August 29, 2018 Show with Peter Elliott on “Reasons for Disbelief: One Man’s Story of Leaving the RLDS (Community of Christ Church)”

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August 30, 2018

August 29, 2018: PETER ELLIOTT, a convert from the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Biblical Christianity, discusses: “Reasons for Disbelief: One Man’s Story of LEAVING the RLDS (Community of Christ Church)” with special co-host Jason Wallace, pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church of Magna, Utah

00:01: Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown
00:08: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,
00:16: Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:23: Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.
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00:46: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
00:57: Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,
01:05: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at IronSharpensIronRadio .com.
01:13: This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 29th day of August 2018, and I'm delighted to have on the program for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Peter Elliott.
01:30: He is a convert from out of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, also known as the
01:38: RLDS, and today known as the Community of Christ. This is actually part two of a three -part series that we are doing on the
01:49: RLDS cult. We began on Monday with Paul Trask as our guest.
01:55: He is another convert from out of the RLDS to biblical Christianity, and today our guest is
02:03: Peter Elliott. We do intend next week to have another RLDS convert from out of that group to biblical
02:14: Christianity, and her name is Carol Hansen, and we're looking forward to that interview,
02:22: God willing, with her next week. But today, as I said, we have as our guest today for the very first time
02:31: Peter Elliott, and he is the author of a book, A Church's History and Theology Led to Reasons for Disbelief, One Man's Story of Leaving the
02:42: RLDS Community Church of Christ, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the very first time,
02:51: Peter Elliott. Thanks for that Chris, it's a pleasure to be here. And also co -hosting the program with me today is
03:00: Pastor Jason Wallace, pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah, and also founder of LDS .video.
03:08: It's great to have you back in the program, Pastor Jason Wallace. Although you've been a guest in this program a number of times, is this the first time that you've co - hosted with me?
03:17: Yes. And it's great to have you as a part of this program, even though you're, when it comes to the cults, being a resident of Magna, Utah, not far from Salt Lake City.
03:30: Obviously your focus of attention is the larger group, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, the
03:36: Mormons, and you have dedicated an evangelistic effort to them through LDS .video,
03:45: but it's glad that you would join us today to probably learn a lot yourself for the first time about the
03:50: RLDS, but tell us about Christ Presbyterian Church of Magna, Utah.
03:56: We're a congregation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which basically means we're a conservative remnant of the old
04:04: Presbyterian Church here in America. We believe the Bible is the
04:09: Word of God. We've been here for 20 years. We started from scratch, Lord's Bless.
04:14: We have a congregation here just outside Salt Lake. We have a sister congregation in Ogden, and we've tried to be aggressive in outreach, and we've done that through book tables, debates.
04:26: We also, for the last few years, have been putting out evangelistic videos. We have eight aimed at a
04:33: Mormon and former Mormon audience at LDS .video. We have also, homosexuality is a big thing here in Utah, and so we have
04:46: GayChristian .video with a video aimed at answering the claims of that movement, and we just released a couple months ago an earnest plea to Roman Catholics, and it's at RomanCatholic .video,
04:58: and all those are free. Great, and we'll be repeating that information later on,
05:04: God willing, but Peter Elliott, you are from a fifth generation of members of the
05:14: RLDS, and yet you live in Australia, in Western Australia. The RLDS, as you know, is most commonly known to citizens of Missouri, because of the fact that that is where they are most prevalent, and they obviously found their way, over the last hundred years or so, to Western Australia.
05:41: Tell us about how the RLDS migrated over there, to your knowledge. Well, my family connection goes back, really, to the first Mormon mission to England, which took place in 1840, when the original leader,
06:00: Joseph Smith, was still alive, and I had an ancestor by the name of Francis White, who apparently converted to Mormonism, during that first mission to England, and he subsequently moved to Western Australia, and his descendants stayed within the church, but eventually, through the development and the split between the
06:26: Mormons and the RLDS, they eventually affiliated with the RLDS, and my family had been part of the
06:34: RLDS ever since that time, so there were five generations before me. I was generation number six, and that was really a key part of the
06:45: RLDS in Western Australia. Now, would you have been, growing up, a real outsider in your own homeland?
06:55: I mean, were there, other than your own congregation, were there other RLDS folks that you knew and had fellowship with, or what was the situation like there?
07:07: Yeah, in one way, we were outsiders. There were really only two branches within the
07:15: Perth metropolitan area. There was the Fremantle branch, which I attended, and there was a branch that was called
07:21: Woodlands branch, and they were really the only two branches in our whole state. When you say branch, would that be similar to the way some denominations use the word parish?
07:33: Yes, it would be similar to a parish. Okay. So that was really a family connection.
07:42: And so, being that long in that group,
07:49: I'm sure that this was a very heartfelt and cherished religion for your family since you were in it so long.
07:58: Tell us something about growing up RLDS, as far as perhaps stories that you heard from your parents and grandparents about the movement, or even things that you did as a family that were uniquely
08:16: RLDS, things that your average family in Australia would not have participated in, or things that the average family in Australia, whether they were
08:27: Christian or not, participated in that you did not in a reverse way. Tell us something about that.
08:36: In some ways, our family would have looked very similar to a lot of other church families,
08:43: I think. You would have walked into a lot of our services and not been able to tell too much difference from walking into most mainline denominations.
08:56: There weren't that many mentions of the church distinctives publicly all that often, but they were definitely there.
09:05: My grandfather was the pastor of the church in Fremantle for many years. My stepfather, when my mother remarried, was also the pastor of the church in his time.
09:16: My mother was the church organist for 32 years, so we're very much involved in it. The distinctives were mainly defining us against the
09:26: LDS group and emphasising the differences between the two groups. In terms of what we did or didn't do,
09:34: I think most of the people in the church took a stance against alcohol, so we tended not to drink alcohol.
09:43: But apart from that, there weren't any distinctive practices. We didn't do anything as colourful as the
09:48: LDS group and have underwear with magic symbols on it. And we didn't particularly have an affinity for bicycles.
10:04: So I'm sure that those of our listeners who missed
10:10: Monday's show with Paul Trask, who actually, for those of our listeners who missed that program,
10:18: Paul Trask founded a ministry called Refiner's Fire Ministry, and they publish a number of books about the
10:28: RLDS. It's the only Christian ministry I know of that has a major emphasis on the
10:34: RLDS, and they actually make available this book that we are talking about today,
10:40: Reasons for Disbelief, One Man's Story of Leaving the RLDS Community of Christ Church by Peter Elliott.
10:48: But for those of our listeners who missed Monday, if you could tell us about some of the major differences.
10:57: In fact, let's back up a bit. Before we get the major differences on the
11:03: RLDS and the LDS, the RLDS and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day
11:09: Saints, the Mormons, the major group from Salt Lake, tell us about how the group initially split, and then we will get into some of the major differences.
11:22: And of course, those of you who heard Monday's program with Paul Trask, there may be some overlap, but of course
11:27: Peter Elliott may also bring to light things that we didn't have time to address on Monday.
11:34: So if you could, start with where the split came. Sure. The split really originally came when
11:42: Joseph Smith, the founder, died in 1844 at the age of 39, and so the split initially happened over the issue of who was the correct leader to succeed
11:56: Joseph. Now Brigham Young, as key amongst the Apostles, there was a group that felt that Brigham should be the leader to take over after Joseph, but there was another group that felt that Joseph had appointed his son, also called
12:16: Joseph, who became known as Joseph Smith III, as his successor. The time of Joseph Smith's death in 1844, his son was only aged about 12, so clearly not in a position to take leadership of anything.
12:34: But the group that felt that Joseph had really anointed his son for the role really became the
12:41: RLDS, so they waited, effectively, until such time as the son was old enough to decide whether or not he wanted to take over from his father.
12:51: He did do that, and then the reorganized church formed some years later as a result of Joseph Smith Jr.'s
13:01: son taking on the father's mantle, as it were. In the meantime, of course, the group following Brigham Young had moved over to Utah and became the
13:12: LDS group. So the original split was over that issue of succession. And there are major differences between the two religions that actually make them, in many ways, entirely different religions that have some similarities.
13:31: I would say the same thing, for instance, about evangelical
13:37: Christianity, historic Reformational Protestantism, the branch of the church to which
13:46: I belong, I would say that the Roman Catholic Church is an entirely different religion that has a lot of similarities, but they have differences that are too significant to claim that they are the same religion, because especially the gospel is different.
14:03: But in the same way, I would say, from what I know of the differences between the
14:09: RLDS and the LDS, that the differences are so significant that they would be really two entirely different religions.
14:18: Would you agree with that, Peter? I think there's a huge amount of similarity, well, as you've said about Roman Catholics and evangelicals, there's obviously a huge amount of similarity, but there are also some significant differences.
14:33: So I would agree along those lines. The other interesting thing about the RLDS is, in more recent times, how they've changed.
14:42: So you've got your historic differences, which we'll talk about, but you've also got how the
14:47: RLDS has positioned themselves relative to those original historic distinctives in the last 40 or 50 years.
14:57: So I might go back to the original historic distinctives, which are particularly around,
15:03: I think, three main areas of doctrine, and those main areas are polygamy, baptism for the dead, and plurality of gods.
15:14: So when I was growing up, they were three things that were seen as being very much keeping us apart from, and really justifying our continued separate existence from, the
15:28: LDS Utah group. And my grandfather, who was pastor, as I said, for many years, would always identify himself as a member of the
15:37: Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Lafayette Saints, not the Mormons. And these were, at that stage, so back in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, the key differences.
15:51: So polygamy, baptism for the dead, and plurality of gods were the big three. And yes, well, that is a huge difference, because it's obviously one of the huge differences that the
16:07: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints has with Christianity, is the area of monotheism.
16:15: Christians are monotheistic. We believe in the Trinity, and the
16:20: Trinity, as everyone who is a Christian, has some familiarity with the fact that it is the teaching that God is one
16:30: God and three co -eternal and yet distinctive persons that are co -equal.
16:38: And the Mormons believe not only are there an unlimited number, an infinite number of gods, they believe they can become one of them if they are faithful.
16:50: So that is a huge difference, that doctrine of progression, which you are saying also separates the
16:58: RLDS from the LDS. That's right, Chris. So the version that I was taught growing up, taking that issue of plurality of gods, was that really plurality of gods was something that hadn't been taught by Joseph Smith, and was really something that was a later development from that, you know, that really bad lot that went over to Utah, was what
17:24: I was taught. Now, you know, we can get onto this in a minute if you want, but subsequently my own investigation proved that really what
17:33: I'd been taught as a child growing up in the RLDS about Joseph having nothing to do with that really wasn't correct.
17:41: Yes, and in fact that would go along with the polygamy as well. I know that the RLDS, I don't know if they've come to admit it in recent history, but from what
17:52: I understand, the RLDS adamantly denied that Joseph Smith was a polygamist himself, nor did he advocate it, and then there is irrefutable evidence of that that has arose during the centuries since the
18:12: Mormon Church began, that he was certainly a polygamist. Am I right on that?
18:17: That the RLDS denied that there was any connection between Joseph and polygamy? Yes, that's true.
18:25: That certainly was the version that I grew up with. The interesting thing is the divergence between the versions that I was taught, my parents and grandparents were taught, and what later came to be gradually admitted, although never really publicly taught and published by the leadership of the
18:49: Church in Independence, Missouri. So as part of my own investigation during the 1979 -1980 period,
18:59: I was in correspondence with particularly Richard Howard, who was at the time the
19:04: RLDS Church historian, and in the book that you referred to earlier,
19:10: I quote from some of Richard's correspondence, and it was becoming obvious to me that some of the stuff that I was discovering, which of course was sometimes based on primary documents, but sometimes based on the work of others like Tannis, for example, the
19:26: RLDS leadership in the 1970s -80s period was actually coming to accept some of the real difficulties of the traditional positions that held on these three doctrines, and really coming to,
19:40: I guess, something of a revisionist understanding of that, but not really coming out and publicly telling the people of that.
19:48: Now can you repeat what you just said? There was a little bit of distortion from the Skype audio, but are you saying that the
19:55: RLDS in the 1970s started to become more assimilated to historic
20:01: Christianity in their teachings? Is that what you were saying? No, no, I'm definitely not saying that.
20:07: What I am saying is that they were really, the leadership of the Church in that period was really revising its understanding of some of these historical teachings about those big three doctrines, and essentially, in many ways, coming to agree more with the historic claims of the
20:29: LDS group in Utah. Oh, okay, the reverse of what I thought I heard. Yes, exactly.
20:37: Okay, but even so, they never adopted, from what
20:44: I understand, they never adopted the progression to godhood, or obviously by the 1970s nobody was practicing polygamy in either of the groups, but what do you mean by the other teachings as far as assimilating more to the
20:59: LDS understanding? In terms of, say,
21:06: Baptism for the Dead, one of the things that I've been taught growing up was that Baptism for the
21:13: Dead had never really been practiced. It was something that had been foreshadowed.
21:18: It was something that had been discussed as going to take place in the
21:26: Nauvoo Temple when the Nauvoo Temple was to be completed, but because the
21:31: Nauvoo Temple wasn't completed, the original RLDS view was that the conditions for Baptism for the
21:37: Dead were never actually met, and so it didn't actually take place. Now, certainly in later years, the
21:46: RLDS historians like Richard Howard, their investigations came to show up exactly the opposite, and that Baptism for the
21:56: Dead had been practiced in the river, and it had also been practiced in a makeshift font in the
22:04: Nauvoo Temple itself, I think. So that was one of the issues. The other one was the polygamy issue had been maintained for many years, that Joseph had never been involved in that, and his widow
22:21: Emma had apparently always denied it. But again, as you've said, the evidence came forth, and the reorganized church leaders saw that and appreciated the weight of the evidence, but one of the issues
22:33: I had with the RLDS leadership back in the 80s was that they never actually came clean, if you like, and published their findings in a way that was accessible to the general membership of the
22:49: RLDS church. They hid his polygamy. They hid Joseph's polygamy, you're saying. Yeah, so polygamy,
22:55: Baptism for the Dead, and plurality of gods, they never really published the views that they had come to hold as the leaders of the
23:04: RLDS church, which was that Joseph had really been involved in all of these things.
23:10: So that cut to an issue of honesty and integrity. And I guess that was one of the areas where your faith in the
23:18: RLDS system began to crack. It was, it was indeed, because my correspondence with Richard Howard and subsequent correspondence between both, you know, my mother got extremely distressed by what
23:34: I was discovering, and much to my surprise actually sent a copy of my book.
23:42: I mean, we only ever printed two dozen copies for local distribution, in my mind, of the first print run.
23:49: And she sent a copy of that to the leaders of the church in 1980 with a please explain letter.
23:55: So it was an interesting way of instigating a correspondence between us and the church leaders.
24:01: But one of the things that came out of that correspondence, when we challenged them as to why they weren't publishing the views that they now held, was the response that they really had, their words were, a long -range plan to change the thinking of the people of the church.
24:19: So for us that just sounded like brainwashing. Yeah, and Jason Wallace, you had a question for our guest today,
24:29: Peter Elliott. I was curious, with your family being among the early converts there in England, if in that interim period from 1844 to the reorganization in 1860, were they connected with James Strang at all?
24:48: Not as far as I know, Jason, no. And could you tell us, Jason, about that group, that branch or sect splinter group of the
24:59: Mormons? There was controversy when
25:06: Joseph Smith died about who would be his successor. Obviously Emma and others claimed that Joseph had intended his son to succeed him.
25:21: The senior member of the leadership was
25:26: Sidney Rigdon, and he claimed leadership. He was a member of the first presidency.
25:34: Brigham Young was the senior member of the Twelve Apostles, and he ends up taking a large chunk of people eventually to Utah, but there were many people who didn't go along.
25:48: And one fellow who had been a fairly recent convert by the name of James Strang had a letter that he purported made him
26:02: Joseph's successor. And he ends up moving off to Wisconsin, to Laurie, Wisconsin, and he soon claims not only has he received all these other things, he claims to find his own plates.
26:17: And at one point, Joseph's mother, a member of the
26:23: Twelve Apostles, a number of other people all gravitated towards him, and he had about 12 ,000 followers when
26:33: Brigham had less than 50 ,000. So it was a fairly significant splinter group, but had difficulties, and then people ended up turning on each other, and one of them shot
26:48: Strang. And when he died, many of the group ended up joining in the reorganization that took place in 1860.
27:00: Fascinating. Well, we're going back now to, or should I say, we are entering into our first station break.
27:09: If anybody has a question that they would like to ask of our guest, Peter Elliott, our email address is
27:15: ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the
27:26: USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.
27:32: Let's say you are a member of the RLDS and you want to disagree with our guest and you don't want to draw attention to yourself.
27:41: I understand that. Or perhaps you're a member of the RLDS and your questioning that group yourself and you don't want to come out of the closet, as it were, yet.
27:51: Well, we can understand why there might be a number of reasons why you'd remain anonymous. But if it's not a personal and private matter, please, as always, give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the
28:06: USA. And we look forward to hearing from you. In fact, we already have a number of people waiting patiently for their questions to be asked and answered.
28:15: And we will get to as many of you as we can as time will allow. But don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back with Peter Elliott and more of our discussion on his conversion out from the
28:25: Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints into biblical Christianity.
28:31: Don't go away, we'll be right back. Hi, Phil Johnson here.
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35:38: Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours, with a half hour that we just already had with 90 minutes to go.
35:49: Our guest is Peter Elliott. Peter Elliott grew up in the reorganized
35:54: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints and spent most of his early 20s traveling the world living off tinned fish and yogurt, gold prospecting and escaping from government jobs.
36:07: Since then he has earned a bachelor's degree in English literature from the West Australian Institute of Technology, now
36:13: Curtin University, and a Bachelor of Divinity and a Master's in Theology, both from Murdoch University.
36:20: Most recently, Peter has submitted a doctoral thesis entitled Edward Irving, Romantic Theology and Crisis at Murdoch University, which we hope to interview
36:31: Peter on in the future. Peter lectures in church history in several colleges and lives near Fremantle, Western Australia with his wife
36:39: Deborah and their two sons Joel and Jason, and we are discussing his book, Reasons for Disbelief, One Man's Story of Leaving the
36:47: RLDS Community of Christ Church. And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,
36:56: chrisarnzen at gmail .com, and our co -host today with me to discuss this issue today is
37:04: Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church, which is a congregation in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination in Magna, Utah, not far from Salt Lake City.
37:16: He is also founder and director of LDS .video. Well, Peter, tell us more about how the crumbling history or the revealing of the falsities, the cover -ups and lies about the
37:36: RLDS church history began to draw you more and more away from them and eventually into biblical historical
37:46: Christianity. Sure, Chris. I think one of the key things for me in doing the research that I did, and I might just backtrack a little bit as to how
38:00: I started that research. As I said, I grew up in the RLDS church and one of the similarities between the
38:08: RLDS and the LDS is how they call their priesthood members. So one day you get a tap on your shoulder from the pastor who says,
38:17: I believe God's calling you to the office of priest or teacher or deacon, whatever it is, and then you're supposed to pray about that and then back with your answer, yes or no.
38:28: Now, I started to see people who were younger than me in my branch getting called to priesthood offices and I was getting a bit nervous.
38:38: I thought one day the tap is going to come on my shoulder. Now, my stepfather was the pastor at that time and, you know,
38:47: I probably wasn't leading the most regular of lives as a young guy. That might have bought me a bit of time.
38:55: I knew one day that that tap on my shoulder was going to come. So a friend of mine had an opportunity to travel overseas for an extended period of time and he asked me to go with him and I took that opportunity, realizing that what
39:10: I needed to do, really, and bear in mind this time when I'm 20, 21,
39:16: I still believe that the RLDS teachings were probably completely true, but the one thing
39:22: I didn't want was to just accept because five generations of family. I wanted to have my own testimony, my own faith, and I realized that the
39:34: RLDS and LDS churches made historic claims and I realized that I could actually investigate those.
39:43: So, for me, that meant I needed to get access to some materials that were not readily available in Western Australia.
39:52: So when I traveled overseas, I made sure I got to Independence, Missouri and I got into the archives there, started a friendship with the librarian and started getting hold of a lot of material that I would later bring back to Perth and start researching.
40:11: So that's really where it all began and when I got back to Perth around the end of 1979,
40:19: I started researching this material. One of the interesting things I came across was something called the position papers.
40:26: Now, this is completely RLDS, nothing to do with the LDS, but it's a very interesting turning point for the official position, if you like, of the
40:37: RLDS church. What was in the late 1960s, around 1967, the
40:44: RLDS church was developing what it called its new curriculum. In other words, what are we going to teach people in our churches?
40:53: And as part of that, they developed these positions on all of the historical distinctives of the reorganized church.
41:03: And just to give you a couple of those, and by the way, these position papers were never intended to be made public, but they got leaked out.
41:15: So in these position papers, for example, they actually discount the historicity of the
41:21: Book of Mormon itself and they also discount the so -called inspired version, which was the version of scriptures that the
41:31: RLDS used in preference to the King James, which the LDS used.
41:36: So basically you've got the leaders of the church preparing in private these position papers that are completely taking a different view on their major distinctives from what had been taught previously.
41:51: And it's going to form the basis for what the church is teaching during the 1970s.
41:57: So when these papers got leaked out, it caused a bit of a controversy, and it was a further step in me realizing that effectively church leadership was making changes of direction, but they were not openly communicating that to the members.
42:15: Wow. We have some questions from listeners. First of all, quite an interesting individual.
42:24: We have Steve, and Steve is from West Boylston, Massachusetts.
42:33: And what makes Steve interesting, I'm going to give actually his full name and his church, because Steve has been a guest on this program in the past, as has his senior pastor.
42:47: Steve is associate pastor at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.
42:54: And just for a quick plug for him, the website is bbcchurch .org, bbcchurch .org,
43:02: and also nocompromiseradio .com, nocompromiseradio .com. But Steve Cooley was a
43:09: Mormon. He's a Mormon convert to Biblical Christianity. Not a convert from the RLDS, but from the
43:14: LDS. And Steve has a few questions here, actually. First of all, he asks, is the
43:22: RLDS engaged in missionary work like the LDS? So my understanding is yes, it is.
43:34: But as I think I might have mentioned in an earlier comment, that I think predominantly now they are focusing their efforts probably in third world regions.
43:46: But the difference is that they've never had the same sort of system that the LDS have, where there's an expectation that young people will spend a certain period of time as full -time missionaries.
43:57: That's never been part of the RLDS focus. And I think that the fact that they have taken really a revisionist stance on their historic beliefs really puts them in an awkward position.
44:15: They're now effectively offering people what is really not much different from, say, some liberal form of Protestantism, with an interesting historical twist to it, let's say.
44:30: Yeah, you're talking about the current community of Christ. Correct. And Steve also says,
44:39: I remember the RLDS seems to be less adverse to the physical symbol of the cross.
44:47: Is that true? I didn't really notice much response to that either way.
44:55: In the RLDS church that I grew up in, there was a plain cross symbol on the back.
45:01: Oh really? Of the church, yeah. And that would never be the case in an LDS temple or chapel ward,
45:08: I think. Yeah. He also asks,
45:15: Steve asks, does the RLDS have temples? No.
45:21: Well, they've got a site for the temple in Independence, Missouri, and they've built something on it, but nothing in the way that temple is understood in LDS.
45:34: So, in terms of the LDS history of basically plagiarizing
45:40: Masonic ritual for their temple ritual, there's nothing like that. And Steve's final question is, does the
45:51: RLDS give the same deference to the Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, and Book of Mormon as the
45:58: LDS? Yes and no. It's a complicated question.
46:07: As part of the position papers previously mentioned, back in them as early as the 1960s, the
46:16: RLDS leaders were really discounting the historicity of the Book of Mormon.
46:22: So, if you ask them do they regard it as scripture, they will probably say yes, but how they interpret that would be,
46:31: I think, very different from the LDS version. The Doctrine and Covenants, they have a separate one, so they still would consider the
46:42: Doctrine and Covenants as scripture, but of course they've had their own succession of presidents, you know, prophets of the church.
46:50: So, they have some revelations in their Doctrine and Covenants that have come since the split, so they're completely different from the
47:01: LDS Doctrine and Covenants. And I overlooked one final question here.
47:08: Is the RLDS growing or shrinking? Has the internet impacted the
47:16: RLDS as it has the LDS? Yeah, I think that this is really a question for Paul Trask, but Paul and I and your other guests coming up,
47:29: Carol Hanson, have had discussions on this in recent years. The funny thing is that the
47:36: RLDS continues to quote the figure of membership of 250 ,000, but it's been quoting that figure for about 40 years and it's never changed.
47:51: It must be the only organisation in church history that's been going for so long and the membership has never either increased or decreased officially.
48:03: I'm being a bit facetious in saying that. The membership has definitely declined, but they're just not releasing the figures by how much.
48:12: But if you look at some of the recent developments in terms of church finances, then it's becoming pretty obvious that the
48:21: RLDS is struggling. Well thank you Steve and thank you for giving me your full mailing address because you have won a free copy of Reasons for Disbelief by Peter Elliott and we will have
48:32: CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, ship that out to you at no charge to you or to us.
48:39: And we also want to thank again Paul Trask and Refiners Fire Ministries for providing us with these books.
48:47: We have, let's see, we have another question. In fact what I'm gonna do is
48:53: I'm gonna ask this question and then I'm have you answer it when we come back from our break and I'll even forward you the question,
49:02: Peter, so you have it right in front of you as well so that you could read it during the station break that we are about to enter into.
49:11: But Mike from Florida here, let's see, he's from Lee County, Florida, city of Cape Coral.
49:21: And Mike says, where I live here in Lee County, Florida City of Cape Coral is a
49:32: Community of Christ Church. Do you have any tracks that I could leave at their building?
49:37: They moved into a larger facility about three years ago so I'm assuming that they're growing in numbers.
49:43: Special shout out to Jason Wallace of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah.
49:51: Thank you for your ministry. So you have a fan out there in Florida, Jason. But I'm gonna have you answer that,
49:59: Peter, when we come back from the break. And if anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,
50:07: chrisarnson at gmail .com. This is our longer than normal break. Grace Life Radio 90 .1
50:14: FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us at least 12 minutes during the midway section of the program separating the two major segments of the program because they have their own commercials and public service announcements that they air to localize
50:33: Iron Trip and Zion Radio to Lake City, Florida, some of which is a requirement of the
50:39: FCC. And they air this program, by the way, twice a day in both morning and evening slots 8 to 10 a .m.
50:48: and 8 to 10 p .m. Monday through Friday in a rerun format. But, so since this is an elongated break, please use this time wisely.
50:57: Write down questions for our guest Peter Elliott about the reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day
51:03: Saints, today known as the Community of Christ. And also use this time to write down information provided by our advertisers.
51:12: The more you patronize our advertisers, the more likely they will remain our advertisers, which means the more likely we will remain on the air, because we rely upon our advertisers sponsoring us to survive, and we also rely heavily upon donations as well.
51:30: So please use this time to write down information that our advertisers provide so that you can more successfully and more frequently patronize them.
51:40: But also send us an email for our guest Peter Elliott at chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
51:47: C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com, and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.
51:55: If you live outside the USA, don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. Listening to Christian radio can be a big gamble spiritually.
52:18: Even many of the major Christian networks that include excellent, biblically faithful teachers on their lineup sadly often also include the worst of doctrinally dangerous heretics.
52:29: If you are a lover of the doctrines of Sovereign Grace, you need not fear listening 24 hours a day to firstloveradio .org.
52:38: They feature Christ -centered programming from Reformed pastors and teachers you can rely upon for theological soundness and biblical faithfulness, such as Dr.
52:47: W .R. Downing, Dr. Peter Masters, Pastor Joe Jackowitz, Pastor Robert Gifford, Al Martin, Edward Delcor, and more.
52:56: Firstloveradio .org also live streams my Iron Trepans Iron Radio program daily.
53:02: Please stick around on firstloveradio .org after Iron Trepans Iron Radio is over to continue being blessed by the unwavering proclamation of the gospel of Sovereign Grace.
53:13: Spread the word about firstloveradio .org. My name is
53:28: Steve Lawson, founder and president of One Passion Ministries, as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries.
53:34: I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the Doctor of Ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.
53:40: I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor.
53:46: It's called New Covenant Church, NYC. They are a Reformed Baptist Church that meets in Midtown Manhattan.
53:53: You can find their service times and location on their website, which is www .ncc .nyc.
54:01: They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.
54:07: If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City I'd like to recommend that you visit
54:17: New Covenant Church, NYC. Again, their information can be found at www .ncc
54:24: .nyc. Have a great day. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is sponsored by Harvey Cedars, a year -round
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55:01: An additional 9 ,000 come annually to Harvey Cedars as families, couples, singles, men, women, pastors, seniors, and missionaries.
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55:39: hcbible .org. Call 609 -494 -5689.
55:46: 609 -494 -5689. Harvey Cedars, where Christ finds people and changes lives.
56:07: I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries. The New American Standard Bible is perfect for daily reading or in -depth study.
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58:09: Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am
58:15: I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.
58:23: We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.
58:31: We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do, than how men view these things.
58:39: That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostles' priority, it must not be ours either.
58:46: We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.
58:58: If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.
59:04: You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528 -5750, or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our
59:16: TV program entitled, Resting in Grace. You can find us at ProvidenceBaptistChurchMA .org,
59:22: that's ProvidenceBaptistChurchMA .org, or even on SermonAudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor
59:30: Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. James White here, co -founder of Alpha Omega Ministries, and occasional guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
59:54: I'm so delighted. My friend Chris Arnzen will be heading down to Atlanta for the next G3 conference from January 17th to the 19th, 2019, where I'll be joining a very impressive lineup of speakers on the theme,
01:00:06: A Biblical Understanding of Missions. Speakers include John Piper, Steve Lawson, Vodie Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, Phil Johnson, Josh Weiss, yours truly, and many more.
01:00:19: I hope you all join Chris and me for this phenomenal event. For more details, go to G3conference .com,
01:00:26: that's G3conference .com. Welcome back, this is
01:00:36: Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is
01:00:41: Peter Elliott. We've got about an hour to go, and we are discussing reasons for disbelief, one man's story of leaving the
01:00:51: RLDS Community of Christ Church. The RLDS, if you've just tuned us in, is the
01:00:57: Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, a different branch of Mormonism, a lot smaller group with some unique things that set them apart, make them distinct and different and separate from the larger body of the
01:01:14: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints that is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
01:01:21: If you have questions about Peter, his testimony of conversion, technical or theological or doctrinal or issues of practice regarding the
01:01:34: RLDS Church, send us an email to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.
01:01:41: Please give us your first name, your city and state, your country of residence, if you live outside the
01:01:46: USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Before we return to our discussion,
01:01:53: I just have a few more announcements to make. First of all, there are two events that I have organized coming up next week in Switzerland, Florida nearby to Jacksonville.
01:02:06: The first is on Friday September 7th at 630 p .m. at the
01:02:11: Gordon -Conwell Theological Seminary in Jacksonville. They have more than one campus and this is at the
01:02:16: Jacksonville campus. My friend Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries and his friend
01:02:23: Dr. Michael L. Brown of the Line of Fire radio program and of the Fire School for Ministry.
01:02:29: They are going to be lecturing on the theme, A House Mended to Christian Unity in a
01:02:35: Culture of Outrage. That is Friday September 7th 630 p .m.
01:02:42: at the Gordon -Conwell Theological Seminary's Jacksonville, Florida campus. If you'd like more details, go to the website of one of the sponsoring churches,
01:02:49: Switzerland Community Church, and that is SwitzerlandCommunityChurch .org SwitzerlandCommunityChurch .org.
01:02:56: The following night I have organized a debate that both Dr.
01:03:01: James R. White and Dr. Michael L. Brown will be involved in. They are both going to be debating two homosexuals who are ordained ministers and who believe that homosexuality in its desire and in its practice are not to be viewed upon as sin.
01:03:27: They are not to be viewed upon as something that opposes the will of God, opposes the teaching of the
01:03:34: New Testament. The theme of the debate is, is homosexuality consistent with New Testament obedience?
01:03:39: As Saturday night, September 8th at 630 p .m. as well, that's going to be held at the
01:03:46: Switzerland Community Church in Switzerland, Florida nearby to Jacksonville. If you'd like information about that event, which is free of charge, you can also go to SwitzerlandCommunityChurch .org
01:03:58: SwitzerlandCommunityChurch .org. Then coming up in November on the 9th and the 10th, the
01:04:05: Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their annual QuakerTown Conference on Reformed Theology.
01:04:11: The theme this year is the glory of the cross. Once again, that's November 9th and 10th and it will be held at the
01:04:17: Grace Bible Fellowship Church of QuakerTown, Pennsylvania. Speakers include David Garner, Ray Ortlund, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson and Carlton Winn.
01:04:26: I will have an Iron Trip and Zion Radio exhibitors booth there, God willing, so I hope you join me there on November 9th and the 10th.
01:04:32: Go to AllianceNet .org to register. That's AllianceNet .org.
01:04:38: Click on events and then scroll down to QuakerTown Conference on Reformed Theology. Then coming up in January, the
01:04:45: G3 Conference returns to the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia, which is a suburb of Atlanta and I am so excited to be there for my third year in a row, manning an exhibitors booth for Iron Trip and Zion Radio, God willing.
01:05:02: And the speakers include Paul Washer, John Piper, Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, Tim Challies, Phil Johnson, Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, Stephen J.
01:05:18: Nichols, who is the president of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by the late R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries.
01:05:25: And the list goes on, it's a very long list on that roster. If you would like to join me there at the
01:05:31: G3 Conference, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com. I would strongly advise that you, if you have a business or a parachurch ministry that you want to promote amongst the crowd of nearly 5 ,000 people that are expected to be there,
01:05:49: I expect that you not only register for attendance but register for your own exhibitors booth at g3conference .com,
01:05:56: g3conference .com. Please make sure that you tell all of these folks that are running these events that you heard about those events from Chris Arns and Iron Trip and Zion Radio.
01:06:07: By the way, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service has a special offer that if you order from them by going to cvbbs .com,
01:06:16: cvbbs .com, you can get by purchasing a minimum of $50.
01:06:24: You will get for free the book From Pride to Humility by Stuart Scott and you will also get free shipping on that order of $50 or more by going to cvbbs .com
01:06:38: and you can also call them toll -free Monday through Friday between 10 a .m. and 4 30 p .m.
01:06:43: Eastern Time at 800 -656 -0231, 800 -656 -0231.
01:06:52: Last but not least, if you love the show, you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, please go to irontripandzionradio .com,
01:06:59: click support, then click, click to donate now. You could donate instantly with a debit or credit card and you can also send in a check via snail mail to the address that will appear on the screen when you click support at irontripandzionradio .com
01:07:17: Two caveats that I try to remember to tell you every day, never siphon money away from the regular giving that you're accustomed to to your local church where you are a member in order to give to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.
01:07:29: Never put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Those two things are commands of God providing for your church and providing for your family.
01:07:39: Although providing for Iron Trip and Zion Radio is obviously not a command of God, if you love the show and you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands, then please consider supporting
01:07:50: Iron Trip and Zion Radio as much as you can and as often as you can and we look forward to receiving your internet donations or your checks via snail mail and I thank
01:08:03: God for all of you who have already been doing that and if you want to advertise with us, send us an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,
01:08:11: chrisarnson at gmail .com, put advertising in the subject line and we will help you launch an ad campaign as long as whatever it is you're promoting does not combat with or militate against what we believe here.
01:08:23: As long as you are not promoting something that conflicts with my beliefs, we would love you to help you launch an ad campaign.
01:08:30: You don't have to believe identically with me, but you just need to be promoting something that does not conflict with what
01:08:36: I believe. And by the way, if you want to send in a question to our guest
01:08:42: Peter Elliott, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, the same email address that I just mentioned, chrisarnson at email, chrisarnson at gmail .com
01:08:52: and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence. And if you remember,
01:08:59: Peter, before the break we had a listener from Florida who basically was asking for recommendations for tracks because in Lee County, Florida, city of Cape Coral, there is a
01:09:17: Community of Christ Church there that has just erected a new building that's larger, so he wants to bring tracks there.
01:09:25: And if you could give him any recommendations and even tips about the very act of bringing tracks to the building.
01:09:34: Sure Chris, during the break I've actually had an email on this from Paul Trask. Paul has directed the listener in the short term to his website which is www .help4rlds
01:09:51: .com and the 4 is a number and there are some short articles there that Paul thinks might help your listener.
01:09:58: And the other thing Paul's saying Chris is that he's going to send to you some hard copy tracks that they use there in Missouri that then you can forward on to this listener or to to any others.
01:10:10: So I think that's the best response from here in Perth anyway. And well thank you
01:10:18: Michael. Please make sure we have your full mailing address there in the
01:10:23: Cape Coral area so we can have cvbbs .com mail you your own copy of Reasons for Disbelief by our guest
01:10:31: Peter Elliott. My guest Pastor Jason Wallace, you had a question for Peter Elliott as well if you could.
01:10:39: Yes, I was curious. The Community of Christ, the RLDS, seemed to have become very socially liberal in recent years.
01:10:49: And a lot of the folks that are joining them here in Utah seem to be homosexuals or people pressing for women's ordination, things like that.
01:11:01: Is that something that you're seeing elsewhere? Yeah, look I'm afraid I can't actually comment on that.
01:11:08: Effectively you know my research led to me obviously leaving the RLDS about 30 years ago and although I still have some relatives who are linked with the group.
01:11:21: I can't. That are linked with what? Could you repeat that? Sure, I still have some relatives who are linked with the
01:11:29: RLDS. Okay. But I can't really comment on you know the demographics of who may be joining the group at the moment here in Australia I'm afraid.
01:11:40: Okay yeah so you left 30 years ago and I wanted to hear more about specifics that led you to finally say
01:11:50: I am no longer going to be associated with the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day
01:11:58: Saints. I renounce my membership from them. I am now embracing and believing in the
01:12:05: Lord Jesus Christ that is taught in Scripture, the true Jesus Christ of Scripture and placing my allegiance with him and where you where you finally made the break and you became a member of a
01:12:19: Bible -believing church. Tell us about that exodus in more detail. Okay well this will probably take me about 10 minutes
01:12:26: Chris. That's fine. Okay so basically when I came to the end of the research that I did in 1980
01:12:34: I had examined the church and its distinctives historically and I just came to the conclusion much to my surprise initially that I could no longer believe and so for me that meant that I had to make a decision to leave the church but the initial obligation
01:12:54: I felt was to actually put something into print which is the book you've been referring to during your program.
01:13:02: So because the main reason for that was that I realized I've done the investigation
01:13:07: I've got some documents access to documents from America that was simply not accessible to people in Western Australia so that's why
01:13:16: I initially put together that particular book and we circulated it to the membership and I expected people to challenge me to be angry with me what really stunned me was the
01:13:29: I suppose the level of inertia I couldn't understand why people who officially were committed to a particular theological position when it was challenged couldn't be bothered or didn't want to engage with that particular contrary point of view
01:13:47: I actually kept going to the church for about a year after I published that book simply because I wanted to be available
01:13:55: I wanted people to be able to challenge what I've written but very few people did so after that process
01:14:02: I stopped attending the church resigned my membership but what I was left with at that point was really simply a vague belief in God belief in God but nothing much beyond that now not long after I wrote that book you've read on the back of the book that I went gold prospecting sounds like you have a lot in common with Joseph Smith well you know leave out the sea of stone and a few other things
01:14:35: I've sort of always picked the one white really so I went gold prospecting with my two friends and as a result of that I'm kind of long story short
01:14:51: I accepted a bet to walk around Ireland now this was walking around Ireland not hitchhiking so I took up that bet and in the second half of 1981
01:15:07: I spent about three months walking around Ireland now while I was doing that I actually read my way through the
01:15:15: New Testament and because I've gone back to sources where our
01:15:20: LDS was concerned I've gone back as far as I could to original sources it made sense to me to go back to original sources where Jesus was concerned so I spent three months walking around Ireland reading the
01:15:33: New Testament the other thing that happened was that this was not long after the
01:15:39: Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt so on the same trip
01:15:45: I visited both Israel and Egypt and really my conversion took place in Jerusalem actually so when
01:15:57: I got to Israel where I stayed predominantly were in Christian hospices mainly because I figured out
01:16:05: I probably wasn't going to get ripped off by the people staying there. Is that like a hostel you said hospice?
01:16:12: Yeah it is they call them hospices I think mainly but yeah because usually in America anyway a hospice is where a terminally ill patient is cared for.
01:16:22: Yeah yeah so by this time I'd read through the New Testament I had you know some idea of really of what it taught but what
01:16:33: I started encountering in Israel were a lot of people for whom
01:16:38: Jesus had made a difference in their life. One of the things that happened growing up in the RLDS church was that really looking back it was much more like a social club than anything else.
01:16:51: It was something people went to it really as a religious ritual and I didn't see it making much difference to how they lived their lives apart from the commitment itself to the group.
01:17:04: When I got to Israel I started meeting some amazing. You still there
01:17:09: Chris? Yes I'm still here. When you got to Israel you got to meet some amazing people?
01:17:15: Yeah some amazing Christian guys for whom their faith was actually affecting how they lived their lives and the choices that they made.
01:17:23: I'll give you one example. I met a guy called Dave who was in his 20s. He looked like a surfer but he told me he was actually a former professional gambler.
01:17:35: Now I didn't really believe this but he demonstrated his card counting ability and I did.
01:17:41: Now this guy had left a career as a professional gambler to come to Israel, left thousands of dollars on a bid in a hotel room and walked back to God and I thought okay.
01:17:53: I met some theology students, I met Episcopalian ministers,
01:17:59: I met person after person in Israel that actually their faith made a difference in how they lived their lives.
01:18:08: Now I guess the climactic moment for me came just as I was about to leave
01:18:14: Jerusalem for the last time. Many of your listeners would know there's a place there called the Garden Tomb and I visited the
01:18:23: Garden Tomb on a number of occasions but on this last occasion as I was about to leave
01:18:28: Jerusalem I was sitting in the Garden Tomb by myself and I was just really pondering the cumulative effects of reading the
01:18:36: New Testament, meeting all these people who were saying that Jesus was alive and changing their lives and I was sitting with the empty tomb in front of me and I remember being really annoyed because a lot of tourists were going inside the tomb and taking photographs and I was sitting in front of this empty tomb and there are all these flashbulbs going off and people being quite honestly a bit crass about it all and I gradually became aware in the
01:19:12: Garden that there were three separate worship services going on around me. There was a group of Germans on one side, a group of I think
01:19:23: Japanese on another and a group of Afro -Americans on another so I'm surrounded by three separate worship services in three separate languages and in front of me there's an empty tomb with flashbulbs going off.
01:19:42: Now at that moment I almost burst out laughing because I realized that this was essentially a stage managed operation and it was a soap opera moment with a flourish of overkill that I would have had to be particularly stupid not to see and I realized that you know
01:20:10: God had got me to that point in my life and actually stuck me in front of an empty tomb with flashbulbs going off and three separate worship services around me effectively almost reenacting the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem and at that moment
01:20:27: I realized well look this this is it and I uttered those the most dangerous words anyone can utter is
01:20:35: I surrender I'm yours and for me that was it that was the moment of conversion
01:20:43: I was by myself in the garden tomb in Jerusalem flashbulbs three gospel choirs that's where God got me.
01:20:51: Praise God and so from what you said earlier your mother had not immediately followed step with you has anybody from your family as of yet joined you in your exodus out of the
01:21:09: RLDS? Yes they have Chris for one reason and another my mother certainly did resign her membership my stepfather ceased to become active my grandmother my grandparents remained members until they died but in her latter years my grandmother in her 90s actually admitted that she could well have been wrong about what she believed so and there were a number of other people not necessarily certainly just because of what
01:21:47: I'd written but I just think because of what God was doing generally at the time who did make an exodus out of the
01:21:56: RLDS Church. The RLDS Church here in Perth now is is much smaller than it was 30 or 40 years ago.
01:22:05: Now how long ago please forgive me for making you repeat this if you already said it but how long ago did your mom leave?
01:22:13: Well really as soon as I wrote the book in 1980 my mom's doubts really matched my own and she started engaging in her own correspondence with the church leaders which is actually now printed in the back of the book and so in essence she
01:22:33: I think she left in her heart before she actually left in writing but it would have been in fact sometime in the 1980s that she actually wrote that letter of resignation.
01:22:45: Now you said your dad also left did either of them actually though come to faith in Christ because I from what
01:22:52: I understand not only about the LDS the larger cult but with cults in general although we always rejoice whenever we hear about anyone leaving there who is saved by the grace of God and becomes a
01:23:08: Christian there are many people who leave cults who become atheists or agnostics at the very best because they are just so disillusioned and hurt and they feel that they have been deceived that a deity even exists or deities plural.
01:23:30: What's the situation with your parents and what do you know about our LDS folks in general? Yeah I think it's a bit of a mixed bag
01:23:39: I'm certainly with my parents my mom certainly has a living faith in Christ and my stepdad who passed away a couple of years ago
01:23:48: I think he had I'm not entirely sure but I think he retained a faith in Christ and certainly he had a prayer life and I know that but beyond that I couldn't really say but my mom
01:24:05: I'm completely confident she has and also a number of other people here who have left the reorganized church have found themselves in Orthodox Christian assemblies.
01:24:21: Well praise God for that before we go to the break this is our last break Pastor Jason Wallace do you have a question that you'd like to ask of Peter Elliott?
01:24:33: No I think he's answered them thank you. Okay great well we're going to our final break right now if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own our email address is
01:24:42: ChrisArnzen at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com
01:24:48: please give us as always your first name your city and state and your country of residence and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter don't go away a
01:24:59: God willing we'll be right back after these messages with more of Peter Elliott and his exodus out of the cult known as the reorganized
01:25:09: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. Got to tell you for my money
01:25:14: Chris Arnzen's radio program is just the best I think that's what it's called this is
01:25:25: Todd Friel of Wretched Radio and TV with Phil Johnson of Grace to you inviting everybody to come to the
01:25:31: G3 conference which has almost instantly become one of the best conferences in the country and it is it's a great conference
01:25:38: I love it and Chris Arnzen was there last year he's been there I think every year it's great to see him there you and I actually did some recordings in the lobby at that place which is a highlight tons of stuff going on tons of great speakers and no matter where you are in the building you will hear
01:25:53: Chris Arnzen's laugh that's worth the price of admission alone if you would like to join
01:25:58: Phil me Chris and a cavalcade of great preachers so it should be a cavalcade of great preachers and me g3conference .com
01:26:08: g3conference .com Chris Arnzen host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here
01:26:18: I want to tell you about a man I have personally known for many years his name is Dan Buttafuoco.
01:26:24: Dan is a personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer but not the type that typically comes to mind.
01:26:30: Dan cares about people and is a theologian himself. Recently he wrote a book titled Consider the
01:26:36: Evidence for the Bible. Ravi Zacharias wrote the foreword. Dan also has a master's degree in theology.
01:26:44: Dan handles serious injury and medical malpractice cases in all 50 states. He represents many
01:26:50: Christians in serious injury matters all over the country. Dan is an exceptional trial lawyer.
01:26:56: He wrote the test for the National Board of Trial Advocacy and currently his firm has over 100 cases that have settled for one million dollars or more and in approximately 10 different states.
01:27:10: In Illinois his lawyers had the fourth largest settlement in the state's history. In New York his case involving a paralyzed police officer made the front page of the
01:27:20: Law Journal. If you have a serious personal injury or medical malpractice claim in any state
01:27:26: I recommend that you call Dan. Consultations are free. There is no fee unless you win.
01:27:33: Dan Badafuco's number is 1 -800 -669 -4878 1 -800 -669 -4878 or email me for Dan's contact information at chrisarnson at gmail .com
01:27:46: that's chrisarnson at gmail .com My name is
01:27:56: Steve Lawson, founder and president of One Passion Ministries as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries.
01:28:03: I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the Doctor of Ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.
01:28:09: I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor.
01:28:15: It's called New Covenant Church NYC. They are a Reformed Baptist Church that meets in Midtown Manhattan.
01:28:21: You can find their service times and location on their website which is www .ncc .nyc.
01:28:30: They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.
01:28:35: If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City I'd like to recommend that you visit
01:28:45: New Covenant Church NYC. Again, their information can be found at www .ncc
01:28:52: .nyc. Have a great day. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko inviting you to tune in to a visit to the pastor's study every
01:29:04: Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE radio www .wlie540am
01:29:14: .com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.
01:29:22: Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon
01:29:28: Eastern Time for a visit to the pastor's study because everyone needs a pastor. Listening to Christian radio can be a big gamble spiritually.
01:29:52: Even many of the major Christian networks that include excellent biblically faithful teachers on their lineup sadly often also include the worst of doctrinally dangerous heretics.
01:30:04: If you are a lover of the doctrines of Sovereign Grace you need not fear listening 24 hours a day to firstloveradio .org.
01:30:12: They feature Christ -centered programming from Reformed pastors and teachers you can rely upon for theological soundness and biblical faithfulness such as Dr.
01:30:21: W .R. Downing, Dr. Peter Masters, Pastor Joe Jackowitz, Pastor Robert Gifford, Al Martin, Edward Delcor, and more.
01:30:30: firstloveradio .org also live streams my Iron Trepans Iron Radio program daily.
01:30:36: Please stick around on firstloveradio .org after Iron Trepans Iron Radio is over to continue being blessed by the unwavering proclamation of the gospel of Sovereign Grace.
01:30:47: Spread the word about firstloveradio .org Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, for am
01:31:05: I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man
01:31:11: I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.
01:31:17: We are a Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.
01:31:22: We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how
01:31:28: God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things. That's not the best recipe for popularity but since that wasn't the
01:31:36: Apostles priority it must not be ours either. We believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.
01:31:52: If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts or plan to visit our area please come and join us for worship and fellowship.
01:31:58: You can call us at 508 -528 -5750 that's 508 -528 -5750 or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs or watch our
01:32:10: TV program entitled Resting in Grace. You can find us at ProvidenceBaptistChurchMA .org
01:32:16: that's ProvidenceBaptistChurchMA .org or even on sermonaudio .com. Providence Baptist Church is delighted to sponsor
01:32:23: Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Iron Sharpens Iron Radio placed him in, and we thank
01:35:24: Mike Gadosh for the wonderful blessing he has been to Iron Trepans Iron Radio for so long.
01:35:30: And more importantly I want to thank God for him, for his placing
01:35:38: Mike in my life. Back in the 1980s he was my very first pastor, he baptized me, was my mentor in the faith, and continues to be a mentor in the faith.
01:35:49: And there is no words I can adequately use to describe the importance of Mike Gadosh in my life, and I just thank the
01:35:58: Lord that he has come through the surgery with flying colors and I will keep you updated.
01:36:04: I just want to give a quick shout out to my new friend or reasonably or fairly new friend
01:36:10: Steve Amos in Perth Australia. Steve contacted me
01:36:17: I don't know maybe six to eight months ago, and he asked for a church recommendation and it just so happened that the timing was providentially perfect because the association to which the congregation where I am a member belongs,
01:36:33: ARPCA, the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America, we just planted a church not long ago in Perth, pastored by Alan Beardmore, and I told
01:36:43: Steve Amos in Perth Australia about this church and he and his wife visited, fell in love with the church, and have joined the church and I believe are already members if not becoming members very soon.
01:36:57: And I wanted to give a plug to Steve's business because they are creating a banner and other promotional material for Iron Sharp and Zion Radio.
01:37:07: ART &SIGNFX is the business and you can email
01:37:13: Steve Amos at info at ART &SIGNFX that's
01:37:19: Frank Xylophone FX and the word end is spelled out it's
01:37:25: ART &SIGNFX .com .au ART &SIGNFX .com
01:37:32: .au and the email address is info at ART &SIGNFX .com
01:37:38: .au. Now we are back with our conversation with Peter Elliott, author of the book
01:37:46: Reasons for Disbelief, One Man's Story of Leaving the RLDS, Community of Christ Church.
01:37:53: Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. We have
01:37:58: John in Bangor, Maine who wants to know Peter if you remain in contact with the
01:38:04: RLDS folks that used to be your fellow congregants there in Perth and if you have made any headway by the grace of God in leading any of them out of that cult into the true body of Christ and more importantly to saving faith in Jesus Christ.
01:38:26: Thanks Chris. The only contact that I really have still with the people who may still be linked with it is probably through social media but most of the people of my generation either left either to go to a
01:38:47: Christian church or they just completely drifted away. So I don't really have any ongoing contact with many of the people in the church at all but going back to 1980, early 1980s, which is when
01:39:03: I left the church, wrote the book, then yes certainly there were a lot of contacts going on there.
01:39:10: A lot of us were questioning what the RLDS taught in the light of some of the things
01:39:16: I've discovered and quite a number of us did leave the church, leave the
01:39:21: RLDS church and convert to Christianity, particularly back in the 1980s. So there was a lot of stuff going on back then but now
01:39:30: I'm more distant from it. Well thank you John and give us your full mailing address in Bangor, Maine because you have also won a free copy of Reasons for Disbelief by Peter Elliott and that will be shipped out to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,
01:39:48: cvbbs .com and we also want to thank again our friends at Refiners Fire Ministries for providing us with these free books that we are giving away.
01:39:57: I know that you, from what Jason Wallace asked earlier, are not really completely up to speed with the rapid,
01:40:07: I should say, deterioration of the
01:40:13: RLDS into basically mainstream liberalism.
01:40:20: From what I heard Peter, I'm sorry, from what I said, from what I heard
01:40:25: Paul Trask say on Monday about the the present community of Christ, I mean he didn't go in an exhaustive detail but they seemed barely distinguishable from the
01:40:39: Unitarian Universalist denomination which is an apostate liberal mainline
01:40:46: Protestant denomination. But since these developments, have you seen splinter groups forming even in our recent day, in our modern day, of RLDS perhaps wanting to remain faithful to their roots?
01:41:09: Good question. I'll preface my answer by saying that I think the situation that the community of Christ, as it's now called, finds itself in today derives directly from the sort of things that I was writing about in my book back in 1980.
01:41:26: In other words, having distanced themselves from those historical roots through things like the position papers, they had to find some place to land and to be honest
01:41:41: I think this was motivated as much by the desire to, financial desire really, people had positions in the church, they didn't want the church to implode which
01:41:55: I think it probably would have done if they'd been courageous enough to just publish openly things like what they said in the position papers.
01:42:04: So having distanced themselves from the original historical interpretation of RLDS beliefs, they didn't have really many other places to go apart from where they've ended up in this fairly liberal end of the spectrum.
01:42:26: Now in terms of splinter groups, there certainly were splinter groups arising back in the 1980s where you had some more fundamentalist groups coming out of the
01:42:37: RLDS, groups who could recognize that a change was happening from the top of the church down, that they were moving away from those traditional distinctive beliefs that were
01:42:48: RLDS, but people didn't really know necessarily why. There were certainly conspiracy theories around, people felt the leaders of the
01:42:57: RLDS church were betraying them etc, but because they've never made the reasons for the change public, people developed their own theories.
01:43:07: So certainly back in the 1980s there were splinter groups coming out, but as far as I can tell not so much in recent times.
01:43:16: We have BB from Cumberland County, Pennsylvania who asks, I'm sorry if I missed this earlier, but does historic
01:43:25: RLDS teaching involve works, righteousness, salvation just as most cults endorse?
01:43:37: In so far as they were clear on the subject, and I think there was a lot of lack of clarity in the
01:43:45: RLDS, certainly the group that I grew up in Western Australia. Yeah, Paul mentioned that there is very little systematic theology in that group.
01:43:54: Oh yes, absolutely. So I can clearly remember my grandfather, who I see as a pastor for many years, completely preaching against and ridiculing from the pulpit the idea of having any personal relationship with Christ.
01:44:11: Wow. And he, I think, was probably typical of that generation of preachers.
01:44:20: So it was really, I think, by default, if not by systematics, that you were really left with a system of works.
01:44:32: Well I asked this of Paul and I'll have you answer the same question, because there are obviously many people who did not hear
01:44:39: Paul Trask's interview on Monday, but where, I'm not talking about the modern -day
01:44:46: Community of Christ group, which is really not only an apostate group from Christianity, but from the
01:44:52: RLDS, but as far as historic RLDS teaching, where is the cross of Christ in their theology?
01:45:01: What importance does it have? Did Christ actually redeem his people on Calvary?
01:45:08: What was the purpose, in their view, of the death of Christ and his resurrection, etc.?
01:45:17: Again, it was very much in the background when
01:45:22: I was growing up, but the view really was one that Christ paid the price for Adam's sin, but then after that you're on your own.
01:45:35: Wow. And as far as the
01:45:40: Trinity is concerned, I remember Paul Trask on Monday basically saying that it seemed to him that the
01:45:47: RLDS that he was familiar with before the more modern liberalism took over, he viewed it as a functional
01:45:58: Trinitarianism. He said that it was not, as the LDS views, the
01:46:04: Trinity as three separate deities, but he said that the theology was so lacking in a systematic basis that he wasn't a hundred percent certain there wasn't some modalism involved in that Trinitarian view, which would obviously be a heretical view in regard to the actual belief historically and biblically about the
01:46:32: Trinity. What was your understanding of the Trinity as far as the RLDS taught it in its historical form?
01:46:41: Yeah, I would say that it was more binatarian than Trinitarian.
01:46:47: I always remember the Holy Spirit being referred to as it, and so the
01:46:54: Holy Spirit was conceived in the teaching that I was exposed to as really an impersonal force, so rather than a third member of the
01:47:07: Trinity. Okay, I'd like you now to, before we take any other listener questions,
01:47:13: I want to make sure that you have five minutes at least of uninterrupted time to summarize everything that you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners regarding the
01:47:22: RLDS, regarding your departure from it, regarding any words that you have to say probably especially to those still in the
01:47:33: RLDS, because I'm confident that God will eventually bring this program, if there are not already
01:47:39: RLDS members listening right now, both old -school and Community of Christ versions of it,
01:47:47: I'm confident that eventually it will wind up in the hands, or should I say the ears, of folks from those categories.
01:47:57: I want you to basically pour your heart out to them as well. Okay, so for those of you who are still in the
01:48:08: Community of Christ who are holding on to the historic beliefs, you're probably wondering why the changes.
01:48:18: I'd encourage you with all my heart to investigate the material that has been referred to here, go to Paul Trask's website and look at the discrepancies in the historical views that you may still be holding to.
01:48:33: The RLDS clearly does depart from historic and orthodox
01:48:38: Christianity, and for those of you who have perhaps joined the
01:48:45: RLDS more recently, the Community of Christ, look back to the history.
01:48:50: I mean the past always shapes us as individuals, as movements, and look back into that past and then ask yourself what does the
01:49:00: Community of Christ have to offer today, and encourage you to consider the claims of orthodox
01:49:07: Christian denominations. You'll find, I'm sure, that what the Community of Christ is offering is a very pallid imitation of traditional
01:49:18: Christianity that will not satisfy your heart's longing. I mean when
01:49:23: I looked at what I had to do to eventually leave the Community of Christ, it was not an easy decision to make.
01:49:32: I had to leave the six generations of my family's beliefs. I understand how tough that is.
01:49:38: But in the conclusion of my book, one of the things I wrote is that truth is under no obligation to be palatable, but it's true.
01:49:49: And if you are open and honest and pursue truth, you'll find in fact that truth is a person,
01:49:57: Jesus Christ. And when you're in that, you'll find that he has already pursued you, and in that encounter you'll find transformation as you encounter
01:50:10: Jesus Christ. That's my hope and my prayer for you. It's been my experience, it's been the experience of many others who've left the
01:50:18: RLDS Community of Christ. Just be brave enough to take the lid off those beliefs and trust
01:50:26: God for the journey. Praise God. I'm going to ask our co -host one more time,
01:50:34: Jason Wallace, if he has anything to say before we run out of time today. Jason? I just thank you so much for the information.
01:50:43: Thank you for your testimony. Well Jason, why don't you give our listeners your contact information before I provide the contact information for our guest
01:50:52: Peter Elliott. Sure, and this would apply for LDS and for Community of Christ.
01:50:58: We've got materials that deal with the claims of Joseph Smith and all the various, you know, hundreds of groups that claim their origin back to him.
01:51:07: If you go to LDS .video, you can see our materials there. They're all free. And we have contact information there.
01:51:19: The website is GospelUtah .org. Before I take your contact information,
01:51:27: Peter, we do have, I think we have time for two more listener questions. We have
01:51:33: Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who wants to know, in regard to the historic, more conservative version of the
01:51:42: RLDS, what is the view of the afterlife? Are they annihilationists?
01:51:49: Do they believe in a literal eternal heaven and a literal eternal hell, including conscious eternal punishment, etc.?
01:52:01: Okay, my recollection is that they'd still be holding to the idea of free heavens.
01:52:09: So you remember the biblical vision where Paul said he's caught up to the third heaven.
01:52:17: So they would have that level of belief, historically, that said that there are three levels of heaven in which they divide up the
01:52:27: Trinity, incidentally. It's only the top level of heaven that you have access to all three members of the
01:52:34: Trinity. If you get into the bottom level of heaven, you've just got the Holy Spirit, excuse me, being facetious here.
01:52:40: And so that would allow for a gradation of afterlife, depending on how you live.
01:52:49: Well, thank you, Bobby. You've also won a free copy of Reasons for Disbelief by Peter Elliott.
01:52:55: Make sure that we have your full mailing address in Hartsdale, New York, so that CVBBS .com can ship that out to you.
01:53:03: We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, and he asks, are there any talks among the
01:53:15: LDS and our LDS hierarchy about the possibility of a merger because of the fact that they both appear to be drifting into liberalism?
01:53:25: That's an interesting question. I think that's probably more one for Paul Trask, but I think in view of the fact that the community of Christ is taking the theological position that it is, as we've commented on, and the
01:53:42: LDS in Utah seem to be at a very different position, the possibility for some sort of unity between the two, sitting here as I do in Perth, Western Australia, it seems to be fairly distant.
01:53:57: Well, thank you, Bobby. Actually, that was CJ. Well, I have one more question.
01:54:07: In regards to Australia, and perhaps particularly Western Australia, what are the major rivals to Orthodox Christianity, Biblical Christianity, in regard to false religions and cults there that you have to constantly not only teach your fellow
01:54:31: Christians there about how they are aberrant and how they have departed from the faith, but to whom that you may personally be evangelizing to bring them to the true gospel of Jesus Christ?
01:54:47: You know, Chris, I'd have to say that during the last 20 or 30 years there's been a real decline in my experience in Australia in terms of encountering the cults.
01:55:01: There are far less door -knocking going on from Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses than there used to be.
01:55:07: I think essentially in Australia what we're facing is less of an issue with the cults being particularly militant, and just more of an issue with secularism, to be honest, in Australia.
01:55:22: I think that's our pressing issue, and not so much that the cults are gaining a lot of ground.
01:55:31: Well, now I want to make sure that our listeners have all of your contact information. First of all,
01:55:38: I know that the ministry that publishes your book, the ministry founded by Paul Trask, Refiners Fire Ministries, they can be found at help4rlds .com.
01:55:54: That's help, the number four, not the word, but the numeral four, rlds .com,
01:56:00: help4rlds .com. Do you have any other contact information that you care to give personally?
01:56:07: Certainly. My current role is at Perth Bible College, where I'm Dean of Studies, and my contact there, my email address, is pelliott, that's p -e -l -l -i -o -t -t, at pbc, or Perth Bible College, dot w -a -dot -e -d -u -dot -a -u.
01:56:35: Do you care to mention anything about the Baptist Church, where you are a member in Perth? Sure, yeah.
01:56:41: I'm part of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, which is in Perth's southern suburbs. It's a church that's been around for some decades, probably has about six, seven hundred members.
01:56:54: Wow. So probably one of the larger Baptist Churches here in Perth. And do you have any contact information for them?
01:57:05: I don't have their email offhand, I'm sorry. That's okay, well you could email me, if anybody listening emails me,
01:57:12: I'll get that information to you, chrisorensen at gmail .com. chrisorensen at gmail .com.
01:57:18: I want you, those of you listening, to remember that next month, which is actually next week, as we move into the month of September, Carol Hansen, who is another former
01:57:33: RLDS member, who was saved by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, and is now a biblical
01:57:40: Christian, and has been for some time, we're going to discuss her testimony of leaving the
01:57:46: RLDS, and the book that she has written, comparing and contrasting the
01:57:51: RLDS with true, authentic, biblical, and historic Christianity.
01:57:57: So make sure that you mark your calendars for Tuesday the 4th of September, 4 to 6 p .m.
01:58:04: Eastern time here in the United States. And then of course, please pray for my trip to Jacksonville, Florida, for the conference at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary that I have organized between, or should
01:58:18: I say with, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries and Michael L. Brown of the
01:58:24: Line of Fire program and the Fire School for Ministry. And then the debate on Saturday the 8th of September at Switzerland Community Church in Switzerland, Florida, between Michael Brown and Dr.
01:58:39: White, and two professing Christians and ordained ministers who are homosexuals will be defending that desire and practice as something acceptable to God.
01:58:51: And of course, Dr. James R. White and Dr. Michael Brown will be opposing that and defending the biblical position on that.
01:58:59: We want to thank you so much, Peter Elliott, for being our guest today, and I look forward to having you back on the program.
01:59:06: And I want to thank you, Jason Wallace, as well, for being my co -host today. My pleasure. And I look forward to having you back not only as a co -host, but as a guest many times in the future.
01:59:16: I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions, perhaps even more, especially those who are listening who didn't identify yourselves, who might be members of the
01:59:29: RLDS or the Community of Christ. I hope that you go to hopeforRLDS .com
01:59:37: and look up some of the other literature that they have available, and also go to Jason Wallace's website lds .video.
01:59:45: I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.