Apologetics Conference 2016: Answering Mormons' Questions (Eric Johnson)

The Importance of Truth and the Need to Understand Mormonism

If you are interested in Mormonism, I think you're going to get a lot of information. It will be firehose. I have been told, I was told by someone a couple of nights ago, we've been at a church since Sunday, we've been at a different church every day, every night.

And so I was told by somebody from New Jersey, I said, did you get the information? Because it was fast. It was an hour long. And they said, you talk fast, but we're used to that in New Jersey. So Utah, they're not so used to it.

So it's great. I used to teach for 17 years at a Christian school in El Cajon, California. I was the Bible department head of a school that is the same where the church of David Jeremiah, maybe you've heard of before.

And so I learned how to talk as fast as I could sometimes to get the information in, but had a great time doing that. But in 2010, moved to Utah. Let me ask you a question. Does truth matter? I think it does, doesn't it?

I mean, we live in a world of truth. If you cross the road without looking both ways, eventually you're probably going to get hit. Law of gravity is something that's very narrow. It's not bigoted to say that gravity exists.

And I think when we sang that song and you were talking about Jesus, I think it was important that we didn't use the word Krishna, for instance, or Vishnu. Why not? If we started to sing to Vishnu or Krishna, would you have a problem with that?

Well, yeah. And so that's kind of like a counterfeit $30 bill that's orange, right? I mean, how many people are going to be able to pass a $30 orange bill and it's not going to work? And so you guys would say, no, that's wrong.

However, if we use the same terms and just happen to use the name of Jesus and made it look like a 20, but there were some things missing, would you have a problem with that?

I would.

And yet, is it hard to recognize? What I want to do in this first hour is I want to show you a little bit about what the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based in Utah, with over 15 million members, with over 80 ,000 missionaries inundating this entire area with this temple open house.

And on the 11 o 'clock, 1130 hour, I'll be talking about the temple specifically. But what I want to do in this hour is I want to give you a good overview. And just so you know, if you could get my PowerPoint up, an online PDF file containing the notes for this PowerPoint will be on mrm .org slash Philadelphia.

So if you were to write that down, we didn't print those out for you, it's four pages. All of the quotes that I'm going to give here today are listed on that website. It's a PDF. You can print them out, four pages, including the chart I'm going to show you.

And I think if you are able to stay with me, then I think you're going to have a pretty good idea of what this religion is about. Let me tell you a little bit about this ministry. Mormonism Research Ministry was founded in 1979 by my friend Bill McKeever.

He was not a Mormon ever, and neither was I. He became a Christian at the age of 18. And all of his LDS friends, and that's the nickname, Mormon or LDS, when I'm referring to a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I'll use LDS or Mormon. They all began to try to evangelize him as they had never done before, because he became a Christian. And so he wanted to do some research, and that's how it started. And then in 1979, when he was a young man, he started this ministry.

We have a twofold purpose. Number one is we want to inform Christians about this religion. Number one, so that we can have you do the work that we can't do, just like your pastor can't do the work. You know people who we don't know, and you'll be able to have an influence with them.

And also, to keep people from joining this church, do you know that more than half of all Mormon converts come from a Christian background? Does that surprise you? Because they knock on your door, and they're so nice.

I mean, the white church, have you had them come to your door before? How many have had Mormon missionaries come to your door? Many of you have. And so they come to your door, and what many Christians want to do is go hide behind the couch, right, or they slam the door in their face.

That happens a lot. And the missionaries take that as being a martyr. Well, you know, it's obviously that we have the truth, because otherwise they wouldn't be so against it. And I would say, just as a short way to say, if you don't want to talk to them, tell them.

I'm not interested. But if you're interested, then, like Pastor Jeff, if they come to his door, he's inviting them inside, and he's going to have fun with them, right? I mean, that's, I mean, he's going to talk, he's going to ask lots of questions.

And I think, legitimately, we should be able to ask lots of questions, and not be scared.

Of that.

So we want to inform you about that, and not, I don't know how much you came into knowing about this church, and that's what we do a lot of, speaking at churches. We also want to share the Christian faith of Latter-day Saints.

We're going to be doing that this afternoon. If you come with us to the Temple Open House, afterward, we're going to be out there. My friend John and I have a newspaper that we hand out. In fact, you got that newspaper as you came in, and we like to hand those out to people who are not Mormon, so they can understand that this is different from what Biblical Christianity is saying, and also to give to Mormons.

We've had lots of good discussions out there, and we do a lot of different evangelism things with our ministry. We do have a website, and if you get nothing else out of here today, go to our website, mrm .org.

We have YouTube videos, lots of articles. I can't tell you all the information. We get about over 1 ,000 hits a day. We've been around since 1995 on the internet, so we have a short URL, M-R-M, and easy to.

Find.

We write books. I'll be talking about that at the end. You can go to our back table and see some of those. We have a daily radio show we've been doing since 2011. Let me tell you, we have a lot of Mormon listeners.

You have to understand, Utah, 60 of everyone living in Utah is Mormon, and like you would probably have a pretty large percentage here who are Roman Catholic, right? We have Mormon, and so those are our neighbors, our friends, and how many of you know a Latter-day.

Saint?

Let me ask that question. Okay, so about maybe a quarter of the room. If I ask that question in Utah, everybody raises their hands. It's pretty obvious that you know somebody there, but here, it may not be as well-known, but because of this temple I'll be talking about in the next hour that I speak, you're going to find out that that is such an important building for them, and to have that building there, they're not going to build a building like that and not try their best to grow, and so that's something that we like to do is go to places like this to be able to share, but the radio show plays in five different radio stations, but in Utah, three times a day, and we have had Mormons who have become Christians through that.

We also do podcasts, and we have over 1 ,300 shows backlogged. They're 15-minute shows. So go on to our website, go to radio, and you can see an index of all the shows, and then evangelism events, as I was talking about.

Well, here is what I was talking about at the beginning today, that there are the same terms that are being used, and yet there can be confusion, and this is one of the hard things when you're trying to detect a counterfeit $20 bill.

You first need to know about the real thing, and that's why Pastor Jeff and the church here is equipping you in understanding your Bible. Right now, you're going through the book of Ezra. You need to understand the Old and the New Testaments.

You have to have a good grasp of what the authentic is, and today, we're going to take time away from the Bible to take a look at a counterfeit. The Secret Service looks very carefully at what the counterfeits are, and I'm going to tell you something.

You can know your Bible as well as you want to know it, but if you don't understand what the other person is thinking and saying, if you don't understand his or her worldview, you're not going to be able to communicate truth very well, despite all your Bible knowledge, and I know that for a fact, because I had a professor at, I went to seminary back in the 90s, 80s and 90s, and this guy's name was Dr. Ronald Youngblood.

He was a translator of the New International Version, excellent professor, and well-known. He's now passed away and was with the Lord, but he sat with a Mormon on a plane for three hours, and he came back to class one day, and he said, he says, I have two PhDs, I have all this information, and I could not evangelize this person next to me, because I didn't know what he was talking about.

He was using the same words, and I didn't know where to go, and that was when I was, that was when I first started the seminary, and that gave me a lot of respect for a guy like that, who understood, as much as he knew, he needed to have more information, and he said, I'm, he says, I vow to you students today, I am going to do my part so that will never happen again, and I can be an effective witness for Jesus on a plane, whether I sit next to a Mormon, or Jehovah's Witness, or an atheist, because he knew his Old Testament, but he admitted he didn't know much about Mormonism, so here are the terms many Christians will ask their LDS friends, do you believe in God, and what does a Latter-day Saint say?

Yes, of course we believe in God, you didn't think we did? Of course, we're not atheists, do you believe in Jesus? And they like to, the missionaries will do this, I've seen it happen, oh, wait a minute, we have Jesus Christ on our name, the name of our church, it says the church of, and in big font, if you notice, it's Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, if you go through the temple, those of you who go through the temple today, do me a favor, I think I lost count of how many Jesus paintings there were, I saw one of Joseph Smith in the first vision, that's all I saw, I saw a Book of Mormon painting, but I'm gonna say probably 30 or 40 paintings, all had pictures of Jesus, but one thing you won't find in there with Jesus, you'll find the Garden of Gethsemane, you'll find Sermon on the Mount, but you won't find what?

You won't find a cross, the cross is not something they appreciate, they think that if Jesus died by a bullet, would you wear a bullet around, a bullet casing around your neck, they just don't understand that, they think it's kind of gross to think about where Jesus died, they'd rather reflect on his life, but for us as Christians, the cross is not foolishness, we preach the cross because that's where forgiveness of sins takes place, but they do believe in Jesus, it's just which Jesus, 2nd Corinthians 11 4 says, it's possible to have another Jesus, and certainly Paul says in Galatians 1 8 9, that there can be another gospel, if anyone preaches a gospel other than the one I preached to you, he says something pretty harsh, let him be accursed, and that's a big deal, so they have Jesus, they also will say, salvation by grace, yes, we have salvation by grace, and you go, well, wait a minute, I've heard that Mormonism is not Christian, and yet they believe in the same things we do, there's your 20 dollar bill, it's not orange, and they might even try their best to pass the tests that the secret service puts into those bills, but we have the ability to look at that closer, and so I want to take a look at this today, to see yet a Mormon answering these questions in a way that it sounds confusing, I think it's possible to better understand, so how do we answer Mormons, I think there's a couple of key rules, number one, we need to use gentleness and respect, the Bible says in 1 Peter chapter 3, it says that we're always supposed to have an answer for everyone who asks us to give the apologia, this is an apologetics conference, to give an apologia for the hope that we have, but notice, do this with gentleness and respect, we have a term for it, we call it compassionate boldness, and that might sound like an oxymoron, but compassion, we need to love the Mormon people, but there are some, including some people in higher level institutes, educational Christian institutions where they would say, you know what, they seem like they're such nice people, we just need to just get along, and so they want to be compassionate, but they're not bold in saying wait a minute, we need to call out air when it comes, and because there are people who are following this who may not know very much and are easily accepted into this religion and end up, I'm going to say, causing themselves all kinds of problems down the road, because there's going to come a time where there's going to be a resurrection, there's a resurrection of life Jesus said in John chapter 5, but there's also a resurrection to judgment, and in Matthew chapter 7, Jesus says, there will be many who say, Lord, Lord, look at all the good things that I did, and what does Jesus reply?

Come on in, yeah, come into my kingdom, no, he doesn't say that, he says, no, I never even knew you, and so as good as Mormon people are, and are Mormons nice people? Absolutely, please hear me, I do not, I am not against the Mormon, people like the Mormons oftentimes will call us anti-Mormon, I'm not against the Mormon, I'm against the religion itself, just like I'm against Buddhism and Islam, I'm not against the Muslim, or the Buddhist, or the Hindu, I'm against the religion, because I believe it's taking people to a place that is eternal separation from God, and I don't want that for anyone, so we do that with gentleness and respect, 2nd Timothy 2 .15 says we need to be doing our best to present ourselves to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth, know that word of truth, and the more you know that, and then the more you understand what I'm going to talk about today, you're going to easily see this, if you don't have much biblical knowledge at all, some of the things that I'll say, you'll go over, and you'll go, what's so wrong with that?

But if you know your Bible, you'll say, how did they come to that conclusion? Ephesians 4 .14 says that we need to speak the truth, how? In love, and so I want to encourage you, especially for those of you who come down with us today, if you, after you're done with the tour, if you want to come out and try to hand out some papers, I'd love to have you be a part of that, and if that's something you want to do more of, this thing is only open for four weeks, the Mormon open house, Mormon Temple open house happens for four weeks, anybody can go right now, but in four weeks, they will close it down, and only those in good standing with a temple recommend card can actually get in, there's certain requirements, I'll talk about that in the next hour, when I get to talk about the temple, and I'll tell you a little bit about what goes on in there, now they're not going to tell you down at the temple open house, you'll go see a video, and then you'll get to go through this temple, they're not going to tell you very much at all, they'll say you can ask questions, but you're not allowed to ask questions about what they actually do in there specifically, like the ceremony itself, it's very private, we call it secret, even though they would like to say it's sacred, but I want to do all of that love, and I don't want to needlessly offend, we wrote a book called Answering Mormon's Questions, and in chapter one, we dealt with probably the most common question that comes up, there's 36 chapters in this book, and we put this number one because we know it comes up all the time, and I'm going to tell you, I was out there for four hours on Wednesday, and I got asked this question at least ten times, as I'm handing out this newspaper, and asking people, free Christian newspaper, not Mormon, and I do that on purpose, and the Mormons, about 80 of those going through are LDS, and they'll say, well we're Christian too, don't you think we're Christian?

That's the question that they're going to come up with right away, and so that gives me an opportunity to talk about what I'm going to share with you here, and so that's what we're going to deal with, this question is, why won't you accept Mormons as Christians, do you think we are a cult?

Now I'm going to tell you right now, from the very beginning, I don't think that you ought to use this question when you're talking to a Latter-day Saint, and I'm big on asking questions, I like the Socratic method, because you need to understand where they're coming from, you don't want to use words like, you believe, never tell a Latter-day Saint what he believes, rather, what do you ask?

Yeah, do you believe this? I heard you believe as man is, God once was, do you believe that? Why do you believe that? How do you know that? These are questions you can ask, and so I'm big on that, but this question is not a good one, because that puts them right on the defensive, and that's not something that's going to get very far, and especially the word cult.

We can talk about the word cult, we do in our chapter here, I think, realistically, it is a theological cult in every way possible, but I don't like to use that word, because then that word becomes a slam, and they turn off, and you don't want to do that, you want to keep your conversation open whenever possible.

So here, at the beginning of the chapter, we list some questions you can ask, to try to, that's a pretty loaded question they just came at you with, so I will ask, could you please define what the word Christian is?

Can you define that term? That's a good one, just to get them to explain what they think it is. Why does it bother you that I, as a Christian, won't accept Mormonism as a part of Christianity? For some reason, they want our approval.

When Mitt Romney was running for president, and there were a number of people who said they would not vote for him, that caused a lot of problems in Utah, they were really upset with Christians, and they say, why won't you vote for him?

And that was a personal decision, we didn't have a recommendation either way, you needed to vote your conscience, but there were a number of people who did not like the fact that it was a Mormon who had pledged allegiance to the LDS leadership, but why does it bother you?

They're concerned that we don't accept them, and so I think this is our opportunity, so find out, what do they think, and then you can respond to that. Why do you think people assume your religion is a cult?

Again, you're not calling the religion a cult, but why do you assume people think that? Well, they think that we're polygamists, we're not polygamists, I agree, you're not, people who believe that don't have a very good understanding of religion.

Or some people will say, this temple, they think that we have a marriage bed in there, and that we consummate the marriage in there. No, you don't, I know you don't, we're not teaching that, so what else, what are some other reasons you think, because I don't agree with their religion, what do you think I don't agree with?

And just get them to try to open up. One of the things that I find fascinating is they really desperately want to be known as Christian, and here's something that I will do when they do that, I'll say, okay, let me get this straight, so you are a Mormon, and you are a Christian, so Mormon and Christian are synonymous, would you agree?

Oh, yeah, okay, well, I consider myself a Christian, maybe I need to come up with another name then, huh? You know, maybe I need to come up with something else, or maybe, since Christian is the same as a Mormon, maybe I'm a Mormon.

And I do that facetiously, and I have to have a little bit of a relationship with the person to do this, and they'll look at me, and they'll say, what do you mean? I say, well, you know, I reject Joseph Smith as a prophet of God, I reject the Book of Mormon, I don't think Thomas S. Monson is a true prophet of God, but I'm a Latter-day Saint.

And what's their immediate reaction? Why? Oh, so are you suggesting that words have meaning? Mormon has a specific meaning. Historically, biblically, does Christian have a meaning? Yes. And so just for anybody to call themselves Christian, it would be like a Hindu.

I actually had a Hindu devotee, I used to take my students to these different religious venues, and he claimed he was a Christian. We love Christ, too, he was a good guru. And I said, so you're a Krishna Christian?

It kind of goes together, I guess. He goes, yeah, of course, it's all part of it. Well, come on, you know, and he's saying all these things you have to do, you have to recite the Maha Mantra so many times a day, and you can't eat dairy or meats, and, you know, okay, so call yourself a Krishna devotee, but don't call yourself a Christian.

Then we put a summary at the beginning of every chapter in this book, and it says, LDS church leaders not only proclaim that theirs is a Christian organization, but they also insist that theirs is the only church with which God is pleased.

Since even before the church was founded in 1830, incredible claims have been made that fall outside the parameters of biblical truth. Their views on the Godhead, salvation, and scripture, along with many other doctrines, separate Mormons from the rest of the professing Christian world.

And while Christians need to be respectful when discussing these topics, differences on central issues cannot be ignored. After all, truth matters. Took me all day to write that paragraph. A lot of stuff in there, but do you see what I'm trying to get at?

And this is what our chapter is about. It's vital information, we've got to use gentleness and respect, but we can't just ignore this. A lot of people in this politically correct world we live in want us to ignore it.

Just let it be. I'm so glad for Pastor Jeff and your church that you want to teach people the truth and not let your people fall into the air, and then to help others get out of the air. I can't tell you how many ex-Mormons I have met who are so excited about knowing Jesus for the first time.

It is amazing the things that we see. I get to see, because I'm on the front lines, just back in April we had a couple in 80 years old sat down in the bookstore where I volunteer on Saturdays with Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse Ministry.

It's a bookstore, it's been around since the 1960s. Sandra Tanner is 75 years of age and she's a go-getter. She's the grandmother of Christian apologetics in Utah. And so I was working with Bill, we came in and we work on these Saturdays.

They came in and they said, we are done with Mormonism. We asked why? Because the church came out with these gospel topics essays from 2012 to 2015 where they made admissions to a number of things that they had never known before.

They admitted, for instance, that Joseph Smith did not just take his finger and read the gold plates of the Book of Mormon to translate them, but he took a rock, a magic rock that he had, put it into a hat and he read off of that.

The church has admitted to that in this essay. He said, we never knew that before. He read off a rock, are you serious? And then they admitted, this really bothered his wife, that Joseph Smith had 30 to 40 wives.

This is on LDS .org, 30 to 40 wives. We've known that forever. I mean, that's just part of the church history, but the Mormons didn't know that. They thought he was married to Emma. No, he was secretly marrying women in the last few years of his life especially and one-third of his 30, it's usually used the number 33.

One-third of his wives were teenagers as young as 14 and another third were married to other living husbands. That's polyandry and a lot of people didn't know that. They knew Brigham Young had 54 wives.

They didn't know Joseph Smith. So, this couple sat there and said, we don't know what to do. We don't know what to do. Can we go to church? Is that okay? I don't, we don't even know what, we're not supposed to go there.

They tell us not to, but how do I dress if I do go to church? So, we had to kind of instruct them. I mean, the man, for sure, had already been a Christian. I mean, he already accepted. We didn't have to say a little prayer.

He already was. She was still trying to figure this all out. Long story short, they've been going to Bill McKeever's Church Lifeline. It's an evangelical free church in the Utah area. They've gone every Sunday since Easter.

Not only that, but they've been coming to my Monday night Bible study every single Monday. They can't get enough. We're studying, we're going through the New Testament and they just say, this is incredible.

We never knew this stuff before. 81 now. They're 81 years old. So, we're seeing a lot of stories like that. So, truth really does matter for people like that. This is a church manual called Gospel Principles and I want to tell you what their standard is, what their authority is.

According to this manual, which is well accepted in the Mormon world, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints accepts four books of Scripture. The Bible, the King James Version specifically, and yet the Bible is true only as far as it's translated correctly.

What you got to see last night with Andrew about how we got the Bible was very important because they think corrupt priests change things and manipulated things. Even though they'll use the Bible to support their views like baptism for the dead in the temple, they use a verse out of context in 1 Corinthians 1529 to support that.

But, they do believe the Bible. They do accept it as Scripture. Then they believe the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is a story of two ancient peoples called the Nephites and the Lamanites who lived on the American continent.

There was a battle. The Nephites were destroyed. The white people were destroyed by the Native Americans, the Lamanites. The last living Nephite was Moroni. His dad was Mormon. That's where the book title comes from.

He had saved the plates of the records of these ancient Jews on the American continent. Jesus had appeared actually on the American continent as well according to this story. He took the plates as a human being in about 430 or so AD, buried them in upstate New York.

Palmyra buried those plates. Then in 1823, he came back from a human being. He became an angel. That is the angel that's on top of the Mormon temple. That would be the angel Moroni, a depiction of him.

Joseph Smith took those plates and supposedly translated this story of the ancient Americans and Jesus' appearance on the American continent. That's the Book of Mormon. That's the book they'll ask you to read and pray about.

We're not going to spend much time on that, but that's its own topic. Doctrine and Covenants are revelations that Joseph Smith receives from Jesus. He gets all kinds of revelations. In fact, I'll pass this around.

This is called the Triple Combination. These are their three unique scriptures. You can take a look, flip through, and get an idea. Those three scriptures along with the Bible and the Pearl of Great Price is another.

Those four books are called the Standard Works. That's very important. We want to use the Standard Works when we're doing our research and talking to Mormons and use their scripture. You'll see me using that today.

In addition to those books of scripture, the inspired words of our living prophets become scripture to us. That is very important. They have living leaders today who they trust very much. They have words that come to us through general conferences twice a year, first weekend of every April and October.

The whole church gets together in Salt Lake City as a centerpiece. Everybody here would be watching on TV as their prophet and apostles and other leaders do speak. I'll be quoting from General Conference here today.

The La Jona and Ensign magazine are monthly magazines. The Ensign is the English version. That's very important. You'll see me quote from that as well and instructions to local priesthood leaders. They don't believe in a closed canon.

They believe in an open canon. Scripture can continually be added because they have leaders that come directly from God. As far as those general authorities, here they are. We have the president. The founder was Joseph Smith.

In 1830, he founds his church. He claimed in 1820 as a 14-year-old boy that God the Father and Jesus appeared to him in what's called the Sacred Grove in the Palmyra area. You can go visit there today.

It's very important. Every Mormon knows the First Vision story of how God the Father and Jesus came. They told Joseph Smith that all the churches there were false. Their creeds were an abomination. They were not to be believed that Joseph Smith was going to restore the church that had been lost before.

Joseph Smith was the first one. Today, Thomas S. Monson. On the left-hand side in the middle, those three men there are called the First Presidency. The First Presidency, the guy on the right of Monson is Henry B. Eyring.

The guy on the left is Dieter F. Uchtdorf. Those three men make up the top three leaders, but the president is most important. We don't expect Monson to live much longer. He's almost 90, and he's suffering from Alzheimer's, so he's fading away really fast.

In fact, they limit his appearances. When they dedicate this temple in September, it won't be Monson coming to do it, as he's dedicated more temples than anybody else, I think. So, somebody else, maybe Eyring or Uchtdorf will come.

Then there are 12 apostles on the right-hand side. Those 15 men are the top leaders, the three plus the 12, and they believe that's the same structure that Jesus would have had, and then they also have what are called the Seventies.

Those are the leaders who will do most of the preaching at these conferences, and they are directing the people on how to believe. So, now you understand. We have the written scripture. We have the oral scripture given to us by these men who have been appointed, and Thomas S. Monson is number 16, so there have been 16 presidents of the church.

They also are known as prophets. Let me talk about the sixth president of the church. Give a quote. This is from Joseph F. Smith, the nephew of Joseph Smith, and this is what he said, I contend that the Latter-day Saints are the only good and true Christians that I know anything about in the world.

There are a good many people who profess to be Christians, but they are not founded on the foundation that Jesus Christ himself has laid. And you might say to me, well, Eric, that's a pretty serious quote, but that was probably said a long time ago.

I know my Mormon friends wouldn't agree with him, and that might be true. There might be Mormon friends you would have that would say, I don't agree with that. You guys are, and they'll call you Christians.

They'll say, oh yeah, you're Christians. You're doing nice things, but what exactly does that mean? And that's what I want to talk about. So, remember this quote because later I'm going to show you some current quotes from their leaders to see if what Joseph F. Smith is an anomaly or if it is accurate for today.

Gary J. Coleman is responding to a 14-year-old girl, a little Mormon girl who he called Courtney, and she was supposed to be the daughter of an LDS mission president. He says this in the Ensign, May 2007, and the May and the November issues cover General Conference.

They give you all the speeches word for word. So, those are the two most important editions, and you'll find our books that we write. We load our content with quotes from General Conference. This is what he said, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you are a Christian and I am too.

I am a devout Christian who is exceedingly fortunate to have greater knowledge of the true doctrine of Christ since my conversion to the restored church. Notice how church is capitalized. That's how they will do it because it is the church.

These truths define this church as having the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I now understand the true nature of the Godhead. I have access to additional scripture and revelation, and I can partake of the blessings of priesthood authority.

Yes, Courtney, we are Christians. So, what does he say? He says we have the true doctrine. We have the fullness of the gospel. By definition, if they have the fullness, what do you have? Less than the fullness.

You have half the story with the Bible. You need the rest of the story with the Book of Mormon, and they're gonna say that they have a better idea of the Godhead. They have a better idea of scripture and revelation and priesthood authority.

I want to deal with those specifically because these are crucial issues. Would you think that those are essential issues? And as Christians, we may have different denominations in attendance here, but one thing we can agree with would be those things.

Isn't it true? And so, that's what we want to look at. Apostle Neal Anderson, some ask, aren't there many of other faiths who love Christ? Of course there are. Notice the however. However, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, having a witness of his reality, not only from the Bible but also from the Book of Mormon, knowing his priesthood has been restored to the earth.

That's very important. Let me just stop here real quick. According to Mormonism, after the Apostles died, all authority was lost. And in fact, we were in the Dark Ages for probably about 1 ,700 years.

In the Dark Ages, we had no priesthood. We had no authority until Joseph Smith brought it back. He brought back the priesthood because in 1829, the year before he founded his church with six members in New York, he was visited by John the Baptist and he and Oliver Cowdery were baptized in the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania.

John the Baptist was there. And then later, and he doesn't remember the date, so we don't know the date in 1829, but Peter, James, and John came back and they laid their hands upon Joseph Smith and Oliver and they were given the Melchizedek priesthood.

So, the Aaronic priesthood today is given to 12-year-old boys or older, and the Melchizedek priesthood is given to 18-year-old men or older. Women do not hold the priesthood, although the feminists have been trying hard lately, working there, working overtime trying to get women the priesthood.