The Manti Mormon Miracle Pageant | Rapp Report Daily Wrap-up 0009 | Striving for Eternity

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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Welcome to the Rap Report, daily edition, where we provide a quick biblical interpretations and applications.

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This is a ministry of striving for eternity. Welcome to the weekly wrap -up of the daily rap reports.

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This week I wanted to give a review of what had happened when I went out to the

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Manti Mormon Miracle Pageant. Explain some of the reasons why I went, what we are looking to accomplish, why we talked about a new book that's available at strivingforeternity .org

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called Sharing the Good News with Mormons, and also, at the end of the week,

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I give a special story. I don't want to give any details of it because it is such a special story.

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I want you to hear it as I told it, but it is something that will give every Christian great joy.

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We sometimes think, we go to these events, we go out and evangelize, and we think no one's listening, and sometimes, just sometimes, it's the person who you never expect or didn't even speak to at an event that ends up hearing the gospel, and something special sometimes happens, and that happened while I was at Manti.

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And you'll get to hear about it if you listen to the rest of the rap report coming now.

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Where was the rap report daily yesterday? Well, to be honest,

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I was out of commission. I'm sorry for missing a day yesterday. We got back from the

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Manti Mormon Miracle Pageant, and I was extremely sick along with three other members of the team and just could not, couldn't even get to church, which is unusual for me.

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So usually I go to church as much as I can every Sunday. It was even at church the

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Sunday after I got married, so I'm not one for missing church. So it was surprising when

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I did, and I was not feeling well and ended up having to miss church and didn't get the daily recorded either.

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But I will say this, we had a great time at the Mormon Miracle Pageant, or actually the

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Manti Miracle Pageant, which is a pageant in Manti, Utah, where they describe the how the

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Book of Mormon came about, supposedly, and how Joseph Smith got it. And what I want to do, at least tomorrow, probably, give some details of what we were doing there, why we go, and more so later this week,

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I'm going to tell you an incredible story of what happened while we were down at Manti.

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You're going to want to keep listening this whole week to hear that story. So make sure you subscribe to The Wrap Report so that you can get that, because you will not want to miss this.

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It was a great account. So because I was out yesterday, we're going to be trying to do a twofer for today, so you'll get two downloads today.

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We'll try to space them out, so you don't get them at the same time. But we'll have a second one on today, because I was sick yesterday, if you heard yesterday.

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You can still hear to my voice. My voice is weak because I was doing a lot of open -air evangelism at the

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Manti Miracle Pageant. That's what I went down there to do. Why would I go to a Mormon pageant, a

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Mormon event, to do open -air evangelism? Well, several reasons that we're going to discuss this week, and I think they're going to find them helpful.

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One reason is because these people, for the majority of them, are deceived.

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Yes, there's some who are deceiving others, but even they are still deceived, and we go down there because we want them to know the truth.

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The question is, what is more important, for us to spend our time sharing with those who do not know and are deceived, or worrying about those that we want to feel more comfortable with?

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Well, I went down there to people who are deceived and think that I am anti -Mormon, when in fact,

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I love the Mormon people. I want them to come to know the truth like anyone else, and that's why I would go down.

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Why was I doing open -air? Well, partially because that was a title I was assigned in a new book called

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Sharing the Gospel with... Sorry, Sharing the Good News with Mormons, and you can get that at the strivingforeternity .org

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store. I'm going to talk more about that in tomorrow's podcast. So, why would

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I do open -air evangelism? Well, like I said, I went down to the Mormon pageant down there in Manti, Utah this year because we were debuting a new book,

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Sharing the Good News with Mormons, and my topic in that book was about open -air evangelism. There's 24 authors to that book, all covering a different way to share the gospel with Mormons.

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We get to go down to Manti and see many of those in effect. My technique, my style of evangelism when

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I go there is to hand out gospel tracts, try to start one -on -one conversations, but I mostly try to do a lot of open -air evangelism, and you can hear my voice is weak because of it, so sorry about that.

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But I do that because I can often get a larger crowd of people who won't stop and talk to people but want to defend their religious beliefs.

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In fact, I encourage them to do that. Their book says they should be preaching to me on the streets, and so I encourage them to do that.

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They think I'm there to protest, and I'm not. I'm there to do exactly what they do when they come knocking on people's doors.

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I go there to share the truth with them because they need to hear it. I understand that I disagree with the

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Mormons. They disagree with me. They think they have a restored gospel, and I somehow have a gospel that fell away, that was corrupted.

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And because of that, it needed Joseph Smith and the Latter -day Saint Church. But the reality is,

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I go down there in open air so I can reach as many people as I can with the gospel. People who won't stop and talk, but still hear the gospel explained and proclaimed.

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So I've been mentioning this week about the Manti Mormon Miracle Pageant, where we had over a hundred

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Christians. Probably this year, it almost seemed like it might have been closer to 200 even, but probably about realistically,

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I would say there were a hundred to a hundred and fifty, at least that I saw, Christians that were at the church in the mornings for the training.

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What we've been doing is, each of the authors, well some of the authors I should say, that shared in the book,

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Sharing the Good News with Mormons, available at strivingforeturning .org on our store. It is a book of 24 different techniques, styles, ways of approaching

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Latter -day Saints, also known as Mormons, with the gospel. Each person giving a different technique, a different style in how they try to go about reaching the lost that are part of the

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Mormon Church. Some are specific to Mormons, like the lifting of gold plates, but what is the meaning of that?

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Well, you really have to understand Mormonism to know that. But others are general, like being able to open air, or hand out tracts, or have things in the newspapers, things like that.

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These are general things, and I think that really, the book Sharing the Good News with Mormons is more about evangelism than it is

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Mormonism. And the nice thing about this is that chapters are all about six pages, 3 ,000 words.

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You can read any chapter completely separate, because they're all written by separate authors. And this book is really neat in just giving people creative ways of reaching the lost.

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Maybe you'd come up with your own ways. Actually at the Manti pageant, we saw people that did come up with their own ways there. Okay, so I promised earlier this week that I would have a special story for you about what happened this week at the

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Manti Mormon Miracle Pageant, and actually, in fact, it didn't even happen in Manti.

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Well, I was in Manti, but the other person wasn't. You see, I posted an innocent, so I thought, post that I was flying to Utah to evangelize

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Mormons, and a Mormon woman contacted me and was very upset that I would think the need to evangelize

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Mormons. In fact, we started dialoguing. I actually at one point thought that this person may be a troll and wanted to unfriend her because I had friended her during the week.

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And I thought about it and chose not to. I chose to keep the dialogue going. In fact, by the time the week was up, she had given up on Mormonism in just three days.

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She realized Mormonism was false because I sent her to mrm .org. That's Mormonism Research Ministry.

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She started reading about what Mormonism teaches and went, oh, I can't believe Mormons think that we could be gods.

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I don't believe that they believe Jesus is Satan's brother. And then she started to realize that she was deceived.

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She said, why don't they teach you these things when you join the church? I was able to get her on the phone with myself and Eric and Bill from MRM.

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And the result is she recognized the church was wrong, but she wasn't ready to believe yet until I was flying home.

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Sunday morning at 1 55 a .m. I got a text message that from her saying that she repented and believed in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, has left Mormonism, has never been so joyful believing in the real

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Jesus. This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.