Cultish: The Mormon Multiverse, Pt. 2

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Is Protestantism Heresy? Pt. 3 - The Pope | Collision w/ Jeff Durbin

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YouTube channel today, subscribe and hit the bell. See you there, guys. Welcome back to Cultish, everybody, where we are entering into the kingdom of the cults.

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In the first episode, we started talking about the Mormon multiverse, which I just love that title.

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I can't get over it, Aaron, but I'm so thankful again to have my dear brother here with me, still flying solo.

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Jerry is out on his adventures, so I'm hoping he is having a great time.

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And sorry about that, not having video in that last episode. That is my bad, but this one we're definitely recording this time.

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And you know what? Man, I'm just so stoked from that last episode. I don't even know where to begin in this one, but let's start off with God never sinning or possibly

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God sinning. That's where we left off, right, Aaron? Yes. All right. Let's continue that conversation.

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And I just want to throw you guys a website as well. You made a website. Can you tell them about it? Godneversinned .com.

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Very good. Very good. So let's continue the conversation and let's go into some more interesting things about the

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Mormon multiverse. Go ahead, brother. Yeah. So if you have a Mormon multiverse where there is a family tree of the genealogy of the gods, where each god is a domain -specific cosmic regional deity over a particular subset of spirit children.

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Sorry, kind of honed this language down. You have to be specific when you talk with Latter -day

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Saints, because a more general set of language can be easily redefined. Anyway, so I've tried to hone it down.

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But when you start chasing out the details of Mormon exaltation, you start realizing that some really interesting implications come out of this.

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So I call them exaltation dilemmas. If you have polytheism, what is then entailed by the

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Mormon flavor or form of polytheism? So I've tried to gather up maybe 20 or 30 of these, and maybe we'll just do a few.

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But one dilemma that I've tried to help discuss with Mormons is whether or not we will remain dependent on Heavenly Father forever.

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Okay. So what I'm trying to do here is tap into the conscience of people who are made in the image of God, who have the law of God written on their hearts.

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I think reflexively and conscientiously, Latter -day Saints know deep down that it's wrong to say that we will become independent of God ever.

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We are dependent creatures. I think reflexively, like theologically, I think Latter -day Saints might end up saying that we can become independent.

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But sort of reflexively, they want to maintain this Christian idea that we'll always be dependent on Heavenly Father.

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And families are forever, right? Right. Yeah. The problem here, though, is if you try to retain somewhat of a

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Christian semblance of Heaven, and you say, okay, we will forever remain dependent on Heavenly Father, then in the

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Mormon multiverse, you have to extrapolate that backward on Heavenly Father. And we also have this

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God -given intuition, this impulse, this law written on our hearts, that we ought not say that Heavenly Father is dependent on someone else.

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So Latter -day Saints reflexively want to say that Heavenly Father is independent, that He is not dependent on a previous generation of deities.

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So it's just a dilemma, though, because what's what's true of one becomes true of the other.

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Christians don't suffer from this dilemma, because we have a God who is infinitely independent and self -sufficient.

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He has never received a gift. Paul says at the end of Romans, quoting from the

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Old Testament, who has ever given him a gift that he might be repaid? Who has ever been his counselor?

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Isaiah says, who has ever taken God by the hand and taught him the path of justice? Right. There's something very unique and special about God, because He's never been informed.

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He's never been tutored or counseled or taught. He's never read a book. He's never been given a Christmas gift and said, wow, that's interesting.

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Thank you. I never had that before. He's not downstream. He's not a hand -me -down deity. He's not drinking from the well of a previous generation of the gods.

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God is the transcendent source of everything good, true, and beautiful. And we as Christians can say that heaven for us is not a kind of maturation event where we learn to become independent of God.

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Rather, we grow in our sense of dependence on God, whereas Latter -day Saints have to sort of pick one or the other.

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So how does that work too? If we're going to take an eternal progression of gods, and Elohim had a father who then had a father, then had a father, then had a father spiritually, who is then also a god.

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So God essentially would be always learning, right? That means the

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God before Elohim would be more of a god and have more knowledge than Elohim and the God before him would have more than him and more than him, more than him.

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How does that work? Is that an exaltation issue? It is. It's a great question. I do have to help provide some background.

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Yeah, please. In Latter -day Saint theology, there are simply different views. Latter -day Saints tend to assume that they have a somewhat uniform, cohesive theology, and that we

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Protestants suffer from a diversity of ideas about these things. Well, in actuality, on these basic things,

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Protestants don't have any diversity. Whether God is learning, whether God ever learned as God, we don't suffer from any diversity on these issues.

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There's one God. We have the basics of the Trinity as a part of our unity. But among Latter -day

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Saints, there's actually a couple different views on this issue. One, you could say, is championed by Brigham Young.

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In Brigham Young's view, all the gods are always progressing in all of their attributes, that the only alternative to progressing is diminishing.

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So for him, the only way that a god could remain a god is that if he grows in his power and in his knowledge.

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So for him, God is still learning. This is a position that subsequent

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Latter -day Saint leaders came to reject. So Joseph Fielding Smith, who was an influence on a

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Mormon apostle named Bruce McConkie, they taught that Heavenly Father was not learning.

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In fact, Bruce McConkie, LDS apostle, gave a very famous speech at BYU called the

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Seven Deadly Heresies, where he says it's a heresy to believe that Heavenly Father is still growing in knowledge and power.

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So when you go to the street, it's just a roll of the dice, really. I mean, you know, whether the

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Latter -day Saint believes that God is still growing in his attributes, or whether he has maxed out in his attributes.

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So among Latter -day Saints, though, you'll get this idea that salvation, ultimately in the fullest sense, is eternal progression, and to cease progressing is a form of damnation.

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So that's why they would say even the second and third levels of heaven are a form of damnation, because you cease to progress in the fullest of ways.

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Well, even Latter -day Saints who champion this principle end up saying that, well, maybe God is not progressing internally with respect to his attributes.

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Maybe he's only continuing, he achieves a kind of maxed out God status, but then he continues to progress in what you might call eternal increase.

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It's the divine MLM, where he has more and more and more beings under him who achieve glory and godhood, and he helps beings who help beings who help beings.

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So it's like this pyramid scheme, I'm just being facetious, but yeah, where there's more glorious deification happening beneath him, and that increases a sort of external glory, but his internal attributes are not being improved upon.

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But like I said, there's different Latter -day Saint views on this, and some of these exaltation dilemmas are particular to one of those views.

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Okay, so this has got me thinking about eschatology here, the belief of the end times.

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We, as biblical Christians would say, use the Bible to try to create these beliefs, not create them ourselves, but find them through scripture.

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But within regards to Mormonism and eternal progression and having spirit children and not diminishing,

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I think a form of eschatology almost lends itself to the fact that, according to LDS theology, children will stop being begotten by heavenly father and heavenly mother, that there will be a point in time that the consummation of all things ends the plan of salvation, that there won't be any more procreation in the pre -existence.

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Maybe this is an appropriate time to bring up the dilemma of whether or not there are a finite supply of intelligences in Mormonism or an infinite supply.

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So what are intelligences here? I got into a conversation with an LDS man last Thursday, and I was telling Aaron about it afterwards, and he said intelligences are like wisps, that's like the best he could put it.

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But let's, help me understand what an intelligence is. So I apologize for the nuance, there are different LDS views on this.

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This is the Mormon multiverse, guys, that's where we're at. Someone should write a book on the different LDS theologies.

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There is no one LDS theology. Whenever a Mormon says we believe, he typically just means I believe and some people

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I know believe. But so Brigham Young believed that intelligence was a substance out of which new persons were conceived via the union of Heavenly Father and one of his wives.

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So in the heavenly realm, there are gods conceiving new people into existence from the substance which is called intelligence.

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Orson Pratt believed that intelligence was a collection of particles, individual particles, each of which is like its own individuality and that individuals are kind of a coalescing of these particles into collective beings.

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That's my paraphrase on it. So just to help understand here, so we have Brigham Young who was holding to the flesh and bone that's achieved by Elohim by being obedient to the gospel ordinances and principles, whatever earth he was on before, looking at it through the

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King Follett discourse. So through a body of flesh and bone, he's able to conceive with one of his wives to grab from this intelligence soup, which turns it into a spiritual offspring.

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And you have your, as an ego, an identity, a person, an individual, you have your beginning as a person is at the conception event in Brigham's view, in the pre -existence.

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Yeah, so you had a genuine beginning in some sense. In Orson Pratt's view, it's a little bit idiosyncratic.

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Joseph Smith does not seem to have distinguished between spirits and intelligences.

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And Joseph Smith seems to have believed that you did not have a beginning. You were genuinely co -eternal with all the other gods, all the other intelligences, all the other persons.

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So in Joseph Smith's view, you are uncreated. There was no spirit conception event where you had a personal beginning.

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So I mentioned in the first episode podcast with you and I that there was a kind of a reconstruction era in the late 1800s, early 1900s with respect to Mormon theology.

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And this is when they kind of choose to get rid of the lectures on faith. They choose to reinterpret the book of Mormon.

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There's a statement called the first presidency statement on the father and the son.

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It was, I think, penned in large part by James Talmadge. And that's where he tries to redefine what it means for Jesus to be the eternal father.

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And where they really arrive at a naming convention for Elohim equals father and Jehovah equals son.

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That's a very late Mormonism. That's not really mid 19th century

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Mormonism. That's a later development, which is an attempt to sort of repair the damage that Brigham Young did with his

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Adam God doctrine. A lot of weird confusion going on about who's Adam, who's Elohim, who's Jehovah.

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And James Talmadge is rejecting Adam God and trying to synthesize all of the

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Mormon standard works. And so this is where you get, in part, due also to B .H.

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Roberts. So the big three Mormon intellectuals that helped in this era of Mormon theologizing were

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B .H. Roberts, John Witzow, and James Talmadge. And at this time is where you get this view that you have intelligences who are eternal identities, persons.

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Well, then that aspect of it was already taught by Joseph Smith. But what they're doing is they're attaching this idea that at spirit conception, which is something you're going to get more explicitly, at least as a concept from Brigham Young, they're kind of trying to put those two ideas together.

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So that's where they're saying, okay, when Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother conceived you, it's not that you had your beginning.

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It's that your spirit body was added on. You kind of had an upgrade.

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And so you went from intelligence to having a spirit body. And then the next stage of that is a spirit body getting a body of flesh and bones.

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This is where you get sort of a modern summary of Mormon theology is the

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B .H. Roberts, James Talmadge model of intelligence, spirit, and then flesh and bones.

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Yeah. So it's spirit children, and then you enter into mortal probation with blood and everything, and then obedient to the gospel ordinances and principles, you receive an exalted body.

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And that's after the consummation of all things, right? Like in the end, you get that glorified body of flesh and bones, so you can have your own.

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So you could beget spirit babies. Yeah. So you can beget spirit babies. Okay. But sort of the explicit idea of, you know,

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I think some Mormon theologians call it, I think it's the vaporous spirit birth. That's really a

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Brigham thing. And I mean, some Mormon theologians get grumpy with Brigham Young for extrapolating or kind of extending what

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Joseph Smith taught. And so modern Mormon theology, whether people really realize it or not, it's sort of the result of trying to repair all the damage that Brigham Young did and synthesizing all of Mormon scriptures.

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So back to your question though, about intelligences, if you take, I don't know if they, I don't know if it's called the mixing up terms of the tripartite.

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Yeah. Yeah. Tripartite. There's tripartite and bipartite. In the Christian vocabulary, that's referring to the question of whether your body, soul, and spirit are just a dual substance being.

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I might be getting the word wrong the way BH Roberts have used, but it's the idea in different, the word differently used, maybe it's triadic or tripartite.

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In that scheme, it's referring to intelligence and then spirit body and then body of flesh and bones and so forth.

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So if you take the view that the intelligences are eternal, that they're not created and they never had a beginning, you have this really interesting discussion about whether or not the supply of intelligences, which are already persons, is infinite or finite.

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If it's finite, then at some point, when all the gods are sort of drawing from this pool of intelligences.

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That was going to be my question. Is it just one big pool that all the gods draw from, or does each God get their own pool?

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Right, right. So if it's finite, then you, some, at some point you run out of gods to big, to, to foster into exaltation.

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Um, and if it's infinite, then you have, you end up having these intelligences who never get a chance.

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They're always in the back of the line, if you were, well, they're, they're always at some point in the line and there's an infinite sort of, um, series ahead of them.

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And so you have these, these intelligences that just sort of sit there in the pool of intelligences who never get adopted.

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And it's interesting because you talk about what does it mean to be a child of God? If it's true that our intelligences as standard

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Mormonism teaches are eternal, then in what sense are you really the child of God?

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Because Mormons get really excited to say, I'm a literal child of God. Well, are you a child of God?

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Because if, if, if your intelligence, if your fundamental self was always what it was, it's not owing.

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It's really not even made in the image of God. It wasn't even made. It wasn't begotten. It wasn't conceived. So in that organized, it's organized and added to an upgraded, but you as you, as the you, you, you, the fundamental self, you are not made in the image of God.

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In that scheme, your, your spirit body was, and the other extended parts of you are in the image of God in some sense.

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But in the Christian view, the whole integrated self is in the image of God. And it's, it's, it's way better.

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The whole fundamental personality of the human self is imaging by reflection, the character and being of God where by design, by purpose, by essence, in some analogous way, we're meant to be the embodied representatives of God on earth.

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And that's a holistic statement. It's not as though our bodies are in the image of God, but our spirits aren't. It's not as though the soul or the self or the fundamental ego is not an image of God.

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No, I, I as I, I am in the image of God. Mormonism in that BH Roberts sense can't actually say that they use the language for it.

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They can't actually say that. Yeah. I mean, it just kind of raises, they're so proud to be in the image of God, but it's like, well,

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I actually think that's more true of us than it is for you. Cause I can thank God for creating me, not just upgrading me, but for giving me my very

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Paul quotes a pagan poet in act 17 in him, we live and move and have our being.

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So I, I can thank God for my very existence. I was brought into being by a loving and free act of an omnipotent creator, who is goodness himself.

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You can't say that if you are eternal and you're co -eternal with God and you're fundamentally uncreated, you can't give

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God credit for that. You can't relate to him as your fundamental creator of the self. You can't actually say your intelligence was made in his image.

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19:47

Yeah. Yeah. It, it posits the fact that if God has to do this, then there is a law outside of God that is guiding him that he must abide to.

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And like you said, there's no creature creator distinction. There's only a form of upgrading and organizing within the

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LDS worldview. Whereas as Christians, we go, well, God out of his good, mere pleasure created us to glorify him and enjoy him forever out of nothing that we did or no plan that he ought to follow, but by just his nature wanted to create us.

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And that's an amazing gift for us as Christians to be able to behold that we're created in the image of God, to glorify him and join forever.

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We're fallen creatures. And though we don't deserve God's grace, he died for us on the cross so that we could know him and know him forever.

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Literally. That's a, that's actually an amazing thing. Yeah. Yeah. Can continue continuing on. What are some more dilemmas within eternal progression here?

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You just touched on one. I'll set it up by saying that Mormons think very ill of the

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Nicene Creed and the way this gets expressed. Well, first of all, Joseph Smith said that the

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Trinity was a monster, three headed monster. Yeah. By the way, this is, I would heartily discourage my

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Christian friends from using a three headed monster analogy for the Trinity. That is an atrocious way to give an analogy to the

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Trinity. Please don't do that. There are much more historic and biblical ways of, of depicting the

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Trinity with helpful language that doesn't resort to pagan, blasphemy, blasphemous images.

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Yeah. Or depictions. So a lot, a very common way that Latter -day

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Saints will decry the Trinity is to say that our God is without body parts or passions.

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And I think that what that connotes for the average Latter -day Saint is that our God is not personal.

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He's too abstract. He's something more like just an idea, or they'll speak of them as being kind of like a gas or an abstraction.

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So they, when they think about our God, they think of someone who's ultimately impersonal, doesn't, isn't actually loving, cannot relate.

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And it's, it's interesting because when you really zoom out to the Mormon multiverse pick great title for a book, by the way, when you zoom out to the

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Mormon multiverse, you have all these gods who are abiding by and submitting to this eternal law.

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And this eternal law is not sourced in any ultimate transcendent deity. Right.

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So to your point, you have this sort of might even call it a platonic form or this, this, this idea or governing principle.

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Sub apriori. Yes. It's the apriori of apriori. It's over all the things and all the things have to conform to it.

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And it's not personal. If I could just use this language that they Mormons use against us, it's this eternal law is without body parts or passions.

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Now, if you say your God is the thing that ultimately governs the reality that you're in, your

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God is the ultimate reality that governs the reality. And if that's true, the real God of Mormonism is an eternal law that is abstract.

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It's platonic. It's impersonal. Eternal law cannot love you.

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Eternal law doesn't send a son to die for you. Eternal law doesn't have goodness in himself that is toward you.

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Eternal law isn't thinking about you. Eternal law is this, this, this uncreated book, if you will.

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If I could just use a metaphor, it's just the brute facts of how the universe works that the gods are mediating or instrumenting or implementing.

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But the gods don't know who to give credit for, for the eternal law. It's not sourced in a personal

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God. Whereas for Christians, we are exempt from this terrible dilemma where we accidentally find ourselves with an abstract divine law deity, if you want to call it that.

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There's an ancient dilemma called the euthyphro dilemma, where the question is posed, are the gods good because they conform to an external standard of goodness?

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Or do they sort of by fiat create arbitrarily an external standard of goodness?

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Both options are terrible because in the one, you have gods that are submitting to a higher law. So why even call them gods?

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And in the other, goodness becomes arbitrary because God just waves his hand and just arbitrarily creates the standard of goodness.

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For the Christian, we cut through and we split the horns of this dilemma because goodness is sourced in the very character and being of God himself from who he is, is grounded in his very character.

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The law that God issues is a reflection of his very character and being his essence.

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I had an atheist friend who once uh, looked at me and he said, Aaron, when you say

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God is good, you're really just saying that God is God. And I smiled and I said, exactly like God is not good because he conforms to an external standard of goodness.

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So Mormons have kind of accidentally ended up with a

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God without body parts or passions. Whereas Christians have an infinitely, uh, good

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God who is rich in his tri -personal being. Yeah. Amen. Who is, um, who has relations, uh, father, son, and Holy spirit, uh, begetting, uh, you might say, uh, proceeding, uh, spirating those old

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Trinitarian terms, uh, God who loves creation and then acts out of the free infinite depth of his rich personal being.

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Whereas the gods of Mormonism are these pitiful, exalted supermen who are, um, trying to obey this impersonal, uh, law called eternal law.

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That's a, that's amazing. Correct me if I'm saying heresy to you. It's like, when I think of the Trinity, I think about even God's law where a testimony is built on two to three independent lines of testimony.

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It's like the father bears witness to the son, the sun bears witness to the father, the Holy spirit bears witness. That's there's two to three independent lines of testimony and personal intimate relationship.

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Prostantheon like in John one with God himself, you know, self -sustaining everything comes from him within Christianity.

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And it seems like with regards to Mormonism is they actually, like you said, stumbled upon creating the false religions that Jesus Christ conquered in Colossians two.

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Like it's those false religions that found the ultimate meeting in Christ, even through philosophy through the

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Greeks, right? Like an act 17, where he says to the unknown God statue that you have created, well, this is who he is because philosophically, uh, mentally

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Christianity is the supreme, uh, standard of all thought processes in existence.

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Like there's no, there's no way around it. Anyone who tries to reason outside of the biblical truth and the biblical

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God ultimately gets reduced to absurdity in their own reasoning. It seems like Mormonism recreated religions that Christ had already destroyed, right?

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Like the Greeks and their gods, like you said, they created that dilemma where it's like, well, is there just a law above them?

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There's no other God above those gods, but Jesus Christ in the incarnation gave meaning and proof to the fact that there is gave meaning to life.

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And he gave meaning to death in the incarnation, which is absolutely amazing. Is that kind of what you're, what you're talking about a little bit?

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I think so. I mean, one problem that Mormonism has is it really doesn't know what to do with the very nature of scripture, um, because they don't have an ultimate self -attesting, self -authenticating being.

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So the whole idea of God speaking words that are self -authenticating and self -evidencing and are, you know, why is this so?

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Because God said so. Christians are much more comfortable with that because there's nothing beneath or above God's word.

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There's nothing deeper when you bump up against the foundation of God's self -revealing authority.

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Um, you don't have to go deeper and say, okay, but, but why should I believe you when God speaks?

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Um, he, he provides a lot of confirmatory, I might call it secondary or corroborating evidences, but God's revelation of himself is that at the foundation of it all.

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Um, and Christians prioritize the verbal expressions, the very, the very nature of inspiration and of scripture is that God with omnipotence, um, inspires humans in a way that super intends the human will, um, to retain human personality, but to speak the very mind of God in words that don't,

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I like to push this hard is when God speaks, his words retain their authority in an enduring fashion.

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They're durable and perpetual. Hebrews says the word of God is living and active. Um, all of it is fulfilled.

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All of it remains evident, uh, relevant. Uh, Paul says all scripture is God breathed. It remains profitable for training, for a rebuke for righteousness.

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Whereas in Mormonism, you have these polytheistic deities who speak words that seem to kind of lose their power over time.

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They, they need sort of fresh, um, you know, sort of infusions of revelation.

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They, you know, the, the, the words of the prophets every six months sort of have to be re -upped or, uh, you'll get a lot of, uh, discussion in Mormonism about that's not official, that's only policy, or, um, that's not relevant to my salvation or that when he said that he was just an apostle or he was just speaking as a man, or, you know, that was relevant.

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It's very odd because for Christians, I mean, Mormons are really confused because they're like, you guys have the

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Bible, but like, you need something new now. Like, uh, it's kind of a dead book. It's, it's kind of lost its luster.

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It's sort of, it's useful. It's inspiring, but it's not as active and as relevant as, as, as something fresh would be.

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But for Christians, the word of God remains fresh. Why do we believe that? Because the very nature of the word of God is an extension of the very being of God.

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The nature of inspiration and the nature of the, the revealed words of scripture are what they are because God is not a liar, are what they are because God does not change.

29:59

So we can, we can stand on an apostolic foundation. Jesus comes, he's

30:04

God's ultimate mic drop. He, he, he gives us foundational apostles and prophets who speak foundational words, which give us a foundational deposit, uh, upon which the, the church can stand.

30:16

We're not continuing to build a foundation. The foundation has been laid. Amen. We don't, you don't, uh, side note.

30:24

This is, I read this morning. We're not building a tower of Babel here. Yeah, exactly. The foundation upon, you know, really, uh, just a side note is this morning,

30:32

I was reading about the new LDS temples and they're using a modular construction strategy such that they no longer have a cornerstone.

30:41

Oh, what? And so they no longer need the prior, they would kind of have a, a ceremony that would dedicate the temple where they did something with the cornerstone.

30:53

Um, and they, but they don't have any, they don't, they no longer use cornerstones and they're using this sort of like easy modular, uh, reproducible strategy for quickly.

31:04

Eco friendly for climate change. It's, it does not remind me of Solomon's temple.

31:09

Does not remind me of even Herod's temple. I mean, it's just, um, it, it, it, it's, it's, it's rich irony that they're doing this without a cornerstone.

31:20

Now there's a lot you could pull out from there, uh, in a, in a metaphoric way. Um, but for Christians, the

31:27

Holy Spirit inspired word of God being given as a gift to spirit and dwelled

31:33

Christians is a durable foundation until the very return of Christ. Whereas for Mormons, the very nature of inspiration, it can't be as robust or active.

31:43

It's more like milk on the shelf that has an expert expiration date. It's keep having to replace things and change things up line upon line precept upon precept, except there's always more coming in.

32:01

And it kind of makes sense too. If you think about it, if they believe that ontologically they are

32:06

God, right in embryo is Spencer W. Kimball puts it in the miracle of forgiveness. That means even their own words are authoritative.

32:14

And as on such a same level, I mean, as a Christian, we think in absolutes. So I think even philosophically, we take things, try to, we try to get it to the logical end of their thought process.

32:24

So if an LDS person is a God in embryo and ontologically, they are part of this intelligence soup, which is

32:30

God, uh, then even their own words are inspired, you know, and that kind of has to create some level of confusion within themselves because they are what

32:41

Elohim is in the long run. Hopefully they are, if they're obedient to the gospel ordinances and principles enough, does that make sense?

32:49

Cause what I'm saying, they can't really have an inspiration above themselves when ontologically they really are the standard.

32:56

There's no weird, there's no transcendent truth teller, right? There's sort of a super advanced truth teller that needs corroboration and confirmation.

33:04

But, um, if I, I would need to kind of think about that. Cause I, if I understand the spirit of your point, um, if we think of ourselves as embryonic deities, that probably has a downstream effect on our epistemology and the confidence we have in our own ability.

33:18

And I like to reason, I like to ask Mormons, do you believe your feelings are infallible? How do you know this is true? I feel it to be true.

33:25

Uh, how did you come to believe that? Well, I have an internal testimony that it's the case. Um, do you think you could be wrong?

33:30

No, I can't be wrong. How do you know that? Because I know if every fiber of my being, um, in my own words, it's kind of an emotional epiphany and it's like, well, do you trust your emotional epiphany to be finally authoritative?

33:43

And this is, it's interesting. You know, I wonder if that is connected somehow connected to the embryonic deity.

33:49

I'm just thinking off the cuff here, you know, like that's, that's when it makes sense to go, go back to the foundational statement too.

33:55

So we, as Christians, in terms of a solar script Torah and the way God laid upon us, the foundation, the apostles prophets to what we have now, what we build it upon the

34:06

LDS personal go, well, yeah, that's why you have 47 ,000 different denominations. We hear it all the time on our YouTube comments for apology of Utah.

34:13

Uh, so how, how do we, how do we get around that? How are we supposed to think about that? Yeah, it's interesting. Paul in Romans, sorry, in Ephesians and Ephesians four, he says that Christ has gifted.

34:23

The church has given the church apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists. Why? Well, he goes on to talk about equipping the saints for the work of ministry and helping the body of Christ become more mature as we conform to his image, to his character.

34:41

Um, so it's interesting. Paul is gifting the church with men who will help, you know, in Ephesians two, he specifies that the prophets and apostles are the foundational offices.

34:51

And then in Ephesians four, he's got the larger list, but it's the pastors, teachers, teachers, and evangelists who build upon the foundation, right?

34:59

So in Paul's own view, we have something foundational, and then we have an ongoing need for maturation, unity, sanctification.

35:09

So we're already spring -loaded in scripture to anticipate some forms of diversity, division, need for growth, um, need for maturity, but, um, that, that, so you might think objectively in terms of denominations or local churches or different hierarchies of polity and, and leadership, but really the, the substantial spiritual unity of Christians goes deeper than these superficial structures.

35:36

It has more to do with the organic spiritual unity we have in Christ maturing.

35:42

So when I think about the worst forms of disunity in Christianity, I'm not really thinking about denominations.

35:48

I'm even thinking about a local church where you've got this just maybe tragic relational breaks of relationship.

35:54

Envy, strife, bitterness, jealousy, things like that. Yeah. So I think we should think more in terms of that.

36:00

And it's counterintuitive, but when you have Christians who say, I have different views on Calvinism and Arminianism or different views of eschatology, and at different points in Christian history, we say, you know, for the sake of peace, we're going to fellowship over here.

36:13

You're going to fellowship over there. Well, it might not seem like intuitive to you, but I actually get along pretty well with Christians across the denominational picket fences.

36:23

I want to know what he talks about having brick walls and picket fences, Christian local churches and denominations between genuine

36:29

Christians are picket fences. Yeah. And we have very good neighborly relationships and we have a substantial shared spiritual union.

36:36

The brick walls come when you get to heresy or apostasy, you know, LGBTQ affirmation, rejecting the

36:43

Trinity. So that's how Christians are thinking. And we're not necessarily freaked out about, you know, distinctions between local churches or different church governments.

36:53

I have a kind of spiritual man crush on my Presbyterian brothers. I love the

36:58

Presbyterians. They're like 80 % of all my historical heroes. I'm a reformed Baptist. I love historical

37:05

Christianity. I want to affectionately pull in and admire and draw from sometimes very problematic

37:13

Christians who had very messed up views on certain issues. But there's a common faith, one

37:19

Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Lord, one God over all who is in all through all.

37:26

I share a substantial spiritual unity with people who share the same Trinity that I do and the same gospel.

37:32

And we could lock arms and give each other the modern version of a holy kiss and embrace each other as fellow brothers, even across the picket fences within Mormonism.

37:42

You have a kind of a unity of hierarchy and you have a unity of a singular denomination.

37:49

But I don't think Latter -day Saints realize just how divided they are internally with respect to theology and doctrine and ideas.

37:58

If they're going to define a denomination by a distinction of thought, a variance of opinion about certain theology or doctrine,

38:07

Mormonism by that definition has, you could say millions of denominations. Mormons have very fundamental, internal, varied disagree.

38:18

They diverge. They're gods in conflict. Yeah. And they have very, very different.

38:25

You talked to one Latter -day Saint about whether God was a sinner, whether a heavenly mother is a part of the Godhead, whether we become gods in the fullest sense, whether there's an infinite regress of gods, whether we're going to have spirit babies when we become gods, what kind of repentance is required for forgiveness?

38:42

Was Spencer W. Kimball speaking truth when he wrote The Miracle of Forgiveness? Was Adam God necessarily wrong?

38:49

Was Brigham Young wrong about God still learning? Was Bruce McConkie's Seven Deadly Heresies an accurate view of heresies or was he actually teaching some?

38:58

I mean, it's interesting. Some Latter -day Saint leaders teach things as public truth that later get denounced as heresies by subsequent

39:04

Mormon prophets and apostles. That's what I'm thinking. When we picket fences as Christians, the reason why the picket fence is up is because we have an exegetical difference through the

39:14

Word of God. The Word of God is the actual standard. And then we can lay the brick wall because we go, that's not in the

39:19

Word of God. We separate ourselves from that. That is not orthodox. Within Mormonism, it seems like the brick wall is placed by the prophet in terms of, let's say, the

39:28

RLDS, the Apostolic United Brethren, Warren Jeff's clan.

39:35

That's where their distinctions are on the brick wall. But internally, within each one of those camps, they can't put up picket fences because there's no actual standard.

39:43

They're not very public or visible about their differences. It gets pushed under the rug.

39:50

I used to go to the yearly symposiums for the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology. It was a very unique experience because you could hear

39:57

Mormon philosophers and theologians just hash out huge Mormon theological differences.

40:03

But it makes no difference because they don't actually speak for the authority of the church, right? They don't, and they don't typically have public discussions of that nature.

40:09

You don't really get a lot of visibility in Mormonism on the private internal differences. Do they still do that? Not the

40:15

SMs at PT or TP. They don't so much. You have to find it in different ways. It's more underground.

40:21

You really have to know where to look for it. The big point, though, is that Mormonism lacks a substantial theological unity internally.

40:28

Just to press the point, in Mormonism, you can be in a same -sex marriage now and not necessarily be counted as apostate.

40:37

Just to press the point here, you can be an atheist in Mormonism, and that doesn't yet suffice as grounds for excommunication.

40:46

You can deny the resurrection of Christ, and they will try to keep you on the rolls. They will not excommunicate you.

40:53

They will try to retain you as a member of record even if you deny all the fundamental truths of Mormonism.

40:59

If you stop paying your tithe, will they excommunicate you? No. There's very few things that'll get you kicked out.

41:04

Maybe adultery or publicly opposing the LDS leadership. But in terms of the substantial creedal tests or belief differences, if you say,

41:15

I don't believe Joseph Smith is a prophet, as long as you're already a member, that's not going to be the reason they kick you out of the church.

41:24

Their unity really isn't over the same things we have unity over. It's just a different way of doing life.

41:31

There's a lot of people in Utah who say they're Mormon who are attending who don't believe.

41:37

We talk to students at BYU who say, I'm a junior. I just want to finish my degree.

41:43

I don't believe any of this anymore. I still go to ward and my bishop knows and he's just helping me sort of finish this out.

41:51

I've met plenty of Mormons in Utah who are closet doubters, closet agnostics, closet progressive liberals, some who are openly transgender and they maintain their membership.

42:03

The boundary maintenance is different. So for Christians, the spiritual unity is more substantially about our shared belief.

42:10

It's not about having the one true church. It's about having the one true Jesus. It's about having a relationship with and a submissive faith and a trust and a union with Christ.

42:23

Even if we're across the picket fences, Mormonism is not a picket fence. It is a brick wall. Mormonism looks at the rest of Christianity and says, y 'all are downstream from the great apostasy.

42:32

You lack any authority to conduct any of your ordinances. And you don't even have the gift of the Holy ghost.

42:38

That's a brick wall. That's a, that's kind of a violent spiritual divorce. And Mormonism comes back and says, but can we still sit at the table with you?

42:46

And like this, like a religious table fellowship table and Christianity says, I don't know if you remember this, but in the 19th century, you said all our creeds were an abomination.

42:56

All the professors are corrupt and all our churches were wrong. And you've been sending missionaries to us and teaching us that we don't have the gift of the

43:03

Holy ghost and that we can only get that through Mormon ordinances. That's a very divisive thing.

43:08

Christians enjoy. We, okay. We have a ton of disunity issues we have to work through, but we're very public about those things.

43:15

Typically where there's a whole lot more public dirty laundry, especially in Protestantism. The dirty laundry of Mormonism is, is there.

43:22

The division is there. It's just not as public. And I don't think they're being as honest with themselves about the lack of spiritual unity they share together, man.

43:32

Yeah. Just, just you describing that makes me think of, cause our episode title, maybe a future book by Aaron here, the multiverse of Mormonism.

43:39

It's like, not only in theology, is there a multiverse, but even in their own minds, you know, and how do you sort through that type of madness?

43:48

Like individually, personally, because you can talk to an LDS person and they'll give you straight faced answers.

43:55

Like, yes, I know Joseph Smith is a prophet. They give you their testimony. They bear it to you.

44:01

But truly the Bible says that these people who deny the true Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross for their sins, they actually don't have peace with God.

44:10

So how do you sort through this multiverse of madness really just to steal something from Marvel here to the

44:18

LDS person that you're talking to? Well, to appeal to them through the word of God, because like what Aaron was saying is that it's sharper, it's living than any two edged sword.

44:26

It cuts to the division between bone and marrow, soul and spirit. You got to appeal to them as God says they are and believe that about them.

44:35

Like you can say everything you want about your testimony, but truly God describes you as somebody who's confused, who's lost, who's broken, who can't find true purpose within the religion that you have found yourself because you're denying the effectual grace that God has given you through the

44:53

God man, Jesus Christ and his full death on the cross for your sins to be forgiven and to actually have peace with God.

45:00

They don't have it. So it makes sense that this disunity within even Mormonism in this multiverse is a reflection of their relationship with God, right?

45:10

So the disunity between Christian brothers isn't in our unity in the Holy Spirit. What it is is in our differences and exegetical approaches to scripture because like you said, we're submissive to scripture and we want to honor

45:23

God in what our convictions are and God honors that. There may be differences between denominations, but we do not differ on who

45:30

Jesus is, who is God, and how we are saved. And those are the most important distinctions really.

45:37

Some spirited disagreements between genuine Christians are in large part fueled by a shared unity over a belief in the importance of the inerrancy of scripture and a love for core doctrines.

45:48

It's like because we're so unified over the basics and because we are such a vigorous, like we want to defend the authority of scripture and the inerrancy of scripture.

46:00

It's in that context that we come to the same table and then hash out other differences for our love for God.

46:06

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's good, man. That's just making me think. I mean, that's my personal experience too.

46:12

And like talking to these LDS people every week on the streets, like I'm finding myself asking them more often than not, what do you believe?

46:21

Because they don't all believe the same thing. In 2005, 2006, when

46:27

I was talking to Latter -day Saints, Mormonism was more relevant. Mormons were more unapologetically

46:33

Mormon. They were more clearly Mormon. They understood their own beliefs a bit more. Today, whether you're at BYU or Provo City Center Temple or Temple Square, even if somebody says they're

46:45

Mormon, more in the habit now of asking diagnostic questions to kind of figure out where they're really at.

46:50

I like to ask, if you weren't Mormon, what religion would you be? Ooh, that's a good one. What's your backup religion?

46:55

I'm going to put that in my back pocket, Aaron. I'm stealing that. It helps sort of expose spiritually where they're really at, where they're kind of leaning toward.

47:02

A lot of these people are already exiting. They don't even know it. A lot of these people are already on their 10 year track of exiting.

47:10

Sometimes you could just fish that out. Do you have any big doubts about the LDS faith? What has most challenged you? And sometimes they just gush out like,

47:17

I have no idea if this is even... And they might be defensive of Mormonism, but if you're being maybe you could say pastoral or just being a good listener, you're like,

47:31

I don't think arguing about Mormonism, which I'm willing to do, but I don't think that's really the issue here. I think they need the gospel.

47:39

They need a simple presentation of, I would say, grace as connected to the person and work of Christ as connected to the very being of God.

47:50

And one of the ways I've enjoyed doing that lately is talking about how God, because he is the ultimate first, original, most high transcendent deity, he has within himself the infinite richness of being out of which to freely give.

48:06

In other words, God's not a hand -me -down deity. He's not just a conduit of blessings from the universe. It's not as though God is teaching you what he himself learned.

48:15

It is more blessed to give than it is to receive. And God is the best giver is the one who's never been given anything because the best giver is the one who has had everything in himself to give.

48:27

He is infinitely rich in his own being. He's not a secondary deity. He does no familytree .com

48:33

entry for God where there's ancestors above. There's no ancestry of deities prior to our deity.

48:41

Our God is not merely regifting what he's been gifted. The best giver is the most high trinity.

48:48

The one that's not obligated to give anything. Exactly. He's most free to give because he's under zero obligations.

48:54

He's most able to give because he has everything within himself. That God, that's the God of the

48:59

Bible. The God of Romans 11, for from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever.

49:05

Amen. Paul also says, who has ever given him a gift that he might be repaid? Who has ever been his counselor?

49:12

That's the God of Romans 4 where he justifies ungodly people. He takes very dirty, filthy, unqualified, spotty in their repentance, weak in their faith.

49:23

Lord, I believe, help my own belief. He takes very cringy, ill -equipped, unqualified, beggar type pitiful creatures who have deep sin issues.

49:37

Even King David's who have murdered and committed adultery. He offers them an absolute free and rich forgiveness on account only of the blood of Christ, freely offered as an immediate gift to those who would empty their cup, empty their hands and say,

49:56

Lord, I'm not righteous. You're righteous. You're worthy. I'm unworthy. You're the giver. I'm the receiver.

50:01

I'm needy. You're the provider. You accomplished the final work of the,

50:08

Jesus accomplished the final work of the cross. He's my final prophet, priest, and King.

50:14

I need you. It's the unsophisticated help of a believer whose faith is very unsophisticated.

50:23

It's just a childlike, you're everything, I'm nothing. God gets all the glory in that.

50:30

He gets all the bragging rights. All the attention goes to God. He's the 100 % sufficient one.

50:37

We're the 100 % needy ones. It makes all the more sense that the biblical God is completely sufficient in himself, independent, not needy, never learned, infinitely rich in his being, tri -personal.

50:51

It makes infinite more sense that that God would provide free grace to pitiful creatures, lusty, arrogant, proud, problematic, cringey believers like you and me who need grace.

51:04

It makes infinite more sense that that great Trinitarian God would delight in showing himself to be the best of all gift givers.

51:13

It makes a whole lot more sense that in a polytheistic scheme where you have deities who've, through a works -based system, have learned to be gods.

51:23

It makes a whole lot more sense that in that system, you end up with a works -based salvation because they're teaching you how to conform to this impersonal law that is trying to assist you to become worthy enough, qualified enough, meritorious enough, for you to become worshipped someday as a deity.

51:40

Sorry for interrupting your currently scheduled programming, but did you know you can go to apologiastudios .com and become an all -access member?

51:47

With all -access membership, you get exclusive content from all of Apologia Studios' productions, not to mention

51:53

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52:03

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52:14

and become an all -access member. Now back to the programming. Wow, yeah, that's what it reminds me of Romans, I believe it's eight, where it's

52:21

God is both the just and the justifier, so he is the one that freely gives righteousness through faith, but he's also the judge, and that means when he gives us faith and grants us the righteousness of Christ and Christ takes our sins, since he is the judge who's freely able to condemn, he declares us just in his mercy, grace, and righteousness, so there's no one then who can condemn us because the judge doesn't even condemn us anymore because Christ has fully satisfied that work, but with regards to LDS theology,

52:51

God isn't the just. It's this eternal law of progression, and that's impersonal. That's something that is under obligation to serve by creating spirit offspring who then are obedient to the gospel ordinances and principles, become a god themselves one day to be under the eternal law as well.

53:09

It's a really weird, interesting dynamic. I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. It's such a hard thing to wrap your head around when you're a

53:18

Christian, never growing up in LDS circles and talking to people that their whole lives have been building upon sand, right?

53:27

And when you're having conversations with people in the real, I like the way you put it, it's you need to give them the gospel because the reality is their foundation is sinking sand.

53:37

It really is. It's crumbling around themselves. Their spiritual life is a wreck. According to the Bible, they don't have peace with God.

53:44

We need to stand on the firm foundation, which is God's word and show them there's actually a place for you to stand your feet.

53:50

And you can actually have absolute certainty that when you die and stand before God, since he is both the just and the justifier, that you stand before God clothed in the righteous robes of Christ and you are condemned no longer because Christ has given his life for you.

54:09

And that is the most amazing, beautiful thing for any sinner to understand that while we were still sinners,

54:14

Christ died for us, that there's nothing that we can do to inherit that salvation. Let's quickly touch on that though,

54:20

I think Aaron, because if you're LDS and you're listening, maybe you're going, but I do believe in grace. It's not just a workspace salvation.

54:28

How do we speak to somebody or to that LDS person that may be listening or to even

54:33

Christians to help them be better equipped to help an LDS person understand that your definition of grace is different than the

54:40

Bible's definition of grace. Maybe think about a temp agency. The tip agency is where you might go.

54:45

You're needy. You lack some skills. You need help. You do need grace. Maybe you don't deserve a job, but you're graciously, you're hoping for the grace of a job, but at a temp agency, ultimately they're trying to assist you.

54:59

Maybe it's a gracious assistance, but they're trying to assist you in helping you get to a place where you can earn a paycheck.

55:05

So if you think about grace in the context of a merit system where I'm just, I'm graciously assisting people to better participate in a merit system, does that really satisfy the biblical picture of grace?

55:17

I would, I would take it back to Romans four verse five versus four and five, I should say. It says, when a man works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

55:27

If you, if this is an, if this is analogous to an economic arrangement, when you work there, there's, there's a kind of, there's a covenantal obligation to give you what you're qualified for.

55:42

Well, in the new covenant in biblically, we're taking very unworthy, unqualified sinners, and there's a free gift of repentance of the

55:52

Holy spirit of a new heart of, of, of redemption and forgiveness. So in Romans four verse five, it says to the man who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly.

56:04

So is this like a tip agency or is this more like the welfare office? That's offensive. Ezra Taft Benson, who was very anti -welfare at a political level.

56:13

He extrapolated this to the spiritual level. And he said, it was in this era, at least it was that some of the

56:20

LDS leaders would talk about how salvation there's a really good quote on the, there's an

56:28

MRM article just search for the word merit. And there's a quote where I don't know if it was Benson, but they talk about how, you know, you're not just going to get this, these salvation benefits, these full benefits of exaltation.

56:40

You're not going to get this for free. You're going to have to earn it. You're gonna have to merit this. Well, let's just take that offensive analogy of, of welfare.

56:49

People like, oh, people, these people are, you know, dang, we're welfare Christians to them.

56:54

Yes. Wow. And that some people that violates our sense of justice, like you need to work for it. You need to be qualified.

57:01

Welfare is, you know, sometimes gracious, but sometimes it's just a free handout to people who ought to be working.

57:08

Well, biblically we're all like unworthy.

57:14

I mean, if you want grace, you literally have to empty your cup and go to the welfare office, spiritually speaking, and say,

57:21

I'm a beggar. I have nothing to offer. The best I can give you is my sin. I have nothing.

57:27

I am so messed up. Amen. I, I cannot earn part of this. Um, you're only working for death.

57:32

The wages of sin is death without Christ. Everyone's working regardless, but you're working for death.

57:41

There's a really famous, uh, I think it's called the parable of the bicycle where Stephen E Robinson, a Mormon professor tries to sort of clean up the

57:48

Spencer Kimball perfectionism and Mormonism. Okay. And he has this analogy where the, I think a young lady tries to buy a bicycle and she saves up all the coins that she can in a cup.

57:59

And she presents it, I think to her father and her father pays the difference. Right. Yeah. And the idea is, well, she didn't really, she really couldn't pay for the bike and she probably only had like a buck 50, whatever.

58:08

And, but the, you know, uh, God will supply the net other a hundred dollars. So, but the idea is that you're still kind of coming with your best.

58:15

You're still, you're still contributing what you can. The, the biblical sense of a salvation and grace just obliterates, even bringing a penny where you bring an empty cup and you you're destitute.

58:30

You're, um, you're desperate. You're, you're bank. I love, I like bank, the bankruptcy analogy for, in order to be saved in the new

58:38

Testament, you have to declare spiritual bankruptcy. You have to reach a point, a breaking point where you realize you have nothing to offer.

58:46

Grace in Mormonism, I would say is a gracious system that is assisting people to better participate in what is ultimately a merit system by which you can prove your worthiness in the end to become a

59:02

God who is worshiped by your own future set of spirit children. Man. And that's why

59:08

LDS people need the gospel because it is not something that we are owed.

59:15

It is a gift to us. Lest any man should ever boast. So the

59:20

Bible says it's all through Jesus. I like to ask people on the streets. I'll say, what better can you offer

59:26

God than what Jesus offered? I go, are you sinless? No.

59:32

Was Jesus? Yes. Then what can you truly offer God that's better than what

59:38

Jesus offered him? Nothing. But if you think you can work for something to offer God, you're then denying the work of Christ in saying,

59:47

I have something better. It was in Galatians. Is it three 21, where it says those who seek to be justified by the works of the law, the grace of Christ has no effect on you.

59:57

Well, that's why, because Christ righteously fulfilled all works and demands of the law on my behalf as a sinless person and the

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God man who then fully satisfies the wrath of the eternal God on the cross, not just for one person, but for all who believe in God.

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And I think it's in Psalm 49, I think it's 49, 10. I could be wrong, but it says that the weight of man's sin is so heavy.

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Essentially. I'm paraphrasing here that man cannot ransom his life for another because it's so costly.

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It will never stop the other man from seeing shield or the pit, but Jesus did.

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That's pointing to the, the, the righteousness of Christ. It's pointing forward to the head of the gospel that it's the

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God man who came and died for us. Just like, uh, Abraham, when he's going up Mount, uh,

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I believe it's Mariah, right? Going up Mount Moriah with Isaac to go sacrifice Isaac. And he's like, no, don't sacrifice your son.

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Thank you for not withholding him from me, but I will be the one who provides the sacrifice. Like the beautiful foreshadow of the gospel that we see all throughout the

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Bible is that it's never been your works that justifies you or declares you righteous before God.

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It's solely been faith the whole time. The Bible is holistically unified on that front.

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And I praise the Lord for that, because if it had anything to do with me, I'm condemned,

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I'm condemned the wages of sin is death. This is why Christians don't have different kingdoms in heaven. Uh, there's one kingdom with one

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King and dwelled by one Holy spirit with an equal justification, meaning all saints were equally justified in Christ.

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And though there are different varying degrees of rewards, there's one table. Uh, and we come back to that same table.

01:01:43

Uh, we come to that same table as believers in heaven and the resurrection equally

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United to Christ. And having been United to Christ, I am indirectly United to all those who are

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United to Christ. So the eternal family stuff taken care of by the, it was called the communion of saints, the true

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Catholic church, not the Roman Yeah. The union I have with my brothers in Christ is through my faith in Christ.

01:02:10

Yeah. It has nothing to do with my temple recommend my worthiness. Um, there are, there are believers in this life.

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I have severe frustrations with, and I am going to be extremely close to them in heaven. And there is no temple ceremony needed.

01:02:23

There was one temple ceremony needed, um, that was accomplished by Christ. It was ultimately, um, what he did on the cross, which resulted in an earthquake in a splitting of the veil in the temple.

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Yeah. And then he destroyed it later. Yeah. And now we can boldly approach the throne of God with confidence, um, because of the flesh of Christ, which has been, um, sacrificed on our behalf for us.

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And that's, that's a beautiful thing. And I think that latter day saints reflexively want to participate in that. They want to say they're a part of that.

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They, they, they want to be seen as at the same ultimate table with us. I would just say, um,

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I'm not trying to push you out of the kingdom and I'm not trying to, um, uh,

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I'm really not. I really want to draw you in to a simple unity with Christians on the substantial spiritual foundation of Christianity that is not dependent on belonging to our particular denomination.

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Again, it's not about belonging to the one true Jesus. It's about, sorry. It's not about belonging to the one true church.

01:03:24

It's about having the one true Jesus. I love it, dude. A second Corinthians 11 three, uh, it says, but I fear that as the serpent deceived

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Eve by his craftiness and in the Greek craftiness can also be translated to false wisdom. Uh, your minds will be corrupted from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ simplicity and purity, just like Eve.

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Then it says for, if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we did not preach, or you receive a different spirit, which you did not receive or a different gospel, which you did not accept, you bear this beautifully.

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Meaning the purity and simplicity, uh, of devotion to Christ is through the power of the gospel that can't get any better than that.

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It has nothing that you can do. It is simple. It actually really is simple. It's like rejoining that relationship with God that we had in the garden, purely through faith, not of a craftiness of mind, right?

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Although Christianity in thought is the most rigorous thought philosophical system that there ever is.

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It's the most beautiful thing. Like all hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ.

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Absolutely. But when we're talking about our relationship with God, there is supposed to be a simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

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But if there's a different Jesus, a different gospel and a different spirit, it's going to corrupt things. And it's going to make things complicated.

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It's going to create a multiverse of madness. And you're ultimately going to follow one who is not the

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Jesus Christ of scripture. And if that happens, you do not have an atonement for your sins. And when you stand before God and try to give him your filthy rags, it's not going to end well for you.

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And that's your heart for the LDS people. That's our heart for anyone who's not in Christ is we don't want you when you stand on judgment day before God to stand condemned.

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That's a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God, especially when that living God died for you so that you could have eternal life.

01:05:14

Right. Yeah. Amen. Amen, guys. I think this is an excellent spot to end our second episode.

01:05:20

Aaron, thank you so much for coming on here with us today. Give us some resources again that we can go to find some more of your articles.

01:05:27

If anyone ever wants to donate to some of the ministries that you're involved in, let everyone know. Yeah, there's MRM .org.

01:05:33

That's an excellent research ministry, training ministry. There's a ministry headed by a friend of mine named

01:05:40

Bradley Campbell called Godlovesmormons .com. That is a great resource for short videos that would help articulate the gospel to questioning

01:05:47

Mormon friends. That's one of my favorite. If you're if you're wanting to deep dive, if you're wanting to deep dive and get nerdy about this stuff,

01:05:58

I would buy a two dollar used copy of Gospel Principles on Amazon. It's an

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LDS internal training book for LDS worldview and theology. And on IRR .org

01:06:11

IRR .org Institute for Religious Research, Rob Bowman has something called the

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Gospel Principles Archive, where he did a chapter by chapter. He is a scholar who is very informed and yet accessible, but he did he did a chapter by chapter

01:06:25

Christian review of every chapter of that book. Wow. If you wanted to deep dive and equip yourself to effectively communicate with your

01:06:31

Latter -day Saint friends, I would I go there. And if you're wanting the basics and you're new to all this, I would start going through Godlovesmormons .com

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videos. And if you're at an intermediate level, I would start reading articles on MRM .org.

01:06:46

Praise God. Thank you, Aaron. All right, guys, we'll wrap it up and we'll see you next time as we enter into the Kingdom of the