Cultish: Introducing Christianity to Mormons, Pt. 1

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Cultish: How I found Jesus at Burning Man, Pt. 2

00:00

All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Cultish, Entering the Kingdom of the Cults. My name is Jeremiah Roberts.

00:05

I'm one of the co -hosts here, and I'm actually joining Andrew in his super secret headquarters here in Harriman, Utah.

00:14

I'm actually in the headquarters. This is wild stuff, man. It's a brand new headquarters. How long have you been at the super secret headquarters?

00:21

I'd say about two and a half weeks I've been here at the super, super secret headquarters, Jerry. Should we keep it super secret or should we drop any hints?

00:28

Yeah, I'm close to target, but even a little bit closer to Walmart. Okay, that really breaks it down.

00:34

Yes, it does. Definitely does. All right, well, I'm super excited. We are here with Eric Johnson. We're gonna be talking to you because you published a brand new book.

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It's available, actually, as of right now. This podcast was released right around the release date.

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The book is called Introducing Christianity to Mormons. You can take a look at it here. And thank you for coming on and joining us today.

00:56

Hey, thanks for having me on. Awesome, so can you tell everyone real quickly just a little bit about yourself and what makes you a little bit of an expert on the subject at hand?

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Maybe what motivated you to write this book? Well, I work with a ministry called Mormonism Research Ministry.

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It's based here in the Utah area. We have a twofold objective.

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One is to share our faith with Latter -day Saints, as you guys do out on the streets all the time, and also to inform

01:22

Christians about what Mormonism teaches. This book is, I've been a part of about five or six different books.

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This book is one that I've authored by myself completely. The other ones always was with somebody else,

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Bill McKeever, Sean McDowell. And this one, I spent the last two years working on this as a reference tool for people who would like to share

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Christianity to Mormons but don't know quite how to do it talking in their own language. So I take into consideration the terminology that they would use, their mindset, and then try to present the straight

01:57

Christian gospel as to who God is, who Jesus is, what is salvation in a way that a Latter -day

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Saint could understand because we see people leaving the church left and right. When I say the church, that's the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. And so if they're leaving, they need to be able to at least have the opportunity to understand what

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Christianity is. So I wanna get rid of the stereotypes, the straw man arguments, as you would say, and just to help them to be able to say, this is what

02:25

Christianity is. Okay, excellent. Now, you mentioned there's a lot of books you participated in with Bill McKeever.

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I remember one of them being Mormonism 101. That was very helpful for me a long time ago. And there's been a lot of other books too, even about specifically evangelism to the

02:42

LDS. You have people reasoning from the scriptures of Mormons. Sharing the good news. Sharing the good news of Mormons.

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And also there is Letters to a Mormon Elder by James White. There's just a lot of content out there. Is there, what was the motive for you specifically to write this book?

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Was there just something that you felt was a unique angle that maybe just a little bit different than how other books had approached it?

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What was the driving force behind that? Well, you mentioned Mormonism 101. That is a comparison between Mormonism and Christianity.

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We came out with that book in 2015. My daughter came to me in August of 2020.

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I had just recovered from COVID. And she had asked for a book that she could give to her

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LDS friend at work who had left the church and wanted to know what Christianity taught. So I looked at my bookshelf.

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I'm sure you guys have books on what is Christianity. And like The Case for Christ or Cold Case Christianity.

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Books like that, good books. But as I looked at each one, I'm not sure that they were good for handing to a person who is coming out of a

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Mormon background and wanted to better understand what it is that we believe. So I told my daughter,

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I think this is a book that needs to be written. And that afternoon I'm mowing the grass and I thought, it's

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COVID, we're not doing a whole lot. I ought to be the one who writes this. I've been doing this for close to 40 years, studying

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Mormonism. And I felt that having a book where we would explain what the basic faith of Christianity was.

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So as I said earlier, that we could get rid of the stereotypes that a lot of Latter -day Saints have about what we believe so that at least if they want to reject

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Christianity, do it because they're actually disagreeing with Christianity as it really is, not as it's not.

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Yeah, it's like there's not an ignorance to it when they don't want to be a

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Christian, deny the gospel in a sense and the biblical gospel. So what even brought you to Utah, right?

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Like you're here now, where are you from? Were you ever LDS just for our listeners? Because a lot of people that listen to us, we interview people who came out of the cults.

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But give us some of your background and how you even got here. Well, if I say October of 1978, you probably are familiar with Jim Jones.

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Yes. Named cultish, so you'd have to know Jim Jones. He's got a picture of him right there. Oh, right over there,

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I didn't see that. I mean, don't drink the Kool -Aid. That's where that idea came from.

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When I was a junior in high school, before you guys were even probably thought of, I was really bothered by the fact that Jim Jones called himself a

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Christian and he ended up having 1 ,000 people drink poison Kool -Aid.

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So I became very interested in other religions. I grew up in a Christian home. I wanted to see if what I believed as a

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Christian really stood up to the truth. And I started to read scriptures such as the

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Quran, the Book of Mormon, I'd read the Watchtower. I talked to Hare Christians when

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I went to college at San Diego State. And so that really gave me the ability to take what

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I believed and compare it with other people. So 1987, I came here to Utah on a short -term mission.

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I was going to seminary actually at the time at Bethel Seminary, San Diego. Ended up meeting my future wife here.

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We got married in 88. And I met Bill McKeever in 1989 in El Cajon, California where he lived.

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We ended up becoming good friends. I ended up teaching in Southern California for 17 years.

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I taught Bible. I was a Bible department head at a Christian school. And also taught at the community college.

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And I also taught at the seminary where I graduated. And then in 2010, Bill kept asking me to come to Utah because there was such a need for what we were trying to do.

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So we moved here, moved my family, left my oldest daughter in San Diego, and the rest of us moved here to Utah and haven't looked back.

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We've been here for 12 years. And I do this ministry full -time, self -supported with mrm .org.

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And the idea is that we will continue to do this until we can't do it any longer.

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Praise God, praise God. I was reading in your book, there's a little story about when you did your short -term mission trip here to Utah, when you got into a conversation inside two

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LDS people's home in a small city, like outside of Salt Lake City. Can you give us that story and like the general lesson from that?

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Yeah, every chapter in the 10 chapters has a real -life evangelism story.

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You guys have them as well. I just decided I wanted to have something in there that would be helpful to show how the information could be used so it wasn't just a bunch of dry facts.

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The first story in the introduction, I wanted to give a story that was a little bit self -deprecating because people think that, well, you must be really good at this.

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You must see Mormons become Christians all the time. No, not necessarily, but I do hopefully have constructive conversations that will draw them closer one way or the other.

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But we were knocking on doors in 1987, my first time in Utah, in Manti, where the

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Mormon Miracle Pageant used to be. I don't know if you guys ever get a chance to go there. So you were knocking on the Mormons' doors. We were knocking on doors in Manti, Utah, and they're very friendly there.

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In fact, I was just talking to a ministry leader in that area today. He says that they still open up the doors, let you in, bring you some lemonade.

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So this old couple, they're probably in their 70s or 80s. I can't remember exactly how old they were, but a farmer kind of guy, had never left

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Utah. I ended up trying to share the gospel. It was an adventure because this guy had no clue about Christianity as far as outside of Mormonism.

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He had never been past Salt Lake City, which is two hours away. I did my best, but I ended up talking very fast.

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I went over his head. I wasn't paying attention to his reaction. I remember at the very end, he basically said,

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I really don't understand what you're talking about. I mean, I'm a Christian. I go to a church, and I've never heard of any of this.

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I said, have you ever heard of Billy Graham? He says, never heard of the guy. This is back when Billy Graham was pretty popular, and they only had three

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TV stations at that time that actually, before the days of cable, there was no internet.

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He had never heard of anything outside of his religion, and I found that to be astounding, but I don't think

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I did a very good job of explaining that. I remember walking out of that encounter. It was a very cordial encounter, and I said to myself,

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I'm never gonna let that happen again. I'm gonna have to do better at my serve, and so at that time,

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I thought to myself, I'm going to try to be the best ambassador I can possibly be for Christ.

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I'm gonna have to really practice this, so it took years and years and years, and I still learn on the street, as you guys do, too.

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You'll get something, and you'll go, why did I say that? And you just say, well, I'm gonna learn from that, and you continue to grow, so hopefully,

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I'm better today than I was last year, and I'm definitely, I think, better as an evangelist than I was back in 1987, but it's a willingness to do that, and so that story hopefully will help people to realize the first time you're gonna do this, it's not going to be easy, and you're gonna make mistakes, and that's okay, then you learn from that, and then hopefully, you build on that, and you find a tactic that you like to use that will be beneficial.

10:12

Hey, what's up, everyone? Have you ever wanted to get behind the microphone and chat with myself and Andrew, the super sleuth of the show here at Coltish?

10:19

Well, guess what? You get to do exactly that this October, October 27th through the 29th at ReformCon.

10:26

It's gonna be a great and awesome live conference. There's gonna be a lot of great speakers, so if you want to get behind a microphone with myself and Andrew, the super sleuth of the show, go to ReformCon .org.

10:37

Get your tickets right now, October 27th through the 29th, and can't wait to meet you all there and have a great conversation.

10:42

Now, back to the episode. In my experience, when it comes to talking with people who are LDS, I'm thinking back about my high school in the late 90s.

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I'm 41 years old now, and at that time, they seemed to really know their theology, and they're very upfront about the great apostasy.

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If anyone who's listening in who has not really had interactions with someone who's LDS, the LDS church teaches that they are the restored church of Jesus Christ, that right after the apostles died, they lost their priesthood authority, and really, the authority of the church was gone for 1 ,800 years.

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It wasn't until Joseph Smith in the 1800s went out in the woods to pray to see which church is true, and that's where he had his first vision.

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We can talk about that, but I think that back then when they were in high school, when

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I was in high school, they were a lot more upfront saying, hey, we're the true church, you're apostate, and we would have conversations back and forth, but at least it was kind of set in stone where they stood and then where I stood.

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I think now it's a lot more challenging. They are a lot more postmodern.

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It's almost like you have to convert them to Mormonism before even talking to them about Christianity, so I think it has a lot of challenge.

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There's a lot of challenges that entail. Just real quickly, what are your thoughts on that? Oh, I think the lines are blurred, and that becomes a problem because, and you can never assume that a

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Latter -day Saint actually believes the way that the church teaches, especially, as you say, with postmodernism.

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You have a lot of Latter -day Saints who have personal revelation disagreeing in the doctrines of the church, and it doesn't bother them when you point it out, and you say, well, that's not how your church teaches.

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Doesn't matter. That's my personal revelation. I think the idea of being called a

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Christian has really intensified in the last 20 years because, you're right, in the old days, they used to enjoy being called

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Mormon. They wanted to not be called Christian in that same sense, and today, if you tell a

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Latter -day Saint, well, I don't think Mormonism is Christianity, you'll get pushback. The title of my book, actually, in four words, is quite controversial because introducing

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Christianity, those first two words, what do you mean introducing Christianity? We're Christians, too, and I'm getting this a little bit from some

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Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. Well, what brand of Christianity? Well, obviously, Harvest House is an evangelical

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Christian publisher. I didn't think the need was there to put in evangelical or biblical, if that defines more specifically, but biblical,

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I think, is the best word for us because we hold to what the Bible teaches, so I don't wanna get into a tennis match with a

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Latter -day Saint. You're not a Christian. Oh, yes, I am, back and forth. That doesn't serve any purpose, but for anybody who says, well, that's not gonna be a very attractive title, well,

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I agree. This book was not written for somebody who is a true blue Mormon, but then to Mormons is the second part that is very controversial because in 2018, the top leader of the church,

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President Russell M. Nelson, he's in his late 90s now, he taught that Jesus is offended anytime you use the word

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Mormon, which doesn't make any sense because this is the church that called its choir the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

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And not only that, Jesus had no problem a couple years prior when they did the whole

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I Am a Mormon campaign. Exactly. In the movie, Meet the Mormons. Yes, so it doesn't seem to make sense that Jesus is offended.

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Why did he only start to get offended in 2018? Well, if you go back to 1990, you'll see in April of 1990 that Nelson gave a talk where he criticized the use of Mormon or any abbreviations for that.

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And in the next conference, Gordon B. Hinckley, who was part of the First Presidency, later became the 15th president of the church, said he had no problem with it and he thought

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Mormon meant more good. So it's kind of a controversial thing even back then and I'm sure privately they disagreed.

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And then when he took the helm, Nelson did in 2018, he made that the rule. But here's my question to Latter -day

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Saints. Okay, how was I supposed to title the book? I mean, was I supposed to say, Introducing Biblical Christianity to Members of the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints? I mean, that would be ridiculous for me to do.

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The publisher would never allow for it. But I think they did themselves a disservice because what they did is they took away their brand.

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They used to have a website. They still do, lds .org and mormon .org. You can't go to those sites.

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They'll forward it over to churchofjesuschrist .org. I'm sorry, I can't call this church the

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Church of Jesus Christ. I'm not gonna use 47 keystrokes of a word to go on my book.

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I can do that in four words. So I think an evangelical Christian has a pretty good idea of what I'm trying to do.

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Introducing, you wanna call it biblical Christianity to Mormons. And I think that is so necessary because too many

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Latter -day Saints who leave the church end up going to atheism, agnosticism, or nothing at all.

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You guys see that all the time. Yeah, in fact, we're here in Utah. And it's amazing, whenever you go out at night, you can see almost like there are light beacons.

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They light up the temples at night. So when you go out and you can kind of see the broad valley of Salt Lake, you can see exactly where they are.

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But you did mention that a lot of people are leaving the LDS Church. But at the same time, though, you have someone like Russell M.

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Nelson, who's announcing, oh, we're building more temples. We're building more temples, at least in my opinion, to try and give the appearance that things are all as well in Zion.

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But a lot of people are leaving. Why do you think that is right now? Listen, this is a religion that has a lot of money.

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And they really don't know what to do with it in a lot of ways. They wanna prop up what they have, which really is so emblazoned with that temple.

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The temple is so important to them. And building more and more of these is going to keep the faithful even more faithful.

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Because, I mean, they're building them in places there aren't very many Mormons. They're putting them in places that I don't think really needed a temple.

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I'll give you an example where that story took place in the introduction in Manti. They're building a temple seven miles away in Ephraim.

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Now, we have to understand, all of Sanpete County, there's only a couple, I mean, maybe 15 ,000 total people in the entire county.

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And you're gonna have two temples for them. But they're gonna build one in Ephraim, a college town.

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Does it really need one? Russell M. Nelson has stressed the temple since 2018. He has announced 100 temples.

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He's very proud about that. No other leader has announced as many. And he's only been in office for five years.

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Every single time, there's 15 to 20 new temples that are being announced. So I think that is a way to get your

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Taipei faithful, we call them true blue Mormons, who will continue to listen to what their leaders say and having new temples.

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They're very proud about that fact. But I think it's hiding, it's a bandage around the wound that is just festering because Mormonism is dying in many ways.

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People are leaving in droves. The church admitted to that a decade ago. They put together these essays in 2013 and 2015 called the

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Gospel Topics Essays. That really floored a lot of Latter -day Saints because they were finding out for the first time that Joseph Smith had 30 to 40 wives, that a third of his wives were teenagers.

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A third of his wives were married to other living husbands. They found out that Joseph Smith had taken a rock, a magic stone, seer stone it's called, put it into a hat, and he translated the

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Book of Mormon. That astounded many Latter -day Saints. They found out that the Book of Abraham is not really a physical translation.

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It's a spiritual translation. These are amazing things that the church has had to do to admit to because the internet was killing them.

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People were finding out all these things. But I think even more so than the history and the doctrines why people are leaving, in the last five years, it's the progressive ideas.

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There are the feminists who are leaving. They're upset because you can't pray to Mother God. One of the

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Gospel Topic Essays deal with that. Not allowed to pray to Mother God. She's just as viable as Heavenly Father.

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Why is that? Because I've seen, it seems to be like this weird elephant in the room when you, I've seen in forums where I see people who are

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LDS argue with other Latter -day Saints about whether you can or can't. What's the source of all that?

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What's the controversy behind that of what you know? Well, she doesn't hold the priesthood. That's for one thing. Heavenly Father was once a human in another realm, became the

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God, and he actually is polygamous. And that polygamy will be reinstated for the

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Latter -day Saint Celestial Kingdom, the very best they have. So Mother God's not worthy of the worship, and that really bothers the feminists.

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Or the idea that they don't hold the priesthood. Only 11 -year -old boys can get the Aaronic Priesthood, and then 18, they get the

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Melchizedek Priesthood. That's where they're called elders. That bothers the feminists. Another thing that bothers a lot of progressives within the church would be the

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LGBTQ plus issue, because I was just talking to a couple about a month ago, and they said that was the reason they left

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Mormonism. I don't think that's a good reason to leave a religion. I think you should leave a religion not because you disagree with its policies, but you realize that it's not the truth.

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And then the goal would be to find what is the truth. But she says, I can't believe that the church has done that.

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In fact, a lot of people left in 2015 when the church decided not to allow children of homosexual parents to get baptized.

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That really was a problem for a lot of people. They left in droves over that, and then the church reversed itself about three years ago to say, well, now we're gonna allow that.

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Well, they do listen to the surveys. They listen to the court of public opinion.

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And I don't think Jeremiah or Isaiah or Micah, do you think they ever cared what people thought?

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No, they just preached what they believed God had given to them. If this is a organization led by living prophets and apostles, general authorities, who supposedly have that authority from God, I don't think they ought to really care about what anybody else thinks, that they should just do what is the right thing that God is instructing them.

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And that's not really how this church works. So it'll be interesting in the next five years to see where this church goes, but they're getting a lot of pushback from people who still are in the church, or some of them have left, but many of them still in the church, but complaining and possibly causing problems in Sunday school lessons and other places.

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Do you think there's a gap between, I'm gonna let you jump in here. Do you think there's a gap between the younger and the older generation?

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I just, I see huge disconnect between the prophet, the quorum of the 12.

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These are men who are all in their nineties versus I call the TikTok generation, generation

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TikTok. Like how they view Mormonism, how they're talking about it, how they view it. I think there's a really giant generational gap, and it's gonna be very interesting to see what happens as the older generations passes away.

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And surely, but slowly, this younger, more progressive generation kind of really takes over the leadership of the church.

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And yeah, it'd just be interesting. Do you see that happening as well too? Yeah, I mean, in 2012, there's a guy named

22:11

John DeLinn. He has Mormon Stories podcast, very popular guy. You'll hear about him all the time from former

22:17

Mormons. He's a devout atheist, does not like Christianity, but I have to say, very powerful in his podcast.

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Well, he came out with a survey in 2012. And before the gospel topics came out between 2013 to 15, which you can find by the way on the church website.

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And he said, based on the survey, that the most important reasons why people were leaving were the history and the doctrines.

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Those issues I just mentioned and others that was really bothersome for people, especially as they were finding out this information.

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And then the church goes and admits it in their church essays. That was really a problem. But like I said, in 2019, there's a book and I have it with me, it's called

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The Next Mormons. That book is by Oxford University Press. A lady named

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Jana Reese, she is a Mormon blogger, did a number of surveys. And so she's dealing with the kinds of groups you're talking about.

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She dealt mainly with the millennials and the subtitle, The Next Mormons, how millennials are changing the

23:18

LDS church. But really, since she's written this book, the Gen Zs have really had a huge role.

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Because now those kids are 19, 20, coming into 21. So they're actually having an impact on the church.

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And what she found out on the reasons why people left, because she asked those questions, I think, whereas John Delins from 2012 was more dealing with the history and doctrines.

23:45

I think his first eight were, maybe seven of the eight were those things. She doesn't have anything until number eight.

23:51

And I think it might have been the seer stone. People are leaving because they don't trust the general authorities anymore.

23:57

They don't think this is the one true church. They don't necessarily believe that the

24:02

Book of Mormon is an accurate scripture. There's a lot of issues that they're gonna have to deal with in this postmodern culture.

24:10

And I'm with you on that. The idea that the younger generation is kind of rebelling.

24:19

I'll give you another example, BYU. It's supposed to be a Mormon university, correct?

24:25

But boy, there's been a lot of things in the last few years like lighting up the Y into rainbow colors.

24:31

And then the anger that they have toward the leaders. The church made it appear that you would be allowed to come out of the closet.

24:39

So a lot of the students came out and they said no, but we still have these regulations. They felt betrayed.

24:44

A student a couple years ago came out right on the stage where the graduation was taking place as kind of a rebellion to this.

24:53

I'm finding that they're not able to control this very well. Last fall, September, October of 2021, an apostle,

25:03

Jeffrey R. Holland, went over to the school to basically lay out the line that homosexuality is wrong and that marriage is between a man and a woman.

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The next day, there were hundreds of people protesting who were BYU students protesting, which should be, as far as a moral statement,

25:20

I would agree with Jeffrey R. Holland, but they were protesting what he was saying. So I think they might have been surprised at that because you would think, okay, this guy comes in and says this is a line.

25:31

Is that gonna change down the road? I don't know, but I can't see homosexual marriage happening in the temples anytime soon.

25:39

But then a lot of people back in the 1960s would have never thought that the church would have gotten rid of its ban on the black priesthood before 1978.

25:49

Things are changing extraordinarily fast. Even two years ago, there wasn't even any conversation whatsoever about pronouns, the they, them, zeser, all that.

25:59

So it only goes to say, where is the culture gonna be even two years from now? Yeah. Hey everyone, if you are watching us right now on Apology of Studios YouTube channel, you need to know that Cultish would not be possible if it wasn't for this studio.

26:14

So if you wanna support Apology of Studios, which also makes Cultish a possibility for you to enjoy every single week here on YouTube, go to apologyofstudios .com.

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You can become an all -access member and you will also get a lot of great additional content, which will also help support the studio, which will allow

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Cultish to be a possibility as well on a weekly basis. So we thank you all for watching us. And now back to the episode.

26:38

It just kind of makes sense. Like even if we think about putting the spotlight on liberal Christianity or progressive

26:44

Christianity, once you abandon the standard that the Bible is our infallible, inerrant rule of faith and practice, like anything goes, right?

26:53

And the LDS person, they argue essentially like agnostics and atheists against the Bible. So it seems to me like it's a logical conclusion of where it's just going to end up, right?

27:04

Because the Bible states that in order to obey or want to obey the laws of God, that his spirit must be placed in you.

27:10

Of course, there are the LDS quorum or whatever they're called.

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They, of course, they're pushing for a continued conservatism, but I would say that that's not necessarily because they have the spirit of God.

27:22

We know they don't because they worship a different God and a different Jesus and they have a different gospel. But it seems like the way they continue to keep people inside the

27:30

LDS organization is that they have a spirit of confusion. Like people just don't even really know what they believe anymore.

27:36

Like on the streets of Provo, so many times I have talked to gay LDS people, men, and they go,

27:43

I talked to my bishop. My bishop approves of this. I said, your bishop is lying to you. Like he's not telling you what you need to hear.

27:50

He's not telling you the gospel or the sin that you're committing in order to actually have conviction and to repent.

27:56

And it just kind of blows my mind down there that we have this conservative group of older men, but for some reason, this next generation, and even their bishops are not doing what the leaders say or what the prophet says, right?

28:12

Like this is really weird to me. It's like, they almost don't even know what they believe. And that's why I find this book to be extremely helpful because right now,

28:18

Wade and myself are counseling a couple people who are coming out of the LDS faith. And like legitimately, they ask the same questions that are in this book because they don't even really know what they believe.

28:30

They don't even know in what they believe if it was historically accurate, if it was even taught to begin with.

28:37

And then they don't even know the questions on how to address things like the Trinity, historical accuracy of the scriptures and our textual criticism, like our manuscript tradition and things of that nature.

28:47

They have no idea. It seems like one of the tactics of this older generation for the younger is to manipulate their feelings, right?

28:55

No critical thinking, just critical feelings in order to keep them complacent and not asking questions.

29:01

Right? Oh, I think you're right. One of the things I think Christians need to do is not feel like they have to have all the answers for everybody who asks them a question.

29:10

I think we ought to be asking the questions. And one of the things that would be so important if you're talking to a

29:15

Latter -day Saint is not tell him or her what they believe. Because as you pointed out, many

29:22

Latter -day Saints are no longer believing the things that the church is teaching. And they're fine with that.

29:28

So when I come to a topic, I like to ask the question, well, what is it that you believe about blank?

29:35

And they'll say, you know, they'll tell me what it is. Or if they bring out a term that we have the same term in Christianity, like grace,

29:43

I'm saved by grace through faith, really. What does that mean to you? What does it mean, saved by grace through faith?

29:51

And let them tell you. I think sometimes just by listening to what they have to say and then understanding what

29:56

Mormonism teaches will give you the ability to say, let me break that down a little more because I wanna make sure.

30:02

And then I oftentimes will ask, well, what do you think I believe about salvation by grace through faith?

30:09

What do you think I mean when I say the word Trinity? These different terms, you'll be surprised.

30:17

You'll hear some of the biggest heresies called out when you ask somebody, what do you think

30:23

I believe about salvation by grace? Oh, you believe you can go up in front of a church and say a little prayer and then you get to go to heaven and you can do whatever you want.

30:30

I mean, how many times have you heard that? Or the Trinity, you know, well, I think your

30:35

Trinity is really bizarre because who's Jesus praying to in the Garden of Gethsemane? You know, this three -headed

30:42

God, three gods in one God, that makes no sense. And you go, okay, well, that's not what

30:48

I believe. What the Latter -day Saints are believing is what we call a straw man. A straw man is making things out of a doctrine that is not really believed.

30:59

I don't believe those things. I think we need to be careful in not making up doctrine for the Latter -day Saint. And again, even if it's different from what their leaders say, we can say, okay.

31:08

I have oftentimes told Latter -day Saints, well, that's interesting that you believe that, but that's not what your leaders believe.

31:16

And sometimes they'll say, well, I really don't care what they believe. Or sometimes they'll say, yes, they do. I'll say, well, can

31:21

I show you some quotes to very clearly show how your scriptures disagree and how your leaders disagree? And it's not hard to do if you have the resources and have the ability.

31:31

And again, that comes with experience, as I was talking about from the introduction, talking to this gentleman in 1987,

31:38

I didn't have the experience that I have today. So I'm able to direct the conversation in a way that hopefully will get to the heart of the matter.

31:49

And that is, they really, in their Mormon faith, do not have a relationship with the

31:54

God of this Bible. That's what this book is gonna try to do, showing what Christianity really does teach.

32:00

This is the authentic, essential truth of what we hold. You mentioned the

32:06

Mormon Stories podcast. That's one example of a lot of podcasts out there of ex -Mormons who just either become atheists or agnostic.

32:16

But specifically, when you listen to the Mormon Stories podcast, I'm truly honest, it's somewhat depressing to listen to because it's really,

32:24

I call it just misery loves company. And this is not really to take a shot at it, but they're in understandable circumstances being in something you thought was true.

32:32

And then you only find out to be a lie. It would only make sense that you would be jaded.

32:39

So I do wanna have empathy towards that. My question would be though, do you think there's anything in this book that would be relevant to somebody that would fall into the category of the

32:48

Mormon Stories podcast, an ex -Mormon who's left the faith, who has been jaded? And what do you think is the difference right now to active

32:54

LDS, Latter -day Saints, and people, say, who have left the faith, who are ex -Mormons, but don't really believe anything anymore?

33:01

Do you see any difference between the two? Well, we have to understand, according to Jana Reese in her book, The Next Mormons, 45 % of all people who leave

33:08

Mormonism head to atheism, agnosticism, or nothing at all. Another 21 % say they're just Christian.

33:15

They haven't gone to a church or anything. They just believe that because they're moral, they haven't committed murder.

33:23

Moralism is what that is. That's two out of three people. Think about that. Only one third head to any kind of faith, and of that number,

33:33

Christianity, evangelical Christianity, 10%. Only one out of 10 considers. According to, it's not my statistic, it's

33:40

Jana Reese's, 10 % become evangelical Christians. Well, what is the problem?

33:46

Why are they not coming our way? Well, I think the great apostasy is one of those things that takes away the idea that if the church isn't true, then nothing else is.

33:55

You've heard that on the street. Latter -day Saints repeat that to themselves to encourage each other when they get bad information, or not bad information, but hard information.

34:04

Well, I can't believe that they found that. But if the church isn't true, then nothing else is because, as you mentioned, the great apostasy taints all of us because we come from, well,

34:14

Joseph Smith, history chapter one, verse 19, found on the Pearl of Great Price, says that all of the churches, according to God the

34:20

Father and Jesus, were wrong. All their creeds were an abomination in His sight, and all their professors were corrupt.

34:27

So if the church isn't true, and we're talking the LDS church, if it's not true, then nothing else is, they wouldn't wanna come over to our side anyway.

34:37

I was talking to three couples a month ago. I volunteer at Sandra Tanner's Utah Lighthouse Ministry bookstore, and we get a lot of people who are not

34:46

Christian, and not necessarily even Mormon, but these three couples, all of them were there at the same time.

34:52

This was rare, because we usually only have one person in at a time, and this time we had three. All three of them came from a

34:59

Mormon background and had left in the last year. And so what I like to do is

35:05

I like to find out, well, so what have you embraced now? What's your faith? And all three of them claim to be atheists.

35:13

I always like to do this. This is my strategy when that happens. I say, oh, so you know definitively that there is no

35:21

God, and no amount of evidence is going to change your mind. That always kind of throws them when

35:26

I say that, because they look at me and they say, well, I wouldn't say that. I'm kind of new at this. All three had left within the past year.

35:33

And I said, well, that's what atheism is. Theism is God, the belief in God.

35:40

A is without. You have a belief that there is no God. Now, I said, so if you had the evidence and you felt that there's a possibility that God exists and it could be shown, then you would believe.

35:50

And they all said yes. And I said, well, I said, let me say that you're probably not atheist, or hard atheist is another way that's used.

36:00

If you take a look at it, you really do not have atheist view. You have an agnostic view.

36:07

Gnosis is knowledge without knowledge. So you're telling me if the evidence was there, would you be willing to do some work and to see if Christianity could stand the test of truth?

36:16

I always challenge Latter -day Saints with that. And one lady took a Bible. I bought her a

36:21

Bible right there on the spot. She says, yeah, I'd like to read the Bible. I wanna, in a modern language, I like to have Latter -day

36:27

Saints read it in the modern language. They can have their King James right next to them if they like, but to read it so they can understand it.

36:33

And so what did I do? I took somebody that was an atheist. I moved them over to agnosticism.

36:41

So we moved them one step down the ladder. Now, the next person who comes along, maybe they can help show evidence.

36:47

As my chapter three talks about existence of God, evidence, there's evidence, I think, to show that God exists.

36:54

Maybe they'll get them to become a theist. Well, that's the next step. Then the next step after that would be monotheism and the idea of the

37:02

Christian God. I think when we do evangelism, you guys have done a lot of it on the street.

37:07

I hope you don't walk away after talking to somebody and say, shoot, I wish that I would've just said this or I could've done it that way.

37:15

And now you could improve your serve, there's no doubt about it, possibly. But we're only in sales, guys.

37:21

God's the one who's in production. And if we can understand that maybe evangelism is not a one -time deal, and if you've helped somebody get a little bit more understanding of what

37:32

Christianity is, then the next person is the tag team. And they'll come and maybe they'll share something that will startle somebody.

37:39

I've met so many Christians, former Mormons, and by the way, they make the best Christians because they know where they were before.

37:48

They were lost, and now they are found. And they become very excited. But most of them, it wasn't a one -time occurrence.

37:55

It was listening to this podcast. It was reading this article. It was going on the internet and doing this information.

38:02

And then their Christian friend brought this out to them and then invited them to church. And before you know it, now they're a

38:08

Christian and they won't turn back. You ask them, would you like to go back to Mormonism? Why would I wanna go back to that?

38:13

When I have this relationship with Jesus. Yeah, what about fundamentalist Mormons?

38:19

Have you had any interactions with them? I have. What's that like? They're very similar, actually, to the

38:26

Latter -day Saints as far as their deprecation of the Bible. They don't really think the

38:32

Bible is accurate. Article Eight gets in the way, Joseph Smith's Eighth Article of Faith. The Bible is true only as far as it's translated correctly.

38:40

They're usually not as open. It depends on where you meet them or talk to them. For many years, and I wouldn't say many,

38:48

I'd say about four years back at the end of the 20th century, I got to be really good friends with a group in Manti, Utah called the

38:57

FLDS. Not the FLDS, the True and Living Church, TLC.

39:03

Forgive me on that, the FLDS is Warren Jeff's group. This is the TLC and it was led by a guy named

39:10

Jim Harmston. I got to know them, I knew some of the apostles. We had lots of conversations.

39:17

A lot of more bizarre ideas, polygamy for that. You're talking fundamentalists.

39:23

They'll certainly go to certain passages in the Bible to try to show polygamy is true.

39:29

The Mormons aren't gonna try to do that. But I'm gonna say what

39:34

Paul says in the first part of 1 Corinthians, that the blind are unable to see because they're blind, they can't see.

39:43

So this is where you have to go in with an attitude of prayer and say, "'Holy Spirit, help me to have something "'that will jog them to help them to be able to see.'"

39:51

But they're a very hard group to reach. Oh, for sure. Hey, what's up, everyone? We love that you are enjoying our content on a weekly basis, but this program cannot continue and wouldn't be possible without your support.

40:04

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40:24

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40:39

Back to the show. What do you think about this? Because we talked a little bit about how the church has gone progressive and the divide between the two as just the cultural zeitgeist.

40:50

But I think when it comes to fundamentalism, I mean, the foundation of the

40:55

LDS church is this restoration. And so a lot of the fundamentalists, they look at these different doctrines like polygamy, blood atonement, for example, and things that the church has really distanced themselves from you look at Under the

41:10

Banner of Heaven that was produced. I think Senator Tanner helped consult and kind of give her insight on a couple of different things.

41:16

But you have the story of the Lafferty brothers who go and get radicalized by this idea of the school of prophets that believe that the restoration really needed a restoration.

41:26

One mighty and strong. Yeah. Do you think just with just the culture here in Utah, maybe just the Mormon culture in general, that the progress as the official

41:35

LDS church becomes more progressive, that we might see the radicalization of other fundamentalism because they're thinking, well, we need to restore it.

41:45

So there's the allure of people not only to go into atheists or agnosticism who lead the LDS church, but maybe, hey, what if we go to this group who found the truth in contrast to the official

41:55

LDS church? What are your thoughts on that? Well, I think that it's hard to say exactly what will happen in the future with the

42:02

LDS church. But my fear, a lot of people think, well, if we can just take down this

42:08

Mormonism and bring the whole thing down. You hear people talking that way, like the Worldwide Church of God, which did happen.

42:15

But what happened after that took place 25 years ago? It was a church in California that was based there.

42:24

And they basically came out and said, we're not true. Well, they ended up with a bunch of splinter groups.

42:29

And so you have, I think the biggest one now is the one in Philadelphia, but they've got all these different churches that have different teachings and different leaders and they don't all agree.

42:41

So they're just a bunch of splinter groups. My fear is that if Mormonism were to ever drop and the whole thing just fizzles and a leader, let's say

42:51

Russell M. Nelson gets up and says, hey guys, by the way, sorry, we're not the true church. I don't think that will happen.

42:57

But if it ever did, what would happen? Well, you're talking to a group of people who believe they have the ability to have personal revelation.

43:06

The churches emphasize that for all these years. And so I think you might have a splintering that will make it impossible for you and I to do what we do out on the streets because everybody will have their own prophet.

43:21

Everybody will have their own leader. And post -modernism is gonna be king, whatever they wanna believe, they can make the scripture say whatever it is that they want to say.

43:31

Andrew, you and Wade have interacted with a couple of prophets on the street as well too. Tell us about that. Yeah, oh man, there's one man down in Provo.

43:40

He's come by a couple times. The second time he was a little bit more nasty than the first, but yeah, he was essentially just saying some pretty wacky stuff, saying that he has a revelation that could be written.

43:51

He said it could be on the same level as scripture. It could be written. Again, he never called himself a prophet, but the things he was saying, like things could be written, very much like a prophet of the

43:59

Old Testament, right? And he was saying that Buddha was Job. Some interesting things, but it was more mainly on the level that you're talking about, that he has this personal relationship with Jesus.

44:11

We got into a really intense conversation with him and it ended up with him saying, I am the one mediator between you and Jesus.

44:18

Really interesting stuff that was going on within this man's mind.

44:23

Like that's what happens when you think you're literally speaking with God. I think there's a spiritual deprivation that occurs.

44:32

And also the true relationship between God and his word is distance between you to where you get confused with your own thoughts and emotions, or let's say, could be a demonic entity to be influenced to literally be thinking that what your conversation, you're literally having an audible conversation with God.

44:49

But how do you discern between what's true and what's false when the Bible's incorrect, right? Yeah, and there's a guy, former

44:54

BYU professor, Robert Millet, and he said that the best thing that the

45:01

LDS church has, and I'm just paraphrasing, is personal revelation. But then he said the most dangerous thing the church has is personal revelation.

45:11

Why did he say that? Because you have the ability to pray and determine what is truth, but the

45:17

Bible says that the heart is deceptively wicked. Who can understand it? To trust your feelings, to trust your own judgment is a very dangerous thing.

45:25

And the kinds of people you're running into, and I've run into those people as well, it's like, in fact, it's almost like humorous.

45:34

You throw out things, and I remember talking to a guy that was a self -proclaimed prophet, and he believed that he was gonna be the one to take over in Salt Lake City.

45:42

At that time, it was Thomas S. Monson. He was gonna be the next prophet. How old was this guy? I think he was probably in his 70s.

45:48

Wow. And I said, well, can I get your address and phone number?

45:54

Because when that happens, I'd like to be able to have the conversation

45:59

I'm having with you now, and then you'll be able to explain things more. And he was more than happy to give me his information.

46:05

I mean, it's kind of almost bizarre to think. And the Latter -day Saints would think, most of them would say, that guy's nuts.

46:11

Well, where did he get these ideas from? Well, he got them just as Joseph Smith did, just as Warren Jeffs did, just as the

46:20

Lafferty's. All these different people say that they have the truth, and you're right, Andrew, without the

46:26

Bible, without having a steady grasp on what the authority is, which for Christians is the

46:32

Bible. It should be for the Mormons too, but the Bible's true as far as it's translated correctly, so they end up throwing in their other scriptures and then modern -day revelation.

46:41

Then your own revelation, it can be convoluted to the point where it just makes no sense whatsoever.

46:49

Yeah, so you mentioned you talked about the guy who is 70 years old and thought he was gonna take over the church. In your experience doing all the ministry here, what's the highest person, highest authority you've talked to in the

47:01

LDS church? Anybody that was, you have a bishop, you have a stake leader, and then you end up having sort of the hierarchy that we could have a conversation about, but what's the person highest authority that you talked to, and what was that like?

47:13

Well, we talked to a 70 when we were in Nauvoo, Illinois.

47:21

Can you explain to everyone what that means, the 70 and just the hierarchy just very quickly for anyone who doesn't understand?

47:27

The top leader is the president, and he has two counselors, the first and second counselor of the first presidency.

47:32

Those three men are the top leaders of this church, so first presidency.

47:38

Then you have 12 men under them, and those are called apostles. The senior of the 15, after a president or a prophet, their synonymous terms dies, then that oldest one comes in.

47:51

So right now, it'd be Dallin H. Oaks. He happens to be the first counselor in the first presidency, and after that would be

47:57

M. Russell Ballard. These men will take over, and they are, these guys are all in their late 80s, early 90s.

48:05

Some of the other apostles are in their 70s and 80s, but very old group, and then under them, you have several quorums of the 70.

48:13

So I have never talked to an apostle. I've never talked to a president, and they don't make themselves available, but our friend

48:20

Sandra Tanner, she regularly went and visited with apostles on a regular basis back in the 1960s when the church was very small, so it was possible to go meet with those folks.

48:32

Now, just a month ago, I was in Nauvoo, Illinois doing some evangelism there at the pageant, and we had a chance to meet with one of the apostles of the

48:43

Community of Christ, which is the RLDS. Well, that church is only about 250 ,000 compared to 16 million for the

48:49

Mormon church, and he sat down with us for an hour and a half, had a cordial conversation right next to where the tomb for Joseph and Emma Smith are in Hiram Smith in Nauvoo, Illinois, and he was quite honest.

49:04

He doesn't believe the Book of Mormon, for instance, is a historical book. He believes in postmodernism.

49:09

I mean, just the things that he believes in are directly opposite of what the Mormons believe, but to get a meeting with any of those leaders today, even for a

49:18

Latter -day Saint, is practically impossible. Yeah, and there's also a lot of different branches, even in the earlier years, you mentioned the

49:24

RLDS. You had the FLDS, which came about by when, after Joseph Smith died, there was a disagreement between,

49:32

I believe, Brigham and Emma Smith, and you had people that stayed behind in Missouri, and then you had Brigham and his group that came to Utah, but the

49:40

RLDS, where did they start, and who was their founder? Where do they fit into the splintering of sorts?

49:48

So when Joseph Smith dies in 1844 in a gun battle in Carthage Jail, for the next year, they had different people who wanted to take control, but Brigham Young was the strong -willed one.

50:01

He was able to eliminate some of the others, like Sidney Rigdon and a few others.

50:07

Then in 1846, he takes people from the majority of the Latter -day

50:12

Saints, and he takes them east to go to Utah, to Salt Lake City, and that's our holiday.

50:19

Welcome to Utah, guys, because July 24th is now a holiday, right? Pioneer Day. Pioneer Day, so that's the story of the

50:27

Mormons. Well, Emma Smith wanted her son to become the leader, and so Joseph Smith III ends up becoming the first president of what used to be called the

50:40

Restored Latter -day Saints, and so that actually had relatives of Joseph Smith all the way until the 1970s.

50:50

The church today is a very liberal church. You wanna call them progressive, they definitely are. They fly rainbow flags at their sanctuaries, but they're very small.

51:01

They probably are growing only in Africa, where they have a lot of humanitarian programs, but in the

51:06

United States, many of the churches are like the liberal, mainstream, mainline denominations.

51:15

They basically have made themselves meaningless. They say 250 ,000 people.

51:21

I don't think they probably even have that, but they definitely are the largest splinter group, and then there are other groups that claim

51:30

Joseph Smith as the top leader, and many of them are polygamists. So in here in Utah, we have a number of groups that claim that they have authority with their own prophet, just like Joseph Smith, and that the church went astray after 1890, where 1890 is when they got the manifesto and said polygamy was no longer valid, and then also the black revelation.

51:52

Polygamist groups believe that blacks are still cursed, as the original Mormons did. So you have those differences.

51:59

I don't run into too many RLDS, but it was fascinating to talk to an apostle. In fact, this is a guy.

52:06

His name is Mackay, his last name is Apostle Mackay, and he is the great, great, great grandson of Joseph Smith.

52:14

And so he's now an apostle, but he's the one, if you heard about last month, where they found a picture of Joseph Smith, and so he and another person are the ones who brought that forth.

52:27

And so, fascinating person and a fascinating topic as far as other groups that are not just, well, just the

52:36

LDS church itself. Yeah, and I think, I really appreciate you taking the time to kind of give us a broad overview, just from your perspective and vantage point.

52:44

I do believe we're kind of dealing with this very postmodern phase of Mormonism, and we've had other episodes where we talk about that.

52:51

Just real quickly, tell everyone the name of the book, Introducing Christianity to Mormons. Where can people get copies of this that they wanna get a copy for themselves?

53:00

I have a website, introducingchristianity .com, one word, introducingchristianity .com.

53:06

I have links to amazon .com, christianbooks .com, Barnes & Noble carries it.

53:12

Those are probably gonna be your best places to pick that up, and it also is in the Kindle edition if you're interested in that.

53:20

But yeah, it just came out September 13th. I think that this book will be helpful for a lot of people.

53:26

I encourage people to take a look at it, and I'm hoping that there will be Christians who not only read it, but maybe hand a copy to somebody who's asking them questions about what we believe, because we need to tell people that there is hope outside of Mormonism.

53:41

Yeah, and there's no shortage of people that are needed to be able to reach the LDS community.

53:47

I feel right now, even what we've done the last four years at Coltage, I feel like we've gone to the ocean with a spoon, and there's so much need, not just for, even for active

53:57

Coltists, but people who are ex -Coltists, and there's just such a huge, huge need for that.

54:03

So I think this book is gonna be very, very helpful, and I've really enjoyed it. So let's go ahead and do this. This is a good general overview of the current, up from your vantage point, of the state of Mormonism, and in part two, what we'll do is we'll probably just kinda go a little more into details about your book and kinda talk about the intricacies, the topics, and why you approached them the way that they did, you did, and I think this will be a great, great conversation.

54:25

So if you guys really enjoyed this conversation, definitely let us know what you thought, leave a comment on our social media, and again, the book is

54:33

Introducing Christianity to Mormons, and tell the website again. It's introducingchristianity .com.

54:39

Right, and you can also get it available on your Amazon as well, too, or christianbookstore .com.

54:44

We'll have links in our description. So all that being said, thank you all for listening into part one of this awesome conversation, and we'll chat with you next week in part two.