Preparing to Witness to Mormons at Upcoming General Conference

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And welcome to The Dividing Line this Saturday afternoon. My name is James White, and during the next week, starting
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Tuesday evening, members of Alpha and Omega Ministries, our volunteers, will be heading out for, sometimes
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I lose track anymore, I think it's our 17th year, 16th, 17th year, in distributing tracts and witnessing to people as they gather at the
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Easter pageant of the LDS Church. The play, a passion play, put on by the
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LDS Church each year called Jesus the Christ. Last year, about a hundred and twenty thousand people, they estimate, attended the
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Easter pageant. It is held on the front lawn of the Mesa Temple, which is between Hobson and LeSueur on Main Street in Mesa, Arizona.
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And for the past a decade and a half or so, we too have been at the
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Easter pageant. No, we do not go on the grounds. No, we do not in any way try to dissuade people from attending or watching the play.
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It is a live play. There are all sorts of people involved with it. It is very nicely put on.
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It has become one of the largest, I think it's either the largest or the second largest play put on by the
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LDS Church in the United States, which would also mean in the world itself. But then again, that would also mean in the universe.
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That's not overly relevant at that point. But it's a very large play. They put a lot of money and time and effort into the production.
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Of course, it's also one of the main proselytizing times of the year for the local
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LDS missionaries, because when you attend the Easter pageant, you will be given and outline a program.
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And in that program, of course, there will be a means of contacting the various and sundry
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LDS resources that you might want to avail yourself of. And of course, if you want a free
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Book of Mormon, you'll get a free Book of Mormon. However, the free Book of Mormon will arrive attached to two smiling
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LDS missionaries. And so for the months after the Easter pageant, the missionaries are very, very busy tracking down all of the contacts that they made during the
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Easter pageant. Now, the pageant itself doesn't promote a whole lot of LDS theology.
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In fact, if you are not really familiar with Mormonism, you would have a hard time coming up with anything specific in the
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Easter pageant that would automatically make you go, oh, this is Mormon. This is Mormonism.
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This is a system that holds to many, many different beliefs other than Orthodox Christianity, and in fact denies the most fundamental, central, and definitional beliefs of the
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Christian faith. You will see the story of Jesus, and you'll see the story of the crucifixion, and the resurrection, and so on and so forth.
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And if you don't really know what you're watching, you wouldn't be given any specific information as to how
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Mormonism differs from Christianity. In fact, one of the things that has always bothered me the most as I walk around the public sidewalks that are around the
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Easter pageant area, around the temple area, is listening to the music that is played over the loudspeakers prior to the beginning of the pageant.
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You will hear many Christian hymns being played, normally instrumentally, over the loudspeakers as the people are gathering, and many of the people who gather are not
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LDS. In fact, I would estimate it's probably, it may be a 50 -50 split between Mormons and non -Mormons.
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It used to be more Mormon than it is now, but it's become much more of that proselytizing effort, and so Mormons are very strongly encouraged to bring their neighbors and friends and so on and so forth.
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It's good family entertainment anyways, and so what has always bothered me and concerned me, of course, is the fact that here you have music playing, and I've heard songs like,
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Holy, Holy, Holy, which of course has words in it that would refer to God's eternally being
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God, even though Mormonism says he hasn't eternally been God, and God in three persons, blessed
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Trinity, and yet Bruce R. McConkie, one of the Mormon apostles, back in the 1970s and 80s, identified the doctrine of the
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Trinity as the whisperings of Satan, of Lucifer himself. So it's quite obvious that the
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LDS Church is doing everything in its power in the presentation of the
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LDS Easter pageant to attract the non -Mormon, to attract especially the
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Christian non -Mormon, and to present to them not the differences, not the uniqueness of the
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Mormon faith, but the idea of a sameness, but a freshness. A sameness, but a freshness, because you see the young LDS missionaries standing out there and distributing their programs, and they look very nicely dressed, and here's young men giving two years their life at the very prime of life in service to their church, and they have the young LDS ladies, the sisters out there doing the same thing, and it just looks so alive, so much more alive than many
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Protestant churches. And so it is their main proselytizing effort, and as I said earlier, for about the past 16 or 17 years, we too have been at the
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LDS Easter pageant. Started off only hearing about it shortly after I began to study
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Mormonism, and I and my young wife, God bless her soul, rode with me on a
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Kawasaki 440. At that time, to show you how long ago it was, the freeway ended at Country Club, and you had to get off at Country Club and go up to Maine and over there.
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Those of you who use the superstition every day and weren't around back then may be amazed at how little it once was, but it was a long time ago, and we went out there and were amazed at the number of people began tracking and witnessing at that time.
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The next year we went out for a couple of nights, and at that time we were accompanied by Wally Tope. Wally Tope, some of you may remember if you're familiar with Ministry to Mormons, was a very zealous individual and sharing with LDS people all over the
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United States. He was killed during the LA riots. He was beaten to death by rioters outside of a grocery store that he tried to witness to them, and they beat him to death, and he was in a coma for quite some time, was the last person to die from the
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LA riots. And then the next year we began specifically tracking all six nights of the pageant.
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It's only five nights now. It goes Tuesday through Saturday now. It used to be Monday through Saturday, and we began printing tracks and organizing people and covering each of the corners and working much more specifically on covering all the nights of the
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Easter pageant out there in Mesa, and have been doing it ever since then. Now it's not the most enjoyable work in the world in the sense that by the fifth night you're tired.
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You've been standing from about 6 p .m. till 9 .30 or 10 o 'clock at night. Each night you're normally on your feet.
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You're frequently in conversations, though there are periods of time, especially in the first few nights, when there isn't anything spectacular going on, especially during the presentation itself.
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For the first hour or so between 6 and 7 p .m. there's not a whole lot of people coming in, but then after 7 o 'clock it really starts getting busy.
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But you also get a lot of quite simply nasty comments from people. Many of the LDS people will tell you to get a life, get a job.
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How dare you stand out here and tell us we're not Christians. Don't you know the name of our church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day
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Saints, etc., etc.? And many of these folks don't want to talk to you. They just want to vent at you for a moment and then walk off.
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The Mormon missionaries in the past have done everything in their power to try to get tracts out of people's hands.
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We have pictures from years ago of missionaries with bulging pockets showing them to us, crowing about the fact that they were finding people who were reading our tracts.
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And we even have had people come back to us and say, you know, they took the literature you gave me. Could I get another one?
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And of course we always give them another one and say, now hold on to this one. So we've had that type of experience and we frequently have the young LDS people get downright nasty.
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I've been hit in the back with a snow cone. I've had a half -eaten Arby's roast beef sandwich thrown at me and hit me in the chest.
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Didn't hurt, but certainly did look strange. And we've even had the windows of our office, when we had an office that was available for people to visit, smashed out by young Mormon men that we had talked to that evening.
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They smashed the windows about two o 'clock in the morning and then left a phone message for us just so we knew who had done it and, of course, why they had done it as well.
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We didn't have their names, obviously, so we couldn't do anything about it, but that has taken place. But it has also been a time of tremendous sharing.
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And if you can look past the rejection, if you can look past the individuals who try to treat you like you are not even human being, those who make the snide and nasty remarks, if you can look past all of that, there has been a tremendous opportunity of sharing with people of every age group.
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Certainly, especially on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, there's a lot of young people.
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Many of these LDS young people have come to this pageant since they were knee -high to a grasshopper and they are bored stiff.
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And so their parents let them leave and go do something else, and they decide to go talk to the strange people up at the corner.
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And we have had some tremendous opportunities. Yes, sometimes we've actually had to leave the corner because an entire group would get together, would get very rowdy, frequently be riled up by some adult who would be acting like a like a child.
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And we've had to leave the corner because they were just getting so loud and obnoxious and pushy and so on and so forth.
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But most of the time, the conversations are very, very good. Very intense, yes.
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You're talking with maybe five to fifteen people at a time. You try to focus your attention upon a particular individual, but you will have some very intense conversations.
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And these young people have never heard the Gospel of Grace. They've never heard of the idea of man being dead in sin.
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They've never heard of the idea of God's grace in a biblical fashion. The LDS concept of grace is far removed from the biblical concept of grace.
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And so, tremendous opportunities of sharing with young folks, with young men who are about to go on a mission, planting seeds in their mind of truth that you pray that God will allow them to see come into fruition.
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We've had many conversations with Mormon missionaries out there. Some of the most amazing encounters we've ever had with missionaries have been out there.
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We've given my book, Letters to a Mormon Elder, to young Mormon missionaries. And we remember just about three years ago now, a young missionary who took the book
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I think on a probably like a Wednesday night. And when we talked with him again on a Friday night, he had already read about half the book.
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He was his own leader, so he had a little more time than most missionaries did. And we were in one conversation with some young LDS people and they asked some questions about the
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Bible right as these missionaries walked up. And this one missionary who was reading my book said, oh, oh, can I answer that?
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And he gave the answer to how we got the Bible and how it was translated directly out of my book,
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Letters to a Mormon Elder. That's how closely he had been reading it. And he wasn't mocking it. He even said to the young LDS people who were staying there, he said, hey, you ought to listen to these folks.
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They're missionaries like we're missionaries and they've done their homework and they know what we believe and they respect us. And you should have seen the young people standing around.
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If they had had dentures, they would have dropped them right then and there because they couldn't believe these missionaries were saying these things about us.
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Especially since obviously a whole lot of other missionaries don't say those things about us. So we've had some incredible encounters with those young LDS missionaries, with returned
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LDS missionaries, with older people, people of every race, every male and female, every age group.
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Tremendous conversations with these folks and frequently, even when we're having a conversation that we just don't feel like it's really going anywhere, we don't feel like this person's really listening, they're just there to argue.
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When you maintain a Christian testimony and a Christian attitude and you speak God's truth,
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God honors His truth. And frequently what will happen is you'll give your all in a conversation but you know this person just really isn't listening.
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And when they walk away, you sort of take a deep breath and turn around and lo and behold, maybe a number of yards away, maybe behind you, you didn't even see them, didn't even notice them, there's someone else that's been listening.
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And maybe they won't approach you right at that time, maybe they will, but maybe they'll come up to you a few minutes later, later that evening, a couple nights later, you never know.
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But they come up to you and say, you know, I heard what you were saying that person and you know that that person didn't treat you very well and I'm very sorry for that and I've never heard anyone talk about what you were saying.
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Could you tell me more about that? And then you have those wonderful opportunities of sharing your faith, sharing the gospel, talking about who
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Christ really is, why it's vitally important to have the right Jesus Christ.
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Not the Jesus of Mormonism but the Jesus of Scripture because the Jesus of Mormonism cannot save.
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And the right gospel because the gospel of Mormonism cannot save. Wonderful opportunities to share those messages that you didn't even expect that you're going to have.
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And of course you're distributing thousands and thousands of tracts over the past week and in fact this very day the president of Alpha and Omega Ministries, Rich Pierce, has been slaving away, working extremely hard in retype setting some of the tracts we've distributed for years and printing those tracts himself, putting the paper in and putting the ink on and running the tracts and cutting the tracts and folding the tracts.
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Rich is up to his eyeballs in the responsibilities and duties right now. You might want to pray for him and for me as I am very busy speaking this day in fact, today,
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Saturday, in Chicago. I won't be back until Wednesday of this week to join in with the ministry out there.
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We are very, very busy right now and could really use your prayers for all the opportunities that are being presented to us.
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But we're distributing thousands and thousands of tracts. Now you say, yeah, and a lot of them get thrown away.
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Yeah, they do. They do. There's no question about that. We call them fallen warriors. Sometimes they're returned to us, crumpled up, thrown in our faces, torn up, spit upon, various and sundry things like that.
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We find them in the street and try to pick them up. We don't want to litter. Many people do, but we don't.
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And yes, many of them get trashed, but not all. And it's always tremendously encouraging to see one of two things.
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A, a person taking the tract and maybe sticking inside a Book of Mormon. That frequently happens up in Salt Lake City as a person's walking into the
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General Conference, which, by the way, program note, is where we'll be next week. But next week we'll try to do this program live from Salt Lake City so that we can share with you from the very gates, talk with some of the folks that are out there passing out tracts and witnessing to people, and try to take your phone calls.
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That's not going to be easy, but we're going to do our best to try to make it all work out next week as we're
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Lord willing at the General Conference, the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City.
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If I can make it up there, transportation -wise, that'll be my 30th consecutive
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General Conference there in Salt Lake City. But those tracts get put into pockets, get put into purses, get put into books, whatever, and they get read at another time.
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They get read at a time when there's not a confrontation going on, when there aren't people standing around who will try to encourage you not to read it.
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They get read at a time when a person's maybe at home, alone, when a person, that person has had questions on their forget.
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So just a few years ago we were contacted right after we had been passing out tracts at the General Conference, the
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Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, by a young lady, about 17 years old as I recall, and her friends had been putting tremendous pressure upon her to join the
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Mormon Church. She grew up in a somewhat Christian church, a sort of nominally
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Christian church. She had received some biblical teaching, and she knew there was something wrong here, but she couldn't put her fingers on it, and she really didn't have any resources available to her that would explain to her where the problems really were.
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And so as she and her friends, their friends had brought her to the General Conference, and it's very impressive to go up there and to see
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Temple Square, and to see the thousands of people gathered, and to attend conference with 10 ,000 people in the
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Mormon Tabernacle, and the Mormon Tabernacle choir singing, and it's very impressive. But as they're walking toward the
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South Gate, her friends saw us standing outside the gate passing out tracts. And her friends immediately began talking about how terrible we were, and how hateful we were, and how nasty we were, and these terrible anti -Mormons.
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Well, all that did was made her interested in what in the world we had to say. And so she managed to sneak away just long enough from her friends to pick up some of our literature.
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She couldn't talk to us. She had to sort of swing by and grab some tracts and hide them real quickly, and then rejoin her friends, and then leave.
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Well, those tracts gave her the information that she had been looking for. She knew it was there somewhere. She knew there was a problem someplace.
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And she found out what the problem was when she read our tracts, and she contacted us, and thanked us, and informed her of her story.
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We don't know how many times that happens. Many people say, well, well how many people repent when you're out there sharing with the
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Mormons? How many people walk up to you and say, I just prayed the sinner's prayer, or something like that? Well, very few.
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Very few. Yes, we do know of Mormons who have left the LDS Church, but not because of a single tract.
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But that tract was instrumental in getting them to start thinking, and getting them to start considering these issues, and getting them to start doing some research.
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And the result of that over time, and leaving Mormonism is an issue that takes quite some time, the result of that over time was that they did come to know the
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Lord, and they left the LDS Church. But far more than that, are the number of people that we have helped to see through the charade, see through the smoke and mirrors, through the the public relations get -ups, to see what the
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Mormon Church is really all about in its doctrine, its theology. And that of course is the message of any church, is its doctrine, is its theology.
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Yeah, I know that makes us somewhat backwards to be so focused upon that. There are many
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Christian churches today that de -emphasize the concept of doctrine and theology, but what you teach defines who you are.
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What you teach about who Jesus Christ is, who God is, what the gospel is, that defines who you are.
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Why else do we have a purpose for existing as a church? And so in that very situation, we have been able to help many people to be warned, to realize what
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Mormonism is all about. We've had many people come up to us and say, you know, up until the point where you talked to me and the point where you gave me this information,
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I just sort of thought Mormonism was just sort of another religion. It was just, you know, the difference between being a
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Methodist and a Lutheran. You know, just different denominational type stuff. I didn't know that they taught that God was once a man who lived on another planet.
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I didn't know they taught that men could become gods and that Jesus Christ is the first begotten offspring of God the
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Father and we're all begotten offspring of God the Father in a physical or spiritual pre -existence. I didn't know any of that.
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And of course, the Mormon Church is more than happy to get you into the Mormon Church, to get you into the
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LDS Church, get you into that baptistry, and get you baptized on the minimal amount of information it takes to get you to agree to do so.
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I'll never forget when I first wrote Letters to a Mormon Elder. It was not even published yet. It was in that manuscript stage where it's all written and it's being proofread and of course people are ripping apart your grammar and things like that.
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It needs to be ripped apart. We all need editors and I'm very thankful for mine. And the book wasn't out yet, but someone from a large
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Baptist Church called me and said, you know, we just lost someone to the
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Mormon Church. A member of our Bible study just informed us that they joined the Mormon Church and we'd like to bring this person by and have them talk to you.
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And I said, sure, that'd be no problem at all. And so this person came by and so I started the conversation by saying, so what convinced you, though you were once a monotheist, you believe there is one
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God, what convinced you to become a polytheist and believe in many gods? And this person looked at me and said, what are you talking about?
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I don't believe in more than one God. Oh, well, what convinced you to believe that Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer?
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What? I don't believe that. And so I went down the line and all down the line this person went, what are you talking about?
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I've never heard anything like that before in my life. I don't believe any of that. Mormonism doesn't teach that.
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And so I gave this person the manuscript of Letters to a Mormon Elder. It had notes scribbled in the margins and it wasn't overly pretty but it was the material anyways.
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And about two weeks later they came back and said, I cannot believe what
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I got myself into. This person said, you know, you'd you'd document something and you'd give the the reference in these books and I had been given these books.
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Mormons had been giving me books like a Teachings the Prophet Joseph Smith and Mormon Doctrine and and Doctrines the
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Salvation and and these were all sitting on my shelf, brand -new books, but I hadn't read them.
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You know, I sort of looked through them and just looked like books on God and the Bible and stuff like that and I hadn't read them yet and so I looked these things up and lo and behold that's exactly what it says.
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And I've I've told them, excuse me, remove my name, I made a mistake. But you see what happens with a lot of folks is they don't run into someone who can explain where the differences are.
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And so what happens is over time they develop friendships, they develop a connection to the organization and very slowly, and for some people it almost never happens, but very slowly for most people these concepts these doctrines are introduced slowly over time.
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And at first there might be some resistance, but as long as you don't show too much of the doctrine, too much of what the differences are, you can slowly bring that person in to where they begin to accept things that initially they never would have accepted at all.
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Mormonism has learned public relations. Mormonism has learned the key to getting people to accept doctrines that initially they would reject vociferously.
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They've learned this in the missionary lessons. If you took the missionary lessons 20 years ago and compared the missionary lessons today you would be shocked at the vast difference between what was presented to you then and what's presented to you now.
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The missionary lessons are far less doctrinally oriented and teaching oriented than they ever were before.
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And Mormonism has learned to really quiet down its criticism of Christian churches.
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The first thing you hear today in the Mormon presentation is not Joseph Smith's first vision, where he sees two gods,
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God the Father and Jesus Christ, in separate distinct physical bodies, and that these two gods say that all
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Christian churches are corrupt and their professors are an abomination in his sight. You don't hear that first thing.
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Instead you hear a nice, innocuous, non -specific, rather ambiguous discussion of families being forever and being together forever and yada yada yada with pretty pictures and so on and so forth.
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And of course if that's enough to get you to join, that's good. That's enough. Let's go with it from there.
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It's a shame, but that's the way that it works. And so people are brought into the church without having much knowledge of what the church teaches.
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Well, when we're out in Mesa this following week, Tuesday through Saturday nights, or when we are in Salt Lake on Saturday and you may be going, how can you be in both places?
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Well, we need volunteers to be in both places. When we're out there doing this work and we pass out literature to non -Mormons, at the very least those who have any interest in truth at all, those who have any interest in being careful about what they join, being careful about what they agree to, are going to have to ask certain questions of the
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Mormon missionaries they probably would rather not answer because they read our
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Now, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to get an honest answer. They may still join because they won't contact us and say, okay, the
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Mormons said this, what do you say? And only rarely do we get those opportunities.
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We do get them, but rarely do we get those opportunities where we get to sit down with the missionaries and the prospective convert and lay everything on the table.
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You would think if Mormonism was really true, that they would invite that kind of encounter.
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In fact, Doctrine and Covenants section 71, part of the LDS scriptures, tells Mormons to call upon their enemies in public and private and that if they are faithful that the errors of their enemies will be exposed and the early
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Mormons did that. The early Mormons were not like modern -day Mormons. The early Mormons would arrange debates with ministers and pastors and they would publicly proclaim their teachings in an open fashion.
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I could only wish to have been around at a time like that to have been able to engage in that type of thing, but they won't do that much anymore.
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That's not the public relations direction that the church has chosen to take. So at the very least, we're making the
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Mormon missionaries answer questions they'd rather not answer and of course they then have to run the risk that those people are going to come back to us and say this is what they've said and then we can document from their own literature what their own leaders have said.
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And of course if that's happening while we're out there, then that give -and -take is certainly an opportunity for God's truth to be proclaimed and people to understand what the issues really are.
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So pray for us this week. Pray for us that we will speak God's truth in a proper fashion and that he will be honored and glorified in what we're doing.
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Lots more to talk about on The Dividing Line today, but we need to take a break and we'll be right back right after these messages.
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Welcome back to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. I'm the director of Alpha Omega Ministries. I'm an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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I also teach for the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. In fact, let me just mention in passing one of the most common requests that we get at Alpha Omega and in the various things that I do is the question, when are you going to be teaching
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Greek again? When can I take a New Testament Greek class? And I just want to let you know that I am scheduled to be teaching
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Beginning Greek on Thursday evenings starting around the end of August for the
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Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary's Arizona campus. And so if that isn't a subject you've wanted to tackle, it is a seminary class, so it's graduate level, master's level, but I know that you can take the class on an audit basis, for example, if you wished to.
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You can take it for credit. You can do either direction. And that'll be beginning at the end of August going into December, so it'll be the fall semester.
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Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. Give them a ring. Talk to them and let them know of your interest so you can get the necessary forms filled out.
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And we'd be more than happy to see you this coming fall in the Greek class there at Golden Gate Seminary if that's something that you'd be interested in doing.
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And let me just put in a plug here. People have asked me in all of my Bible college and seminary training what was the single most important class that I took in regards to helping me with apologetics, with defending the faith.
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And I say, well, there were two. The single most important one was New Testament Greek.
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Being able to look at the New Testament documents in their original language, that's probably the single most useful class that I took.
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But the second was church history. Knowing church history, knowing how we came to believe we believe today and what the events in church history were, the
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Council of Nicaea and the Reformation, whatever it might be. Church history and Koine Greek, those were the two classes that have helped me the most in doing apologetics.
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So some people say, well, come on, you're inviting people to learn Greek? Yes, I am.
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Well, isn't that a little intellectually arrogant? No, it's not. It isn't. I don't accept the dumbing down of the
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Christian faith, the dumbing down of the Christian church. Think about the time we invest in things that will have absolutely, positively no eternal value at all.
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Don't we have time to invest in things that do have an eternal value? Don't we have time to invest in learning how to read the
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New Testament in its original language, which the greatest commentary on the New Testament is the
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New Testament in Greek. There is no question about that. And so I don't in any way, shape, or form apologize for challenging people.
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Look, if you're an engineer, if you're a computer person, if you're a professional, you've shown your ability to master difficult subjects and it's not easy to cover beginning
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Greek in 15 weeks, which is how we do it. It's fast -paced. It's gonna take work. But you know, most of us in our secular employment put that kind of work in all the time.
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And there's absolutely nothing in Scripture and nothing in the faith that says we shouldn't put just as hard work, in fact, even harder work into our
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Christian faith. Wouldn't you like to be non -dependent upon reading a commentary someplace and just simply assuming that the commentator is being perfectly honest with the text when he says the
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Greek means such -and -so? Wouldn't you like to be able to check out the commentators? Let me tell you something, folks.
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Scholars who write commentaries, scholars who write books on theology, they're not perfect. In fact, they have their own traditions, they have their own pet doctrines, their own pet positions, and those things sneak in.
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And the only way to check them out is to be able to look at the original languages yourself when they make those types of claims.
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So consider it, this fall. Maybe you might need to not commit yourself to some other things, just so you have some extra time to do it.
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But think about this fall, taking Koine Greek through the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary's Arizona campus here.
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And I'll be the instructor there. And we always have an interesting time. And yes, apologetics does enter into the class.
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Often I will share instances where that language has come up and have been very, very important to me in my work.
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And of course, I suppose if I'm telling you to give them a ring, it'd be good if I gave you their number. It's 240 -3284, area code 602, 240 -3284, regular business hours,
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Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary's Arizona campus. And since we're talking about it, going every which direction today, since we're talking about it,
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I was just invited to teach a, well, it's technically called
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Christian Philosophy. But it, in essence, is a Christian apologetics class on the main campus at Golden Gate Seminary.
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And that main campus is in Mill Valley, California. Now, Mill Valley is a beautiful area.
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It's just south of San Francisco. Golden Gate's main seminary campus in Mill Valley sits on a hill.
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And when you're in certain of the classroom buildings, you can look out the windows and literally look across the bay at downtown
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San Francisco. It is gorgeous, beautiful, beautiful place.
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And you may say, why are you mentioning teaching a class in San Francisco? How in the world would any of us go to that? Well, it is a four -day intensive class.
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And when they say intensive, they mean intensive. 8 a .m. to 5 p .m.
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Thursday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday. It is the weekend after the
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July 4th weekend during the summer. It is a two -hour class, graduate level.
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We'll be doing apologetics, which would include the issue of worldview, presuppositional versus evidential apologetics.
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We would also be discussing Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, the role of the Trinity in these issues, as well as taking some time to listen to some key issues on the subject of authority regarding Roman Catholicism.
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All in four days. Eight hours a day. Well, it's not actually eight hours a day, obviously. Well, actually that would be eight hours a day, because you take an hour break and, you know, glucose intravenous feeding in the afternoon would probably be a good idea to stay awake and to stay with it.
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But if you're interested, that's only a four -day class with a weekend in between.
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That may be a way of, maybe you need to get some graduate credits for whatever profession you're in, and they allow you to take whatever you want.
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Think about it. This summer, July, I believe it's July 8th and 9th, and then 12th and 13th, if I'm recalling correctly off the top of my head, they would have that information here at the
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Golden Gate campus locally at 240 -3284. That may be something that you might be interested in participating in.
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So, back to what we're doing this particular week after a rather large detour there.
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We're going out, we're sharing with the LDS people. And, you know, it's not actually a detour, because one of the, one of the things that we try to do when we share with the
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LDS people out in Mesa, when we explain the Christian faith to them, is to do so in a positive manner.
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And I don't mean that in the way that our society currently interprets that positive. Well, if you're going to do it positively, you can't say anyone's wrong.
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You can't say that anything is false or untrue. You just have to, you know, be very vanilla and plain and everything's wonderful and cool and so on and so forth.
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That's not what I mean. When, when Jesus refuted the Sadducees in Matthew chapter 22 about a false teaching,
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He did not start off by saying, well, that's one way of looking at it. He didn't do that.
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He said, you are wrong. You do not understand the Scriptures, nor the power of God.
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Those are the first words out of His mouth. That's not politically correct. I know that. But that's the way the Lord Jesus did it.
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And I don't think that type of secular positivism is, is the way we should approach things.
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When I say we try to positively share with people, what I mean is, we're not just out there saying, well, Mormonism's wrong about this, and Mormonism's wrong about that, and Joe Smith is a false prophet here, and here's 48 false prophecies of Joseph Smith, and yada, yada, yada, yada.
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Yeah, we have to deal with some of those things. One of the tracts we were passing out is called, Men Is Not God. And it is a tract that demonstrates that Joseph Smith was utterly clueless as to what in the world he was talking about when he quote -unquote translated the book of Abraham.
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But, most of the conversations that we have are not focused upon specific errors in Mormonism in its history or false prophecies of Joseph Smith.
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In fact, the majority of the conversations that we have with Mormons are focused upon what we believe, what the scriptures teach.
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Most of the time, we are, we are centered directly in the text of Scripture. We're talking about what the
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Old Testament says, we're talking about what the New Testament says, we're looking at scriptural passages, we are discussing things, and we're presenting the gospel, because we have to assume these folks have never heard the gospel.
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Oh, they use the term all the time. They talk about the gospel all the time, but they've never heard the true gospel.
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And so, I've said many, many times, you've probably heard me say it if you've listened to this program at all, I would rather have five people with me in Mesa, five people with me in Salt Lake, who know what they believe and can explain it to others, than 50 people who can rip and shred
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Mormonism, but have nothing positive to give in its place. I think we're very consistent at that point.
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I think if you look at Letters to a Mormon Elder, I think if you look at Is the Mormon My Brother, the two books
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I've written on Mormonism, we're not just simply ripping and shredding on a false system, we present the truth in its place.
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When you say Joseph Smith wasn't a true prophet and he gave you a false gospel, if you can't then turn around and give a consistent and full and meaningful presentation of what the real gospel is, what are you doing out there?
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And some of these folks have very in -depth questions to ask concerning what we believe about the gospel, concerning whether we are being consistent in saying they're wrong and we're right.
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And so, it isn't, there isn't an inconsistency between my talking about taking a Greek class or taking a
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Christian apologetics class, because a lot of folks that are out there with me, they've taken Greek from me before.
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Many of them are able to address issues in regards to the original language, maybe to, maybe to explain to a
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Mormon why there isn't any contradiction between Acts 9 -7 and Acts 22 -9, even though in the King James Version of the
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Bible it looks like there is. That's one of the favorite alleged contradictions that Mormons like to throw in your face is, well,
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Acts 9 -7, Acts 22 -9, in one place Paul says that he, the men traveled with him, heard a voice, other place says they didn't, and so here's a contradiction.
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Well, the answer to that lies in being able to explain what
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Luke actually wrote in the original language. He didn't contradict himself. The King James Translation isn't overly clear, the
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King James Translation doesn't grab the nuance of the various terms that are used there, but the contradiction is in our minds and our misunderstanding, it's not in what
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Luke wrote. But you have to be able to address issues of where the Bible came from. Mormons frequently say, well,
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I believe the Bible is the Word of God as far as it is translated correctly. That's what the eighth article of faith in the Mormon Church says. Well, how many people know anything about how the
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Bible is translated? How many people know anything about how the Bible is transmitted to us? We pass out a tract called,
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But It Is Translated Correctly. We'll be passing that one out this year. And it deals with that very issue of how the
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Bible is transmitted to us, the form in which it was transmitted, how we, why, why do we have a
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New American Standard, NIV, so on and so forth. And if you've been listening over the past couple weeks, you've already picked up on a lot of that stuff, but that's an issue that you have to address many times with Mormons.
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And so it is very consistent for our ministry, which emphasizes giving consistent biblical responses to false doctrine, to false teachings, to, on the other hand, challenge people to improve their knowledge of the
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Bible by taking Greek, by taking L1311, I believe is the number, the Christian philosophy there on the main campus, and expanding our studies.
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There's everything consistent in doing that. And it'll also help us to avoid getting involved in presenting less than solid material to the
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LDS people as well, because it will help us to be discerning in the way in which we approach those questions.
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Well, I have a few more things to discuss with you, but we need to take a break. We'll be right back right after this. Welcome back to The Dividing Line.
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My name is James White, and today we've been talking about the upcoming missions work that we will be doing in the city of Mesa, Arizona at the
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Easter pageant, beginning Tuesday evening. And then this weekend as well, a sort of a split shift here, where some people will be at the
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Easter pageant Saturday, and then some of the rest of us will be at the general conference of the
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LDS Church in Salt Lake City. A very strenuous week of missions work. We would certainly covet your prayers, your support at this time.
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We don't discuss support issues very much on the air, but I will tell you this, it does take funds to print, and to distribute tracts, and do things like that.
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And so keep us in your thoughts along those lines as well, as we're involved in doing missions work with the
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LDS people. Now you may be a Mormon listening today, and you may say, I just cannot understand with all the people out there who are unchurched, just plain old pagan folks, why you
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Christians, you born -again Christians, you conservative Bible -believing Christians, sometimes known as Bible -thumpers or Bible -bashers, sometimes
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Mormons will use terms like that to describe us, why you folks just can't let bygones be bygones, why you can't let people believe what they'll believe, and just accept the fact that we are
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Christians like everybody else, and just let us believe we want to believe. Well certainly, in our grand
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United States here, we can believe we want to believe, at least for the time being, though we're losing those freedoms rather quickly.
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But no one is, when we go out to the Easter pageant, trying to tell anyone, you don't have the right to believe what you want to believe.
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If you want to be wrong, you can be wrong. That is everyone's birthright here in the
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United States. If you want to believe whatever it is, as strange or untrue as it may be.
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But you see, I have the right as American citizen to say, well, you're in error. Here's why you're in error.
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Here are facts about your history you need to know. Here are facts about what the Bible says that you need to know.
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And I can't force you to change your mind. No one can. I can't argue you out of Mormonism, and I wouldn't try.
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That is something that only the Holy Spirit of God can do. But I am called to bear testimony to the truth.
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And let's try to keep a few things in perspective and a few things in mind. First of all, it's
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Mormonism that came along in the 1800s and said that all Christian churches were an abomination and corrupt, that their doctrines were incorrect, and that God had to reestablish his church.
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It's Mormonism that came along and said that there are many plain and precious truths that have been removed from the Bible. It's Mormonism that came along and said that there are saved two churches, the
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Church of the Lamb, the Church of the Devil, and the Church of the Lamb is the LDS Church. It's Mormonism that came along and says that you have to have priesthood authority from God to act in his place.
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And that priesthood exists only within the LDS Church because, according to Mormonism again, the
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Aaronic priesthood was reestablished upon the earth by John the Baptist and the Melchizedek priesthood by Peter, James, and John, and given only to the leaders of the
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LDS Church. So it's Mormonism that has made these statements. It's Mormonism that has come along and said the doctrine of the
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Trinity is wrong. It's Joseph Smith who said that the doctrine of the Trinity presents a three -headed God that is a monster.
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It is not the Christians who made those statements. It's the Mormons. And therefore, when I go out and share with the
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LDS people, I am first and foremost giving a defense of the truth. And no matter what the response of Mormons is,
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God is glorified when his truth is proclaimed. When it's proclaimed with a desire to glorify him, it's proclaimed accurately.
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It's proclaimed not in arrogance, but in truth. God is glorified. And people say, why?
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You know, I don't see a whole bunch of people just falling down and accepting whatever you have to say. You don't have to. That's not what we're involved in.
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That's not important to us. I'd love to see all the Mormons come to know Christ, but I know that that's probably not going to happen.
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Instead, my concern is to glorify God, to speak his truth, and to leave the results in his hands.
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When I talk to LDS people, I see myself in them. If it were not for the grace of God, I could believe any type of theological heresy, even the type of heresy that destroys the soul.
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I could believe, I suppose, that God was once a man, lived on another planet. I know plenty of intelligent Mormon people who really do accept these teachings of Joseph Smith, teachings utterly unknown in the history of the
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Christian church, but came up with by Joseph Smith in the late 1830s.
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And they're intelligent engineers and nuclear physicists and people like that, and they believe it.
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Because you see, it's not an issue of the intellect. It's not just an issue of what you know.
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It's an issue of the heart. It's an issue of the Spirit. It's an issue of the Spirit of God either allowing a person who doesn't love the truth to accept a lie, a deception, or that same
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Spirit of God opening the heart and the mind, opening the hearts of those who have been given a false gospel and a false
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God. Only the Spirit of God can do that. Only the Spirit of God can open that heart.
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I may be able to present all sorts of arguments against Mormonism. And over the years,
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I've certainly learned what directions to go and how to handle situations and conversations and so on and so forth.
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I've got a lot of experience in talking to Mormons, but all the experience in the world, all the facts in the world, all the data in the world, all the memorized things that I can present to a
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Mormon is not going to change their mind. Very often
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I have people who call me and say, oh could you come over and talk to my neighbor friend? He's a Mormon. I'm sure if you just talked to him, he'd see the light.
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I go, no, that's, I'm afraid you've got the wrong idea here. It's not a matter of just simply presenting facts to folks.
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There is a spiritual element of blindness. And I've had people comment on the fact that they've gone out and passed out literature with us and they've listened to the witnessing encounters and have never had anything impressed upon them more strongly than in those situations what it means to be spiritually dead and spiritually blind.
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There are certain individuals that come out there almost every year. There's one man, I don't believe he lives here anymore, but he used to even call into our radio program and he'd come out there just the pageant just to bother us, just simply to try to break up as many conversations as possible.
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And if anything was said by everyone who ever tried to deal with him and talk with him, it was there is the greatest example of spiritual blindness
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I've ever seen. That doesn't make us arrogant because we, if it were not for the grace of God, might be in the exact same position.
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No room for that kind of pride and arrogance, but there is room for the bold proclamation of the truth of God.
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And you know we can be bold. We can be bold because we trust God is sovereign to save his people.
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We can be bold and we don't have to pull any punches. We don't have to not talk about the sovereignty of God for fear of offending the
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Mormons. We don't have to not talk about man being dead in sin for fear of the Mormons. We don't have to do that because we recognize it's
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God who saves in the first place. And he's powerful to do so. The flip side of that is there is no power in heaven and earth that can stop
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God from saving anyone that he has foreordained he is going to bring to himself through this missionary work.
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No power in heaven and earth. Nothing the Mormons can do about it. God will save his people. That's all there is to it and we can rejoice in that.
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So we'll pray for us this week as we're out in Mesa. Hey, if you're out there, you drive by, you see us, honk at us, wave, do something.
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Don't throw food. Money would be nice. Don't throw food. Just say hi to us and encourage us. If you're coming by, walking by, stop by and say, hey,
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I heard you on the radio Saturday. I appreciate what you're doing. Praying for you. That would be the greatest thing for us.
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We'd really, really appreciate that. But keep us in your prayers first and foremost. And next week, Lord Willen, live from Salt Lake City.