpret it too. Really? Yeah, and this John 10, 34, that means you can become a God. That's how you interpret it too, right? Please.

Absolutely amazing. Just be straight up on it. Other misconceptions occasionally we get is that somehow we're oppressive to women and we're not. Women are very much equal in our faith.

Which is why, of course, the Mormon Church was one of the primary opponents of ERA back in the 70s. And why women have the priesthood, right? Oh, well, no, they don't have the priesthood. And that's why women are dependent upon their husband's priesthood for resurrection.

Well, okay, we won't mention any of that.

I've also heard that Mormons are racist. And I think a lot of that comes from the idea that also an attempt to paint us as other by some. And the reality is is Mormons have had African-Americans in our ranks since 1830.

And we've never been segregated, unlike some denominations. But we went through a small, but the one thing we did do is we went through a period when African-Americans did not have the ability to fulfill church leadership roles.

And because of that, and the fact that that did not get overturned until 1978, people then mistakenly say, well, blacks were not part of your church. Well, yes, they were. I did their leadership roles.

Well, they did in the beginning, but then for whatever reason, they didn't for a while. And then they were given that again. The question is, was it racism? Probably. You know, just as all denominations, we have people who aren't perfect and people who make bad decisions.

But the good news is that's been overcome. That's been overcome.

Now, here is a man who, if he attends priesthood session, has to stand to affirm that this man up front is the prophet and this is the first presidency and these are the 12 apostles. And there's been an unbroken line of succession in the priesthood all the way back to the restoration of the priesthood to Joseph Smith in 1829, right?

So this racism, and he's right, there was, I mean, Brigham Young was obviously a racist, no question about it. But to say that, well, you know, they did it first and they didn't for a while, that's from the time of Brigham Young until 1978.

Figure out the years. That's over a hundred years, right? And why weren't they allowed to have the priesthood? Because the prophets of the Mormon church, the apostles of the Mormon church taught amazing things, that the blacks were cursed with a black skin, that the Book of Mormon up until 1981 clearly taught that the mark of Cain was a black skin, that the Lamanites were given that mark.

And that in fact, when Lamanites would join the Mormon church, well, Christ church, that they would become white and delightsome. And as late as the 1960s, the Mormon prophet Spencer W. Kimball said he would go to the Indian reservations and he would notice that the children of converts to the Mormon church were lighter than their parents because the fulfillment of the Book of Mormon, for crying out loud.

Doesn't mention that, does he? Well, that was just speculation. Of the prophet of the Mormon church, of which this man is not the prophet of the Mormon church. And again, if I know this, well-read Mormons know this too.

And that's why I'm telling you, there's a split coming. Because if the Mormon church keeps just muddling around and wandering about in the wilderness without any clue as to what it believes anymore, people who know what the gospel of the restoration was are gonna go, hey, y 'all need to start teaching what we were teaching back when we were growing like gangbusters.

And then the moderates and the new BYU grads, like, oh, we can't do that because these polls say. But again, I just, I cannot imagine what it's like to be in someone's situation like Mr. Gordon here and to just know how easy it would be for anybody knowledgeable about the history of the Mormon church to just absolutely go, what are you talking about, dude?

I mean, you could bury this guy under quote, after quote, after quote, in context from the general discourses, from all the GAs, all the general authorities, all the way up to the modern period. You could bury this guy with almost everything he says.

And yet, there you go. Fascinating.

Latter-day Revelation, the Great Apostasy, and the Trinity

Central message of Mormonism is that God speaks to man today, not just through the Bible, but through prophets.

Now, keep that in mind. The central message of Mormonism is Latter-day Revelation. Okay, that's fairly orthodox. Now, he's not gonna live in light of that because whenever there's something uncomfortable that those prophets have said, he's gonna default back to, well, it's not in our scriptures.

And I just go, you know, one of the first books I read on Mormonism was recommended to me. I've told the story many times before I started studying Mormonism. I read all the Christian books I could on Mormonism.

Then I realized, you know what? I need to read what the Mormons say to the Mormons. I need to read what the officials say, not just the little Mormon missionary who's my age. Back then. And so I started going to the LDS bookstore.

Back then it was at 35th Avenue in Northern, in Phoenix. Mary was the older lady who worked in there. And I was directed to a book, and Mary mentioned to me, oh, this is one of the books they give to all the missionaries, to all the missionaries.

This is something all the missionaries read before they go on their missions. It was called A Marvelous Work and a Wonder. Of course, Rich is laughing because he probably remembers that Wally Tope had an alternate name for it.

It's A Marvel More Don't Wonder. That's what it's called. What was, and I remember, it's amazing. My memory's showing that I'm in my sixth decade these days, but there are some things that just, you don't forget.

And it's mainly long-term stuff, thankfully, which is why old people sit around and reminisce, because they can't remember what happened last week. But anyway, I remember reading that book. At the time, I was working as a radio announcer.

And so I had lots of time. If the California Angels were playing, I'd have three hours. And if I got my homework done, I was in college, then I had time to read. And that thing's still sitting. It's right through that wall.

It's about right there, right through that wall. And it is all marked up with a yellow marker all over the place. And what was the constant theme? Now, LeGrand Richards, the author of the book, was a general authority of the Mormon Church, unlike Mr. Gordon, who is not a general authority of the Mormon Church.

And what was the constant theme over and over and over again? Joseph Smith did not learn this by reading the Bible. He learned this by divine revelation over and over and over and over and over again.

That was the message. Now, this guy doesn't function that way. He may say, well, the central message is light of revelation. But that means that the idea of defaulting back to some scriptural canon, when he doesn't even mention the whole LDS canon.

Oh, we've also got the Book of Mormon. Excuse me, Doctrine and Covenants, which is where most of your theology comes from?

And that God continues to speak to us through prophets, as he did in old times, and apostles.

And, yeah, that would be it, I guess. Okay. You know, I've said so many times, give me an old-time Mormon who talks about the apostasy so we can go to the Bible and talk about it. You know, don't give me this, well, there were lots of good people and stuff like that.

I don't remember that in the First Vision story. That's because it's not there. And any honest reading of the documentary history of the Church, any honest reading of the documentary history of the Church is not going to give you that idea even once.

It's not there. I'd just like to ask him, does the word all mean all? They were all corrupt. All corrupt. All their professors were corrupt. All their creeds were an abomination in his sight.

It's just some stuff snuck in there. I told you, I even stopped my bike. I pulled out my phone and I called Rich and said, you've got to listen to this. You've got to listen to this. And make sure, what did I say?

Make sure to buckle yourself to your seat because you're going to fall off if you don't because this is utterly amazing.

So is it a, I'm trying to sort this out. And you're speaking there, of course, about Joseph Smith. Was the revelation delivered through Joseph Smith that Christianity had, in essence, true Christianity had ceased to exist on the face of the earth or, and that it's being restored, or that there's now further revelation that's going to come through Joseph Smith?

Now, you'll enjoy this response. Both statements are true. And when you say Christianity ceased, I have to modify that a little bit, saying that while good Christianity was on the earth and has been on the earth since the time of Christ, that some of it had been, that some other teachings had crept in and there had been a loss of authority in practice of Christianity.

Just get, just be honest and tell the people about your doctrine of the priesthood. I mean, why are you embarrassed by these things? I mean, I could answer these questions so much more clearly and in so much more of an Orthodox historical Mormon fashion than this guy is.

It's amazing to me. The Mormon teaching, sir, in case you've forgotten it, has to do with what's called the great apostasy and has to do with the fact that there is no church on earth if there is no what? Priesthood authority.

You know that. You've been to priesthood meeting. You've been to the general conference. You know all about the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods and you know that according to your teaching, without the priesthood, there is no Christian church.

This was a, this is the gospel of the restoration, not the reformation. Those are the words of your own prophets and apostles. I'm not making any of this up and any knowledgeable Mormon in the audience knows I'm not.

Any knowledgeable Mormon knows, wow, the Christian guy is the one honestly representing our historical beliefs and not the Mormon guy who is soft-selling. Amazing.

Amazing. It's not that Christianity is wrong. Rather, it's that Christianity has many good things but also has some influence from philosophies of men.

That's exactly what was told to Joseph Smith in the sacred grove, right? I invite anybody, go to Palmyra. Go to the sacred grove. I've walked through it myself. Read the stuff unless they've changed the signs since I was last there and you're gonna find nothing about what he just said at all.

How many old dead general authorities are all spinning in their graves?

Well, they're spinning in Hades where they're spinning but it's a different issue. Yeah. You've got to hope that the person you're talking to has never even bothered to read anything of the documentary history of the church.

Anything out of the Journal of Discourses. Anything by Joseph Fielding Smith. Bruce R. McConkie. James Talmadge. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. Mark E. Peterson and all these people are just going, really?

Can you imagine what McConkie would do if he was alive and heard something like this? This guy would be so ex-calmed in overnight. I mean, he'd wake up the next morning and the entire bishopric from his ward would be on his front step asking for his temple recommend card.

You know that. Anybody, any Mormon in the audience knows that. Unbelievable.

And then the second part is that with the restoration of the church the way it was, part of the things it had, like in Ephesians, it talks about there'll be prophets and apostles and those types of things until we all come to a unity of the faith and restore that practice of having prophets and apostles.

And if you have prophets and apostles, then God can continue to speak to his church and give advice and guidance.

What are some of the, as you said, philosophies of men, ideas and philosophies of men? Can you give us a few specific examples that have crept into Christianity such as it is today? Sure.

The big one that most Mormons will quote to you is the idea of the nature of God in the Trinity. You know, and here's where it gets complicated because when you talk to a Mormon long enough, both sides will start nodding their heads and saying, wow, we agree a lot with each other because we do believe in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

We believe they're all gods. We don't believe, and we all believe that they are one in purpose and God the Father is God and will always be our God. We don't believe that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one in substance.

So we don't have the exact same belief in the Trinity as.

Exact same belief in the Trinity? I could spend the rest of this hour quoting you. The general authorities of the Mormon church speaking in general conference alone, and even more so if we then put their publications together, condemning the doctrine of the Trinity as a doctrine of devils.

I could point to you the temple ceremonies of the Mormon church, which have been modified greatly over the past few decades, but which for decades on end, reaching back to the time of the founders of Mormonism, included the mockery of the Christian pastorate and the mockery of the Christian doctrine of God.

Do these folks really think in light of, I mean, the Journal of Discourses are now online, journalofdiscourses .com, isn't it? Journalofdiscourses .com, it's all there. Man, I think about the look of my dear wife's face.

We hadn't been married very long at all. When I dragged that, it was in a cardboard slip case, remember, what? 26 volumes plus the index, paperback edition, $69 .95. Now that was the 1980s. But I had purchased that thing, and that was almost a week's worth of my income.

And I dragged it home on the back, I bungee corded it to the back of a Yamaha motorcycle to get it home after college, after class. And we were so glad I did that because it went out of print for a while after that.

And that was the one we used and photocopied and marked. And we were teaching a class at North Phoenix and all that kind of stuff. I've still got it sitting on the shelf in the other room. Now it's available online.

It was tough to find stuff in the printed edition of paperbacks. Now it's all there. I'm sure the Documented History of the Church is available someplace. I know it's available electronically. I've got, there's Gospel Link 2001.

I mean, 2001 sounds really old now. All that stuff is available online, fully searchable. This guy's got to know that if someone wants to know whether what he's saying is true or not, they can find out.

It's all there.

So much easier now. And you're just like, really? As others do, we tend to call it the Godhead. But again, as, you know.

Yeah, our Godhead view is just a, it's just a different version, see? No, it's not. It's completely different.

As you talk with Mormons, you'll first say, wow, that's a big difference. And as you talk more, you'll start saying like, hey, wow, that's a little difference. Because again, we do believe God, Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Ghost.

And God, the Father's Father. And God lives on a planet that circles a star named Kolob. And you can become a God. And that's what exaltation is. And there's an unlimited number of gods beforehand. Please.

Honesty, my friends. Honesty. These are issues that cannot be soft-pedaled like this. It is, I mean, I wonder if Pierre is listening. I mean, he'd have to be pulling his hair out listening to this kind of stuff.

But it's the one in substance issue that we have.

Also, the idea that Yeah, it's that monotheism thing. We've got a little problem with that monotheism, the most basic affirmation of Christianity.

The Bible was, God spoke to us through the Bible, which he does, but then God can't speak to us past that point, except through prayer. And we believe that God can continue to speak to us through prophets and apostles.

And that would be the third one, is the loss of prophets and apostles that were in New Testament times as well as Old Testament times. We believe that that organization and that would still be there.

So the organization, as they understand it, which included, of course, the Council of 70. I don't remember that in the New Testament. And the Council of 12. Well, there wasn't a council. And the first president, well, no, there was a first presidency, all of whom are apostles.

There was 15, so 12. What about the 12 foundations? I will never mind that. And then, of course, this all has happened in temples, which Christians built. Well, no, Christians didn't build temples. And the Melchizedek priesthood, well, the Bible says only Jesus has that.

See what I mean? Islam is considerably closer to biblical Christianity than Mormonism ever will be. And I don't know what's going on in Salt Lake City with invitations to all these evangelicals to come up and speak.

Hey, go up there. As long as you'll speak the truth, speak the truth. But if it is a part of an attempt to mainstream and allow you to continue to believe falsehood under the cover of we're not as bad as we used to be theologically, I say to you, anybody who participates in that does not actually love either one, the gospel of Jesus Christ, or two, the Mormon people.

Because if you care for them, you will tell them the truth. You will tell them the truth. You will not assist them in veiling, in pulling a veil over the actual history and doctrines of the Mormon church.

You won't do that. You won't do that.

Here's some more soft-selling. In today's world, we have something we all agree in. We have the new atheism that's going out and aggressively telling people there is no God. And we also have different denominations who are trying to tear down beliefs of others, which I don't think is ever a good thing.

But as we live in this new internet world, we have more and more of our youth and more and more people who are falling away from traditional Christianity.

Now, by the way, the thing about tearing people down, remember, for decades on end, for decades on end, the first presentation of the Mormon missionaries when they came into your home was based upon the first vision.

And what did the first vision say? Well, when you actually read it, well, here it is. Now, we actually, I probably, I have, the only decent new LDS stuff I have is on my iPad. I actually haven't kept up with keeping a decent LDS library on my, I mean, I've got an LDS library on my Mac somewhere.