Game Plan for Dialoguing with Mormon Missionaries by the 7 Foot Apologist

Oh, I lost my mouse.

Let's see.

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Do my sharing thing?

No, not yet.

Okay.

Um, I, when I, we're going to go.

Ready?

I'm Terry Kammerzell and I'm here on behalf of Creation Fellowship Santee.

We're a group of friends bound by our common agreement that the creation account as told in Genesis is a

true depiction of how God created the world and all life in just six days, about 6

,000 years ago.

We've been meeting on this online platform since May of 2020.

We've been blessed with almost 80 different speakers

over that time.

They've been doctors, scientists, pastors, evangelists, apologists, all sorts of different people who

love the Lord and have a message to share.

They cover topics that range from creation science to current events to other theology topics.

And you can find the recordings that we have of those, of those speakers by visiting

tinyurl .com forward slash CFS archives.

That's C for creation, F for fellowship and S is for Santee.

And while you're there, you can also click on the link to see our upcoming speakers that we have scheduled for the remainder

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on our email list.

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Tonight, we're blessed to have back a good friend of ours, Dan Kreft, the seven foot apologist.

If you've followed us for very long, you may recall that he's been with us three times before.

One of those times was to teach us some skills for how to respectfully debate people

on social media when it comes to defending our faith.

Another time he did his one of a kind begats, wherefore are the begats presentation.

And believe it or not, he and I actually hosted a live presidential debate

watch party one time, you know, when the world still made a little more sense.

So with that, we're very thrilled to have him back tonight for a different topic.

And I can tell you that a couple of us got to meet him in person since then, and we can vouch for the fact that he really is

seven foot tall.

We can also vouch for the fact that this presentation tonight is going to be a blessing to you.

And it's going to be so simple that even middle schoolers can track it.

Just a little information about Dan.

Dan is a full -time apologist and full -time IT guy.

So how does that work out with his time?

Oh boy.

Well, he'll explain that a little more, I'm sure.

But then also he has some experience playing basketball.

That's not a surprise.

And even with Shaquille O 'Neal.

So that's pretty exciting.

So you can read more about Dan and his ministry at sevenfootapologist .com.

And with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to you, Dan.

Well, thank you very much for having me back.

It is a pleasure and a privilege to get a chance to share with you all once again.

Am I sufficiently shared here?

Yes, it looks good.

Alrighty then.

Good.

So let me make some minor adjustments here to the previews.

All right.

So tonight's presentation is a game plan for dialoguing with Mormon missionaries.

This is not necessarily about how to engage in conversations with your friends who

happen to be Mormons, but I'll be more focused on what happens when you

have two guys show up at your door, looking something like this, offering to talk to you about

the Book of Mormon and how we should conduct ourselves.

So when you do have a couple of Mormon kids come up to your door and

they're wanting to come talk to you, the first decision you have to make is what are you going to do?

How should you proceed?

So the first question we want to look at is what should you do?

So you have a few options before you, as I see it.

The first is to turn off the lights, hide and be behind the couch and be very, very quiet.

Or you could take a slightly more aggressive approach and start hollering at the top of your lungs.

Get off my lawn, you sons of perdition.

You could do that.

You could be a little more demure and say, well, just talk to the hand because the face ain't listening.

Wait, there you go.

Talk to the hand because the face ain't listening.

Or number four, you could take the approach that is my personal favorite, and that is to

invite them in.

So I would recommend you do that.

But whenever I talk about inviting Mormons into my house, invariably there are some brothers and sisters in the Lord who

will look at me and say, well, wait a minute.

Doesn't the Bible have something to say about this?

Doesn't 2 John say not to invite them in?

Well, let's take a look at the verses in question and see what God has to say in his

word.

It says, for many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh.

This is the deceiver and the antichrist.

Then you jump down to verse 10.

If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house and do not give him a greeting.

For the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil

deeds.

So we look at this and it seems to be a pretty clear cut.

Well, I should not invite them into my house because we have some clear theological differences, especially

regarding the person and work of Jesus Christ.

But I think it's really important that whenever we look at Bible passages, we look at them in context

because the number one rule in hermeneutics is that context is king.

So you must consider the context.

Let's take a look at some context from the scriptures that will help us to understand what's

going on here in 2 John.

In Mark chapter 6 verse 10, Jesus commanded the 12 to stay in one house for their

duration of the visit to that particular city.

In Acts 9 .43, Peter stayed for some time with Simon the Tanner in Joppa.

Acts 16 .14 and 15, Paul and company stayed with Lydia of Thyatira in Philippi.

Then we jump over to the next chapter, Acts 17 .5 -7, Paul and Silas stayed with Jason in Thessalonica.

In the next chapter, we see Paul stayed with Priscilla and Aquila in Corinth.

And then if we go all the way to the left hand side of your Bible to the Old Testament, we look at 2 Kings chapter 4 and we can

see that Elijah stayed with a Shunammite woman in his own apartment.

So why do I bring these up?

There's clearly a difference between the 12 apostles and Elijah and your average Mormon missionary.

Well, the thing we should note here is that during the first century, itinerant missionaries

were commonly stayed in host housing because they didn't really have hotels back in the first century.

So they would find a house that was willing to receive them and they would use that house as their base of operations, if

you will, while they were in that particular city.

So I think that's what really what's going on here is that in 2 John, John is

admonishing the body of Christ not to use your house as a base of operations for

false teachers.

Because if you do, in doing so, you become part and parcel, partner with them in their ministry,

the same as if you had made a financial contribution to their work, right?

So looking at the context, hosting an itinerant preacher is not the same as inviting

Mormons in to give them a truth and frankly, to slow their progress in your neighborhood, right?

Because God has sent them to you for a reason.

And they're showing up on your doorstep for a reason because God is sovereign.

And while they're there, you've got a job to do.

So if you want to, this is just one guy's opinion, but if you'd like another, you can scan the

QR code there and you can see John MacArthur answering a question from a guy during one of his Q &A sessions, where he

responds very similarly, similarly, and talks about the context of 2 John.

And I think you'll think, I think if you watch it, you'll see that it sounds very familiar to the answer that I just gave you.

So yeah, sometimes God brings the mission field to your door.

And I'm of the opinion that, oh, I want to make mention one thing.

Some people might not be persuaded by this.

So if you're, if you're not persuaded by the context argument with regard to 2 John,

then I would encourage you, do not violate your conscience.

Above all else, we need to consider what Paul said in Romans 14, 21 through 23, that we

need to be, in all things, we need to be convinced, we need to be consistent, and we need to be

considerate.

So if you do not feel like you can, in good conscience, invite them into your house, then don't, don't let me,

don't let me persuade you in that direction.

Have a conversation with them on your front porch, if you like, whatever, but do not violate your conscience.

So, all right, with that said, I believe that sometimes God brings the mission field to your door,

and it saves you a trip, right?

So I'm of the opinion that when that happens, you should just go bananas and have fun with it.

So I'm going to highlight for you a couple different approaches that I've learned in the years, over the years,

and they're by no means the only approaches for dialoguing with Mormon missionaries, but these are a

couple that I've, the first one that I've had good personal success with, and the second of which

I've been looking for an opportunity to use, but the Mormons have been, not been showing up at my house

for the past few years.

I don't know why.

So I'm kind of sad because I want to, I want to try it out, but here we go.

So the first approach is one that I learned from a former pastor of mine named Carl Payne and his

book, Transferable Cross -Training, book two, Apologetics.

You can see there, there's a QR code.

If you want to scan that, you can see where you can purchase this book.

It's, it's very, very thin.

It's, it puts the cookies on the bottom shelf for, for all the kiddies to get to them.

And I asked if Dr. Payne, if I could use the, his likeness and

his book and, you know, mention it in my presentation.

And he said, yeah, sure.

That's okay.

So we're blessed.

So Dr. Payne's approach is, is pretty simple.

It really boils down to setting the agenda of the meeting and staying on task.

So setting the agenda of the meeting looks kind of like this.

Let's say you've got two young Mormons who show up to your door.

We'll call one of them Luke and one of them Obi -Wan, because I don't know if you're familiar with this, but Mormons go

on two -year missions.

And when they go out on mission, there is always one guy who is on his second year of the mission.

And the other one, that would be the Obi -Wan.

And the other young, the other one would be the, the Luke of the, of the group.

He's in his first year of mission.

So you have the older kind of coaching the younger one around.

So we're going to use the names Luke and Obi -Wan.

And I'm not going to call them elder because usually they're way younger than me.

So I would go like this.

Oh, hello, Luke.

Hello, Obi -Wan.

I'd love to sit down and talk with you.

Come on in.

How much time do we have together today?

This is a crucial step.

You do not, you, you, you must remember to ask them how much time you have to

talk today.

Because as, as we'll see a little bit, a little bit later on, it's, if you don't establish this right off the bat, it's

very, very easy for them to look down at their watch and go, oh, look at the time.

We have another appointment to get to.

So don't forget to ask how much time you have.

Make sure you get that upfront.

And plus it also helps, you know, how to pace yourself.

So you may have to, you may have, they may say, Hey, we've got all the time in the world, or they may say, we've only got 30

minutes.

So that'll also help you pace yourself.

So then you want to set the agenda of the meeting and say something, you know, I always like to try to build a bridge before I

talk to them.

And I truly do admire the dedication of these Mormon, these Mormon

kids.

And I know that not all of them probably want to go on mission and be away from their families for two years.

But they do it.

And for as far as I can tell, they do it willingly and happily.

Actually, the company that I work for currently, six of my coworkers are Mormons.

And so, you know, periodically, they, you know, somebody will mention, you know, when I was on mission, I was here and I was, you know, then they

seem to have been a pretty positive experience for them.

So they seem to like it.

And so I try to, you know, try to build that bridge and establish a little bit of a rapport with them.

And don't just, you know, try to go right for the jugular.

So I would continue with like, you know, you know, I really admire your dedication to your faith.

Honestly, most Mormons, I know, put most Christians to shame in that department.

You spend two years away from family, sometimes in remote places to ride around in bikes on bikes and have

doors slammed in your face.

That is amazing to me.

And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

I clearly have not done that myself.

I don't know that I would.

That's that's a huge commitment to take two years out of your life to go door to door to door

and having doors slammed in your face, right?

And yeah, so the takeaway here is be nice, like your mom said, right?

Continue setting the agenda.

But there are some things that about your faith that concern me.

And it's those concerns that I'd like to focus on.

To make sure we're maximally productive today, I'd like you to agree to limit our discussion to the following three topics.

The nature of God, the destiny of man, and salvation.

Now, I know a lot of other people take a lot of different approaches.

Some people will focus on Joseph Smith and his prophecies and how the prophecies haven't come true.

They'll focus on the incredible nature of the you know, hauling around a bunch of golden plates that weighed how

much and he was able to Joseph Smith was able to run through the woods with them.

There are all kinds of things you could talk about.

And believe me, there are all kinds of rabbit trails you could go down when you're talking with Mormons.

But those really aren't the most important things, right?

What's really important at the end of the day is that you focus on who God is, where's man going

and how does he get there, right?

So that's the important stuff.

So the first approach, the one that I'm borrowing from Carl Payne, focuses on the

nature of God and the destiny of man.

So what I like to do is like to set the stage and first of all, what you always want to do when you're having a talk, a

discussion with anybody you don't agree with is you want to make sure you define your terms.

If you do not define one of the huge differences between the difficulties we have when talking to Mormon missionaries or

just your garden variety Mormons you may meet in the workplace is that they use all the same words,

but they don't always mean the same thing.

So what we're going to do is say, ask two questions and say, first of all, do you

believe that God is omniscient?

Now we want to define this term and be very very clear about what omniscient means.

Omniscient comes from two Latin words, omnis and scientia.

Omnis means all and scientia means knowledge.

So God is all knowledgeable.

He has all knowledge.

And I really like to drill down on this and say, make sure that we're crystal clear on it and say, is there anything

that God does not know?

No.

So no matter how big the universe is, he knows every single square inch of the universe.

There's nothing in creation that he does not know.

Yes, I've never had a Mormon disagree with me on this and they'll agree to the terms.

Yes, God is absolutely omniscient.

There's nothing that he does not know.

This is crucial.

Don't forget this.

You see, the reason why we want to define our terms so well is that

words are kind of like buckets, right?

They're like buckets with labels on them.

And you see, we have a bucket that says Jesus on it.

And the Mormon has a bucket that has Jesus on it.

And when you see them at first, they're carrying their little bucket and you look at it and you go, hey, look, you've got a Jesus bucket.

And they're like, hey, you've got a Jesus bucket too.

And you're like, hey, brothers, right?

Well, the thing is words are like buckets with labels on them.

And words, they're like buckets because they carry meaning.

So what you really have to do is take your nose and stick it in their bucket and give it a sniff.

Does it smell anything like what you're carrying around in your Jesus bucket?

So when you go, okay, my Jesus bucket smells like this and your Jesus bucket doesn't smell anything like it.

So they have, the names are the same, the labels are the same on the outside of the buckets, but the contents are very, very, very

different.

And the same could be said with Jesus, with salvation, with grace, just

about the entire vocabulary that there's either a subtle or a drastic difference in meaning.

So you have to make sure you drill down and define your terms.

So is God omniscient?

Yes, he is.

Okay, we've got that established.

Question number two, do you believe as Lorenzo Snow did that you can become gods?

Now, Lorenzo Snow was the fifth Mormon president.

He was the fifth prophet of the Mormon organization.

And Lorenzo Snow once said, as man now is, God

once was, as God now is, man may be.

This is the belief that Mormons can believe, that Mormons can achieve godhood.

They will become gods of their own planets and have their own, they start their own races.

So normally, the response that I get when I ask this is they're, the kids are kind of taken

aback.

They're like, oh, well, wow, I can't believe you know that quote.

Well, yeah, so they'll get, I'll get a reluctant, yeah.

But one time, these two guys came to my house, and they totally, they

completely blew up my whole routine because they said, well,

no, we don't believe that.

And I'm like, you're not, you're not supposed to say that.

Like, yes, you do.

Like, no, we don't.

Like, yeah, you do.

And then I was just, I was a wreck after that.

I didn't know what to say, because they totally blew up my script.

And so I had to go to the books and dig around in their, in their works,

and their standard works.

And I found Doctrine and Covenants 88 -107.

And then shall the angels be crowned with the glory of his might, and the saints shall be filled with his glory, and receive their

inheritance, and be made equal with him.

So they do believe that you can be, you can be equal with God.

For some reason, my remote isn't working, even though it's 12 inches away.

And so, hang on.

There we go.

You can also, so this is from the Doctrine and Covenants, right?

So this is from the Mormon scriptures.

So there's really not much, there's no, there's no room to argue with this.

If you go to, there's a, there's a book that's published by the Mormons, and they, it's called

Achieving a Celestial Marriage.

And in it, it says, God was once a man who, by obedience, advanced to his present state

of perfection.

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

In the same document, a little further down, it says, Elder B .H. Roberts stated, man has

descended from God.

In fact, he is the same race as the gods.

His descent has not been from a lower form of life, but from the highest form of life.

In other words, man is, in the most literal sense, a child of God.

This is not only true of the spirit of man, but his body also.

And that comes from the Course of Study for Priests, published in 1910, page 35.

And lastly, from that same document, it says, can you see the implications of these two statements as they relate to you and your eternal

destiny?

Elder James E. Talmadge did.

He declared, quote, in his mortal condition, man is God in embryo.

However, in any individual, now a mortal being may attain to the rank and

sanctity of godship.

So Mormons most definitely believe, if they're honest with you, that they can attain

godhood.

They will be made equal with God.

Joseph Smith, in his famous sermon called the King Follett Discourse,

says this.

This is a little bit of a lengthy quote, but I trust you'll bear with me.

He says, quote, God himself was once as we are now and is an exalted man and sits in

throne in yonder heavens.

I'm going to tell you how God came to be God.

We have imagined and supposed that God was from, was God from all eternity.

I will refute that idea.

It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God and to know that we may

converse with him as one man converses with another and that he was once a man like us.

Yea, that God himself, the father of us all, dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ himself.

You have got to learn how to be gods yourselves and to be kings and priests

to God, the same as all gods have done before you, namely by going from one small degree to

another and from a small capacity to a great one, from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until

you attain to the resurrection of the dead and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings and to sit in glory, as

do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power.

And that's once again Joseph Smith Jr. in the King Follett Discourse, a very famous sermon of his.

So we've asked our two questions and we should get an answer that resembles, yes, we do believe that we can

become gods.

So now we can hop aboard the Isaiah train.

Now because I'm, one of my favorite things to do is to lead people on a trail of

connecting verses through the scriptures.

I don't know where I picked up this approach, but I really enjoy it because I enjoy letting God

speak for himself.

And the approach is pretty simple.

I start with a verse and, oh, by the way, you want to make sure that you have for yourself at least

three King James Bibles in your house.

One for you, one for the, and one for each of your two Mormon kids.

The Mormon missionaries used to carry around Bibles, but I found that in recent years they have stopped doing that for whatever

reason, probably because the Bible is a big book and it's a whole lot to carry around when you're on a bicycle.

Understandable.

So don't expect the Mormons to have a Bible handy.

It is one of their scriptures, so they should not have any objection to using it.

The King James Bible is their preferred translation, not the Joseph Smith translation.

Interestingly enough, we can talk about that later if you like.

So I like to make sure that I have three King James Bibles handy, or at least two, one for each one of the missionaries.

I personally use the New American Standard.

That's my personal preference.

And I have my Bible marked up for this encounter.

And I'll show you an example of that in just a minute.

So what I'll do is I'll say, okay, could you hand them each a Bible?

And I say, can you verify that, you know, this is like a magician, right?

Like, can you verify that these are, you know, ordinary playing cards?

This is an ordinary King James Bible, right?

There's nothing fancy going on here, no shenanigans.

So they'll look at it and they go, yeah, it's a King James Bible.

So I say, could you please turn to Isaiah 43 .10?

Oftentimes you have to help them figure out where Isaiah is because, well, they don't spend a lot of time in the Bible.

They spend most of their time in their other three standard works.

So I ask them to turn to Isaiah 43 .10.

And then what I like to do is have them read it out loud.

Why do I have them read it out loud?

Well, because if they're reading it out loud, that means that they're reading it, taking it in with their eyes,

they're speaking it with their mouth, and they're hearing the Word of God spoken from their own lips.

So it's an immersive experience, if you will, right?

So have them read it out loud and say, could you please turn to Isaiah 43 .10 and read it out loud for me?

So they said, sure.

And so the verse goes, ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I

have chosen that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.

Before me, there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.

Okay, thank you very much for reading.

I have a couple questions for you.

Was there any other God before God, according to this verse?

Like this is God speaking, right?

So according to God, was there any God before him?

And if you're going to be honest with the text, and they usually are, they'll say, well, no, there was no

God before him.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

And then the second question is, will there be any God after him?

And then if they're looking at the text and be like, well, of course, there isn't because it says neither shall there be after me.

Then you want to go on to the next verse in the train.

And the way I do this, I don't necessarily have all the verses memorized in order.

I know where they are, but I don't necessarily have them memorized in order.

So what I do in my Bible is I do something like this.

This is actually a photograph that I snapped of my Bible, and I got it labeled over here in the margin, Mormon start.

This is where I start with the Mormons.

You see it's Isaiah 43 .10.

And you notice that down there at the end of the verse, where it says, and there will be none after me, you'll see a little

arrow and a very messy scribbling.

It says 44 .6.

Well, that's my cue that the next verse in the train is Isaiah 44, verse

six.

You notice some scribbling there off to the right.

That's when I talked to Jehovah's Witnesses.

I got a different train of verses that I take them through.

So we go over to Isaiah 44 .6.

So I say, please turn to Isaiah 44 .6.

And if you would, please read it out loud.

So they say, sure.

And when they read it out loud, they say, thus saith the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts.

I am the first and I am the last.

And beside me, there is no God.

Thank you very much for reading.

Now I have a couple of questions for you.

First question, can there be anything before the first or after the last?

Now this is, you know, we're keeping the cookies on the bottom shelf, right?

We're not getting super philosophical.

We're not getting theological.

It's a very simple question.

Can there be anything before the first?

Well, obviously not, because if there were something before it, then it wouldn't be the first, right?

The other thing would be the first.

And likewise, there can be nothing after the last.

Otherwise it wouldn't be the last.

It would be the penultimate to use a fancy word.

And second question is, is there any other God beside him?

Well, clearly, no, there isn't, because the text is very clear about that.

This is actually God speaking, and he says, I am the first and the last, and beside me, there is no God.

So then we have another verse we want to go to.

I thank them for reading.

Thank them for answering.

And then we look at the Bible, and you'll see that I have another arrow that says, go to 45, five and

six.

So we turn over to Isaiah 45, five and six, and I say, I am the Lord, and there is none

else, and there is no God beside me.

I girded thee, though thou hast not known me, that they may know from the rising sun and from the west that

there is none beside me.

I am the Lord, and there is none else.

Thank you for reading.

Can I ask you a question?

Sure.

Is there any God other than Yahweh?

Well, clearly, no.

And secondly, oh, I guess that's the only question we have for that one.

So you may be wondering, like, oh my goodness, Dan, this is so monotonous.

Don't they get sick of you doing this?

And, you know, I get the point, right?

You can stop at any time you like during the, you can shorten the train by any, you know, by all

means, go ahead and shorten the train if you want to.

But in the number, every time I've done this, the Mormon kids are, they're more than happy

to read it out loud.

I think it's because they're just happy to be actually sitting on a couch and not walking around in the heat or in the cold, right?

So they're happy to have somebody to talk to, and I'm happy to oblige them.

So then I ask him to turn to Isaiah 45, 18, where we read, For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, God

himself that formed the earth and made it, he that established it, he that created it not in vain, he formed

it to be inhabited, inhabited.

I am Yahweh, or I am the Lord, and there is none else.

The question we have to ask is, thank him for reading, and then say, is there any God other than

Yahweh?

Well, clearly, no, there isn't, because the text is very clear about that.

Okay, thank you.

Can you please turn to Isaiah 45, 21 and 22, which says, Tell ye and

bring them near, yea, let them take counsel together, who hath declared this from ancient time, who hath told it from that time?

Have not I, Yahweh?

And there is no God beside me, a just God and a Savior, there is none beside me.

Look unto me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else.

And I bet you can guess what my next question is going to be.

Is there a God other than Yahweh?

And clearly the answer is no, and that's the answer they should give you.

And then we go to Isaiah 44, 8.

So notice that we've gone from Isaiah 43, 10, and we've gone all the way down to Isaiah 45.

But now we're going to go back to Isaiah 44.

And there's a reason I do this, and hopefully it'll become clear once I read the verse to you.

So please turn to Isaiah 44, 8.

And there we read, Fear ye not, neither be afraid.

Have not I told thee from that time and have declared it?

Ye are even my witnesses.

Is there a God beside me?

Yea, there is no God.

I know not any.

Do you see why I asked them, what if God is truly omniscient?

And ask him and really get specific about what omniscience means.

Here's the question.

Is there any God besides Yahweh, right?

If they say no, well then that's the right answer.

But here's the point, right?

It says, yea, there is no God.

I know of none.

So if God is truly omniscient, and he says that he doesn't know of anything,

what does that tell you?

There is no other God.

So at this point, I like to use what Greg Kokel calls the Columbo tactic in his book

Tactics.

And in his book Tactics, this book really changed everything for me.

I used to be scared to talk to atheists, I used to be scared to talk to Jehovah's Witnesses until I read this book and I was

like, oh wow, this is really good stuff.

Basically the gist of it is, the biggest takeaway I got from Greg Kokel's book is, he who asks the

questions controls the direction of the conversation.

When you don't know what to say, just ask questions, right?

So yeah, I use that.

And you know, Columbo, if you're familiar with him, if you're of a certain age as I am, you might remember that Columbo from the TV

show, and this is, you know, this disheveled private investigator or police officer, and he never had a

pencil on him.

He was always asking for a pencil and he seemed really absent -minded and he just looked like a total incompetent slob,

right?

But he was brilliant.

And he would play dumb and he was like, you know, I'm wondering, I'm wondering how you

reconcile your belief that you can become gods with what you read from the Bible where

God says over and over again that there is no God but him and never will be,

right?

And there's one thing I had to learn how to do early on is just learn how to ask a question

and then shut my mouth and be quiet and let the Holy

Spirit go to work.

I made this mistake too often with my mother -in -law.

Every time I would ask her a question, she'd go, oh, and she'd start thinking.

I'm like, oh no, I've lost her.

She didn't understand.

So I would keep talking and try to explain it to her and completely get her off the mental track that

she was on.

So learn how to be comfortable with sitting in silence and while they think about it.

There are a couple of different responses that I've received in response to, the answers I've received in response to this question.

Response number one is, well, those verses just mean that there's only one God of this universe.

God is our God and there is no other for us.

And you see, now you see why it's so important to drill down on what omnipotence is and make sure they

understand that God, sorry, not omnipotence, omniscience, and that God is indeed all knowing.

Because remember, words are like buckets and they carry meaning.

So number one, God is omniscient.

So by definition, there's nothing he does not know.

Point two, he does not know of any other God.

And point number three, therefore, there can be no other God.

So now you see why it is so important to define your terms, do it ahead of time.

And it saves you a lot of grief and arguing and backtracking and all that.

Another response that I've received in response to this question is, this is not the message we preach when we go to house to house.

It's not what we really, it's not what we focus on.

We want to reach people with the gospel.

This is a great tactic to kind of, just kind of downplay the fact that, you know, I've got, I've

asked them a question that they cannot answer.

And it's like, well, you know, they kind of downplay its importance.

Well, we don't, you know, you're the one who brought that up, not us.

So it's not really important to us.

So we're not going to answer it.

But then I just kind of gently hold their feet to the fire.

But that doesn't really answer my question, does it?

You hold a belief that contradicts God's own words.

And I'm really curious how you reconcile that inconsistency in your mind, right?

Like really hold their feet to the fire, you know, in love, of course, you know, you don't want to be don't want to be a

jerk about it.

Response number three would look something like this.

Oh, look at the time, Elder Luke, I just realized that we have another appointment in five minutes that we have to get to.

So now you understand why it's important to say how much time do you have, right?

So then you can respond with, you know, I'm a little confused, fellas, didn't you say we had about an hour?

It seems to me that you owe me about 45 minutes.

Right?

So be firm.

Be gentle, but be firm.

So we've covered the nature of God, and the destiny of man.

Now I want to get into salvation.

And for the salvation topic, I want to dive into a different approach that

I learned from, from Bill McKeever, Eric Johnson, and Keith Walker called the impossible

gospel of Mormonism.

So there's one thing you have to understand about Mormons is they I've kind of alluded to this earlier, was that they

have four, they have four scriptures that they call their standard works.

The standard works are the Bible, the King James Bible, the Book of Mormon, book called the Doctrine and

Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price.

You all are familiar with what the Bible looks like.

It's a fairly thick book.

The Book of Mormon doctrines and covenants and the Pearl of Great Price are a much

smaller volume.

This is a copy that I purchased with with cheater tabs, no less to help me out.

I got this from a used bookstore for about 15 bucks.

So the Mormon Church did not get any money for me for this one.

And it's really nice.

It's leather bound.

And it's got somebody else's name printed on there.

So thank you, Mrs. Neeson, or Miss Neeson, whoever you are, for dedicate for giving me your your

standard works.

So the interesting thing about it is that though, the they only believe the Bible

insofar as it is correctly translated, which is really just code for saying, well, when the Bible

conflicts with the other standard works, the Bible gets thrown under the bus.

So the books that are important to them are the Book of Mormon, the doctrine and covenants and the Pearl of Great Price.

I've tried to read through the Book of Mormon, I think I got about three quarters, seven eighths of the way through it.

And I just, I really I just lost interest.

It sounds a lot like some of the stories in the Bible.

There are a lot of verses that show up in the Book of Mormon that that that

that Joseph Smith has been accused of plagiarizing from the the King James Version, they sound very familiar.

But you're not going to find any doctrine in the Book of Mormon, it's more more or less a history book of theirs.

The doctrine and covenants is where you find their, their, their, the meat of their theology.

So what I want to do in this in the approach called the impossible gospel of Mormonism is we want to take two of

their scriptures.

So you know, sorry, going back, you know, when you're quoting Bible verses in the back of their mind, they're always going to be

thinking, yeah, but the Bible is only correctly only, you know, correct insofar as it's correctly translated.

And so they're that kind of, they kind of have this out built into it.

Like when the Bible says something they don't agree with.

They're like, yeah, but it's the Bible, right?

What are the other standard works say?

So the other approach we're going to take with this, with the impossible gospel, is we're going to use just six verses

from the Book of Mormon, and from the doctrine and covenants, three, three verses from the Book of Mormon, three verses from the DNC,

and demonstrate from their own scriptures, that salvation is utterly impossible.

So this is a kind of, it's more of a, more of a defensive approach, I guess you could say.

You're just basically showing them how their, their own worldview is, is inconsistent, and it doesn't, it doesn't, doesn't get

them anywhere.

They can't win with it.

So we're going to talk, we're talking about salvation.

So the first thing you do is you take them to First Nephi 3 -7, and this is in the Book of Mormon.

So what I like to do is very similar to what I do in, with my, with my Bible, is in my

standard works, I have a pink bookmark that is attached to one of the

pages.

And this might not show up terribly well, but you can see there I have a passage that's blocked,

and that I have some questions written in the margin.

So I have them on the tip of my tongue, right?

So the questions here are a little bit different.

They're a little more varied, which is the reason why I write them in the margin.

So we go to First Nephi 3 -7, and have them read it out loud.

I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them

that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.

And so you ask him a very simple question.

Is it possible to keep all of God's commands?

Well, it says right there on the verse, God, the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall

prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commanded them.

So no, God, God does not give you a command that you cannot obey.

So then you make it personal.

The Apostle Paul was, did this time and time and time again throughout the Book of Acts in his He made it

personal.

So you make it personal with the Mormons.

You say, well, how are you doing at this?

Are you keeping all of God's commands?

100 %?

Of course, if they're going to be honest with you, they're going to say, well, no, I'm not.

Okay, well, thank you for your honesty.

And we turn over to the Book of Alma, also in the Book of Mormon, which says,.

And I say unto you again that he cannot save them in their sins, for I cannot deny his word.

And he hath said that no unclean thing can inherit the

kingdom of heaven.

Therefore, how can you be saved except that you inherit the kingdom of heaven?

Therefore, ye cannot be saved in your sins.

Make it personal.

Ask him a straightforward question.

Do you struggle with sin?

We all do, right?

We're all human.

You can relate to them on that and say, hey, look, you know, I'm not trying to judge you.

I struggle with sin sometimes too, right?

Or all the time, various things.

So then you just ask him, well, doesn't this mean that you are still in your sins and unclean?

Right?

Because if you struggle with sin, then you cannot be saved.

So doesn't this mean that you are not saved according to this verse?

And then we go on to the Book of Moroni, which says, If you shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness

and love God with all your might, mind, and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you.

Sounds a little bit like Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, right?

For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, that is the gift of God.

Not of works, lest any man should boast.

But you know, they stop at that first part.

Then is his grace sufficient for you?

And then you just ask him a simple question.

Have you denied yourself of all ungodliness?

And of course, they'll have to say no if they're going to be honest with you.

No, from time to time, I still do sin.

And you say, well, doesn't this mean that you have yet to receive the grace to cleanse you?

Because you see the conditions in there, right?

It says, If you shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness and love God with all your might, mind,

and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you.

So if you haven't denied yourself of all ungodliness, or if you have not loved God with

all your might, mind, and strength, then his grace is not sufficient for you.

It's conditioned.

His grace is conditioned upon your performance.

And that's what it boils down to.

So then you ask them, if you have not denied yourself of all ungodliness, when do you think you will?

And then there's doctrines and covenants.

We switch over to the other book, Doctrines and Covenants 2515.

Keep my commandments continually, and a crown of righteousness thou shalt receive.

And except thou do this, where I am, you cannot come.

Just ask them simply, how many commandments must you keep continually?

Some?

Most?

All?

Right?

It says, keep my commandments.

There's no qualifier on that.

So you would have to say it would be all commandments.

And you have to keep them continually.

And if it's all, then how are you doing at this?

Because as it says here, except thou do this, where I am, you cannot come.

Doctrine and Covenants 5843.

By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins, behold, he will confess them and

forsake them.

So how many sins must you forsake?

You can ask them.

And have you forsaken all of your sins?

And you know what forsake means, right?

That means to repent of it, to turn from it, to never go back to it again.

And then if you go back to it, then you haven't really repented.

You have not forsaken it.

You left it alone for a while, but you've gone back to it.

So that's not forsaking.

So have you forsaken all of your sins?

And if not, doesn't that mean that you've not truly repented?

Because repentance to them is forsaking the sin and never, ever, ever going back to it again.

And Doctrines and Covenants 131 says, for I, the Lord, cannot look upon

sin with the least degree of allowance.

All right, so here's where we bring it down to a close.

In light of all the answers you've given to all the previous questions, do you think

that God will overlook your sins?

And let that question sit.

There's a guy by the name of Spencer W. Kimball, who is one of the former president, I think he was the president

of the Mormon organization.

He wrote this book called The Miracle of Forgiveness.

And in it, he wrote, this is very, very telling.

One of the most fallacious doctrines originated by Satan and propounded by man is that man

is saved alone by the grace of God.

That belief in Jesus Christ alone is all that is needed for salvation.

He goes on to say, forgiveness is canceled on reversion to

sin.

Those who feel that they can sin and be forgiven, and then return to the sin and be forgiven again

and again, must straighten out their thinking.

Each previously forgiven sin is added to the new one, and the whole gets to be a heavy

load.

So are you picking up what he's putting down?

So you sin, and then you have this burden that you're carrying on your back.

And then you repent of it, you forsake your sin, you take it off of you, you leave it on the path, and you start walking again.

Well, if you commit the same sin again, then you basically, that sin that you left behind in the path,

back in your past, that sin, that guilt from that sin is heaped upon you on top of the sin

that you've just created, you've just committed, and the guilt that comes with that.

And then you repent of that, and you put that along the path, and you start walking, and then you sin again in the same manner.

And then you have to go back and pick up those two burdens, and you put them on your shoulder, and then you have the additional burden of the sin you just committed.

You see where this is going.

The burden just gets to be heavier, and heavier, and heavier, and you can never escape it.

The only way to escape it is to become sinless.

And none of us is going to do this.

Okay, so then Spencer Kimball goes on to say, God would never require anything from his

children, which was not for their benefit, and which was not attainable.

Perfection, therefore, is an achievable goal.

Wow.

So much for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, right?

Totally unbiblical doctrine.

And this is, but this is the burden that the Mormon has, is that he understands that his forgiveness

is contingent upon his own behavior.

It is not grace.

It is not God's free gift.

It is something that he must work to deserve and to maintain.

So once you get to this point, and you help them understand that there is no way they can be saved under your own

system, and that's when you come with the biblical truth, and you say, look,

about 6 ,000 years ago, God created everything perfect.

He created man and woman in his own image.

God himself is eternal.

He is not created.

And he says, let us make man in our image.

So he made man.

He made woman for the man.

And then two chapters later, in Genesis chapter 3, they fell.

They rebelled against God, and sin entered the world.

And as a result of sin came death.

But a promise was made in Genesis chapter 3, that God would send forth a

descendant from Eve to be the sacrifice that would save all of

mankind.

And so the Bible is all about God's plan of redemptive history for mankind,

finding its culmination in the person of Jesus Christ, who, as John 1 tells us, was the Word.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was with God from the beginning, and he is the creator of all things.

There's nothing that has been made that was not made by him.

So Christ Jesus came to save sinners.

He came to give his life, and for his blood to become the atoning sacrifice to cover

our sins.

As I quoted earlier, it is by grace that we are saved.

And this means God's unmerited favor.

There is nothing we can do to warrant or merit God's favor on our behalf.

As a matter of fact, he tells us that even our righteousness is as filthy rags in his sight.

There's nothing we can do to please this holy God.

And that is why Jesus Christ had to come and die a horrible death on a cross at the hands of his own

creation, so that his creation would be able to have their sins covered over, their sins

paid for, for all the sins past, present, and future.

If they would, just by, if they would, as Romans 10, 9, and 10 says, that they would

believe with their hearts that Jesus rose, that God rose from the dead, and confess with their mouths that Jesus is Lord,

then they will be saved.

It's a matter of faith.

It's a matter of belief.

It is not a matter of working.

There's nothing we can do to earn God's salvation.

So that is the message of hope that you want to bring.

And you want to make sure that you don't get to the point, and you're walking through all this, where

all you do is focus on the negative, and you don't deliver the truth.

I've had too many encounters with Mormons in my house where, you know, I forget to ask them how much

time we have, and then a time runs away from us, and they say, oh look at this, we have to leave, and I haven't given them the

gospel yet.

Folks, the whole point of apologetics is to get people the gospel, right?

That is the whole point.

Every time Paul opened his mouth, every time he gave his apologias in the book of Acts, it

was always arguing from Scripture to present the truth to people, and to present to

them the gospel, and to get them the gospel message.

That was he, Paul says, woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.

And those times when I've let Mormons get out of my house, and they have not given them the truth of God's word,

I wholeheartedly resonate with Paul's message, woe to me if I do not preach

the gospel.

So please, above and beyond all else, whatever you do, make

sure you present the truth of the gospel to your Mormon friends, or anybody who

doesn't believe for that matter.

So a few things to take away, a few things to remember.

Number one, prepare your Bibles and your standard works in advance.

So all the little underlining, and the chaining of verses, connect the verses, right?

Make sure you have those ready and on hand.

So my kids know that when the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses knock on my door, Mormons knock on my door, I said to my

kids, I said, go get my standard works and my Bibles, my King James Bibles.

And when the Jehovah's Witnesses come to the door, I say, kids, go get my Kingdom

Interlinear Bible, they know what it is, they know where to go to get it, and bring me, you know, some of the other things that I use

in talking to them.

So make sure you have your resources on hand and ready to go.

Remember to ask how much time you have, set the agenda, make sure that you keep your scope

very, very tightly focused on the nature of God, salvation, and

man's eternal destiny, man's eternal destiny and salvation.

And then remember, this is crucial.

It's not our job, it's not your job, it's not my job to convince, convict or to convert anyone.

That is the Holy Spirit's job.

I am super competitive by nature.

And I don't like to lose, I don't like to lose at anything, whether it be an argument or a basketball game, a

game of monopoly, it doesn't matter, I am hyper competitive.

And in my early years of talking, of practicing apologetics,

I had to, this is a lesson that I had to learn the hard way.

I was always really disappointed when I wasn't able to persuade somebody to, you know, come to the foot of the cross.

And, you know, the Lord had to remind me, it's like, look, Dan, that's my job.

Don't try to take my job from me, your job is to tell the truth.

Your job is to always be prepared to tell people about me.

Right?

The admonition in 1 Peter 3 .15 is not, you know, always be prepared to have a chain of verses in

your standard works, or have a chain of verses in your Bible, or know all about the scientific arguments and the

arguments for God's existence and all that stuff.

That's not what it's about.

Matter of fact, I have a presentation called apologetics is not what you think.

That's linked to from the speaking page on my website, sevenfootapologist .com.

Take a look at that if you if this is if this is sounding new to your ears, then I would recommend that you go watch that presentation.

So just remember, it's not your job to convince convict or converting one that is the Holy Spirit's job.

I'd also like you to direct you to some other resources that I found to be very helpful.

These are the first three are YouTube channels, Apologia Studios, is Jeff Durbin and sometimes

James White.

James White, incidentally, is the author of the King James only controversy and a bunch of other books.

Jeff Durbin does a really good job talking to Mormons and anybody for that matter.

He does lots of street evangelism, and they've got videos of him talking to people and you can kind of see his approach and how he

goes about doing it.

Living Waters is Ray Comfort.

I love his approach.

Ray Comfort, it doesn't matter who he's talking to you, he's going to take you to the Ten Commandments

because the scripture says that the law was given as a tutor to lead us to Christ, right?

So Ray takes that very seriously.

He says, you know what, if the law was given to us as a tutor to lead us to Christ, then I'm going to use the law to convict people of

their sin, show them their need for a savior, and then present the gospel.

So it's a great approach.

It works with you can watch him, you know, interacting with all kinds of people, atheists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses,

pagans, it doesn't matter.

He talks to them all and he uses the same basic approach.

So it's really, really, really powerful because it's based upon the Word of God, right?

Mormonism Research Ministry is Bill McKeever.

He's one of the authors of the Impossible Gospel of Mormonism.

He's got a few videos there on his YouTube channel that you can look at.

And then Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, Matt Slick, that

is a link there to all of his Mormon resources.

Matt's been doing this for a really, really long time.

The guy is basically a rocket surgeon when it comes to apologetics.

He's very, very thorough with his research and his documentation.

And there's just, you probably, it'll take you a long time to run out of material to read on his website.

He covers everything.

So yeah, so those are some great resources that you can use in your own endeavors to share and

defend your faith.

And remember, sometimes God brings the mission field to your door.

And when that happens, go bananas.

Have fun with it.

And that is the end.

I guess.

We're now open for Q &A.

Well, I have to say that we have some people in our Zoom room here who love minions.

So that was a very appealing and fit end.

So can you explain, Leilani would like you to explain why it is that you use the King

James Version and not their Bible.

I think.

You mentioned earlier that you talk about that.

Yes, because the Mormons don't use the Joseph Smith translation.

You might find that as rather odd.

Like, why would the Mormons not prefer the Joseph Smith translation?

He's the one who founded their religion.

Why wouldn't they use his Bible?

And I think the answer is pretty simple.

It's because the Bible is not used as one of their standard references so much as it is to make them seem a

little less different than Bible -believing Christians, right?

Say, hey, look, we believe the Bible too.

And if you've never studied this, you may look at the Mormons carrying a, you know, hey, wait a minute, that's a King James Bible.

I read a King James Bible.

Oh, well, they must not be that much different from me after all, right?

So it's a way to basically grease the skids into your house and

into the conversation, right?

It establishes a point of commonality.

It's pretty simple.

It's also interesting to note that originally Joseph Smith, as he tells the tale, paraphrases

quite a bit, but he was apparently praying and asking God, you know, which of all the denominations

should I choose?

Because he was confused.

He wanted to do the right thing.

And there were apparently some evangelical preachers holding, you know, big tent revivals where he was.

And he says, he prayed and says, Lord, which of the denominations should I choose?

And the answer he supposedly got was, do not choose any of them for all of them are an abomination

to me.

He says, I will restore the gospel through you.

So red flags waving, right?

When somebody claims to get a special word from God and they're going to restore the gospel, which was lost for thousands of years,

be on your guard, right?

So initially Joseph Smith tried to do everything he could, as did their early leaders

to distinguish themselves and to set themselves apart from the Christian church.

But it's really interesting how as time has gone on, they have done, they've now

kind of reversed direction and they try to do everything they can to make them seem Christian, right?

Including calling themselves Christian.

We're just another Christian denomination.

So it's really, it's really interesting to see how they've kind of, they've changed over time.

It's a, it's a marketing thing, baby, right?

You know, that's, that's how it is.

You, you win more, you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar,.

Right?

Well, so I know that this can, can

step on some people's toes, a lot of our friends toes, but, but one of the things that

you said is that they like to present it, that it's the same, you know, they, they want to present it the same, including

that we worship the same Jesus, which became a very controversial point.

You may, you may know within the last couple of years.

So do you want to weigh in on that?

Yeah.

So the, the, the, the Christian notion of who Jesus is, the way God, the way Jesus was

revealed in the Bible is that he is from everlasting, right?

From, from, from everlasting to everlasting.

There are God, thou art God.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

I mentioned John one in the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God, right?

Jesus is from all eternity.

God, the Mormons will say they believe in the Trinity, but they mean a very different thing than, than

we, than we say, then, excuse me, then when we say Trinity.

So when biblical Christians say, I believe in the Trinity, they mean we have one God

manifested in three persons.

What the Mormons believe is that we have three gods, essentially

three gods represented in three persons.

They believe that all of us had a, had a, had a, a

pre -mortal existence in heaven.

We are the result of cosmic relations between heavenly father and his spirit bride and all these

bunch of spirit babies were produced.

And the reason why Mormons typically have very large families is that they're trying to create

fleshly existences for these, these pre -mortal spirit babies.

So they have, they can come to earth, live life, and then go back to heavenly father.

And if they're good Mormons and they get the, they achieve a celestial marriage and they do

all that is commanded of them, then they could one day hope to attain godhood.

They'll basically get their own planets and start their own race and do everything that God, God, the father did

when he started this planet.

So they believe that Jesus is a created being.

He is not eternal.

They believe that as part of the pre -mortal existence, Jesus and Lucifer were some of the two of the offspring

of heavenly father and his celestial bride.

And that, so that Jesus and Lucifer are brothers and that the reason why

Satan fell was because he had a plan for salvation and Jesus had a plan for salvation and the two plans

differed.

Heavenly father chose Jesus' plan for salvation and Satan was subsequently thrown out of heaven.

So yeah, the Jesus that's in the Bible is eternal.

He is eternally God.

He is 100 % God.

He is 100 % man, but the Jesus of Mormonism is decidedly not that.

He is a created being, spirit brother of Lucifer and of you and of me.

So very, very, very, very different.

You know, and Jesus says, you know, in John eight, he says, unless you believe I am, you will

die on your sins.

Now, when he said that, you know, that, that got some people pretty upset, the, the, the Orthodox Jews of his day, because Jesus

real, they, they realized that Jesus was making a direct claim to divinity.

He was associating himself.

He was taking the name of God.

I am Yahweh.

Um, and so when he did that, he says, I am, unless you believe I am, in other words, unless you

believe I am Yahweh, you will die on your sins.

So they do not believe they believe that Jesus is a God, but he is not God almighty.

Thank you for, thank you for expounding.

On it.

So, um, um, all right, but here in zoom.

So Jessica, um, it's not so much a comment as it is, or a question as it is in feedback,

but she says, um, your entire presentation has been solid.

It checks off all the boxes, scripture, saturated, engaging, focused, and persuasive.

I, I can.

Definitely tell he is a seasoned apologist.

She says, so, you know, I, I don't even, I, I, I may have talked with you

about this, Terry.

Uh, I, I struggle with the label apologist because I don't see anybody in the Bible labeled as such.

Uh, and I, I don't like to be called an apologist because I think that kind of makes it sound like, well, I'm something special that

you're not, or I have some special training that you don't.

Right.

It's kind of like, I call it the cosmopolitan effect.

Right.

So if you go to the grocery store and you walk through the, uh, the checkout stand, you notice they have all the, you know, the, the glamor

magazines, you've got cosmopolitan, glamor, L, whatever else is there on the stands these days.

And what you, you look at the women on the cover, what do you always see?

You see perfection, right?

And I, I, I'm, I obviously, I'm not a woman.

I don't even try to identify one, even though I live just outside of Seattle.

I don't care to do that.

Uh, I don't know what it's like to be a woman, but I can just imagine trying to look at, you know, looking at magazines

and thinking to myself, I could never measure up to that.

Right.

So the reason why you can never measure up to that is because you don't have your own airbrush department, right?

You don't have somebody taking the wrinkles and the, and the blemishes off of your skin so that other people see perfection

in you.

And I think what happens is when we look at the, you know, the big name apologists of our day, we see guys with,

you know, PhDs and masters and, and they got more degrees than Fahrenheit and they're really super smart.

And they got really great answers to everything.

And there's no question they can't handle.

And they say, well, you know what?

I could never do that.

Well, well, guess what?

Nobody said you had to, you know, the admonition we have in first Peter three 15 is to always

be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is within you.

And what is the hope that is within you?

The hope that is within you is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It is the gospel.

It is the fact that the God became a man and died on the cross and paid the penalty for your

sins so that you don't have to.

And the, the, the, the only thing that you are admonished to do is to always be prepared to tell people what Christ has

done in your life.

Read the book of first Peter.

See what it's all about.

It's all about living rightly in the face of persecution.

And we should be living our lives in such a way that when others, when people outside the church, look at us, they go, how is it

that you're able to go through persecution and people hating you and mistreating you, et cetera, but yet you still maintain hope.

You still maintain joy.

How is it?

You know, there's something wrong with you.

What's your problem?

And then you could say, I'm glad you asked.

Let me tell you about Jesus.

That's what you need to be prepared to always do.

You don't have to, to wax eloquently.

You don't have to do zoom calls or any of this stuff.

Be prepared to tell people what Christ has done in your life.

That's the admonition.

That is the command.

That is a great admonition.

And actually we had a speaker several weeks ago in August, Brad Dacus, the president of

Pacific justice Institute.

He, he did his whole first half presentation on that topic.

It was kind of a mini sermon that we got from first Timothy.

So that was a really great.

So people who are watching tonight, go back and watch that one also.

I have to catch that myself.

Yeah, it was really, it was an, I mean, he even stopped, stopped in when he was done with that and did a

sinner's prayer.

And then he went on to tell us some of the court cases that they're working on.

That was a really, a really great presentation.

So, so yeah, you'll want to want to watch that.

We are pretty much up against the time, so we're going to go ahead and close.

So the one thing we just had another comment come

in, but it's okay.

Please tell people again, how they can find your ministry.

I know that you do go out and talk sometimes.

And so let people know how they can find you, how they can reach out to you.

If they have questions or want to.

Have you come to their church.

Yeah.

The easiest way to get ahold of me is to go to my website, sevenfootapologist .com.

If you don't feel like typing out the word seven, you can use the number either way will work.

Sevenfootapologist .com.

I'm also on the social medias, although I don't do a whole lot there because I do have a day job, a

full time job.

And that does keep me busy.

It also keeps food on the table.

So I'm happy to do it.

That's the best way to get ahold of me.

All of my talk, the talks that I have that have been recorded are linked from my speaking page.

There are also links there to contact me directly.

I do have a book called Jesus is not the answer to every Sunday school question.

But honestly, you'll get a lot more out of the out of the presentations from the website than you will out of the out of the

three volume book that I wrote.

So save your money, watch the videos, they're free.

And they're it's got a lot more information.

In them than than the book does.

And the books do.

Okay, thank you for that.

And once again, we are Creation Fellowship Santee.

And you can find a list of our upcoming speakers by typing in tinyurl .com forward

slash CF Santee that C like creation F like fellowship.

Santee is spelled s a n t e, although probably if you're watching this anywhere on the

internet, our name ought to be underneath the video anyway.

But you can find our list of upcoming speakers next week, we're going to have Israel Wayne come back and speak to

us about biblical hermeneutics a little lesson on that, which I know Dan

touched on that tonight as well.

So it'll be good to hear more from him on that.

And then also, while you're there, you can click on the link for our archives page, we do have

channels we have channels on bit shoot and rumble and YouTube.

If you're watching this on YouTube, you won't find that video of Brad Dacus, because there are some topics that we

self censor so that we don't get banned from YouTube, but his video is definitely

on rumble and bit shoot.

So with that, we're going to go ahead and close for tonight.

Thank you.