Tuesday Guy - Questions for my Mormon Friends (Part 1)

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This is No Compromise Radio, special Saturday edition. The Tuesday guy, Steve Cooley on Saturday.

That's a ridiculously long intro. Anyway, today, for those of you who don't know me, and you should know me by now or you wouldn't be listening,

I come from a Mormon background. And so I thought what I might do today is I have some questions for my

Mormon friends. And I've said this on many occasions. Let me say it again. I love

Mormons. I love people in the Mormon church. I'm so thankful to them in many ways.

I mean, I get a little bit emotional just thinking of all the times, especially early in my life when the

Mormon church was a particular help to me and my family. I think even of a few years ago, my mom still is connected.

She's a member of the Mormon church. And I needed some help getting her things out of her house when she was incapacitated in Colorado.

And I couldn't go out there and move all the stuff. I'm physically not capable of doing it. And her home teacher, a really fine man, organized a group to go to her house and empty it all out for me.

I mean, come on, that was great. So I mean, I have nothing against Mormons, against those who belong to the church,

Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. This has nothing to do with personal issues and everything to do with theological issues because it is ultimately not a

Christian religion. It is not a Christian faith. It is not based on the Bible. It is based on the words of one man who then basically turned over the reins to other people.

But anyway, some questions for my Mormon friends. And the first one is, it would be kind of funny, but it does make you think a little bit.

Where in the Bible is there a single wedding held in a temple? If you know much about the

Mormon faith, so much of it is really focused on getting married in the temple.

That was for years. The big focus in my life and in the lives of others is you need to get to the temple.

You need to be married there. You need to know that you and your wife are gonna be together forever, that your kids are gonna be sealed to you.

And so it's the temple, the temple, the temple. But where are the temple weddings in the

Bible? Where is there any evidence that there was ever a wedding in the temple? Some people might point to the wedding at Cana.

Well, there's no temple at Cana. I mean, when Jesus went there, and some people have argued that was his own wedding.

That's one of the Mormon theories I heard when I was still in the church. Okay, whatever.

Or maybe it was the reception after, but I'm like, okay, well,

Jesus then turned the water into wine. Well, it was grape juice. No, because you can't get drunk on grape juice.

And why would they say anything about the quality of the grape juice? Oh, you know, normally we get swill grape juice, but this is really good grape juice.

Just wrong, wrong on so many levels. But again, where in the Bible is there a single wedding held in a temple?

And the answer is nowhere. Now, here's another question. Where in the Book of Mormon is there a single wedding held in the temple?

And the answer is nowhere. So you have these two books that they, you know, they obviously refer to the

Book of Mormon as scripture. We'll talk more about that later, but they revere them.

And these are narratives. I mean, these books by and large are narratives. They're not epistles written to, well, at least not the

Book of Mormon. It's not like a series of letters written to local churches. There's nothing like that in the

Book of Mormon. So in the entire canon of scripture, there are no recorded for the

LDS church. There are four books. There are no actual weddings that take place.

Now they do have instruction in the Doctrine and Covenants, but that doesn't give you any example of one actual wedding during ancient times that ever occurred in a temple.

Okay, that's question number one. Question number two, kind of related. Where in the Bible is there another temple other than that in Jerusalem?

When it was destroyed, did they build one, you know, somewhere else? Did they want, you know, kind of,

I mean, even if you look at it this way, to sort of spread out your losses to make sure that you had a backup plan, as it were?

The answer is no, there's no other temple. In fact, the other temples that are located throughout the ancient world were temples to other gods.

They were false temples for false religions. There's never another

Jewish temple. So again, the whole idea of the centrality of the temple is quite foolish.

From the Mormon website, the official Mormon website, I got this quote here. Family relationships can last forever, not just for this life, just as some of life's sweetest joys can come through family associations, the loss of a beloved family member can be a source of our deepest sorrow.

Jesus gave power to his disciples to seal families together forever when he said, quote, and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Well, again, if you look at Matthew, that's Matthew 16, 19, the King James, which they prefer.

They believe that the King James is the best Bible version. And I think that's mostly to do with it was the only one in existence in the

English language when Joseph Smith founded the church. But if,

I mean, you can look at that context, because here's something that the Mormons don't do very well. They don't walk through biblical contexts and explain what individual verses mean in a given context.

Excuse me. It's pretty easy to take a single verse, import whatever meaning you want into it, and then develop doctrine based on that one verse.

That's proof texting. That's not something that we should want to be involved in as Christians, but it's the basis for much of what the

Mormon church does. Because if you just studied the Bible, you would never come up with Mormonism in a million years.

Even if you studied the Book of Mormon, you would never come up with Mormonism. Now, there's an amazing thought, right? Even if you studied the

Book of Mormon, you would never come up with Mormonism. So it had to come from another source.

But not only is marriage not mentioned in Matthew 16, but if you look through the scriptures to see where Paul or Peter, any of the

New Testament writers might expound or expand upon this idea of eternal marriage, you'll never see it.

So what, you know, this is the kind of proverbial taking a little bit of taking an inch, you know, you give them an inch and they take a mile because this is just, it is not founded in the

Bible. Again, from mormon .org, their official website.

Temples are houses of the Lord, the most sacred structures on the earth. Anciently, the

Lord directed Solomon to build a temple. This temple was a place where God could dwell, was a place of prayer, was a place of sacrifice, and was a place where the principle and covenant of sacrifice was fundamental to worship.

Now listen, he says, or they say, at the time of the restoration, which I'll explain in a moment, the

Lord commanded Joseph Smith to once again build temples on the earth. Like ancient temples, notice the plural, today's temples are also sacred places where God may dwell.

They are places of prayer, and although we no longer offer animal sacrifices because that was done away with when

Jesus Christ became the eternal sacrifice for our sins, the principle and covenant of sacrifice is fundamental to our temple worship.

Now let me just explain what the restoration is, because I'm going to talk about this a little bit later.

But they believe, the Mormons believe, that the church, the true church, the church that Jesus intended, there was an apostasy, and they use a passage that I'm going to forget now,

I should have looked this up, to say that there must be an apostasy, a falling away, and it has to do with eschatology, but they use it to explain why, after the apostles died out, there was almost immediately a leaving of the truth, and they believe that the church did not exist on the earth, the true church, did not exist on the earth until Joseph Smith reestablished it in the 19th century.

In fact, in his famous, famous to Mormons, first vision, God the

Father and Jesus Christ, the Son, both appear to Joseph Smith as physical beings, which is wrong because we know that the

God, God the Father, is never portrayed in that way. In fact, John 4 .24

says that he's a spirit, and those who worship him must do so in spirit and truth, but in any event,

Joseph Smith says he says that he saw two personages, God the Father and Jesus, and God the

Father says to him, this is my beloved son, hear him, and then Jesus tells him that he's to join none of the churches, why?

Because they're all an abomination, all of them, so there's this complete, because that's why

Joseph Smith went to pray anyway, was to figure out which church he should join, so their belief is that for more than 1 ,700 years, the truth, the true gospel did not exist, the true church did not exist, that Joseph Smith was the means, the human means by which

God restored the truth to the world because it had disappeared for all those years, which

I find fascinating and which I'll mention, but that's what they mean by the restoration, so at the time of the restoration, the

Lord commanded Joseph Smith to build temples again on the earth. Again, we never see the idea of multiple temples, that there should be multiple places of this kind, and the idea that God worships, or God exists only, sorry, not

God worships, but that God exists only in temples is, again, biblically incorrect.

He doesn't need some kind of human structure. God is everywhere. God is spirit.

God feels all things. He is everywhere. He's in all places. There's no place that you can go to flee from him, the psalmist writes, so this is just, again, false.

Then they say here, in the temple, members learn eternal truths, receive sacred ordinances, including those that bind husband and wife together for eternity, as well as join children and parents, but again, that is not something that is taught in the

Bible. They also provide ordinances, such as baptism for those who have died without the opportunity to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they cite 1

Corinthians 15, 29, and 1 Peter 4, 6. Now, I ask this question, where are those ordinances, baptism for the dead, and well, where is that described in the

Bible, and they would say, well, it's in 1 Corinthians 15, 29. So here's what

I say. If these are so foundational that they have to be practiced in the temple, these are sacred rites that have to be done, such as baptism for the dead, they do sealings, they do marriages for people who are dead.

If they're so foundational, wouldn't they be given more space in Scripture?

Why are there no commandments to build other temples in the Bible? And here's my point.

When a doctrine hangs entirely on two of the most difficult verses in all the Bible to explain, which is 1

Corinthians 15, 29, and 1 Peter 4, 6, you've got real problems. Again, if we see what

Paul wrote to Timothy and to Titus, if when he told them how to run churches, then when he wrote to the

Corinthian church, the church of Thessalonica, all the different churches, when Peter wrote to the saints who were scattered, he never stressed, they never stressed the temple.

They never talked about temple marriage. They never talked about endowments. They never talked about temple recommends. They never talked about tithing, and they never commanded the building of more temples.

Why not? If this was so central to the true gospel, why did they never do it?

It just boggles the mind. Okay, question now, believe it or not, we're only on question number three.

Was Jesus wrong when he said, and this gets back to the restoration, was he wrong when he said, and I say also unto thee, thou art

Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. They call that the falling away, the subsequent falling away, the apostasy, but think about it.

If Jesus promised that no power on earth would stop him from building his church, and yet your whole religion is based on the premise, then in fact,

Jesus was thwarted in his desire to build this church. It was stopped. For 1700 years, there was no building of the church.

There was no faithful remnant. There was no evidence of the truth anywhere on the planet.

That's pretty shocking. That's pretty shocking, and it should be very upsetting to Mormons when they think about it.

Question number four. We're in the Bible. Is the office of apostle described as being for someone who has not seen the resurrected

Christ? Right, when they're talking about replacing Judas Iscariot, what do they say? Well, they say, well, it has to be somebody who's been with us since the beginning, namely from the beginning of the ministry of our

Lord, and somebody who'd seen him resurrected. Nobody alive today would qualify.

Nobody in Salt Lake City would qualify. The First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, because they actually have 15 apostles in the

Mormon scheme right now. Nobody would be qualified. So we're in the

Bible. What do we see it described that way? And the answer is we wouldn't. Now, question number five.

Is this part of the gospel? From mormon .org. God sent Jesus Christ to earth to give us a way to overcome our sins and imperfections.

Really? Because my understanding of why God would come from the

Bible, by the way, Romans 3, when it talks about why Jesus came to earth, it talks about him making propitiation and satisfaction.

He satisfied the wrath of God for our sins. It has nothing to do with, listen, listen, giving us a way to overcome our sins and imperfections.

Not us, we don't overcome them. Jesus did it. He said, it is finished. He didn't say,

I've done my part, now it's up to you. Again, just wrong, and this is not the gospel.

The gospel, meaning good news, isn't, hey, good news, now you can work your way to heaven.

That's not good news. The Bible says that we're incapable of doing that. Describes us as being dead in our sins and trespasses.

And here, just between us, since I just have a few listeners here on the Saturday No Compromise show, and you can write me someday, you'll be able to write me anyway, at Tuesdayguy at nocompromiseradio .com.

One of the things that really is amazing, amazing, is this idea that Jesus only made it possible for us to work our way to heaven.

That's not good news, that's bad news. I remember my friend Edwin walking around our neighborhood, we were having a yard sale, and he'd come over to help out, and there were a couple of lady missionaries from the

LDS Church, and he said, what are you guys doing? They said, well, we have good news. And they said, oh, what's your good news? Edwin said to them, and they started telling him what their good news was.

He says, that's not good news. He goes, we can't save ourselves. And he proceeded to give them the gospel, and that's exactly right, that's what we need.

I remember after I took an evangelism program, and the leaders were super excited that I was a

Mormon who had been saved, and so they wanted me to come and talk to them, and they asked me, they said, well, what is the key with Mormons?

And this was after I'd just given them this long exposition, I was super nervous, I was not a public speaker, and I just said, listen, here's the problem.

The Mormons have a wrong view of God, a wrong view of man, a wrong view of sin, a wrong view of scripture, a wrong view of Christ, and a wrong view of salvation.

And they said, well, so what's the, and my answer was much longer than that, but they said, what's the one verse that we can really nail them with?

And I paused, just like I am right now, and I just said, okay, they've got a wrong view of God, I mean, everything is wrong.

You can call yourself a Christian all day long, but if you stray from what the Bible teaches, and they do, they stray far from it, then it's just not true.

This is not a Christian religion. Question number six is this part of the gospel, also from mormon .org.

Before he was crucified, Jesus prayed to God in the Garden of Gethsemane on our behalf. Christ's sufferings for our sins in Gethsemane and on the cross at Calvary is called the atonement.

First of all, the Bible doesn't say that he suffered for our sins in Gethsemane. That's not what it says. He suffered for us so that we can be made clean and return to live with our

Heavenly Father. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news of Christ's sacrifice for us, giving us a path back to the

Father. You know what, if it would just stop at Christ's sacrifice for us, that'd be fine.

But what they mean by giving us a path is just that Christ sort of cleared our own sins out of the way so that we could walk, so that we could do what we couldn't otherwise do.

You know, you often hear, and this isn't in my notes, but you often hear that Mormonism believes that Jesus and Satan were spirit brothers.

And can I just say right now, I hate that. I hate that when people say that because it is true, but it doesn't even begin to scratch the truth or scratch the surface on the truth because they not only believe that Jesus and Satan or Lucifer were spirit brothers, but that Jesus, Lucifer, and everyone listening right now, all of us on the earth right now, and all the angels were all spirit brothers.

That's how crazy this was. We all existed. That's what they teach is the preexistence. And I don't want to spoil,

I don't want to get ahead of myself. But the idea that it wasn't just Lucifer and Jesus, it was all of us, every single one of us.

And the only difference between Jesus and the rest of us is that he was the firstborn spiritually.

Now, they don't get into gestation periods or anything else, you know, to explain how long it takes for a spiritual birth,

I don't know. At least I never learned that. But that's just a minor point of clarification here, and I wanted to make that today.

But this idea that he gives us a path back to the Father, you know, it's so subtle because that says that we came from the

Father, and that's what they believe. They believe that we existed as spirits, that we came here, that we have something, there's something called the veil.

You know, there's a veil in the temple, which was torn, by the way, at the time of the resurrection.

But they still have veils today. They believe that there's a veil that prevents us from remembering the preexistence.

Isn't that convenient? It's just wrong, but I mean, there's a whole made -up system.

I mean, it's much like Roman Catholicism, and they have this super complex system that you just couldn't get at by looking at Scripture.

You couldn't even get at it if you added the Book of Mormon and believed it was

Scripture. So now let's talk about the preexistence. Question number seven, what biblical evidence is there for a preexistence?

And the answer is, it's pretty skimpy. And so they'll cite something like Jeremiah 1 .5, which says, before I formed you in the womb,

I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations. So they would say, well, there you go.

He knew us, God knew us. Well, no, God knew Jeremiah, and the question is, what does it mean that God knew

Jeremiah? And the answer doesn't mean that, or it doesn't mean that Jeremiah was in a spirit world, that he had a spirit birth, that he had a spirit mother.

None of these things are biblical. They're not presented anywhere in Scripture, and that's not what this verse means.

Now, what does it mean? Listen to what Charles Feinberg has to say.

In order for Jeremiah to know that his commission was by divine decree, this is the context.

Jeremiah's sorting out this calling that he has. In order for Jeremiah to know that his commission was by divine decree, the

Lord explained his motivation in accomplishing his purpose through him. Observe the four actions of God toward his prophet.

God knew, formed, consecrated, and appointed him. It was indeed encouraging for Jeremiah to know that God had specifically equipped him to carry out his commission.

The knowing was not mere cognition. In other words, he just didn't know, wasn't just aware of him, but a sense of relationship and approval.

God's claim on his life was prior to all other relationships as with the servant of the Lord in Isaiah 49, the psalmist in 139, and Paul in Galatians 115.

Jeremiah's consecration was his being set apart for a definite spiritual purpose.

Here is a biblical coupling of God's foreknowledge and his sanctifying his servant.

The emphasis is on the divine initiative and sovereign choice. In this respect, Jeremiah was appointed a prophet for a worldwide ministry.

It refutes the idea that the work of God's servants was always provincial. Here's the point.

This doesn't indicate that there was a preexistence. It means that God foreknew Jeremiah, that he foreset his affections on him before Jeremiah was even born, that he had a purpose before he was even born, but there's no indication that there's anything more than God's purpose and plan being perfectly carried out by Jeremiah.

And listen, for any of my Mormon friends, I would encourage you to write me, info at nocompromiseradio .com.

We love you, and part two will be coming up in just a minute. No Compromise Radio is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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