Why I Left the Mormon Faith with Micah Wilder

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00:47

Welcome back, friends. Got a very special episode for you right now. If you're brand new to our ministry, my name is

00:53

Nate, and that's my homie Logan underneath me. It's physics. Don't ask how he's there. Wise Disciple is our organization.

01:00

We're all about living effectively as Christians in today's culture, but we have a very special guest. He is one of the members of Adam's Road, which is a

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Christian nonprofit dedicated to sharing the gospel through song and testimony. The testimony is amazing.

01:14

All the members of Adam's Road have left the Mormon faith and embraced the true gospel.

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As a matter of fact, our guest has written a book called Passport to Heaven about his journey out of the Mormon faith.

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Michael Wilder, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, Nate. Appreciate you guys having me. Well, I am so pleased to be speaking with you.

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We were talking a minute ago. I heard about you, actually, the first time when I interviewed Ms. Lynn Wilder, your mother, about her testimony.

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Your family has an amazing story, so we're excited to hear what happened to you.

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Logan's going to start us off with some questions, so Logan, go ahead. Sure. Well, thanks for coming on to the show with us.

01:57

So first, and you can feel free to use this question as a springboard for people that aren't as familiar with your story, but so you've been out of the

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Mormon faith for a little while, I think about 10, 15 years or so.

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So my first question is, why write this book now? Is this something that you always knew you wanted to do?

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It just took a while to put together, or is there something in your life, your story, the culture, et cetera, that made you want to write this now?

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Yeah, no. I've actually been working on this book for the past 15 years. I actually began writing it within weeks of getting saved, and I felt very compelled to share my story in written form.

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I couldn't have anticipated when I began this process that it was going to take this long, but I know that it's kind of all been in God's timing.

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I think that He has done so much in my life since I began this process, and I've had to kind of go through my own personal growth and maturity and development in my relationship with the

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Lord and my knowledge of grace and truth, and I think that it's kind of all come full circle to where I felt ready to finally complete it and allow

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God to open the right doors to make it happen. Yeah, so tell us a little bit about that journey.

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So first of all, I confess I was slightly excited when I saw that you're from Indiana because we don't get many of those, many fellow

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Hebrews around here, but you had quite a journey to do with your journey first being part of the

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Mormon faith and then leaving it. So can you give us just sort of a brief overview of what that journey was like, kind of the high points of your story, if you will?

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Yeah. Yeah, so I was born and raised, like you said, in Indiana. I grew up in a very faithful, devout

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Mormon home. I moved to Utah when I was a freshman in high school, spent my high school years right in the heart of Mormonism.

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We lived in a town, in a community that was about 98 % Latter -day Saint. And so all of my friends, my community, my culture, everything was saturated in this religious identity.

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My mother at the time was a tenured professor at BYU, Brigham Young University, the private

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Mormon school out in Provo, Utah. And I was just a very devoted, young Latter -day

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Saint man. I very much would have compared myself to Saul of Tarsus and his zeal for God as a

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Jew. That was comparable to my zeal for God as a Mormon, and I was kind of like a Mormon of Mormons.

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And so at the age of 19, I went and I served a two -year mission trip with the white shirt, the name tag and the tie in Orlando, Florida, very zealously went about attempting to make converts.

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And it was about four months into this two -year missionary journey that I encountered a Baptist pastor and engaged me with the gospel message.

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And that's really kind of what set my life on a new trajectory was I heard the gospel for the first time in my life.

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I was challenged in love to read the New Testament through the eyes of a child. I spent the rest of my mission doing so.

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And it was simply through reading the New Testament 12 times from beginning to end that God opened my eyes to the gospel and I was born again towards the end of my two -year mission trip.

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So what was, so I have a couple of questions about that. So one is, what was the time, how long did that process take?

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And then kind of connected with that was, was that largely because of a, was it more argument or was it more relationship?

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Like, did you have sort of ongoing conversations or was it more, you know, you had a stone in your shoe that just wouldn't leave?

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Yeah, I think it was more of the stone in my shoe. So I had this kind of one encounter with this pastor who gave me that challenge.

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And I really began this process because I thought that reading the New Testament was only going to solidify my testimony of the foundational, you know, tenets of Mormonism.

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And so I didn't begin this process really thinking that he was right or thinking that, you know,

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I needed to learn something new. I thought that reading the Bible was going to prove the gospel that I knew and avowed, and it would disprove his gospel of grace as he had shared it with us.

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And so from that point on, it was about 18 to 20 months of consecutively reading the

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New Testament daily of, you know, learning to understand what the word of God is really teaching me about the nature of God, the nature of Christ, and the sufficiency of Jesus' offering on my behalf.

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And so as you're going through this process, when, so you mentioned that, you know, living in Utah, you were in a community that's, you know, about 98 %

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Latter -day Saint. I think, you know, and I thought about this for myself, it's very difficult to tell where our own thoughts start and, you know, sort of the influence of our community begins.

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So how did you kind of take a step back to see, to kind of look at, okay, what have

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I worked out on my own versus, you know, what's sort of the influences of what I grew up with? And especially since, you know, your family has, you know, a story that plays into this as well.

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I'm curious how those things kind of interplayed. Yeah, so for my personal faith as a

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Mormon at the time, we were actually very much encouraged to kind of establish our own personal testimony, as they called it.

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So I'd really, I think by the time I had gone on my mission and I was 19, I think I had really established my own independent, right, testimony and faith system outside of, you know, just what my parents and my religious leaders had taught me.

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So when I was on my mission and then I was being challenged, right, by the word of God, I didn't have like any exterior influence on me, right?

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I didn't have, you know, engagements with people who were teaching me truth. I wasn't reading theological books or having access to anything outside of what

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I was receiving directly through the scriptures, directly through the word of God. And so for me,

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I just, God just loved me in a way that He started to open my eyes, even though I wasn't looking for them to be opened, right?

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Even though I didn't think they needed to be opened, I thought that I had everything that I needed in the

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Mormon church and through the teachings of the Mormon church, God started to slowly wash my eyes with the word of God and reveal to me this gospel that was different from the gospel that I had known growing up.

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And so I started to not even question the teachings of Mormonism, I just wanted to know more deeply about what

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God was revealing to me through the scriptures. And if you've ever gone through that process of really reading the word of God for the first time, it was like,

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I just wanted more of what it was offering me, even though I didn't have a full understanding of what it was.

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I just knew that every time that I sat down and I opened up the New Testament, that God was doing something in my heart and in my life.

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And so I begin to separate the things that I was taught by my religious structure.

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And I just begin to see the clarity of what was being revealed in the word of God.

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And I don't really have an answer as to why I put my faith and trust in God's word.

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There's no logical reason other than that the spirit of God through God's word just begin to grab a hold of my heart and begin to draw me unto

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God and unto a relationship with Christ until I was fully able to see what the gospel message really was.

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And is all this happening while you're still on part of your two -year mission? Because it was pretty early in when you had this initial confrontation, right?

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Right, right. So it's pretty much the entire duration of my two -year mission that I am reading the

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New Testament daily. And so I start at the beginning of the journey as this very Saul -like, pharisaical, passionate, zealous Mormon missionary.

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And slowly, one step at a time, one verse at a time, 18, 20 months later, I had come to a full understanding of the offering of Jesus Christ and received that offering by faith.

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So what's that moment like for you? Because you've been a

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Mormon, raised in a Mormon family. You're on a two -year mission. So what did you do?

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Who did you talk to? What was the response like? And what was it like for you? Because I'm sure there's the thrilling excitement of having found the gospel, but then there's also the complications of all of your connections.

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So what was that moment like for you? Yeah, so as I was going through this process, the kind of amazing thing about it is

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I didn't really understand what was happening as it was happening. And what I mean by that is I never anticipated that the things

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I was learning were going to lead me outside of the religious construct that I had always known and loved.

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And so I got towards the end of this journey, and all of a sudden, I really began to see things in a way that started to completely shake the foundation of my religious faith in the

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Mormon church. And in the book, I talk about this very powerful experience I had reading through the book of Hebrews.

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And I read Hebrews 7, 8, 9, and 10. And for some reason, it's like the veil, this religious veil that had been on my eyes my entire life, this blindness, all of a sudden,

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God just removed it. And I'm reading Hebrews, and all of a sudden, I'm seeing that Christ is the sufficiency of everything in the old law, that everything that was part of the old law was not there to be our salvation, but to be a type and a shadow of pointing us towards the hope that was to come.

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And that hope was Jesus alone. And so all of these elements that were foundational to my faith as a

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Mormon, the prophets and the priesthood and the high priests and the temples, that they were all fulfilled in the person and the work of Jesus Christ alone.

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And once I realized that I no longer needed those things because of what Jesus had done for me,

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I realized that the Mormon church at its very core, the very foundation of it was in fact built on a man -made gospel and was not the saving gospel as revealed in the word of God.

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And so that was kind of this terrifying epiphany where for the first time in my life,

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I said to myself, the church is not true. And of course, at that point is, well, what now? What do

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I do, right? And so God, His love is so incredible, right?

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This unmerited favor, this grace that He gives us, this chesed, this steadfast love. And so He's so patiently working with me and drawing me and opening my eyes and going through this process with me.

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And within 24 hours of kind of having that earth -shattering revelation of realizing that the church wasn't true,

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I came to a saving faith in Jesus Christ and was born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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And I knew at that point my life was never going to be the same. And of course, I also knew that there were going to be cultural and familial repercussions of this change that had taken place in my heart.

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So as you're describing this transition, you describe this moment where you realize that the church that you're in isn't teaching the truth, that the church isn't true.

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So I'm curious about this. So Nate and I were talking before we started recording that, talking about that some

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Mormons, when they leave Mormonism, they leave it and go into atheism.

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And it sounds like, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here. It sounds like that you never even really considered that, that it was pretty much just you grappled onto Jesus and then that showed you the way to the true gospel.

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I'm wondering if you have any insight as to why that was different for you and what it is that maybe made the difference in your story and why, you know, any insights from that that we could take into our conversations with others?

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Yeah, I think that's a really good question. It's an important point. And I think that the difference for me was the element that drew me out of Mormonism was the word of God, if that makes sense.

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So it wasn't any of these, you know, other influences that I had, say history or characterological issues with Joseph Smith or, you know, or questionable doctrines within the church or things like that.

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It was literally reading the Bible and the Bible alone that showed me that there was a distinct difference between the gospel of the

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Mormon church and the gospel of the Bible. And so I think for me that when I finally came to that revelation, right, that epiphany that the church isn't true, well,

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God had been rebuilding my life and my faith on the gospel message for the last 18, 20 months as I was reading the

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New Testament 12 times from beginning to end. And so at that point, I had almost unknowingly totally rebuilt my faith, right, my testimony, my foundation on the word of God, on scripture and on Jesus Christ alone and no longer on these extra biblical tenets of Mormonism.

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And so I never considered anything else because I didn't leave Mormonism because I had some outside influence.

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I left Mormonism because the Bible and because the word of God showed me that there was a better way and that better way was

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Jesus. And I never let go of that throughout that process. Yeah, that sounds great.

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I'm going to pass it up to Nate now who has some more questions for you. So I think we skipped over some.

16:07

So by the way, all we're talking about right here is all laid out really well, by the way.

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So I used to be an English teacher and I had to grade a lot of papers of writing. You're a really good writer, man. Like your grasp of narrative and storytelling is excellent.

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It was very compelling. But we're talking about Passport to Heaven, and so we're going to go ahead and recommend this book.

16:27

It drops in a couple weeks, right, Micah? Yeah, June 1st. June 1st.

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It's a really, really very compelling, great read. So definitely check it out. But we skipped over something and I was wondering if we could go back to it for a split second because you had gumption.

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You went, there was a moment where, I don't give too much away, but there was a moment where you decided that the best thing that you could do as a missionary was go to a

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Baptist Sunday service, sit down, listen to the message, and then afterwards approach the pastor and try to convert him to go to the

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Mormon faith. Can you, like, clearly those encounters with pastors is what pulled you out.

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But can you talk just a little bit about that? Yeah, I mean, we had this zeal that we were taught in the

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Mormon church, especially as missionaries, because we were actually taught by our headship that we had an exclusive authority from God to be representatives of Jesus Christ.

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And so we actually believed that we held a divine authority that superseded any pastor of any other church.

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And so we saw people like that kind of as targets for conversion. And I guess

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I had gotten to a point in my mission where I felt confident enough to go to another church, sit through a

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Sunday evening service and approach the pastor, because I was, I mean, I was prideful, but in a more kind of sincere way,

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I really believed what I believed, right? As a Mormon, I really believed that it was the exclusive way to eternal life in the presence of God.

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And I figured that, you know, if I could convert a pastor, then I can probably use him to help convert his whole congregation.

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And that was just kind of my, that was my MO, I guess. That makes logical sense, you know.

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There was another pastor though. So you're, you ran into another pastor stopping in to use the restroom.

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And I was curious about this because he, he seemed pretty brash himself, but he came up to you and he said a few things, but then he mentioned the love of Jesus.

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And, and I was wondering if, if that was the beginning of the end or if that was like a puzzle piece that you realized was missing that you didn't realize before or something like that, because you keep bringing that up, that they mentioned the love of Jesus.

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Yeah, I think that, you know, when you go back and you see how deliberate the hand of God was in your life,

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I mean, you can really take instances from your childhood on, so it's hard to say, but I think as far as my mission journey,

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I think that was really when God was so deliberate and active in putting me in, in, in situations and with people that he would use, right.

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Vessels that he would use to plant seeds in my heart. And so that first pastor, Pastor Shaw, I tell the story of our inadvertent meeting with this pastor as we wandered into his church, needing to use the facilities.

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And, and he ended up, you know, engaging me in a very unique way. It's, it's kind of a funny story in the book, but for me at that time, it was a very unique experience.

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And, and again, it was one of many that God used to plant a seed in my, in my life and to begin to, you know, cause me to think about things in a way that I had never before thought.

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And the amazing thing is, is, is each one of these situations, they all led me and pointed me back to the word of God.

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And you'll notice in our ministry, in the book, in our testimonies, like we always emphasize scripture and the

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Bible because it is powerful and it's life -changing and it's living and it's active and within it is contained the gospel message that is the power of God into salvation.

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And so each one of those experiences ultimately drove me deeper into the word of God, which ultimately drew me to a saving relationship with Christ.

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That's excellent, man. Yeah. Just a very, very interesting story there. Part of the story too, was you mentioned something interesting, it caught my eye.

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You mentioned that the cross repulsed you. And partly because you were taught that Jesus' primary suffering for our sins took place in the

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Garden of Gethsemane before he got arrested. I, I have not, so I'm not familiar with all the ins and outs of, of the

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Mormon faith. I had, that was news to me. So I was wondering if maybe you could explain that for our audience. Yeah.

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So, so growing up, like we really kind of had an aversion to the symbol of the cross.

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If you'll notice in Mormon churches, they do not have crosses on their steeples. They don't, you know, symbolize the cross in the way that Christians do.

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They don't wear cross necklaces around their necks and things like that. And so this idea, because we saw the cross kind of as this instrument of death, this useless torture that Jesus had to undergo, but we didn't see it as, as the, the primary suffering and atonement, right?

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And propitiation for our sins. That was actually taking place the night before in the

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Garden of Gethsemane. And so I don't really know how or why that doctrine was taught other than it was.

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And it's come through many of the prophets of Mormonism that Jesus is primary suffering, right?

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The spiritual kind of eternal taking his sins upon his own body, that that actually took place in the

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Garden of Gethsemane. And so when it says that he sweat, as it were great drops of blood, that that was the moment when he was actually suffering for our sins.

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Now they don't discount what Jesus endured on the cross. They believe that it is part of what they call the atonement, right?

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So the Garden of Gethsemane, the cross, the tomb, and ultimately resurrection, that's the, that encompasses the atonement, but they do not believe or teach that the payment, the full payment for sin took place on the cross of Calvary, that it was essentially, you know, a physical torture that he had to undergo, but there is no necessarily a spiritual significance to it.

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So if there's no full payment, is there a need for payment somewhere in Mormon theology, or how is that reconciled?

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Well, it's reconciled, or the way that I would have understood it, because people have different viewpoints on this, but the way that I would have understood it is that Jesus, that we do our best, right?

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We contribute everything that we can, and then Jesus makes up the rest.

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And that may vary from person to person, but ultimately we have that individual responsibility to do everything that we can to faithfully follow the laws, the ordinances, and the commandments of Mormonism.

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And so it's like, we believe that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins. Like I would have never said that I was saved by my works.

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However, I couldn't be saved apart from my works, right? So it wasn't my works that were saving me, but I needed my works to be saved.

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Although Jesus himself paid the price for my sins in the

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Garden of Gethsemane or whatever. So it's basically grace plus works, right? It's our contribution to the work of Christ that ultimately leads to our right standing with God.

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I see. I see. So the cross is Jesus providing that opportunity that as long as you do everything you can, then he carries the rest.

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Exactly. I see. Boy, yeah, it's just, it's intricate. And I think a lot of our listeners definitely desire because they have

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Mormons in their family. They have Mormon neighbors. They have Mormon coworkers. They desire to share the truth, but they, you know, they're concerned that they need to know a bunch of stuff and before they open up their mouth.

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And so anyway, I, we're going to get to how to engage Mormons in just a moment, but also from the outside looking in, again, not really familiar with this kind of stuff.

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We hear about, or you write about the MTC, so the Mormon Training Center. And that's like a nine week,

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I guess, period where you are trained before you are sent out to your mission. So what does that entail exactly?

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Yeah, so for me, when I was going on a mission, I was actually learning a new language. So if you're going there and you're learning a non -native language, so for me,

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I was learning Spanish so that I could be a missionary to people who spoke Spanish. You go for nine weeks.

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Some of the very difficult languages are 12 weeks. If you're going to a mission where you're not learning a new language, it's only,

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I think, two weeks. But ultimately the purpose of the MTC is to equip and train the missionaries to go out and to be the most effective proselytizers that they can be.

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And so for us, it was not only learning Spanish, but it was learning the doctrines, learning all of the intricacies of what we believed, how to communicate that, as well as how to defend our faith to people that were going to come and challenge us, in particular

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Christians. And so we used to even have these kind of role playing scenarios where we would sit face to face with a

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Christian, right? And they would engage us on certain doctrinal topics that are very common that Mormons know about that Christians are going to address about what

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Mormons believe. And then we would have to use the scriptures and use our teachings in order to defend our faith.

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So it was a very military -like. So you get up at 6 .30 a .m. You shower.

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You do breakfast. You got to be in classes usually by 7 .30, 8 o 'clock. You have a lunch break and a dinner break.

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Other than that, you're basically in classes for 10, 12 hours a day. You're learning. You're being taught.

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And then you prepare yourself to go out and to be the most effective missionary that you can be.

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And I think that the Mormon Church does a very good job of preparing these young men and women for this endeavor.

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And I think that actually speaks to one of the things that is common that when a lot of Christians engage with Mormon missionaries, sometimes they're really intimidated, right?

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It can be intimidating because it seems on the surface that they really know their stuff and that they're very well educated in the scriptures.

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And although that may seem the case on the surface, it is a very surface level knowledge. So we were very deliberate about taking the

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Bible passages that seem to support our doctrines in the Mormon Church, right?

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And we knew those really well. And so if someone would quote Ephesians 2, 8, 9, well, we would go straight to James chapter 2, right?

26:40

Faith without works is dead. And so we kind of had a rebuttal biblically for the things that we knew people were going to address.

26:48

No, that's good. So that was something that came to mind was when you got into these role -playing situations, how accurate was the

26:55

Christian devil's advocate kind of a person? Uh, I guess some are better than others.

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It's actually interesting because at the MTC in Provo, they actually hire outsiders.

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I actually had a friend who was a Christian and who had a ministry to Mormons, and she was hired by the

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Mormon Church to go in and to have these discussions with missionaries to be in these role -playing scenarios.

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So it's kind of a cool ministry opportunity, actually, because I think they want it to be, you know, as genuine and as authentic as possible.

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But really, I mean, there was nothing I experienced there that compared to what I experienced in real life when

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I engaged with godly men who really knew the scriptures. I mean, when I sat and met with Pastor Benson and he knew,

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I mean, he was a very well -educated man in the gospel, in the scriptures, and when

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I heard him just communicate the gospel and be able to go to the scriptures with such clarity,

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I had no response to that. I had no rebuttal. And so that was really the first time in my life that the doctrines of what

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I believe were challenged in such a direct way by the scriptures. Wow. Well, thank you for that, because I, so it sparked a couple of comments from our live stream audience here.

28:18

One of them was a question from Trevor. Hi, Trevor. It says, does every Mormon go to the

28:23

MTC and then out into the mission field? Is that the process? It is, yeah.

28:28

To be a full -time two -year missionary, you have to go to the MTC. Wow. And I'm sure,

28:35

I guess some of that changes, too, because you were, originally, you were supposed to go to Mexico, right? So maybe the pushback from,

28:44

I guess, the Christians in Mexico would be a little bit different than the pushback that would come from the

28:50

American Christians, and so your process would change, right? Maybe, maybe.

28:56

Yeah, I don't know. I think that there were kind of, I mean, even when I was in the MTC, I was with a class of guys that were all going to Spanish -speaking missions all over the world, right?

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So we were all being equipped the same, not necessarily where we were going regionally. So we kind of had a generalized training.

29:15

But yeah, it definitely would have been different wherever you go. If I had gone to Mexico like I was originally assigned,

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I certainly would have engaged, probably, with a lot of Catholics. But I got sent to central Florida, which is a very evangelical area, a lot of Southern Baptists and other things.

29:31

Again, when you read the book, you see how God used these changes in my life so deliberately to ultimately bring me to truth.

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And that's what's incredible about God and His love and His pursuit for us is that He finds us where we are.

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And I often think about if I had never experienced the detour of my life, if I had served a

29:54

Mormon mission in Mexico, where would I be right now? And that's certainly a question I cannot answer. But what

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I can say is that there are people and circumstances that I encountered in Orlando, Florida, that God used to change my life forever.

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And I just praise Him for that. Well, Micah, I really appreciate your story, again, because it is something that I think will ultimately bless a lot of people, both inside the

30:23

Mormon faith and outside of it. And we only have a couple of questions left. But before we get into those, talking to you, it reminds me, you know,

30:31

Jesus talks about counting the cost of discipleship, following Him. I was just doing that Bible study this morning with my son.

30:39

But boy, maybe you could spend a minute or two on what happens to people like you who they pursue the truth, but there are repercussions communally, societally, you know.

30:54

I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the consequences of challenging the

30:59

Mormon faith. Yeah. Yeah. So obviously, being born again while a

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Mormon missionary came with its own repercussions, and I won't go into the details of how all of that played out, but I will say that I did come to a crossroads in my life where I had to face the reality of what it meant to be a disciple of Christ.

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And Jesus gives that call, right, to all of His followers. If you want to be My disciple, then deny yourself and take up your cross and follow

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Me, because what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his soul? So at some point as Christians, we have to say, what is our fulfillment?

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What is our satisfaction? What is our purpose? What is our life? Is it the world or is it Christ and is it the gospel?

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And even Jesus' exhortation in the Gospel of Luke is that we take up our cross daily, right? So we're supposed to go through this process of crucifying the flesh daily in order to be servants of the gospel.

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And so I was in a position where following Jesus was going to mean losing my familial relationships, potentially, certainly my friends, my culture, my community, my church, right, my career path and education through Brigham Young University, all these things that were so important to me, right?

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Every aspect and facet of my life was so deeply rooted in my religious identity, and all of that was going to change as a result of the gospel.

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But that's the testimony that I have and that any Christian should have, and that's that we find an infinitely and eternally greater worth in Jesus and that it doesn't matter at what cost it comes to follow

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Christ because in Jesus, we have our everything. And that was something that God just showed me in that moment where I really struggled to find the strength to be a witness for Christ, knowing that this cost was coming.

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And even like John 6, 35, which kind of has really just become the theme verse of my life where Jesus says,

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I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

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And so once I came to realize that Jesus gave me everything that I'd ever been seeking my entire life,

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I knew that nothing else was going to satisfy me in the way that Christ could. And that gave me that strength by the grace of God to take up my cross and to follow

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Jesus and to say it doesn't matter what I lose in this world because I have Christ and therefore

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I will always have everything that I need. And I love what Paul said in Philippians 3 after he kind of boasts of all of his accolades in Judaism, and then he says everything that he once counted as gain, he now counted as loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing

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Christ Jesus is Lord. And that was something that was very powerful for me to hold on to that hope to know that even if it comes to the loss of my own life and in the

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American Christian church, I think that the whole aspect of discipleship is lost on so much of the church because we don't live in a culture and in a society where we have the types of persecution and suffering that many of our brothers and sisters, you know, internationally do who literally have to say,

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I will put my life down for the sake of the gospel, knowing that even losing your own life is worth it for Christ.

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And so I want to believe that I have that hope, you know, that it doesn't matter, you know, whether it's losing a friend or losing a job, losing a family member, or ultimately losing my own life, that through Christ, that we have that strength because he is worth it.

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Wow. Amen. Yeah, I suppose this wasn't just something that came overnight, you know, that this is something that you really did have to wrestle with and count the cost.

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Because the thing is, if I remember the detail or the timeline here, you were the first in your family to challenge everything, is that right?

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Correct. I was the first one to get saved in my family. And you were prepared to lose your relationship with your entire family.

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You were also—were you dating somebody at the time? Like, everybody. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it was my life.

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I did not have a life or an identity outside of my religious one.

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And at some point, as a Mormon missionary who'd become born again, I had to face that reality and accept that reality.

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And my encouragement is, you know, there may be people out there not necessarily coming out of Mormonism, but there are many groups that may cause you to lose the things that you know and love in order to follow

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Jesus, whether it's leaving a particular false denomination, whether it's atheism or Islam or whatever.

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I mean, whatever lifestyle we lose, it can come at a cost. And as we face those things, to hold on to that hope, to know that Jesus is always going to be the only thing that will ever eternally satisfy, and if we have

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Him, then we are fulfilled in Him. And it's a scary thing, but it's—you know,

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I can stand here today and say that I would lose anything a thousand times over for what

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I know that I have in Christ, because I've searched everywhere else. And I've been the most religiously zealous man that you could possibly be.

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I've lived the tenets of the Mormon laws perfectly, and I've never found the satisfaction that I was able to found through Christ and His Word.

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Amen, man. Amen. You could say that 30 times every night, and I'd need to hear it one more time.

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Well, so our audience, Micah, desires to be able to effectively engage with—again, they're

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Mormon friends. They don't want to be disputational for no reason, but they do have a desire and a love and a care for the

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Mormons in their lives. How do you suggest they go about that? What should they do? What things should they avoid?

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What do you think? Yeah, so the first thing—and I'll tell this no matter who you're witnessing to—the core of the gospel and the core of discipleship is love, right?

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So if we're doing anything or our motive and purpose is anything but love for others, then we need to take a step back.

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And the reason why I bring that up is because I've met a lot of Christians that don't approach people in love.

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And I had many Christians approach me as a Mormon missionary in the state of Florida who did not engage with me in love.

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And I'll tell you, it negatively impacted my view of the Christian body.

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But I engaged with people like Pastor Benson who did love me. They were compassionate. They were gentle.

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They were kind. They were respectful. Now, they didn't compromise on truth, and you'll see that very clearly in the book in my conversation with Pastor Benson.

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But he shared truth in love, as we are called to do. And as Paul says in 1

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Corinthians 16, let all that you do be done in love. And of course, in 1 Corinthians 13, he says, you know, if we don't do it in love, then we're just a clinging symbol, right?

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So we have a lot of clinging symbols out there. And so we have to see people as people for whom

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Christ died that God loves and wants to draw into a saving relationship. And we want to, you know, have that heart for them that God can save them in the same way that he saved us.

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And so I think when we have our focus right, all of a sudden, it's not about us winning an argument.

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It's not about us proving how wrong they are or showing them how wrong their doctrines are.

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It's a desire to want to show them truth, right? And reveal the truth of the gospel.

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And so my advice from the very beginning is to do what Pastor Benson did, and that's just remove all the other stuff.

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There's a lot of historical things. There's a lot of bizarre doctrines, right? Strange directions you can go.

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But ultimately, knowing that Joseph Smith, who's the founder of Mormonism, knowing that he is a false prophet is not going to save somebody.

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The gospel is going to save somebody. And so ultimately, they need the gospel message.

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And so we as a ministry, we really emphasize grace. We emphasize the gospel, and we emphasize the word of God.

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And so just some practical pointers that never make presuppositions about what a

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Mormon believes, and that's a mistake we see a lot of people make. And I do it sometimes like, well, you believe this, right?

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And because the Mormon church teaches it, everybody is on a different part of the spectrum as to what their personal experience with God is, right?

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And so we want to draw that out. We want to know where they are and what they need so the Holy Spirit can work with us to guide them to the word of God and point them to truth.

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And so asking questions, right? Engaging with them. One thing that I've noticed is that Mormons will shut down very quickly if it seems like you're trying to preach to them.

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And so generally, they will put up a wall. And so in a roundabout way, make them feel like they're in control.

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And so asking questions is a great way for them to talk about what they believe and why they believe it.

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And once they do that, it then gives you the opportunity as a Christian to open up the word of God and to share with them what you believe and why you believe it.

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But not doing it necessarily in a confrontational way, but in a way that will cause them to begin to investigate.

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And ultimately, my goal in any conversation with any Mormon or any non -believer is that I want to get them into the word of God because the word of God is the greatest and most powerful ministry tool that we will ever have.

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And yet it's one that we omit so often from ministry. And I know what the power of the word of God is.

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I experienced it in my own life. And so just like Pastor Benson looked at me and said, you don't have to trust me.

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Go to the source. That's my encouragement for anybody. Go to the source. Approach it through the eyes of a child.

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Remove whatever preconceived notions you may have about what truth is and allow

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God through His word to reveal His truth to you through the Holy Spirit. And God will do that.

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And I've seen people change. I've seen my family change. I've seen my friends change.

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I've seen people come from backgrounds that you would look at and say, that person's never going to be saved.

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And yet the power of the gospel message can transform and rescue them. And so our ministry,

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Adams Road, on our website, AdamsRoadMinistry .com, we have a ministry tools tab.

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And underneath that tab, there is a page called Ministering to Mormons. And so we've kind of put all of our years of expertise, both the mistakes that we've made and the things that we've learned throughout that decade and a half of ministry, and we've put that into a document that has links, that has information and other things to help equip you as a

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Christian to be able to effectively witness the gospel to the Mormon people. Wow. That is, you are speaking our language,

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Micah, because we have a particular way that we advocate for communicating the gospel, talking about the

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Christian faith, and it trades along the exact same lines as you suggested. So I really appreciate that.

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And the grace aspect, focusing on grace, the gospel message, does stand in stark contrast to,

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I suppose, what we were talking about a few minutes earlier with the notion that you must do all that you can, and then

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Jesus will do the rest kind of a thing for the Mormon. I'm sure it's like water to a parched soul.

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Oh, absolutely. And a lot of Mormons think they understand grace, and so another thing that's important when you're engaging with Mormons is defining terms, right?

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So they will use a lot of Christianese, if you will. They'll talk about grace. They'll talk about salvation.

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They'll talk about atonement, right? I mean, all these things, but they have a different connotation within their belief construct, and so it's very important to define those terms and then to define them biblically, and grace is such an important part because Mormons think they understand grace, but grace to them is very different, right?

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So grace actually, in the Bible dictionary of the Mormon church, grace is the enabling power that God gives us to follow the commandments, right?

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So it's a totally different understanding. It's basically God's grace is I'm giving you strength in order to do the works, and so of course we know that biblical grace is unmerited favor, right?

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It's something that is freely given to us, although we could never earn it or deserve it or be worthy of it, and I think so many

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Mormons, maybe unknowingly so, are hungry for that message of grace.

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It's just they've never been taught it. They don't understand it. I mean, I remember when Pastor Benson communicated this concept of grace to me, and I just couldn't even wrap my head around it because it just didn't make sense to me, right?

43:46

It defied human logic, which was that in order to gain something, I have to earn it, and I have to work for it, right?

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And so it's almost like this natural denying the gospel because it's so simple and it's too simple, and that's actually what's incredible about the gospel is that people reject it because of its simplicity, and so I think that so many

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Mormons are hungry for that idea of grace and forgiveness. I think it's a very important topic and talking point with Mormons, too.

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I think that when I was a Latter -day Saint, I had a burden on me, whether I was willing to admit it or not, but I had a burden of uncertainty, and that uncertainty was, am

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I forgiven, right? Have I done enough? Even in Mormon theology, you have to go through a continual daily process of repentance.

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There are certain sins that if you commit, you cannot be forgiven directly by God. You have to go to your

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Mormon authority. You have to confess those sins, and then they have to give you the process of penitence and back to right standing with God.

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And even once you sin after that, your former sins return, and so you're kind of in this constant state of not knowing if you really stand right with God, and I think that that scares a lot of people.

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They don't have that assurance of the forgiveness of their sins, and I think that that's also another way,

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I think, that you can really get into the heart and mind of a Mormon person and really ask them, do they know that they're forgiven, and if not, would they like to know, and how would you know, and what does the

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Scripture say about how we can know if we're forgiven, and that's an important and I think powerful topic as well.

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– I hope you don't mind me taking an extra minute here, but I mean, just as a follow -up to that, is that something that you have, so again, our audience, they are interested in engaging the

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Mormons in their lives, but that's a little bit different than a Mormon coming to the door that you're not familiar with, you've never seen them, they knock on the door, and then they come in, right?

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So in that dynamic, how much can you get away with when these are strangers?

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How bold should you be, you think? – I think you have to be led by each experience, each circumstance, but the way that I like to approach it is, what if this is the only opportunity they have to hear the gospel?

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And I think about that with Pastor Benson, and I think about, if you wanted to break down our meeting with him, you kind of go, well, he did the shotgun approach, it's not the best, whatever, but honestly,

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I know, even talking to him afterwards, it's like, what if this is the only time these guys hear the gospel?

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I'm not worried about how they respond to the message, I'm worried about the message being planted in them.

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And I think that that's such an incredible approach to, when we have these opportunities, whether it's 30 seconds, whether it's five minutes, or whether it's an hour, is this may be their only opportunity to hear the gospel.

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And so what am I willing to say? How willing am I to remove myself from my comfort zone?

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And even be in a situation that may ultimately create tension in that relationship, knowing that that may be a necessary step of planting the word of God in their hearts.

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And so I do know there's actually ministries out there whose whole purpose is to get

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Christians to invite Mormon missionaries into their home, to develop relationships with them over several weeks and even months, and use that as an opportunity to share the gospel.

47:22

Yeah, excellent stuff. Man, I have like 9 ,000 more questions for you, but we are out of time.

47:28

One more time, so you already mentioned this, but tell us, just on the way out the door, just tell us a little bit more about your ministry,

47:34

Adams Road. So Adams Road was founded 15 years ago by five former Mormons who had been born again through the blood of Christ, and we started a music and testimony ministry.

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And the purpose of our ministry is to communicate the gospel, not only through our stories, but also through music.

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And so we exclusively, we take the Bible, we take the word of God, and we put it to song. We kind of remove all the other

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Christian fluff, and we just take Scripture and put it to music. And so we do that.

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All of our music is free. You can download 10 full -length studio albums from our website,

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AdamsRoadMinistry .com. We have tons of available resources and ministry tools for you there.

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And then we also spend about four to five months out of each year living on a tour bus and out traveling and visiting churches and equipping and encouraging the church for the ministry of the gospel.

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And so we'll actually be on the road this year, starting the middle of June through the middle of October. We'll be all over the

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United States, from all the way up in the Northeast to Vermont, all the way out to California and everywhere in between.

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And so I encourage you to go to our website. You can check out our calendar if we're going to be anywhere in your area. We do free events.

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We'd love to meet you and encourage you with the gospel message. ISKRA, Amen.

48:50

Well, Michael Weiler, it was such a pleasure to have you on. Micah is the author of Passport to Heaven.

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You definitely need to go out and get that book and get like three more for your friends. For more from Micah, check out

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AdamsRoadMinistry .com one more time. Micah, thanks so much for joining us tonight. Thank you for having me.

49:08

Wow, Logan, a lot there. But we'll definitely discuss this in the future. That's all the time that we have on this episode, ladies and gentlemen, but don't fret, we will return soon for more theology, apologetics, and engaging the culture for Christ.