Open Air Theology "Modern Mormonism"

All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Open Air Theology. This is a show that me and my homeboys get together and do. My name is Jeff. I'm one of the co-hosts. I'm also one of the elders at Covenant Reformed Baptist Church in Tallahoma, Tennessee.

If you're ever in this area, we would love to have you to worship the one true God with us. Also, if you like the intro music to this show, me and my co-elder, well my co-elder, he remastered it, not me, I didn't do any of that stuff, but he remastered it and a lot of people have been asking, they would like to be able to have it whenever they want to.

The single drops, I believe on the 22nd, sorry, I'm going to pass it over to Brayden, I'm going to stumble that.

I am Pastor Brayden Patterson of, well, so I got so much things to talk about now. So I am the pastor of Valley Baptist Church in Southern Idaho. We meet on Sundays at 11 a .m. in the morning on the Lord's day.

If you live in that area, I'd love to see you. However, on that note as well, I have been called to pastor a church in Southern California, Grace Bible Church. It's going to be full time ministry. It's a confessional 1689 church.

Really looking forward to that. And so California Kid, SoCal, as I've heard they like to call it. Anyway, yeah, they meet on Sundays at 1030 a .m. on the Lord's day of them. Please, if you live in that area, be a great blessing.

If you were to go to that church, check it out. Even before my family and I get there and love to see you in December when we do finally move. So also, I have Reformed Ex-Mormon as a YouTube channel.

Go check that out. And we have a conference coming up in February. So go look up OpenAirTheology .com. OpenAirTheologyConference .org. Go to Jeff's Facebook, click on the link and get yourself a ticket to next year's OpenAirTheology .org.

On that note, after I'm done talking for five minutes, I'll pass the mic down to. We're not doing so well tonight.

We're not doing well at all. As a matter of fact, so if I'm going to be I'm going to be looking in the camera. I know I'm looking at you now, but I don't see these yahoos over here. Oh, you don't see anybody?

Well, no, I see if I do this, but now I'm not looking through the camera because I'm on my iPad. So I'm going to do that. I like it better when you look at me. I know it's a rough day, but it was a good day, but a rough day.

I'm having technical difficulties. So I'm on my iPad. My camera's not working on my on my computer. And just so I could keep on whining a little bit more, I didn't even get to hear the new song.

I didn't even hear this. I mean, it's the same one. I haven't been able to upload it yet. And I'm not going to upload it to the OpenAirTheology until it drops.

OK, well, I still couldn't hear it. And you guys are dancing and it's just not the same. I just I you know, because, you know, the song is something that really gets us going. The song, you know, Jeff Rapp, everybody's going and I got nothing.

So I'm not motivated at all to do this. And now we're talking about Mormonism. I do have, however, a Lost City Opus X cigar that I plan on smoking to the glory of God after the show. Let's introduce myself.

My name is Tom Shepherd and I'm a member of Grace Bible Church of Bernie. And I am the co-host of OpenAirTheology. I do a YouTube show, even if none, all about evangelism. But today we're going to we're going to be talking about somewhat about evangelism today, aren't we?

With some Mormons. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I'm excited to be here. I think you're in.

It might have been. It's just it's just not fair. That's just not fair. So so we are the three Mormon rejects and we have facial hair. Could you imagine?

We got to talk about that real quick. Number one, we had a great graphic for the show that Braden Patterson had ready to go. And it was all of us. It was looking good. And then he made this fake one where everybody had beards, including Braden.

And we're weird. And Jeff wasn't. I don't even have the right. Do you have that? You have a different nose. It's horrible. Awesome. No. So anyway, Jeff messed up and I can't even see comments on this either.

So I can't. That's sovereignty.

That's that's sovereignty, right?

That was a horrible graphic. That was one of the worst graphics that we've ever done on the show.

Let me let me do this here real fast. I'll I'll I'll show it just in case somebody doesn't have it, because I thought it was pretty funny.

And it was it was just fault.

You know, it was without a doubt. Not none of Braden's. None of Braden's. Is that showing? I got nothing.

Well, it looks good. Look at that. That is weird beard. Look at that. It looks like Dom DeLuise. What is going on there?

Whenever I went to get the graphic, this is the first one that popped up. So that's what I use. I was like, well, you know, this is what you do.

Oh, my God. My wife would divorce me if I looked like that.

Look, Jeff's got a blonde beard. Yeah. Look at this. That's good looking is what that is.

No, that looks still. Mormon with a beard is what that looks like.

Dude, your beard didn't add no weight to your chin like.

Was with the nose. I don't know. Just give me a beard without the nose. It was an A .I. thing I did. It was pretty funny.

Oh, man. Oh, boy. All right. Well, what are we talking about tonight? Besides talking about those Mormons, those Mormons, dem boys, dem.

Mormons, they don't even like being called Mormons.

So the male audience is, yeah, they really don't.

But not necessarily Mormons. We're talking about modern, modern. I can't say the word modern, modern, modern. I can't say it.

Mod earn modern earn. And there's a few words from Pastor Jeff Jeffrey.

Listen, my congregation knows there's a lot of words that this just straight lingo kid cannot say. Brayden's want to write a book. I mean, it was like, well, let's think of a title. He says the title.

And I can't even say the title. People ask me what's in my book. I was like, ask Brayden.

I can't say it. Oh, man. The architecture of the new covenant.

So we are talking about modern day. LDS is actually so actually later, later day, better letter, letter. They say later, latest. It's the latest day. Latest, latest day saints. Why. These guys just can't get it right.

Can they? They just keep on going ladder and ladder.

I don't see how we got an audience for guys.

Yeah, please subscribe and share this video around. Let me just say that up front, right? It's going to get better. Okay. I swear here on out it's better now. So there are, um, this, this conversation really came up after several weeks ago, we talked about doing a show on this and then it was, well, we should do a show on this and that got precedence and then we were like, well, let's talk about Mormonism next week.

And then there was something else that popped up. And so every Mormonism kept on getting put on the back burner. And then, um, in that meantime, I had the opportunity to talk with a LDS individual named Zachary, right?

Um, he's a LDS apologist guy and he was bringing up things that he believes as an LDS member that when I was LDS, I would never say, um, and so it really opened my eyes about the lat latest day. Saints are evolving and they're muddying up the water even more in the process.

So would you say that they don't even disagree? They don't even agree with the, the, the church leaders of the latter day saints right now.

That's absolutely, absolutely not. Yep.

Does that make it harder to evangelize them?

Absolutely. It, it, you have a harder time putting a pin on what exactly they believe because it's going to change even in the middle of the conversation, just so you can't actually nail them down on, on an actual engaging conversation.

And so, um, I mean, there's so many things. So I'm going to share a screen real fast with you. I think this is kind of funny because this happened right as the show was starting. I was, I wanted to pull this up just to show people this.

Um, but let's do this. Bam, bam. So we talk about different AI programs, right? Uh, pastor stealing chat, GPT sermons and dah, dah, dah, dah. Well, did you know that there is a website called LDS bot and it's an AI apologist LDS website?

So I said, what is this jank to it? They responded. And then I called it a heretic and it didn't respond. So, um, I don't know. Um, yeah, so just, I mean, you can see the type of ways that they're, they're going about now being able to argue with Christians.

And so if I, if an LDS person that is really wanting to have a thorough conversation with the Christian, they utilize this website and it's a Christian that's really unknowing, you're going to be thrown with a plethora of things that you don't know how to maybe handle right off the top of your head.

So I hope that tonight we can give you some really valuable insights that hopefully will help you engage not only Mormons, but Jehovah witnesses and every other cult in between.

So, yeah. And eventually we're going to have Jake D on here, Mr. Derringer, and we're going to interview him on Jehovah witnesses, being that he is an ex Jehovah witness, right? And, uh, he can probably give us some practical tips on how to have those conversations, uh, whenever they come knocking at your door or when you see them standing in an airport by a tall box with information, just with their arms crossed.

So, um, I did want to also start with showing this real fast. So this comes right from, so there's several places I want to go with this, like this conversation tonight, but this comes right from LDS .org's website.

So when you talk to an LDS person and you bring up things that they are unfamiliar with, or at least when I was LDS, this was the case. If somebody had brought up something to me that I was, it sounded not right.

It sounded anti is how I would describe it. It sounded like you're trying to undermine my belief. I would just say, well, that that's anti Mormon. And that doesn't come right from the LDS website. And so this is the LDS website on this topic right here.

This is the 13 articles of faith that they have. And these are just short statements that the church holds to. And in statement of faith eight, it says, we believe the Bible to be the word of God, as far as it is translated correctly.

We also believe the book of Mormon to be the word of God. And so when you compare that statement right there to what Joseph Smith claimed when he was 14 or a story he claims when he's much older than 14 years old.

But one that he says he experienced when he was 14 was that Christ appeared to him. The father in Christ appeared to him, which right there are our apologist. Red alarm should be going off because has anyone seen the father, Jeff or Tom?

No, no. But Joseph Smith says he didn't. And he says that Jesus told him. Well, you've seen Jesus. You've seen the father. Well, this is true. But he's saying two different two different personages. Right.

So actually two different gods, correct? Two, two different beings. Yep. Two different. Yeah.

Yeah. I, according to Mormonism. Yeah. We'll, we'll get into that too here in a moment as well. But, um, J Jesus tells Joseph supposedly that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight, all the Protestant believers, all the Christians in Joseph Smith's day in the 1800s, all their creeds were an abomination in sight that they drew near with their lips, but their hearts were far from him.

And so part of the, the creeds is chapter one, paragraph one of the 1689, which is a confession that all three of us hold to. And it says that the word of God, the Bible, the scriptures, the 66 books are the only infallible inspired, uh, sufficient rule of all knowledge and saving faith.

And so the Christian saying the Bible alone is the sufficient revelation of God. And the book of Mormon is saying, no, no, there's more. And by putting in this word, as far as it is translated correctly, they're putting a caveat under every contentious or contradictory claim from the book, from the Bible that proves Mormonism wrong.

They can just say it wasn't translated correctly. Gotcha.

So kind of a win-win for them. Yep.

Yep. It's a, it's a moving of the goalposts to make it so that somebody can never score on you. Um, so I, like even you bring up Ephesians two, eight and nine. Well, that was, that was translated incorrectly.

Gotcha. You bring up Romans chapter three. Well, that was translated.

Well, what if you break out the Greek, like, like if you were to just read to them, the.

Greek, yeah, they're, they're, they're not going to like it because of ultimately they think that it's been corrupted in some way.

The Greek has been corrupted, the manuscripts, the manuscripts.

Yep. And also even in this talk, go ahead.

But will they pay, uh, you know, like if you point out how the Book of Mormon has been.

Changed over the years. When you are talking to your average, when I say average, I mean, the, the LDS person that doesn't do a lot of, doesn't have LDS bought, right. Doesn't, doesn't, isn't actively engaging with Christians.

That kind of LDS person isn't know any of this, but. And they think that there hasn't been any changes to the Book of Mormon, but modern LDS apologists now are going way further, changing, changing definitions that I would have never held to.

So something that, that Zachary Wright guy, that's, he said that I would have never believed in when I was LDS was that each one of us, you, Tom and Jeff, myself, we are all as eternal as God is, that there's never been truly anything created that we've just been reshaped.

Which, which also would include us being former sinners, but now achieving Godhead. Yes. So basically that claim would make God the father that we believe in. He would say that that person was actually a former sinner.

Yeah, but don't, so when I was going to a Mormon church, just to, you know, for people that don't know, I, for about two or three months, I was attending a Mormon church just to find out what they believed.

What I was told is that we were spiritual offsprings of heavenly fathers, how they would, you know, that that's the lingo. So in heaven, the father had sex. Can we use that language here with heavenly mother and had spiritual offsprings.

So that right there eliminates us being eternal, right? If we were in any fact created. So, so, so even in their own theology, it seems to go against what Mormons have taught. And so this is something that I was taught in 2004 ish, five ish.

Yeah, it is that that saying right there is completely different than anything I'd ever heard growing up as LDS. I always had heard that we were spiritual offspring of a heavenly father and a heavenly mother.

And then that was our preexistence. And then we came to earth to get our bodies so that then one day we could be exalted, be like God, the father or heavenly father. But now it's now it's removing that and saying, well, science says nothing has come into existence and nothing can truly be destroyed.

It's just that things change their their form. Well, that's exactly how God or our God works is that we're all ontologically. Listen to this. We're all ontologically the same. Just just different, different stages of that sameness.

Now, would would the Mormon missionaries that that used to be the ones that are in the tie, what knocking on doors, would they do that, too? Or is this something totally different?

So something that we're going to watch here in a moment is a great brother in Christ. His name is Aaron, and I'm going to butcher his last name. It's Aaron Shavovloff.

I yeah, that is terrible.

I think that was actually listen, I was practicing before we got on. I think that was the closest time I've gotten to it.

It's a terribly. It's all I've used out of Pentecostal church.

Listen, it sometimes came out of me right there. Someone else coming on. He has brought to my attention. I didn't know this was a thing. So one of the ways that why Mormonism is being changed so much is that you have these rogue people that are doing their best to be apologists for the church.

And so they're changing all these different views on things and trying to arm people with with answers that the church never officially take. So then they have always a cop out because they say, well, this hasn't been officially said, this is just what I it's terrible stuff.

And so the the group that it's called, it's called the Calvary. It's not Calvary is in the mountain of Calvary where Christ was crucified by getting on your horses and riding a Calvary in the war, the Calvary on Facebook.

And it's this missionary group that is, I would argue, peddling this new, modern, more latest day saints muddying the water stuff. And it's it's scary stuff.

Now, what what do the true Mormons think of these guys? Real quick. I think that.

I would imagine as time goes on, there'll probably be a more of official statement from the LDS officials that just double down and say, well, if it doesn't come from us, then it's not.

The church's authority or or those that are in the main church would get a profit that would side with them just to keep that because because they hope to what the living prophets say, not necessarily what dead prophets have said.

That's right. And so that's something that Aaron in this video discuss on is that in the 1950s, the 1970s, we had LDS prophets standing up and teaching X, Y or Z things behind their pulpit on general conference that now modern prophets are completely contradicting and having several teachings that are going against these things, which which one's true.

And this gentleman, his name's it's Dustin Dixon. Dustin Dixon, who's this LDS, I would argue, in practice, an apologist here who's a part of this Calvary group is a part of Zachary Wright and Travis Anderson, I think is another name that's in there.

And he's he's essentially says, well, both can be true, but they're contradictory statements. And he just doesn't want to acknowledge that. So we watch the clip here. I have a clip. So I have I have several clips here.

I will say that this first one that we show does have a curse word in it at the very.

Real quick. Can I ask this much, Michelle, a question, Michelle, what is GTS? Why? She says, hey, oh, hey, GTS, my sister.

It's good. It's good to see you, Jeff.

Oh, OK. Oh, listen, I I'm not with the time.

You know, Jeff, you just allowed.

I'm just not with it, right? I mean, I'm I'm I'm 44 years old, OK? I mean, I'm not a young buck no more. I love it. I get up in the middle of the night to pee five times and hurt myself twice. All right, we'll put this up.

Sorry. Listen, this is a different kind of show, OK? This is a different show. Yeah. And to answer Bruce, he asked, do we only do the videos? We would do a podcast with faces. And what fun would that be?

Yeah, we will one day. Hopefully, Lord. Yeah.

And just don't figure it out. We're a bunch of dumbos before I play this video. I do want to just show.

And the only reason I show this is not as this is a form of showing authority. But this was this was my quad when I was LDS.

And I explained to them what a quad is.

It's the Book of Mormon, the Bible, the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price all bound together in one one go with it. But I just want to let you know that I was very much an LDS member.

And so I'm speaking from experience and a what used to be a testimony on these things. And I'm telling you, when I was growing up, this is a completely different form of Mormonism now and it's dangerous.

And so I hope that this is a blessing to everybody that watches. So but on that note, we're going to watch just the first two minutes here of this does have a curse word in it. So if you don't want to hear the S word said skip for a couple minutes.

But here it is. Just toughen up. Yeah, just toughen up. We're up in the hands. It's almost like John and Cash flipping somebody off. Yeah, that's that's controversial.

Let's keep on going. Yeah, it's like my ability to choose good and wrong, my ability to like do works of good or works of evil. Yeah. But we would define that as a moral public. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Not having a premoral life was a big part of that.

How so? Well, if if I was created from nothing, right. I mean, God's infinite foreknowledge already knew what what place he's going to put me in or what decisions I've made. Given what circumstances, that's a pretty standard Latter-day Saint view, though.

No, it's not actually. Most Latter-day Saints we talk to believe in divine, definite foreknowledge. I don't I don't really give a shit what those Latter-day Saints have to say, but thank you. It doesn't matter to me.

Most of your leaders, though, have taught that God knows the definite future. When they've spoken on the issue. But you know the story of Osler and Maxwell. You told me you were a candidate for Blake Osler.

Correct. Neely Maxwell on timelessness and he agrees with them on this point. I don't I don't know how that what the outcome was. But OK, but the changes, but the dominant position of historic Latter-day Saint theology is that God knows the definite future.

OK, that's the dominant position for just traditional Christianity in general. I would expect those Protestant presuppositions to be within Christendom in general. I don't I don't people haven't really given much thought to Latter-day Saint dialogue.

But your leaders have taught that God knows the definite future. I think that the Bible teaches that. I'm I'm that who's posing a problem is why I brought it up with agency. And it also contradicts to a lot of the prophecies in the Bible.

I don't think your leaders think that's true. OK, I was just appealing to your authority, right? My authority? Yeah. No, no, no. No, because the Bible would disagree if that. Oh, you're the objective authority.

The Bible, the Bible teaches that the Bible holds that God knows the definite future. I would say some verses in the Bible indicate that.

And then let me pause here and just I hope you guys heard that. This Dustin gentleman said there is no objective authority. And that was in response to Aaron saying the Bible is the objective authority.

So that's my question, too. So Aaron is assuming that this guy is going to represent normal Mormon beliefs at first.

Great question. So let me let me be up front and tell us a couple of these things. So this was this is a two hour long video that Aaron does. Let me also say Aaron does a fantastic job in this video. And even in areas where we would say, well, maybe we could have said this.

I would be doing the same thing if I was watching one of my evangelism videos. I'd be like, man, I wish I would have done this instead of this. Right. And so I know I know that Aaron is getting a lot of slack regarding people saying, well, why are you casting pearls before swine?

This guy doesn't want to hear the gospel. Why did you waste two hours of your time on him? Listen, we all get led in different ways when we're doing evangelism to try to talk to people in different ways.

And sometimes we immediately shut down conversations. Sometimes we keep on having those conversations. And one of the fruits of this conversation, listen to me. One of the fruits of this conversation is the fact that everyone now can watch what more modern apologetics looks like.

Right. We can all take notes and we can all put these things in our tool belt to be able to evangelize to LDS people. But one thing I would say that I do think here going forward, you see that Dustin is having the presupposition that there is no objective reality.

There's no objective truth. So therefore, everything he argues for is 100 percent subjective. Aaron is trying his best to point himself, point Dustin to the word of God that shows objective truths within it.

The Bible tells us that the natural man will not accept the things of God, that we are enemies of God, we're haters of God. All those Bible verses that tell us a presupposition that we have as believers towards unbelievers.

Right. When I was LDS for those 19 years, I would have thought that I could understand the things of God. And it was revealed to me personally and through feelings and burnings in the bosoms and all these kind of things.

Right. However, it wasn't until God opened my eyes and did something to me that his objective truth was made so bright and clear. I could no longer reject it as objective truth. And so Dustin, in this video, the LDS individual, he's not going to accept these things.

And he even admits it in the video, unless the Lord is kind to him and opens his eyes and changes his heart, which is the prayer.

So we would say the natural man receives not the things of the spirit because he's spiritually discerned. Right. That's right. It's foolishness unto him of this entire conversation. So the things that he's trying to communicate to him are right over his head.

He's trying. Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. Listen, this is something I noticed, Tom, I sent you the voice messages of this as we sat and listened to it and for accountability and whatnot. That Zachary Wright gentleman, I want to get your opinion on what you thought of what he was saying as somebody who never broke his LDS.

What did you think of him and what did you think of my interaction with him?

So he was trying to put yourself, well, number one, he was just trying to twist everything. Every single thing that you brought up to him, he went to something else. As soon as he knew he was wrong, he would go into, well, what about this?

He would never address any of the issues that you brought up because he knew he was trapped. So, I mean, it was almost like he was trying to spin everything that you said to him and going on to another issue.

In other words, he would spin 10 different opinions, saying everything was subjective and that none of the things that you were saying were. So he was just trying to spin the conversation constantly. So he wasn't interested in knowing the truth.

He was putting himself on the same level ground as you were, yet he had no standard by which to stand on. And you were telling him the standard is the scriptures, the standard are the 66 books of the Bible.

This is what it says, but he wouldn't accept any of it. He wouldn't accept any of the truth. He was just argumentative.

Absolutely. Yeah, I would agree with you on that. And I think, so what we see in those voice messages from Zachary is the exact same type of argumentation that this Dustin gentleman is doing in here. He's coming at it with an attitude of arrogance and pride.

And he, this guy, he actually admits it. He says, I am arrogant. At one point in this video, he says, I am arrogant. Something that, you know, something that I would just say to Michelle, too. So she just brought up something about Isaiah with God's word doesn't return void.

Amen to that. We're dealing with men. Listen, let me show you this real fast. I'll put this up on the screen and I can bring back this here in a second. But let me share screen on this. This is, I don't know if we'll be able to see this or not.

Oh, yeah, we will. So this is just one of the messages that was sent by this gentleman to myself. He says in here, so he brings up Isaiah. So that's the reason I'm wanting to bring this up, Michelle. Your comments about Isaiah actually verify my point about you ultimately holding to a subjective standard.

We can't objectively prove that Isaiah wrote all of Isaiah because we can't find any manuscripts that that date that far back. That would be objective. And we just don't have that. So you are imposing your subjective opinions into the text to arrive at your conclusion.

However, one thing that I bring out to him is how does Jesus treat the words of Isaiah? He quotes them and he treats them as historical facts. And Isaiah is prophesying about a thing in the future that according to Isaiah chapter 44 to 46, he says, I will tell you these things before they happen so that you may know that I am God and there's none other that there's none before nor after me.

So God himself speaks. I tell you future events to let you know that I am God and that this was true, that I prepared this beforehand so that you would know that I'm the only God. And what Zachary is doing and what Dustin is doing in these videos is is no better than the atheist that's trying to take the modern textual criticism approach of trying to disprove every book of the Bible so that then you don't have any objective reality.

You have no objective truth.

And so, you know, so Georgia, Georgia, just ask the question, do you think that OK? Yeah. Do you think that these cults are to read that again on mine? Do you think that all of these are just false teachings that are cultivating a secular beliefs in their religion?

And in my opinion, they're basically trying to conjure up a God of their own understanding that's going to suit them. Whatever God that they want to to follow or that that's that's going to be the one that they're going to that they're going to follow a God that they've made up in their own mind.

Amen.

That is for sure. Right. And that's what we expect from people who are dead in their sins. Absolutely. That follow after the imaginations of their mind. Right. That's one that's our layer.

One's not that that's not going to punish me according to my sin that, you know, I forgive myself. I'm accepted by everything. Just a God that's going to suit us. And that's what all idolatry is. Yeah.

We're our own God.

And so the question I kept on trying to hound is accurate, which this gentleman I know I haven't shown you everything. And a lot of it was through voice messages. But one thing that he never did was answer my question of how do you believe?

Why do you believe in what you believe in? And and he didn't want to answer it because I would assume and this is this would be the reason why I wouldn't want to answer it as an LDS individual. Previous LDS individual was because you have to admit I got a good feeling about it.

Hmm. It's it's based on my opinion rather than something other than my opinion. And and you listen, let me let me ask you guys this, Jeff. If if let's say I was wanting to argue with you, debate you on whatever topic it was, but I didn't believe in the laws of logic.

I said I was a purple cow and you can't convince me any other reason. And all the other cows in this world are really chickens and all chickens are really just fire engines. How are you going to debate me on anything?

OK, you can't.

You don't have an objective reality to hold to someone to. That's the importance of knowing the laws of logic and understanding presuppositional apologetics in some in some basic understanding. Right.

I've had a conversation with one. They spoke about the testimony and the burning in the buzz. And I just say, yeah, man, I've had gas before, too.

That's right. I love it.

Yeah. And that's and that's really that's really. The issue is, is that we are going with the presupposition that God, God's word is final authority. There's absolute authority in God's word and that we must submit to that that word.

If John Stott said we cannot agree on anything unless we first agree how to agree. So what's the standard of our belief? And so what do we do, Braden, when a guy just keeps on going out, spinning and spinning and spinning?

My opinion is that we go right back to the hard issue. What is what's the gospel?