The Dividing Line - Agnostic Mormonism?

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00:11

And welcome to The Dividing Line on a

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Friday morning. Doing things all completely discombobulated today. We were going to be doing things completely different than we're doing it now.

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I was in Tucson this morning, and I will be in Tucson this afternoon. Those were apologies to my little car, which

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I try to not put extra miles on, but nothing I can do about it today. I'm going to be riding an

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Altura to Tucson tomorrow, and it looks like it's just going to be really bad.

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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 my biggest concern for tomorrow.

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Want to borrow my mountain bike? Almost. Yeah. So I have zoomed back here to Phoenix to switch out bikes.

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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.

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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.

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So it did solve our problem of trying to figure out how we were going to do The Dividing Line today because voila, here

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I am. But we're only going to do an hour. I was going to 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.

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So it's a bit of a pain. So we're going to be doing... If I could have gotten

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Mutato to sing for me for today, maybe

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I would never ask him to do this, but maybe we can get him to sing We Thank Thee, O Lord, For The Prophet Who Communed With Jehovah, a famous Mormon hymn.

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But we could do Radio Free Salt Lake City or Provo or something like that.

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We haven't done anything specifically on Mormonism in quite some time, but it's time to do so.

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I listened to someone in Twitter. This is a program brought about by a tweet.

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One of many that have been brought about by tweets. Someone tweeted me, and I'm sorry,

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I don't remember who it was, and my Twitter stuff isn't coming up very fast here. Someone tweeted me a link to the

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November 15th Issues Etc. program. Now, I've been on Issues Etc.

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a number of times over the years, and so the tweet was a little bit opaque.

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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,

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Mr. Gordon of Fair Mormon, which I think,

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I'm pretty certain, is the old Fair LDS, and I had a lot of interaction with F -A -I -R,

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Fair LDS, back, oh, late 90s, early part of this century, and they were an excuse organization.

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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.

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We still have, in fact, here's our little track, Men Is Not God, it's available on the website, but there it is.

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I mean, oh wow, I haven't looked at this for a while.

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We actually distributed this, huh? Must have been to the young men at priesthood meeting who can read things with this font size.

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Well, we tended to target the, well, not the younger ones, we avoided that because it was kind of, there's a,

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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,

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I can read that, the back isn't bold for some reason, and I, oh wow, that's amazing.

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Anyway! So, Barry Lynn wouldn't be able to read that for sure. No, no, definitely not. Wow, that was, that's bad.

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Anyways, they were involved in making up excuses, and they still are, to basically defend the

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Mormon testimony. You can keep believing, we'll find an excuse for archaeology in the

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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

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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, I mean, look at what happened with farms, you know, it gets absorbed by the church, and then all the big names in farms get canned, and now you have, you know, this mainstreaming stuff is just on full bore.

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And as I listened to this program, I was absolutely shocked.

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I was hearing agnostic Mormonism. Well, you know, we don't, you know, as man is,

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God once was, as God is, man may become, you know, that first part, we don't, we just don't know much about it.

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And I'm sitting here going, how can you say things like this?

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The Mormon kids in the mid -1980s knew about it. They knew, they had read

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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,

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I mean, once they've gone to the temple, the missionaries, they've seen this stuff being presented, they see the polytheism,

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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?

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Because anyone knowledgeable of Mormonism, any knowledgeable Mormon who has read Joseph Smith, has read any of Brigham Young, has even thumbed through the

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Journal of Discourse's all 26 volumes, but who even just keeps up with the priesthood manuals, is sitting there going, seriously?

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You say we don't know? And then when he describes the first vision,

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I'm just like, I mean, I have spoken with thousands of Mormons.

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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

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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,

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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,

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I'd say about 5 ,000 missionaries and at least 5 ,000 non -missionaries. And I'm sitting here going, 99 .9

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% of these people would sit there and they would listen to this man speaking going, what is he talking about?

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And he's the president of FAIR, and he's on a national Lutheran talk show.

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Now thankfully, right at the end of the program, the host mentioned that they're going to have

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Bill McKeever on, on the next Monday, to respond to this, which is great.

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I'm glad they did that. But I was absolutely amazed at the lengths to which this man would go.

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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.

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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.

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You know, come on, man. I mean, when you say the biggest thing that comes out of the First Vision was

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Joseph Smith's sins are forgiven? Really? I mean, I can't tell you how many

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Mormon missionaries I've talked to, and they'll start, and back then they started the missionary presentation with the

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First Vision. And it wasn't about Joseph Smith's sins being forgiven. It was about God the

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Father and Jesus have physical bodies. They're separate and distinct physical entities.

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And he never even mentions that as part of the First Vision. Just amazing.

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Absolutely amazing. So what we have here is one of the most incredible examples of the vain attempt to mainstream

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Mormonism. Now, if Mr. Gordon believes all this stuff, if he really goes, I don't know. Some people go, well, that's good.

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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.

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It's dishonest. I mean, the facts are the facts concerning who

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Joseph Smith was. The facts are the facts concerning what Joseph Smith taught. The facts are the facts concerning what's found in the

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Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price. And you cannot repair

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Mormonism. You have to abandon Mormonism.

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There's no repairing it. And these people like Richard Mao, the former president of Fuller Seminary, who are running around trying to patch this thing up.

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It's just utter foolishness. Utter foolishness. You have to abandon it.

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You can't repair it. It's a false belief. But anyway, we need to listen to what was said here.

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And I only got the first portion of it marked up, but the second part, we have to play all of it anyway.

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So we're not going to 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.

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I believe the truth claims of Mormonism. What do you think is the biggest popular misconception about Mormonism in general?

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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.

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Granted, I would agree that we're not traditional Christian in many ways, but as far as do we believe

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Jesus Christ is our Savior, do we believe in the Bible, do we believe in the foundational beliefs that other

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Christians believe in, yeah, we're very much Christian. Now, I have entire videos out there addressing this very issue.

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Fundamentally, let me repeat something I've said many times before. Islam is considerably closer to biblical

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Christianity than Mormonism ever could be. Islam is. You say, but Islam denies that Jesus is the

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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

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Father has many wives and lots of kids. Billions of them. Because God the

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Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as any man. Doctrine and Covenants section 130 verse 22. Because God the

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Father was the man who lived on another planet and became a god and there are an unlimited number of gods in the universes.

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So everything you just heard there, well, he's our Savior. What does that mean? He's later on going to admit, well, you know, a lot of Mormons think that God the

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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.

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Unlimited number of gods. I mean, even the Hindus only have about 330 million. Unlimited number of gods.

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And so to say, the core beliefs, we believe all those things. No, you don't. No, you don't.

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You have a completely different God, a completely different Jesus, completely different spirit, a completely different gospel. Atonement is completely different.

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Starts in the Garden of Gethsemane. How it is availed, how it is obtained, completely different.

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You have an open canon of Scripture. You have other books of Scripture. And even when you talk about the

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Bible, he never quotes the eighth article of faith in here. It's like historic Mormonism has disappeared for these guys. Well, we accept the

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Bible as far as it's translated correctly. But the Book of Mormon is the most correct book of any on earth. I mean,

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I haven't done anything in Mormonism for a while, but this stuff just flows back out. I did it for so many years.

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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 himself a

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Mormon. Absolutely amazing. Absolutely amazing. It continues on with some of the alleged misunderstandings.

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A lot of misconceptions are things, well, one that comes to mind for most people is that Mormons are polygamists, that we have more than one wife.

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And while it is true that back in the 1800s, polygamy was practiced for a select few.

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Select few, 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.

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It's a quick way out of the Church. So then people say, well, what about all those Mormons practicing polygamy in southern

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Utah and northern Arizona? And my answer is, they're not Mormon. They haven't been Mormon for close to 100 years.

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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

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Mormon. It would be very much like saying, you know, Lutherans are still Catholics. They're not.

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Lutherans are not Catholics, but, you know, it's just confusing to people when people say that those groups practicing polygamy down there are

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Mormons. Now, that's the official line. I'll give him that.

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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 what you did is you went down to Mexico and you married your wives down there.

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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.

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

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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, he was fine.

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That's right. As long as you don't make a stink, they will close their eyes.

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You better believe it. You better believe it. And everybody in Salt Lake City knows it, and I think

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Mr. Gordon knows it as well. Let's see. Misconception about believing the Bible, we're very fundamental

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Bible believers. Most times I have friends who are pastors, and we sit down, read the

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Bible, and occasionally they'll say, how do you interpret that? And I'll tell them, and they'll say, wow, that's how I believe it too.

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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

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Bible, and that would be the Book of Mormon, and that's where we get our nickname, Mormons.

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And notice, he doesn't even mention the doctrine that covers the Pearl of Great Price. Doesn't even mention.

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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, you know, that means we can receive revelation at any point in time.

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They are not fundamental Bible believers, for crying out loud. The first people who ever pressed me on alleged errors in the

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Bible were Mormon missionaries. That's not fundamental Bible belief. Eighth article of faith, we believe in the

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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.

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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

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Lutheran talk show where that's what people need to know.

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Soft sell right, left, and center here. Absolutely amazing.

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And don't tell me you sit down with regular Christians and, well, that's how I interpret it. Really? Really?

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So you've read through the stuff and said, yeah, well, we interpret this to mean that God the Father is the one

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God named Elohim, and Jehovah is a separate God from Elohim, and oh, yeah, that's how we interpret it too.

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Really? Yeah, and this John 1034, that means you can become a God. That's how you interpret it too, right?

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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.

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Women are very much equal in our faith. Which is why, of course, the

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Mormon Church was one of the primary opponents of ERA back in the 70s, and why women have the priesthood, right?

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Oh, well, no, they don't have the priesthood. And that's why women are dependent upon their husband's priesthood for resurrection.

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Well, okay, but they won't. 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

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Mormons have had African Americans in our ranks since 1830, and we've never been segregated, unlike some denominations.

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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.

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And because of that, and the fact that that did not get overturned until 1978, people then mistakenly say, well, you know, blacks were not part of your church.

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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.

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You know, 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.

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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

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Twelve 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?

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So this racism, and he's right, there was, I mean,

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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.

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Figure out the years. That's over 100 years, right? And why weren't they allowed to have the priesthood?

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Because the prophets of the Mormon Church, the apostles of the Mormon Church, taught amazing things.

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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

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Lamanites were given that mark, and that in fact, when Lamanites would join the Mormon Church, well,

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Christ Church, that they would become white and delightsome. And as late as the 1960s, the

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Mormon prophet Spencer W. Kimball said he would go to the Indian reservations and he would notice that the children of converts to the

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Mormon Church were lighter than their parents because of the fulfillment of the Book of Mormon, for crying out loud. Doesn't mention that, does he?

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Well, that was just speculation of the prophet of the Mormon Church, of which this man is not the prophet of the

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Mormon Church. And again, if I know this, well -read

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Mormons know this, too. And that's why I'm telling you, there's a split coming.

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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

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Restoration was are going to go, hey, you all need to start teaching what we were teaching back when we were growing like gangbusters.

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And then the moderates and the new BYU grads are like, well, we can't do that because, you know, these polls say.

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But again, I just cannot imagine what it's like to be in someone's situation like Mr.

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Gordon here and to just know how easy it would be for anybody knowledgeable about the history of the

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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

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Journal of 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.

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And yet, there you go. Fascinating. The central message of Mormonism is that God speaks to man today.

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Not just through the Bible, but through prophets. Now keep that in mind. The central message of Mormonism is

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Latter -day Revelation. Okay, that's fairly orthodox. Now, he's not going to live in light of that because whenever there's something uncomfortable that those prophets have said, he's going to default back to, well, it's not in our scriptures.

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And I just go, you know, one of the first books I read on Mormonism was recommended to me.

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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?

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I need to read what the Mormons say to the Mormons. I need to read what the officials say, not just the, you know, little

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Mormon missionary who's my age, back then. And so I started going to the

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LDS bookstore. Back then it was at 35th Avenue in Northern, in Phoenix. Mary was the older lady who worked in there.

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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.

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To all the missionaries. This is something all the missionaries read before they go on their missions.

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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.

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It's A Marvel More Don't Wonder, is what it's called. But what was, and I remember, it's amazing.

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My memories showing that I'm in my sixth decade these days, but there are some things that just, you don't forget.

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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.

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But anyway, I remember reading that book. At the time

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I was working as a radio announcer. And so I had lots of time. If the California Angels were playing,

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I'd have three hours. And if I got my homework done, I was in college, then I had time to read.

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And that thing's still sitting. It's right through that wall. It's about right there, right through that wall.

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And it is all marked up with, you know, a yellow marker all over the place. And what was the constant theme?

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Now, LeGrand Richards, the author of the book, was a general authority of the Mormon Church, unlike Mr.

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Gordon, who is not a general authority of the Mormon Church. And what was the constant theme over and over and over again?

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Joseph Smith did not learn this by reading the Bible. He learned this by divine revelation.

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Over and over and over and over and over again. That was the message.

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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

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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?

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

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And yeah, that would be it, I guess. Okay. You know,

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I've said so many times, give me an old -time Mormon who talks about the apostasy so we can go to the

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Bible and talk about it. You know? Don't give me this, well, there were lots of good people and stuff like that.

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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

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Church, any honest reading of the documentary history of the Church, is not going to give you that idea, even once.

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It's not there. I'd just like to ask him, does the word all mean all? They were all corrupt.

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All corrupt. All their professors were corrupt. And all their creeds were an abomination in his sight.

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It's just some stuff snuck in there. I told you,

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I even stopped my bike, and I pulled out my phone, and I called Rich and said, you've got to listen to this.

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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.

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So is it a—I'm trying to sort this out. Is it— And you're speaking there, of course, about Joseph Smith. Was the revelation delivered through Joseph Smith that Christianity had, in essence, true

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Christianity, had ceased to exist on the face of the earth, and that it's being restored?

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Or that there's now further revelation that's going to come through Joseph Smith?

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Now, you'll enjoy this response. Both statements are true.

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And when you say Christianity ceased, I have to modify that a little bit, saying that while good

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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 and practice of Christianity.

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Just get—just be honest and tell the people about your doctrine of the priesthood. I mean, why are you embarrassed by these things?

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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.

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It's amazing to me. The Mormon teaching, sir, in case you've forgotten it, has to do with what's called the

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Great Apostasy. And it has to do with the fact that there is no church on earth if there is no what?

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Priesthood authority. You know that. You've been to priesthood meeting. You've been to the

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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

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Christian church. This was a—this is the gospel of the

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Restoration, not the Reformation. Those are the words of your own prophets and apostles.

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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

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Christian guy is the one honestly representing our historical beliefs and not the Mormon guy who is soft -selling it.

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Amazing. Amazing. So, you know, so 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.

30:39

That's exactly what was told to Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove, right? I invite anybody, go to Palmyra.

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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.

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And you're going to find nothing about what he just said, at all. How many old dead General Authorities are all spinning in their graves?

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Oh, 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

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Church, anything out of the Journal of Discourses, anything by Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruce R. McConkie, James Talmadge.

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I mean, the list goes on and on and on. Mark E. Peterson and all these people are just going, really?

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Can you imagine what McConkie would do if he was alive and heard something like this? This guy would be so excombed in overnight.

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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

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Temple Recommend card. You know that. Anybody, any Mormon in the audience knows that.

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Unbelievable! And then the second part is that with the restoration of the

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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.

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

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What are some of the, as you said, philosophies of men, ideas and philosophies of men?

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Can you give us a few specific examples that have crept into Christianity such as it is today? Sure.

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You know, the big one that most Mormons will quote to you is the idea of the nature of God and the

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Trinity. You know, and here's where it gets complicated, because when you talk to a

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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.

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We believe they're all gods. We don't believe, and we all believe that they are one in purpose and God the

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Father is God and will always be our God. We don't believe that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one in substance.

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

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Trinity? I could spend the rest of this hour quoting you the general authorities of the

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Mormon Church, speaking in general conference alone, and even more so if we then put their publications together, condemning the doctrine of the

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Trinity as a doctrine of devils. I could point to you the temple ceremonies of the

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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

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Christian pastorate and the mockery of the Christian doctrine of God. Do these folks really think, in light of,

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I mean, the Journal of Discourses are now online. Journalofdiscourses .com, isn't it? Journalofdiscourses .com.

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You can, it's all there. Man, I think about the look on my dear wife's face.

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We hadn't been married very long at all. When I dragged that, it was in a cardboard slipcase, remember?

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What? Twenty -six volumes plus the index, paperback edition, $69 .95,

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and 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,

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I bungee corded it to the back of a Yamaha motorcycle to get it home after college, after class.

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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.

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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.

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Now it's all there. I'm sure the Documented History of the Church is available someplace.

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I know it's available electronically. There's GospelLink2001. I mean, 2001 sounds really old now.

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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.

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It's all there. So much easier now. And you're just like, really?

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As others do. We tend to call it the Godhead, but again, as, you know...

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

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It's completely different. As you talk with Mormons, you'll first say, wow, that's a big difference.

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And as you talk more, you'll start saying like, hey, wow, that's a little difference. Because again, we do believe

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God the 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

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Kolob, and you can become a god, and that's what exaltation is, and there's an unlimited number of gods beforehand.

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Please! Honesty, my friends. Honesty. Honesty. These are issues that cannot be soft -pedaled like this.

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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.

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But it's the one in substance issue that we have. Also, the idea that... It's that monotheism thing.

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We've got a little problem with that monotheism, you know, the most basic affirmation of Christianity. The Bible was...God

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spoke to us through the Bible, which He does, but then God can't speak to us past that point except through prayer.

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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.

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We believe that that organization and that, you know, would still be there.

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So the organization as they understand it, which included, of course, the Council of the Seventy. I don't remember that in the

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New Testament. And the Council of Twelve. Well, there wasn't a council. And the first president. Oh, no, there was a first presidency.

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All of whom are apostles. There was 15. It was 12. What about the 12 foundations? I will never mind that.

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And then, of course, this all has to happen in temples, which Christians built. Well, no, Christians didn't build temples. And the

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Melchizedek priesthood. Well, the Bible says only Jesus has that. See what I mean? Islam is considerably closer to biblical

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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.

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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,

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I say to you, anybody who participates in that does not actually love either, one, the gospel of Jesus Christ, or two, the

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Mormon people. Because if you care for them, you will tell them the truth. You will tell them the truth.

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You will not assist them in veiling, in pulling a veil over the actual history and doctrines of the

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Mormon church. You won't do that. You won't do that. Here's some more soft -selling.

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Well, I think 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

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God. And we also have different denominations who are trying to tear down beliefs of others, which

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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

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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

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Mormon missionaries, when they came into your home, was based upon the First Vision.

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And what did the First Vision say? Well, when you actually read it, well, here it is.

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Now, we actually, I probably, I have, the only decent new

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LDS stuff I have is on my iPad. I actually haven't kept up with keeping a decent

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LDS library on my, I mean, I've got an LDS library on my Mac somewhere. I obviously don't use it a whole lot.

39:52

This is what's called, anybody who recognizes this, this is what's called a quad, okay? It is the big honking, you need to bind this well or it's going to fall apart type version, which has all four of the books of the canon of the

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LDS Church, which is the King James Version of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, those are the only two that seemingly Mr.

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Gordon wants to remember, the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price, along with bound in the back, the topical index and glossary and so on and so forth, which actually is, well, they're the maps right there.

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Anyhow, in Joseph Smith history, you have the discussion of, allegedly in the spring of 1820, we know it wasn't in the spring of 1820, we know the revival he talks about took place in 1824, this is a story that evolved over time, history has demonstrated that this is the case, there really isn't any question about it at all, and when he talks about the

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First Vision later on, again, he not only soft sells it, but he admits, well,

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Joseph Smith really didn't talk about it after it happened, it was years later he started talking about it. Well, the funny thing is, he's right, historically, but that means he contradicts what it says in his own scriptures, which is one of the difficult places.

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But beginning at verse 17 of Joseph Smith history, one, it no sooner appeared that I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound, when the light rested upon me,

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I saw two personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name, and said, pointing to the other, this is my beloved son, hear him.

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My object in going to inquire the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join.

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No sooner therefore did I get possession of myself so as to be able to speak, than I asked the personage who stood above me in the light which of all the sects was right, for at this time it had never entered into my heart that they were all wrong, and which

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I should join. I was answered, I must join none of them, for they were all wrong, and the personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in sight, that those professors were all corrupt, that they drew near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

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They teach for doctrines and commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof. He again forbade me to join with any of them, and many other things did he say unto me which

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I cannot write at this time. When I came to myself again, I found myself lying on my back looking up into heaven. When the light had departed,

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I had no strength, but soon recovering in some degree, I went home, and as I leaned up to the fireplace, mother inquired what the matter was.

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I replied, never mind, all is well, I am well enough off. I then said to my mother, I have learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true.

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It seems as though the adversary was aware at a very early period in my life that I was destined to prove a disturber and an annoyer of his kingdom, else why should the powers of darkness combine against me?

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Why the opposition and persecution that arose against me almost in my infancy? So there's the story of the first vision.

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There wasn't anything in there about forgiveness of sins, was there? No. There it is. Two personages, physical personages, father and son.

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Go to Salt Lake City, look at the paintings, if they've still got them up. What do the paintings always show? Two physical beings in the presence of Joseph Smith.

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This is what the Sacred Grove is all about. Again, all I'm telling you is what the

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Mormon General Authorities have said since the beginning days of Mormonism, that this is the foundational element of Mormonism, that God, Joseph Smith himself said, what?

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It is the first principle of the gospel. It's not the first principle of Mr. Gordon's gospel, but the first principle of Joseph Smith's gospel was to know for certainty the character of God and that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, yea, that God himself, the father of us all, dwelt on a planet, just as Jesus Christ himself did, and he said he'd show it from the

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Bible. That's Joseph Smith's own teaching. I'm just giving you exactly what they taught. They're falling away from the belief in God, and sometimes what they do is they use half -truths or sometimes they use isolated statements, sometimes they'll take a quote from someone but they won't put it in context.

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And so what FairMormon tries to do is we try to look at the arguments and put them in context and put them...

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So far, the context has been completely against his rewriting of Mormon history.

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You know, I help people, when they see an argument on the internet or in a book for that matter, that makes a claim, you know, we go and look at that claim and say, where did it come from, what's the source, what are other things that person said, what's the real belief, is that out of context, is it in context, is it out of historical context, or is it in historical context, and we try to provide that.

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That way, people can look at that and they can maintain their relationship with God without being distracted by somebody's false claims.

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What does the term testimony mean in Mormon parlance? Mormon parlance, that's a great question.

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For us, a testimony would be the core belief that Jesus Christ is the

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Savior, that God the Father is God, and it would also go on to say that the

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Bible is true, the Book of Mormon is true, and that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and that we have a prophet today.

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See, again, I have gone to Mormon ward meetings. I've sat there and listened to the testimonies.

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You will not hear them saying the Bible is true in the same way the Book of Mormon is. The Book of Mormon is the most perfect book of any on earth.

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The Bible is the word of God as far as it's translated correctly. That's the article of faith. It's printed right in here.

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We need to get a new edition, by the way, since they just came out with a new one. Either that or at least get it electronically, but I don't know.

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Maybe it's just the old codger in me, but I like having the... I wonder where my triple went.

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Yeah, there's... Oh, no, that's the King James Bible. I've got a triple in here someplace, and I've been carrying those things around for so long out in the battles that I'd like to track down one.

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But anyways, it's right there. And for most Mormons, that would encompass their testimony of the

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Church. Obviously, that would be somewhat different than most Christians, but for us, if you don't believe in the

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Book of Mormon and you don't believe in Joseph Smith, then obviously you shouldn't be a Mormon. You should belong to a different denomination.

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Now notice that. Did you catch that? You should belong to a different denomination, because we're just another denomination.

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That is not how Mormons... That's not how Mormons thought. Maybe it's now how they're starting to think, which may be why their growth rate has gone psshhh.

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But that's not how they... That's not how the Utah Mormon thinks. And again, I've been there during Fasting and Testimony Sunday, and the little kids get up.

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I have a testimony that Jesus is the Christ, and that Spencer W. Kimball is the prophet of the

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Church. I'm going back a few years here. And that Joseph Smith is the prophet of God, and the

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Book of Mormon is the Word of God, and I love my mommy and my daddy and my brothers and my sisters, and in the name of Jesus, amen.

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And it's not, I'm so glad we're one of many denot Christian denominations, and blah, blah, blah. That's...

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No. Is, going to the issue of some of the ideas and philosophies of men, as you say, that have crept into Christianity, dealing with the nature of God.

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Is it safe to say, I don't want to mischaracterize, that you would, that Mormons reject the teaching of the

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Trinity as it's encompassed in the historic creeds of... Now, tell you what, go on to 1 .2,

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no whining. Christianity, namely the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, where it is clearly taught that God is three in person, one in substance.

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That is rejected, am I right? Yes, you're correct. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about what I would call the second person of the

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Trinity, Jesus Christ. Has he always been God? Is he God in the same sense as God the Father? We believe that God the

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Father is our God, the God we pray to and such, and we pray through the name of Jesus Christ, and...

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The first part of the answer should be, well, we believe that God became

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God himself. We believe in what's called the eternal law of progression. We believe that we are of the same species as God.

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This has been the clear Mormon teaching all along, but it is so unbiblical, so foreign to Christianity.

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They know it, and the only way to try to maintain some semblance of Mormon identity is to start reeling that stuff in and minimizing the target, and that's what we're listening to.

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Is God God? Yes. Is Jesus Christ God? Yes. Has he always been God? Yes.

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No! And oh! I can quote so many general authorities at that point that it's not even funny.

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What do you mean God has always been God? I mean, you can go—well, can

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I find the old articles page? I don't even know if anybody can find that anymore on the website.

49:09

Well, good luck finding it, but there used to be a section on Mormonism, and in those articles on Mormonism, you will find dialogues that I had with people like Eldon Watson and Alma Allred and people like this who have lunch with the general authorities and are involved in the leadership of the church right there in Salt Lake City.

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And what are we arguing about? What are we arguing about? Well, this

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Greek philosophy that determined Christian orthodoxy, where you have a God who is self -sufficient, a

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God who has eternally been God. We've gone back to the original. We've gone back to Revelation at that point.

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We don't have that anymore. We are of the same species as God, and it's all about exaltation, and you can become a

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God. And if you could become a God, have you eternally been God? And if God became a God and received exaltation himself, had he eternally been a

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God? No. Yes. The Eternal Law of Progression presentation you did back in the mid -90s is on our

50:19

YouTube page. People can go and watch that video. Yeah. Yeah. But this is—I'm talking about articles where I was going back and forth with—and you can hear—you can just read the

50:27

Mormons themselves, saying the very things that Mr. Gordon just denied. What does all that mean?

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Well, there it gets fuzzy. You know, there are some things we know and some things we can philosophize about. There it gets fuzzy.

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Now here's where he starts getting fuzzy, because the fact of the matter is,

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Mormon leadership has addressed this subject over and over and over again. Let me—and in fact, since we're going to be running out of time and we're going to continue this,

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I want to be able to make sure that you understand. You're going, why are you so upset about this?

51:12

Look, folks, it is a matter of honesty. It is a matter of—if you want to reach the

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Mormon people, you have to understand what they believe in this kind of misrepresentation.

51:28

You might say, well, this guy might believe that. Okay, that is introducing a new problem, in the sense that you now have to—it used to be, when we go out and talk to Mormons, they knew what they believed, and it was fairly easy to talk to them and to get right to the point.

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But it is something to get over. But you need to understand, I am not making this stuff up, okay?

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Let me read to you, and I can't put it over on this screen, I look at you when I'm reading this.

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Was 1992 all that long ago? I guess for some of you it was.

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We're talking 22—well, let's just go ahead and say 22 years.

52:27

I'll close up the program with this. Let me just read you what the LDS Church taught its own people for over a decade in the

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Achieving a Celestial Marriage student manual. That's not Scripture! It's not. But it is copyrighted, 1992, by the

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Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, and until at least 2001, in my recollection, it was the material that you had to read and study before you were sealed in the

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Mormon temple. So this is the leadership of the

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Mormon Church, less than two decades ago—well, a little over two decades ago, but it was used up to 2001, so that is less than two decades ago—explaining to their own people what their doctrine means.

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Now, I don't know if Mr. Gordon was sealed in the Mormon temple, don't know anything about him. But wouldn't it be ironic if he's read this?

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Because here's what it says. On pages 4 -5. God is once a man who, by obedience, advanced to his present state of perfection.

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Through obedience and celestial marriage, we may progress to the point where we become like God. Proclaiming the divine potential within man,

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John Taylor once wrote, Knowest thou not that thou art a spark of deity, struck from the fire of his eternal blaze and brought forth in the midst of everlasting burnings?

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Elder B .H. Roberts stated, Man has descended from God. In fact, he is the same race as the gods.

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His descent has not been from a lower form of life, but from the highest form of life. In other words, man is, in the most literal sense, a child of God.

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This is not only true of the spirit of man, but of his body also. Can you see the implications of these two statements as they relate to you and your eternal destiny?

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Elder James E. Talmadge did. He declared, In his mortal condition, man is God and embryo. However, any individual, now a mortal being, may attain the rank and sanctity of Godship.

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How is this possible? What course of action will bring this potential to fruition? As you study this lesson, look for the answers to these questions.

54:29

Points to ponder. Sub -point. God became God by obedience to law.

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We just heard Mr. Gordon say, Oh, God's eternally been God. The leadership of the Mormon church two decades ago, to everyone who's being sealed in the temple said

54:44

God became God by obedience to law. Was that mere speculation? No, it's the consistent teaching of the

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Mormon church up until that time in history. It was late afternoon as we sat in my office, but I felt the time had been well spent.

54:57

He sat silently now, obviously contemplating the ramifications of the things we had been discussing. We had talked of God, of how he had become

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God and of what that meant in terms of our own exaltation. Finally, he spoke. What is this law of exaltation to which you keep speaking?

55:10

Well, it involves the whole of the gospel law. Everything required of us by God is associated with this law, but the major crowning point of the law, which man must obey is eternal marriage.

55:18

Therein lies the keys of eternal life, or as the doctrine of covenants puts it, eternal lives. I stopped just for a moment to point out the massive difference in meaning in basic phrases such as eternal life and eternal lives.

55:30

In other words, an eternal increase of posterity. Then what you're saying is that God became God by obedience to the gospel program, which culminates in eternal marriage.

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Subpoint, through obedience to law, we can become like our Father in heaven. Yes, do you realize the implications of this doctrine as far as you are concerned?

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I think so. If God became God by obedience to all the gospel law, with the crowning point being the celestial law of marriage, then that's the only way

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I can become a God. Right. And it is the law that assists us in reaching that potential.

56:03

It tells us what we must do to gain the ultimate freedom. In fact, it is by obedience to law that we have progressed to our present position.

56:09

You mean we have always been governed by law? Next paragraph is one of the most non -Christian, pagan paragraphs

56:19

I've ever read in Mormonism. It's only three sentences long. Here's what it says.

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Always. You are an eternal being. You were never created and you cannot be destroyed, but you can advance, progress, and develop by obedience.

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That's the Mormon church teaching the Mormon people, you are an eternal being.

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You were never created and you cannot be destroyed. That is not Christianity. It never was

56:47

Christianity, never will be Christianity, and as long as Mormonism affirms it, Mormonism remains the pagan religion it's always been.

56:55

I continue on. Then Hamlet's question, to be or not to be, is not the question? Right. Not in the ultimate sense, at least.

57:01

Order means law and that law is the law of the celestial kingdom. Any who come under that kingdom must obey that law.

57:07

But I thought godhood meant freedom. If I have to do things to become God, am I really free? You've got it wrong. It was the

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Savior who said, if you continue my word, that is, obey the law, you shall know the truth, the truth shall make you free.

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One of the worst eisegesis of John 8 I've ever heard. So by obedience to law, we learn truths by which we become free, but not free from the law.

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Can you see that? I think so. I can be a god only if I act like God. Exactly right.

57:33

Can you imagine the state of the universe if imperfect gods were allowed to spawn their imperfections throughout space?

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If beings who don't have law under their subjection were free to create worlds? I guess that would be pretty disastrous.

57:47

But I'm not sure I see why celestial marriage becomes the crowning apex of this progression. Marriage doesn't seem directly related to the creation of the universes.

57:54

Oh, but don't be limited by your mortal perspective. God himself has declared his own reasons for existing. Remember he said, for this is my work and my glory.

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I see his purpose is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, Moses 139, another work of blasphemy, which involves giving birth to spirit children and setting them on the road to exaltation.

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If that is to be done, you must have an exalted man and an exalted woman. Exactly. An exalted man and woman who have been joined together in an eternal marriage.

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If this man and woman are obedient to all gospel laws except celestial marriage, what would be the result? They still could not be gods.

58:25

Now I understand celestial marriage is the crowning ordinance of the gospel. Right, I said with a smile, and with that comment,

58:32

I think we can end the discussion. Folks, I'm not making anything up. Mr.

58:37

Gordon's making things up, but I'm not making anything up. I'm telling you exactly what the leadership of the

58:43

LDS Church has said to its own people consistently all along. And we need to know that.

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And the Mormons who are having dialogues with evangelicals need to be honest, honest about the history and teachings of their own church.

59:02

That is vitally important. That's why we're doing this program, and when we get together next week, we will continue doing this.

59:10

We'll do other things, too. Maybe we'll do a jumbo and do half an hour of current events and then get back into this. But we need to respond to the absolute soft -selling of Mormonism and agnostic

59:20

Mormonism. We don't know, even though our general authorities and leaders have said we've known for a long, long time.