"Who is Jesus"-Christian Pastor compares Jesus with LDS member

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Okay, so we are live. Welcome to Reformed Ex Mormon. I am

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Pastor Brayden, and I have the absolute privilege and honor and blessing to have Connor on our show here today.

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He is a LDS member, an active LDS member right now, and we are going to be discussing and asking the very important question of who is

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Jesus. And just talking with Connor before we started this live stream, just about what we're planning on doing today, what is the goal and object of what this video is for.

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We discussed that before we even begin, we're just going to start out with just reading a verse from the Word of God, just to preface what this question is of who is

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Jesus, this conversation, debate, this topic that we're discussing here today.

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So the verse I'm reading from right now is from Matthew 24, verse 24, and it says in here for false

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Christs and false prophets will rise and will show great signs and wonders, so to mislead, if possible, even the elect.

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And there's one other place I really want to turn to and read with us really quickly. So that's Jesus speaking there in Matthew chapter seven, and he says in there, there will be many false

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Christs. And so the idea of what we're wanting to talk about right now is who is

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Jesus? That's the most fundamental and important question I think that anybody can ask themselves, their friends, their neighbors, their loved ones, their family, so on and so forth.

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And the reason that we need to ask these kind of questions and look to God's Word for the answers is found in Acts 17 11.

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It says, now these were more noble minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the

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Word with great eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

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And so we see in that verse, in that text, that it's a noble thing to ask these questions and a noble thing to seek out truth in God's Word.

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And so that's what my prayer, my hope, my desire for today is one that God be glorified, and we can hopefully come to some conclusions at looking at God's Word and seeing who is the biblical

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Jesus. And so just as a little bit of an introduction into what is planned for today, as we're planning on trying to keep this to around an hour in our conversation, we're going to begin with doing an introduction of ourselves, which we hope to not go over five minutes with, just kind of talking about who we are, our background, our stories of what we believe in, a testimony even would be welcomed in this time.

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After which we will then get into a 10 minute opening statement, opening argument of who we view is

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Jesus, of which I asked Connor earlier of him being our guest, my guest today. Who he would like to go first.

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He said that I can go first and he would follow me up second. After that, after our 10 minute arguments are up, we'll take a moment to say what the other opponent was saying in their argument and make sure that we understand the other positions very clearly.

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And I think that that is absolutely the correct way of doing this so that we make sure that we're not misrepresenting the other side.

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After which we'll then go just kind of making this formally informal in the sense that then we'll just go back and forth and with asking questions, let it be a little bit organic and just letting

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God's word speak and letting it lie where it lies. And so after that, though, we'll also be opening things up to have people in the

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YouTube comments, if anybody's watching to please leave comments, questions, and to address it to the specific individual you would like to ask those questions to.

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And we'll make sure to get those answered Lord willing. And then after that, we'll then do a closing argument for which we said that we prior to do five minutes,

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Connor will go first on that. And I will follow up on the end after which we will end the live stream.

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So, Connor, I'll turn it over to you right now if you want to give a five minute introduction just on your story, your testimony, and just what leads you to being an

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LDS member. Yeah, definitely. So I do want to say one thing before you formally get into it.

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It's just that I've always been fascinated by how mainstream Christians just love that verse about the

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Marines. It's not a bad thing. Let me make it absolutely clear. I'm not saying that as a criticism or anything. Anyway, I just think it's absolutely fascinating how often that verse gets brought up because there's a lot of people that get praised in the

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Bible. And it's funny how often that they get brought up to the point where I've seen churches named the

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Berean Bible Church. There was one that was named that year where I served on mission. Anyway, that's just just a little observation of mine, just like an outside perspective.

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But, yeah, my name is Connor Smith. I was born in the church. I'm 22 years old, and I've always been interested in apologetics.

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I suppose my first exposure to apologetics was way back in high school.

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A friend of mine, he attended a private Christian academy, and they showed the Godmakers in his high school class.

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I think it was his religion class. And I don't know if any of you know what the Godmakers is. But it is a, it also goes under the name

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Banned Mormon Cartoon, and it is a highly inaccurate summary of our beliefs.

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Let me just put it that way. It is, it contains a lot of spin, a lot of half -truths, and a lot of very misleading parts.

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And at that point, I didn't really know much. But my friend Hunter, he would tell me all about, you know, how he was able to go up from the class and how he just kind of explained, okay, no, that's not quite what we believe.

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This is what we believe. And I thought that was really, I thought that was a great opportunity event for him. I thought that it was really interesting, first of all, how they let him do that, and also just how it seemed to, you know, kind of work out.

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And I feel like that's kind of my role through all of this is

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I don't see myself as necessarily trying to change people's minds. I, however,

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I meet a lot of people who reject our religion and what we believe. But when

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I start talking to them, they don't really understand what it is that they are rejecting. And that, to me, just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

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If you're going to disagree with us, fine, that's totally fine. But you should know kind of what you're disagreeing with.

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And so that's kind of my goal today. I want to kind of give you a rundown of what we believe and hopefully maybe even clear up some misconceptions today.

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Well, yeah, like I said, I'm 22. I served a mission. I, yeah,

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I just got recently married to one of my dreams, who coincidentally is named Emma Smith.

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And that's, I suppose she's going to get called as a Relief Society president soon just because of that.

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It's funny. But yeah, I was the Gospel Doctrine teacher briefly. I say

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I've been active on LDS, non -LDS Facebook groups for a while. Oh my gosh, that's a hilarious mug there.

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I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt you. Sorry, that was my fault.

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No, no, no, I didn't saw that. And that was a hilarious mug. That's good. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you. But that's an awesome mustache, by the way. Well, it's not as impressive as something like this.

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I wish this is what it looked like, but it doesn't end up being like that. So anyway, sorry. Keep on going on with your introduction.

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I need a minute to think anyway. Let's see, in terms of my testimony, I would say it starts foremost with the fact that I know

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God exists personally because I have spoken to him personally.

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I have spoken to him. I have asked him questions. I've gotten answers. And the details of that,

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I don't like to share too often in a public format. I'll typically share that more in a private one on one setting.

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But I'll just say for now that I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that, first of all,

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God exists. Second of all, that he loves me. He loves my family. Third of all, that I'm not quite where I need to be, but I'm on the right track.

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And that's I think this gospel is true.

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The gospel is true. I know that Jesus Christ is there. I know the repentance is real. I know that the things that he teaches us in the scriptures, that they are true.

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I've applied them to my life, and I know that they are true. And anyway, that's the short version of my testimony.

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Is there anything else that you want me to go over in this introduction here? No, that is absolutely. I am meaning myself.

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So yeah, no, that is absolutely perfect. In fact, we're right at five minutes right there. So that was perfect.

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Yeah. So thank you for that. I appreciate it. So just to let everybody know,

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I'll be trying to mute myself just so that when I'm slurping coffee, it doesn't interrupt what you're saying, even though it already did with the visual of it.

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But I'll hit my timer right now. And just so then I'll just give my quick five minute intro as well.

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Yeah. So my name is Brayden Patterson. I have the absolute wonderful, blessed privilege of being a pastor at a church called

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Valley Baptist Church in Hagerman, Idaho. I was raised with four other brothers underneath two loving parents that I absolutely love till today.

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Absolutely. But I was raised for 19 years of my life in the LDS church, born and raised.

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Three of my older brothers have gone on missions. My little brother is getting ready right now to go on a mission. And I myself, when

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I was 19, was getting ready to go on a mission. And in the process of getting ready to go on a mission, I just as a just as a proof, this is my quad.

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So just let everybody know, I really am. I really am an ex -Mormon. So I graduated with all four years from my seminary high school, memorized all hundred scripture masteries.

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I was ready to really go out and be a good serving missionary. And in the process of getting ready and starting to work on my paperwork,

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I met my now wife, but at the time, just a good looking, beautiful woman.

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And so I began starting to date her. And in that process of dating her, I was challenged, encouraged by my parents to baptize her and her family or else that she wouldn't wait for me on my mission.

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And so I'd only been dating her for a month, maybe two. It was definitely under two, but definitely, definitely around a month period.

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And I had given her a Book of Mormon the night prior. And then this night came about where I talked with her for an hour to two hours, one on one in her driveway of her house in a car.

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And in that conversation, I bore my absolute soul out. I think

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I talk a lot now as a pastor, but I talk straight for two hours. And she sat patiently and listened. And the ground that we covered is everything from the plan of salvation, the plan of happiness, the pre -existence, the necessity of temples and temple work, who

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Joseph Smith was and who prophets are today, the reasoning why we should have them today, what the

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Book of Mormon is. I mean, everything that you can imagine for a first lesson, we covered great ground in that conversation.

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And after which, like I said, my then at the time, this lady I was dating, but now my wife, my wife sat patiently and she, after I was done and I thought to myself,

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I couldn't have said that any better than the way I just said it. And I know it's true. She looked at me and she said, that's stupid and not in the

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Bible. And so it hit me right then and there. What I just read was absolute truth to absolute falseness.

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And it worried me very, very, very much. And so I went home that night and I've been studying in the Word of God for the last six years, taking her up on that challenge.

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And there has not been one thing that I found in its totality that I told her that night, not to the two hour conversation that I had seen in the

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Word of God and the 66 books of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. And so I'm really excited to be discussing this with you,

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Connor, tonight, just because I really do think that this is the fundamental question of who Jesus is. And as we discussed on the phone a couple of days ago, you know, somebody that's

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Muslim that believes and says that Jesus was somebody that existed, but he didn't die on a cross and he was just a prophet or an apostle, a good man.

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Just because they use the same terminology of saying Jesus as I do, it does not mean that they have faith in Jesus as he describes himself in the

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Bible. And so I'm really looking forward to this. Like I said, since leaving the

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LDS church and coming to being a born again Christian and having faith in Jesus Christ as the second person of the

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Trinity, it has brought about a very clear depiction of my own sin, my own need of who

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God is, and a complete and utter reliance on the salvation that he's given to me through his death, burial and resurrection, which is the shortest summation of the gospel found in 1

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Corinthians 15, 1 through 4. So I, oh, and maybe to give you a little bit more introduction about myself, that young, lovely lady that I was talking about now, we have two kids together.

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We live in Twin Falls, which is 40 minutes away from Hagerman. So it gives me a good amount of time to be able to think over stuff and pray and so on and so forth.

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But yeah, two young kids, and it's an absolute privilege and a blessing to be here talking with you tonight,

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Connor. So that was just under five minutes as well. So, perfect.

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So now, are you able to hear me, Connor? Yep, I can hear you just fine. Perfect. Perfect. And I'll see real quick if we've got currently six people watching right now.

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So what we'll go ahead and do now, which just let everybody know that is watching this. I hope that you stick around, that you listen to this and do not take anything that I say or Connor says is truth.

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Go and search it for yourself. Go and seek these things out. Hold myself and hold

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Connor and our conversation accountable to what the word of God has to say about things, because that is the final authority.

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But yes, yeah, I would add also ask God, seriously, just pray to him and ask, because God does answer prayers.

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And if you believe God answers prayers, get down on your knees and ask him about anything that we what we're saying is true.

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Don't take our word for it. Yep. And I would encourage people to go. Yes, yes, absolutely.

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Yeah. So and that's the that's the great dilemma, right? Because if I if I pray to God and I got a confirmation that that I should go and steal money from the store down the street and I got a really good feeling that I should go and steal that money.

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The word of God already told me not to do that. Right. So, yes, I know what you're saying by that. But yes, it's look into the word of God, be praying to him and seek his truth.

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So to get started on this, what we like I said, just as a as a precursor to this is that I will have 10 minutes to give my definition of who

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Jesus Christ is, after which Connor will give his 10 minute argument for who he sees

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Jesus Christ as. And then from there, we will both go back and forth, giving what we perceive as what they were saying as their argument.

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And so as long as we can agree that that is a valid understanding of each other's arguments, we'll then continue the dialogue.

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Sound good with you, Connor? That's perfect. Perfect. And just let people know, Connor, we did debate in high school.

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Is that correct? Yep. So this is nothing this is nothing new to you. So I'm excited for this.

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So what I'll do, since I'm happening kind of as the partial host in this way,

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I'll try to keep myself honest. Like I said, I'll put 10 minutes on the on the clock right here, and I will go ahead and hit start as of right now.

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So I think this is a perfect thing that we're talking about right now. Who is Jesus Christ? Especially right now, because we're in the month of December where the whole

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United States celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. And I think this is important because we don't celebrate my birth as far as the

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United States go. We don't celebrate your birth, Connor. We celebrate one person, Jesus Christ.

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And now, while I don't think Jesus was born on December 24th or 25th, we are celebrating it for a specific reason.

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And so my first text I would go to to speak about who I would say Jesus Christ is, is found in Matthew chapter one, verses 21 through 23.

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And it says in there, And she will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for it is he who saves his people from their sins.

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Now, all this took place that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying,

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Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which translated means

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God with us. And so just as a little bit of more context in there, Jesus's literal name,

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Jesus, has a meaning to it. And it means he will save his people. And we see what the fulfillment of the text is that he shall be called

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Emmanuel, which means God with us. So if I was to say I have faith in Jesus Christ, I think majority of everyone around the world would say that's a good thing.

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And if I even said I have faith in Jesus as the son of God, son of man, a lamb, a really perfect, genuine good guy.

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Once again, people around the world would say that's that's a good thing, that that's correct. But if I said that this same

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Jesus that I'm talking about is the same grocery store I talked about robbing earlier, he's my cashier there and he goes by Jesus.

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I have now fallen outside of the realm of having a faith in the biblical Jesus. Doesn't matter the titles that I've been giving to that cashier as far as being the son of God.

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It doesn't matter how Christian I am sounding when I'm saying those terms. It has been voided because I have violated who

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Jesus Christ is, according to the Bible, that Jesus at Fred Meyer, that Jesus at my grocery store is not a

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Jesus that will save me. He's not a Jesus that can save anybody because faith is only as good as the object that we put it into.

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And so it is my argument for tonight that I believe that the LDS church has fundamentally done this with the being and the person of who

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Jesus Christ is. And I think this starts fundamentally at the first vision account found in Joseph Smith history verses 15 through 21, which

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I used to be able to quote the entirety of thing of you. But in there, it says that Joseph Smith saw two figures, two personages being the father and the son, and that they spoke to each other and he spoke to Joseph.

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And when they spoke to Joseph, they said that all his creeds, all the professing creeds of that day were abomination before the sight of God.

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And it's those same creeds that I hold to today are the same ones that Joseph Smith said were abominations in the eyes of the

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Lord. And so this is a serious thing that we're talking about tonight. Who is Jesus?

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And I think in this first vision account, we see a erring in Joseph Smith and an erring in what the

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LDS church holds as doctrine, because we see Jesus in the New Testament quite frequently talk about no one has seen the father, no, not one.

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We find in John chapter one, verse one, that in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was

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God. He was in the beginning with God and all things came into being by him and apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being.

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And so the word himself created all things. And as we see again, as a comparison goes in the

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Pearl of Great Price and Abraham chapter four, it says that he reorganized existing material that was already present there, that he's not the creator of those things, which is a contradiction to what

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Jesus Christ has done. But it goes on to say in verses 10 through 13, that he comes unto his own and his own did not receive him, but they rejected him.

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And in verse 14 to talk about specifically what it says, it says, and the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us and we beheld his glory, glory of the only begotten from the father, full of grace and full of truth, full of grace and truth.

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And in verse 18, it says, no man has seen God at any time. The only begotten

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God who is in the bosom of the father, he has explained him. And so we see Jesus saying in his text, or as far as the author of John goes, that no one has seen the father, but the son has explained him,

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Jesus says, and in John chapter 14, he says to Philip, Philip comes to him and says, show us the father and it suffices us, it will be sufficient for us.

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And Jesus, I'm turning there right now, so I don't miss quote, Jesus says, have I not been so long with you,

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Philip, if you've seen me, you have seen the father, how can you, how can you say, show us the father?

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It goes on to say in second Timothy chapter or first Timothy, excuse me, verse or chapter six, verse 16, it says in there that no man has seen

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God, no, not one for he dwells in inapproachable light that no man has seen or can see.

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And so I think fundamentally, Joseph Smith told a lie in that first vision account that takes people away from who

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Christ is, but we're not talking about the father tonight. We're talking specifically about who Jesus Christ is, and it's my argument that Jesus Christ is of the same essence, the same substance as the father being the second person of the

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Trinity, that he's distinct in his persons and his subsistence is from the father and the Holy Spirit.

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But that he is in his fullness, the one and only God from all eternity to eternity, and that there's none before him, nor shall there be after him because part of being the nature of God is that he is uncreated.

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He is the creator, and we ourselves have been created. So therefore, it puts us outside of the realm of being divine in any way.

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And we see in Ephesians chapter two that by nature we are children of wrath, which is a whole different subject in of itself.

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But talking about who Jesus Christ is, I think that one of the best questions that I ask, and I'll ask

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Connor later today in our time to ask questions back and forth to each other, is why did the

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Jews kill Jesus? Why did they reject him? And just to talk really quickly on these things, and we'll cover a good amount of text right here.

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But in John chapter five, he says, And then it goes on to say in John 8, 23 through 24, he says that,

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He then goes on to say later on in that same chapter, once again, he says, It's in the final verses of John chapter eight here.

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He says, And the

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Jews then go on to say, And because you being a man, make yourself out to be

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God. So he makes himself equal to be God, and he makes himself out to be God. And then we see in the finality of John chapter 19, the reason that the

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Jews were seeking to crucify him was not for anything that he had done. But him being a man, he made himself out to be the son of God.

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So we see the Jews interchangeably using the title of being equal to God as being a man, being

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God, making himself out to be God. And also being a man, making himself out to be the son of God, which were titles that the

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Jews had meaning and understanding about. This is fundamental, because I would say that Jesus is the one and only

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God that we see in Isaiah chapter 43, verse 10, that there's none before him nor after him. He's called

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Savior in verse three of Isaiah 43. It's God alone that can forgive sins.

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And so if I believe in Jesus not being the single one and only God that I worship, he is not a

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Jesus of the Bible. He's not a Jesus that can save. And so I would turn for maybe my final, because I got one minute and 30 seconds left here.

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I want to read this one verse that I think is very particularly important on talking about who

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Jesus Christ is. It would be in the text of Luke chapter five. It says in here, just as a little bit of context, so I don't have to read the entire thing.

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Jesus is in a house and a whole bunch of people are around him and they've gathered to him so that this paralytic man can't reach him.

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And so this paralytic man, his friends that are around him have torn apart the roof and they have lowered the paralytic man to be right in front of Jesus.

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And so they lower him right through the center and in front of Jesus. Jesus says this, And seeing their faith, he said, friend, your sins are forgiven you.

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And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason in saying, who is this man who blasphemes?

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Who can forgive sins but God alone? But Jesus aware of their reasoning answered and said to them, why are you reasoning in your hearts?

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Which is easier to say your sins have been forgiven you or to say rise and walk? And I would say that is true.

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It is very easy to say your sins are forgiven you. It's a lot harder to say rise and walk.

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But we see what happens when Jesus says this. But in order that you may know the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

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He said to the paralytic, I say to you, rise and take up your stretcher and go home.

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And at once he rose up before them and took home his bed, lying on the bed that he was lying on and went home glorifying

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God. And it says after that, all the people there were amazed at what Jesus had just done. And so we see something in there.

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You see what I would say is a foreshadowing of what Jesus Christ did on the cross. Christ forgave sins in his body on the cross being made sin so that we might be made the righteousness of God.

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And that's something he could only do if it is God in flesh that did that. And it was through his resurrection that validated his claim.

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Just as the man that was paralyzed validated his claims when he rose and walked home.

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He validated Jesus forgiving his sins because that's something only God can do. And so yeah, so that was my timer going off there.

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And so my argument tonight is that Jesus Christ is the one and only God from all eternity to eternity.

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And that he's the second person of the trinity and anything other than that cannot be considered Christian.

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And so on that, Connor, I will hit my 10 -minute timer for you.

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And as soon as you start, Connor, I will hit that 10 -minute timer for you. So I'll go ahead.

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Actually, before I start, do you mind if I do the thing where I summarize your argument? Oh yeah, do you want to do that now or after you're done with your question?

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Probably easier to do it right now. Just make sure I have everything straight before I get going. That sounds great. So if I have your basic arguments straight, you believe that who

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Jesus is has been changed by the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter -day Saints from what it has been traditionally.

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And therefore, you feel justified in saying that the Christ that we worship is a false Christ, like you mentioned in Matthew 24, 24.

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And then you gave a list of reasons. I'm afraid I didn't get all of them down, but you gave a list of reasons why you believe that it has been changed.

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Why you believe that our position is incompatible with the Bible. Yeah, and to preface that a little bit more is that I want to say that this is just the traditional view.

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This is what I would say is according to the Word of God view. And so the reasoning that I would also say that that is also the traditional view is that it's found in Matthew chapter 16.

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Then he says in verse 18, chapter 16, verse 18, Jesus says, Upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

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So I believe that the last 2 ,000 years of Christians professing Jesus Christ as Lord have gotten his deity correct using the

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Word of God alone as their authority, which I also use alone as my authority. And I've come to the same exact conclusions that they have.

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And so, yes, your summation of that is adequate. Just wanted to preface that I use the

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Word of God alone as my authority. Okay, like I said, I think you wouldn't get quite all of your reasons. Are there any reasons that you brought up that you want to discuss?

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Or you know what? I think I'll let you do your 10 minute stuff and we can talk after for sure. But I there was a lot of Bible verses

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I covered in there. And yes, I was just typing here on my phone.

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If there's any specific ones that afterwards that you want to discuss, let's do it. But I'll let you do your 10 minute opener.

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I'll mute myself right now and I'll hit start as soon as you start talking. So something

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I just want to say first, whenever we're talking about the issue of having a

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Latter -day Saint Jesus and then a Christian Jesus talking about them as different people, let's just get one thing clear.

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I think that it's worth pointing out that we are talking about the same historical figure. And we are talking about two different Jesuses.

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We're talking about the same two different people believing different things about the same Jesus. So the way that I kind of see it is imagine you had

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John F. Kennedy's yearbook, like his high school yearbook or something like that. And you open up the yearbook and it has a whole bunch of little stories about him.

30:09

Like, I don't know, maybe he was in the chess club or something along those lines. You open up the yearbook and you read about all the things that he did.

30:18

And maybe there's some other things that he did while at the same time, maybe you have a friend of his that told you a couple of extra stories that weren't in the yearbook that you decided to write down and include in the yearbook.

30:30

But then someone comes along and says that he was the president of the United States. We're not talking about two different John F.

30:37

Kennedys. We're talking about one John F. Kennedy and then one person believes something additional. And that's what it is here.

30:44

I think that that's what it comes down to is you have the Bible and you're reading the

30:51

Bible and you have things in the Bible that you're learning about Jesus.

30:57

And two, they are probably the most important things. The fact that he died on the cross for our sins is the number one most important thing.

31:03

If you were to forget every other part about him, that would probably be the most important part to remember.

31:10

And that we share as common ground. That everything in the New Testament, everything in the Old Testament is all common ground.

31:16

We might interpret it a little bit differently because we do have modern revelation that has added to our understanding of Christ.

31:22

But in terms of do we have different Christs, I think that the answer is no.

31:28

Because we are clearly talking about the same historical person. And what we believe is compatible with the

31:34

Bible, even if it's not necessarily compatible with your beliefs. Anyway, so just kind of go really quick over common ground.

31:40

I mentioned that the New Testament is an area where we have common ground. I'd say, I mean,

31:45

I started, first of all, with what you said, where he was born of the Virgin Mary. He went, lived his whole life around age 30 or so.

31:53

He began his ministry and gathered disciples around him. He taught amazing things that we can read all about in the

32:00

Gospels. And then it ultimately culminated in his sacrifice. We believe that it started in the

32:06

Garden of Gethsemane and then ended on the cross. And then you guys believe it just started on the cross. But that's more of a side issue than, it's more semantics than anything.

32:16

But yeah, that's, all of that we have as common ground there.

32:21

And then of course those, he was resurrected after three days and then he ascended into heaven.

32:27

His disciples, they all kind of scattered and spread the Gospel throughout the world.

32:33

And as a result, the world was able to be introduced to Christianity and we're able to know how to be repent of our sins.

32:40

We're able to know how to be saved. And yeah, now this is where the

32:47

LDS and traditional Christian stories differ. At this point, we start talking about the apostasy, but that's a separate issue.

32:54

So I don't think we need to delve into that right now. In terms of things that we can add that we've learned through modern revelation, you mentioned how

33:04

Jesus was probably not born on December 25th. We agree. We know from modern revelation that Jesus was born on April 6th.

33:10

That's just a little thing that we can add. We also have a little bit difference of a perspective on Trinitarianism.

33:18

That's the, I would argue that's the biggest actual difference in terms of what we believe in terms of like, as far as Jesus himself.

33:27

Not even, not going into doctrine quite yet, but just in terms of Jesus himself, I think that's probably our biggest difference.

33:35

Let's see. Oh, I'll read this. Let's see. However, there is one thing that you addressed a couple of times.

33:46

You seem to be implying in a couple of points that we don't believe that Jesus is

33:51

God. I would like to definitely correct that. Now, this is from the title page of the Book of Mormon, this quote right here.

33:59

It was included with the original Book of Mormon. Mormon wrote it as, I guess, an introduction.

34:05

So it is a part of the Book of Mormon. It wasn't just something that we added later. But it says that, it talks about the purposes of the

34:12

Book of Mormon. First of all, to convince the remnant of the house of Israel what great things the Lord has done for their fathers and also to the convincing of the

34:19

Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the eternal God, manifesting himself to all nations.

34:28

And yeah, I definitely just want to correct that. We do believe Jesus is

34:33

God. And I don't really know any other way to say that. If I misunderstood your point, if you want to dig into the nuances there a little bit more, we can.

34:43

But yeah, kind of going back to the differences between our beliefs.

34:49

This quote right here is from Jeffrey R. Holland, who, for those of you who don't know, is an apostle of our church.

34:55

We believe that we have living apostles today that have inherited the mantle of the

35:01

Apostles of Old and are equal in authority to them. So you can kind of think of this as a statement from one of the

35:11

Apostles of Old that helps you understand how we think of them. But yeah, this is from Jeffrey R.

35:18

Holland. He says, we are not considered Christian by some, I suppose, because we are not fourth century Christians. We are not Athanasian Christians.

35:24

We are not creedal Christians of the brand that arose hundreds of years after Christ. No, when we speak of restored

35:29

Christianity, we speak of the church as it was and not as it became when the great councils were called in debate and anguish over what it is they really believed.

35:37

So if one means Greek influence, council convening, philosophy -flavored Christianity of post -apostolic times, then we're not that kind of Christian.

35:43

Peter we know, and Paul we know, but Constantine and Athanasius, Athens, and Alexandria, generally we know them, but we don't actually follow them.

35:52

Thus we teach that God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ are separate and distinct beings with glorified bodies of flesh and bone.

35:59

As such, we stand with the historical position that the formal doctrine of the Trinity as it was defined by the great church councils of the fourth and fifth centuries is not to be found in the

36:07

New Testament. We take literally at His word that Christ came down from heaven not to do His own will, but the will of Him who sent

36:14

Him. Of His antagonists, Jesus said, they have hated both Me and My Father. And along with scores of other references, including

36:21

His pleading prayers, Jesus repeatedly subordinated Himself to His Father, saying regularly one way or another,

36:27

My Father is greater than I. However, having made the point of their physical and distinct physical nature, we declare unequivocally that they were indeed and are one in every other conceivable way.

36:37

In mind and deed, in will and wish and hope and faith and purpose and intent and love.

36:43

They are most assuredly much more alike than they are different in all the ways that I have just said. But they are separate and distinct beings as all fathers and sons are.

36:52

In this manner, we differ from our traditional creedal Christianity, but we do feel we agree with the New Testament.

36:58

And that's really all I have to say. I acknowledge that there are differences between us. However, I feel like we do agree with the

37:05

New Testament. Maybe not with your interpretation of the New Testament, but we do agree with the New Testament. The Bible has been one of our standard works.

37:14

It's been in our canon of scripture for almost 200 years now. And I mean, if we really contradicted it, then

37:21

I think someone would have noticed by now, with all due respect. But yeah, I think that's about all I really have to say on the matter.

37:31

Okay, you got, I'm unmuted now. You got another two minutes. Are you good on what you got?

37:38

I mean, yeah, I think that's about everything I had to say. I feel like it's better to end it before I start rambling.

37:48

I get you. No, and I tend to do that myself. Totally understand. So likewise, just to kind of repeat back with what you said, your argument is that we are speaking of the same historical

38:00

Jesus with some minor differences, in your opinion. And I wouldn't say minor differences.

38:06

Sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I wouldn't say minor differences. Minor differences. They're very real, and they do have very real doctrinal implications.

38:12

Absolutely. And I agree with that. But at the same time, I don't feel it's enough to warrant saying we're talking about a completely different person.

38:18

Okay, yep. So you think that we're talking about the same person. You would believe that you are within the bounds of being able to use the title

38:26

Christian, but not what you would say that is a credo Christian or somebody that looks to the

38:32

Nicene Athanasian, London Baptist Confession of Faith, so on and so forth creeds. And then you would say that one of the biggest fundamental differences is our understanding of what the

38:43

Trinity is. And that within that, that you would argue that the Father and the Son are one in being and in a lot of other ways, but they are separate and distinct in their being.

38:55

Is that correct? Yes, I'd say just, I wouldn't say our biggest difference period, but limiting ourselves to the context of who is

39:04

Jesus Christ, I think that our biggest difference is Trinitarianism versus what we believe, which

39:09

I feel like it's weird that we haven't come up with a good name for it yet. We don't really have a name for what we believe.

39:15

Godhead. I've heard you guys use Godhead a lot. So I don't know.

39:22

Monolatry is the one that I've heard that's closest, which is a worship of one God, but believing that it's possible that others exist.

39:29

That's the closest, like easy one word description that I've heard, but even that doesn't quite really fit it.

39:37

The easiest thing to say is Latter -day Saint theology. That's the, yeah. But anyway, yeah.

39:45

I'm sorry, say that again. But yeah, you seem to have it pretty well. Yeah. Good. Okay. I'm happy about that then.

39:51

So from this point on, what we had planned on doing today is making this now kind of a informal kind of going back and forth with questions and also statements, right?

40:01

I want to keep this as relaxed as possible. Just talking about some of the important stuff that you talked about and the important stuff that I talked about.

40:10

So Connor, with you just going last on this, I will, and you being my guest today, I'll let you maybe start off with a question.

40:20

How about that? All right. So let's see. I'm just kind of going through my notes of what you said.

40:28

Oh, so this is an interesting scripture. So you mentioned Isaiah 43 as evidence that there is not more than one

40:37

God. And if you could read that really quick, just so we have that context. Yeah. Would you like me to read that for you?

40:43

I don't have my Bible right in front of me. No worries. So yeah. Would you like me to read the

40:48

Isaiah 43 or all the, it repeats itself several times. So in Isaiah 44, Isaiah 45, Isaiah 46, it repeats that same.

40:55

I know you mentioned Isaiah 43. I know that Isaiah 43. Yeah. So I think I did. I think you're right that I mentioned just that one.

41:02

So verses 10 and three, it says in here, you are my witness declares the Lord and my servant whom

41:07

I've chosen in order that you might know or that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he before me, there was no

41:14

God formed and there will be none after me. I, even I am the Lord and there is no savior besides me.

41:20

It is I who have declared and have saved and proclaimed. And there was no strange God among you.

41:26

So you are my witnesses declares the Lord. And I am God, even from eternity, I am he.

41:32

And there is none who can deliver out of my hand. I act and who can reverse it. So here's my question.

41:40

That verse talks about how there are none before God and that there are none after. Yeah. And you take that to mean that there are none other than him.

41:48

My question is, is there anything before or after an eternal being? So I'm sorry, say that one more time.

41:55

So is there anything that is before or after an eternal being? No, there is nothing that is before God in the sense of there.

42:04

He is the sole reason that we exist. He is the creator and by his will and his word, according to Colossians chapter one, we exist because of his word.

42:13

As far as being after the idea that it's getting out in there is that there is nothing that comes after him.

42:19

As far as he is the alpha and omega that he is completely God alone and there's nothing else like him is how

42:25

I would understand a text like that. Yeah, and I partially agree. I think that that verse is trying to compare God's eternal nature with the temporal nature of the idols that Israel has been worshiping and that Isaiah is in all of that chapter.

42:37

Yep. However, the reason why Latter -day Saints don't have a problem with that verse is because it doesn't actually say anything about God's existing concurrently with a father.

42:50

That's why we can say that Jesus is God and Heavenly Father is God and the Holy Spirit is God. However, none of them are before or after each other.

42:58

So I would ask you, though, so just coming back on that, who would you say is the

43:03

God that is speaking in that text? Because if you see the father and the son, the Holy Spirit is three separate beings in that sense of three separate gods, which

43:13

God is speaking in Isaiah 43? So that is a very good question, and it is kind of a hard question to answer.

43:21

The understanding that I have is that Jesus was the one who spoke to Israel, but he spoke as commanded by the father in a role that's kind of similar to a translator speaking on behalf of someone who they're translating for.

43:40

That's my understanding, but I'm not going to hold to it. I'm not going to. I haven't actually done a whole lot of study on that specifically, but that's, yeah.

43:50

Yeah, so I would also maybe in that same idea that you're saying that there's three gods that could be running the course at the same time in that sense.

43:59

Is there another savior other than Jesus Christ in that same idea, that thinking of the title

44:06

God, is that then therefore different when it says there is no savior besides me as well? No, there's no other savior.

44:14

The Bible makes it very clear that there's no name under heaven whereby we can be saved except for Jesus Christ. Yep, I agree with that.

44:19

So that's from Acts chapter four, and I would 100 % agree with that. So my coming back with you on that is you're absolutely correct.

44:27

This is in the context of Isaiah, who would have been writing this around 739

44:33

BC in that time frame, speaking of a future day of Babylon's captivity in the 500 area.

44:39

So 200 years in advance, and Isaiah even named Cyrus by name who's going to conquer

44:44

Babylon. The Cyrus that hasn't even been born and conceived is not even a twinkling in the eye of Cyrus's mom and dad yet.

44:51

And so there's great confidence I can take in the scripture because it's prophetic by nature, but it is absolutely speaking about a false religion and Nebo's the gods of Babylon in that day.

45:03

It's speaking of false gods, false idols, and even talks about idol making later on in these chapters after this.

45:10

Why is it if God says, if this is possible, if there was more than one God in this text as you stated there, why is it that even if it's the father speaking, the son speaking, the

45:21

Holy Spirit speaking, whichever one it says in, it says that he knows not any other that he knows none before him nor after him.

45:32

And so the thing that would bewilder me, the reason I would say this scripture goes completely against the LDS doctrine is if they're running code current.

45:39

And as you said, they're one in purpose, they're one in mind, and they have this relationship. I just don't see a son or a father or a spirit, whatever person of the

45:50

Trinity is being spoken of in this. I couldn't see them saying that I know of no other before me or after me.

45:56

I would at least think they would say, I know of another God. Well, that's again, we don't think that there is anything before or after an eternal being.

46:04

God, it goes all the way back in time as far as it goes and all the way forward in time as far as it goes.

46:09

So if you were to put it all on like a line, there's nothing that is before or after.

46:15

Yeah. So I wasn't planning on going into this text. I'm happy that you went back to Isaiah 43. Do you believe that you can become a

46:21

God like our God, the father and how you would understand that our God, the father being an exalted being?

46:28

Do you believe that you someday can be an exalted being like him, never achieve the same greatness as him, but become a

46:34

God in the future? So I get this question at Paramount. My answer is that I'm not going to say anything about me personal.

46:42

I feel like it's between me and God, and I don't really, that's not really what we're debating about.

46:49

But what your real question is, is it possible? And then my answer is, I think that as it says in,

46:54

I think it's Romans eight, that we are the heirs of God and we can be joint heir, but that we can be the heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.

47:04

Yeah. And what did Christ inherit from his father? Well, like what did he get from his mother? What did he get from his father?

47:11

So I would push you a little bit more on something like that, because I am completely under the influence that the

47:16

Bible cannot contradict itself. And if joint co -heirs means that we can partake in the divine and the sense of being, coming our own gods and goddesses and so on and so forth, that would be in direct contradiction to what

47:30

Isaiah 43, Isaiah 46 teaches, as well as it would also violate Exodus 20, the command that thou shalt have no other

47:37

God before me. And so I would argue that. So, yep.

47:43

So even if hypothetically I were to become a God, I, we would still worship the father in the same way that Jesus worships the father.

47:53

He makes it clear to Mary, and I believe it's John 20, that he goes to her

48:00

God and his God. He clearly refers to the father as his

48:05

God. And in the same way that Jesus Christ continues to worship the father, despite attaining Godhood himself, he is our example.

48:11

And we would follow that example. And so no one, no one here would ever worship me.

48:18

Anyone, no one would ever worship any other person that's attained Godhood in the same way.

48:24

It's what all of us would continue to exclusively worship the father. So you used a specific word there that I think is really, really important.

48:31

You said attain Godhead. You said Jesus had attained Godhead. So was Jesus in the

48:37

Old Testament, was he attained that exaltation that is spoken of by the

48:42

LDS church in that text, or did that come post his physical life in the

48:48

New Testament? So it is kind of hard to say how exactly it happened.

48:54

We know that it happened in the premortal life because Jesus was the creator. He did create all things.

48:59

We don't believe in post ex nihilo creation. We do believe things were organized out of pre -existing matter. But if you say,

49:05

I created a sandcastle, you don't, you don't like, or you aren't really surprised. Like I snapped my fingers and made it into existence.

49:12

You can still call, properly call Jesus the creator, even though he didn't pop into existence from nothing.

49:18

We don't believe that's possible. Anyway, but yes, Jesus was the creator and clearly by then he had already attained

49:23

Godhead. So obviously it happened in the premortal life. For those who don't know about our doctrine of premortal life, we believe that we lived in heaven with our heavenly father for an indeterminate amount of time.

49:36

We don't have a whole lot of details from back then. We really don't. And as to how exactly it happened, whether Jesus has always been that way, or whether that's some way he, like whether he did something or whether something happened or I really don't know.

49:48

I really, really don't know. And there are a lot, there's a lot of speculation. A lot of it's really interesting and that'd be really fun conversation to have, but it's probably not good for this conversation.

49:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, and I don't mean to ask all the questions, but you did say about God being a creator and that you would still say that building a sandcastle, you still consider that being a creator.

50:11

John 1, 3 that I read earlier, it says in there, all things came into being by him and apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being.

50:21

I would say that that would then mean that Christ created both the sand and the sand castle because it came into being by him and nothing that is into being has come into being apart from him is what that text says.

50:33

So I would, I would argue absolutely from a creationist standpoint that it came in ex nihilo, that it was

50:39

God himself that created, and it was not a reorganization of, of material that existed prior.

50:45

And that was through who Jesus Christ is. Um, which I, since we're talking about who

50:51

Jesus Christ is and I've asked several questions, do you have any questions to, to point towards me with, with who

50:57

Jesus is? So just a quick response to that verse really quick. Um, I'm not an expert on Hebrew or Aramaic or any of that.

51:06

So take this with a grain of salt, but I have heard that the word that Genesis uses that gets translated as create or creation can also be used in the same way that someone would say that they created a boat.

51:19

And so don't take my word for it that if I'm wrong, I might be wrong. Go ahead and look it up. But I know,

51:25

I mean, I really don't see any reason to say that someone isn't a creator just because they didn't pop into being just like that.

51:36

And that while that verse right there in specific does seem to imply that it's ex nihilo creation.

51:43

I think that ex nihilo creation creates a lot more problems than it solves theologically speaking.

51:49

And that there's some very good reasons not to believe it. But that has more to do with the problem of evil and everything else than this.

51:55

So that actually, actually the problem of evil would be a really fun topic for another time. Yeah, we should definitely do that. I would love that. Yeah. So no,

52:01

I do think that this is fundamental though, the who Jesus Christ is, because in Philippians or in Galatians, it says that he is the preeminent one, that he is this firstborn of all creation, that he's in first place of this.

52:13

And so I would absolutely argue that this has to be a statement that Christ is the self existing one.

52:21

And maybe that's the next place I would like to go to, because you're saying that fundamentally that you're within this umbrella of what can be considered

52:29

Christian. I would ask though, I don't know how much you know. You said you don't know

52:35

Hebrew. You don't know the Greek. You don't know the Aramaic. I am very limited in my knowledge. I don't know that much either.

52:40

To be honest with you, it's one of my downfalls from not being able to have gone to a seminary, which one day hopefully I can remedy that.

52:47

But from John chapter eight, verses 23 through 24, it says in there, and he was saying to them, you are from below.

52:53

I am from above. So it's speaking of two different natures that's taking place there, in my opinion of what this text is saying.

52:59

And he says, I am not of this world, or he says, first, you are of this world. I am not of this world. And he says in verse 24,

53:05

I said, therefore, to you that you shall die in your sins for unless you believe that I am.

53:12

And if you're reading along with me, every Bible always italicizes this word, he, because he is not in the text.

53:19

It says, I am, and you shall die in your sins. So if you do not believe that I am, you shall die in your sins.

53:27

And do you, have you ever heard of what ego me, I am Yahweh, those statements are.

53:34

Okay. So that's a big, I mean, it's the whole thing in Moses where he says, I am sent me, I am sent.

53:39

Yes. And so that name, that Yahweh name that's in the Hebrew, that's gets translated in the Greek Septuagint as ego me, which is the name that Jesus Christ takes.

53:47

And after every time he says this to the Jews, they seek to kill him after he says this because they thought it to be blasphemous to utter the name of God.

53:55

And so the name of God is, I am in our English, it's ego me in the Greek, it's Yahweh in Hebrew.

54:01

And it's used over 6 ,000 times in the old Testament. A lot of people don't know that the word of the word

54:07

Yahweh is used over 6 ,000 times in the old Testament as the explicit name of God.

54:13

So if Jesus in here says that I am, and that word to break it down a little bit more, it carries with it the idea that it's the self existing one.

54:22

And that comes from Exodus three versus 10 through 16. I believe it is. It's Exodus 314 to be specific.

54:28

But in there it says that he is the self existing one, that he exists not dependent on anything else but himself alone.

54:35

And that's part of that divine simplicity that we could talk about another time. But do you believe that Jesus Christ, this is where I would say this is the dividing line, that if I asked an

54:46

LDS person this, is that Jesus Christ, is he the self existing one? There's no

54:51

God before him, nor after him. He relies on no one else, that he alone is

54:56

God and possesses immortality because he has the fullness of God dwelling in him. Do you see that same understanding in that I am statement and on John chapter eight, verse 24?

55:10

So I think that you make a lot of good points. I think there's a lot where I can nod along and agree with you.

55:16

If you ask me whether Jesus is self sufficient in the way that he has power of himself, he doesn't need anyone else.

55:29

I would throw a question back at you and say, what do you think about the verse that says the son can do nothing of himself but what he seeeth the father do?

55:39

I think that's John five. Yep, it is. And that comes about, right?

55:45

I believe it's prior to then Jesus saying that my father is always working. And then the Jews go on to say, you have made yourself equal with God and they seek to kill him because of that.

55:54

And so once again, I would say that from that text that he can do nothing but what he sees his father do is a claim of divinity and that he and the father are one.

56:06

Once again, coming from John chapter 10, verse 30. So going back to that, I would argue that the father, the son, and the

56:13

Holy Spirit are one in being, three in persons, equal in their coexistence, they're co -equal, co -eternal.

56:20

And you cannot divide them, but they are distinct in their persons. And they speak, they have wills, they talk, they talk to each other.

56:30

There's these different Trinitarian words that come about that we talk about. But just sticking on John chapter 8, verse 24, would you say that Christ is that I am?

56:39

And understanding that, how did the Jews perceive this? When Jesus said, I am, how did the Jews understand that?

56:45

Because that's the context. Do you agree that the Jews understood that to be the one and only God from all eternity to eternity?

56:52

And Jesus was just a man claiming to be that one God. So I think that yes, the

56:57

Jews certainly did understand that to be Jesus claiming to be God. I don't necessarily agree with everything you said about what

57:04

I am is supposed to mean. I'll have to look into that myself. Yeah, me too. But yes, certainly

57:09

Jesus was claiming to be God there. And yes, the Jews certainly understood that as it was intended. Yeah.

57:14

Okay. I appreciate hearing that. So this would then go back to like ideas like that word,

57:21

I am Yahweh, that comes from the Shema, which is Deuteronomy 6, 4.

57:27

It says, oh, hero, Israel, the Lord, your God is one. Oh, hero,

57:32

Israel, the Lord, your God is one, which is Yahweh as Lord.

57:38

Every time we see Lord in the Old Testament, it is almost always speaking of Yahweh, especially if the four letters of Lord is capitalized.

57:47

It's almost always Yahweh. So it says in there, the Yahweh, your Elohim is one.

57:53

And that would be my argument that is also being spoken of here in John chapter eight, verse 24 specifically.

58:00

Do you have any other questions? So you brought up the Shema, I might be mispronouncing that, Shema. Yeah, no.

58:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there is an interest. So that reminded me of something that I copied from a

58:11

Facebook post way back when, and I just found it. But it's a commentary on that verse from the Jewish study Bible. And it says, many modern readers regard the

58:19

Shema as an assertion of monotheism, a view that is anachronistic. In the context of ancient Israelite religion, it served as a public proclamation of exclusive loyalty to Yahweh as the sole

58:29

Lord of Israel. The verse makes not a quantitative argument about the number of deities, but a qualitative one about the nature of relationship between God and Israel.

58:37

Almost certainly the original force of the verse, as a medieval Jewish exegetes noted, was to demand that Israel show exclusive loyalty to our

58:45

God Yahweh, but not thereby to deny the existence of other gods. In this way, it assumes the same perspective as the first commandment of the

58:52

Decalogue, which by prohibiting the worship of other gods presupposes their existence. And that's from the Jewish study

58:58

Bible. And like I said, it's for the Shema right there. I like it. I like it. So I would also ask you then, what does that same commentary then say on Isaiah 43 through 46?

59:08

Because I can almost guarantee you that it would say that there's probably one God. And so Jews in the

59:13

Old Testament, in that Exodus 3 chapter I was speaking of, it says that the angel of the Lord spoke from the flame and that angel of the

59:20

Lord is then therefore called God later on. And so even in the Old Testament, we see these three persons of the

59:25

Trinity spoken of with different titles given to them. Absolutely. It's never spoken of as father in the

59:31

Old Testament, but it's spoken of as Elohim God. And we then see that the second person of the

59:36

Trinity is often referred to as angel of the Lord. And the third person of the Trinity spoken of as the spirit of the Lord.

59:41

And there's Jewish, Orthodox Jewish men and women that have written over the years that in the last 2000 years, that would say that just according to the

59:51

Old Testament, they see a Trinitarian God. And that's well within the Orthodox of being a Jew, which is interesting.

59:56

So anyway, I know there are plenty of people who would disagree with that as well, but I'm not an expert and I don't think to be,

01:00:02

I just have that little commentary right there that someone posted recently that I thought was interesting and yeah, something to add to the discussion.

01:00:10

So this, because we just hit one hour total, and I know you said you have stuff that's going on.

01:00:16

I want to read a quick Bible verse and we can open it up to questions in the comments because I believe we still, let's see here.

01:00:22

How many people we got watching? We got seven people watching. So we went up from one from six earlier. So Matthew chapter seven has a very big, this is to me what

01:00:34

I always tell the people that are so wonderful at worshiping

01:00:39

God at Valley Baptist Church, the church that I'm the pastor of. I tell them this is the most scary verse in the whole

01:00:44

Bible for me. It says in here, many will say it's in Matthew chapter seven, verse 22. It says, many will say to me on that day,

01:00:52

Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? And did we not cast out demons in your name and in your name perform many mighty miracles?

01:00:59

And Connor, I don't know your backstory. Maybe you've done these things. Maybe you haven't. I can't say explicitly that I've done any of these things, but we see that there are people that recognize

01:01:07

Jesus as Lord. They use that as a title of him and they use experience as why they believe that they are saved.

01:01:15

The reason that they think that they are accepted into this fold of Christ. And Jesus says after that, he says, and then

01:01:21

I declare to them, I never know you. I never knew you depart from me, you workers of iniquity.

01:01:27

I never knew you. And then it goes on to say, that's the scariest verse right there. Depart from me, you workers of iniquity.

01:01:32

And it says, therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts upon them may be compared to a wise man who built his house upon the rock and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and burst out the house.

01:01:47

And yet it did not fall for it had been founded upon the rock. And according to Acts chapter 14 that you mentioned earlier in verses 10 through 12, it says that he was the chief cornerstone that the builders rejected.

01:01:57

We would also see that from Psalm 118 and Psalm chapter. Oh, I'll just stick with 118. I know it calls it the rock in there.

01:02:04

Isaiah chapter. He's called the rock several times all over the old testament and the new testament.

01:02:11

And the point that I'm making in there, you probably remember that verse. Right. So Jesus is our rock.

01:02:20

We have to be built upon him. And it says in here that there's going to be people that profess him as Lord that actually don't know him rather actually better said

01:02:28

Christ doesn't know them. And he says, depart from me, you workers of iniquity.

01:02:34

I never knew you. So on that note, on knowing who Jesus Christ is,

01:02:39

I would ask anybody in the comments to please shoot your questions to both Connor and myself. And maybe we can give five minutes of something like that.

01:02:47

Is that okay with you, Connor? And then we can make our closing arguments. I, this has gone a little bit longer than what we talked about.

01:02:53

So we'll give it a time until the thing. Okay. Sounds good. So we'll give it a quick second to talk about that.

01:02:59

But please start sending in your questions right now. If you haven't, we were talking about dinner earlier.

01:03:08

Connor, what did you eat for dinner earlier? I wanted to eat for dinner earlier. I had, what did

01:03:15

I have? Oh, that's right. I had a rumen sandwich. There you go. Nice. There you go. I had a fettuccine

01:03:20

Alfredo with some peas, mushrooms, and ham that my wife made. It was, it was delicious. So nice married life is definitely great.

01:03:30

A little trick I learned with making Alfredo at home is you take where it says put in some water and you replace it with like beef broth or chicken broth or something like that.

01:03:41

Just put a little bit more than it asks for. Like if it's a cup and a half, put in two cups. Okay. It's a little bit more and it adds a little bit more flavor to it.

01:03:47

Really? You said beef broth? Yeah. Like beef broth or chicken broth or vegetable broth, just some kind of broth.

01:03:53

And then just replace that where it says water. Who would have thought the seven views that we have right now, the eight views right now, you guys are getting cooking advice right now from Connor.

01:04:01

So that's, that's a blessing. So Connor, we do not have any questions yet posed to either of us.

01:04:10

Maybe what we will just do is we will just go ahead and go right into the closing arguments if that's okay with you,

01:04:15

Connor. All right. Okay. So let me get my timer up on my phone and I will let you have five minutes.

01:04:22

Once again, if you go two minutes and you want to be done, that's fine. If you go seven minutes, I'm not too worried, but try to keep it around five minutes and we'll be good.

01:04:30

So as soon as you start talking, I'll mute myself and I'll hit start. So when it comes to the question of who

01:04:38

Christ is, this is kind of tied into if we are Christian. And that's kind of the real impact that we see of a lot of these discussions.

01:04:48

It's trying to decide whether or not Latter -day Saints are Christian. And when it comes to people like Brayden, for example,

01:05:01

I'm not too worried about him not thinking that we're Christian because he already knows what we believe.

01:05:10

He has done research. He's lived it for a little while and he already knows about as well as any non -member can what exactly it is that we believe.

01:05:19

I'm not super worried about his opinion because if he says that according to his definition of Christian that we don't quite qualify, that's fine.

01:05:27

I'm not here to really argue with that. However, what I am worried about is that people on the man on the street who hears, oh, they worship a different Christ.

01:05:38

They worship, they are Christian. He is not going to think in terms of some complex theological definition.

01:05:46

He's not going to think of a list of religious attributes that you need to have in order to be a

01:05:53

Christian. He's not going to think, oh, that just means that they're not Trinitarian. That's not going to come to his mind. What he's going to think is he's going to think, oh, they don't believe

01:06:01

Christ died on the cross for our sins. They don't believe that Christ was resurrected.

01:06:07

They don't believe in, you know, all the dozens of other things that we do have in common, that we do the legitimate things that we have in common.

01:06:14

And so that's the real impact of these kinds of discussions for me, is that when people say that we aren't

01:06:23

Christian, they get a serious misconception about what it is that we actually believe.

01:06:30

And that's kind of a problem, because when a person on the street thinks of Christianity, they don't think of the minutiae, the things that we're talking about here in this discussion, the things that are definitely important.

01:06:46

But that don't, they don't really feel like the actual things that you talk about when you're saying

01:06:55

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior and Redeemer of the world versus Jesus, the cashier.

01:07:04

It's not that, it's not that kind of difference. It's very clear that we are talking about Jesus Christ as in the one in the

01:07:11

Bible. And as a result, I feel like the fact that we're able to have this kind of discussion at all, where we're able to compare similarities and differences, shows that we have enough common ground that honestly, we should be considered

01:07:27

Christian. We should be considered to worship the same Christ, even if we believe different things.

01:07:33

We should be, I mean, I honestly consider other

01:07:39

Christians as my brothers and sisters in Christ. I think that you guys are missing out on a lot of really wonderful things that can be found in the

01:07:46

Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Prologary of Christ, and so on. But I do consider you guys my brothers in Christ.

01:07:53

And yeah, I mean, that's all I really have to say is that I don't want to see people becoming even more confused about our beliefs as a result of this discussion.

01:08:11

And what will happen if people start saying, we don't believe in Christ, we believe in a false Christ, or we believe in we are

01:08:18

Christian, something like that, that will just lead to more confusion. And yeah, that's all

01:08:25

I have to say. Okay, so you have a minute left.

01:08:31

Are you good on your five minute closing statements? Okay, I got the double thumbs up. And Connor, I appreciate what you said about that.

01:08:39

We don't want to put out to people wrong representations of ourselves and what's going on.

01:08:44

So I appreciate what you're saying for sure. Let me get my timer here set since I'm having a hard time right now.

01:08:51

So I'll hit my starting time right as of now. So once again,

01:08:57

I look at my authority as being the word of God alone. And if there's anything I said that was incorrect,

01:09:02

I will go back to God's word and I'll be prostrate, perform and repentful about it. That being said, though, the question of who

01:09:10

Jesus Christ is so, so important. Christians is not found in the title or the name of your church.

01:09:18

To be a Christian is a individual matter in having faith in who Jesus Christ himself described himself to be.

01:09:24

And so it is not found in a Baptist church or a Presbyterian church as Christian as far as that goes.

01:09:30

But there are definitions that we have to hold to in order to be

01:09:35

Christian. For example, there's essentials that are absolutely true that you have to believe in.

01:09:42

If I said I believe in Jesus as the lamb of God, but not as our high priest, I'm not believing in Jesus anymore.

01:09:48

If I say I believe in Jesus as our high priest, but not the great I am, I'm not believing in Jesus anymore. I'm not believing in the

01:09:55

Jesus of the Bible, the one that can save, the one and only that can save. And as we've seen in Matthew chapter 24, verse 24, there's going to be many false

01:10:02

Christ Galatians 1, 8, 9. There's only one gospel. And if anyone comes and preaches to you a gospel contrary to the one that you have yet received, let him be accursed.

01:10:10

We see this consistently, consistently, consistently all throughout the text. And my argument for this, though, is that in Matthew chapter 16, verse 18, it says in there, after Jesus asked the apostles, who do you say that I am?

01:10:25

And Peter says, thou art the Christ, son of the living God. Jesus says, you are Peter, which means small stone or pebble.

01:10:31

He says, upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

01:10:38

When Christ said that, he was speaking about himself being the rock, as we can clearly see all throughout the text,

01:10:45

Acts 4, 10 through 12. And when he died, his death, burial and resurrection is when he secured the salvation of those that would believe in him, his sheep.

01:10:55

And it is a relationship aspect that makes somebody a Christian. And a Christian will profess the truth of who

01:11:02

Christ is. And Connor, with as much respect as I can possibly say this, this is completely out of love.

01:11:10

You have denied essentials of what Christianity are, according to the word of God. And I hope that our viewers can see those kind of things.

01:11:18

And once again, go back to the word of God alone for your authority to find out what truth is. Jesus Christ is worthy to be worshiped.

01:11:28

He's worthy to be preached. He's worthy to be known. A statement that was made earlier was that we believe that the atonement started in the garden and finished on the cross.

01:11:38

And that comes from Doctrine and Covenants chapter 19 verses 7 and 8, I believe, and Alma chapter 11,

01:11:44

I believe, without turning and opening it up. This is problematic.

01:11:49

This is just another reason that it shows that there's a denial of who Jesus Christ is. In first Peter chapter 2 verse 24, it says, and he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness for by his wounds you were healed.

01:12:09

Colossians chapter 2, I'll turn there. I'm actually going to be preaching this Sunday over a text as lovely as Colossians chapter 2.

01:12:16

But Colossians chapter 2 verse 13 and 14, and when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcised of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us of all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which were hostile to often have taken them out of the way, having nailed them to the cross.

01:12:37

Every church that denies the essentials of Christianity also take away what the cross means in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

01:12:45

And I Luke Luke chapter 24,

01:12:51

I believe it is in there. We see the thief on the cross say this to him. He says, do you not?

01:12:58

He rebukes the other thief that has been telling Christ and hurling abuses. He says, do you not even fear God for you are under the same condemnation?

01:13:05

The thief recognized Jesus as God. And he says, this man has done nothing amiss. We have to believe

01:13:11

Jesus to be the one and only God in flesh in order to have salvation. And if he is neither of those things, we cannot take his words in John 19 30 seriously.

01:13:21

When he says that after he knew all things had been fulfilled and he only can know those things if he was fully God, he said to tell us,

01:13:28

I, it is finished. That debt is been paid in full. And so my encouragement for anybody watching this is come to Jesus Christ, have faith in his death, burial and resurrection.

01:13:39

Worship him as he has described himself in the text. And your sins have been paid for him. You have salvation as soon as you have faith in his name.

01:13:47

There is no need for a eternal progression works. Romans 3 28.

01:13:52

It says that we maintain a man is justified by faith, not by works apart from works.

01:13:59

And so anyway, that would be my closing statements. I will hit stop on that guy.

01:14:06

Connor, there's somebody that asked, can we still ask questions? Do you have time for a question? Sure. Let's go for it.

01:14:11

Okay. I, the YouTube video is a little bit behind, so let me see if we wait for another 30 seconds.

01:14:19

If this person will ask a question, we got a gentleman named cereal scrub, which that sounds very scrubby wanting to ask a question.

01:14:28

So I don't know if this is to me or to you, Connor. All right. So we'll, we'll, we'll keep on waiting just a couple more seconds.

01:14:33

Connor, as we're waiting for that, I just, I thank you for coming on tonight. As I talked to you on the phone previously,

01:14:40

I am very appreciative to have these kinds of conversations because Christ is worthy to be sought out.

01:14:47

He is truth and it's important to seek him. And so I appreciate you on here, defending what you believe in as truth, as I hope if you did believe this is truth,

01:14:56

I hope that you would actually be willing to defend it. So I'm super thankful for that. So this is my wife that asked this.

01:15:05

Well, actually, let's go first to Dennis Cornwell. He says, Jesus is enough.

01:15:10

So I'm assuming that he's asking, is Jesus enough? Connor, do you think Jesus is enough? That depends on in what way you mean, is

01:15:19

Jesus enough? That like, are we talking about in a salvation context? Or are we talking about like, obviously you can't have

01:15:26

Jesus without the father. And so in that way, I suppose you could say that Jesus is not enough.

01:15:32

Having Jesus is the only part of your theology. I wouldn't say that's full and complete theology. Having said that,

01:15:39

Jesus is the one that we look to for remission of our sins. Like I said before, his name is the only name whereby we can be saved.

01:15:44

And actually a really interesting point that I heard one time is that that includes the father.

01:15:50

We don't look to the father for our salvation. We look to Jesus Christ for our salvation because he's the one who died on the cross and also suffered a cup.

01:15:57

I guess both of those things. I would say both of those things. And so since he didn't say,

01:16:04

Connor, I'll also answer that question too. I would say that Jesus is absolutely enough in our salvation. I would quote the exact same verse that you did, that he's the only name under heaven whereby which a man must be saved.

01:16:15

We do not need to go to any other person than Jesus. And I'd also look at the Old Testament and New Testament that says that we sin against God alone.

01:16:22

And so for God to forgive sins, it has to be himself to do it. And so I would say that God in flesh died on a cross 2000 years ago and therefore

01:16:31

Jesus is enough. So I'll ask my wife's question next.

01:16:36

And she wants this one to be towards you, Connor. What is the gospel? What is the gospel?

01:16:42

The gospel, as I understand it, is the good news of Christ. It is the fact that, yeah, honestly, we're kind of screwed as a human race.

01:16:54

We are screwed six different ways. And if it weren't for Jesus Christ, then we would have no hope.

01:17:00

It's not an exaggeration to say that all of humanity would be absolutely doomed. But through Jesus Christ atonement, we're able to repent.

01:17:09

We're able to be reconciled to God. And yeah, that's the good news in a nutshell, that we're able to be reconciled to God and that we're able to take in salvation.

01:17:19

Okay, I like it. Okay, my wife would like me to answer the question too.

01:17:26

My answer to that question in a sort of summation of the gospel is that, yes, it is the good news to understand the good news.

01:17:31

You first must understand the bad news. And that is we from birth are sinners underneath the just wrath, righteous wrath of God, needing a savior.

01:17:40

God himself stood in our place. He died, was buried and rose again three days later in its shortest summation of the gospel.

01:17:48

And if we place our faith in that, our sins have been paid for when he said to tell us die. And that comes from 1

01:17:54

Corinthians chapter 15 verses one through four. So I got another question for you, Connor. So Serial Scrub asked, just wanted your interpretation or yes, this is for Connor.

01:18:08

Just wanted your interpretation on the Shema. What did you say the one

01:18:14

Yahweh was? So what would you say is the one Yahweh? What would I say is the one

01:18:19

Yahweh? I mean, the father. If we're talking about who we should direct our worship to, it is the father.

01:18:28

Jesus Christ, he worshiped the father. And yeah, he's supposed to be our example.

01:18:35

Like I mentioned earlier, when he spoke to Mary just after his resurrection, he said, I go now to my

01:18:41

God and your God. And I think it's pretty clear that worship is supposed to be directed for the father.

01:18:52

Now, there are places where Jesus Christ was physically with the people. And in that case, the people worshiped him.

01:18:59

That is completely proper. But when we're talking about worship in the true and saving sense, that's generally preserved for the father. I believe there is one verse in,

01:19:07

I want to say Corinthians that mentions worshiping Jesus. Yeah. So there's actually several.

01:19:13

So Matthew chapter 28, verse 17, it says they fell down and worshiped him. And Revelation, right?

01:19:19

So Revelation chapter four and five, with Jesus not being present, it says that that has this obvious depiction of Jesus as the lamb, that he is standing as a lamb slain with seven eyes and seven horns, representing the fullness of the church.

01:19:33

And it says that they sang out to him, holy, holy, holy, only you are worthy, worthy, worthy, worthy.

01:19:39

And it's this worship thing. And in Revelation chapter 19, it goes on. When John falls down to worship the angel that's revealing this to him, the angel says, no, don't worship me, worship

01:19:55

God alone. And so we see in Revelation chapter five, Jesus not turning down that worship. So I kind of answered that question, even though that was just directed to you.

01:20:04

So sorry. So anyway, is there any other questions that we can ask on this subject on who is

01:20:11

Jesus? And like I said,

01:20:18

I know that we are a little behind on these questions because it takes a second for these things to come up. Maybe we will wait.

01:20:26

Let's wait 30 more seconds, Connor. And then I'll thank you again for being here. And we'll end the broadcast.

01:20:37

And yeah, like I said, please stay afterwards, Connor. Just I'll hit end the broadcast here in a second.

01:20:43

It'll shut off the live stream and then it'll just be you and I talking after that. So I believe that we've probably caught up to questions.

01:20:53

So I will go ahead and tell you once again, Connor, it was a privilege having you on to defend faith, defend your faith in whatever it might be.

01:21:02

And if you had faith in a purple dog, then you should be able to defend that, right? And so this is a good thing to be able to have these kinds of conversations, because if you actually believe in what you do and you believe that that's how salvation comes about, it's a hateful message to not share those things with one another.

01:21:19

It's a loving message to actually take out what you believe, if you believe that's an eternal reward or an eternal punishment.

01:21:26

So it's a good thing. So thank you, Connor. I actually didn't defending anything. I probably should have done a little bit more research beforehand.

01:21:34

You did an excellent job having all those scriptures handy. And that probably comes from your training as a pastor as well.

01:21:39

But yeah, definitely great. Yeah. As we talked before, I did just a little bit of studying beforehand, but you do it long enough.

01:21:48

It's always in the back of your head. It was so yes. And you know, the same thing as we were talking about, you already being on those

01:21:56

Facebook groups, you kind of already understand the arguments of what people are trying to say. And so you go out automatically know where to go.

01:22:02

So it's a little bit different on Facebook comments. Yeah, a lot more time to think and compose what you're going to say.

01:22:10

I'm not quite as good on the heat of the moment, but I don't know. Yeah, I think you did a good job in maybe correcting a few misconceptions and, you know, teaching people.

01:22:23

I hope that this edifies. I hope the LDS viewer that watches this once again, takes what you have said and what

01:22:29

I've said and compares it to the word of God and sees which one is more true as well as the Christian. I want the

01:22:34

Christian, any viewer, the nonbeliever, the atheist, the Muslim. If there is a Muslim, I would be blessed to have a

01:22:39

Muslim watching my YouTube channel. But to look and see literally what

01:22:45

I am saying and what you are saying and compare it with the word God, because like I said, I am not the author of truth, not the author of salvation, but I do know the one that is the author of salvation and the author of truth, and I know where to find those things out.

01:22:58

So that's where I want to direct people to. So Connor, thank you very, very much for being on tonight.

01:23:04

I would love to have some more conversations with you in the future, whether that's on the discussion of what is evil, whatever it is that we want to discuss,

01:23:11

I would absolutely be privileged and honored to talk to you again. And as we talked on the phone earlier this week, the reason that we wanted to do this live stream was so that it was something to hold me accountable and something to hold

01:23:24

Connor accountable as well. So then it's not just over the phone, can't really hold each other.

01:23:31

You can't look and see what I actually said. You know what I mean? There is no accountability from others in that sense.

01:23:37

And so I think doing these kinds of things in a public format like this is a blessing. I really, really do.

01:23:43

So I really enjoyed it. Thank you. And again, I just like to repeat this to all your viewers.

01:23:49

I'd say that in addition to looking through the scriptures, I'd say pray and ask God. I know that he's answered my questions.

01:23:55

I know that he will answer yours. I know that God does love us and he doesn't mean for us to just be groping around in darkness.

01:24:05

He does want to give us light and knowledge. And I know that he has for me. I know that I'm not unique.

01:24:11

I know I'm not the only one. I would invite your viewers to make it a habit of going to God in prayer and every once in a while just asking

01:24:20

God, is this correct? Is this really your doctrine? And yeah, that's all

01:24:25

I have to say. And Connor, I agree that we should be praying for things, but I do want to reiterate though, that a feeling that's contradictory or a thought that's contradictory to the word of God is not a true feeling.

01:24:39

And I'm not saying that that's what you're saying, Connor. I'm just saying that I want to make it very clear that we must use the authority of God as what truth is.

01:24:49

If we lose the word of God, then there is no moral objective standard.

01:24:55

It's all then subjective to whatever I want to make it into. And so I just want to remind everybody of that as well.

01:25:01

So Connor - I understand where you're coming from. Yes, absolutely. When you know what God, what an answer from God feels like, it's unmistakable in a way that's very hard to explain.

01:25:13

Yeah, yeah, and yes. So Connor, I think, are you able to still hear me,

01:25:20

Connor? You're loading right now on my side. I might've lost

01:25:25

Connor. Once again, though, truths can't contradict each other. That's part of the laws of logic.

01:25:33

Yeah, so Connor is calling me right now. So let me answer that real quick. Connor, are you able to hear me on the phone?

01:25:39

Hi, yes I am. Sorry, my computer died. Nope, no worries. So I'll just have you on speakerphone as I give this little outro so everybody knows that I'm still talking with you.

01:25:48

Yeah, you want me to get on speakerphone? Nope, I think we caught what you were saying on that for sure. I think we got it.

01:25:55

Yeah, sorry about that. Nope, no worries whatsoever. So yeah, truths can't contradict each other. There's only one truth and Jesus proclaims to be that truth in John 14, verse six, that he's the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the father except through him.

01:26:07

So everybody on YouTube, God bless and have a blessed rest of your night. I hope that this has blessed you and I hope that you're willing to share this with your friends and family and loved ones.