WWUTT 1885 How to Witness to a Mormon (with Dr. James White)

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Yesterday, we heard some strategies on how to witness with the Gospel to Jehovah's Witnesses.

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Today, we're going to hear about how we can communicate with Mormons, with the

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Gospel of Christ, when we understand the text. You're listening to When We Understand the

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Text, an online Bible ministry so that we may know all the riches freely given to us by God.

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For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky, and greetings, everyone. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and respond to them in our

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Q &A, and you can send questions to us via email, whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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This week, though, we're doing something a little bit different. Yesterday, I aired Part 1 of a message.

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We're going to hear Part 2 of it today. This past Tuesday, James White came to our church,

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First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas, and he did a 90 -minute presentation on how to share the

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Gospel with Jehovah's Witnesses and then how to witness to Mormons. So yesterday,

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I played the first 45 minutes of that talk, where he went through Jehovah's Witnesses, the Watchtower Society, and how we might minister to them with the

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Gospel. Today is Part 2, with the next 45 minutes, as he addresses

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Mormonism and how we can engage with Mormons. Now, in this particular talk, he doesn't give as focused a strategy as he did with the

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Jehovah's Witnesses, but nonetheless, he does walk us through the language that Mormons will use, which is a lot of the same terms that Bible -believing

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Christians would use. In fact, some of them may even call themselves Bible -believing Christians, and that's part of the problem.

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We're using the same terms, but we mean different things. And so Dr. White is going to use his

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Universal Mormon Translator to help us recognize the difference in the language that we use, though it may be the same terms, we mean different things.

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Of course, he's going to make some references to some slides. He had a slide presentation that went along with this.

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I did not video it, so I can't show you those slides, but you can find him doing this same kind of presentation elsewhere on YouTube.

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I've seen him do this before. This was just the first time I saw him do it live and do a talk about Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormonism back -to -back.

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Even though you don't have the benefit of the visuals, I still think that you'll be able to follow along.

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Before getting to part two of this talk with Dr. James White, let me begin with Galatians chapter 1, verses 6 -10.

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Jehovah's Witnesses and the Latter -day Saints, they believe a different gospel, and so hear the warning about following a different gospel given by the

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Apostle Paul to the Galatians. I marvel that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

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But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to the gospel we have proclaimed to you, let him be accursed.

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As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is proclaiming to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be accursed.

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For am I now seeking the favor of men or of God, or am I striving to please men?

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If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a slave of Christ.

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And so, as servants of God, we must take the gospel to those who have been led astray by a different gospel, that they may come to know the truth and turn from their sin to Christ, and so be saved.

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Here is Dr. James White with part two of this presentation on witnessing to Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons.

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I have often said that dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses, you have a narrow spectrum of topics that you need to know very in -depth.

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But with Mormons, you have a wide spectrum of topics that you don't need to know nearly as in -depth.

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So, it's sort of the reverse. When I first started studying Mormonism, I had nobody to guide me.

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I had met two Mormon missionaries. I was challenged when I met them. I could tell immediately we were speaking different languages.

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And even though I was raised as a preacher's kid, I did not feel like I knew my faith nearly well enough. The sad thing is,

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I started asking questions of people in my Southern Baptist Church about the Trinity at that point, and got mainly heretical answers from my leaders on the doctrine of the

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Trinity. So when I started reading LDS sources, and I don't know who it was.

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No one said to me, you need to go to the original sources. Don't just read Christian books about Mormonism.

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I read all the Christian books about Mormonism, and then realized, you know what? I need to read what they say.

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I need to go read their books. I don't know how that happened, but I'm so glad it did, because that is what has defined my ministry ever since then, as to how we've done apologetics.

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As I started reading a marvelous work on Wonder Brother Grand Richards, and Mormon Doctrine by Bruce R.

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McConkie, and Teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith, and all these other books, Articles of Faith by James Talmadge, sometimes

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I'd sit there and I'd go, I'm never going to remember all this stuff. I can't. There are just so many things to deal with.

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Years ago, I put together a graphic to sort of help people understand the core teachings of Mormonism.

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Now let me just mention something. Even though you'll notice that the quotation here is from an official publication of the

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LDS Church, copyright 1992. Now some of you think 1992 is a long time ago. For Tom and I, it was just yesterday, wasn't it, brother?

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Oh, yes. Not long ago at all. Oh, Latter -day

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Saints, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, LDS. Mormonism's changing.

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When I first started witnessing the Mormons, the 14 -year -old kids could argue theology with you, and they would, and they wanted to.

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When we first went to General Conference of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, the first time we stood outside those gates, we had lines of Mormons waiting to talk to each one of us.

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If you went up there today, you would be lucky to get into three conversations in an entire day.

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Mormonism's changing. I can give you a lot of the reasons why. I don't have time to do it right now. I don't know what

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Mormonism is going to be like 10 years from now. It's changing that fast. But the theology, technically, has not changed, but the knowledge of the

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Mormon people has. Honestly, in the 80s and 90s when we were doing most of our work out in Mesa and up in Salt Lake City, every

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Mormon you talked to knew what they believed. And they wanted to defend it, and they believed it was true.

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I can talk to Mormon missionaries today, and it's like nailing jello to a wall. They absolutely positively are so subjective.

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Back in the 80s, they wouldn't even call themselves Christians. Now they do. There is a movement in the late 90s to mainstream

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Mormonism, and they didn't realize they were, in essence, injecting cyanide mainstream right into their veins when they decided to do that.

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And Mormonism is changing. Their growth rate has plummeted. In the 1980s, when

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I first started studying Mormonism, the average Southern Baptist church had 274 members, and in an average week, 273

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Southern Baptists became Mormons. That's one church per week wholesale converting to Mormonism in the 80s.

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That's not the case anymore. Most of their growth is now natural growth. Big families, big kids.

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What's happened? Well, they've made some major, major, major errors in their planning and everything else, but the fact of the matter is, as society has changed, the subjectivism of Mormonism has made them very, very susceptible to cultural movements today.

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Utah is collapsing on homosexuality, gay marriage, the whole

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LGBTQ plus array. BYU is collapsing on all of these things. I would not be surprised at all to see blessings for gay marriages in the

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Mormon temples in a very short period of time. They were behind the horrific

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Senate bill that was passed just a few months ago, the respect for marriage.

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They supported that. Now, they have a God with a physical body who's a male.

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I thought for sure they'd be the last ones to collapse on this. Well, not the case. So I wouldn't even have time to run through all the stuff about Joseph Smith.

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Let me just mention very, very quickly, if you're not aware of this, Mormons have four books of sacred scripture.

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The Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and the King James Version of the Bible, as far as it is translated correctly.

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Used to be most of your Mormons had read all those things. That's not necessarily the case any longer. You're going to run into certain

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Mormons who know a lot about their faith and others who don't, just like you do amongst us as well. But what

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I want to share with you is the central aspect of Mormon theology, and I've never found a place where it was more clearly expressed than in achieving a celestial marriage, a student marriage.

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This is a book you could buy at the LDS bookstore, and before you could be sealed in the temple, you could have a celestial marriage.

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See, Mormons can get married in a secular sense, but that doesn't last for eternity. If you're sealed in the

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Mormon temple, and there are only a certain number of temples, not the ward chapels you see in our neighborhoods, but the temples.

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If you're sealed in the temple, then it lasts for eternity, and that's how you become a god. You had to go through this book as a part of a class to become married in the temple, and you'll notice it's pages four and five.

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It's right at the beginning. So let me read through this and use it sort of as the way of introducing us to it.

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So the book says, God was once a man who, by obedience, advanced to his present state of perfection.

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Through obedience and celestial marriage, we may progress to the point where we become like God.

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Proclaiming the divine potential within man, John Taylor once wrote, Knowest thou not that thou art a spark of deity, struck from the fire of his eternal blaze and brought forth in the midst of everlasting burnings?

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Elder B .H. Roberts stated, Man has descended from God. In fact, he is the same race as the gods.

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His descent has not been from a lower form of life, but from the highest form of life. In other words, man is, in the most literal sense, a child of God.

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This is not only true of the spirit of man, but of his body also. Can you see the implications of these two statements as they relate to you and to your eternal destiny?

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Elder James E. Talmadge did. He declared, quote, In his mortal condition, man is

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God in embryo. However, any individual, now a mortal being, may attain the rank and sanctity of Godship.

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Articles of Faith, page 529, which, by the way, Articles of Faith is, used to be anyways, almost always given to missionaries before they run their missions.

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How is this possible? What course of action will bring this potential to fruition? As you study this lesson, look for the answers to these questions.

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Points to ponder. God became God by obedience to law.

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It was late afternoon as we sat in my office, but I felt the time had been well spent. He sat silently now, obviously contemplating the ramifications of the things we had been discussing.

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We had talked of God, of how he had become God, and of what that meant in terms of our own exaltation.

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Finally, he spoke. Now, the italics yellow is the younger

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Mormon, and the other is the older, wiser Mormon. What is this law of exaltation of which you keep speaking?

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Well, it involves the whole of the gospel law. Everything required of us by God is associated with this law, but the major crowning point of the law which man must obey is eternal marriage.

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Therein lies the keys of eternal life, or as the Doctrine and Covenants puts it, eternal lives.

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In other words, an eternal increase of posterity. Now, again, I hate to rush this, but you have to, but I need to stop here and point something out to you.

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The greatest problem we have in dealing with Mormons is language. We use the same words, we use a different dictionary to define them.

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Okay? So, so many people I know will have, they're going on for an hour with the

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Mormons, and they think they're really getting somewhere, and then all of a sudden the Mormons say something, and they realize they haven't gotten anywhere at all because they weren't communicating the whole time.

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And so I've often likened it, and the graphic I'm going to show you is what I call the universal translator.

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Anyone know where that phrase came from? Star Trek, universal translator. Every time the

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Enterprise runs into some freaky -looking alien being, they speak English. How does that work?

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Well, they had to come up with some explanation, and it was the universal translator, which takes whatever language they're speaking and makes it

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English and makes it go the other direction, and everybody goes, fine, that's how you got to do it. Well, we need a universal translator for Mormonism.

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They're not going to make the effort to translate to us. We have to make the effort to translate to them. Here's a good example.

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See what was just said here? Therein lies the keys of eternal life, or as the

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Doctrine and Covenants puts it, eternal lives. And what are eternal lives? In other words, an eternal increase of posterity.

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You and I talk about eternal life. And the Mormon translates that into having an unlimited number of children as a god to populate another planet.

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That's not what you believe eternal life means, but that's what the Mormon believes. And so it's the same phrase, but completely interpreted in a different fashion.

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Let me make one statement before I go to the next screen. This will wake you up. Islam is considerably closer to biblical

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Christianity than Mormonism ever could be. Now, given that Mormons have a

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Bible, and they look so moral, and they talk about Jesus, and they use all their language, am

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I insane? It's real simple. Muslims are monotheists. They believe there's one God to create all things.

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Christians are monotheists. They believe there's one God to create all things. Mormonism is the most polytheistic religion ever established amongst human beings.

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We know of Hinduism. How many gods does Hinduism have? Anybody know? 330 million amateurs.

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There are an unlimited number of gods in Mormonism. Infinite number. Infinite number of gods.

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God the Father, in Mormonism, is a man who lives on a planet that circles a star named

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Kolob. And before he became a god, his god was a man.

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And before that, his god was a man as far back as you want to go. So, then what you're saying is that God became

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God by obedience to the gospel program which culminates in eternal marriage. Subpoint. Through obedience to law, we can become like our

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Father in heaven. Yes, do you realize the implications of this doctrine as far as you are concerned? I think so.

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If God became God by obedience to all the gospel law with the crowning point being the celestial law of marriage, then that's the only way

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I can become a god. Right. And it is the law that assists us in reaching that potential.

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It tells us what we must do to gain the ultimate freedom. In fact, it is by obedience to law that we have progressed to our present position.

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You mean we have always been governed by law? No, hold on. This next little paragraph is one of the most important I've ever read in thousands and thousands and thousands of pages on Mormonism.

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Here it is. Always. You are an eternal being.

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You were never created. And you cannot be destroyed. But you can advance, progress, and develop by obedience.

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If you cannot see that that is the absolute lie of Satan in the garden, then you're not looking.

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Because the fundamental teaching of scripture is that you were created.

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You were made by your creator. And he can destroy you and your body in hell, as Jesus himself said.

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But in Mormonism, God's just an exalted man. He's just like you.

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He's just farther down the road than you are. That's all. There is no ontological difference between yourself and God in Mormonism.

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None. There is no creator God in Mormonism. The God of Mormonism cannot create matter.

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Matter is eternal. God is an exalted man. And a faithful Mormon, who is married in the temple, believes that when he is resurrected, he takes his wife or wives with him, organizes a new planet, has celestial babies, puts those spirits and the bodies on that planet, and starts to process all over again, except now, you're

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God the Father. That's their hope. Then Hamlet's question, to be or not to be, is not the question.

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Right. Not in the ultimate sense, at least. Order means law, and that law is the law of the celestial kingdom. Any who come unto that kingdom must obey that law.

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But I thought Godhood meant freedom. If I have to do things to become God, am I really free? You've got it wrong.

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It was the Savior who said, and you want some really Scripture -twisting here? It was the Savior who said, if you continue in my word, that is, obey the law, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

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So by obedience to law, we learn truths by which we become free, but not free from the law. Can you see that?

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I think so. I can be a God only if I act like God. Exactly right.

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Can you imagine, listen to this, can you imagine the state of the universe if imperfect gods were allowed to spawn their imperfections throughout space?

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If beings who did not have law under their subjection were free to create worlds? This is not some science fiction novel.

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This is a marriage manual for Mormons. They are literally talking about space gods, because that's what they believe.

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I guess that would be pretty disastrous, but I'm not sure I see why celestial marriage becomes the crowning apex of this progression.

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Marriage doesn't seem directly related to the creation of the universes. Oh, but don't be limited by your mortal perspective.

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God himself has declared his own reasons for existing. Remember, he said, for this is my work and my glory.

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I see his purpose is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. I just stop here. That's Moses 139.

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That's a quotation of their scriptures. Their God's work and glory has to do with man.

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And that makes perfect sense, because he is a man. There is no meaningful God in Mormonism.

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Which involves giving birth to spirit children. Ladies, congratulations. You don't have the priesthood.

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The most you can look forward to in eternity in the Mormon world is being eternally pregnant.

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Never seeing your feet again. There is literally,

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I am not making this up, I could take you to the local ward chapel, pull out the hymnal from the back of the thing, open it up, and show you a hymn that they sing regularly that talks about our heavenly mother.

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It's there. Trust me. Which involves giving birth to spirit children and sending them on the road to exaltation.

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If that is to be done, you must have an exalted man and an exalted woman. Oh, the gender binary.

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I don't know what they're going to do when they fix that. That's going to be a mess. Exactly.

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An exalted man and woman who have been joined together in an eternal marriage. If this man and woman were obedient to all gospel laws except celestial marriage, what would be the result?

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They still could not be gods. Now I understand celestial marriage is the crowning ordinance of the gospel.

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Right, I said with a smile, and with that comment, I think we can end the discussion. That's how they start the manual on marriage.

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You're looking at me like I made all this up. I didn't. Now, I then have a number of quotations from the

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King Follett funeral discourse that I will not go through. I'd love to, but do not have time to. I've talked about this, so let me show you my wonderful universal translator.

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It also looks like something from Amway. If any of you were going to be inviting your friends over for a multi -level marketing meeting this evening,

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I just ruined it. Sorry about that. Here is the universal translator.

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I will be able to go through it very quickly with you. This is meant to be a circle. You'll notice spirit children over there and spirit children up there.

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You sort of do this number. The two eternal things in Mormonism are intelligences and matter.

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Intelligences and matter. Matter is eternal. God cannot create. No creatio ex nihilo.

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God cannot say let there be and there is. No. Matter is eternal. And intelligences.

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We've all existed as intelligences throughout eternity. God, us, angels, all the same thing.

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All the same thing. For now, just follow the arrows and have to trust me.

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You'll see how it comes together later on. From intelligences, you get to spirit children. Intelligence is placed into a spirit child.

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How you get spirit children, you'll find out later on. But you have a heavenly father,

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Elohim, who is an exalted man with a body of flesh and bones as tangible as any man's. And a wife.

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But he has many wives. He is a polygamist. And amongst Mormons, especially in Utah, when you have two people who are especially close friends or something like that, you and I would obviously be very close friends because you have a very fine bow tie on.

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And so that's just how it would be. And so if we were Mormons, we might say to each other sometimes,

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I bet we had the same spirit mother. Because that would explain how you're so close to one another.

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We had the same spirit mother. Because there's lots of spirit mothers up there. And not everybody had the same spirit mothers.

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And so that's how they would explain that. So you were born as a spirit child in a spiritual preexistence.

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You're born. You wear little spirit diapers. You have a little spirit poo -poo. You crawl around.

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You grow. You fall down. You get boo -boos on your spirit knees. The spirit body is just as real as a physical body.

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It's made of matter. But since it's super refined, it's not visible to the human eye. And so you exist as spirit children.

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You grow up. And you go into the mortal probation. We'll get to this one later on maybe.

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You go into the mortal probation. That's where we are now. That means your spirit is taken from the preexistence and put into a physical body.

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Why don't you remember that? Mormons have various theories. There's no actual revelation on this.

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But they have different theories. And the one that makes the most sense to me is that if you take a six -foot -tall spirit child and cram it into a little baby, it loses its memory.

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I mean, that would make sense, right? Most Mormons would say, well, God just removes the memory so you can be tested to see if you're going to be faithful.

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Something along those lines. You go into the mortal probation. That's where we are now. There are two ways out of the mortal probation.

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One line goes down to spirit prison. This line goes up to paradise. There's an A and a B. Where are the

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A and the B? A is the four fundamentals of the gospel. The four fundamentals of the gospel. Faith, repentance, baptism by laying on of hands, and receiving the

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Holy Ghost. Those are the four fundamental minimum things to receive the gospel.

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But that's not all. Because the B is continued obedience to gospel rules and principles.

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So this is the Mormon way out of life. You die as a faithful Mormon. You've done the four fundamentals of the gospel.

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And you're faithful. You go up to paradise. We'll talk about where you go from there. If you don't do those things, you go to the spirit prison.

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But the Mormons, at least, are a very evangelistic people. Because you'll notice, what happens is, people will come down from paradise, and they will witness in the spirit prison.

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And they'll tell you what you must do to get out of the spirit prison. Okay? Four fundamentals.

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Faith, repentance. As a spirit, you can do that. But how do you baptize a spirit in water?

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And how do you lay hands upon your head for the reception of the Holy Ghost? You try to put your hands on the head of a spirit.

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You just keep on going through it. It doesn't work really well. So, there has to be someone who is baptized in your place.

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So Mormons practice baptism for the dead. And so, you may have wondered why all the genealogical websites on the web are owned by the

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Mormons. They bought everybody's genealogical library. Why? Because they are doing baptism for the dead.

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They are doing genealogy work. They believe it is their duty to open the way out of spirit prison to paradise for their ancestors.

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In fact, the old teaching, it's not the teaching anymore, but the old teaching was, you wouldn't get any farther than your ancestors did.

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And that would give you motivation to then help them to get on their way. And so, if you sit outside of a

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Mormon temple, you will see people going in. They'll have these bags, these little garment bags, and they're going in to be baptized for the dead.

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And they used to, I'm not sure they do anymore, I don't think they do anymore, but they used to do 50 baptisms in a session.

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So, you would come in, you would take the names of your ancestors, you'd give them to them, they'd put it into a computer, they'd put the names up on a screen, you'd go down into a baptismal font that's built on the back of the statues of 12 oxen, and you have an elder.

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I have a video of this, but we don't have time to look at it this evening. You can actually see these things online, because people snuck through with little teeny tiny cameras and stuff like that, and recorded some of this stuff.

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But you will be baptized in the name of such and such a person, read off by the recorder, shum, shum, you come up, baptized you in the name of such and such a person, 50 times in a session.

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Then you get out of the baptistry, you go to another room, elders gather around you, they're wearing the temple garments, they'll put their hands on your head in the name of da -da -da -da, lift their hands, da -da -da -da, in the name of da -da -da -da, to receive the

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Holy Ghost. So they are doing, by proxy, what needs to be done to fulfill the four fundamentals of the gospel.

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So that if your relatives that you're doing all this for believe and repent in the spirit prison, they can get out through baptism of the dead and go to paradise as well.

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Okay? But that's just the four fundamentals, you've still got to continue to be in the gospel ordinances and principles.

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Can you do that in behalf of the dead? Yes. Mormons can go through the entire temple ceremonies, the reception of the priesthood, the

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Hawaiian yards, even do sealings to the dead in eternal marriage, in the temple, and do this for their ancestors.

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It's not overly surprising that it's in the context of temple work that Mormons will very often report encounters with the dead.

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I will never forget, years ago, visiting a Mormon family as a part of our outreach at our

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Southern Baptist Church. I think that the young person had visited our church, that's how we got the name and address.

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And so they sent me out, because I was already studying Mormonism, to talk to this family.

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And we're talking, and I'm sharing passages from the scripture about the fact there's only one true God, and God was never a man, he doesn't know of any other

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God. I had noticed, I had seen a shadow at the stairway.

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It was a two -level apartment. I had seen a shadow, I knew somebody was on the stairways. And at one point, this young girl comes down, and she comes in and says,

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I just want to say something to you. And she says, I don't care what you show me from the Bible, I have seen that Mormonism is true.

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How's that? When I was baptized in the temple, when they got done, when

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I walked down into the water, I looked up, and along the back of the room,

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I saw a line of spirit beings. And every time

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I was baptized, one of the spirit beings smiled and disappeared.

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And when we got done with my baptisms, there was one spirit being left, and it began to cry.

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And so I said, something's wrong, we missed someone. And they went back and looked, and lo and behold, they had skipped someone.

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They baptized me in that person, the spirit being smiled and disappeared, and I don't care what you show me from the

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Bible, I saw it, and that's it. Now, how do you respond to something like that?

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Now, what's interesting is that was the first time I had heard it. I witnessed over 5 ,000

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LDS missionaries, personally, one -on -one, and a lot of other Mormons beyond that.

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I've heard the same story. Now, does that mean it's a story they pass around?

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Possible. But when you build entire temples, all meant to be involved in communication with and contact with the dead, what can you say, okay?

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So you can do other things for the dead. But notice the lines here. From the spirit prison, you've got a big thick line here that goes over here.

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This green line is the resurrection, all right? Notice this line crosses that. Well, the first time

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I ever passed out tracks in Salt Lake City, it was in May. I didn't know about the general conference yet, so we went up there in May.

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It was hot, and I was going over to the Howard Johnson's to get a drink because I was dying. And I was crossing

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North Temple and West Temple, and as we're walking across, there's some

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Mormons who've just come out of the temple where they were being baptized to the dead. We're walking along, and so I offered them a track.

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And when you offer a Mormon a track, genetically, their hand goes like that to read the back, who it's published by.

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And he looks at it, and he looks at me, and we're literally walking across the street, and he says to me, go to hell.

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And I looked at him and said, sir, according to your theology, I can't go to hell. And he knew

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I was right, and it really made him angry. It really did. Because I've had a lot of Mormons tell me,

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I'm going to go to the terrestrial level, which is a second level. There's three levels, celestial, terrestrial, and telestial.

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Telestial? What in the world is that? Honestly, I'm not making this up.

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You know where telestial came from? Joseph Smith took the first two letters of terrestrial and slapped them on the last letters of celestial and came up with a new word called telestial.

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I'm not making that up. That's where it comes from. So here's the glory of the sun, the glory of the moon, glory of the stars, 1

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Corinthians chapter 15. This is the second highest level. This is the lowest level. Telestial is for drug pushers and bad people.

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Terrestrial is for the moral folks. Celestial is the realm of the gods. That's where you become a god, and you only get there through Mormonism.

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So we'll talk about that in a second. These all receive their physical body back in resurrection.

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Celestial, terrestrial, celestial. Now celestial, that is exaltation to godhood.

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You are married. You bring your wives with you. By the way, women, you are dependent upon your husband's priesthood authority for your resurrection.

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So I wouldn't burn that dinner if I were you. Seriously, you are dependent upon your husband's priesthood authority for your resurrection.

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That has introduced some really bad dynamics into Mormon marriages, I can assure you of that. But you get to the celestial level of glory, you engage in physical intimacy because you have a body of flesh and bones, no blood.

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No blood. Because 1 Corinthians 15 says flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God.

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So Joseph Smith, it's great stuff. Anyway, you go up here to celestial level, you organize your own planet, you start having spirit children, and at the right time when you have enough spirit children to do this, you then create your own

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Adam and Eve, and you put spirit children into these bodies, and you start the process all over again.

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Except now you're God, and you're worshipped by your offspring as God. Which would mean on this planet,

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God the Father was once a man lived as a man, like you and I. And a lot of Mormons will admit he would have been a fallen creature, just like you and I.

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Some say he was a Jesus figure, so he wasn't fallen, but there's nothing that really decides that one way or the other.

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But you'll notice something. Down here, we have some that come out of the spirit prison and go to hell.

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Now who are they? Those are apostate Mormons. So if you received a testimony of the

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Holy Ghost that Mormonism is true and then denied it, you go to hell. You go to spirit prison, and then you go to hell.

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And you're the only people down there together with Satan and the demons. Now where did the Satan and the demons come from?

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Satan and the demons are spiritual offspring of God the Father. According to Mormonism, when it came time to start this planet,

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Elohim, God the Father, called a council of his elder children. And you're going to love this.

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Jesus presented Elohim, the Father's plan. Which was he'd give everybody their choice.

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The Arminian Jesus, give everybody their choice. And then

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Lucifer comes along. And Lucifer is going to force everyone to become a god.

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No free agency. So guess who Lucifer is? Calvinist Lucifer. A vote is taken.

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A vote is taken. And Elohim's plan presented by Jesus wins.

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But a third of Elohim's spirit children follow

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Lucifer and fight in rebellion. They're cast out of heaven. They become

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Satan and the demons. They want to get back into the law of eternal progression here. That's why they try to take over physical bodies.

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But they are not allowed to. In finality, they are cast into hell. But notice, that line does not cross the resurrection line.

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So what that means is, apostate Mormons who go to hell have their physical bodies.

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Which means they've gotten farther through the eternal law of progression. And so they rule and reign over Satan and the demons in hell because they advanced farther than Satan and the demons did.

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I guess that's a consolation prize. Okay? Now is there anybody sitting in front of me going, you just made all of that up.

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Now obviously, keep something in mind, the Mormons don't simplify it like this. Well, they do sometimes their own people.

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I have found some books that are pretty straightforward. For example, one of the things I don't mention here, when it came time for Jesus to be born, why did

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Jesus have the power of eternal life? When the Mormon missionaries come to your door, they'll say, we believe that Jesus Christ is the only begotten of the

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Father, and they'll always say this, in the flesh.

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Because when you look at this, Jesus isn't the only begotten of the Father, the Father's begotten billions.

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But in the flesh. Without question. I have an entire chapter on this in my book,

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Is the Mormon My Brother? Without question, the teaching of the Mormon church has always been, God the

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Father, who, according to Mormon scripture, has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as any man's. The Son also, the

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Holy Ghost, hath not a body of flesh and bones, otherwise he could not indwell us, is the teaching of the Doctrine and Covenants. God the

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Father, in a body of flesh and bones, had sexual intercourse with Mary, to create the body of Jesus.

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The virgin birth for Mormonism is only that Mary was a virgin at the time of conception, not the time of birth.

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Jesus is immortal because his father was immortal. Total different understanding of virgin birth, huh?

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Yeah, just slightly. Many Mormons do not know this. Though I can show you publications from the official church, that use stick figures to show you the same thing.

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It's very, very clear. But it's very, very embarrassing too. And many

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Mormons just are not aware of this at all. So just keep that in mind, in case they were to totally freak out.

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So, what does that tell you? We have a completely different Jesus, we have a completely different God, we have a completely different Jesus, we have a completely different Gospel, we have a completely different source of authority.

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Mormons believe they have a priesthood, a special priesthood authority, the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthoods. Real, real weak spot of their theology that has been very useful to go toward discussion of that.

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So much more could be said. I'm sitting here thinking about blood atonement, and this subject, and false prophecies of Joseph Smith, and there's just so many things.

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You can't possibly do it even in a weekend. Here's what I want you to understand.

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This helps you to understand where the language is coming from. Hopefully this will help you to, when you hear a

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Mormon speaking, to hopefully translate what they're saying, knowing what the background is.

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When you talk to Mormons, when you talk to anybody, this is for any situation, but especially true of Mormons, when you go into the conversation, you have to have a goal.

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The main thing that I see Christians doing, going, oh, there's a Mormon, and oh, they're coming up to me, okay,

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I need to talk to them, and then the next thought should be, I need to communicate to them this divine truth, and that's where we stop.

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We forget. You know, on Thursday morning, I'm gonna get up, and I'm gonna hook my truck back up to my fifth wheel, and I'm gonna leave the

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RV park down there in North Tyler. If I don't put a specific goal into my two different GPSs, I've got one for RVs and then

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Google, because Google will try to kill you if you're in an RV. It hates you. It'll send you down little roads that'll absolutely destroy you.

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It's happened, believe me. Anyways, if I don't have a goal, I can drive around all day.

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I'm not gonna get anywhere, but if I have a goal, then even if there's a detour, I may have to take an exit off and maybe do a little driving around, but what am

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I trying to do? I'm trying to get back on the road to get where I was going. You have to have a goal in your conversation with the

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Mormon, and when they throw roadblocks up, you've gotta treat it just like that, as a roadblock, but then you're getting back on the road to where you want to go.

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So what do Mormons need to know? Polygamy's bad. Well, that's true, but that's not what you need to be communicating to a

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Mormon. Joseph Smith was a false prophet. Well, if Joseph Smith is staying in the way of the gospel, then you might need to go there, but that's not the most important thing they need to know.

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They need to know who God is. They need to know who Christ is, and they need to know what the gospel is, and you have got to have that as your goal, as where you're gonna go, because if you don't have a goal, you're gonna go round and round and round, and I can't tell you how many

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Christians I've talked to in the past 40 years that they got up the courage to engage in a conversation, and two hours later, they come back and like,

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I don't feel like we got anywhere. Part of it was the language. Part of it was simply not having the goal in mind in the first place.

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You've got to know where you're going, okay? Now, I understand, folks, this is like drinking from a fire hose, because I went through it fast and didn't even touch on all sorts of fun stuff.

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I mean, if I showed you some of the other stuff I've got in this presentation, like I said,

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I've got a video, and we've got pictures of the temple up in Salt Lake City, which, by the way, almost collapsed in the earthquake a couple years ago.

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They are literally having, they have billions to do it, but they are rebuilding the entire foundation of that building, because Moroni fell off the top, and it almost came down.

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It's amazing. But the sunstone, the moonstone, the starstones for the different three levels of heaven are right on the side of the temple there.

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All sorts of neat, fun stuff like that, which we would take time to look at if we had more time. I've written two books on this subject.

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One's called Isamor and My Brother, which is very in -depth on the theological aspects, and then

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I think the one that is most useful in witnessing to Mormons, Letters to a Mormon Elder, which a lot of people have passed out to Mormons, because they're written as forms of letters to a

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Mormon missionary. But to a Mormon missionary who believed what Mormonism believed in the 1980s, it's not that there's anything specific that's changed, but the emphasis has changed a lot since then, and most

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Mormons are much more ignorant of their faith than they ever were back in those days. But it's still better for you to know more about their faith so you can translate the language as it comes to you.

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Whew! Okay, I'm tired. Thank you very much, you two, for listening, and I appreciate you.

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You guys were great. Good job. He's looking at me and talking to me. Mom, what do

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I do? The strange -looking man up front. I see you, too. You've been paying attention as well.

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Congratulations, young man. Very good. Anyway, thank you very much for coming out on a Tuesday evening.

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That's sort of what we're doing now as I travel, is it doesn't matter which night of the week, and it's so great to see

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Christians coming out and doing this kind of thing. For me, I just want you to pray that the

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Lord would give you the opportunity to be the love of Christ in the life of a

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Jehovah's Witness or a Mormon. At the same time, I'm warning you, if you honestly analyze your own foundation and do not feel you have a sufficient foundation to engage in that kind of work right now, don't do it.

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I've had to deal with people who went out and tried to save the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and ended up as Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.

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So be wise. Talk to your elders. Send your elders out to do it. No, I'm sorry. Tom's going, thanks, appreciate that.

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Seriously, pray that the Lord would prepare your heart to be a person because there are many

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Mormons leaving the Mormon church right now, and just like the Jehovah's Witnesses, they're not joining our churches.

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They're religiously burned out. They need to have you folks to be that lifeline.

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So let's pray together. Father, thank you so much for this opportunity of preparation, and we do pray,

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Father, that you would give us opportunity as we still have freedom in this country to do so to testify of your truth, especially to the

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Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. Lord, give us a love in our heart. May we not see them as enemies, but as those who have been entrapped and enslaved.

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Lord, help us to be that light that you would use to draw your people unto yourself. I thank you for this church.

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I thank you for Pastor Buck and the whole staff here and the work that you're doing in this growing, growing place.

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I pray your blessings upon this church, and thank you for this time we pray in Christ's name. Amen. And that concludes this presentation from Dr.

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James White. Again, if you didn't hear part one, I would encourage you to go back and listen to yesterday's episode as he walks us through how to share the gospel with a

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Jehovah's Witness. Come back to these episodes often. Listen to them again so that you can get in your mind an understanding of what

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Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons believe, and it may help equip you on what you need to know when you share the gospel with them.

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As Dr. White had encouraged in yesterday's message, don't do this because you want to skewer them with your theological sword and win debates.

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That's not what this is about. It's so we might win souls for the kingdom. So be wise, as Jesus said to his own disciples, be wise as serpents and gentle as doves as we go out with the gospel of peace so that those who hear it may turn from their sin and be saved.

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We don't want to put a stumbling block in front of them. If they are going to stumble, let it be on the gospel because they rejected the gospel, not because we were a hindrance to them.

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Be wise in the way that you communicate these things. As said in Colossians 4, let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer each person.

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Thank you so much for joining me. God willing, I'll be back on with my regular schedule next week. Coming back to a study of Hebrews on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Isaiah on Thursday, and hopefully

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Becky will be able to join me for the Q &A on Friday. I want to remind you once again that I'm going to be speaking at Providence Church in Marshall, Texas this coming

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Sunday morning, 10 .30. Look them up. And we'd love to have you join us if you don't have anywhere to worship this

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Sunday and you're in the Marshall area. Let me conclude with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the gospel that has been given to us.

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And as you have shown mercy to us that we might hear of Jesus Christ and come to faith in him and so live, may we show this mercy to others so they too may come to hear the gospel and be rescued from their sins and the wrath of God that is burning against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

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Help us to correct opponents with gentleness. As said in 2 Timothy 2 .24

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and in 1 Peter 3 .15, setting apart Christ as holy, always being ready to give an answer for the hope that is within us, but doing this with gentleness and respect.

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We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. This is When We Understand the

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Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. There are lots of great Bible teaching programs on the web and we thank you for selecting ours.

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But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family. Find a good gospel -teaching

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Christ -centered church to worship with this weekend and join us again Monday for more Bible study When We Understand the