Traveling Through Mormon Country

Apologia Studios

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So this is actually one of my favorite places. I love this area.

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This is south of Salt Lake City, Sandy, Draper area. And it's like when you're here,

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I feel like you're at home back in Arizona in many ways because Mormons build amazing communities and it's always very organized, like grid pattern, clean.

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You know, it's just, there's families everywhere. It's just a nice community south of Salt Lake.

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Obviously the scenery is just absolutely gorgeous, the mountains and it's absolutely beautiful.

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But so the plan is to plant Apologia Church, Utah, south of Salt Lake City.

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I think a lot of people don't really understand Salt Lake City, while most people associate it with Mormonism, it's actually predominantly secular and a lot of atheism and humanism and a lot of liberals.

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LGBT agenda. Yes, exactly. So while you have everything in Salt Lake City oriented towards the temple, even the streets are all oriented based upon where they are in relation to the temple itself.

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Salt Lake City proper is not really where everybody is at. No. In terms of the families and the communities.

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The big Mormon communities, they're going to be south of there. Like you said, Draper, Sandy, all this area around here.

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So what do you know about this area in terms of the community that needs to be reached? Well, so besides all of Utah itself being based off of our own research, probably only 3 % evangelical, this area is likely only 2 % evangelical.

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That means there's probably just out of, even let's take the city of Draper, like 50 ,000 people, there's probably only a thousand

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Christians maybe. And even then, you know, with the church changing and apostasy taking place, you have the woke church movement, intersectionality, critical race theory.

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You know, even then we still don't know how that has affected the Christian landscape up here.

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So, you know, it could be less, you know, there are faithful brothers and sisters here, but it could be less.

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And there's a lot of, obviously, there's a lot of nominalism within Mormonism, but there's of course also a lot of nominalism within the professing evangelical church.

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So even if you're in Sandy or Draper and you have even a number like 3 % evangelical, how much of that is an effective witness to this vast

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Mormon community? Right, right. You know, what I thought was interesting too, was during the height of COVID, when this was all, when all the wards, all the stakes were shut down, you know, one of our pastors here that we love, who we're partnering with, he said his wife would go to the park and she would see and talk with women,

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Mormon neighbors, and they would say stuff like, we're so glad it's closed.

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We don't wanna go back. They feel like they're getting a break. Yeah, they're getting a break. It's like the yoke, the burden of the organization of the

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LDS church, the Mormon church, it was kind of lift, it's lifted for a moment. You know what I mean? Right, yeah, not all the responsibilities.

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Yeah. Whereas, I mean, I'm sure you're gonna find, you know, different segments of people speaking like that, maybe even for within nominal

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Christianity. Sure. But the general idea in our circles of Christians, when we've been told not to go to worship, was

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God forbid, and I can't lose worship. I can't miss worshiping God and being with God's people, which

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I think is the proper orientation. Yes, agreed. So, we right now are in, is this, this is

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Sandy proper? Or like this area, this stretch right here, or is this coming into Draper?

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Is Draper this way or that way? Draper runs north to south. Okay. It stretches barely just west beyond the

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I -15, and then I think you're gonna be heading towards, was it

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Riverton? This area, the temple is that way. You can almost see the city. Temple is north of here.

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Temple is that way. And everything this way right here, this is where the communities are. Yeah, this is, you even go through a neighborhood, you just see, you look at the houses.

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You know, we rented one, remember, for ministry over here. The houses are huge, huge families, beautiful lots, beautiful neighborhoods, well kept.

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You know, the big LDS families left the city. They left a little while ago.

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They came out here. So, this is the area that needs to be reached.

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Yeah. This is where you can be in the community, amongst the families, and you can be in relationship and community with these people all over this area where we're gonna plant.

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Exactly, exactly. These are the people. This is where God is gonna raise his elect out from this community, and we're praying that they would come and be part of the true church of Christ.

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So, what's interesting here is as you look ahead, I don't know if you can get this on the camera, you can see a temple, and another temple far off in the distance there.

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You have a ward right here. Yeah, the Salt Lake City Temple is right over that way. And so, everywhere you look in this area, you are seeing the church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

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Saints. I mean, if you live here and you're not Mormon, you know that this area is dominated by Mormons.

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For sure. And so, we have, of course, driving into the communities right now.

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We're gonna point out that here's our first ward, visible. I mean, they're everywhere. So, we're just gonna start driving back some into the community, and you're gonna be seeing lots of these.

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There's so many. Yeah, and if you drive at night, especially, if you're at like a high point on a hill just like this, you're gonna see one lit up there, right there, right there.

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Pretty sure there's one. Yep, right there, north and west. So, within our view right now, we see four temples.

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Four temples. Yeah, within that view right there of that hill, you see four temples, and you can see all these houses, all of these communities, families, and wards everywhere you look.

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It reminds me of, there's a ward right there. Exactly, wow. It reminds me of 2 Chronicles 34, where Josiah, the young king, he becomes king, and it says that he fears the

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Lord, and he takes down all the high places and altars to the

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Baals and Asherim, and it says that he grinds them into powder. You know what

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I mean? And these are high places. These are false temples of worship. So, it's my hope one day, whether in my lifetime or in my posterities, to see this transformed, to see those torn down, to see the people who were once in them to come out and be a part of the true church of Christ, to have freedom and liberty in Christ, to have forgiveness in Christ, to have peace with Christ, no longer being under the yoke of an organization, under the temple endowments, everything that goes along with that, that is the burden that Christ ever meant for us to carry.

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You know what I mean? So, those are a reminder of kind of the enslavement that these people are in, and they're just, like you said, they're so nice people, and they're super sweet, you know?

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Yeah, and - Most of them. Yeah, no, I mean, largely, all the years of evangelism, and I have hundreds of hours and hundreds of hours of evangelism on the street with the

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Mormon community, and I would say that is largely what I have experienced and why

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I enjoy so much communicating with and interacting with Latter -day

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Saints, because I think maybe 98 % of all those hundreds of hours of interaction has been so wonderful.

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Yeah. Sometimes it has been, of course, rigorous and engaging, but that's good, but I've rarely had to deal with conflict that is mean -spirited, nasty, abusive.

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It's been rare instances. There's a ward. Ward? Yep, a ward up here.

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Yep. So, we're just gonna keep pointing them out, everybody. We're just driving down one little stretch here. We saw four temples.

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We've passed numerous wards already, and we're just gonna keep passing. If we actually turn down one of these neighborhoods here, it's really interesting.

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There's so many people, so many families, so many communities. When you turn into a neighborhood street and maybe drive down a bit, you're gonna pass several wards as you pass by that neighborhood because there's so many, the population is so large, you're told where to go to practice.

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And so, they have their designated wards. This is your ward. You're assigned to it. You're assigned to it, and there's so many people that they have to have so many wards.

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What's interesting, too, is when you think about the situation with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, it adopts

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Christian terminology, it uses our language, but it's interesting because it's a complete redefinition, of course, of who

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Jesus is. Jesus is a created being. He becomes God. Heavenly Father was once a man like us who became a

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God one day. Many wives. The goal of Mormonism is to go through exaltation and obedience to ultimately become a

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God and goddess of your own planet one day. So, even with the co -opting, though, of Christian language and our terminology, and in many respects, they'll borrow things from our worldview that are good things, you'll have the popping up of these temples.

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And what people don't seem to realize, because they haven't been given the truth, is that that temple is an affront to God.

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Yes. Because not only are you worshiping a false God in that temple, a false God, a false

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Christ, but it's a false gospel because you're taught in Mormonism that you need this temple and these temple ceremonies and these temple rites and things in order to work your way into Godhood, into the highest level and highest kingdom, the celestial kingdom, which is the ultimate goal.

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And you have to be a temple -worthy Mormon. And how do you become a temple -worthy Mormon? Well, not through trusting in Christ.

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Not through trusting in Christ and receiving His righteousness as a gift and all your sins taken away because He takes the curse on your behalf.

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And through faith in Him, you have the gift of Him and His righteousness, ward. Another ward. Another ward.

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Another ward right there, too. Yeah, up on the left. But they say that through these temple ceremonies and being worthy in the temple, you can attain to Godhood.

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But how do you become temple -worthy? Not through faith in Christ and His righteousness, but through your performance, through your own works, through your own righteousnesses.

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Obedience to the gospel ordinances. Obedience to the gospel ordinances. And so you have, of course, Mormonism adopting

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Christian language, but pulling out all the goodness and glory of the Christian message. So it's just sort of like the veneer of the gospel and packed with so much oppression.

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Ward right there. So again, we've been on the stretch for now, what? Maybe a mile and a half, two miles. Not even.

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And we're just ward after ward after ward. And again, all we have to do is just turn off. But back to what

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I was saying, when you think about these temples that are propped up, they see that as like the most glorious thing. That's our temple. That's where we go to our temple service and all the rest.

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But in reality, that symbol is though beautiful, there's no denying its beauty and its architecture in many respects.

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It is oppression. It is enslavement. It is not peace with God.

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It is not forgiveness and righteousness. It is through your own good works and obedience to these ordinances and laws.

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You can become worthy enough to attain Godhood. Whereas the biblical message was and always has been salvation is a gift of God by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

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And it's his righteousness that you need, not your own filthy rags that you're presenting before God.

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And another thing that's really important too, why don't we want a temple today in the new covenant? Well, it's fairly simple in New Testament theology,

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Ward. It's fairly simple in New Testament theology. Jesus is the temple. Right.

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Jesus is the temple. We're all being built up as little stones into this dwelling place of God.

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He's crafting the stones too. Exactly. And he's the temple. I don't want to go back to the shadows of the old covenant.

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I have access to God's throne right now, bold and confident access because of what Jesus did.

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And every one of these temples is a testimony to the fact that Mormonism has abandoned the biblical gospel, has abandoned the biblical

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Christ. What were you going to point out there? You can see all these points. You just know the pointed tops.

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Oh yeah, they're all over. Exactly. But I mean, you have to admit though, I mean, this community is so nice.

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I mean, you have to say that. The Mormon people know how to build a good, beautiful looking community, but that's going to,

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I'm going to make a point now. It's going to work against them because so much of that aesthetic, that external appeal ends up becoming oppressive because Mormon women,

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I mean, you look at some of these places and it's just surprising to me how many places that do cosmetic surgery and alterations exist in the common strip mall out here.

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Here's a temple right here. Let's drop by it. And so there's this need to...

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Keep the appearance. To have the appearance of the perfect family and I look beautiful and I always have the right amount of makeup on and my body looks just right sort of a thing.

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So here's a temple. There's Moroni. These temples, all of them, what it makes me think of is the psychological manipulation of the cults, right?

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So there's a large presence of Mormonism in the city, but imagine being the person who is stuck in Mormonism, right?

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They don't have peace with God. They don't know God, but they can look and no matter where they look, they see a temple.

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Their organization's always watching. But there's no safe place for them. And it's just a interesting thing to think about in the fact that Christ, who is the eternal

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God, took on flesh so that we could have peace with God, but in the LDS religion, they take on flesh so that they could become a

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God one day through obedience to the gospel. Say that again because that's such a powerful point. Yeah, so as Christians, we believe through the text, the mystery of the gospel, which was proclaimed from the prophets of old, which is

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Christ, the fact that he took on flesh so that we could just simply have peace with God through his death, burial, and resurrection.

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But the LDS theology takes it and flip -flops it. They say, no, you take on flesh so that you can become a

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God one day. And it says in John chapter one, which is I think one of the most death throes to Mormonism, it says that no one has seen

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God, the Father, except his only son, who has made him known.

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Not all the spirit children. No, it says very specifically that Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, is the only son.

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And we only obtain the title of sons of God through the adoption into his family by the blood of our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And even you mentioned the word firstborn, people get caught up in that because they don't understand what protantikos means.

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Firstborn doesn't mean first in order. He was born first as reference to his preeminence.

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The firstborn son had preeminence. He was the one that was most highly honored. And so firstborn there means that Jesus is the preeminent one, not first created.

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Jesus is uncreated. And John 1 says, in the beginning was the word, means the word was already there.

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And he was with the Father and he was God. And he created all things. Nothing came into being that's coming to being except through Jesus.

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Mormonism can't believe that. Mormonism can't believe with their Christ that nothing came into being except through Jesus because there were things that were, there were gods who had become

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God before Jesus was a spirit child of heavenly Father. So there were things created and there were things happening and going on before Jesus came into existence.

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John 1, 1 through 18 is a death nail to Mormonism in many respects.

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So many texts are, but that particular text is powerful. But I mean, again, the thing that has to be acknowledged when you are driving around South of Salt Lake City with all these families is you have to admit this is a nice place to be.

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But these people are so incredibly lost. It looks so beautiful. It seems to all work so well, but underneath it is a depression and a darkness and a sadness and a lostness.

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Ward, another ward. And that's evidenced by the massive problem of opiate addiction within Utah, the massive problem of suicide that is so prevalent in this area.

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And there's just so much to this that is of course so visually pleasing and nice to see, but underneath it is people who desperately need to know

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God and to be saved. Oh, there's another temple. You know, it reminds me too of one of our dear sisters here who is a nurse.

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And I remember her talking about the fact that she sees all these women come in, LDS women come in.

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They've got all these issues. You've talked about, they got to maintain the appearance. They've got to look the part, play the part.

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They've had six kids, but they better look like right when they got out of college or something like that.

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You know what I mean? So they've got to do all these things. And she talked about the fact that they're so, they are having to take so many antidepressants, anti -anxiety medicines, so many things.

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They're self -medicating with alcohol, with pills because you just can't keep up the image.

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You can't. It's like you said, the veneer of religiosity, this, you know, earning, earning, meriting.

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Sorry, I bumped into that. There's a practical consequence to bad theology.

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And when you believe that God's acceptance of you is based upon your external sort of being righteous enough, looking righteous enough,

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I've got to have enough. I've got to be clean enough to be accepted by God and myself. That's going to now lend itself to all your relationships, how you live in your community.

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You have to look pure. You have to look perfect. You have to look clean. And if you're trying to attain

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Godhood one day, how much more oppressive is that gnawing, that gnawing,

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I've got to do, I got to look perfect. I got to do everything right. Whereas the believer wants to have the righteousness of another, right?

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And a believer recognizes, I mean, like Paul's like, I'm the chief of sinners. He recognizes like,

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I'm foul. God is holy. I am absolutely broken. The only hope that I have is

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Jesus and his righteousness. And so there's no need for me to put on a front and pretend and sort of just look on the outside, like I've got it all together.

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And I'm just right. And I'm pure before God. The Christian like cast woe upon that.

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No, I don't want God to look in at my own unrighteousness. I want the righteousness of Jesus.

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And so that message of the gospel can heal, not just save, heal, heal this land, heal these people.

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I mean, I see the need for Christ, of course, as far as the eye can see in the world, but you can just look at it, all this place.

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So dominated by a false gospel, we need to win this place to Christ. And that's why we're planning a church here.

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Ward. Ward, temple. Oh yeah, we pointed that one out. You know, it's gonna be interesting.

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In part, I don't know fully what to expect. I think it's gonna be challenging for our families here.

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I know, and I praise God for some of the faithful brothers and sisters already here and the work that they've been putting in.

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I'm grateful for that. And I'm excited to partner with them. And so yeah, there'll be good churches out here that are ready to work together and really impact this place for Christ.

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But yeah, you know, with the LDS church claims that there's 2 .1 million members in Utah with 3 .2

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million people in the population of the state of Utah, that would make 66 % or more

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Mormons in the state of Utah. So we're talking two out of every three people you walk by in the grocery store in the mall is gonna be

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Mormon. So guys like us, we kind of stick out a little bit. You know, even when we've gone to Walmart or gone anywhere, you know, around here, we stick out a little bit.

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Oh yeah. Just on this, here's a temple, Jordan River Temple.

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Man, for someone that loves the Mormons so much, this is like a kid in a candy store for me, let me tell you right now.

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Yeah. Because I, the Mormon people are my very favorite people to reach.

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Yeah. I just love their community. Lord. So to me, this is like a dream because I love these people and they're all right here.

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I mean, just to be able to say ward, ward, ward, ward, temple, as much as I want all that to go away and I want everyone here to know

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Christ, I'm so excited that God has given to us the opportunity to come and to minister to this community where you go,

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I know what you believe and I know how to reach you with the truth. You know, what

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I'm interested in finding out about and seeing how much of a challenge it'll be is, you know, some people have said it'd be easier if they didn't even, if they had never even heard the name

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Jesus. You know, you have a false lexicographer, Joseph Smith, you have a man who took our words, took

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God's words and adapted them and gave them new meanings. It can be very difficult.

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I mean, you've been in front of the, you know, the Christmas light show in front of the temple.

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We've been to the Easter pageant. We've gone to plenty of wards and, you know, we get the same thing, right,

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Andrew? We get a whole lot of, well, we worship the same God. We both worship Jesus.

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We're Christians too. And so that's why people have said it'd be easier if they had never even heard the name

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Jesus because there's this syncretizing of our language, the biblical worldview, and then this false ideology with it.

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It's melding together. And so it makes it very difficult because they think, you know, a lot of them don't even think we're the apostate ones.

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They're very, I would almost say, yeah, they should. If they're consistent, they should. It's almost an ecumenical thing, like, or relativism, you know, we're all good.

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You got your truth. We'll all end up there, you know, different routes. Just in the 80s and 90s, they'd be happy to call you

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Gentiles and to say that you would be going to, you were one of the sons of perdition or you were going to outer darkness, whereas now they're just like, no, we're, yeah, you're fine.

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You can probably go to at least a lower level. You know what, the, what is it, telestai or, no, wait, no, that's -

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Telestial, telestial. I just said a Greek word. You said telestai. Yeah, telestai. That's it, man, it is finished. Cut.

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No, don't cut that. Um, yeah, the, what is it? The terrestrial and telestial, yeah.

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Did he, are those, is that a, he made that up. He made that word up. Yeah, he made it up. Telestial. Celestial and terrestrial, oh, wait, not telestial.

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Telestial. Yeah, the third level doesn't even sound that bad. You know, there's going to be resorts and, no,

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I'm just kidding. I believe Joseph Smith said, though, if you were able to see and get a glimpse of the telestial kingdom, you would probably, you would, you could, people would commit suicide just to get there.

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Just to go be a part of that level, wow. You know, it still just blows my mind, and I know there's different doctrines on how they view the fall and the curse and what

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Adam and Eve did. I know some of them look at it as a beneficial thing, but it still just blows my mind that -

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It was necessary to happen in order to - Yeah. In order to get to the progression.

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Right, right. And that's what blows my mind, is the fact that the promise, and we always mention this,

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Andrew, like the promise of the enemy, of Satan, the serpent, was, you know, eat of this fruit and you'll be like God.

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Yeah. And - Did God say that? And, yeah, and hath God said that? So those, those are the two -

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Warden. Warden. Those are the two things that the LDS religion causes its people to consider.

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Did God say that? Is it missing many plain and precious parts? And then that number two, don't you know you can become a

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God one day? So the two promises of Satan - You'll be the determiner. Yeah. You'll be the ultimate.

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So I guess I just don't know how they can't see that, but of course the spirit of God is the one who opens the eyes of the blind and quickens their souls and raises them up to life and -

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See, that's part of the issue, I think, that we see today with the LDS church and especially us as in, you know, evangelical

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Christianity, sometimes we're blinded to the fact that there is real spiritual darkness and oppression. Just like it says, like all the time when we're going to the wards in 2

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Corinthians 11, verse four, there is a different gospel, not necessarily that there is one that frees you, like Paul, you know, clarifies in Galatians, but a different spirit and a different Jesus.

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So there's people literally accepting and they're getting baptized in the name, and they're believing in a belief of a different Jesus and accepting and asking for a different spirit to come into their lives.

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So there's a physical manifestation of this spirit, the spirit of Mormonism, whatever these entities may be that have outward reflections, right?

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So there's an appearance of peace with God. There's an appearance of beauty, but on the inside, these people are broken.

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And we want them to actually have peace with God because if we believe what the Bible says that no one has peace with God until they have faith in the true and living

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God, Jesus Christ, right? But this spirit that they've accepted, what it does is it, what it can do is it can oppress people, right?

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Like it can literally psychologically twist your mind. So you have to break through that only with the power of the gospel.

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So you have to go to them and you have to tell them, look, you have been deceived. You are currently being deceived.

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But the words that like Brother Wade was saying that, you know, well, we're Christians too.

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Your truth is your truth. My truth is my truth. They've been psychologically manipulated. There's a real spiritual trauma that has been inflicted upon these image of God bearers, right?

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So there, that's pain. We need to see that when we're looking at these people, they need to be rescued from bondage.

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And the only one that can do that is Christ, the true and living God. And we got to break through years upon years of psychological indoctrination by proclaiming the truth to them, as much as it may hurt, you know, going to their wards, it may hurt them.

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You got to rip off that bandaid, you know, you got to tell them you've been deceived. Well, that's one of the things

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I think that's, that's something that we hope blesses the

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Mormon community. And of course, encourages Christians is that apology of church has by God's grace gone out to them, gone to the communities.

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You guys go to wards regularly on Sundays, where to where they're going to worship. Some of them might say to that, that seems really the wrong way to do this.

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I'd say, we'll tell it to Paul when he goes to the synagogues to refute them, but you know where they're at. So you go there to go reach them.

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You can go into the wards, we go to the Mormon Easter pageant, we go to Christmas lights, to the temple, we go to the temples to evangelize, we go to their general conference to go and engage with that community.

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And I think that's one of the distinct things that we want to bring here is just that spirit of love, humility, but also boldness to say, no,

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I really care about you. This is life and death stuff we're talking about here.

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This is your eternal soul. And so we're going to where they're at. So being in this community, planning a church here, as someone might say, well, what's different?

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I would say, well, what's different is hopefully our passion and love for the community is a highlight, but what's different is we want to engage them where they're at.

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We want to go into the public square. We want to start righteous trouble so that the

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Mormon people can't avoid the message of the truth. It's going to be in front of them. We're not going to allow people to be comfortable.

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No, it's a sad reality too. You know, there are so many of them slipping out the back door, then entering into the front.

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You know, there's a, I think it's like a 20 to 30 % of LDS millennials are actually active in the church.

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With each successive generation, there's less and less membership in that demographic, that age range.

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So it's like you said earlier, it's really on its last leg and it's dying out.

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And we've seen them bow to the state. We've seen them become more, you know, relative or friendly to worldly standards and things like that.

31:46

And the fact of the matter is, I mean, we just passed by a cemetery and the reality is, is that Joseph Smith, unless, you know, we somehow didn't know about some sort of repentance right before he was murdered, is he's in hell right now.

32:04

Joseph Smith is in hell, apart from Christ, without the atonement of Christ, because of what he's done, creating his own religion.

32:15

It's really, truly one of the greatest inventions of Satan is the Mormon religion. And ultimately, some of you might say, well, why?

32:24

We would say, because it changes God's truth. It lies about God, it gives people a false

32:30

God, and it robs them of the message of hope that they have in the gospel. It adds to and takes away from God's words.

32:37

I mean, explicitly adds to and takes away from God's words.