A Mega Edition of the Dividing Line Today

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00:38

And welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday afternoon here in Phoenix, Arizona.

00:45

A lengthy edition today, a mega -sized edition of The Dividing Line because this is the only

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Dividing Line for the week. It is Thanksgiving week and certain people are just going off on their own after Thanksgiving so we can't come to you on Friday.

01:04

I mean, a lot of you, you know, would be very blessed but just can't, just can't work it out.

01:11

Hey, now you need the day on Friday to decorate your house for Christmas anyway, right? Oh, right. Yeah.

01:17

No, that's, I'm always out on Black Friday, you know, just fighting with the crowds.

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I've never understood that. Why, why would, I try to avoid the roads on that day. I mean, it's, it's, oh, no, no, that doesn't make a lick of sense.

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Anyway, we have lots to get to today. I do want to get back to and try to finish my response to the

01:41

Gordon presentation on issues, etc. on Mormonism. But we have a lot of other stuff to get to today.

01:49

Trying to find my cursor. There it is. At least, you know, I have to admit, Vista is what drove me out of Windows.

02:03

And now Apple has had its own Vista. It really has. I think Mavericks is Apple's Vista.

02:09

I mean, whoever put that thing out did not test it. Do I detect apostasy coming?

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Oh, well. Coming back to the Windows cult? Well, it certainly makes things look more attractive when, when stuff that used to work just, just won't work anymore.

02:26

And, but the one thing that Mavericks did allow me to do was fix the problem with the size of my cursor anyways.

02:32

So I suppose it's, but when other stuff just stops working completely because somebody did not test this appropriately and just breaks everything.

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And I'm not the only one who's had problems. But anyways, that's another story. We won't get into all of that right now.

02:47

Lots of stuff has been piling up over the past couple of weeks and we need to catch up with them before they just completely become irrelevant or just part of the archive of the news.

03:00

I noticed that the American Humanist Association sent a letter threatening a church that was involved with the

03:09

Samaritan's Purse in gathering Christmas gifts for children.

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And, you know, what's it like to be a part of the American Humanist Association? I mean, what's, what's your reason for this?

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I mean, you're just a bunch of ogres anyways. And you just run around threatening to sue people.

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I guess that's what atheists and humanists are all about is we will force our culture to be a secular culture through the force of law itself.

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And the only reason they're able to do that now is because we have, we have bought into this whole silliness about the

03:51

Constitution being a living document rather than having a meaning that was determined by its authors.

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And because nobody, nobody even thought of what these people have come up with for a long, long, long, long time.

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And it's so obvious that their vision is not the vision of the Founding Fathers, but they've managed to demonize the

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Founding Fathers. So that's really all there is to that. Much of that going on.

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And of course, if I were even looking for those stories these days, we could, we could fill hours with the, that kind of, kind of stuff.

04:30

It's just, especially this time of year, obviously, just all over the place. I was sent a link to,

04:38

I just do not understand this, a article by Ben Witherington at patheos .com.

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And I read it and I just, it's about his visit to Rome and to the

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Vatican. Now some of you recall when I went to the Vatican, I didn't, I wasn't invited by anybody to go meet the

05:06

Pope, but Ben Witherington was, and it's, it, the way that it was described by the person that sent me the link was, this guy's like at a

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Justin Bieber concert. I mean, he is just, oh, it's just, oh, it's just so exciting and it was so wonderful.

05:29

Here for example, the Pope agreed to greet a few more people, those in the second row, not the 20 rows behind us, and suddenly whoever this young lady with him was, and I found ourselves lining, lining,

05:40

I guess, lining up to greet the Pope. But what do you say to the Pope? Well, I can think of a few things, but I simply mumbled something like, thank you,

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Holy Father for greeting us. Well, thank you, Ben, for demonstrating that you're really not much of a

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Protestant, are you? But something special happened. The Pope really took to the young lady with him. I can't even begin to pronounce her name.

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Yulia, I think, and she both shook his hand and kissed the ring and knelt before him.

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Here are a few of the Vatican official shots, which I will replace when they send me my copies.

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And so, you know, they send you these and you see Ben Witherington, you know, doing his bowing thing.

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And he talks about going to a gala dinner in this fancy place and says, frankly,

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I didn't care if all the statues suddenly came to life and ate dinner with us. I couldn't, it couldn't have been more magical than what had already happened on a day.

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I will never forget. Oh, he's just, oh, I did. And I just go, well,

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I guess I shouldn't be overly shocked because there really aren't that many really convinced

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Protestants left. There are most Protestants are Protestants of mere flavor of tradition, but they are not

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Protestants of conviction. They're also Protestants of bigotry and bias and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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But there aren't very many Protestants left of actual conviction who know what the issues were, know what the issues are, and hence would have no desire whatsoever, let alone get all giddy and excited like a little girl when they meet a man who claims all the titles the

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Trinity for himself. I mean, seriously, Holy Father, that's the Father, by the way,

07:36

Vicar of Christ, that's the Holy Spirit. I mean, the very representation of a religious system that not only still does not contain and present the gospel, but continues to persecute those who speak the truth in many lands just leaves me stuttering.

07:57

Whenever you see that, you just know, OK. I mean,

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I understand 150 years ago, things like that, that some of those popes were, you know, very much involved in scholarship and stuff like that.

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And there was more interaction at that point that didn't necessarily, but bowing down and kissing rings and doing stuff like this,

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I just, and being all excited about it.

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I mean, it'd be one thing to have to do all that stuff to gain access to something in Rome, I guess, but it's completely other when you're just like, oh, it's just so wonderful and magical.

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And then these are some of our leading, quote unquote, Protestant scholars. Anyways, a lot of folks sent me links, and a couple weeks ago,

08:48

I talked a little bit about Stephen Anderson and the

08:53

New World Order Bible versions trailer. And I mentioned, and I think

09:01

I forgot to mention even when I did a little follow up on this, that I had, no,

09:07

I did, I did mention that I had intended in my initial discussion to respond to what he said.

09:18

He put up a video, he actually put up a blog article, then he put up a video, sort of mocking me, saying I don't know the difference between the different kinds of English.

09:25

It was all about the utilization of archaic language. Remember last time I played for you, him contradicting himself, because in our

09:35

Hell discussion, he was all about, well, we need to, we can't use foreign words and we need, if we're not speaking in a way people understand us, we're speaking to the air.

09:44

This is like, did you catch that? Well, I finally, I mentioned to you at that time,

09:50

I said, well, I wrote to the producer and the producer, the producer said that Pastor Anderson will answer all my questions.

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Because remember, I asked the producer, so exactly why did you include what is so obviously an attempt to be dishonest, you know, put in a clip about my allegedly calling the end to a three hour long interview.

10:14

And that was after 16 minutes discussing the same subject. And it was a subject where most people, when they listened to the whole thing, were scratching their heads going, that guy's really weird.

10:23

And they weren't talking about me for once, all that kind of stuff. And the response I finally got after the last program was, well,

10:30

Pastor Anderson will answer any of your questions about that. So, so I guess he was saying

10:35

Pastor Anderson decided, hey, did you get that where he said that? Let's stick that in there. I don't know.

10:41

We'll find out. We will find out in time. Now, I saw a video and I'm going to play a few minutes of a video for you here.

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Well, actually, I can't really play. Well, I could. I suppose I could put the video up here and like hold the monitor up.

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And that really wouldn't be the. Oh, yeah, you could have done it. You keep you keep telling me it's really pushing it.

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You know, I mean, but I've told you we could do that.

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You just got to let me know ahead of time to get the video. You were in last time we talked about doing stuff like this.

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You're sort of like, I don't know, we're really pushing it. You know, this computer over here, it's just doing so many things.

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You know, eventually it's just going to go and, you know, and it will eventually go like that. It's just, yeah, but not that.

11:31

Not with. Oh, OK. All right. Anyway, I'll play you some I'll play you some a portion of this.

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I forget. Was it Twitter? I think it was probably Twitter.

11:47

I would assume it was it was Twitter. I get a lot of good information through Twitter. Sometimes I get the same information six to 12 times, but that's sort of how that works.

11:57

But I was directed to a brief and it cut off right in the middle.

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So I don't know if they just had recording problems or just what it was, but a brief presentation by Dr. Keith Small on Quran manuscripts.

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And evidently. Now, again, this is a this is a

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Brill book, so you have to be really generous with the dates provided for Brill books, as we've discovered in regards to the manuscripts that Dan Wallace told us about quite some time ago that were supposed to be out in February and they're not going to be out for a while.

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So this is a Brill book that he mentions in this talk, but he's talking about early manuscripts and he's talking about this on a palimpsest manuscripts.

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Now, let me just, again, make sure you understand what I'm talking about. Palimpsest manuscripts, manuscripts where you've taken the parchment, you've washed the original and original writing off of the surface of the palimpsest, off the surface of parchment, and you've written something else over top of it.

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And the reason you do this is parchment is actually animal skin and therefore it's more durable than paper would be.

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You know, you try to wash paper, it just falls apart. And the reason palimpsests are important is because you can, especially using ultraviolet light, see what was written beforehand for two reasons, sometimes because there's acid in the ink and so it mars the surface and sometimes because of the nature of what you use to write itself, it marred the surface, the quill that you were that you were using.

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Now, obviously, it's much more difficult to read what's called the lower text, in other words, underneath the upper text in a palimpsest.

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And so, you know, but it can also give you a text that's much earlier than what was written.

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I mean, you could have a you could have a manuscript and it served its purpose for 150 years and then gets washed off and reused for something else.

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I mean, if the if the parchment was really that good and had survived well, then there could be a major amount of time between what was originally written and then being washed off and something else.

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There are a number of New Testament palimpsests. There aren't very many Quranic palimpsests, but the

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Su 'ana manuscript is one of those. And there are many people who feel that the inferior or lower text of the

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Su 'ana manuscript goes back to the pre -Uthmanic period, prior to Uthman, prior to the fundamental editing that he did of of the text.

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And so I just want to play a few minutes of of Keith Small's comments here, because I think you'll find what he has to say rather rather interesting.

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So take a listen to what he has to say. Over time, those damaged areas would age differently.

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And within a few hundred years, you have this light brown ghost text reappear.

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And that's what we have here. And you can see these with the naked eye in this particular manuscript.

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Sometimes you have to use ultraviolet or infrared light to help highlight the difference.

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Now, this find in Yemen was a manuscript find every bit as much on the level as the

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Dead Sea Scrolls, the Naqamati Codices that were found, both those finds in the 1940s, an enormously important manuscript find.

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And they are still, these manuscripts, they are cataloged, but they're still being evaluated and gradually being made available to scholars for study.

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OK, this manuscript, this particular one, has two levels of text.

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The original lower level was very possibly written before the time of Uthman's reign.

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It was possibly written in the 640s. The carbon dating of the manuscript works with that view.

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The script style works with that view. Other features can work with that view.

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And for some reason, it was washed off within a generation, within 20, 30 years, 40 maybe, and rewritten with what you now see is the dark text, the black text.

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And so basically, the scholars who are working on this manuscript right now, they work with, on American, let's say, ballpark figures of the 640s, the 650s for the undertext, 670s, 680s, 690s for the upper text.

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And it's fascinating that one of the later records of this tradition of Uthman's calling in manuscripts, establishing one text and having these others destroyed, not only this later tradition says, not only did he say they should be burnt, he said they could be washed.

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So we may have right here an example of a manuscript that went through that very process.

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Now, as I mentioned, it's being examined in detail by many scholars right now. It's being produced for publication by a team of scholars in France and Germany, and it's hopefully going to be coming out within about a year, published by Brill Academic Publishers, a very reputable publisher.

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A very slow publisher. But also, if you want to learn more about it in the meantime, just put

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Sonopalpsis in Google, and a lot will come up. And a lot of the early research on it is already online.

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It's not a complete manuscript. It's not the complete Quran. And parts with both upper and lower texts are only about 60 out of 80 pages of the text.

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And not all of those 60 pages can the under text be read. You can see it's there, but you can't quite make out a lot of words.

18:32

OK, from what is already known. Now listen to this.

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The lower text confirms this picture of variability and flexibility during the period before Uthman, that there were different words, different phrases, even a missing verse to, you know, our look back.

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And even a very different order of surahs for the different surah changes that are in the manuscript.

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There are only about four, but it's a very different order from any encountered before. Also, the variations don't match.

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The records of what's asserted to have been in any of the known companion collections. Catch that? Like those of Ibn Masud, Ubaid bin

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Khab, or the Imam Ali. Now, I stop it right there.

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One of the reasons to do this is, once I start talking about it, then all the smart people start jumping online and start searching.

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If you go to, on YouTube, Al -Maktoum

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College, M -A -K -T -O -U -M College. This is a three -part series, which is why

19:49

I only heard the first part. Now I'll get the other two parts. So I'll get to listen to the rest of this and I will do that for my ride tomorrow.

19:59

But you can find all three parts. I don't know if they had to cut it up or just, that's just,

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I have no idea why it was cut into three parts, but this was put up seven months ago. So hopefully this publication time period is even closer.

20:14

But catch what he's saying is, he's saying that there are variants in the palimpsest that are not to be found in what we already know, at least those of you who listen to this program, which puts you in a very small percentage.

20:32

And some Muslims, but the vast majority of Muslims have no idea of any of this stuff, just like the vast majority of Christians don't have any idea about textual variation or Codex Sinaiticus or whatever else.

20:46

That's just sort of the vast majority issue on both sides of that divide. But the vast majority of Muslims really do think that what they have is just what, it's the only thing that you can't have.

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That's just, it's Uthman, it's always been this way. That's all there is to it. And what he's saying is, we know that there were other traditions that of specifically, most importantly from my reading, that of Abdullah ibn

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Masud. And you also have that of Ubay ibn Ka 'b. And if you've listened to my debates with Adnan Rashid, and you couldn't have listened to the one with Yusuf Ismail yet, but that's supposed to be sent to us very quickly from the

21:33

Pachastrum, you will know that there are manuscripts that contain these readings.

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And for some of them we don't have manuscripts, we have commentaries that mention, well, Ubay ibn

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Ka 'b read it this way, and Ibn Masud read it this way. And a lot of the early commentaries didn't have any problem talking about these things.

21:55

It's only later on that all of a sudden, well, we shouldn't be talking about these things, and things change.

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So that's what you have going on there. Well, what Keith is saying here is,

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I'm sorry, Dr. Small, I have met Keith, and so he's a nice guy, what

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Dr. Small is saying here is that some of the readings, in fact, in some instances, as he's going to say here in a moment, many of the readings are not to be found in either

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Ka 'b or Ibn Masud. So they represent another tradition.

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And as you say, in some instances, they represent the majority of the variant readings, where the text varies from Uthman.

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There are variations of the same types of variants said to have been in these versions, and occasionally one or two will match, but the pattern of variations does not match what is recorded for these other versions.

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And so one scholar has said this is very possibly the part of a collection of an unnamed companion, just one of the other companions, not one of the ones named in the tradition.

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Just for an example, on one single page that one scholar examined, they found 30 three -zero differences from what is considered the normal text now.

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And when they matched these against records of known textual variants in the secondary literature, they found two match what is asserted to have been in Ibn Masud's version.

23:43

One matched Ubay ibn Ka 'b's version, but 27 didn't match any known collection.

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Now, that to me is fascinating. So two match Ibn Masud, one

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Ubay ibn Ka 'b, and 27 are variants unknown before.

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Now remember, this is very, very early on. There's still much less information to go on, which is somewhat interesting in light of the fact that the

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Qur 'an is so much younger than the New Testament is. But there's still so much less information to be going on.

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We're still in the early days of the examination of the text of the

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Qur 'an. But one thing is very, very, very, very clear from this, and that is when

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Muslims attack the veracity of the New Testament, they don't realize, they just don't realize that by so doing, they are seriously undercutting the very foundation of their own text as well, because they assume things about it that just should not have been assumed in the first place.

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And so, as I said, if you want to see the rest of it, and in fact, get to the rest of it before I do,

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Al Maktoum College is the YouTube channel.

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And you scroll down just a little bit here, get my cursor back up here.

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There's only one, two, three, four, five, six. There are only six videos above Keith Small's presentation.

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So it's not a real active channel. I guess this is in Dundee, Scotland. Oh, well, that's nice. So I've been in Dundee, but I spent my time walking through the graveyard looking for my ancestors, because I happen to know that my great -great -great -great -grandfather was married in Dundee, Scotland in, what was that?

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18... Anyways, it's skipping my mind at the moment. 1870 -something, I think.

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And then moved to the United States. Anyhow, that's where that took place. I found that fascinating.

26:05

It will be directly relevant, of course. Once the Braille book is out, that's going to be directly relevant to many of the debates we'll do in the future, because Lord willing, we will be able to provide an even wider variety of textual variants and the reasons for the textual variants in regards to the text of the

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Qur 'an. And so much of the presentation made by Muslim apologists will simply have to start partaking of realism.

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They'll have to start realizing that there are things you have to do to deal with ancient texts, which we've been doing all along with the

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New Testament. We've been very open about it. They will eventually be forced to create that critical edition and to honestly analyze the actual state of the study of the text of the

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Qur 'an, which, to be honest with you, right now they just simply have not yet done. So you might want to take a look at that.

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I think you'll find it to be very, very interesting. I wasn't going to weigh in on this, but I just noticed something, and I'm wondering if somebody in channel can tell me what is going on here.

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But Frank Turk, the great creator of all sorts of problems in the internet, who used to be a regular in our chat channel before he got too good for us, of course he shows up.

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We just kick him around like a football anyways. So I doubt he can type more in a sentence before someone will cast him into prost -purgatory or something.

27:40

But we had our part in helping to make him famous, and now he's just for us.

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But he just tweeted, it's about to be a very long hour on the Janet Mefford show.

27:54

Listen to it live. Now this is sort of stupid to be advertising to somebody else, but I wonder, I wrote back and said, why will it be a long hour?

28:03

And I haven't heard back yet. I haven't heard back yet. But Janet got herself into a whole passel of trouble.

28:11

Sometime recently I got an email, I think it was from Steve Camp if I recall correctly, with a link to the 18 minutes that Mark Driscoll was on the

28:25

Janet Mefford show. Before he hung up on her. And now

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I think I've lost contact with Janet a few times, but it wasn't because I hung up on her. It's because the phones weren't working correctly or whatever.

28:39

But I guess, Algo says Peter Jones might be on there.

28:45

That could be interesting. Anyway, just ban

28:51

Centurion just in case he showed up. That's great. Here I am. That's pretty nasty.

28:57

I know he unbanned him eventually, but it's like, come on. Someone's just saying you could have played

29:07

Dr. Small at 1 .2 or above. That's true. If I had it in the right program.

29:13

That was VLC. And I don't know where the variable thing is in VLC, if there is even a variable control in VLC.

29:21

Anyways. Oh, he okay.

29:27

All right. So Algo says Peter Jones might be on there discussing Driscoll's plagiarism, and he claims he didn't hang up.

29:37

Oh, yeah. And I'm sure he didn't just happen to show up at the right time at the strange fire conference too.

29:44

Come on. Oh, please. Probably because there is some evidence

29:50

Driscoll was still there and said, I am still here. Okay. All right. Well, all right.

29:56

The whole thing gives me hives. The whole thing about, you know, well, you know, I really love you, but you sure are mean today.

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Oh, gosh. I'm just sort of interested in what specifically is going to be said today.

30:16

You just have to be careful with Christian celebrities, you know, because Jana got herself in a lot of trouble with very powerful people by doing that.

30:25

Oh, one other thing. I'm sorry. There was one thing, and I finally scrolled down far enough to see it. I don't know.

30:31

I forgot to show this to you, but there was an article. When was this? November 2nd.

30:37

So we're a while back. Listen to this title. This is from BBC, believe it or not.

30:47

Shamsi Ali, the rise and fall of a New York imam. Big old picture of Shamsi Ali. That's the same fellow

30:54

I debated. An imam once regarded as one of New York's leading religious figures had a sudden fall from grace.

31:00

So what does the story of one man's attempt to adapt Islam to modern America tell us? Before the controversy that cut him down,

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Shamsi Ali was the leading figure of moderate Islam in New York for Muslims and non -Muslims alike. For a decade, the biggest mosque in New York, the

31:15

Islamic Cultural Center on 96th Street in East Harlem, was his stage. Here, the diminutive Indonesian with a brusque demeanor praised democracy and vigorously condemned extremism to thousands of worshippers.

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Outside the mosque, he taught the FBI and congressmen in Washington about interreligious coexistence. He befriended presidents, too.

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In the days after 11 September 2001, the city of New York picked him to represent the Muslim community on President George W.

31:38

Bush's interfaith visit to Ground Zero. Another president, Bill Clinton, wrote the foreword to the new memoir, Sons of Abraham, that Ali co -authored with a

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Jewish rabbi he counts among his close friends. Although many of his conservative peers interpret the

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Quran to prohibit the use of music, Ali listens to rap and hangs out with hip -hop mogul Russell Simmons. He even shrugs disinterested at cartoons of the

31:59

Prophet Muhammad. In short, Shamsi Ali is the Muslim that liberal America wants, but he is not the leader all

32:07

New York's Muslims want. Ali is a divisive figure in New York's Islamic community, and two years ago, the same mosque that gave him a platform to grow influential and popular, suddenly pulled the rug from under him.

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Now rather than preach to thousands at the 96th Street Mosque, Ali speaks to a meager congregation of 20 at the

32:23

Al -Hikmah Mosque, far out in the sticks of Queens, New York. And then there's a picture of him speaking.

32:34

Now what year was the Shamsi Ali debate? I don't know. 2000?

32:41

Oh, Algo's in channel. Algo will know. As soon as Algo hears this, he will type the date, and I will just keep an eye, because this is what

32:50

Algo does. This is Algo's function in life, is to remind me of when I debated people. Oh, OK.

33:00

By the way, Frank Turk just responded. Janet is unpacking other incidents of Driscoll's plagiarism.

33:10

If I had time, I'd respond by saying, we're talking about you on the air right now. But I'll tell him about that later.

33:18

But I debated Shamsi Ali. And the funny thing was, he wasn't, quote unquote, liberal.

33:24

In fact, we debated the Bible and the Quran. And I presented some of what I was just talking about in regards to Keith Small.

33:33

And he was pretty straightforwardly conservative in what he was saying to me.

33:39

In that debate. But evidently, he lost his platform there.

33:46

And so, Algo's saying, please repeat, debated who? Shamsi Ali.

33:51

When was the Shamsi Ali debate that took place? That was prior to the second one we did with another imam that very few people showed up to.

34:04

The first one, we packed the place out for Shamsi Ali. And then we did one. Names are difficult for me to recall sometimes at that particular context.

34:16

But anyways, oops. Wow. I hit the wrong return and deleted half of what

34:25

I was gonna be talking about. Anyways, I found that interesting to see what has happened.

34:31

Really? You look back over, you know, let's think about some of the people

34:36

I've debated. Where is he now? He's traveling around holiday inns.

34:41

Did you find the date? 2009 is in my mind, too.

34:48

Yeah. So, you know, like almost five years ago. It sounds about right to me.

34:54

And Jerry Matotix is meeting with small groups of people, about half a dozen to a dozen people at holiday inns, talking about the

35:08

Illuminati. He's way outside of Orthodox Roman Catholicism in his views and what he's doing these days.

35:17

What? I'm seeing opposed here. June 25, 2009. Oh, okay. Yeah, right around there.

35:26

He's out there. Now, Hamza Abdel Malik is a Quran -only guy. He's no longer a

35:32

Sunni. He's thrown off the shackles of Sunni Islam and the Hadith and things like that.

35:38

He wears Western clothes and things like that. And he came to one of the debates we did recently.

35:44

In fact, he was at one of those debates. I think it may even come to the Shamsi Ali debate now that I think about it. And you see these folks and some of them just aren't even close to where they were at the time of the debate itself.

35:59

It's rather interesting. Well, anyways, I have a list of things here and I still need to get to all of them.

36:06

Let's see. I've talked about Anderson. I've talked about Keith's talk. I've talked about Witherington. I did want to mention real quickly, it is amazing the resources that are now available on the subject of Islam.

36:22

I mentioned this briefly. There is an excellent article by Sharon Lindblom on mrm .org back on November 7th about the history of the late war between the

36:33

United States and Great Britain. A 19th century book, The History of the

36:38

Late War Between the United States and Great Britain has been mentioned before now as a possible source for the

36:44

Book of Mormon, most notably by Rick Grunder in his 2008 work Mormon Parallels, a bibliographic source.

36:50

But the suggestion that Joseph Smith may have used this book in his writing of the Book of Mormon hasn't seemed to gain much traction until now.

36:56

At the 2013 ex -Mormon conference in mid -October, former Mormon Chris Johnson presented findings he and his brother

37:02

Duane uncovered in their study and analysis of a comparison of the two books. Mormon discussion forums and blogs are now in serious dialogue about how

37:09

Gilbert Hunt's 1819 New York textbook relates to the Book of Mormon, and in some cases more specifically how it undermines the popular apologetic reliance on Hebraisms to substantiate the ancient origin of this

37:20

Mormon scripture. Now let me explain that. One of the defenses, I mean, how do you defend the

37:26

Book of Mormon? You know, the Book of Mormon, and we're going to get into a little bit of this as I play more of Gordon's stuff, but if you talk to a

37:37

Mormon in the 1950s, their understanding of the geography of the

37:43

Book of Mormon and the peoples that the Book of Mormon is referring to would be almost universally the same.

37:50

BYU used to sponsor trips down to Mexico and Central America, and you'd go visit the the

37:57

Olmec and Toltec sites and Aztec sites to see, this is it.

38:03

These were the Lamanites and the Nephites and all these people, and here's where it all happened, and it was obvious Joseph Smith felt that the

38:16

Book of Mormon geography was huge. I don't have time to look it up right now, but I've read it before.

38:27

Zelf, remember this? Zelf, the white Lamanite.

38:32

Remember Zelf, the white Lamanite? Been a while since that particular brain cell fired, huh? It's good, it got some exercise today.

38:42

Look up Zelf, the white Lamanite. My daughter just came in channel and says, you don't defend the

38:48

Book of Mormon, you pray about it. Duh. I took her out to Mesa too many times.

38:55

But if I recall correctly, and again, I shouldn't do this off the top of my head, but I'm doing everything off the top of my head today.

39:05

My recollection is that the story of Zelf is in the DHC. I think it's in the

39:11

Documentary History Church. It might not be. It might have been a newspaper article, Times and Seasons, something like that.

39:17

Of course, half of Times and Seasons ended up in the DHC. But it was the story of Joseph Smith.

39:27

Some companions came across an Indian burial ground, and they dug up some bones.

39:33

And Joseph Smith, being the prophet that he is, revealed to them that these are the bones of Zelf, the white

39:41

Lamanite, and told the whole story. The point was that clearly, for Smith, the story of the

39:49

Book of Mormon had extended all the way across the northern hemisphere of the Americas. Now, why do

39:56

I mention this? Well, it sort of has to be that way to explain the Hill Cumorah, the battles in the

40:02

Hill Cumorah, the hiding of the golden plates, all the rest of this stuff. Yet today, for most knowledgeable Mormons, what you do is you minimize the

40:17

Nephites and Lamanites down to this tiny little group. And that's what Gordon's going to do here as well.

40:25

And you basically say, we'll never find material evidence of this civilization because it was so small.

40:36

And so they've separated the Nephites and Lamanites out from the

40:41

Toltecs and Olmecs and Mayans and Aztecs and all these people. And generally have moved the location from upstate

40:51

New York and across all of America. And again, this isn't by looking at Joseph Smith going, well, what did our prophet say?

40:58

They know what the prophet said. And that don't work. So now you've got the idea that it's a small, maybe 45 square mile area someplace where all this took place.

41:18

Extremely limiting the range of geography. So you can basically explain why it is that what is said in the

41:25

Book of Mormon is so utterly different than what we know of the actual archaeology of Mesoamerica and of the

41:33

United States. I mean, I haven't had a whole lot of interaction with the bigwigs in Salt Lake City, but I did with the bigwigs in Provo many years ago when

41:48

I wrote an article for the CRI Journal about farms. Now farms doesn't exist anymore. It's sort of been absorbed into the new

41:56

Mormon church. But when I did, one of the things

42:01

I criticized was just the absurdity. I just saw that my granddaughter was scared of Keith Small.

42:14

Keith's a nice guy. I'm sure he's a grandpa himself. So I don't know why Clementine was scared of Keith Small, but maybe because he was speaking too slowly.

42:23

But anyway, a grandpa definitely does not speak slowly. One of the things

42:28

I criticized was Bill Hamblin. In the Book of Mormon, the Book of Mormon uses the terminology of unsheathing your sword and scalping someone with it.

42:45

Now you know what that means, and I know what that means. It's pretty obvious what that means.

42:50

There really isn't any question about it. But the problem is the folks in Mesoamerica didn't have swords.

42:59

They didn't have that level of metallurgy. They had war clubs with rocks in them, and so Hamblin had actually tried to somehow explain the language of the

43:10

Book of Mormon and the idea of using a war club with obsidian rocks embedded in the wood as the same thing as unsheathing your sword and scalping somebody with it.

43:20

I'm sorry. Rich is in the other room trying to scalp somebody with a war club.

43:29

It's just so absurd. It's everywhere. It's like a watermelon. No, it's horrible. It wouldn't work.

43:38

And if you want to hear us discussing that, you can listen to the

43:47

We haven't converted that and put that on YouTube because that was an audio thing. It's still available on MP3, though.

43:55

The discussion with Hamblin and Peterson, Martin Tanner's radio program up there in Salt Lake City, discussing the letters to a

44:05

Mormon elder with two BYU professors, whatever that one was. We were live in the studio. It was really a very, very uneven thing, but it went real well.

44:15

Anyhow, all this to go back to the fact that Mormons recognize, there are many

44:24

Mormons who come to recognize that the Book of Mormon story was made up by a guy in the late 1820s who didn't know anything about the ancient inhabitants of this hemisphere.

44:37

That's really all there is to it. And so you can't make a positive case.

44:43

You can't go, look, we found Bountiful, we found Zarahemla, whatever.

44:52

I'm getting a blow -by -blow as to whether I am entertaining my granddaughter via the internet right now.

44:59

Thought that was really funny. Okay, all right, good. Anyhow, she did giggle at me about the joke about someone getting skinned.

45:09

Maybe she needs to watch less TV. Well, given she's not one yet, that might be a good idea. Except for the

45:15

DVDs you all were given about the Brainiac Baby or Genius Baby or My Baby Can Read or whatever.

45:21

Number 455 is the... Okay, put number 455 in the search on our website and you'll be able to listen to the dialogue that we had with those two

45:30

BYU professors. So you can't make a positive case. So what you've got to do is you've got to make a case based upon possibilities and probabilities.

45:38

What they've done for a long time now is say, well, look, what you've got is

45:47

Joseph Smith couldn't have written this because, for example, there's all these

45:53

Hebraisms in it. There are these Hebraisms that would not have been a part of Joseph Smith's language, and so that's evidence.

46:02

Now, of course, my immediate response to that is, excuse me, but he allegedly translated this by the gift and power of God.

46:08

So why in the world would there be Hebraisms in the first place? But anyways, that's what they say.

46:17

And they've been going at this for quite some time. And so this article, that's what it's talking about. And I continue on that Gilbert Hunt wrote

46:24

The Late War, an imitation of the biblical style in the hope that any young student reading the book would acquire a love for the style and it would become an inducement to him to study the holy scriptures.

46:34

Consequently, The Late War employs word structures and ancient sign language that reads very much like the Bible, KJV, and the

46:41

Book of Mormon. Some people see the strong Book of Mormon parallels in The Late War as proof that Joseph Smith, a person with easy access to Gilbert's book, used it in composing the

46:49

Book of Mormon, thus negating any pretense that the Book of Mormon is divine. Others merely shrug and dismiss the whole thing as unimportant.

46:55

The actual significance of The Late War is more likely somewhere in between. Yet one thing is certain. Hebraisms found in the

47:00

Book of Mormon do not prove a thing about its origin. In fact, they shouldn't even be presented as any sort of persuasive evidence.

47:07

And so if you go to mrm .org, to the blog, blog .mrm .org, you can see Sharon Lindblom's article on that, on The Late War and the

47:14

Book of Mormon, which I found very, very interesting. And as I mentioned, more and more and more material is available online now in regards to the subject of Mormonism.

47:30

The Journal of Discourse is online. It would be so much easier to do the study that I did in the early 1980s now than it was back then.

47:43

There's no two ways about it. One other thing that I said I was going to respond to, and I do want to get to it.

47:50

This is an article from, I don't see it.

47:57

Oh, there's a date. I just have to remember this is a non -American date. November 15th of 2013.

48:06

15 slash 11 slash 2013, which actually makes much more sense the way we do it, but when you've been raised with another way of doing it.

48:14

This is by Ryan Adams. Source is

48:19

Patheos. Why Sola Scriptura honestly scares me.

48:26

Being raised in a Protestant home, the scriptures were, and in many ways still are, the end all be all of the faith for me.

48:32

However, there is a reason I am no longer a Protestant. This reason has many branches, but all points back to one thing.

48:40

Context. Given the necessity of context, I find the whole idea of scripture alone horrifying.

48:47

What it is. Now here's, and again, just let,

48:55

I'll read it directly. Sola Scriptura is the idea that Christianity ought to be based off scripture alone, which is the

49:01

English translation of Sola Scriptura. That is to say, it should be without ritual or the teaching authority of anyone.

49:08

And that each of us is obligated to read the scriptures and form ourselves through them on our own.

49:18

And I know that there are people who think that's

49:23

Sola Scriptura. I understand that. And it frustrates me to no end. But when someone can actually change their entire faith without ever taking the time to find out, hey,

49:37

I was misinformed. I didn't have much of a real understanding of my own beliefs.

49:43

Don't you think that, you know, when you start having questions, isn't the first thing you do is to make sure you understand what the issues are and what your faith actually says about them?

49:55

I have not found that to be the case with most converts. I haven't found that to be the case.

50:01

Instead, I find them to be fascinated about, you know, this stuff out there and that stuff out there.

50:07

And they're willing to go out there and look at that stuff first. So here you have a definition of Sola Scriptura that you will not find historically at the time of the

50:20

Reformation. You won't find it in the history of the church. It's not what scripture alone means.

50:27

It's not scripture in isolation. It's not scripture apart from church.

50:35

It was God's intention to give us both the scriptures and the church. But the church listens to the scriptures.

50:41

The definition of Sola Scriptura is the scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith for the church.

50:51

Not that it's you and your Bible under a tree. Not that God has not given authority to the church.

50:57

Not that God has not given authority for teaching in the church. All of that is a gross misrepresentation. So the whole article starts off with a complete straw man by someone who claims to have once been a

51:11

Protestant. But they're really not a Protestant at all.

51:17

And of course, you can't, you know, when you start out, you can't. That badly of a framed understanding of what

51:25

Sola Scriptura is, then the rest of the article is irrelevant. Because it has nothing to do whatsoever with the issue at hand.

51:34

And it's just a shame to see that kind of thing. Well, one other thing. I'm sorry, I keep,

51:40

I had a long list. I really did. I just want to mention something happened yesterday and then we'll shift over to finishing up that response.

51:51

And honestly, if I can get done in less than an hour, we'll get done in less than an hour. But I sort of doubt that's the case because there's still like half an hour worth of his.

52:00

And so I really doubt that that's going to happen. I'm trying to get to a picture that my daughter just posted.

52:11

But the stupid thing says continue to there, continue the media. And then it put an advertisement over top of the continue thing.

52:20

So you couldn't get to it. So there's a picture of Clementine and she's reaching for me as I'm speaking here.

52:27

In the, I'm going to have to download these. Oh, she's even learned how to pose.

52:33

That's good. She's learned how to pose for pictures. It's going to be a fun Christmas. I'm looking forward to having the kids back and it's going to be fun to have them.

52:44

Have them there. Thank you for posting those. All right. Real quickly, this is sort of important and I know

52:51

I've been sort of scattered all over the place today, but I wanted to have a little bit of something for everybody today. I didn't want to just do

52:57

Mormonism and have a little something for everybody in the audience.

53:08

I started listening to a book yesterday. I normally do not review books until I've finished all of them, but I turned this one off and I'm not certain

53:18

I'm going to bother to turn it back on. I had mentioned this. I don't know when I mentioned it.

53:23

Sometime over the past month, I saw that it was going to be coming out. I said, I'm going to grab that one. It looks interesting.

53:29

I need to take a look at it. The title of the book is

53:35

Evangelical Faith and the Challenge of Historical Criticism. Which, you know, would seem to me to be edited by Christopher M.

53:47

Hayes and Christopher B. Ansberry, Baker academic. And it's brand new, 2013.

53:54

Just came out. And I thought, well, sounds like it might be an interesting discussion of Bible -believing

54:05

Christians and how they interact with the concept of historical criticism. Do they just simply run and hide?

54:14

Do they do what fundamentalism did and basically just, you know, ignore everything?

54:22

Or do they actually, you know, engage it? And how do they engage it?

54:28

And how do you do so in a meaningful fashion and so on and so forth? Well, so I started listening to it on a fairly lengthy ride yesterday.

54:39

And like I said, after a while, I just turned it off. The first chapter, which is actually the second chapter, sorry,

54:46

Adam and the Fall is the title by Christopher M. Hayes and Stephen Lane Herring. I started digging through it and it didn't take me very long to figure things out.

54:58

Let me just read you, for example, one paragraph a little bit later on in the book, but it gives you the idea.

55:04

But what about historical theology? Even though evangelicals tend to make very strong affirmations of solo scriptura,

55:12

I think that most do harbor at least a general sense that in principle, it is best if one can identify historical

55:18

Christian precedents for doctrines. And even the New Testament does not explicitly develop a homarcheology comprising originating sin, concupiscence, and original guilt, there is no contesting the idea that Western Christianity, Catholicism, and Protestantism has historically affirmed as much.

55:33

This history is undoubtedly relevant to our discussion of theological ramifications of a critical account of Genesis 2 through 3.

55:40

So in this section, we will very briefly explain how this homarcheology arose, it's a study of sin, and show that this view is neither the only nor the earliest one in the

55:51

Christian church. So yeah, we affirm solo scriptura, but basically what this entire chapter did was to say, okay, there really wasn't an

56:11

Adam. So what are we going to do about it? Well, what was

56:17

Paul really saying in Romans 5? And then ironically, the argument that the authors present is very much parallel to the semi -Pelagians in the

56:28

Southern Baptist Convention who are promoting the idea that there is no original sin, original guilt, et cetera, et cetera.

56:34

Very same argument I responded to just a few months ago here on this program from Romans 5.

56:41

And so what they have to do is they basically have to cut the first part of Romans 5 free, actually not even first Romans 5,

56:50

Romans 5 .12 free from Romans 5 .16 and following. And so what you have to do is you have to look at Romans 5 and you have to, 12, and say, okay,

57:02

Augustine got it wrong, everybody could be a new

57:08

Adam, there is no original sin, there is no original guilt, there is no federalism, and don't worry about reading verse 12 consistently with verses 16 through 19.

57:26

We don't have to worry about that. Yeah, verses 16 through 19, verses, especially, you know, 18, 19, 20, sounds very much federal headship, and if you allow that to be relevant to your interpretation of verse 12, it's going to be very clear that that is what

57:41

Paul's talking about. But look, this is the only place in New Testament where it's talked about. So as long as it's just in one place, then we can sort of write it off.

57:55

So you don't have to believe in original sin, you don't have to believe in original guilt, you don't have to believe in federalism, and you don't have to worry about that Paul thought there was an

58:08

Adam, because Job thought there were storehouses for rain in heaven, and we don't worry ourselves about that, so why should you be worried about what

58:18

Paul thought about Adam? Now, of course, if you can't see a difference between one of the central elements of Paul's explanation of the gospel and the poetic understanding of meteorological cycles in Job, well, what can

58:41

I say? There's obviously a huge difference. And, of course, one might ask the question, did

58:48

Jesus believe in an Adam? Yeah, it seems so, but then again,

58:55

I understand how these guys are going to understand that. Well, no, Matthew might have believed in an

59:01

Adam and attributed that belief to Jesus, but we don't have to think that Jesus actually believed there was an

59:11

Adam. Or maybe they'll even go so far as to say, yeah, Jesus could have been wrong about that, too. The whole tenor of the book, every chapter

59:21

I got through, basically came to the conclusion, actually, the historical critics are right, and the

59:28

Bible is filled with errors, and what we need to do is we need to stop believing a bunch of things that we believed in the past.

59:36

And what we need to do is we need to create a new Christianity that I call LCD Christianity, Least Common Denominator Christianity.

59:44

You shrink everything. It's basically what this book is doing to the Bible is what

59:50

Mormons have done with the Book of Mormon as far as Book of Mormon archaeology. Now, we don't have to deal with archaeology because the

59:56

Bible actually came out of that time period and actually talks about cities that we find and so on and so forth.

01:00:07

But it's the same mindset. The mindset is create a smaller, smaller, smaller little target so that the big mean people who are shooting at you can't hit the little teeny tiny target.

01:00:22

But whatever you do, don't say Christianity is true because all you're left with is a very, very, very vague, very, very small...

01:00:31

I mean, the very language itself is we don't have to stop believing this. We just need to put it in the right context.

01:00:39

So there isn't any positive argument for the faith. It's let's shrink it down so that we can get around these particular issues.

01:00:49

And it was, like I said, after a while, my wife and I were writing at that particular point in time and I pulled my iPod out of my jersey pocket and I turned it off and I said, enough heresy for today.

01:01:01

I just can't. I just can't keep listening to this. Shrink it all down so it somehow fits.

01:01:09

So anyway, I mentioned that I was going to be getting it. I did. And it was exceptionally, exceptionally disappointing, unfortunately.

01:01:18

So do we have any commercials left that we can actually play? Got them all queued up?

01:01:26

Let's take a quick break and then we'll get back to the presentation on issues, etc. And try to wrap up as much of that as we possibly can.

01:02:21

Prostitution, using the gospel for financial gain, pandering to pluralism, cowardice under fire, felonious eisegesis, entertainment without a license, and cross -dressing, ignoring

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01:03:48

Hello everyone, this is Rich Pierce. In a day and age where the gospel is being twisted into a man -centered self -help program, the need for a no -nonsense presentation of the gospel has never been greater.

01:04:00

I am convinced that a great many go to church every Sunday, yet they have never been confronted with their sin.

01:04:07

Alpha Omega Ministries is dedicated to presenting the gospel in a clear and concise manner, making no excuses.

01:04:14

Man is sinful and God is holy. That sinful man is in need of a perfect Savior, and Jesus Christ is that perfect Savior.

01:04:22

We are to come before the Holy God with an empty hand of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Alpha and Omega takes that message to every group that we deal with while equipping the body of Christ as well.

01:04:33

Support Alpha and Omega Ministries and help us to reach even more with the pure message of God's glorious grace.

01:04:39

Thank you. Looking forward to having more of that as our theme music and everything else in the not -too -distant future.

01:05:09

I'm looking forward to that a great deal. I hope you understand part and parcel of the what did

01:05:17

I just do to my—wow, do not click there anymore. One of the reasons that I am doing this review of the comments made by the president of Fair Mormon, a

01:05:34

Mr. Gordon on the Issues Etc. program, we spent—this ministry grew out of an initial desire to present the gospel to Mormons.

01:05:43

When Alpha Omega Ministries started, we had one focus, and that was Mormonism. Of course, there were four of us in our 20s, and we had zero nada, but that's just how it started.

01:05:58

And for certainly the first decade, the primary emphasis of this ministry was in dealing with the subject of Mormonism.

01:06:08

It didn't take long for Jehovah's Witnesses to become a question, and then Roman Catholicism became an issue that we were addressing.

01:06:17

And what year was it that the pope came? Was it 87? When did you—?

01:06:24

Would have been September 14, 1987. We were about half a mile from here over at St.

01:06:30

Simon and Jude, passing out tracks and blanking as the pope's limo and hearse and stuff went by.

01:06:38

Why do you remember that specific date? Because I got in trouble at work for taking that day off.

01:06:44

Oh, well, if you had gone to see the pope, would you have gotten the date?

01:06:51

Yeah, all the Catholics got in trouble, too, because they were taking the day off, and then suddenly management found out about it, but it was too late, and they lumped me in with that group, and then they found out somehow why

01:07:04

I was out. That was even worse. And yeah, it turned up the heat, and then I had to point out a particular

01:07:10

Civil Rights Act of 1964, and that put a stop to it right away. Well, anyway, so 1987, when the pope came to Phoenix, we were not only out there, we also were in the parking lot of Sun Devil Stadium at Arizona State University.

01:07:27

Remember that? Remember those tracks? I remember. We were passing out tracks so fast. We wiped them all out.

01:07:34

We were completely out of everything, and the Mormons never took tracks like this.

01:07:39

No, no. Actually, look, these people are like, hey, give me stuff, man. And they're bored. And then there's this

01:07:44

Roman Catholic running around behind them going, they're not Catholic, they're not Catholic, and everybody in line is going, oh, then

01:07:49

I want one. Oh, and they were so—I remember that was—this was right when—I forget what program it was

01:08:02

I had gotten, but you were supposed to be able to design WYSIWYG, all right? And it was so graphic -intensive.

01:08:09

Now, remember, this is a monochrome monitor with a 20 -megabyte hard drive.

01:08:16

And we printed it out on a—was that NEC? It was like a 9—that was a 9 -pin.

01:08:22

18 -pin NEC. Yeah, NEC. I mean, jagged edges to the letters.

01:08:28

I mean, it looked horrible. But for us, it was like, wow, this is cool.

01:08:33

And they're just basically photocopied, folded over is what it was, I recall.

01:08:38

I don't know how many we had. We wiped them all out. We had a lot, and we were all quite weary by the end of the day.

01:08:45

What blew my mind is there's this gigantic line outside of—they couldn't say

01:08:51

Sun Devil Stadium, that wouldn't be good, so they renamed it ASU Stadium for that event.

01:08:58

And so we're out in this giant parking lot filled with people, and there are all kinds of concessions.

01:09:06

You remember that? Nah, I don't remember. And they're selling Pope on a Rope. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:09:13

There's soap bars, and I mean, it was all kinds of stuff. And it's like, oh my goodness, this is amazing. Well, if Benny Hinn was there, they'd be doing the same thing.

01:09:19

So they'd probably still be selling Pope on a Rope, even if Benny Hinn was there. But anyway, I'm not sure what that has to do with this.

01:09:27

The point was that those first few years were very much focused upon Mormonism.

01:09:34

And for 18 years, we went up to the

01:09:39

General Conference of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City every six months. 18 years! That's 36 trips.

01:09:47

At first, we drove. We were still so young. We could drive through the night, stand all day, then drive home that night.

01:09:54

Got dangerous, because you start getting really exhausted. But I mean,

01:10:00

I drove my 1964 Dodge Dart up there, and it had holes in the floorboard, and it was cold, and our feet were freezing.

01:10:10

And I mean, we would spend all day long talking to these folks.

01:10:20

Mormons liked to talk back then, a lot more than they do now. That's for sure. And so we did

01:10:27

Salt Lake. We did the Easter pageant. I have spoken with thousands and thousands and thousands of Mormons over the years, of all sorts of different levels, from young people to higher -ups in the church.

01:10:47

So I have a huge Mormon library. I've gone on radio in Salt Lake City debating

01:10:55

BYU professors and Mormon attorneys and taking calls. I would have to be daft not to know what

01:11:03

Mormonism teaches. I really would have to be. And my opponents will accuse me of many things, but they rarely accuse me of being daft.

01:11:14

So when I listened to this man, Mr. Gordon, on issues, etc.,

01:11:22

I knew that any Orthodox Mormon, any

01:11:28

Mormon knowing the history of his own faith, who was listening to this, had to either be cringing in shock or chuckling their heads off, going, man, he's getting away with this.

01:11:47

I don't know who he's trying to fool, but he's getting away with this. It was absolutely, positively amazing.

01:11:56

It really was. I'm not sure why anybody in the channel thinks that dodge darts are funny, but mine was a little bit funny looking.

01:12:06

There's no two ways about it. But let's see, how long would five minutes?

01:12:12

I think five minutes is good. Oh, I was just about to sock Red for five minutes, and Turgeon Fan kicked him before I could sock him.

01:12:20

So anyways, yes? Last show we did on Mr. Gordon, I was thinking about the old

01:12:27

Mormon ecumenist we used to deal with, and I suddenly remembered his name. It was Darrell Anderson? Darrell Anderson, yep.

01:12:33

I mean, Rodney King, can't we all just get along?

01:12:39

He actually came over to the office on Camelback and sat down and talked with me. Every time

01:12:44

I would start quoting from Mormon apostles or anything, I thought, well, you know. So there's been people all along.

01:12:53

But back then, he was the only one I could possibly think of, think back, that was talking in this way.

01:12:59

The Browns? No way. No way? Oh, goodness, no. Eldon Watson, all red?

01:13:04

No way. No, didn't happen. Well, anyways, we're listening to the comments that he made on the subject of Mormonism, and I'm not going to get too much more of it if I don't jump into it.

01:13:17

One of the interesting things about Mormonism is we don't have a systematic theology, as many denominations do.

01:13:22

And that makes it interesting and difficult sometimes in talking with others, because a wide variety of beliefs is allowed in many things.

01:13:29

However, we do believe that Jesus Christ is deity. We believe he is God. We believe he always has been God. We believe he is divine.

01:13:36

What do you mean, you believe he's always been God? Rich is sitting there going, what do you mean he's always been

01:13:42

God? That's not what Mormons believe. What? Well, wasn't it—who was the

01:13:51

Mormon prophet who said that the God the Father was redeemed from another planet?

01:13:58

He's even going to say here that most Mormons, that's what they do believe. How does that fit together with the idea of Jesus having eternally been

01:14:07

God? It doesn't make any sense. There is no eternity in that sense, in Mormonism. That is not the teaching of the

01:14:13

Church. Now, there is confusion as to when Jesus received exaltation.

01:14:19

I had Mormons who told me that they expected Jesus to marry and raise up a family during the millennium so he could receive the fullness of his exaltation.

01:14:28

But that he was already operating with powers of deity. But he came—he is the firstborn spirit child of Elohim and one of his physical wives after Elohim was exalted and established his residency on a planet that circles a star named

01:14:46

Kolam. So how can he have eternally been God? It does not make a lick of sense. It's just not Mormon teaching.

01:14:52

Well, the reason I brought that up was that how can—if his father was redeemed from another planet, he's born after that.

01:15:01

Oh, of course. The idea that he's always been—I mean, there's just no possible way to make that plug -in short of a bold -faced lie.

01:15:09

Well, or just simply saying, all of that, everything that the prophets ever said, is just completely speculation.

01:15:16

And that's pretty much where he's about to go. But he is subordinate to the Father. Has God the

01:15:21

Father always been God as he is now? This is an area that comes up often in discussions.

01:15:28

And the answer is, as far as we're concerned, we don't know. And so the question is, is he always

01:15:33

God? Well, let me put it this way. Yes, he's God. He's always been God. And so we get into some discussions from comments made back in the 1800s about God being

01:15:43

Adam, which is one thing that got quoted. Okay, red herring. Has nothing to do with the Adam -God doctrine. I read you from the

01:15:52

LDS church manual from less than—it was 1992 copyright.

01:16:00

I read that to you. The specific teachings that God became

01:16:05

God by obedience to gospel rules and principles. That's the

01:16:11

LDS hierarchy. Those are the official leaders of the

01:16:17

Mormon church addressing the Mormon people themselves. And here you have someone who is not a part of that hierarchy.

01:16:28

I mean, I'm sure he's—I would assume—I don't know anything about him, but I would assume that he is a priesthood holder.

01:16:36

Maybe he's been a bishop. I just honestly do not know. But he is not a general authority of the

01:16:44

Mormon church saying, oh yeah, God's eternally been God. So you have to either believe the first presidency or you have to believe what this man is saying, one of the two.

01:16:57

Now, I again do not have time to read you the entirety of the

01:17:03

King Follett funeral discourse. If you put in King, space F -O -L -L -E -T -T,

01:17:12

King Follett, into the blog search article at aomin .org,

01:17:18

the first thing that will come up is

01:17:23

Mormonism 101, second level statements, the King Follett discourse. So you can read the entirety of the thing.

01:17:30

This was back from 2000 and—let me see the date here—I believe it's 2008. May 29, 2007.

01:17:38

In it, I lay out the essence of the final major doctrinal address of Joseph Smith.

01:17:52

Now, what you're going to hear in a few moments is Mr. Gordon saying, well, there is speculation and there are these old statements.

01:18:01

Here's what you need to understand, folks. No honest Mormon on the planet will dispute this.

01:18:07

Not a one. Here's a statement. The King Follett funeral discourse and specifically

01:18:13

Joseph Smith's statement that it is the first principle of the gospel to know for certain the character of God and that we may converse with him as one man converses with another.

01:18:23

Yea, the God, the father of us all, himself, dwelt upon a planet. That section of the

01:18:31

King Follett discourse. I don't even have it in front of me. I've just discussed it so many times you can quote it. It is the single most quoted statement of Joseph Smith by the general authorities of the

01:18:45

Mormon Church in all their writings, all their books, all the priesthood manuals, all of the instructional material written by the

01:18:55

LDS Church for the consumption of its own people, in all of the general conference statements.

01:19:01

I challenge anyone to dispute that there is anything else that Joseph Smith said.

01:19:09

Now, the King Follett funeral discourse is not in scripture. So it is the most often quoted non -scriptural statement of Joseph Smith by the general authorities of the

01:19:22

Mormon Church in their publications, in the official church publications, in general conference talks, and the books of the prophets and apostles of the

01:19:28

Mormon Church. So you tell me, is that speculation? You tell me, when it is taken as the essence of Mormonism for 160 years, how does that become mere speculation?

01:19:49

How does that become mere speculation? Can't be done. That's why

01:19:55

I've said over and over again, there is no way, there is no way for Mormonism to be mainstream, to be accepted within the fold of Christianity, because its heresy, its falsehood is genetic.

01:20:15

It is fundamental. It is definitional. We're not talking here about the

01:20:23

Seventh -day Adventists having a doctrine like the investigative judgment that they can get rid of.

01:20:30

We're talking here about a polytheistic false prophet, and you do not have

01:20:38

Mormonism without Joseph Smith. I mean, Joseph Feeling Smith, famous statement, the church stands or falls on Joseph Smith.

01:20:47

You either accept him as a prophet and what he taught, or you reject Mormonism in toto.

01:20:54

In toto. There's nothing redeemable out of it, outside of that. The staller is toto.

01:21:02

So, there you go. It gets quoted quite a bit on the internet, or that God being a man, that gets quoted sometimes, but I look at that and I say, well,

01:21:13

Jesus Christ is God, was God, has always been God, and yet Jesus Christ became man. Okay, now you see what's being done here?

01:21:20

Again, Jesus Christ has not always been God in Mormonism. That's not what Mormonism teaches. Show me where Joseph Smith taught that.

01:21:29

Show me where Brigham Young taught that. Show me where Bruce R. McConkie taught that. Show me where Joseph Feeling Smith taught that. Jesus Christ was begotten by an exalted man from another planet.

01:21:42

Like I said, I'll admit there is some confusion as to exactly when

01:21:48

Jesus was or will be exalted. But the idea that he has eternally been

01:21:56

God in the way that this audience would understand that? No way. Not what

01:22:03

Mormonism teaches, and any honest Mormon understands that. That's why

01:22:09

I say they were chuckling the whole time that this kind of stuff was being sostled.

01:22:15

And so that he could atone for our sins, and then, but he's always been God, and he was God, and he's God. So God the

01:22:21

Father, could he have done the same thing? Well, possibly, I suppose. Do I know? No, I don't know.

01:22:27

Now catch that. Could God the Father have done the same thing? Well, what does this presuppose?

01:22:36

It presupposes polytheism. It presupposes a mortal existence for the

01:22:41

Father, which is what the Lorenzo Snow couplet was all about. As man is,

01:22:48

God once was. Now he's going to tell us, we don't know what that means. Wow. There are volumes of commentary from the general authorities of Mormon church on what that means.

01:23:02

Sermons delivered in the general conference of the Mormon church. I've had many a Mormon debate with me for hours on end about what that means.

01:23:11

And this man be saying, well, they didn't know. They didn't know. Let me remind you, again, it's this man,

01:23:20

Mr. Gordon, versus Joseph Smith, and this is, I would say, this is the most famous thing he said.

01:23:28

God himself was once as we are now. I mean, that's the beginning. This is the beginning of the couplet.

01:23:34

This is Joseph Smith. God himself was once as we are now and is an exalted man and sits in throne in yonder heavens.

01:23:40

That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today and the great God who holds this world in its orbit and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power was to make himself visible,

01:23:48

I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form like yourselves and all the person image and very form as a man for Adam was created in the very fashion image and likeness of God and received instruction from and walked and talked and conversed with him as one man talks and communes with another.

01:24:07

In order to understand the subject of the dead, the consolation of those who mourn the loss of their friends, it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how he came to be.

01:24:16

It doesn't seem like Joseph Smith is going, I'm going to give you some speculation here. I really don't know.

01:24:23

This new agnostic Mormonism only exists to avoid exactly these words I'm reading to you right now.

01:24:30

For I'm going to tell you how God came to be God. He doesn't say, I'm going to speculate.

01:24:37

He says, I'm going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined, supposed that God was

01:24:44

God from all eternity. I will refute that idea and take away the veil so that you may see.

01:24:51

These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are simple. It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God and though we may converse with him as one man converses with another and that he was once a man like us.

01:25:09

Yea, the God himself, the father of us all dwelt on earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did and I will show it from the

01:25:14

Bible. Now you cannot twist those words into speculation.

01:25:20

You cannot twist those words into anything other than the founding prophet of the

01:25:26

Mormon church saying this is the first principle of the gospel. We can know it for certainty.

01:25:32

This may be incomprehensible ideas to some, but for us they are simple and that God was once a man.

01:25:40

That's the first part of the couplet. I fully understand why you'd be embarrassed by it because it is rank heresy.

01:25:48

It's a lie. It's a falsehood, but it was the teaching of Joseph Smith and you are doing no one any favors at all when you coddle them and allow them to think that they can continue to believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet even though they are embarrassed by Joseph Smith's actual teachings.

01:26:11

You need to call the Mormons to abandon falsehood, not modify falsehood.

01:26:19

Sadly, there are many evangelicals that don't get that point today. But Mormonism allows for a lot of possibilities and things, and where we say that's a possible thing.

01:26:29

Now, and this gets into an area that also some people have with differences with us is we believe in something called deification or theosis, and that's that if we follow

01:26:38

Jesus Christ that we can become joint heirs with Christ. And this is a teaching that was taught by many of the early

01:26:44

Christian fathers as well, such as Origen and Clement of Alexandria.

01:26:49

And this is, again, the route that they now take today, and that is, when faced with uncomfortable

01:26:56

LDS teachings, try to find some parallel in early Christian history. Now, that's why there is an entire chapter on theosis and why what

01:27:05

Athanasius and others said about theosis has zippity -doo -dah to do with Mormonism.

01:27:13

Why? Because Athanasius was a Trinitarian monotheist. He did not believe that God was once a man, and when he said that men could become gods, he did not believe that they could be changed.

01:27:25

He did not believe that we are of the same species as God. Remember what I read last time from the

01:27:31

LDS church? From people like B .H. Roberts and people like that? Well -known scholars and authorities of Mormonism?

01:27:42

Didn't believe that. What they believed about theosis is not what Mormonism teaches by any stretch of the imagination.

01:27:50

And some of the early Christians. But it does not mean we're going to be gods of our own planet. It does not mean we're going to supplant

01:27:56

God. It does not mean any of those things. It just means we'll be joint heirs with Christ, that we will be godlike, and that we'll help

01:28:02

God with his creative process. Again, once you listen to Brigham Young, once you listen to Orson Hyde, and to David O.

01:28:13

McKay, and you listen to Spencer W. Kimball, you listen to the actual people who were leaders of the church, they say otherwise.

01:28:23

Not that we're going to ever supplant God the Father, no. But we organize our own planet.

01:28:30

And we raise up offspring on our own planet. And we are glorified by them, just as God the

01:28:37

Father did himself. That's the whole point. And that means if we never supplant

01:28:47

God the Father, then God the Father never supplanted the God that he had. That means there's a

01:28:52

God before him, and a God before him. It's exactly what they taught. I can give you the quotes.

01:28:59

And any Mormon knows it. I just have to wonder, did he really think there wouldn't be any

01:29:07

Mormons listening? There wouldn't be anybody who actually knows Mormon theology listening to these sayings?

01:29:12

Or is he really just, that's just all speculation, all speculation. I don't have to, don't even have to think about it.

01:29:18

And what does that mean specifically? We have no idea. It's just, it goes along with the,

01:29:24

I hear sometimes when I talk to my Christian friends, my evangelical Christian friends, what they talk about, we'll have a crown of jewels.

01:29:29

And I'll say, what does that mean? And they go, I don't know. So this gets in the area with us too, or gets into speculative theology as to what it means in the answer.

01:29:36

Now, again, speculative theology. Let's just dismiss, is this guy a temple -worthy

01:29:42

Mormon? Has he gone through the endowment ceremony? Has he watched the films?

01:29:49

Has he given the surest sign of the nail? Gone through the veil?

01:29:55

Sat in the celestial room? I dare you, Mr. Gordon, go into the celestial room and tell those folks this is all speculation.

01:30:01

We have no idea about exaltation to godhood. I just, just dare you.

01:30:08

Try it, especially try it in a, in a, in the Manti Temple or something like that, down there amongst the good old

01:30:15

Mormons in Southern Utah. I don't think they really appreciate that very much. That's right.

01:30:20

I have to give it. I really don't know. So you were saying it is not in any shape, matter, or form, the teaching of the Latter -day

01:30:25

Saints Church that, well, and here's a quote from the teachings of the prophet

01:30:31

Joseph Smith. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. He says,

01:30:37

I will refute that idea and take the veil away. What was Joseph Smith saying, if not, that God was not always

01:30:42

God from all eternity? That is a great question. That comes from a particular sermon he gave at someone's funeral.

01:30:49

And the answer is, we don't know. And the reason we don't know is because he was killed shortly after that. And since then, much speculation has jumped up about that.

01:30:59

Now, remember, those words are the most often cited words of Joseph Smith by the general authorities of the

01:31:12

Mormon Church for 160 years. And this guy tells us, well, no, really?

01:31:21

I mean, this is used car salesmanship here. At its worst, we don't know?

01:31:31

Wow, Brigham Young thought he knew. Wow. You know, and so you'll get quotes from people that talk about similar kind of things.

01:31:46

You know, has God always been God? Was God like a Christ of some other world? But again, that gets into speculative theology, because...

01:31:56

Now, he's right on one point. There is no official teaching on whether God the

01:32:02

Father was a Redeemer in his mortal probation. That's right. Which leaves open the possibility that he himself was redeemed, which

01:32:13

Mormon leadership has taught. But I've had Mormons try to get around that by saying, well, he was a

01:32:20

Redeemer figure on his planet, just like Jesus was on this planet, and people will be in the future.

01:32:29

But the whole idea of God having gone through a mortal probation isn't the speculative part. The speculative part is whether he was a

01:32:36

Redeemer or redeemed. We don't know which one of those two, but he went through a mortal probation.

01:32:44

He was once a man. He had a God before him. That's not even questionable.

01:32:50

And yet, it's all being put into the realm of speculative theology. Well, we really don't know.

01:32:57

And I know there's one person here that talks about, was God a sinner? And the answer is, I don't believe so. I believe he was, you know, it says, you know, there's, you know, the

01:33:07

Book of Mormon even teaches in Moroni 8 .18, it says, God is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity.

01:33:13

Now, the Book of Mormon does say that, but you need to understand, Joseph Smith had not developed these teachings when he wrote the

01:33:22

Book of Mormon. That's why when I pointed out that when he talked about the expanded canon, what did he talk about it was expanded to?

01:33:31

The Bible and the Book of Mormon. How about the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Gray Prize? Well, he doesn't mention them because they're way too clear.

01:33:41

They talk all about this stuff that he wants to relegate to the realm of speculation. You don't want to talk about section 132, the exaltation of Godhood and polygamy and all the rest of that stuff.

01:33:52

He doesn't want to talk about section 130, verse 22, God the Father's body, flesh and bones, as tangible as any man's, the

01:33:58

Son also, the Spirit is not the body, flesh and bones, otherwise, you know, he could not dwell, so on and so forth. That's all the

01:34:04

Doctrine and Covenants, which is scripture for the LDS church. It's right there.

01:34:11

So, the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith wasn't a polytheist when he wrote the Book of Mormon. The whole first vision story made up almost a decade later.

01:34:21

That's why you can find all sorts of Trinitarian, modalistic, actually, statements in the

01:34:27

Book of Mormon, because at the time of the writing of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith was not into the stuff that he would develop later on.

01:34:36

It was an evolution over time. And so, you know—

01:34:43

I guess what I'm struggling with here is, which is the Mormon to believe? The testimony of none other than Joseph Smith, that God has not always been—he says,

01:34:51

I will refute that idea, and I grant that without any further testimony from Joseph Smith, it's impossible to know exactly what he meant.

01:34:57

But we have other testimony, not only from Joseph Smith, but from the leadership of the LDS church, because remember, in Mormonism, you have something called the priesthood.

01:35:06

And I would assume, in general conference, there is still the sustaining of the prophets and apostles, and the authority of the priesthood, and the testimony that the priesthood has been unbroken since its restoration to Joseph Smith in 1829, right?

01:35:23

And so those priesthood holders—the prophets, the first presidency, the apostles—have provided plenty of commentary on the

01:35:37

King Follett funeral discourse, including Lorenzo Snow's couplet. So, there really isn't any question about that.

01:35:45

Right. But he certainly does mean to refute the idea that God was God from all eternity. Right. How do you rectify that with something like Moroni 818?

01:35:53

Most Mormons believe that he did something as Jesus Christ did somewhere else. That's what—

01:35:58

Now, like I said, see, he just said, most Mormons think that he was the Redeemer figure, that he did what Jesus did someplace else, that's why—and he even said he doesn't believe

01:36:05

God the Father was a sinner. Now, of course, if this man becomes exalted, becomes

01:36:12

God of his own planet, is he a sinner? If every single worthy

01:36:18

Mormon male were to receive exaltation from this planet, were they sinners?

01:36:24

Well, of course. So, there are—the majority of deities in the universe says are redeemed sinners.

01:36:35

Oh, it'd be billions to one, billions to one, vast majority. Yeah, exactly. But many

01:36:40

Mormons believe that he came down to some earth somewhere, got a body, and helped people in some salvation process.

01:36:49

But, again, that is purely speculative. That is not Mormon doctrine. There is no real Mormon doctrine on this.

01:36:56

See, there is no real Mormon doctrine on which of these is the case, but the idea that God had a human preexistence, there is no question!

01:37:05

None! Zip, zero, nada! So he's conflating two issues. Maybe that's how he justifies this misrepresentation of Mormonism in his mind.

01:37:15

I don't know. I don't know. And so all we have is we have this anomaly from what he said, and—

01:37:22

Well, it's difficult for me to see this as an anomaly, given who said it, because, I mean, I can't imagine there'd be any higher authority in the current

01:37:29

Latter -day Saint Church than the Prophet Joseph Smith. So, I mean, it seems to me that, while I will grant that there may be confusion that comes from it, how exactly would you explain what he—his reputation?

01:37:42

It comes down to, was Jesus always God? And did Jesus come down? Did Jesus become man? And the answer is yes,

01:37:49

Jesus is God, and yet he became man. Again, it is not. I would challenge this man.

01:37:55

Show me. Show me, in the teachings of the

01:38:00

Doctrine and Covenants program at Price, to—show me the teachings of the General Authorities of the Mormon Church, that Jesus has eternally, not just in regards to this planet, but eternally been

01:38:13

God. That he has eternally been deity. Because I know the teaching of the

01:38:19

LDS Church is that he's our elder brother, and that he's one of the offspring of Elohim. I know that's the teaching of the

01:38:27

Mormon Church. So, I'm just simply saying, this man is grossly and dishonestly misrepresenting

01:38:35

Mormonism to a Christian audience. Just, there's no other way to—what other conclusion can be drawn from this?

01:38:41

And so, if somebody said, well, Jesus, he became man, somebody might object to that, saying, well, no, he's always

01:38:48

God, and then you get in a discussion, was he God when he was here, was he man when he was here, and it gets into a somewhat—it gets into confusion there.

01:38:58

Obviously, you know, when you talk about God the Father, what do we know about God the Father? What do we know about where he came from? What do we know about what he's done?

01:39:04

The answer is really nothing. Wow. I'm sure glad that Moses knew

01:39:09

Psalm 90, verse 2, "...before the mountains were brought forth, wherever thou hast formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art

01:39:18

God." That's the very thing that Joseph Smith pretended to refute in the

01:39:23

King Follett Funeral Discourse, but it was a whole lot easier talking to Mormons back when they knew what they believed.

01:39:29

Yes, sir. No kidding. You kind of wonder what this guy would feel at the moment if he were in the presence of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and they were armed, because something tells me—

01:39:41

At that point, he better hope that the doctrine of blood atonement was just speculative too, which it really wasn't.

01:39:48

Yeah, no, I've thought more than once. The Mormons that I first met with, the

01:39:56

Mormons that I talked with outside the general conference, that I talked with outside of the Easter pageant, back in the 1980s, if I had represented to them this man's views, they'd be going, that guy ain't no

01:40:07

Mormon. We know what we believe. The kids knew what they believed back then. Oh, the junior high school kids knew more about what

01:40:16

Mormonism taught back then than this guy is willing to admit. Now, I'm not saying he doesn't know these things. I think he does. I think the, uh, is due not to some speech impediment, but because he's trying to find a way of saying things in a politically correct fashion when he knows that what he's saying would be so easily refuted.

01:40:33

We really don't know much at all on that. So what we have to do is we have to go—so

01:40:39

I guess the question is, if you go to a Mormon church, do they have lessons on God being once a man?

01:40:45

And the answer is no, we don't. Really, if you go to a Mormon church today, do they have lessons on was

01:40:52

God once a man? And the answer is no, they don't. I just, I read to you,

01:40:59

I specifically read to you from the Mormon material that they provide for themselves.

01:41:09

Let me, uh, let me give you another example. I knew this was in here. Again, Sharon Lindblom, uh, mrm .org.

01:41:18

Uh, the following illustration is found in the instructor's guide for the current Mormon, the current, the current

01:41:25

Mormon Institute manual, The Life and Teachings of Jesus and His Apostles, Religion 211 -12.

01:41:31

There's a post -it scan. This is, uh, if you go to the blog .mrm .org, November 4th, 2013.

01:41:37

The post -it scan is from the printed edition, page 110. Found in a section of the manual that is discussing second

01:41:43

Peter and partaking of the divine nature of God. It clearly illustrates classic Mormonism.

01:41:50

And once you have a picture, it says you've got the Jesus is our example and mediator.

01:41:56

The teacher could ask his students to consider how Jesus is our example of how we can partake of the nature of God using

01:42:01

DNC 93 -12 -28. The following illustration could be used. Then it's got a,

01:42:07

I don't know why they do the really lousy stick figure thing. Um, but they like to do that in their manuals.

01:42:16

I have no idea why, but you've got Jesus, Jesus Christ stick figure, Christ attained this by receiving grace for grace.

01:42:23

And then the line goes straight up, divine nature of God. Us, we attain this by acquiring the attributes of Christ mentioned by Peter in second

01:42:31

Peter moving from grace to grace, Christ mediator to divine nature of God. It's right there under a section titled study sources.

01:42:41

The instructor's manual suggests that teachers consult teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith, pages 345 through 348 in order to answer the question, what must we do to partake of God's divine nature and become like him?

01:42:57

And I can tell you without looking, I know what's on pages 345 to 348, because I've cited it so many times in my life.

01:43:05

Found on these pages of teachings is part of Joseph Smith's King Follett funeral discourse, which includes in pages 345, 348.

01:43:16

God himself is once we are now as exalted man sits thrown down. Heavens is necessary. We should understand the character and being of God and know how he came to be so far.

01:43:23

I'm going to tell you how God came to be God. He was once a man like us. He had a God himself. Father's all dwelt on earth. Same as Jesus Christ himself did here.

01:43:29

Then his eternal life to know the only wise and true God and how you've got to learn to be gods yourselves and to be kings and priests to God.

01:43:36

The same as all gods have done before you namely get by going from one small degree to another and from a small capacity to a great one, from grace to grace, from exaltation, exaltation, until you attain the resurrection of the dead are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, sit in glory as do those and sit and thrown in everlasting power, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

01:43:53

It is the heart of the King Follett funeral discourse, which this man just said was mere speculation.

01:43:59

And here it is in the current, as in today, as in right now, go to the local

01:44:05

LDS ward chapel and look up Mormon Institute manual, the life and teachings of Jesus and his apostles.

01:44:10

The teacher's manual says, here's how you can answer the questions about this right there. There is documentation that what this man said is untrue.

01:44:23

It's simply untrue. Untrue. It doesn't get any clearer than that.

01:44:29

It does not get any clearer than that. Because we really don't know anything about that comment.

01:44:37

And so, yes, Joseph Smith made the comment. Absolutely he did. But we don't, we don't have anything more than that comment.

01:44:45

Um, so only hundreds of sermons and hundreds of books by the alleged successors to the prophet and by apostles of Jesus Christ over the course of 160 years in Mormonism.

01:45:01

We don't have anything more than that. That's why I call this agnostic Mormonism. We don't know. We don't know.

01:45:09

That's not Mormonism. So that's, you know, so what do you do with that? Very interesting conversation from earlier today with a

01:45:14

Mormon apologist, Scott Gordon, on the beliefs and practices of Mormon. When we come back, we're going to be talking a little bit more with...

01:45:20

Now, then we went to the First Vision stuff. And we really, we really need to hear this.

01:45:26

This blew me away. Of the prophet Joseph Smith's First Vision for Mormons. It is foundational.

01:45:33

Now, interesting enough is Joseph Smith didn't talk about the First Vision. Now listen, now, First Vision. I read you the

01:45:39

First Vision in the last program. The key element of the

01:45:45

First Vision for Mormons for 140 years.

01:45:52

Because this was later development. Joseph Smith didn't start teaching it until at the earliest 1838.

01:45:59

It did not become popular until the 1840s. There are all sorts of historical problems with it.

01:46:05

It didn't happen. It's contradictory to history. We've got all sorts of documentation showing that it's contradictory to history.

01:46:10

The revival didn't take place until 1824. They didn't live where they said they lived. You can prove it a dozen different ways.

01:46:18

We have a great track on that subject. The case against First Vision. But the takeaway to the

01:46:27

First Vision for Mormons is real simple. God the Father and Jesus Christ are separate and distinct individuals who have physical bodies.

01:46:36

That's what the First Vision is about. Now Joseph Smith didn't start telling anybody. He lied about it in Joseph Smith's history.

01:46:43

He claimed he was persecuted. This guy's going to lie about it by saying he didn't really talk about it for a while when his own scriptures say he was immediately persecuted for telling people about it.

01:46:54

Again, evidently he assumes nobody's going to read LDS scripture to find out that he's soft peddling this stuff.

01:47:01

But that's the takeaway. Now listen to this guy's takeaway for the First Vision. It is foundational.

01:47:07

Interesting enough is Joseph Smith didn't talk about the First Vision for a while. He talked more about his visions of Moroni and the

01:47:16

Book of Mormon coming forth. Then later as the church was established, he went back and said, well, the reason this whole thing started was because of this

01:47:22

First Vision I had. For us, though, it really shows us that God and Jesus speak to man today, even as they have in the past.

01:47:33

So yeah, it is a foundational belief. Again, just for the sake of clarity, what does Joseph Smith say was revealed to him in that First Vision?

01:47:40

In the First Vision, it was revealed to him that there were creeds that had been corrupted, that he should join none of the churches, and that he should wait, really, essentially.

01:47:50

And that his sins were forgiven him. That was the most important thing to him at that time, that his sins were forgiven him, and that he should join none of the churches.

01:47:58

Those would be the two things that came out of it, probably. I'm looking through the window here at Rich.

01:48:06

Now, at some point after I was doing all the teaching of the

01:48:12

Mormonism class at North Phoenix, you and Mike took it over. So you had taught the Mormonism class. And you've talked to almost as many

01:48:23

Mormons as I have. Not by a long shot, but yes, I've talked to a lot of Mormons. And you sit here, listen to this, going—the look on your face is, how does he get away with it?

01:48:39

I have to say, in many of my discussions with LDS folks, at some point in time, many of them have asked me, what do you think of Joseph Smith?

01:48:52

Do you believe Joseph Smith? And, you know, what do you think he was doing if you don't believe him?

01:48:57

And I tell them, I think he was a con artist. I think he was a very good con artist. And I think his history before this, and the stories that are told around him by E .D.

01:49:08

Howe, he was a con artist. So I do see a common thread between what we're listening to now and Joseph Smith.

01:49:17

Yeah, exactly. It does seem to run— Except now we're having to con the

01:49:22

Mormons about what Joseph Smith actually taught. Well, I do tend to kind of, I think you do too, trace a lot of this back to the former head of the

01:49:32

PR department, Jordan Hinckley, taking over the church a number of years back and redirecting it.

01:49:39

I will never forget the Larry King interview, and then his subsequent, well, you know what

01:49:45

I meant, from the Pulpit and General Conference afterwards. So the con continues, that's my opinion.

01:49:54

Yeah, very much so. Very much so. I mean, again, those of you who've never talked to Mormons, you just have to take our word for it.

01:50:04

But for a Mormon to say, yeah, the main things are, you know, Joseph Smith's sins forgiven.

01:50:11

I read the whole thing to you. There wasn't nothing about that. The issue of the

01:50:16

First Vision. If you go up to Salt Lake City and you see the paintings in the visitor centers and stuff like that, the whole thing,

01:50:24

I've been to the Sacred Grove and Palmyra, the whole thing is, this is where Joseph Smith realized that all the teachings of the churches were wrong, because God has a body of flesh and bones, and Jesus does too, and they're separate and distinct.

01:50:41

There is no Trinity. All that stuff is a bunch. I mean, the last time I was even on radio up in Salt Lake City, live in studio, the last two hours, this was all it was about.

01:50:50

What was that guy's name? He had written something about the influence of Greek philosophy on Christian, what was that guy's name?

01:51:02

Anyways, that's what it was all about. You're not talking about Van Hale. No, no, no, I'm not. No, I'm not.

01:51:08

It was some other guy that we started going on after we had the encounters with Van, and I forgot what the guy's name was.

01:51:16

Not Richard Hopkins, no. It might have been. It might have been. Might have been. His big deal was he was a

01:51:23

BYU prof. Wasn't Richard Hopkins the one who was... No, it could have been Hopkins then. Anyway, the point is, these guys would have had a cow at this guy's presentation.

01:51:32

Just would have had an absolute cow at the presentation of the First Vision there, because that is not what the

01:51:40

First Vision was all about. So traditional Christianity, and you've already kind of conceded that Mormons are different from traditional

01:51:47

Christianity in many ways, but traditional Christianity would attempt to measure either the truth or the falsity of any kind of teaching based upon the

01:51:55

Old and New Testaments of Holy Scripture. You've said here that the LDS Church measures the truth or falsity ultimately by the foundational teaching of Joseph Smith's First Vision.

01:52:04

In other words, whatever else may be taught by Christianity, if it doesn't comport with the First Vision, it's false. If it came to a contradiction between Joseph's First Vision and the

01:52:14

Bible, which would you choose to believe and why? Well, the question is a bit contrived, because I've never seen a contradiction between Joseph's First Vision and the

01:52:23

Bible that has not been explainable. Now, that's not saying that there aren't things you have to look at and say, hmm,

01:52:29

I wonder if it's this or this. But I do believe that we are very Bible -oriented, and we're very knowledgeable in Bible things.

01:52:35

We read the Bible. In fact, a few research forums say Mormons tend to read the Bible more than most other denominations do. Wow. Wow.

01:52:44

I'm still waiting for the first meaningful, scholarly

01:52:50

Mormon commentary on the Bible, or on a New Testament book,

01:52:56

Old Testament book. Meaningful and scholarly. I listen to that, and I picture the story you used to tell about when you were a child running down the road with your fingers in your ears when your mom's yelling at you to get back there.

01:53:07

Right down the middle of County Road 15. Yep. Yep, that's what was just done. I've never seen a contradiction.

01:53:14

No, no, no. So it's not that we're unfamiliar with the Bible, because we're very familiar with the

01:53:20

Bible and what's in there, what's contained in there. And we read the Old Testament and the New Testament, and we generally use the King James Version in English, although other

01:53:27

Bibles are certainly permitted. But, you know, so a contradiction. I think if I saw a contradiction,

01:53:34

I'd have to go back and say, what am I not understanding about one episode or the other? You know, what is it that, you know, what is it that I would—yeah,

01:53:43

I'd have to go back and look at it again. No, in that first vision, as you mentioned before, Joseph Smith is told that he's being called—now, by the way, again, the vast majority of Mormons face the same question.

01:53:56

The past, anyways, would have said, well, Joseph Smith is the prophet of God. The Book of Mormon is the most perfect book of any book on Earth.

01:54:04

The Doctrine and Covenants are probably best given through the prophet of God. And we believe the Bible is the word of God only as far as it's translated correctly.

01:54:11

And many plain and precious truths have been removed from the Bible. So, which one is more important than the other?

01:54:18

Which one informs the other is a given. It's obvious. I just don't think he wanted to say that in the context in which he was speaking.

01:54:25

The prophet by God to reveal the fullness of the everlasting gospel, as it was delivered to the inhabitants of the new world.

01:54:33

We're talking here about the revelation of the plates that would be left for Joseph Smith to find or delivered for Joseph Smith to find.

01:54:40

Now, what we find there in the Book of Mormon, in many ways, contradicts the New Testament and the Old Testament.

01:54:46

So why should we believe the Book of Mormon as Joseph Smith says it was delivered to him, rather than what is written in the

01:54:54

Bible? So that's where I disagree with you is because I've gone, I've read through the contradictions or the alleged contradictions that are brought forward by many of the various countercult ministries.

01:55:02

And I don't see those contradictions. I do see contradictions of interpretation. Because the Bible is not just, you know, people say you read the

01:55:07

Bible and the word is what it is. And I come back and I said, no, the word is how you interpret it. And that's why we have so many denominations is because people interpret it differently.

01:55:16

And I go through the Book of Mormon and I compare it with the Bible, and I don't see those contradictions. I don't, I really don't.

01:55:22

Could, would you, would you entertain the possibility that what you're doing is going back, because what traditional

01:55:28

Christians will read, they will find many contradictions there. Would you entertain the possibility that you're simply reading the New Testament in light of Joseph Smith's first vision or in light of the

01:55:36

Book of Mormon rather than the other way around? I guess what I'm asking here is, which is the ultimate interpretive authority, the

01:55:42

Book of Mormon or the New Testament? See, the problem is here, the question is, is lacking, because the

01:55:50

Book of Mormon is, has been allowed to stand separately from the Doctrine and Covenants of the Prophet of Christ, the living prophet, the fact that you have 15 men at any one time who claim to be apostles of Jesus Christ.

01:56:05

You go, 15? What do you mean? You have the Council of 12, and then you have what's called the First Presidency. And the prophet and his first two counselors, that's the

01:56:14

First Presidency. There's three. They're all apostles. And you have the Council of 12. That's, that's 15 apostles.

01:56:19

15 living apostles at any one given time, according to the Mormon Church. So that's why you can't have a closed canon, because they are apostles on the same level as Peter, James, John, Paul, etc.,

01:56:32

etc. That's why you can't have a closed canon. So the freakishness of this modern agnostic

01:56:39

Mormonism is that it is, it tries to continue to affirm the idea of Latter -day

01:56:48

Revelation, but at the same time start working in concepts of a sola scriptura.

01:56:56

We will only be accountable for what's in our scriptures. You can't put the two together.

01:57:04

Mormonism, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young together put Mormonism on a path that could never go back to that kind of a perspective.

01:57:13

It's just not possible. And now with the ever -shrinking Book of Mormon geography, and with the obvious embarrassment on the part of the

01:57:23

Mormon leadership concerning what's actually taught in the Doctrine and Covenants of Earl Grey Price, what do they have left?

01:57:31

They can't go to the Bible, because the Bible teaches the exact opposite of what's found there. Despite the fact that this man says, well,

01:57:36

I don't see any of that. I don't see any of that. It's there, it's clear, and it's sad to listen to.

01:57:46

It's sad to listen to. But this is, I can only explain it in the context of the mainstreaming of Mormonism.

01:57:53

This is the whole purpose of this organization, evidently, is to help mainstream

01:58:00

Mormonism, bring Mormonism into the mainstream. It's not possible to do.

01:58:07

Those words that the host quoted and that I've quoted, we have imagined and supposed that God was

01:58:15

God from all eternity. I will refute that idea and take away the veils that you may see.

01:58:21

When Joseph Smith refuted or thought he refuted the idea that God had been

01:58:29

God for all eternity, he forever separated his followers from biblical

01:58:36

Christianity. Until you repudiate Joseph Smith and repudiate his errors, you will not be a follower of the

01:58:45

Christian faith. That is all there is to it. Well, there's more to get to. There's a whole discussion of the couplet, some discussion of the

01:58:53

Book of Mormon, and then finally, a brief discussion of what the gospel is. And so we'll get to those in a future program as well.

01:59:00

Thanks for listening to the program today. It was a mega edition because that's the only edition for this week.

01:59:07

So, Lord willing, we'll be back next week. Should be regular schedule. I'll be heading to St.

01:59:12

Charles for my 14th consecutive year at Covenant of Grace Church in St. Charles in December.

01:59:20

And that'll be, what is that, eighth night, something like that. I've got the wrong calendar up.