The Changing World of Mormonism

Opening Remarks and Studio Setup

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We're in the big studio today, no particular reason other than we haven't used it forever, and I don't want to get lonely and feel unloved and things like that, so you might want to turn the monitor down a little bit back there.

I'm hearing myself, don't need to hear myself. Anyway, we will be heading out on Friday on the longest road trip so far. I'm not sure I'd want to really go any longer than what we'll be doing this trip, but 33 days on the road starting on Friday, and I did get into the unit today, and as predicted, all of the background is hanging off the wall, and yeah, it's going to be fun trying to fix that, and if it starts doing that again, then there's other ways of doing what we need to do, so we'll go that direction, but that's how it goes.

I insist it's the colors. Oh, yeah, Rich says it's the beautiful light that many of you actually very much enjoy. It's just that people who enjoy those types of things, they're kind. You don't have a microphone.

Shut up. Because they enjoy the color, they're not the ones who complain and gripe and do stuff like that, and so there you go. So, hey, my friend Tobias in Germany really likes that light. I think he wants one for his own studio, so there you go.

Take that. Anyway, so here we are. Summer's trying to sneak into Phoenix here at the end of June, getting toward the end of June. It's amazing. The summer heat starts when it hits 110 degrees. It has not hit 110 degrees yet, and for us, that's just astonishing.

It has literally been below normal, I'd say, for like six months. It's just astonishing. Love it. No complaints. No complaints whatsoever. It's supposed to hit 110 after I leave, so we're like, fine, okay.

I won't be around to deal with that anyway. Yes, I know that we still need to respond to Colossians 2 .12. I have that queued up for the other studio, and we'll probably be in there on Thursday, but I have some really old books over here.

Early Mormon Books and the Search for Firsthand Sources

I remember, you know what's amazing? I remember where this was on the shelf in the LDS bookstore at 35th Avenue in Northern. Now, it's not there anymore. In fact, I don't know of any LDS bookstores on the west side of the valley anymore at all, to be honest with you, but I think there's still a Deseret out in Mesa somewhere, but it's sort of like Christian bookstores.

They're harder and harder to find. Everything is online. This is a book called A Marvelous Work and a Wonder by LeGrand Richards. Every time I say that title, Rich is laughing, I cannot help but remember Wally Taupe, and Wally Taupe wrote a book called On the Front Lines, Witnessing the Mormons.

Wally Taupe was the last person to die in the Los Angeles riots. He was beaten into a coma. He went out to try to witness to the rioters and was beaten into a coma and died like two and a half years later, as I recall, and Wally stayed at my place a couple times, literally drove one of my cats insane, and anyway, every time when I read A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, I think of Wally Taupe going, it's a Marvel, more don't wonder.

That was his title for this book, and I remember where it was. I am so thankful because I can't remember anything anymore, and if you ask me a direct name, it'll just run straight out of my mind any longer, but I can remember very specifically what Mary looked like, the kind elderly lady who worked at the LDS bookstore at 35th and Northern, which I think is a tobacco shop now or something like that, a vape shop or something, I don't know, and I remember going in there and purchasing this book, and she mentioned to me, if I recall correctly, that LeGrand Richards, somehow, there was some publishing agreement to where this book, LeGrand Richards is one of the general authorities of the LDS church, and he made it so that missionaries could be given it free or something along those lines.

I forget exactly what it was, but I think this was the first book that I bought at the LDS bookstore. It's filled with markings, and shortly after A Marvelous Work and a Wonder came, and these are the actual books.

This is the book that I purchased. This would have been in the fall of 1982, so 41 years ago. So, this book's been in my library for 41 years, as has this one, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and this is majorly marked up.

I happened, I was telling Rich beforehand, it sort of opens on its own to the King Follett funeral discourse. Now, I had read every Christian book that I could find at the Christian bookstore on Mormonism, and no one walked up to me and said, you need to do this, but somehow, I became absolutely convinced I need to read the Mormons explaining Mormonism.

So, reading Gerald and Sandra Tanner and numerous others, certain references kept coming up over and over and over again. Journal of Discourses, Mormon Doctrine, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Marvelous Work and a Wonder, and so I began going to the LDS bookstore, and I bought this book.

So, I had already read this paragraph in Christian books on Mormonism, but it was this book where I read this paragraph in its context the first time, and it's marked up. Page 370 of this printing of Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, under the heading, Plurality of Gods.

I will preach on the plurality of gods. I've selected this text for that express purpose. I wish to declare I have always, and in all congregations, when I've preached on the subject of the deity, it has been the plurality of gods.

It has been preached by the elders for 15 years. Now, I just stop right there and say, that is a manifest lie. That is simply not true at all, but Joseph Smith was making stuff up as he went along here.

I have always declared God to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate distinct personage from God the Father, and the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a spirit, and these three constitute three distinct personages and three gods.

If this is in accordance with the New Testament, lo and behold, we have three gods anyhow, and they are plural, and who can contradict it? He attacks the Trinity, all to be crammed into one god according to sectarianism.

It would make the biggest god in all the world. He would be a wonderfully big god. He would be a giant or a monster, and then he makes the comment, I learned it by translating the papyrus, which is now in my house, which I've written in the column oops, since that's in reference to the book of Abraham, and the book of Abraham is one of the greatest examples of the errors of Joseph Smith, but yeah, this is an amazing, it's an amazing thing to look back and to remember, you know, how did I have time to do all this stuff?

How did I have time, you know, here's the Doctrine of Salvation by Joseph Hewling Smith. This is probably the most scholarly, James Talmadge's Articles of Faith, and again, these are the books I bought at the time, and these were very often put into a set and given to missionaries.

Not that the missionaries necessarily read them from what I determined, but so that the mission, you know, they wanted the missionaries to have some knowledge of what they believed, and this is a big old quad here, and I'll talk about this one in a moment.

How did I have time to be doing all these things? Well, in the Lord's Providence at that time in my life, I was newly married and was a student at Grand Canyon College, now Grand Canyon University, the same Grand Canyon University, I'm sure you've heard of, they advertise everywhere, and I worked six to midnight, Monday through Friday, and noon to six on Saturdays, so 36 hours a week.

I was on the air as a radio announcer on KWAO-FM 106 .3, the home of the great entertainers in Sun City, Arizona. The tower is still out there, I think there is still active station associated with it, I think it's a Hispanic station, but anyway, during when it wasn't baseball season, then I would, you know, be reading in between records, and literal records, I mean, there would be piles of 33 RPM LPs around me, and I would have to cue up each song, and that's how you did things back then, it wasn't digital, it was all analog, but during baseball season, we carried the California Angels, and that meant from 7 10 to about 10 o 'clock each night, maybe a little after 10 o 'clock each night, every half hour, I had to press a button, and that was it, station ID, that was it, that's all I had to do, and so you'd have, I had space there between me and the console, and the microphone, and stuff like that, and put my books, I could do my homework, and that's where these books got marked, hours sitting there in that studio with these very books 41 years ago, and a bright yellow marker going through, and sometimes becoming discouraged, because there was so much to try to remember, there were so many details, there was so much teaching, and unlike Jehovah's Witnesses, where narrow field of study, you need to know it really in depth, this is an extremely wide field of study, and so you had archaeology in the Book of Mormon, and you had false prophecies, and the history of Joseph Smith, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl Great Price, and Temple Ceremonies, which then brings down Egyptology, because the Book of Abraham, and there was lots of stuff, and I didn't have anyone to guide me at all, but I had an overwhelming desire to witness to the Mormon people, Elders Reed and Reese had come to my home, actually had come to my in-law's home, and eventually did come to my place as well, I remember cooking burritos for them in our little apartment at my parents' house, actually, so long ago, anyway, I wanted to reach out to these people, and I needed to understand what they believed, I needed to understand what they believed from their own writings, and these were the very books, there was another book, now this isn't the one that I had at the time, I got this one later, this is a hardback, I think my paperback's at home, now I know you have a paperback in your office, in the other office over there, but I think the paperback that I marked up is, I think I know where it is at home, I need to bring it back, there's a hole in the in my library where it should be, can't see this because it's all faded out, and this I got from somebody else, but this is a book called Mormon Doctrine, Mormon Doctrine by Bruce R. McConkie, and it's written in, oh, look at this, I didn't even know this is in here, this is a newspaper clipping, look at this, Spare Times Rare to Apostle by David Croft, Church News staff writer, it's a picture of Elder Bruce R. McConkie, Elder Bruce R. McConkie enjoys walking, strolls to and from his office, unfortunately, the way it's been cut, I can't see a date on this, but man, this looks really, really old, I mean, it's very, very, very yellowed and stuff like that, so, and McConkie looks pretty young there, so I wonder what the date on that was, that's interesting, I had not seen that in this before, but hey, we found something, it's organized alphabetically, so here is Justice, King James Version of the Bible, Melchizedek Priesthood, Plural Marriage, Plurality of God, Righteousness, Seventies, uh, Solemnity, Slothfulness, Spirit World, so anything you want to look up, Bruce R. McConkie was one of the Twelve Apostles, and if you're really going to believe LDS teaching, then he has the same level of authority as a Paul or a Peter, now, you know, they might argue about First Presidencies and stuff like that, I suppose, uh, there's certainly nothing about that in the New Testament, but anyway, here's an Apostle of Jesus Christ, and he writes a book called Mormon Doctrine, now, one of the things I remember, when I first started dealing with Mormonism, and that was the first subject that, I mean, that's why Alpha Omega was started, when Alpha Omega Ministries was started, we had one goal, and that was to reach out to the LDS people, and we were going out to, we started going out to the Easter Pageant early on, started going up to Salt Lake City early on, yeah, it probably did not take more than six, eight, ten months before I was starting to pick up Jehovah's Witness material, starting to study where they were coming from, because every class I would teach at North Phoenix Baptist Church, there would be people who'd be asking questions about Jehovah's Witness, and obviously, there's a lot of connection, as far as dealing with the Trinity and things like that, even though the objections are very different.

By the way, I left a certain green thermos in the refrigerator that I will definitely need to find a way to obtain before we get too much farther down the road. It's dry in Arizona at this point in time.

Anyway, and so, here was McConkie, and here was clarity of expression, authority, at least when you're dealing with them, at least you're dealing with the Mormons. What, not much in it? Well, thank you, sir.

Oh, wow, you're right. In fact, there's nothing in it. Well, that whet the whistle once, but it's not going to do much for me after that. Definitely not going to be going along today. Anyway, there was clarity in dealing with Mormonism at that time, and I remember shortly after he died, I forget what year that was, I should have looked it up, but shortly after he died, Bruce Armaconkie, I started running into missionaries who would disagree with what he had said, or said, we don't really know about that.

Well, Apostle McConkie said, well, but he's just an apostle. And I was like, wow, that was fast. How did that happen? And when I was grabbing these books today, I thought, you know, when we used to go up to Salt Lake City to the general conference, we would go to the LDS bookstore in downtown Salt Lake City, because it was huge.

I think it had two levels, if I recall correctly. Oh, there's a third? Okay, but there was a used book. Okay, but the section where they had the doctrinal stuff was huge. It was massive. And their section that had the triples and the quads and all the rest of that stuff, I mean, it's a huge selection.

I was up there a few years ago, and I went downtown, and man, downtown looks completely different than it used to. And the bookstores moved, and I walk in, it's a third of the size it once was. And it has been kinkaded.

It's trinkets, it's shirts, it's little figurines. And the scripture section, tiny in comparison to what it once was. And the book section was embarrassing. Absolutely embarrassing. But one thing I noted, nothing by Bruce R. McConkie.

Well, there was no Mormon Doctrine by Bruce R. McConkie. There were a couple other books, but very few. Very few. And so I looked up today, before the program started, I looked up, I just typed into the search bar, when did Bruce R. McConkie's, because I went on Deseret Book and put in Mormon Doctrine.

Nothing. Went on Amazon. It's there. Everything's used. You can't buy it new. And in fact, one like this, I think the lowest price I saw on this hardback was $92. And so I put in, when did Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine go out of print?

2010. And interestingly enough, I ran across a quote. Sandra Tanner was interviewed when the announcement was made that they were taking the book out of print. And Sandra said the following, I believe the main reason McConkie's Mormon Doctrine was taken out of print was due to its candid discussion of LDS doctrines that the church is now trying to hide.

Such teachings as God once being a man, his wife, heavenly mother, and Jesus being the literal physical son of God are just a few of the doctrines that are being minimized in current manuals. If the LDS church felt Mormon Doctrine presented a faulty compilation of their doctrines, why haven't they issued an authorized compendium of their beliefs?

Mormons often say to me, that's not official doctrine, as though there was someplace to look up the official teachings. Where is the official systematic theology of Mormonism? You would think with the constant claim on the part of the church to latter day revelation, that you would have a clear and consistent statement, a inspired systematic theology.

It's sort of like when Rome says, well, we get to interpret what the Bible teaches. Well, you've had 2 ,000 years to do it now, according to your own perspectives. Where's the inspired commentary? Well, there is none.

There can't be one. And so, the same thing is true in regards to Mormonism. And yet, here you had a man, and I handed the man a tract once as he walked into Temple Square through the South Gate during one of the general conferences.

I gave him our tract, Blood Atonement in the Mormon Church. I think he was probably quoted in that particular tract, if I recall correctly. And an alleged apostle of Jesus Christ, and within just a few years of his death, his book outlining what the LDS Church teaches is taken out of print.

And I would say the vast majority of Mormon missionaries going door to door this day have probably never even seen it, let alone read it, let alone would they necessarily agree with it. What does that tell you?

It tells you a lot. It tells you that Mormonism is changing, and the speed with which it is changing is truly amazing. When you see what's happening at BYU in regards to LGBTQ stuff, that the city council in Salt Lake City is proud to announce that all of its members are LGBTQ.

In Salt Lake City, Utah, I had mistakenly assumed, given LDS teachings, that Mormonism would have to stand fast, stand firm on these topics. Because in Mormonism, God has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as any man.

Mormonism is a completely patriarchal system. Women do not hold the priesthood as men hold it. Anyone who knows Mormon doctrine knows that the man, by the exercise of his priesthood authority, brings about the resurrection of his wives.

And you look at all those teachings, which allegedly come through priesthood authority, there's no way to change them, unless you just simply do away with history and not worry about all the claims you've made in the past on this particular topic.

That may well be what's happening. They've already thrown Brigham Young into the bus for the things he said about Blacks in the priesthood, and that amazed me because pretty much every Mormon male today, if he were to trace his priesthood authority back, it's going to go through Brigham Young.

So you throw him under the bus, you're throwing yourself under the bus. But it does seem that the vast majority of Mormons today aren't overly concerned about that. When we were at the Easter pageant just a matter of months ago, I had a Mormon saying to some of our folks from Apologia that were out there, well, we're all Christians, and we've all been baptized upon profession of faith in Christ.

I'm looking at him just waiting for the shoe to drop, because any knowledgeable Mormon knows that it's fundamental to the very history of Mormonism. Not to believe that my baptism is valid. You have to have the priesthood authority.

It's part and parcel of the whole story. And so now later in the evening, I talked to another Mormon who was like, oh yeah, a lot of our people don't know. He knew that. But this guy I was talking to is a returned Mormon missionary, and he didn't know basic, fundamental LDS theology at all.

Brother, I'm going to have to get a big cup of cold water with ice in it, because I'm dry today. See, if I was in the studio in the RV, now I know how to just put up a screen thing, and it goes to the logo, and be right back, just run down the stairs, grab something down there, and we'd be good.

How Mormonism Has Changed and Why That Matters

So Mormonism is changing. So how do we reach out to Mormons? Because the problem is, if you are talking to a Mormon who does not know his theology, does not know his history, that is probably a confused person.

His theology is probably going to be a mishmash of stuff from popular Christianity, stuff he's heard at the ward chaplain. Oh, the stuff you will hear at an LDS ward chaplain, the stuff you'll hear at an LDS ward chaplain is truly amazing.

You actually made it last time without even a... there, see? You did not appear anywhere in the shot, so thank you. Absolutely necessary today. The stuff you'll hear in an LDS ward chaplain, the first Sunday I ever attended a ward chaplain, they gave a study about how we got the King James Bible.

It was bad. It was really, really bad. And so if this person you're talking to, even if they've been going to the Mormon church their entire lives, they're probably picking up bits and pieces that... Mormonism grew so rapidly in the 80s and in the 90s.

They did not catechize their people. They did not communicate. When we first started going out to Mesa, the 12-year-old kids knew what they believed. They knew these books, and they would argue their position.

You can't get the adults to do that today. I would literally say the 12-year-olds that I started witnessing to in the middle 1980s in Mesa had a better and accurate knowledge of LDS theology, historic LDS theology, as defined by these general authorities than your average adult Mormon does today.

I don't think there's any question about that. Which is interesting because... Oh, we have a question from the audience. We're talking about their children. Those 12-year-olds, we're probably talking about their children or grandchildren.

Yeah, well, their children. Yeah, their children, definitely. So what happened? What happened? Gordon Hinckley happened. Gordon Hinckley happened. For those that are interested, my theory is that the biggest fundamental change that has resulted in, I would say, a poison was injected directly into the aorta of the LDS system when people like Gordon Hinckley, who became prophet in the late 90s, who is with the church publicity department, they started sending their best and brightest from BYU out into big league schools to get their PhDs and then come back and teach in Utah.

Well, the problem is they learned critical analysis theory out there at the big Ivy League schools. And Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, Dr. Karen Sprague Price cannot survive a critical analysis at all.

And so, so many of those people came back, either significantly less convinced and zealous than they were before, or on the brink of apostasy anyways. And that cycle has just continued. So that I really, the future of the LDS church, I can't see, I cannot imagine an organization with the billions that it has, the property just decaying over time into a footnote of history.

There's going to have to be some type of death throes involved, involving splits, charismatic leaders stepping forward. But Mormonism is, it cannot escape the United States. It's an American religion.

Oh, sure, it's spread around the world, but it's an American religion. And so, it is inevitably connected to what's going on in the West. And that's part of why the LGBTQ stuff is happening. But I have no, no understanding of how it possibly could, given the theology of Mormonism.

Witnessing to Mormons from Their Own Theology

So back to how do you, how do you talk to someone? Well, are we talking about a person who knows historical Mormon teaching? Or are we talking about a Mormon who's been attending on and off, has been influenced?

But if you press them on, for example, one thing that Sandra mentioned about McConkie, McConkie was straight up front in his teaching and in his understanding that Jesus had eternal life. Oh, that Jesus, Jesus, I'm still staring at the other one.

Jesus had eternal life because he had a resurrected father. That is that Jesus's physical body was begotten by his resurrected father in the flesh, or to just put it real bluntly, God the father had sexual intercourse with Mary to sire Jesus.

That was what the, that's what the apostles of Mormon church taught. That's what was taught up until fairly recently. There was a, Sandra made mention of manuals. The LDS church did try to do instruction in theology in the past.

And what was that? Oh, it's a horrible color. It was sort of a salmon colored thing for years. It was sort of the first thing you studied when you became a Mormon. Salmon colored. I remember exactly what it looked like.

I'm sure I could walk into my office and pick it up. I'll bet you've got it in yours too. And in this, for family home evenings and stuff like that, in this church published publication, you had God the father stick figure, Mary stick figure plus down Jesus.

I mean, it was, and McConkie was very clear about it. There was no, there was no way to miss what he was saying. That's what he was teaching. There's an entire chapter on this in is the more of my brother.

But if I were to, if I were to guess one teaching that was fully known 30 years ago, but is believed by almost nobody in Mormonism today, that would be it. That'd be it. And that, that reminds me when we start talking Mormonism, I can tell you stories.

We could, we could be here all day long. We were at the West gate of the temple and the West gates to serve a quieter gate. Back then. Now all this is irrelevant because they, they don't meet on temple square anymore, but you had three gates, North gate, South gate, West gate, East gate is soldered shut until Jesus opens it when he returns according to tradition.

Anyway. And so I would walk between the gates and I would, you know, we had, Hey, we had walkie talkies, man. We had now back then, remember they were about this big. How many, how many AA cells did they have?

Like 10. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wonderful. But Hey, we were, we were geeks even back then. And so, I mean, we, we tried to do it right. And so, you know, somebody would say, Hey, there's a good conversation going on at the West gate.

Maybe somebody come over and give us a hand with it or something like that. And Rich go over, I'd go over, whatever, whoever was available. And so I happened to be at the West gate and this tall fellow, McConkie was pretty tall too.

This tall fellow comes across the street and he's moving, but I was trained to pass out tracks by Wally Tope. And I think Wally Tope literally probably tripped people a few times, helped him up off the ground and gave him a track while he was doing it.

And I, I got close to him and then walked with him toward the gate. You only have a few steps. Because you want to get the track within reach and be able to say something to where maybe they'll reach out and grab it.

And Wally had told me that you don't just stand there, you know, like this, because even if, even if someone's interested, they're probably not gonna invade your personal space to get it. So you, you have to have it out toward them.

It has to be facing them so they can read it. You know, there's, there's just basic stuff that, that helps you get more tracks out. Or you can do like my granddaughters did and just be so super cute that people's like, oh, okay, sure, whatever you say, honey.

They do much better than Jannie and Clem and Kaden. They were getting tracks out all over the place. Anyway, so I see this guy look at it and he, he takes it from my hand and he stops. You sort of see his shoulders go down.

And he does the wrist flip. I think we talked about doing this. I don't think I ever did. I always wanted to design a track that on the back where we put our name, it actually says something like, why don't you just read me first?

Something like that, you know, because every, it was just, it was, it was a natural. Read it anyway. Yes, it's anti-Mormon literature. Read it anyway. You know, something like that. We never did, but anyway, and he looks at it and he turns around and looks at me and he says, you know what's wrong with you?

Now, I still get that today from my fellow reformed Baptist. You know what's wrong with you? I've, I've heard that a lot from Mormons. So I'm just, and I, so my other volunteers are standing behind me.

They're listening to this. He looks at me. Now this guy had read Bruce Armaconti. You could just tell. He looks at me and he says, you know what's wrong with you? You don't believe God could have sex with Mary to create the body of Jesus.

That's why you're wrong. And this church is true. Good day. Turned around, walked right in. And I didn't have a comeback because I didn't expect that. I knew that's what they believe, but I just never expected that kind of a bold statement that you're not going to get from almost any Mormon today at all.

But back then, made perfect sense in his theology. So real quickly, what I want to do is I was going to go through the whole eternal law of progression thing, but obviously not going to have time to do that.

This is a presentation I made. There is a presentation. There is a video recording of this from, I think 2010, honestly, from up in Alaska at an ACE meeting that's available on YouTube. I looked it up recently.

It is there. So this is the beginning of my presentation. What's weird is it's blue on that screen, it's blue on that screen, and it's purple there, and it's purple here. So what? Yep. See that's it's purple.

Isn't that weird? Well, now that you've asked that question, I'm sure you will get numerous theories sent to you as to why our cameras are seeing purple as blue, but it is definitely purple, as you yourself noted.

So anyway, this is the opening section, and I'll just do this opening section before we go to the graphic part. With a graphic, it is a graphic. Here, I'll show you what I mean so that no one's confused.

This is what I call the universal translator. Oh, that looks terrible. You'll have to pull that up for it to have any meaning to anybody at all. See how much prettier? Wow, white just washes out on the cameras on the screen.

This is all true. This is... Feel free to take a screenshot of that. This is... Wait a minute. I'm talking about it. Put it back up. No, you can't see it. Put it back up. I can't see that. No one could read that.

What are you talking about? What is wrong with this guy? Anyway, feel free to take a screenshot. Isn't this in PDF form on the website somewhere? I can't find it. What's it under? Is it under eternal law?

I really don't remember. It's supposed to be on our website someplace. There is a presentation in 1995 on this. Oh, I remember that. And it's on a Sermon Audio channel, and it is a PDF download there, too.

Okay, it's on the Sermon Audio channel as well? Yeah. All right. I call it the universal translator. That's from Star Trek. It's meant to translate Christianese into Mormonese and Mormonese into Christianese.

It's not meant to sell Amway products or anything related there, too, though it does look a little bit like it. It really is a very, very useful way of understanding LDS theology as a whole. You have the levels of glory over on the right-hand side, celestial, terrestrial, telestial, hell down there, paradise, baptism of the dead, etc., etc.

Go through that and explain that stuff, and that helps Christians to understand what historic Mormon theology has taught in the past, and hence to understand what it is that they are saying now. So, take that down, and we'll go back to the introduction, which I took from the Achieving a Celestial Marriage manual.

This was a student manual, copyright 1992. Now, you do realize, for many people in the audience, that makes this ancient material, and I'm sitting there going, 1992 was yesterday. What are you talking about?

It was the last century. Yeah, it was the last century. In fact, that was, what, 31 years ago. I don't know. I may start crying here. When you are granted the privilege of being married in the temple, you are found to be worthy.

You have to go through classes, which isn't a bad thing, and for many years, I don't know when they stopped using this. I think around the turn of the century. This was the student manual. So, if you can picture this, you have couples going into class, and this is the book that they are going through together.

They're being taught from, and if you'll notice, the citation you give you is from pages four and five. So, this isn't at the back. This isn't in the advanced material section. This is the introduction.

This is from the very start. And so, this is historic LDS. This is the teaching of Mormonism for the entire last century. It's still the teaching of Mormonism officially, but the issue is, if the leadership begins to de-emphasize something, how long will that teaching remain in the center of the thought processes of the members of the church?

That's the question that has to be answered. But please notice, this is copyright 1992, by the corporation of the president of the church, Jesus Christ, Latter-day Saints. You can't get any more official than that.

You can't. This is what Mormonism teaches. So, let's listen to it. 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.

Proclaiming the divine potential within man, John Taylor, one of the general authorities, once wrote, knowest thou not that thou art a spark of deity, struck from the fire of his eternal blaze, and brought forth in the midst of everlasting burnings?

The Mormon, 29 August 1857. 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 of his body also. That's from 1910. Can you see the implications of these two statements as they relate to you and to your eternal destiny?

Elder James E. Talmadge did. And remember, I pointed to articles of faith. That's James Talmadge down here. In fact, this is a quotation of articles of faith. He declared, in his mortal condition, man is God in embryo.

However, any individual, now a mortal being, may attain the rank and sanctity of Godship. Articles of faith, page 529. How is this possible? What course of action will bring this potential to fruition?

As you study this lesson, look for the answers to these questions. Then we're given a point to ponder. Subpoint. God became God by obedience to law. God became God by obedience to law. Let that sink in from him.

It was late afternoon as we sat in my office, but I felt the time had been well spent. He sat silently now, obviously contemplating the ramifications of the things we had been discussing. We had talked of God, of how he had become God, and of what that meant in terms of our own exaltation.

Finally, he spoke. And so, the yellow is the younger, less experienced Mormon. The white is the experienced, older Mormon. What is this law of exaltation of which you keep speaking? Well, it involves the whole of the gospel law.

Everything required of us by God is, by the way, Mormons have absolutely no connection whatsoever to, well, Mormonism has no connection to Christianity really, but no connection to the Reformation in any knowledgeable sense.

So, law, gospel distinctions, and all that kind of stuff, it just was unknown to Joseph Smith, and so it's not a part of their theology and terminology. Everything required of us by God is associated with this law, but the major crowning point of the law which man must obey is eternal marriage.

Eternal marriage. Therein lies the keys of eternal life, or as the Doctrine and Covenants puts it, eternal lives. In other words, an eternal increase of posterity. Now, the graphic, the eternal law progression graphic helps you to understand this, but here is a good example of why we have to have a universal translator.

When Christians say eternal life, this is not what they mean. Notice, eternal lives. It's the idea of becoming a God and being able to have billions of children in the next world and be worshiped by them.

That's not what eternal life means in Scripture, but that's what it's translated into in LDS theology. Then, what you're saying is that God became God by obedience to the gospel program, which culminates in eternal marriage.