Live from the LDS General Conference Outreach

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I'm not sure. Alpha and Omega Ministries presents the Dividing Line radio broadcast.
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The Apostle Peter commanded all Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us. Yet to give this answer with gentleness and reverence.
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The Dividing Line is brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries, Calvary Press Publishers, the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, and Bethany House Publishers. Your host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and an elder at the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now by dialing 1 -888 -TALK -960.
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That's 1 -888 -TALK -960. And now, with today's topic, here is James White.
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And welcome to The Dividing Line on this Saturday afternoon. I don't know what it's like there in Phoenix because I am currently seated just outside of the
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South Gate of the Mormon Temple at the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter -day
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Saints. There's about 25 ,000, 30 ,000 Mormons here and about, I'm not sure how many there are of us, about 10, about 10 of us here.
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Okay. I'm looking over at Rich who's giving me hand signals from the other direction. We are live today.
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That means we will be taking your phone calls. We'd like to hear from you as we stand here passing out tracks and sharing with folks here at the
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General Conference of the LDS Church. This is, for me, number 30, 30th consecutive
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General Conference, 15 full years of coming up here every April and every
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October, first weekend April, first weekend October. And for some of our folks, this is like 15, 20.
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And for a number of our folks, it's number one, the first time they've come up and done this and each one is having a little bit of a different experience today.
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It is cold here in Salt Lake City. I know it's not exactly spring -like weather in Phoenix either, at least it wasn't last evening when we were at the
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Mesa Easter Pageant, the pageant in Mesa, Arizona. And yes, we were there last night.
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We left a little bit early because it started to rain and it was extremely cold. But we've been there during the week and now we're up here in the middle of the long stretch of ministry that Alvin and Megan Ministries is undergoing between now and May.
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And I hope you'll continue to pray for us as we continue to take opportunities to share the gospel with folks.
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One 888 -TALK -960. And you know what? I have the foggiest idea what the other number is, luckily, anymore.
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508 -0960. There you go. I better remind myself of that one. 508 -0960 is the local number and 1 -888 -TALK -960 outside of the area.
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And if you'd like to talk with us up here, if you have any questions about why in the world we do this, we'd be glad to talk with you.
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I'm sitting here right now looking across and I'm seeing a number of our people in conversation. I see the
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Vice President of the Ministry, Larry Vondra, with one, two, three, four, five Mormons.
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Oh, nuts. Four Mormons and one Christian around him. He's been talking with them for quite some time.
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Some of our brothers from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in San Diego, Randy Churchill, for example, is talking with a
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LDS young man. They've been talking with him for quite some time. And I can see in the LDS young man's hand a copy of the book,
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Letters to a Mormon Elder. Don't know who wrote that thing, but hey, it's nice to see it going out.
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My son Joshua is just trying to pass a track to a whole group of LDS people, well -dressed, coming across from Crossroads Plaza.
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And most of the folks are trying to look right past Joshua, but he gets tracked out as well as anybody else does.
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Sean Hahn has been in a number of conversations up here. I currently can't see if he's in the middle of one or not, but I've had a few.
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And the ones I've had have been, well, they probably got to be rather frustrating.
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Frustrating in a sense that the last two conversations that I had that extended for more than about ten minutes were with LDS folks who, when seeing the direct teaching of Scripture that is contrary to particular
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LDS belief, simply looked at it like, well, that's just what the Bible says. The last individual that I spoke to, we were talking about the nature of God, and I shared with him the commandment from the
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Old Testament where Jehovah says that you are to worship no other God but Him. This is, of course, a fundamental truth in the
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Old Testament, but for the Mormon it's a problematic commandment. It's problematic because in Mormonism you have
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Jehovah, who is Jesus, and Elohim, who is God the Father. And since in Mormonism these are separate gods, separate and distinct gods, in fact
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Elohim is the Father of Jehovah, Elohim became a god before Jehovah became a god, and in fact, after Elohim became a god, he begat
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Jesus, since Mormonism is, in fact, a system that believes in a plurality of gods, a polytheistic system, then these commands in the
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Old Testament regarding the subject of monotheism and the worship of only one true
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God create a real problem. Well, in speaking with this individual about the commandments of God, that he is to worship only
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Jehovah, his response was basically, well, that's just your interpretation. And so I asked, over and over and over again,
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I asked him to tell me, all right, if you say it's just a matter of interpretation, then please tell me, what does
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Jehovah mean when he says, you shall worship no other Elohim, no other God, but me?
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Well, I never got an answer. I asked over and over and over again, but no answer was forthcoming, instead just emotion and anger that we would be bothering to do something like this whatsoever.
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And so, quite honestly, folks, when you stand out here and you share, as we have now for 15 years, and you talk with individuals, you learn more than in any other context, the absolute necessity of the work of grace in the human heart.
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You see, over and over again, individuals who, when faced with the direct commandment of God, when faced with the direct truth of God, have no ears to hear, have no respect for what the
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Word of God says. And if anything, has driven home for me, with tremendous strength, the need of a supernatural work of grace in the heart, regeneration so the person can hear, regeneration so the person can obey, a change of nature so that the truth of God can be heard.
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Well, you see it when you come out here. You see it when you share with folks. And for a lot of folks who come out for the first time, it's a rather soul -shaking experience to very clearly explain to someone the truth of God and then see it rejected, see it just simply utterly dismissed, without even a bit of concern.
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That causes the Christian heart to tremble. We tremble at the Word of God. We tremble at the authority of God.
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And so to see others making light of that authority and making light of that commandment, it truly causes us to be very concerned.
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And obviously, coming out here, first -timers, they think, well, all I've got to do is I've got to show them all the right verses, and I show them the right verses in the right order, and I give them a good testimony, and boom -doh, they'll believe.
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Well, you can be very, very well prepared, and you can have answers to all the questions.
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But God's the one that has to open hearts. God's the one that has to open ears. We can't do it by, no matter how erudite we are in our proclamation, how fancy we might be, this type of work reminds you it is
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God and God alone who saves. But of course, some people might say, well, man, if these folks are so hard, if these folks are so difficult to talk to, why have you been up there now for 15 years, 30 times now?
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Why do this type of work? Well, as I'm looking right now, as I'm seeing Randy talking to the same
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Mormon person, I see that Sean Hahn has joined into Larry's group, and that we now have three
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Christians talking to four Mormons. You see, there's only one particular
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Mormon who's talking, but the other three are listening. And I can't tell what's going on with those other three.
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I don't know what seeds are being planted. I don't know what kind of work the Lord might do in those people's hearts somewhere down the road.
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I just can't tell. I don't know. But every time we get into these conversations, there are other people who are standing by.
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Sometimes they're Christians. Sometimes we recognize that the people that are going to be edified are primarily
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Christians who are hearing these conversations, and there is a role for edification where Christians hear the response that is being given, and they are edified.
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Their faith is strengthened by these types of encounters. We just don't know.
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But we trust it in the Lord's hands. We trust that He is glorified when
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His truth is proclaimed. And that's why we come up here, and today, why we do a lot of shivering. That's why we do a lot of shaking, and up until just a few moments ago,
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I was wearing a thick leather jacket, and I had gloves on. But I'm sitting in somewhat of the sun.
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It's not exactly the Arizona sun, but there is some sort of sun coming down right now, and so I don't have the leather jacket on, but I'm still fairly warmly clothed, just trying to keep the fingers warm.
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Sometimes getting tracks out is difficult in a large group, because you can't move your fingers fast enough to grab them to get to the next group of folks that are coming out.
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But that's why we do it. We trust that God will be honored, and God will be glorified in what
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He's doing. But I'd like to talk to some of our volunteers, and I'd like to talk to you. Give us a ring.
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Give us a call. I believe in some way, shape, or form, by the miracle of technology,
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I will be informed by some supernatural means, or actually by very natural means, when we have callers online.
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And if I don't get names and things like that, don't worry about it. We'll get you on one way or the other. But I would like to have the opportunity of hearing from you here on the dividing line.
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If you have any questions about what we're doing up here today, if you have any questions about Mormonism, call in now.
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Please, whatever you do, resist the temptation to wait until five minutes before the hour
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That's what everybody does. And at that point, it's going to be very, very difficult for us to do a whole lot.
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So if you want to get in, now's the time to call. Even if it's just to encourage us in our work up here, let us know that you're praying for us.
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If you have any questions about the types of responses that we get from people, what types of tracks we're passing out, what are some of the key issues that come up over and over again, hey, let us know.
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Give us a call. 1 -888 -TALK -960. That's the outside of the Phoenix dialing area, 5 -0 -8 -0 -9 -60 is the local number now.
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Give us a call. We'd like to talk to you. Right now, what we're going to try to do, and this will be a little bit tricky to do, is put one of our faithful volunteers on the air who is currently giving me a terrible, horrible face, which means no, don't you dare, but we're going to do it anyways because this is live radio.
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It's our hour and we can do it when we wish. So if Rich over there will hand the phone over to Sean, Sean Hahn, and if Jim there in the studio can work his wonders.
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Sean, is Sean on with me? I am here, yes. Oh, this is very strange. I can hear you out of one ear and then
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I hear you out of the other ear just about a third of a second later. Anyhow, Sean, how many times have we dragged you up here to freeze to death out here in Salt Lake City so far?
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Well, Jim or James, I was trying to recount today, I think this might be my fourth trip.
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Fourth trip. Now, the first one wasn't where we have the picture of you with the snow accumulating on your shoulders, was it?
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That was about my second trip, I think. If that had been the first one, it probably would have been the last one as well,
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I would imagine. We've had a few snow showers today, but very light, just nice and brisk out here today.
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I was wondering what that white stuff coming down out of the sky was, and all the volunteers have been laughing at my son, who has been enjoying his first touches of snow that he can remember, and snow flurries and stuff like that.
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Now, Sean, I know you're a big hunter, so you could be out shooting all sorts of living creatures on a
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Saturday like today, but instead we've got you up here, and I just saw you were in a bit of a conversation, and I was watching the
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Mormon person who was talking to you. What were you all talking about? What were you trying to share with him? Well, he brought up a passage in that of the
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Book of Ezekiel that they often use as a proof text that there's prophecy contained in the
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Word of God prophesying about the forthcoming of the Book of Mormon. Ah, yes. It's somewhat frustrating sometimes when you take him, and I say,
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OK, where is that text? And we flipped open. I believe it was in the, Jim, help me, Ezekiel 26?
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36. I think it's 36 off the top of my head. Yeah, but I took him there. It's about the two sticks being joined together.
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Yeah, we went there, and he just basically said that was my interpretation. I tried to take him to the
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Hebrew word for the word stick, and I tried to explain to him that Ezekiel, when he uses the word, this is in fact talking about a wooden stick and not a scroll.
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And when he wants to use the word scroll, he does so earlier in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. But he didn't want to hear that, and he had some friends, better things to do, so off he went.
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I understand how that works, but I've often emphasized the fact that giving an answer, letting people know there is a response to these things,
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God is glorified when we give that answer, even when that answer isn't accepted. Now, I was mentioning before you got on the phone that a number of the conversations
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I've had today have ended up devolving down to a person's unwillingness to obey and to listen to the
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Word of God. And I know over the years that you've been coming up here, you've undoubtedly encountered the exact same type of response to where you show clearly what the
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Word of God says, and yet, when you do so, there's this willingness to accept one's feelings and emotions above the authority of the
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Word of God. And I'm sure that probably bothers you as much as it does me. Yeah, most definitely.
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When you can take them to the Bible, and you can point things out to them, and you try to explain it very clearly, and if it contradicts what they believe, then their personal testimony kicks into gear and now becomes the authority.
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And then you want to ask them the question, how do you know that that personal, quote unquote, brain in the bosom is, in fact, of God?
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And you just get that smile and that look like, well, you'll just know it if you had it.
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I asked a man, I said, how do you know that that's not last night's pizza? And he didn't like that.
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No, I imagine it's probably good that you're not a small man when you say something like that.
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Just simply so that you keep all your teeth in their current place. But you're exactly right, though. It is, over and over again, we encounter the very same theme in talking with these folks.
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And isn't it ironic that right now, somewhere in the United States, there is a commercial running, one of those very nicely made commercials for the
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LDS Church. And if you call the 1 -800 number, what do they send you? The very book that as we stand out here talking to folks, they end up undercutting its authority because of the fact that it contradicts what they believe.
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And it absolutely is amazing to me that that is what takes place out here.
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Now, Sean, you're a part of a fellowship there in Phoenix. Why don't you tell us which one it is? Well, I attend a church on 29th
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Avenue and Bethany Home Road called Sovereign Grace Bible Church. And I recall hearing recently that you were climbing trees outside of your church, hanging things.
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Is there a particular reason why you were doing that? I had a few people honk at me as I was up in the palm trees hanging a large banner that's advertising an upcoming conference that we're going to have at our church on April 17th from about 7 .30
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in the morning until about 3 .30 in the afternoon with four different speakers, good men of God coming from all over the state of Arizona to proclaim the truth.
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And who might they be off the top of your head? Actually, we even have one gentleman that's coming from California by the name of James Ranahan.
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He is a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary. And he's coming. We have a
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Mr. Chantry coming from Prescott Valley.
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It's called Miller Valley Baptist Church, I believe. And then we have a man by the name of Benny Diaz.
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Benny Diaz? Yep. Former Vice President of the Alabama Dominican Ministry, as I might say in passing. He will be there.
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And then, oh, I'm having a lapse of memory here. The last speaker,
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Jim, you saw the brochure, help me out. I've got a lot on my mind. Oh, you have a lot on your mind.
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I hardly even know what my house looks like anymore. And you're saying you've got a lot on your mind. Well, it's a good speaker and you're feeling...
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Hey, they will forgive you because you're talking about Mormonism. I remembered, I remembered Pastor Steve Cole from Flagstaff, Arizona.
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There you go. A true shepherd of God. Don't worry,
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I don't think the radio signal makes it to Flagstaff, but we do put all this on the web, so someone will surely play this over and over and over again for him.
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Well, Sean, it's wonderful to have you up here, and I want to let you get back to testing out those tracks and talking to folks.
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But thanks for joining us just for a few moments. Okay, thank you. Thank you. 508 -0960, 508 -0960 is the phone number.
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1 -888 -TALK -960. And I don't know if there are any callers online. I don't think there are at the moment.
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Of course, I'm a long ways away, so I'm having to peer very intently at the control booth at Q96 to find out exactly whether there's anyone talking to us or not.
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I am standing currently. You can hear the cars going by me. The right lane is approximately four feet from me.
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There goes a diesel. And we're standing at the south gate of the Mormon Temple, straight across from Crossroads Plaza.
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It is currently between sessions. And for those of you who wonder what in the world the
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General Conference is, the General Conference takes place each first weekend in April and the first weekend in October.
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And the reason that they do it at this particular time is the
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LDS Church was founded April 6, 1830. And in Mormon Scripture, it is actually said that April 6th is the date of the birth of Christ.
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So the General Conference falls as close to April 6th as possible and then six months later.
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And so during the General Conference, there are three sessions on Saturday. The first session began at 10 a .m.
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and got over with an hour and 20 minutes ago at noon. Then there's a huge rush of people coming out.
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Like right now, I'd say there's probably 150 people right now coming back into the
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Temple grounds from over Crossroads Plaza, a very large shopping center across the street. We all like to eat, and so do the
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Mormons. And so they are all coming back with their McDonald's cups and so on and so forth, having satiated that hunger.
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And they're coming back in. The next session begins in 40 minutes at 2 o 'clock. It goes from 2 till 4.
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Then there's another two -hour break. And then from 6 to 8, there is what is called a priesthood session.
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The priesthood session is all men because only men hold the priesthood authority in the
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LDS Church. And hence, starting somewhere around 4, 3, 5 o 'clock, we will see a line coming out of the southeast gate, and it will be all men.
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And we have video and pictures of past conferences where we go down that line in reverse.
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Instead of coming from the front line, we come from the back line. And two of our most experienced tractors, my son
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Joshua and Randy Churchill from San Diego, team up with one another and they hit the priesthood line, normally with tracks relevant to the priesthood.
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And it is always a wonderful thing to drive away from the conference in the evening as we go to try to catch our flights home, seeing all these people standing in line going into the general conference, and they are holding our tracks and reading our tracks as they go into the general conference.
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So that is the schedule for today. During this period of time, we end up having a lot of conversations because there are a number of people who basically don't have any place to go for a while.
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They are not going to be going specifically to the next session of the conference. A lot of these guys are going to be waiting around now for the priesthood meetings, and therefore this is a time when they are not rushing to get someplace and they have an opportunity to talk with us.
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They will sometimes stop and talk with us. Today we are passing out all sorts of different tracks.
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Joshua just walked up to me and he is passing out, but it is translated correctly. I can see Larry over there passing out,
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I believe that is Mormon Jesus, the tract on what the
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Mormon Church teaches about Jesus Christ. People are passing out Grace Plus Works is
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Dead, our tract on salvation. I have a special tract that I am passing out this time around entitled
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Joseph Smith Inspired Translation, A Revealing Test, which is a little tract that has a far too long of a title, but it specifically documents the fact that Joseph Smith changed the reading of John 1 -1,
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John 4 -24, John 6 -44, and Romans 4 -5, and specifically asks the question, well, if we know what those passages originally said, and we do, without any question, there are no textual variants in those passages regarding what
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Joseph Smith changed, and no manuscript in the world reads as Joseph Smith rendered in his own quote -unquote translation.
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And if we know that John and Paul were apostles of Jesus Christ, and Joseph Smith contradicts them, who does that tell us
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Joseph Smith is? Whose apostle is he? And that is the tract that I'm distributing today, and we're using the line that we have been taught by Randy Churchill.
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He passes out tracts saying, Are you LDS? And Mormons say, well, yes, and now since they've responded, you can then hand them the tract, and it seems to be working rather well indeed.
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So right now, another big group just came by, Randy and Josh are over there. Sean's already got three
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Mormons standing around him and is back in conversations explaining why we do what we do, talking with folks there and sharing with them.
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And so the work continues on. You never know who's going to come up to you. You don't know what the questions are going to be.
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You don't know what areas you're going to be challenged on, but you get the opportunity out here to find out just how good your biblical knowledge really is as you take this time to witness to folks and to share with people.
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Someone who needs a break job just drove by. I could do well if I fixed cars just staying right here.
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Let's see if we can find Joshua. Joshua, come on over a second.
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So far we have no one who has any questions about Mormonism online. I see. Well, I guess that means everyone in Arizona knows everything there is to know about the subject of Mormonism.
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And I just had Josh put on the airline. What we're doing here, so you can get a picture of this, I have a cell phone.
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I bought a super -duper high -powered battery. It's supposed to last for two hours and 45 minutes. If I disappear, you'll discover that advertising is not always what it's cracked up to be.
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But there's also two pay phones here. And Rich Pierce is manning one of the two pay phones.
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He's gotten a number of dirty looks from people who are waiting in line. He didn't notice it, but that's okay.
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And he just handed the phone to my son, Josh. How are you doing, man? Good. Well, I think we figured out number four for you.
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Yes. Number four. You've got to speak up just a little bit. Nodding the head doesn't do well on radio at all, as I mentioned when we were in the studio that one time.
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Now, you like to say you're 13, right? Yeah. You're actually very close to being 13, right?
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Yeah. Well, anyways, I know how it is to be young and want that birthday to get here a little faster.
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This is the fourth time up, and have you noticed that people maybe give you a little more respect, maybe a little more willing to take a track from you now than when you were like a foot shorter than you are now?
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Yeah, I think they do. Now, I think it was Thursday evening out at the temple, or was it
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Wednesday evening that you got into a conversation with some folks out there and shared with them? It was Thursday. Thursday evening, had a chance to talk with some folks and to talk with them about the differences between what we believe and they believe.
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There's a lot of folks out here about your age, aren't there? Yes. And they're sometimes willing to stop and talk, aren't they?
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Yeah, they are. It can be a bit of a challenge in regards to the fact that a lot of these
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Mormon folks are willing to talk about what they believe and why they believe it. Well, you keep getting those tracks out, young man, and we'll hopefully get home together tonight.
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We're flying standby, so we hope we make it. Thanks for getting on the phone with me, Josh. Okay. I've been given a note that says that we need to take our first break, and I would like to encourage anyone, please, 508 -0960, 1 -888 -TALK -960.
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Give us a ring. We would really like to talk to you up here, live from the South Gate of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. We'll be right back.
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And we're coming to you live from the South Gate of the LDS Temple in Salt Lake City, General Conference of the
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LDS Church. This is our 30th consecutive missions trip up here to Salt Lake City, and we are passing out literature and tracks to folks here, about 25 ,000, 30 ,000 of them, and about 10 of us, very good odds.
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And that's what we're doing today. And I understand we have a cell phone caller, and since I'm on a cell phone myself,
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I know how difficult that can be. So, Stephan is on a cell phone. We're going to see if we can bring him on.
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Stephan, are you there? Yes, I am. Are you there? I'm here, sir. Hi, James. Yeah, I just want to let you know I'm really excited for you guys down there.
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What an opportunity it is for you guys to witness. I can't believe you've been down there that long, all those years. But I'm so excited.
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In fact, we're praying for you, all 10 of you guys down there, because what an awesome opportunity. I really appreciate that.
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And let me say, when I started this, I had a whole lot more hair than I do now. Gosh, I can imagine. Well, my question for you today is
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I was just curious to why or what do you say to an
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LDS member that when you first walked up to them today, say you were walking up and what's the first thing you say?
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What's the first witnessing thing that you say? All righty. Well, we're going to try something here, Stephan. I hope it works.
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But we're testing the technology to its max here. We're going to try to bring Larry Vonderhaar online at the same time.
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Larry, are you able to talk to me? Yeah, I can. Okay, we're all here. And Larry can answer this, too.
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The question basically was, what do you say? Personally, as I've been distributing literature today, I've been using the
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RULDS. And when they say, yes, then I say, I wrote this for you.
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And since I wrote all of our tracts, it's easy for me to say that particular direction. Larry, what tracts have you been passing out and how have you been approaching it?
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I've been passing out what the Mormon church teaches about Jesus Christ and men is not God. I even take a simpler approach, like, did you get one of these?
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Easier to remember that line, isn't it? Yeah, I keep it simple and quick. And what kind of reactions do you normally get?
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For the most part, we get either pass by or simply take one, or occasionally one or two people, three people stop and talk.
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Okay. That's normally what I get as well. And, Stephan, frequently the response then is, once people do stop, they say something along the lines of, well, you know, why would you be doing something like this?
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Why would you stand out here and pass out literature and talk to people? And that's when we get the opportunity of basically trying to explain that God's truth is true for everybody.
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There is a right and a wrong. And I'm not sure if Larry remembers this, but we constantly are encountering this subjectivism amongst individuals that simply say things like, well, that's your truth, it's not necessarily my truth, this type of thing.
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It can sometimes be very frustrating to try to explain to people there is one truth, it's God's truth, he didn't stutter when he gave us his word, and that we all need to be in subjection to it.
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Stephan, you still with us? Oh, we lost Stephan. Okay, well, then we've got another...
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Okay, all right, that's fine. George and Peoria, can we have George? Hey, James, how are you?
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Hey, doing pretty good. Good. I just wanted to encourage you guys and all the people that are out there, thanks for giving up your weekend to stand for the truth like this.
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Well, I really appreciate your calling in and supporting us, and right now when we're up here talking to these folks, it's nice to know that we're not alone and that we're not the minority that it sort of looks like when we're out here.
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My question is about Easter. As far as the LDS Church, why are they celebrating
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Easter? What does it mean to them? Is it the same as a Christian perspective as far as the
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Resurrection? What does the Resurrection mean? Very, very good question, and I'm glad you asked it, because from the world's perspective, from an observer who is not familiar with the theology of Mormonism, from an observer who isn't concerned about the fundamentals of what a system teaches, it looks like they're doing the exact same thing that we are.
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They do believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. They do believe that he died on the cross and that he was raised to life.
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So from a perspective like that, most people would say, well, there's no difference. The problem is that once you start thinking about who
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Jesus Christ is in Mormonism, that is that he is the first begotten child of an exalted man from another planet, that he is a separate
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God from God the Father, he is a secondary God in point of fact, and that the
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Atonement began in the Garden of Gethsemane, that the Atonement was only finished on the cross, but that it began in the
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Garden of Gethsemane, it does not atone for all sins, and that from the LDS perspective, the resurrection of Christ, what it accomplishes is the resurrection of everyone.
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Everyone is going to be resurrected, hence everyone is quote -unquote saved in Mormonism, so that you can be resurrected, but then you have to be exalted to the status of Godhood, which is by a completely different process.
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Once you start getting down to those fundamentals, you see how very different the whole thing really is. The sad thing about our culture and our world today is, if you get down to those details and you ask what a system is really teaching, you are automatically considered to be unloving, unkind, etc.,
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etc., etc. So from the external, it sounds like the same thing, but once you really start digging down into it, there are some real fundamental differences.
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Well, God bless you guys. I'm real proud of you. I'm real proud of your son, and I'm sure you are too. I certainly am.
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I should mention, if I don't want to get a really cold stare when I get home, that the last two nights we were out at the
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Mormon Temple, my daughter Summer was with us, and she really wanted to go out tonight too. I don't know if she's going to be able to make it or not because we're not there, but both my kids have gone out there with me, and I'm very proud of them.
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Thank you very much for your prayers and your support. Thank you. God bless. All right, we do have some more callers.
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Guys, I'm watching my watch here to make sure I don't run over our break time, but I believe the next one is
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Glenn in Glendale. Glenn, you're with us. Yes. Hi, Glenn. How are you doing? Fine, thank you, and God bless you for your work there.
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Well, thank you. I just had a question. I have three questions, but the first one is, is there at least an outside chance that some of the individuals that are attending there, that attend
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LDS churches, are Christians? Yes, I believe there is. We do encounter situations that bring this out, and here's how it happens.
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Especially the modern LDS church will do everything in its power to get you into the baptismal waters, and if they can do that on a positive information, on the sparsest amount of information they can, they'll do so.
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And so the story that I often tell is when I first wrote the book Letters to a Mormon Elder, some
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Baptist friends at the church that I was attending at the time brought over to my office a lady who had been a member of our church, but had joined
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Mormonism. And so I started talking to her, and I said, well, what convinced you to go from believing only one true
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God to believing in a plurality of God? And she's like, well, what are you talking about? Well, what convinced you to go from believing that Jesus is your eternal creator to him being your spirit brother?
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What? I've never heard anything like that in my life. And so I gave her the manuscript copy of Letters to a
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Mormon Elder. The book wasn't even published yet. And two weeks later, she left the LDS church because she went home.
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She had all the books I was referencing people had given them to her, but she hadn't read them. And so once she found out what the church actually taught, then she very quickly removed her membership therefrom.
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So in the sense that there are people who really don't know what Mormonism teaches, and they came from Christian churches, and they think they've just basically sort of made the move from being a
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Lutheran to being a Methodist or something like that, yes, I think that possibility does exist. But as far as somebody who was kind of raised in it, and they're really, you know, they love the
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Lord, they love their church and stuff, and then they have that network, can they get born again, and not do they have to give that all up because we have a difficult time plugging anybody in.
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I don't know what your church is like, but we don't supply anything close to the fellowship and the activities and stuff that the
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Mormon church offers their kids and the commitment that they demand from them. There's no
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Christian church that has anything close to their whole network that they have.
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Well, of course, I think there's a vast difference between having lots of activities and fulfilling the spiritual hunger of the redeemed child of God.
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And I think what a Mormon who is truly born again and comes out of Mormonism is struck by is when, not when they encounter a church that has fellowships like theirs, but when they encounter a church that unashamedly, boldly proclaims the whole truth of God.
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I think that's what you really need to see happening. I don't think we need to try to mirror Mormonism in regards to its activities.
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We need to contrast ourselves. If you've attended a Mormon war chapel, generally the services are such that they're nice little talks, and they are not in point of fact any type of situation where the word of God is really proclaimed.
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Okay. I feel that there might be a danger sometimes in doing what you're doing due to the oaths and stuff that they take and all this different things you confront.
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Do you feel any, is it a little bit dangerous maybe or not at all? Well, yeah, there's a certain level of danger
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I suppose, and it's not because of the oaths or anything like that. It's more because of the fact that we encounter some folks out here that are extremely emotionally oriented.
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And when you show what the word of God really says and you demonstrate an error in what they've been taught, most of the time the reaction is going to be very emotional.
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And we've had some folks really get in our face. We've only had one person that got slapped up here once. And other than that, we've had some angry words, but nothing on a physical level.
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So the Lord's protected us there. Well, God bless you. All right. I appreciate you taking my call.
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Thank you very much for calling. I appreciate you calling in. You'll be in our prayers. What church are you affiliated with again?
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I'm an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church on 12th Street, south of Indian School. Okay, thank you very much. All right, God bless.
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God bless you. Happy Resurrection Day. Okay, you too. Thank you. Yeah, I don't get to have too many
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Resurrection Sundays where we haven't been out doing everything we've been doing during the week or coming up here.
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So it's nice to hear something like that. We do have other...
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Okay, we need to take a break. And we'd like to hear from you, 508 -0960, 1 -888 -TALK -960.
38:21
We only have a few minutes left here in this hour. If you'd like to let us know what your question is, give us a ring, and we'll be right back right after this.
38:28
And welcome back to The Dividing Line. My name is James White, and I am standing directly outside the south gate of Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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So far, the battery has lived up to its billing, and it seems it hasn't even gone down one bar so far.
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That's not half bad. I suppose I should give a plug to those folks. I should also thank not only
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Rich Pierce for staying over there and giving me various hand signals and things like that so I know what in the world I'm doing, but Dave Amalfitano is back there sweating it on the phones, working hard to make sure that we all stay on, and Jim Ash is pushing the buttons.
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It takes a few folks to make something like this work, but very, very appreciative of their efforts as well.
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We are standing outside the temple distributing tracts, literature. I'm watching Sean Hahn right now dodging a little person that just went by his knees, and he didn't see coming.
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And Larry Vondred, Joshua White's there. We've got one conversation going that I can see here.
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And then we have some folks over on the far side that I can't see from here. If you've not been here, or if you have been here, you can sort of picture this, but the south gate's the busiest gate.
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And then it used to be the north gate was the second busiest gate, but we were somewhat shocked when we pulled up today to discover the north gate is gone.
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It is torn to shreds, and that is because the LDS Church is building a huge meeting hall that I believe,
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Rich, 30 ,000? I think they said we'll see 30 ,000 people directly across from the north gate on North Temple.
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Now, to be honest with you, we don't know what that's going to mean to our work here. That's supposed to open,
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I believe, a year from this conference, isn't it, Rich? I think that's what I had heard. It might have been on the website.
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I'm not sure what it was, but I think it's supposed to be a year from this conference. And so we'll have the
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October General Conference again, and then in next spring, approximately, we're going to need to find out just whether we're going to be able to continue this type of outreach or not.
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There is on -site parking right now here on Temple Square. There is no on -site parking. You have to walk onto the property, and to walk onto the property, you'd have to go to the south gate, the west gate, the north gate, or then about three years ago they opened what we call the southeast gate.
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But still, with a fairly small number of people, you can cover the vast majority of individuals who are going in and out of the general conference.
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Well, once that 30 ,000 -seat auditorium is open, with all the on -site parking, our big question is, will it be possible to continue this type of outreach?
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And I think it will be, but in a modified form. And that is, what they're doing is they're building sort of an underpass under North Temple so that the north gate, you'll be able to walk underneath the road over to the assembly hall.
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Well, what that probably means is just like right now, we have a large number of people going back and forth, back and forth, going over to Crossroads Plaza and eating.
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Well, one thing that will not change is that Mormons will still need to eat. And so what we're hoping is going to happen is we will be able to stand here at south gate and still catch all the folks that are coming from the assembly hall over to the
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Crossroads Plaza to eat. We'll find out. We don't have any way of knowing until it happens whether it's still going to be a worthwhile missions effort at that point.
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If it isn't, then there are other things that we can go visit. The Manti pageants that they have and things like that might be other ways of being able to do outreach like this if, in point of fact, we can't continue this one.
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But until then, that's still the future. And so we're very blessed to have people here from Phoenix, people from, we've been joined by one fellow here from the,
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I think, Logan area here in Utah, and a couple folks from the
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Orthodox Presbyterian Church in San Diego. And we're all here together. And even though there are some differences between our various churches, we all have one message to share with these folks, the one message of the one true
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God and his gospel, the sovereignty of God and salvation. That definitely sets us apart in the emphasis of our proclamation up here is that we do emphasize the deadness of man and sin, the sovereignty of God in the matter of salvation, the supremacy of grace.
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Those are all issues that we raise when we talk with people. The perfection of Christ's atonement.
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These are things that we talk with folks about because they're biblical, and I can guarantee you a lot of these folks have never heard what we have to say before.
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And it's certainly something to be remembered that even though these individuals are the leaders of the
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LDS Church, many of them are returned missionaries, stake presidents, individuals such as that, the assumption can never, ever be made that they have heard the gospel of Christ.
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They've heard the term gospel many, many times. But what did it mean? What was being communicated?
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That is the question that we are asking folks up here and sharing the gospel with them.
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Thankfully, the large garbage truck that had parked right in front of where I was just left. My son is trying to get the smoke to go away from his engine.
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I think we need to talk to the Salt Lake City authorities about that. But we're enjoying our time up here.
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You know, sometimes you can feel frustrated when you talk with someone. I expressed some of that frustration when we opened the program and having just left a conversation with someone that just simply would not listen to what the
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Word of God said. But in point of fact, it is a tremendous privilege to share the gospel.
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It is a tremendous privilege to have the opportunity, the freedom to stand here on these sidewalks.
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Believe me, over the years, both in Mesa and here in Salt Lake, security guards and all sorts of other people have done their best to try to intimidate us and keep us from doing the work that we're doing.
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And they'll come right up to you and tell you you need to leave, you need to shut up, so on and so forth. And in point of fact, we have the freedom to be here, and it's wonderful to be able to do so.
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I believe we could probably, if we don't have any callers, bring Rich on the line with me, if Dave and Jim could work that out.
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Rich, are you there? Yes, I am, Jim. Okay. How many, did you take time while we were flying up here to figure out how many this makes for you?
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Well, I've been doing this with you for, this is my 14th year. I believe this is my 27th conference, barring the one where I had to opt out when
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I was in charge of getting tickets for everybody. We all got to the gate, and suddenly, in my embarrassment,
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I recognized that there are six tickets and eight people. And so that was kind of a difficult situation, so I felt it was my obligation to opt out.
45:44
So short of that one, I've gotten 27 in. This is my 15th consecutive time out at the
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Easter pageant in Mesa. We've had a wonderful week, James, despite the weather.
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Tuesday and Wednesday, we were warm. We were almost baking on Wednesday.
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Here, come Thursday night, we're standing out there. It's raining. It's freezing. There's 15 of us, and one
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Mormon comes across the street, and we're all handing, you know, we got our tracks out with a big smile, going, hi, we're freezing, would you like one, you know?
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He even came up with lines like, here, these are special hand -warming tracks, you know, stuff like that, yeah. We had not seen weather like that in Mesa any time that I can recall at all.
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It was truly incredible. And I did try to make the point that night that our testimony was the fact that we were there, not how many people we got to talk to or how many tracks we got to go out.
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We just didn't chicken out when the going got tough. But you heard me talking about what the future holds as far as the general conference here and the changes that are going to be developing.
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We've just got to keep our eyes open and try to be wise with the opportunities that we have,
47:00
I guess. Yeah, I think folks need to realize that God has given it on our hearts to reach out to this people.
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And in many missions, efforts around the world that churches sponsor and help out with, oftentimes
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I feel that these are lost in all that effort. And these people need to hear the gospel.
47:21
They don't know the gospel. And I think folks in the church at large kind of sometimes assume that since they're
47:27
Americans and they're here in the USA, that they've heard the gospel and that they know what it is.
47:33
And so many times we run into Mormon missionaries, average Mormons, that just don't really know the differences between Christians and Mormons.
47:42
They think we're all just a part of the same church, just different denominational views. They have no idea the major differences in the fact that we worship different gods, we have a different Jesus, and that they follow a false
47:57
Christ. Well, I think people also need to be made aware of the fact that when we first started doing this, there were lines lining up to talk to us because no one else was doing this type of thing during the conference.
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And we're the only folks that have been here consistently for the past 15 years doing this kind of work.
48:17
And so that's a pretty unusual emphasis that we've had, but it's something that we've really tried to focus in upon, and that's why we're up here today.
48:27
That's why I can no longer feel the fingers in my right hand. It is currently,
48:32
I think, still holding the cell phone. I'm not really certain. I can't sort of feel it any longer, nor can I feel the ear it's up against.
48:38
I was blessed to get some gloves last time this happened to us up here that have the fingers protruding, the cyclist gloves.
48:47
That's right. You can hold on to those tracks and get them out to folks. Yeah, I keep those hands warm, but I can still grab the track. That's the way it needs to be.
48:53
Well, hey, we're getting close to the end of our time here together. I would just like to encourage those of us who are listening to the program, continue to pray for us and to access our website for information about further events coming up, please.
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Those of you who called in and said you were praying, that's tremendously encouraging to us who are up here. Also be praying for the outreach that we will be having on Long Island.
49:17
I will be traveling out there at the end of this month. Three debates going on, May 6th against Robert St.
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Genes on the mass, May 12th against Hamza Abdul Malik on the subject of the
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New Testament. Does it teach the deity of Christ? He is a Muslim apologist. And two days later on the 14th,
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Dr. Robert Sabin, one of the leading Oneness Pentecostal scholars in the United States.
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And please be praying for us, and thank you for joining with us. Thank you.
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Pray for us. We will be home tomorrow. We hope and pray. God bless. You can also...