10 - Mormonism, Part 3

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11 - Jehovah Witnesses, Part 1

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy's School of World Religions. This is a ministry of striving for eternity.

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You can go to www .strivingforeternity .org to get more information about striving for eternity or any of the other classes that we have available like our

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School of Systematic Theology, School of Biblical Harmoneutics, School of Discipleship, all are available at that website.

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We're glad to have you with us. I am Andrew Rappaport. I will be your teacher tonight. And with that, we hope to continue in our class as we have been going through our classes on an introduction to the major Western religions.

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We have been looking at the lesson number four, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

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Saints. If you have a syllabus, it would be good to grab that now. We are going to be going through that.

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The syllabus is available at our store at store .strivingforeternity .org.

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You can get the syllabus or any of the other syllabuses there. And with that, you'd be able to follow along in the notes.

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And you would be able to fill in the blanks. If you enjoy this lesson or any of the other lessons on the world religions, and you would like to dig in a little bit deeper than we're doing in class, you can also, while you're at the store, pick up my new book,

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What Do They Believe? A Systematic Theology of the Major Western Religions.

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That is available at our store. So, you can just go to the store, which is, like I said, store .strivingforeternity

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.org. Enough of that now, and let's dive right in. Just as a quick kind of recap, we dealt with previously, in part one, with the authority of the

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LDS, and I'm saying LDS as an abbreviation for Latter -day

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Saints. It's just a lot easier. So if I say LDS, what

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I mean is Latter -day Saints as opposed to Mormons or Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

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Saints. Why not use the term Mormon? Well, here's the thing. What you end up seeing is that the

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Mormons who, as we're going to look at today, say that their church started as a restoration.

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The church fell away, and they restored the church and the gospel. And yet, in arguing that they say that they restored it, well, they end up wanting to be more like us.

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So why would they want to act and pretend like they're Christian like us? You know, they've been doing a campaign called

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We Are Christian. They've redid their website so that it removes some of the things that they've been criticized. And one of the other things they've done is they no longer use the term

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Mormon, because that's associated with a cult, they no longer say Mormonism, they say

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LDS. That's kind of a clue if someone says they're an LDS, that they're a Latter -day Saint, that they're trying to get away from the

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Mormon label. That being said, we've been having an influx of them on our

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Facebook page responding to these classes saying how we just don't understand. We're just haters.

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We don't understand the truth. We're so wrong. All right, if you're going to make those criticisms, support it.

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I've asked now like a hundred times for someone to name one thing that I've said about the

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Latter -day Saints that's inaccurate. Yeah, that's what I hear.

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Silence. Yeah, crickets. That's what, if I had the thing for crickets, it'd be good. Cricket, cricket, that's what we're hearing.

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Nothing. They can't name one thing. It's not that we're here to hate people.

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We're not. We're here because, well, I want to teach the differences of the world religions, but we are comparing them to Christianity so that we have better equipped on how to witness to these people because the simple reality is these people are lost and going to spend eternity in a lake of fire.

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That's why we point out these differences. It's not hatred to point out that they're an error.

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It's loving to point out that they're an error. If they realize that everything I'm saying is correct and they can't name a one thing that I'm saying that's incorrect and then they want to say that we're wrong, the only thing that that's pointing is that you don't like the fact that we're pointing out what your church teaches.

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We went from the authority part two. We looked at their view of God. From their view of God, we looked at the view of Jesus Christ.

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This week what we're going to start with is their view of sin. That's right.

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We're going to look at their view of sin. If you have your syllabus, you can turn there and we are looking at the section on sin for the

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Latter -day Saints. The LDS believe that men will be punished for their own sins and not for Adam's transgression.

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In other words, they do not believe in original sin. They have a real problem with the idea of original sin and believe that man must pay for their own sin.

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In fact, the basis of the argument is based on the fact that they believe the spirit of man was created prior to the fall.

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Before the fall, man was still good. Everything was good,

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I should say. They believe it was at that point that the souls were created and therefore they would say there can't be a basis to having an original sin where we're all punished in Adam as our federal head.

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This is sort of sounding like Judaism, isn't it? Yeah, if you've been with the classes, Judaism had this same wrong teaching.

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But let's look. First, let's look at the pre -existence since I mentioned it. The LDS doctrine teaches that God created man as spirits before, that's your blank there, before the sixth day of creation.

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Before God created man, all the spirits, angels and spirits, period, what we would call angels, and they were all created and they were not given bodies yet.

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And we're going to mention this, this is going to come up in a little bit where it's going to get really funky on how these spirits were created.

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But the life you live as a spirit is going to determine the life you'd have in the body.

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Okay, so how does that work? Well, here's how it works. There were a bunch of angels, there was this warfare that went on before creation.

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And those spirits that obeyed God, well they were pure and light, so they came as white people.

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Yes, that's right, and therefore you can guess. Those that disobeyed God were dark and evil, so God sent them to earth as black people.

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And then those that couldn't determine, that didn't go one way or the other in this warfare between God and Satan, really

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Jesus and Satan, the two brothers, if you paid attention in last class, they came back as, I guess, red and yellow and everything in between.

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They were the mix, they were the neutral people. What you see there is the racism that was very prevalent during Joseph Smith's time coming up.

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Now, that's one of the strange things is that you won't hear them talk about that anymore. It used to be that when they allowed blacks, after blacks in America were allowed to vote and things like that, they were allowed to join the

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Latter -day Saints, but they weren't allowed to be elders, priests, because they were blacks and rebellious, then why could they become

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Latter -day Saints? So that was their working it out on earth kind of a problem that they get, you know, everything's worked out in heaven, but then all of a sudden it wasn't politically correct to say that blacks were these evil, wicked people before they were born, and that's why they're black, therefore, well, they suddenly took that out.

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So I guess God changed his mind? Nope, it's just it was never really there. Some will argue because they don't know it was ever in the books.

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That's the reason I go to YouTube, sorry to eBay, and I buy old copies of these books for sale of Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price and Book of Mormon because having those older ones, you can show them how these are the areas where the

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Latter -day Saints that have the most perfect, as we saw, the most perfect book, and yet they had to go through revisions and like ones regarding doctrine.

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So they believe that all the spirits were born before the sixth day of creation. LDS believe that you did not suddenly come into existence when you were born.

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Do we have Doctrine and Covenants 93? Alright, there we go.

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Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence or the light of truth was not created or made, neither indeed can it be.

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And so what you see there is this idea that they were, that man was there with God in the beginning.

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And so LDS teach that you were happy in God's presence, but he knew that you needed more in order to progress.

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Progress to what? Well, as we mentioned in the last class, they believe man can become God. So in order to become

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God, you needed to progress and become a man to become

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God. You did not have a physical body like you do now. You needed a chance to gain experience on your own, away from God's presence.

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You can't have that beautiful, be in the beautiful presence of God. You have to go away. But the ability to communicate with him and receive help was still available.

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So he sent us to earth, supposedly, hoping that we would return to him one day and receive everything that he wants to offer us.

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Yikes. That is really right out of the pit of hell, quite literally.

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Genesis chapter three, Satan saying to Eve, oh,

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God doesn't want you to eat that fruit because he wants, he knows when you eat that fruit, you're going to be like God.

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Yeah. So now this idea, we're going to come back to this preexistence because it becomes important in a little bit in the next letter

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C. But let's do letter B there in your syllabus. Free will. Not only did man have a preexistence, but they believe that man has a free will.

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The Latter -day Saints believe that one of the most precious gifts that God has given people is the ability and power to make choices.

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God respects a person's freedom to choose. He would never force anybody to choose good or would never stop anyone from making wrong choices because man's sovereignty is so much more important than God's sovereignty.

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Yeah, are you hearing the sarcasm in my voice? He knows that by making choices and experiences of their consequences, we learn the difference between good and evil.

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As you learn to choose good, you find greater happiness. That is right out of Genesis 3.

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I mean, that is almost like exactly what Satan said to Eve, right?

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This idea of free will, the free will in the Latter -day Saints is exactly the free will that Satan promised

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Eve. So, it's really not that hard to find the source of this religion and it's not

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God. Alright, am I tipping my hat? Am I giving away my view?

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Sorry. Let's look at their view of the children of God. Man is, ready for this, man is the literal, physical offspring of God.

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That's your blanks there. Man is the literal, physical offspring of God.

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And they base this on Acts 17, 28 -29.

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Let me read that for you. It says, For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of you, your own poets, have said, for we are indeed his offspring.

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Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art of imagination of man.

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And so they say, see, see, that proves that we're the literal, physical offspring of God.

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Yikes. The LDS believe that everyone is a child of God with a divine nature and a divine destiny.

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Divine nature meaning you're born from God. If you have a divine destiny, you can become like God. By the way, we're not all children of God.

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According to John 1, 19 -20. It says,

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Those that believe on him have the right to be called a child of God. See, we have the right to be called a child of God only when we're adopted into his family.

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Not because we're created in his image. There's that difference. We have to understand the difference between being created in the image of God and being made like God.

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Okay? So, the

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LDS believe that everyone is a child of God. That's right, I said this. With a divine nature and divine destiny.

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You live with him, supposedly, as a spirit before you existed, before you were born.

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And God sent you to earth to receive a body and gain experiences that you need to learn so that you can return to him.

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Let's look at a passage. This is going to be, I may have mispronounced it, but Moshe 5 -7.

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Okay, there we go. So, in this, we see here, he says,

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And now, because of the covenant which ye have made,

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Ye shall be called the children of Christ. His sons and his daughters.

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For behold, the day he hath spiritually begotten you,

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For ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name.

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Therefore ye are born of him and have become his sons and daughters.

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So, here's a problem. When you follow their doctrine properly, you're going to see that what you have is a case that the teaching that God the

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Father had physical offspring. If you remember last class, we said the physical offspring, first was

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Jesus, then Satan, and then all of us followed from the physical offspring of the

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Father. But that's not what this passage said, did it? Put that back up for a moment. And if you look at the passage, it says there that we are the children of who?

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Who's that say? We're the children of Christ. And so what you see there is a confusion.

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You see right there a issue where they have the reality of that they argue for two different things and they don't pick up on it.

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Are we the offspring? The physical, literal children of God the Father or of Christ? If Christ was the first offspring, then why wasn't he the first one sent to earth?

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Why did he come some 4 ,000 years later?

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And how come Satan never came? I'm just curious. Maybe because he rebelled so the others come back as black people but Satan's not allowed to come back at all.

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You see the problems? They say here that we're the children of Christ, his sons and daughters.

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And yet we're supposed to be the offspring of the Father. And his wife. It gets so confusing.

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And that's the thing. When you're trying to make something up as detailed as this is, you fall into problems.

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And those problems become something that, well, you end up with things like this.

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And you end up with contradictions that you can't work your way out of. So according to LDS, the fall was a joy for man.

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When Adam and Eve fell, it was a joy. It brought mortality and physical death.

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That's a great joy. 2 Nephi 2 .25, do I have that? I do.

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Adam fell that man might be. And men care that they might have, what's that?

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Joy? Really? So Adam fell that we could have death and that brings joy?

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I don't know, have you ever gone to a funeral? Like even of an unbeliever and been like, oh, this is a joyful time.

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Because in their idea, we couldn't become God unless we became man.

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Yikes. So you see, if their view of man is that messed up, their view of man and sin,

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I think their view of salvation is going to be really messed up.

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Well, rest assured, it is. Alright, so they have a different gospel.

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Alright, we saw that they had a different Jesus. They have a different view of man. They have a different God.

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They have different authority. I mean, not one thing is even close here. So what's their view of salvation?

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Well, the LDS state that they believe salvation is through Jesus Christ.

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And they have this in Moshe 317, where it says, And moreover

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I say unto you that there shall be no more name given nor any other nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of men only in and through the name of Jesus the

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Lord Omnipotent. And so, what you end up seeing there is it sounds like they're clearly saying salvation is through Jesus Christ alone.

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And we would say, yes. Okay, we're going to agree with that. Hold on. Different Jesus.

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However, the LDS church believes in a different gospel altogether. Than the one taught in the

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Bible. As evidenced by the fact that they claim about the Book of Mormon.

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What are the claims they make about the Book of Mormon? Well, they claim that the Book of Mormon restores the gospel and contains the fullness that's your blank there fullness of the gospel.

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This means that the fullness of the gospel was lost. And the claims that basically the

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Book of Mormon claims that the gospel that had been lost had been taught to Adam and to Enoch and to Noah and to Abraham and to others.

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However, if the gospel to Adam and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and many others was lost and this is the fullness of the gospel then it had to be taught over and over and it kept kind of getting lost.

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How could we trust Joseph Smith to have gotten it right? That he's the first to get it right?

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I mean, this is the same question we asked with Islam when they said that the Bible was corrupted over and over.

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God's Word kept getting corrupted but Mohammed could get it right. This is just a little critical thinking to ask yourself.

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How could Joseph Smith if it was taught to Adam and then to Enoch and then to Noah and then to Abraham and many others and it kept getting lost over and over and over How could we trust

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Joseph Smith the con artist? Because that's what he was. The arrest records show it, prove it.

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So, furthermore what does it teach about God that He can't keep His fullness of the gospel with His people?

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He can't protect it. He's a pretty weak God. LDS doctrine states that God wants all

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His children to know the truth yet He does not protect it, the truth from error?

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It doesn't sound like a God that sincerely cares for His people. In Doctrines of Salvation, Volume 1, page 188, it says this,

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Furthermore, there is no salvation without accepting

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Joseph Smith as a prophet of God. Boy, that sounds exactly like Islam doesn't it?

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One of the tenets of Islam is that you had to believe in Muhammad as a prophet of God Same thing.

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Same problem. It's a different gospel. The gospel is not Jesus Christ through Joseph Smith.

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So, we had to wait for Joseph Smith to come on the scenes. Yikes. But it's really seen that their view is baptism is necessary.

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LDS believe that baptism is necessary, that's your blank there, for salvation.

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And this is seen in their doctrine of baptism for the dead. Yikes, what's that? There's one verse in all of scripture in 1

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Corinthians that mentions baptism for the dead. There's no context of it. It's really not clear completely on what

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Paul's talking about there. But the LDS teach that many people have died without receiving baptism and other ordinances that Jesus Christ taught were necessary to enter into the kingdom.

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Therefore, because God wants all his children to have an opportunity to return to him, he has provided a way to those who died to receive the ordinances through those who are living.

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And this is why in their temple services they have the baptism for the dead. This is why if you do any kind of genealogy study, you're going to come across the

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Latter -day Saints because they are the most prolific in trying to figure out people's lineages.

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And the reason for it is because they want people to be able to go back and get baptized for all the people that are in their family tree.

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This also goes to point to another thing. They believe in two means of salvation.

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You can be saved here on Earth or get a second chance after death. Wow! That's just wrong.

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It is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment. That's what the Bible says.

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That's not what Mormon doctrine teaches. Letter C. Salvation is by works, not by grace and faith alone.

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And you saw that just with the baptism, but Jesus took it upon himself, took upon himself the sins of all men on condition

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Really? He died on the cross and it was conditional? Condition of repentance.

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Offering all people a general salvation. And additional salvation is an individual salvation and is conditional only upon grace, but also upon obedience.

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That's your blank. Obedience to gospel law. Wow! Almost sounding like theonomy.

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But they believe that there is this idea that it is by obedience to the law that you're saved.

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Perhaps the most famous statement of the LDS in relation to grace and works is in 2

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Nephi. I think I have that one there. And I added some emphasis on this.

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But it says there as you read For we labor diligently to persuade our children and also our brethren to believe in Christ and to be reconciled to God for we know that it is by the grace that we are saved after all we can do.

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You notice that I emphasize that because that is the problem. They believe that clearly works based salvation because it is after everything you can do, then you can be saved.

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The LDS teach that atonement comes, the atonement of Christ is fully effective in the individual's life only after we have five things.

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Faith in Christ repentance of sin being baptized receiving the

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Holy Ghost sorry there were six things obeying the commandments and strive to be like Him.

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Does sound like works to me. You know you really get to see this view because in the

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Joseph Smith translation of James 2 14 to 21 you see that in verse 17 he adds the word being alone in there so it says in verse 17 even so faith if it does not have works is dead being alone.

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This also shows that Joseph Smith was influenced by Roman Catholicism because it's only Roman Catholicism that interprets

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James as being dealing with the doctrine of regeneration and not sanctification.

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The entire book of James is dealing with how one can know they are saved. What things of their sanctification that process after we're regenerate after we become a believer in Christ that process after that until the day we die and are glorified that process of sanctification how do we know well

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James gives us a series of things to look for in our life to say if we are believers if we have genuine faith these are the things that we're going to see in our life.

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One of them being works. Therefore the after regeneration and the argument

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James is making is that you know that you are a believer because the works are evident because you have the works that shows that you were saved because you were continuing in the sanctification process.

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However that's not what the Catholic Church teaches because this is the only passage that they could find to try to prove their doctrine of faith plus works.

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Joseph Smith who was so much against the Roman Catholic Church and said that saying that it fell away and yet what is he doing?

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He's actually arguing for a position further than what the Catholic Church teaches because what he's doing is he's saying okay the

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Catholic Church said it was faith by works alright faith plus works

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I should say and so they believed in the works but he's saying that this passage is even so if they do not have work whoops sorry knocked my glass of tea there

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I was trying to take it if you heard that bang I'll put that down there even so if they have works is dead being alone the idea being is that the reason the faith is dead is the reason the works are dead is because the faith is alone in other words you must have works along with your faith otherwise it's dead you need both and so supposedly

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God knew this and he decided that you know he was going to have to make a way so the

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LDS do not believe in any way in eternal security or perseverance of the saints why?

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because well we have works therefore we're going to have an issue where we you know lose salvation things like that right so so the

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LDS do not believe in eternal security thus one can fall from grace since works gets you in you must keep yourself by those works that's one of the things you always see if works save you then works sustain you and that is the issue if you believe that your works are going to save you or keep you saved then you must maintain your salvation and we went in that in great detail in the doctrine of salvation in our class on systematic theology they would be very much in line with what's called

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Arminian theology and you see that in doctrine and covenants this is doctrine and covenants 2032 we don't have it okay then

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I would just read it it says but there is a possibility that man can fall from grace and depart from the living

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God and so we also see letter D that they believe in a second chance so they believe in a the

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LDS believe the period between death and the resurrection is still a probationary or testing period for those in hell kind of sounds like purgatory huh

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I mean there is so much against the Catholic Church and yet they took so many of those doctrines if they repent and actually they took those doctrines but they couldn't take the sources of those doctrines because the sources of those doctrines were tradition and so they want to avoid the

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Roman Catholic tradition saying that that church fell away right if they repent and turn to Christ they may yet be redeemed and that's your blank they're redeemed from Satan through the atonement and inherit some degree of glory among the many mansions to the

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Father to this end they believe that the Gospel is preached to the ignorant and rebellious spirits in prison that may repent and accept

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Christ and live and this is from John 5 25 to 29 of 1 Peter 3 18 to 21 in chapter 4 verse 6 so they believe that Christ remember we're spirit we get a body so we go back to spirit we're in prison because we didn't believe and God gives us a second chance to be redeemed by hearing the

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Gospel a second time and then we can get some level of grace we're going to get to this in a moment that there's different levels of heaven and so we can't get to that highest level but maybe we can get to one of the other levels if we receive

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Christ after wow is this hurting your head yeah there was someone after we taught the last class and they said my head hurts this stuff is strange just be glad we're not dealing with Scientology that one's even weirder alright so what's their view of the eternal state alright the eternal state this is the last of our section here and we have here that the eternal state is becoming a

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God yeah it's becoming God like it's becoming like Christ so we could become well actually like the

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Father right now the way the Father is right now because Christ has to become Christ was a man that had to become he had to progress to be like the

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Father as well and so he's going to be a God he's secured we have to be like him but right there it should ask you like what's so special about Christ if he's just a spirit like us so he's the firstborn right it shouldn't be anything different just saying

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I know that's why all these Latter Day Saints are so upset with these classes because we're just applying a little critical thinking to your doctrine and it's a problem for you and you can't say that anything we're saying is wrong and that really bugs you you'd love to point out something we're saying that's inaccurate

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I understand but we're quoting your sources just saying so becoming like Gods the

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LDS believe that God ordained and established a plan of salvation whereby his spirit children might advance and progress and become like him after you become an

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LDS you have the potential of becoming a

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God that's your blank there to becoming a God this is from the teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith that's right this is right from his teachings teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith pages 345, 347, and 354 according to the formula

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God became a man that sorry let me read again quote

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God became man that man might become God unquote that's their formula the

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LDS believe that the early Christians were invited to study and to become Gods note the plural there by the way this is real problem for Orthodox teaching isn't it yeah we have a real problem with this okay this is exactly what caused the fall you know that thing that gave us great joy yeah that fall from being in God's presence to being in a state of sin and I hate to disappoint them but Adam as our federal head the first born by the way the real first born of humanity in the sense that he was the first one that was created man and because of that you end up with the fact that you see that this is the exact thing that Satan tempted

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Eve with we're in the federal headship of Adam that's why we have a sin nature and we sin alright so let's talk about the view of heaven and we'll try to wrap this up there are three levels of heaven as I mentioned there's the terrestrial the teletrestral the terrestrial and the celestial okay three different levels the lowest level is the telestral that's the telestral glory reserved for those who were wicked in the flesh but in some sense are given some degree they turn to Christ in their suffering between death and the resurrection so remember

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I said that you have that second chance if you were to die and as a wicked person and then afterwards you repent someone does a baptism for you they do the ordinances for you then you can get into the lowest level of heaven this is

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Doctrine and Covenants 76 verses 81 to 113

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I'm not going to post it we're not going to read all that because it's very long but that's where you can find it

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Doctrine and Covenants 76 verses 81 to 113 the next highest level is the terrestrial kingdom is reserved for the honorable men and women while they were on earth the righteous who rejected the fullness of the gospel and witness of the spirit during their mortal life but changed their minds in the spirit prison this is

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Doctrine and Covenants 76 verses 71 to 80 so it's the same chapter just different verses

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Doctrine and Covenants 76 verses 71 to 80 so these are the people that they were they lived a good life in other words those works they were a good person they didn't believe in Mormonism and so they had to go to that punishment world and then they received

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Mormonism after they died their lot in eternity is to dwell with Jesus in glory forever but without enjoying the separate without enjoying the separate presence of the father and continuing in family relationships so they don't get the full presence of the father they get to be with Jesus not to go with the next level up and the highest level is the celestial kingdom which is reserved for LDS members children who died before the age of 8

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I'll mention that in a moment the mentally handicapped who have the mind of a child under 8 years old and those good people of every religious belief who never heard and understood the gospel during their lives or who never felt the spirit bear witness to it this is

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Doctrine and Covenants again chapter 76 and this is going to be verses 50 to 70 so it's

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Doctrine and Covenants 76 verses 50 to 70 alright and what you end up seeing there in that is this is those latter day saints and it's really those that are married in the temple and have children they can have spirit children have their own planets oh yay they get to be in a position where they argue that they will be in this highest kingdom where they get to be in the presence of God the

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Father and they will be able to enjoy his presence not only

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Jesus' presence but theirs as well and oh by the way the benefit of being there is you get to be with Joseph Smith that's right you have the

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Father, the Son, the Spirit and Joseph Smith that they have to look forward to yikes

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I mean it's just there's so much to go here why the age of 8? they get that out of a

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King James reading of oh I forgot it's in Peter I forget if it's first or second now where it says that 8 souls were saved in Noah's day the 8 souls that were saved was not 8 years old as they argue it's 8 human beings were on the ark in Noah's day it was

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Noah that's 1, his wife that's 2, his 3 sons that's 5, their 3 wives that's 8 8 souls 8 people not 8 years old so they have the idea that anyone before the age of 8 immediately goes to heaven by the way side note maybe some of you remember, was her name

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Yates? I forget, it might have been Andrea Yates I want to say but I could be wrong on the name if I'm wrong,

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I'm sorry but there was a woman who killed her I forget how many, 5 kids, 6 kids her son, the oldest was going to turn 8 and she recognized how sinful they were she was so concerned for them that she started killing her son her children in age order she took their lives so that they would immediately go to heaven she realized that if her children turned 8 years old, they would go they would be accountable and they might not make it to the ultimate celestial kingdom you see how dangerous this teaching could end up being?

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a mother killed all of her children to send them to heaven and Latter Day Saints can't say there's anything wrong with that, truthfully because though she murdered she murdered just to make sure that they made it to the right kingdom yikes let's look at their view on hell if we could the

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Latter Day Saints believe that there is a hell but it will be lightly that's your blank there, lightly populated there is a hell but it will be lightly populated after all if you think about it once someone gets a taste of hell only a fool would reject the second chance who's going to reject a second chance they recognize how devastating hell is and they're going to reject it?

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let's see in Alma 12 18, if we could put that up for a moment and we will read this one it says there these sons of perdition now notice what it says there these sons of perdition perhaps only a few in number will be resurrected but not all be redeemed from the power of Satan because they were filthy so as the prophet

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Alma said to them, they shall be as though there had been no redemption made for they cannot be redeemed according to God's justice and they cannot die seeing that there is no more corruption so what you have here in this passage a couple of things, one, you see they're saying these sons of perdition those that are going to be in hell, it's light, it's a few in number, that's not what the

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Bible says broad is the way of destruction, many will find it, broad many will find that but the narrow way is hard to find, what do you see?

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the contrast here, they have it completely opposite, most people will go to heaven only a few go to hell this is similar to others that would argue that basically who goes to hell?

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someone like me someone that understands the LDS doctrine and rejects it outright because it's heresy it's from the devil, that's why

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I would be going to hell in their belief the only people that are going to go there

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I also want to note in there who is it that has the power? we saw this earlier, that we have to be saved from Satan uh uh uh uh we don't need to be saved from Satan the

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Bible says we're saved from God, Jesus Christ made a payment of sin to God, that's who it was paid to it's

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God that we owe the debt of our sin, not Satan why do we owe Satan?

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think about that, Satan is just our brother, he's just another spirit, and one that's not even allowed to have a physical body what control does he have over us?

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sorry, I'm sorry I'm sorry, I'm using that critical thinking again, I know, I'm sorry I shouldn't do that, yikes uh let's just uh, all mankind will thus receive general salvation, accepting the sons of perdition following the resurrection, they will if we have this last one, it's

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Doctrine and Covenants 88 excuse me uh, so it says here and I gave the quote, actually

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I gave that whole text there, including the quote so it says, all mankind will receive general salvation, accepting the sons of perdition, following their resurrection, they will return to their own place uh, to enjoy that which they are willing to receive, because they are not willing to enjoy that which they might have received, so in other words, it's saying that they're not going to enjoy heaven, because they might have received it but because they reject it, they're not gonna get it, no, no, no, no, no so someone like me, we just can't get there because we're so wicked and evil we have the nerve to teach the truth as you're hearing this,

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I mean if you know your Bible, even a cursory even just nominally you know the Bible, you can see these glaring errors, they say that that we needed

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Joseph Smith to restore the fullness of the gospel that means that we don't have the gospel, why would they say that they're a

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Christian like us according to them, we don't have the fullness of the gospel we need the fullness of the gospel, right so you end up seeing that this is a very different gospel, it's a very different view, it's a different heaven by the way, because their view of heaven is of being

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God on another planet so you can have spirit babies and start this all over again that's a real problem because the

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Bible says that there is nothing else like that that God alone is the creator that no one else created with him and that he created all things just a slight problem

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I guess, alright so that is our class on Latter Day Saints next class, which will not be next week next class we will start on Jehovah Witnesses, how to handle those guys that knock on your door without the white shirts, but with the little watch towers, so no class next week, there will be no class next week there is again, if you want to follow us, have any questions you want answered the academy at striving for eternity dot org is the place to send emails, if you would like to send your emails there, also you can pick up a syllabus or my book,

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What Do They Believe at our store, store .strivingforeternity .org you can go there to pick up the book another thing you can do when you go to the website is you can contact us for one of our

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Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminars in that you will get all of the details of our

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Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar and lastly I will say that you can also support us by shopping on Amazon, you can go to smile .amazon

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.com and everything you buy at Amazon Amazon will donate half a percent to us, we have enjoyed getting those checks, it does help, so just do your normal shopping on Amazon but just do it through smile .amazon

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.com and they send the money to us, you are more than welcome by the way,

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I will say this to go to Striving for Eternity and donate go to the donate page, donate monthly if you can, help us, support us to be able to put these classes on around the world for free, we put it on YouTube so that people can watch it for free we are looking to give you a

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Bible College, Bible Seminary type education without needing to pay a dime but some of you could afford to, please consider helping us it helps us to be able to put on things like our

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Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminars in churches that can't afford it, one of the things we try to do different is we try to come into those churches that really can't afford the big name speakers because those people have large costs and we try to go into those churches to bring the good speaking in, the conferences, the seminars, but we do it based on the donations that we have so the more you donate, the more it helps us to do that, it also helps us to do some new things we are working on like discipling other ministries, helping to bring other ministries along and getting them to be able to have the funds to be able to do the things they need to do so they could start out, so next class, which will not be next week, why will it not be next week?

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Because I will be out at the CARM 20th anniversary that dinner on Saturday night,

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I will be staying out there with Matt Slick a little bit longer, we're going to be talking so you may want to listen to CARM radio, go to CARM .org

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and find out when the radio is on and listen, maybe I will be on the air with Matt, making fun of him and giving him a hard time and correcting all his bad theology like his view of baptism, no, just kidding but we probably will be together, it will be a good time and I look forward to being with my dear brothers, so we will not have class next week, but what

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I will say is just watch Facebook, go to the Facebook, the Striving Fraternity Facebook group because there is a chance, just saying, there is a chance that maybe

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I will do something like live stream his radio show or something like that, so we will see what we might do, we might have something going on Monday or maybe

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Matt and I will just turn the computer on and kick off some teaching and just he and I talking together might be profitable, so we might do something, but it will not be the

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Jehovah Witness class, that will be probably the week after, alright? So with that until next time, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.