The LDS Eternal Law of Progression

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Alchemy Ministries began 25 years ago in October of 1983, and the origination of the ministry that I have been the director of for that period of time was my work with Mormons.

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Shortly after my marriage, I was very, very young, I showed Brother Mitch a picture,

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I suppose, I should put it in my presentation. I was, I showed a picture of the night that my wife said she would marry me, we were both 18 years of age.

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I now look at that and go, what a bunch of kids we were. But I was skinny and had hair, right

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Mitch? Was I skinny and had hair? And he would not lie, because he's an officer, so. And very shortly after our marriage, two more missionaries showed up at my sister -in -law's home.

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My wife is an identical twin, so these two missionaries were very interested in this very pretty little blonde thing, and so she asked me to come over.

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I met them on the following Thursday. That was the genesis of everything that has happened since then.

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During those two days, I read three or four books on the subject of Mormonism from a Christian perspective.

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I developed an insatiable thirst for more and more information.

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I was convicted after meeting with those missionaries for about five hours total that I did not know enough about what

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I believed, and I certainly did not know enough about what they believed, to communicate the gospel effectively to them.

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And so that began the study that eventually resulted in, I see a copy down right down here, in my first book on Mormonism, it's called

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Letters to a Mormon Elder. Those of you who buy that book, by the way, the picture on the front is my wife.

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In fact, I designed that entire book cover. I designed it personally.

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Those are all things related to Mormon missionaries. Those are the tracks they had back in the 1980s, and there's even a little thing that the missionaries used to clip their pant leg so it doesn't get caught in their chain.

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I mean, it's very, very realistic. I've had a lot of fun with Mormon missionaries. I've had missionaries fight over that book as to who got to keep it after I went through what was on the cover and stuff, because they found it respectful to them that it actually represented probably what their work would look like back at their apartments, so you know, their girlfriend's picture and stuff like that.

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So anyway, that's what eventually led to Letters to a Mormon Elder, another book I wrote called It's Mormon, My Brother.

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We began going up to Salt Lake City. For 18 years, every six months, we were in Salt Lake City passing out literature and witnessing to Mormons in Salt Lake.

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The only reason we had stopped doing that is not because the Mormons stopped us. The King James only fundamentalist Baptists stopped us.

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They began showing up with big old signs, dressed in shorts, and things like that, and their idea of street preaching is, and I've listened to a man do this the first year they're up there, is to have a whole line of Mormons well -dressed going into the general conference, and the stand they were to sign has almost nothing to do with Mormonism whatsoever, yelling at them, it shouldn't be

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Mormon, it should be moron! And that's what they think. Preaching is totally destroying any opportunity you would have to witness

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David up there, because the Mormons aren't going to differentiate between us and them. And so that's what ended up at the end of that outreach.

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But for 18 years, we went up there during the general conference and passed out tracts. I met people years later who were converted because of that effort and people who were kept out of Mormonism because of that effort as well.

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We also would go out to Mesa, Arizona, starting in 1984, the

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Mesa Easter Pageant. Six nights, sometimes even longer depending on what year it was, and distribute literature there for many, many years.

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But again, we stopped doing that because the same people showed up and destroyed that opportunity of outreach.

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But during that time, obviously I had the opportunity of witnessing to literally thousands of Mormon people,

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Mormon missionaries and others. And we even had the opportunity of doing debates in Salt Lake City. A number of those are available on our website.

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And it's just, really, this was the origination. It was from Mormonism I began studying Jehovah's Witnesses, from that Roman Catholicism, from that Islam, and that was all part of my studies in Bible College and seminary as well.

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But it began with two Mormon missionaries, Elders Reed and Reitz, who I really don't think to this day have any idea what they started.

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That's in that October of 1982, this began.

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And so what I present to you today is, given the amount of time I have, as much as I can give to you, it is also a revelation of the fact that most of you already know that I'm a geek, a recent convert to Matt, for example.

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But some of my earliest recollections of the child was watching, because it was still on the air, something called

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Star Trek. And yes, I do know Star Trek very well. And if you know

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Star Trek, you know that they had a little bit of a problem. If you're flying through space and running into all these alien species, why do they all speak

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English? And if they don't speak English, your dialogue is going to suffer greatly in your episodes.

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And so very early on, they introduced a gadget called the Universal Translator.

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And the Universal Translator is just always online in the later Star Trek stuff. And so the guy that appears on the screen, who's a

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Romulan or a Klingon or whatever, all of a sudden speaks a very good English, because the computer is converting it for you.

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Of course, the fact that his lips are still moving in English is a little bit of a problem. But hey, let's just live with fantasy. The Universal Translator idea is really what

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I want to give to you today. After we have some introductory material here, I'm going to give you a graphic.

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And the graphic is my attempt to provide you with a universal translator for Mormons.

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What I mean by that is exactly what I said yesterday when I addressed the subject of Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, but it's much more the case with Mormons.

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We have a language problem. We use the exact same words, but we go to different dictionaries to define what the words mean.

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So as a result, in 99 % of the encounters, we're saying one thing, the

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Mormon says, sounds great to me. We're actually not communicating at all. You go through about an hour of that and then realize that you haven't been getting anywhere at all.

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And it's extremely frustrating. Most Christians will report to me, yeah, you know, I saw those two young missionaries and I went ahead and I decided to try to talk to them, try to witness to them.

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And lo and behold, we talk and we talk and we talk and I think I'm getting somewhere and all of a sudden I realize that we're using words differently.

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It's so frustrating. So we talk about this subject and that subject and we ended up covering the whole landscape and not really accomplishing anything in the process.

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That is the general complaint of Christians. If you can get down what

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I'm going to present to you as the core of LDS theology, it will allow you to do the translation.

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It will allow you to understand when the Mormon uses the term Son of God, when the

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Mormon speaks of Latter -day Revelation or salvation, you'll be able to understand what they understand that to mean so that you can clarify your words so they can understand what they're saying.

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Otherwise, no communication is going to take place. Now let me just mention something that is becoming more and more of an issue.

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Mormonism is changing. Mormonism is changing. The current leadership, there's a new leader in Salt Lake City.

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Gordon Hinckley passed away a few months ago and the LDS Church has in essence lost its way.

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I've watched this take place. When I first started witnessing Mormons in the early 1980s, when

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I went out to the Mesa Easter pageant the first time, I put my brand new bride on the back of a Kawasaki 440 and drove all the way out to Mesa to find out what was going on out there.

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Those Mormons I talked to knew what they believed. I did not have to drag a library with me on my back to convince

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Mormons about what Mormons believe. That is not the case anymore. Even the young people back then knew they believed in the plurality of gods.

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They knew they did not believe in the Trinity. They knew that, for example, I remember young kids this tall criticizing me if I had like a cross lapel pin or something like that because you'll notice

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Mormon churches don't have crosses on them. They consider that an instrument of torture. Atonement actually takes place in the

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Garden of Gethsemane. It's only finished on the cross. And even the young kids knew that.

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Today you go out to those things and you talk to Mormons, you better be carrying not only the

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Book of Mormon, Dr. Carlos Poterich writes the King James Version of the Bible, the Four Standard Works, but you better have a theological library on your handheld to be able to document that what you're saying is the case because the level of knowledge of the average

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Mormon has dropped significantly in the 25 years or more that I've been dealing with this subject.

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Part of that reason is that when I first started studying Mormonism, there was only about three to three and a half million Mormons. Now there's over 12.

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And let's just say to use our terminology, their catechesis system has not kept up.

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But there's also been simply a change in the leadership of the church. Up until about the 1960s and 70s,

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Mormons didn't even bother to try to call themselves Christians. They wanted to be differentiated. They were very clear in saying that they were the only true church.

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They passed out Joseph Smith's testimony where he said that there's only two churches, the church, the lamb, the church, and the devil.

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That's in the Book of Mormon. And where he sees God the Father and Jesus Christ, a separate distinct physical person of his, and he asks which church he should join.

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He's told him he should join none of them. They're all corrupt and they're a creature of abomination before God. That was the first thing that the

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Mormon missionaries talked to you about back in those days. That is not the first thing Mormon missionaries talk to you about today.

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And so there are changes. And unlike Jehovah's Witnesses where you can say this is exactly what they're going to believe.

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They're going to walk lockstep. There is a much wider range of LDS belief today than there was only 20 or 30 years ago.

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And so you have to be able to listen to the Mormons to find out where they're coming from. Find out if they're the old style

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Orthodox Mormon or if they're more of a cultural Mormon. I mean especially up in Utah.

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There are still, southern Utah, most of the little cities in southern Utah are still 98 percent Mormon.

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But when you have a 98 percentile membership of that church, you've got a bunch of nominal

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Mormons there. They're just Mormon because that's what they were born to be. They don't have enough passion about it to fill the thimble.

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So there's all sorts of different kind of Mormons that you're going to be encountering. What I'm giving to you is the

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Orthodox leadership's position. Now whether they can change that, remember the

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Mormons do believe in something called Latter -day Revelation. And so the problem is the more, the longer they exist, the less

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Latter -day Revelation comes out. I don't actually ever expect to see anything called

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Revelation any longer coming from any of these prophets. At least it'll end up in the canon scripture anyways. Even the revelation that gave the priesthood of the blacks in 1978 is just put in as sort of an announcement in their canon scripture.

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It's not made in the next section of what's called the Doctrine and Covenants, so there are changes.

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What I'm giving to you is the Orthodox perspective. Be aware of the fact there might be Mormons who just simply are not aware of everything that their church has taught.

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I want to start off with a series of quotations from a book called Achieving a

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Celestial Marriage, a student manual. Copyright 1992. 1992 is not exactly 70 million years ago, so this is fairly up -to -date.

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This is no longer the manual they use, they stopped using this around 2001 or 2002, but it's still representative of the theology of the

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LDS church. This was, to be married to the temple is the pinnacle of being a

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Mormon. And so before you are married to the temple, you must go through various classes, marriage counseling classes, read various books.

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And so this is, notice pages 4 through 5, that means this is right up front, it's not buried in the appendix of some books.

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You could buy this book at the LDS bookstore for many, many years. And notice it's copyrighted by the corporation of the president of the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. This is what the Mormon church leadership produces for the teaching of its own people.

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This isn't an anti -Mormon, quote -unquote, talking about Mormonism. This is the

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Mormon leadership teaching its best people, before they go to the temple, their theology.

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And so it is about as official and clear as you can possibly get on that level.

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On pages 4 through 5, we read, God was once a man who, by obedience, advanced to his present state of perfection.

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Through obedience and celestial marriage, we may progress to the point where we become like God.

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

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Elder B .H. Roberts stated, man has descended from God. In fact, he is the same race as the gods.

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His descent has not been from a lower form of life, but from the highest form of life. In other words, man is, in the most literal sense, a child of God.

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This is not only true of the spirit of man, but of his body also. Can you see the implications of these two statements, as they relate to you and to your eternal destiny?

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Elder James E. Talmadge did. He declared, in his mortal condition, man is God in embryo.

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However, any individual, now immortal being, may attain the rank and sanctity of godship.

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Articles of Faith, page 529. Articles of Faith is almost quasi -canonical. It's not, but generation after generation of LDS missionaries, when they go out, are given a certain set of books, and Articles of Faith is one of the key books that they are given by Talmadge.

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How is this possible? What course of action will bring this potential to fruition? As you study this lesson, look for the answers to these questions.

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Points to ponder. God became God by obedience to law.

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Please hear that. God became God by obedience to law.

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It was late afternoon as we sat in my office when I felt the time had been well spent. He sat silently now, obviously contemplating the ramifications of the things we had been discussing.

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We had talked of God and how he had become God, and of what that meant in terms of our own exaltation.

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Finally, he spoke. Now, what I've done is I've put in yellow and italics the words of the young Mormon, and then in the regular white text the words of the

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Mormon leader, the more mature Mormon. What is this law of exaltation of which you keep speaking?

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Well, it involves the whole of the gospel law. Everything required of us by God is associated with this law, but the major crowning point of the law, which man must obey, is eternal marriage.

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Therein lies the keys of eternal life, or, as the Doctrine and Covenants puts it, eternal lives.

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In other words, an eternal increase of posterity. Stop right there.

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Here you have your first example of the need for the universal translator. We have a certain meaning to the phrase eternal life.

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Here you see that in Mormon thinking. Eternal life becomes eternal lives, and what they're making reference here, literally, is to a

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Mormon man after he is resurrected. He is married to his wives in this life, and then he takes his wives.

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He was sealed to many women. I think Joseph Smith was sealed over 250 after his death. You take those women with you.

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You are resurrected in the body of flesh and bone, but no blood. I'm not quite sure how that works, but we'll get into that later.

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You engage in natural marital relations with your wife. She, though a physical being, bears spirit children.

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Not sure how that works, but that's the idea, and the idea of eternal lives is that an exalted man has the ability of procreation in the next life.

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That means the God of this world procreated all of us spiritual, literally billions of spiritual, in a spiritual pre -existence, and so you thought eternal life meant one thing, but the

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Mormon hears you saying something completely different. That's what I mean when I say you need to have a universal translator, and if I could help wake you up on a

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Saturday morning. This is the most polytheistic religion that I know of.

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Most Mormons who know their faith know that, in essence, the only way to defend their view of God is to believe that there is literally, unlimited, infinite number of divine beings.

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An infinite number. An infinite number of universes populated by these divine beings.

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It is the most polytheistic religion I know of, and since the most definitional level of what a religion is, is whether you believe that there is one true and eternal

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God, the creator of all things, or whether you reject that, then may I submit to you that on that level,

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Islam is significantly closer to Christianity than Mormonism is. Islam is much closer to Christianity than Mormonism is.

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We will see that as we continue on. Okay, then what you're saying is that God became

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God by obedience to the gospel program which culminates in eternal marriage.

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Then the subtitle is, through obedience to law, we can become like our father in heaven. The mature

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Mormon says, yes, do you realize the implications of this doctrine as far as you are concerned? I think so.

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If God became God by obedience to all of the gospel law, all the

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Lutherans in the audience are going, at that point, with the crowning point being the celestial law of marriage, then that's the only way

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I can become a God. Right, it is the law that assists us in reaching that potential.

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It tells us what we must do to gain the ultimate freedom. In fact, it is by obedience to law that we have progressed to our present position.

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You mean we have always been governed by law? This next paragraph is one of the most important paragraphs

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I've ever found in LDS literature. Always, you are an eternal being.

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You were never created, and you cannot be destroyed.

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But you can advance, progress, and develop by obedience. Do you hear that?

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That's what Mormons believe. You are an eternal being. God is just like you are.

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You are the same species as God. God is just more advanced than you are. He is farther down the road of exaltation, but you'll get there yourself as long as you follow the gospel program.

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God was once a man who lived on a planet just like you and I. He advanced in the position of being God. There are many gods before him.

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There will be many gods after him. We are all the same species as God. You are an eternal being. You were never created, and you cannot be destroyed.

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That is the most fundamental denial of the Christian faith I've ever heard. All of Christian theism, everything

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Christians ever believed, is denied in those words. That's exactly what Joseph Smith said in the King Paul funeral discourse.

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He said, we have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will rebuke that idea and take away the veil so that you may see.

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He died very shortly after that. But in those words, he forever separated his followers from anything remotely like biblical

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Christianity. And the Christians today who are trying to bring Mormons a little bit closer and a little bit closer and a little bit closer to the truth don't understand that the apostolic example is you identify idolatry as idolatry.

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You call for repentance for idolatry, and you call men to worship the one true God. You don't try to get one generation a little less idolatrous than the preceding one.

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That's not the apostolic way. So remember those words. We continue with one of the lamest paragraphs in LDS literature.

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Then Hamlet's question, to be or not to be, is not the question. Obviously a frustrated English major was forced to write this particular part.

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Right, not in the ultimate sense at least. Order means law, and that law is the law of the celestial kingdom.

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Any who come out of that kingdom must obey that law. See Doctrine and Covenants 88, 24 through 29.

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But I thought God would have meant freedom. If I have to do things to become

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God, am I really free? You have got it wrong. It was the Savior who said, if ye continue in my word.

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Check out this exegesis. You want an exegesis? If you continue in my word, that is obey the law.

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Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Didn't we preach about that one? So by obedience to law, we learn truths by which we become free, but not free from the law.

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Can you see that? I think so. I can be a God only if I act like God.

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Exactly right. Can you imagine this day in the universe? If imperfect gods were allowed to spawn their imperfections throughout space, if beings who did not have law under their subjection were free to create worlds,

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I guess that would be pretty disastrous. But I'm not sure I see why celestial marriage becomes the crowning apex of this progression.

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Marriage doesn't seem directly related to the creation of the universes. Did you notice that? Universes. Plural.

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Not universe. Universes. Oh, but don't be limited by your moral perspective.

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God himself has declared his own reasons for existing. You want to know what God's reasons for existing is?

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Check this out now. Remember, he said, for this is my work and my glory. I see his purpose is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

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There's God's purpose, and it's defined by man. But when your God is an exalted man, then some of you are looking at me going, you have got to be kidding me.

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I am not kidding. I ain't making this stuff up. You can check it out for yourself. This is the look that I get from many groups.

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Which involves giving birth to spirit children and sending them on the road of exaltation. If that is to be done, you must have an exalted man and an exalted woman.

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By the way, you can go into the LDS ward chapel today here in the city of Anchorage, and it might take you a few minutes now since it's been a few years, but I could find you the hymn in their hymnal that specifically has a verse that talks about our heavenly exalted man and woman who have been joined together in eternal marriage.

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If this man and woman were obedient to all gospel laws except celestial marriage, what would be the result?

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They still could not be gods. Now I understand celestial marriage is the crowning ordinance of the gospel.

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Right, I said with a smile. With that comment, I think we can conclude.

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You need to close your mouths otherwise we get in. Here is what

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I call the universal translator. This is not an

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Amway presentation in case you're concerned. It looks a little bit like one, but it isn't.

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This is the core. If it's,

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I hope it's large enough you'll be able to see most of it when we take a look at it here. So it's fairly clear.

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I actually whipped this thing together years ago before making a presentation at my son's

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Christian school, and that's why some of the words are underlined, because it was a straight screen save from Word that became a graphic and it's just worked all these years, so someday

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I'll clean it up and make it even prettier, but this is called the eternal law of progression. Now, old and morbid sort of called it the law of eternal progression.

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That's an issue that is still in flux and will probably always be in flux in Mormonism. Is God still progressing?

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There have been many Mormon prophets who said he was. The modern perspective is generally that he is not.

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The problem is if he's not, the whole scheme sort of starts to fall apart. The idea, clearly in Joseph Smith's idea, was it was sort of like a train, and if you've got the engine up here, then you've got all those boxcars, and the train has to move forward, and if you're toward the end, the only way you can get to where you're going is the people in front of you get where they're going.

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That's why Mormons are still into genealogy, doing temple work for the dead, is because they need to get their ancestors exalted before they themselves can become exalted.

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But if God isn't progressing, then it's almost like the train eventually gets to a place where you just start taking all the cars off, and then it's a whole different ballgame in essence.

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This graphic gives you the central core of Mormon theology. I don't have time this morning to talk to you about the entire range of Eliot's theology, because we could do...

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I used to teach a class in the church I was at that was 13 weeks long just on Mormonism, and we could talk about the

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Book of Mormon. We could talk about the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and the Book of Abraham, and temple ceremonies, and priesthoods, and false prophecies of Joseph Smith, and our theology in the

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Book of Mormon, and Mesoamerican Indians, and everything else. It is a huge, huge subject.

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And a lot of Christians almost just give up, because there is so much information to try to master.

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I know I was quite discouraged at times as I began this, because I did not have anyone to direct me in this study.

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I started going to the LDS bookstore as I would read Christian books. I'd see these certain books were referenced. I'd go in the

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LDS bookstore. Do you have such and such a book? And I remember very clearly going to this one

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LDS bookstore. I was poor as a church mouse. I mean, I was a college student. I'd count a couple of these books, and my new little wife would look at me like I had just completely lost my mind.

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And the little lady at the Mormon bookstore, every time I'd write a check for a book, she'd go, what's your word number?

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I remember the first time she asked me that. I was like, word? Do I make one up?

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All 713? I don't know. But I was honest and said,

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I'm not a Mormon. Well, that's fine. I'll take your check card, but you keep reading these books, and you will be soon.

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So anyways, I'd be reading these books, and I'd be marking this stuff, and I'd go, wow, how am

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I going to remember all this stuff? You know the best way to get this stuff in your long -term memory?

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Witness to Mormons. Let me tell you something. When you're in a conversation with four or five missionaries at one time on the street corner, you do not have time to be using the 28th book of the

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Testament called Importance to be looking up verses. When I first met those two more missionaries,

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I had 169 verses memorized. I had a whole sheet, so I knew exactly. And in six months,

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I had 654 verses, because I was witnessing these guys. And if you know the word, and then you know their stuff, you control the conversation, and you're able to get your message across.

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So what I've done here is I've given you the core of Mormonism. This will allow you to understand the heart, and therefore, when you hear certain words, you'll understand how they're being defined within Mormonism.

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I can't cover everything, but this will at least give you, hopefully, a basis, a ground upon which to have some confidence in understanding what it is the

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Mormons believe, and how you can speak to them. So what we're going to do is we're going to break this graphic up into parts.

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We're going to start up here in the... This is meant to be somewhat of a circle, because you'll notice that with the second little box up there, it says,

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Spirit Children. But up in the right -hand corner is another box that says, Spirit Children.

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That's where the circle connects. But as with any circle, to get into it, you've got to jump in at some point.

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So this is the point we're going to jump in at, is up here in this upper left -hand corner. Here it is a little bit larger.

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The first thing we have here are intelligences and matter. God is not eternal in Mormonism.

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Intelligences are eternal. Matter is eternal. God is not. Mormonism has a real tough cosmology in trying to explain what

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Joseph Smith plainly taught on these issues, and what the early Mormons plainly taught on these issues. Now, some

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Mormons don't believe in intelligences, but the vast majority do. What's an intelligence? It's not a spirit.

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It's basically a disembodied mind, I guess you might call it. And there are literally an unlimited number of intelligences.

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Matter, likewise, is eternal, but there's different kinds of matter. Mormonism has a very odd view that even spiritual beings are made of super -refined matter.

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So angels and spirits are still material beings, but their material is so refined that it's not visible to the physical eye, in essence, is the idea.

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Now, how you get from intelligences and matters to spirit children, for a moment you're just going to have to trust me on. This is a circle, and it will be explained at the end, but like I said, we've got to start someplace.

31:52

This seems to be the most logical place to start. Spirit children are born to celestial parents.

31:58

Celestial parents are individuals who've gone through all this process and become exalted as gods. And we, according to Mormonism, all existed as spirit children in a heavenly pre -existence before we came here to earth.

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Literally, we are brothers and sisters in the most specific sense of all having the same heavenly father.

32:22

However, we would not necessarily have the same heavenly mother because God is a polygamous. And God, the father of this world, is an exalted man by the name of Elohim.

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Elohim is the Hebrew term for God or God's, if it's used in a singular verb, it's God, a plural verb, it's

32:38

God's. And so Elohim has once again lived on another planet. He's been exalted to the status of God, and he engages in marital relations with his wives, and the result are spirit children.

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That's where we came from. We all existed as spirit children in a heavenly pre -existence.

32:57

Now, outside of formal Mormon theology, there's a lot of Mormon mythology, and it's very, very common.

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For Mormons who, for example, are particularly close to one another, say two Mormon women who just get along like sisters, or two

33:11

Mormon men who are like brothers, they will say, I bet we have the same heavenly mother.

33:17

I bet we're full spiritual brothers and sisters, and that's what is going on.

33:26

So, you'll see there's an arrow coming down from spirit children, and so we'll go to this section now of the graphic, and there is the spirit children.

33:36

And from the spiritual realm, there's a big red arrow that goes down to the mortal probation.

33:42

Mortal probation. That's where we are now. We are in mortal probation. Why we don't remember the spiritual pre -existence has often been a matter of speculation on the part of LDS people.

33:57

In general, the idea is that God takes away our recollection of our spiritual pre -existence so that we can be properly tested as to whether we'll be faithful enough to return back into his presence.

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The older theory that Mormon women developed back in the 1800s was that spirit children in Mormonism are born as little babies, and they have spirit hair, and spirit teeth, and probably spirit spit up, and spirit diapers.

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Because remember, their main spirit is matter. It's just a refined form of matter.

34:32

And so you're born small, and then you grow, just like we grow today, until you become a full -grown person in the spiritual realm.

34:43

Well, the theory was, amongst Mormon women, that it was the shock of taking a full -grown spirit and squishing it into a baby that caused the spirit to lose its memory of its pre -existence.

34:55

And you're giving me that look again. I'm not. Make this up. Trust me, this is the idea that is very, very popular amongst

35:05

LDS women. So with the entering, this is the mortal probation.

35:12

All of us are children of the Heavenly Father. And Mormons have very large families.

35:20

One of the reasons they have large families is because they're trying to make bodies to contain all the spirits so that all the children of Elohim can have the opportunity of entering the mortal probation.

35:31

You've got to go through this process to gain exaltation. You don't go through this process and you're stuck. You can't become a god.

35:39

You can't become the great person that you are supposed to be able to become. And so that's the reason that they have the size families that they do, is to provide all of these bodies for all these pre -existent spirit children.

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And I've had a few Mormons, highly -placed Mormons, tell me that God has tens of billions of spirit children.

36:03

So I might be going for a while to be able to get all of them down. Now there is a thin purple line leaving mortal probation going up to paradise, marked with an

36:16

A and a B. This is the Mormon way of salvation, directly the

36:23

Mormon way of salvation. This is the small number. I mean even with 12 million members today, 12 million out of 6 billion is a fairly small number obviously.

36:32

And even the Mormons would not tell you that all 12 million of their number are going this direction. This is the faithful Mormon who goes this direction.

36:42

And the A and the B refers to the method of salvation, the gospel.

36:49

A refers to what's called the four fundamentals of the faith. Four fundamentals of the faith.

36:55

And they are faith, repentance, baptism, and laying on of hands. Faith, repentance, baptism, and laying on of hands.

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Now immediately our tendency is to read those words and to interpret them within our context.

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So we're talking about faith in God, and repentance for our sin, and baptism, and I guess laying on of hands for something.

37:21

But again, this must be interpreted within the context of a religion that's polytheistic.

37:28

And so it's going to have different meanings. Faith, yeah, but remember their anthropology, their view of man is that we are gods in embryo.

37:38

There is no such thing as total cravity. There is no such thing as we would have in regards to man being the pot and God is the potter.

37:50

And so the meaning of faith and the meaning of repentance is substantially different.

37:57

There is no holy God. Remember, God the Father. There are some Mormons who think

38:03

God the Father, Elohim, was the savior figure on his planet like Jesus was for ours.

38:10

But that's not the official teaching. That's just speculation. There is no official teaching on whether he was or wasn't.

38:17

But you see, if you have a Mormon man today who has lived a faithful life and he dies and is exalted and he goes and organizes his own planet, what was he before he was a god?

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He was a fallen man. And as far as we can tell, there were early

38:32

LDS teachers who taught Elohim himself was once a sinner. He was a fallen man just like you and I.

38:38

And so think about what that does to your view of sin. How can God be a holy

38:44

God whose wrath burns at the sin of man when, well, I was there too, did the same thing, had the same feelings?

38:53

That becomes a major, major problem. Baptism. Yes, baptism by immersion, but it is baptism only by someone who holds at least the

39:05

Aaronic priesthood. Generally, it's the Melchizedek priesthood that the person holds when they engage in baptism.

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So a baptism in any other context, not just because of form but primarily due to alleged priesthood authority, is a very different thing.

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The only baptism that is valid before God is a baptism that is performed by the LDS church.

39:27

And then the laying on of hands, again, is related to the priesthood. This time, only the Melchizedek priesthood can lay on the hands the reception of the

39:34

Holy Ghost. And I'm making that specific distinction because Mormons do distinguish between the

39:40

Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost. And so these four fundamentals, absolutely necessary to enter into the celestial kingdom.

39:49

Without this, you can't enter the celestial kingdom, which is why

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Mormons have temples and do ordinances for the dead, as we will see in just a few moments.

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But there's also the letter B. That's the basic, that's the bottom level.

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B is continued obedience to gospel rules and principles. Continued obedience to gospel rules and principles.

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What might that include? Well, obviously, chastity and not committing adultery and things like that.

40:19

But then there's also the other rules that used to be the word of wisdom. And some people still follow it. It's certainly not followed the way it once was.

40:27

But Mormons used to abstain from caffeine and hot drinks and meat on certain days.

40:33

But that's pretty much gone on the wayside in most places. But there are still a few who follow after that.

40:41

But there's also, to become exalted, you have to go through the temple. To get into the temple, you have what's called a temple recommend.

40:49

To get a temple recommend, you go through a personal interview with your bishop. And some of those bishops ask very, very direct questions.

40:56

I think it's become less prominent in recent years. But back when I first started studying

41:02

Mormonism, there were many bishops who would require you to bring your tax forms to make sure that you had tithed on your gross and not your net.

41:14

Or you would not get a temple recommend. Some of the passion is going. So anyway, these are the various things that you have to do to prove your worthiness and continue to be obedient to gospel rules and principles.

41:34

As the Book of Mormon itself says in Moroni 10 .32, If you will rid yourself of all ingottenance, and if you will love the

41:40

Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, then is the grace of Christ sufficient for you.

41:47

Do you hear me? If you will rid yourself of all ingottenance, and if you will love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, then is the grace of Christ. Friends, if you can rid yourself of all ingottenance and love

42:03

God perfectly without the grace of Christ, then why in the world do you need it in the first place? As 2

42:10

Nephi 25 .23 says, it is by grace we're saved after all we can do.

42:19

Yeah, some of you are going, you're making this up. I am not. I assure you, you're making all of this up.

42:25

Now, we go back to our thing here, and we'll go back to paradise and things like that, but let's look at what happens to non -Mormons.

42:35

Here's the non -Mormon section. The non -Mormons come down from the board of probation into what's called the spirit prison, and they generally try to at least defend this by reference to Tartarus in 2

42:50

Peter, but remember, Mormonism does not have to derive its beliefs from the

42:55

Bible at all. It has the Book of Mormon, Dr. Peter's program, Christ, and it has prophets and apostles. It has men that they believe are just as much apostles as Paul ever was, and so the idea of sola scriptura to them is rather abhorrent in that sense, and so the spirit prison is where everybody goes with only the exception of the faithful Mormons who, at resurrection, go directly to paradise.

43:25

Now, we've got to give the Mormons one bit of credit. They are a missionary people.

43:33

They have missionaries in the field all the time. You've probably seen those two young men up here in Anchorage.

43:39

I doubt they do it as much as they do in other places, but riding along the road on their tent speeds up here, they'd probably use cars most of the time because they would turn into missionary sickles in most of your winters, but you see them going along.

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These are 19, 20 -year -old men foregoing going to college, putting it off for two years to do their service to the church.

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They are not supported by the church. They are supported by their families, and they are out there for two years.

44:11

For a while, they tried an 18 -month mission thing. It failed spectacularly, and they went back to the two -year mission, which is what they continue to do today.

44:20

They have about 50 ,000 missionaries out there at any one time. Most of them are trained at the

44:25

Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah on the campus of Brigham Young University. I know that because I wandered in there once during lunch.

44:31

It was very interesting. It was like a JCPenney fashion show, white shirts and black pants and black ties everywhere.

44:38

It was really incredible, and of course, after starting a conversation with about a dozen of them, we were ushered off the police.

44:45

Anyway, that's another story we could tell at the time. They are missionary people, and Mormons don't even stop going on missions when they die, because what happens is faithful Mormons up in paradise come down to the spirit prison and proclaim the gospel to the people in the spirit prison.

45:08

If you accept the gospel, and I'm not sure about you, but if I'm stuck in a spirit prison, and these other folks can come and leave as they will,

45:17

I'm not sure why I wouldn't accept their message. But only a certain number of people even accept their message in the spirit prison.

45:25

How do you get out of spirit prison? Well, what's the only way in the celestial kingdom? You've got to have the four fundamentals.

45:33

One of the four fundamentals of the gospel, faith, repentance. Spirit's going to do the faith, repentance part.

45:38

Have you ever tried to baptize the spirit by immersion in water? Very difficult for you.

45:45

Laying out of hand, just keep going straight through, just doesn't work. And so, you think

45:50

I'm joking. So, that is why Mormons do endowments for the dead.

45:57

When you see Mormons going into those temples, not the ward chaps, but the temples.

46:03

You have a new temple, right? Last time I was here, they took me by there. You have a new temple in the air.

46:10

When you see those Mormons going in there with a little case with them, they have the temple garments with them, and unless they're doing their endowments the first time for themselves, they're going there to either be baptized or go to the temple endowment ceremony on behalf of the dead.

46:26

They've done their genealogical research. The Mormons own every genealogical library in the world.

46:32

If you go on myfamily .com or ancestry .com, it's all LDS. They bought everybody else.

46:38

They've digitized all of it. You're doing any type of research in your family at all, you're supporting

46:44

Mormons, which is, I'm not saying that's wrong. I did it myself because I wanted to try to trace. They bought everybody's libraries.

46:50

There's no other way to do it. And the reason they did it is because of this idea of getting all of your ancestors into heaven.

46:58

That's your responsibility. And so, you're doing your genealogical work, and generally what you do is you come in with about 50 names, and now it's all computerized.

47:08

It's really slick. I visited the Manhattan Temple when it opened. It's one of only two temples in the world that's not a freestanding building.

47:16

It's in another building, which of course in Manhattan they sort of forced to do that. But I remember going through the baptism room, and I saw the network cable connections for where the computer was going to go.

47:29

Because they literally put your temple record in and everything else on a card, and so you hand it to the attendant, he puts it in the thing, the screen comes up, and then he reads off the names as you're baptized each time, normally 50 times in a session, in behalf of the people you're being baptized for.

47:48

Then you go to another room, there's another group of elders, plug it into the computer again, you have a hand upon your head, you see the

47:54

Holy Spirit, the name of the beloved who is dead, lift up the hands, go back down, 50 times. 50 times.

48:00

You're looking at me again with that look, stop. I don't make these things up. I remember after the tour was over, the missionary who led us on the tour came over to talk to us, and I started letting him know how much

48:12

I knew about Mormonism, and especially about the temple in certain ways, which are considered to be sacred and secret.

48:18

But I was amazed how much he was willing to share with me that particular context, because I already knew what it was.

48:25

But I was taking a friend with me, and I sort of pointed at the floor, and so then later

48:31

I was saying, when the missionary was in, that's where the computer goes, and yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.

48:36

You could tell he was a little freaked out that a non -Mormon was telling him what was actually going on in the temple, but anyway, it's a fascinating thing to see.

48:44

And so what they do then is they are baptized in the place of these individuals.

48:50

So if you're in the spirit prison, you've had faith independently, no one on earth has been baptized for you yet, you're still stuck in the spirit prison, because you've got to have the four fundamentals to get into the

49:00

Son of God's kingdom. But once someone is baptized for you, and have hands laid upon their head, and you see the

49:06

Holy Spirit in your name, Holy Ghost in your name, then via baptism of the dead, you see the green arrow, via baptism of the dead, you can get out of the spirit prison and go up into paradise.

49:18

But you'll notice the arrows the blue arrow is larger, it goes to the bottom two levels of glory.

49:26

The bottom two levels of glory are the telestial and the terrestrial kingdoms. In Mormonism there are three levels of glory, celestial, terrestrial, and telestial.

49:36

Now you'll notice that you have to cross the green bar of resurrection at that point. So when the resurrection day comes, judgment comes, those who are in the spirit prison, who for some reason have not accepted the gospel preached to them by the

49:52

LDS missionaries in the spirit prison, will be judged according to their works. Now I've had some nice Mormons tell me that because I'm a good man, and I'm moral, and I've been married, and I have children, and I don't beat my dog and my cat, and so on and so forth, and I've just been misled religiously, that I will go to the terrestrial kingdom.

50:14

Now the three levels of glory come in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul talks about there's a glory of the sun, that's the celestial kingdom, a glory of the moon, that's the terrestrial kingdom, and a glory of the stars, that's the telestial kingdom.

50:26

Now if you've never heard the term telestial before, there's a reason for that. It's because Joseph Smith literally took the first two letters of the terrestrial and slapped them on the end of the celestial and came up with a new word that no one had ever seen before in their life.

50:39

That's where telestial came from. He thought the Bible had been corrupted there, and that it was just missing, and so he provided it, because he's a prophet and he can do things like that.

50:48

And so there are the levels of glory. Now Joseph Smith said that if you could see the glory of the telestial kingdom, the lowest kingdom, for just a moment, you'd commit suicide immediately to get there.

50:59

That's how glorious it is. So you can imagine what the celestial kingdom is like. If the telestial kingdom was just a glory of the stars and a glorious glory of the sun, it's a wonderful thing.

51:08

So you're judged at the resurrection, or the green line intersects there. You're judged from the base of your words. So Adolf Hitler and Mussolini and Genghis Khan and people like that will end up in the telestial kingdom.

51:21

And prostitutes and drug pushers and blah, blah, blah, will end up in the telestial kingdom.

51:27

And like I said, I've been told I'll make it to the terrestrial kingdom. Now I do remember very clearly, very, very clearly, one day in 1984, and I'm awful glad to remember a day clearly from 1984.

51:39

That's a good thing, not when you get to my age. But it was one of the first days we'd ever met up in Salt Lake City.

51:46

My friend Mike Belliveau and I were up in Salt Lake City. We were passing out tracks. And it was really warm that day.

51:53

It was May. It was very hot. And so I decided to wander over to the

51:58

Howard Johnson across the Temple Square to get a drink. And so as we were crossing at North Temple across the way, there was this elderly

52:09

Mormon guy who was sort of walking along. He had his bag. He had just gone through the endowment ceremonies in the

52:15

Salt Lake Temple. And so as we're walking along, I try to hand him the track. He just looks at the track.

52:21

He looks up at me. He says, go to hell. I looked at him and said, sir, are your beliefs?

52:27

I can't. And he looks so angry because he knew I was right.

52:35

He knew I was right. Because I'm not an apostate

52:40

Mormon. I've never been a part of the Mormon Church. And so I can't go to hell.

52:47

And the thing is just so frustrating that I knew his theology well enough to catch him on that. And unfortunately, he didn't take the track.

52:53

But anyway, before I forget, let me do tell you one story about the

52:58

St. Salt Lake. I can spill the rest of the day with stories about the St. Salt Lake.

53:03

But I'm not wearing one today. I actually have a tarpon tie on today, being Scottish.

53:09

But I actually have a kilt that's identical to this, made in Glasgow, Scotland. I'm not wearing it today because Mitch would not take me home if I did.

53:17

But anyway, I used to wear all the time. I still also wear

53:23

Rush Limbaugh ties. Remember them? They're so bright, you have to wear sunglasses around them.

53:28

They are just wildly colorful. I always thought if you're going to have to cut off oxygen to your head by wrapping something around your neck, it might as well be pretty.

53:35

So that was my idea. And so one day, I was up there in Salt Lake City, had a

53:40

Rush Limbaugh tie on, and my son had not yet his growth spurted. So he's just still a little guy.

53:46

And he has a 14 -inch clip -on Rush Limbaugh tie that's identical to mine. Isn't that cute? So we're standing there, passed out tracks, at the south gate of the temple in Salt Lake.

53:57

And the funny thing about Limbaugh ties is you can see the Limbaugh tie coming before you can recognize the person who's wearing it.

54:03

And I remember looking toward the, let's see, that would be east, and I saw this man coming, fairly confident -looking guy, he looked like a businessman, nice suit, but I could tell he's wearing a

54:18

Limbaugh tie. And he's coming to conference. And he saw our Limbaugh ties, and we saw his

54:24

Limbaugh tie. Immediately, so we're both smiling. And I got to pass out a track to that guy because we were both wearing

54:32

Limbaugh ties. You know who it was? Who's the senator from Utah?

54:40

Orrin Hatch. Orrin Hatch. It was Orrin Hatch. Orrin Hatch took a track from us, from me and my son, because we were wearing

54:47

Limbaugh ties, and so was he. So just one of the many fascinating stories of things that took place outside the temple.

54:56

I don't think Rush would really care much about that, but that's a whole other issue. So we move on from there. So most

55:04

Mormons would put me in the terrestrial kingdom, though some would definitely want to thrust me lower than that.

55:11

So we move on from there. We go back to our big graphic. Now let's look up at this corner. What happens to those who have either come straight from mortal probation into paradise through the four fundamentals of continued obedience to God's Lord and His principles, or through ordinances to the dead, baptism to the dead?

55:28

They have likewise been released from entering into paradise. Here in the upper right -hand corner, at the resurrection, that's the green bar there, at the resurrection you enter into the celestial kingdom.

55:40

Now there are different levels in the celestial kingdom, and you, at resurrection, receive a physical body.

55:51

Even those who go into the terrestrial and celestial receive a physical body. However, there's another place where language changes.

56:00

Unless you enter into the highest level of the celestial kingdom, you're damned.

56:08

Unless you enter into the highest level of the celestial kingdom, you're damned. And unless you're thinking of damned the way we think of damned, you just missed my point.

56:16

They mean damned up, as in not able to progress any farther. And the reason is that only those who are married in the eternal marriage ceremony, remember what we started reading at the beginning?

56:31

Only those who are married in the eternal marriage ceremony are able to procreate children.

56:39

What makes God God in Mormonism? Two things, the power of priesthood and the power of procreation.

56:48

Only those who enter into the highest level of the celestial kingdom have the ability to have spirit children, and hence start their own planet, have their own spirit children, place their spirit children in physical bodies on a planet, and start the process all over again.

57:05

Other than that, you're damned. Damned up, cannot progress any farther.

57:12

Singlehood is looked upon very poorly in Mormonism. I remember back in 1983,

57:22

I took my wife, Mike Beliveau and his wife, and one other person in the class I was teaching at the

57:27

Baptist Church that time, and we went to an LDS ward chapel. The month before I had attended the ward chapel,

57:35

I had happened to stumble in on fasting and testimony day, the first Sunday of each month.

57:43

And I sat there as people gave their testimonies, but actually I ended up sitting there while nobody did anything, because not very many people got up and gave their testimonies.

57:52

So a little thought came into my mind, and I remember my wife looking at me going, don't you dare.

58:00

But I waited until the next month, and I memorized a bunch more scriptures. And the next month, the five of us came, and it came time for fasting and testimony.

58:08

I wasn't the first one to jump up, but I got up. And unfortunately, someone else got up at the same time and beat me to the front, so I had to sit there next to the bishop while this other person gave their testimony.

58:20

But then I got up in front of this group. Now, Mormons don't have nurseries, and so there's little kids, you know, just going all over the place, and there's sort of a little bit of noise going on, you know.

58:30

But as soon as I said, I'm not a member of the LDS Church, even the babies shut up.

58:35

It was really weird. I started clanging. You know, it became quiet as could be in there.

58:43

And I started quoting scriptures about justification, peace before God, and this little piece of paper was a fold, still have it to this day.

58:50

Folded. Remember the old mimeograph machines for photocopies? This mimeographed bulletin for the

58:57

Glendale Sixth Ward flies over my shoulder and lands in the pulpit and says, Brother White, our time is up.

59:04

Now, I knew our time wasn't up. I knew what time they'd finished last time.

59:10

And so I hurried and finished up my testimony, and I went and sat down, and a line formed of all the former missionaries who wanted to get up, and they all were testifying right toward me about how they know the church is true.

59:25

And then as soon as the last note on the organ was played, the first counselor was right at the end of our row saying, the bishop would like to meet with you.

59:34

So we went in and talked with the bishop. That was the conversation where I discovered that there were perfect men on earth.

59:41

There were sinless men on earth. He was offended that I said he was a sinner, like all of us were. And so I added more than just Romans 3 .23

59:49

to my memory burst list at that point. But one of the things

59:54

I ended up having a conversation, his name was Stanley Buell, one of the things I ended up having a conversation with him about was children.

01:00:01

I had been married for about, at that point, about seven or eight months, and we didn't have any kids yet, and my wife wasn't pregnant.

01:00:08

Of course, she was 18, but the idea was, well, once you're married, start producing, and he was very straightforward about that.

01:00:17

You need to start having those children. That's what you got to do. And it's the power of appropriation that is considered to be one of the two elements of the power of God himself that defines

01:00:31

God to be God. So that's where the spirit children comes from in the demographic. God, once he's exalted, takes his spirit wives with him, and he engages in natural marital relationships with them, and they produce spirit offspring, and he then places them, once he has enough of them to get started, into bodies on a planet, and it continues over and over and over and over again throughout the universe, and that's what takes place.

01:01:07

Now, what if you're not married? What if you're a single Mormon, which is a very, it's an oxymoron.

01:01:13

What if you're not married? You become an angel. You become an angel. For some reason, you know who

01:01:21

Gabriel actually is? Noah. Noah became

01:01:26

Gabriel. Adam is Michael. I can't even look at it.

01:01:34

In fact, do you know where the Garden of Eden is? Missouri. Noah built the ark in,

01:01:44

I think it was North Carolina, and Claude O 'Neal, that's how it got over there.

01:01:50

But the paradise was actually in Missouri, so, I don't know about you, but that's somewhat disappointing to me, but anyway, that's how it works.

01:02:02

Now, I still have some time. I got until 1030. Okay, good. I was looking at this going, hmm.

01:02:09

All right, well, let's apply this. Let's go back. Let's apply this to our situation.

01:02:16

God the Father, Elohim, is an exalted man from a planet somewhere out in the universe.

01:02:26

Today, according to the book of Abraham, and boy, if you want the clearest example of how utterly without any meaning the claim of Joseph Smith as a prophet is, look at the book of Abraham.

01:02:38

Wow. He claims this is the actual handwriting of Abraham. It's actually a first century funerary document from a mummy.

01:02:46

It's the Egyptian book of breathings. Everything he identified, in fact, similes in the book of Abraham, which, if I had my audio scriptures with me,

01:02:55

I'd be sure I could pass them around so you could see them, but everything he identified, he got completely wrong. We have a tract, it was one of the popular tracts

01:03:02

I ever wrote called Men Is Not God. It's still on our website, if you want to grab it. Men Is Not God. Not man is not

01:03:08

God. Men, M -I -N, is not God. Because in the, there is a, it's called a hypocephalus, it was placed underneath the head, it's a magic hypocephalus.

01:03:19

Joseph Smith reproduced this in the LDS scriptures, and he interpreted each of the symbols and the pictures in this

01:03:25

Egyptian thing, and one of the things he identifies as God sitting on his throne, revealing the grand key words of the priesthood throughout the universe, is actually a

01:03:33

God named Min, M -I -N, known as the incestuous God. And in the originals, and Joseph Smith just didn't catch this,

01:03:42

Min is actually in a sexually aroused position in the graphic, for a while the church neutered him, and then unneutered him.

01:03:54

And Mormons, there are Mormons who know this! And still continue to believe it.

01:04:00

It is absolutely amazing. We passed out thousands of tracts. Men Is Not God.

01:04:05

You see, I've been to Salt Lake. On Saturday, I have one session in the morning, one session in the afternoon, then they have a priesthood session at night, and only men attended.

01:04:13

And especially a bunch of young men. And so the line wraps around, this was before they had the big meeting hall they have now, but back then they still met in the

01:04:21

Mormon tabernacle on Temple Square. The line would literally wrap around the block.

01:04:28

And we got smarter. You start at the back of the line. If you start at the front of the line, and they see other people not taking them, then they won't take them.

01:04:34

You start at the back. And we would run that line. And as we would leave for the day, driving out of the parking lots, leaving for the day, there would be, because they would have to stand there for quite some time, there are literally hundreds of these young Mormon guys standing there with our tracts, reading our tracts in line order.

01:04:55

You ever heard of this? I've never heard of this. And Men Is Not God caused the leadership no end of sorrow.

01:05:03

Because they're the one, their leader's going, I looked this up, that's what's in our scriptures.

01:05:09

What is this about? And it's like, whoa man, go away, we don't like you around anymore.

01:05:14

So, how did I get on Men? To the crowd.

01:05:19

Anyways, the book of Abraham is, if you go to the fourth and fifth chapters of the book of Abraham, there you'll find the term gods, plural, 45 or 46 times.

01:05:34

This is Mormonism. So, Elohim, according to the book of, that's how I got there, according to the book of Abraham, Elohim lives on a planet that circles a star named

01:05:43

Kolob. K -O -L -O -B. Now, any science fiction folks in here?

01:05:52

There is a science fiction series that's on right now on the Sci -Fi channel, but it goes back to the late 1970s, 1980s, to a science fiction series called

01:06:03

Battlestar Galactic. Ever heard of it? And did any of you see it back in the late 70s, early 80s?

01:06:10

You've got Apollo and his starfighter, and what was it, Starbuck? They couldn't have him anymore, his name is now copywritten, but I think his sidekick was

01:06:20

Starbuck. But what was the story? The story was of the human race being chased around by Xylons, these machine type things, on this

01:06:32

Battlestar, this battleship named Galactica. What were they doing? They were looking for the human homeworld.

01:06:38

Who were they led by? Not Loren Green and Alpo. It was, what was his name?

01:06:46

Adama. And Adama ruled over what? The Council of the

01:06:52

Twelve. And they were looking for what homeworld? Kobol.

01:06:57

K -O -B -O -L. And one day, Apollo is captured by these glowing space aliens, and the glowing space aliens say to Apollo, as you are, we once were, and as we are.

01:07:19

Lorenzo Snow, 5th Prophet of the Mormon Church said, as man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.

01:07:27

All the writers of the original Battlestar Galactica didn't know that teaching.

01:07:38

Kobol, Kolob, just switch the letters. So God lives on a planet that circles a star named

01:07:44

Kolob, according to the book of Abraham, and he has offspring, he has children, and he has many wives, and he has all these offspring.

01:07:57

And his first born spirit child, after he is exalted as a god, is named

01:08:02

Jehovah, who is Jesus. Now, they had a little problem with the Jehovah Elohim stuff, we'll get to that at another time.

01:08:11

In modern LDS theology, Elohim is the father, Jehovah is the son. Joseph Smith didn't have that idea, but that came along later, at the beginning of the 20th century, in one of the first presidency statements.

01:08:25

But Elohim is God the father, his first begotten spirit child is Jesus Christ. All the rest of us, then, are spirit brothers of Jesus.

01:08:33

When they talk about Jesus as our elder brother, they mean it. Because we all have the same heavenly father, who begat us.

01:08:41

We may not have the same heavenly mother, but we all have the same heavenly father. Also on the offspring of Elohim is a creature named

01:08:50

Lucifer. And Lucifer, therefore, is the spirit brother of Jesus. Remember when this became a big issue?

01:08:58

When, who was the Baptist Republican candidate? Huckabee.

01:09:05

Remember when Huckabee said, don't Mormons believe that Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer, or something like that? And the

01:09:11

Mormons would go, oh, we don't believe that. From their sources that demonstrate, yes, that's exactly what they do believe.

01:09:19

And of course, the reporters are running around the world, and they're clueless as to what the world is doing about this. Anyway, so, we documented that fact, and sadly,

01:09:29

Huckabee was like, well, sir, I don't know. We even sent the documentation to him, but it didn't do him good, because that wasn't the point.

01:09:38

Anyway, Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer, and what happens is, when

01:09:43

God calls a council of the gods, again, according to the book of Abraham, he presents to these, basically his eldest sons, the plan for planet

01:09:56

Earth. And, in essence, Jesus presents the

01:10:02

Father's plan. And, to put it in our terminology, Jesus presents the

01:10:08

Arminian view. In other words, God is going to give everyone their free agency, that's the

01:10:14

LDS term for libertarian free will, free agency to choose whether they want to become gods or not.

01:10:22

But Lucifer puts forward his own plan, and of course, Lucifer was a god.

01:10:27

And so, he was going to force everyone to become a god.

01:10:35

And a vote is taken, which is how things happen in the modern world, and Elohim's plan, presented by Jesus, is victorious.

01:10:45

Lucifer's plan is voted down, he gets angry, and he goes out, and he convinces a third of God's spirit children to fight in rebellion against Elohim.

01:10:55

That's that little box on the left -hand side, see the line that comes from spirit children straight down into hell?

01:11:01

If you look sort of sideways, it says, Satan and the demons. Lucifer is cast out from heaven, along with his followers, they become

01:11:09

Satan and the demons. They're spirit children of God, but they are damned by not being allowed to enter into the eternal law of progression.

01:11:19

That's why demons want to take over physical bodies, because they're trying to get back into the eternal law of progression.

01:11:26

They are cast out, and they are then going to be cast into hell. But notice that that line does not cross the green resurrection line.

01:11:35

The green resurrection line stops short of it. They remain spirit creatures. But there's also another line

01:11:43

I haven't talked about yet. And I'll come down here so I can sort of show it to you here. It is this line right here, notice it comes down like this, and then there's another line.

01:11:55

Very small line, this is the line representing apostate Mormons.

01:12:01

Now, the old Mormon viewpoint was that apostasy was a whole lot easier to commit than it is today.

01:12:09

In the olden days, almost anybody who left the Mormon church was considered an apostate. Now, most Mormons like to say that you have to receive the testimony of the

01:12:17

Holy Ghost, and the Mormon church is true, and so on and so forth. Lots of history there, if you go into the doctrine of blood atonement and so on and so forth, but we want to leave some time for questions today.

01:12:30

Apostate Mormons are sent to the spirit wizard. They are not given a second chance.

01:12:37

And they are the only ones who go from spirit prison to hell, but notice that line, what does it cross?

01:12:43

It crosses the resurrection line. And so there's almost at least a bonus prize for having been at least a

01:12:50

Mormon for a while and then becoming an apostate. For while you will end up in hell, you get your physical body back before you go there.

01:12:58

Which means you rule and reign over Satan and the demons in hell. Because you got farther along the process of eternal law of regression and Satan and demons in hell.

01:13:16

So, here comes the scandalous part. When it comes time, God creates

01:13:22

Adam. Brigham Young clearly taught that Adam actually was God, but that's a whole other issue. If you really want the best material on it, especially the history of Mormonism, I refer you to the works of Gerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah White House Ministries.

01:13:36

Even in my book, Letters to a Mormon Elder, I refer to them because very, very faithful folks,

01:13:43

Gerald died last summer, as I recall, and Sandra continues to work up there.

01:13:49

Just very, very faithful folks. I recommend you, especially their book, Mormonism, Shadow of Reality. Just a classic work.

01:13:57

But, anyway, you can take a look at that in regards to the Adam -God theory and things like that.

01:14:02

We'll put that to the side for a moment. God creates Adam, starts the human race. When the time comes to send the

01:14:08

Redeemer, how is Jesus described in the

01:14:13

Bible? He's described as the only begotten Son of God. How does that work in Mormonism? Because we're all begotten by God.

01:14:22

If you listen carefully to the missionaries, what they will say is, the only begotten of the

01:14:27

Father in the flesh. And what they mean by that is, God the

01:14:33

Father came and had sex with Mary to create the body of Jesus.

01:14:38

That's why Jesus can be a Mormon. Now, there are many Mormons who do not know this.

01:14:44

They just don't know. In my book, Is the Mormon My Brother, which I had hoped was going to be reprinted, but it looks like it's not going to be,

01:14:52

I provided an entire chapter with all of these statements from the 19th and 20th centuries, demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was the teaching of the

01:15:05

Church. I remember once a Mormon caught me absolutely flat footed outside the west gate of the

01:15:11

Mormon temple. He was coming in at high speed, and I've learned how to pass out tracts at high speed, sort of move along with the person, make sure the tract is easy for them to reach, so on and so forth.

01:15:21

He took the tract from me, he stopped right at the gate, he turned it around, you could tell his shoulders dropped down.

01:15:28

He turns around and looks at me, and he says, you know what's wrong with you? Nah, it's not the first time somebody has said that to me.

01:15:34

You know what's wrong with you? You think sex is dirty. That was the first time I had gotten that.

01:15:40

Especially since I had just passed out a tract that said, grace plus worms is dead. So he turned to me and said, you think sex is dirty.

01:15:46

You don't believe that God the Father had sex with Virgin Mary to create the body of Jesus. That's why you're wrong, this is a true church goodbye.

01:15:52

It wasn't. Didn't even give me a chance to, well, of course I'm not sure what I would have said. But some of them are very often, it's clearly a part of their literature, clearly a part of their teaching, many

01:16:04

Mormons today are not aware of it. There is no virgin birth outside of America's average of the times you can see. That's not

01:16:10

America, that's happened more than once. But from the LDS perspective, that's what you get. That's why

01:16:16

Jesus is the only begotten Son of the Father in the flesh. That's why he had the ability to rise again, because he had an immortal

01:16:23

Father. That's why in our tract, what the Mormon Church teaches about Jesus Christ, one of the major distinctions we draw, is the

01:16:33

Mormon Jesus has not eternally been God. He does not atone for our sins solely on the cross of Calvary, but in sweating blood in the

01:16:41

Garden of Gethsemane. He's one God among many gods, and he is begotten by an exalted man from another planet that lives on a planet that circles the star named

01:16:51

Kohol. That's the Mormon Jesus. And so, we are all born, we enter into this mortal probation, we're being tested, we're supposed to go through the

01:17:02

LDS ceremonies, and if you're a faithful Mormon man, not woman, the woman is resurrected even upon the basis of the priest authority of her husband.

01:17:14

This is a very, very patriarchal system. But, if you're a faithful Mormon man, you'll be resurrected, you draw your wives out from the grave, if they please you, and you organize your own planet, and you start having spirit children, and you start the process all over again.

01:17:33

That's why one of the original Mormon apostles said, if you take a million worlds, like this world, and number the particles of matter in those worlds, you'll find there are more gods than there are particles of matter.

01:17:50

Okay? Now, very quickly, I love Isaiah 29, 16.

01:17:56

You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay.

01:18:02

Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, he did not make me? Can the pot say of the potter, he knows nothing?

01:18:10

Is that not the perfect description of the LDS God? Remember earlier?

01:18:16

You are not created, you cannot be destroyed. God says something very, very different.

01:18:22

Now, very quickly, so we can get to some questions. Sharing with Iodine Saints, ten points. Just write them down real quick, or whatever.

01:18:30

Be patient. Leaving Mormonism is not like being a Methodist and becoming a Lutheran. Be patient.

01:18:36

It takes time. That's one of the main reasons that for a long time, for a number of years, back in the early 1980s, the average

01:18:43

Southern Baptist church had 274 members, and an average week, 273 Southern Baptists became Mormons.

01:18:49

That's one church wholesale per week. That's not the case anymore. Mormonism is basically at natural growth levels right now.

01:18:56

In other words, they're kids. Not to say they're not baptizing other people, but they're losing people at the same rate that they're baptizing people, as far as that goes.

01:19:04

Natural growth rates. It takes time to bring people out of a system like this. And the patience, and the need to be able to give testimony to the fact there's only one true

01:19:15

God in the Bible. How many Christians can even quote you? Three verses say there's only one true God. Most people can't.

01:19:23

Because everybody knows there's only one true God, right? Um, no. Be patient. Number two, be aware of the language barrier.

01:19:29

Hopefully, I've introduced you to that. Hopefully, now, when you think of Son of God, you know what they think of.

01:19:36

Offspring of God. Eternalized procreation. Uh, even salvation.

01:19:42

There's two kinds of salvation in Mormonism. There's general salvation and individual salvation. General salvation simply means resurrection.

01:19:48

Everybody's going to be resurrected in the last day. So everybody's going to be saved. So they say, I believe in salvation by grace.

01:19:54

So do I! Which means to them, everyone's going to be resurrected. That's not what you meant.

01:20:01

You see, individual salvation then is called exaltation. Exaltation to God. See? Be aware of the language barrier.

01:20:10

Be sensitive to the individual's experience and beliefs. As I said, when I first started studying and witnessing

01:20:15

Mormons, there was a much tighter spectrum of beliefs. Now, it's expanded a lot.

01:20:20

Especially a lot of BYU graduates today, uh, have some rather intriguing takes on Mormonism.

01:20:27

So be aware. Listen to what that individual is saying and where he's coming from at that particular point in time.

01:20:34

Number four. Focus upon the central truths of the faith. Don't argue politically with a

01:20:39

Mormon. It's a dead end. And if you are going to argue other issues, like Joseph Smith's Paul's False Prophet, archaeology in the

01:20:47

Book of Mormon, folks, you've got to know your stuff. What if people, what if someone came up to you and said, oh,

01:20:52

I see you're a Christian. Read your Bible at a restaurant or something. I see you're a Christian. You know, that stuff's just bunk.

01:20:57

That Bible of yours is ridiculous. You go, have you ever read it? No. But my cousin

01:21:02

Bob has, and he says it's bunk. Now, how much credibility does that man have in your eyes? Zero.

01:21:09

So why would we expect Mormons? We come along and say to Mormons, oh, you're a member of a cult. Ever read the Book of Mormon? No. Why do we expect credibility?

01:21:16

I've never figured that part out. So don't get into stuff you can't address. Don't say, well, some silly -looking guy up in Anchorage told me that's what

01:21:23

Mormons believe. You've got to do some of your own homework at that point. So, focus upon the simple truths of faith, which are, there's only one

01:21:30

God we can save. Jesus Christ is our creator, the all -sufficient Savior, and salvation is God's gracious gift.

01:21:37

Now, it's sort of in that order. Because a Mormon who thinks God was once a man living on another planet, was a sinner, is not quite in a position to understand salvation by grace.

01:21:46

Because you have to have the right God to be able to have a gracious God. And so there are some fundamental things you have to share first.

01:21:54

But these are the things you want to focus on. And while we have addressed all sorts of other issues, the first vision of Joseph Smith, allegedly spring of 1820 sees

01:22:01

God and the Father and Jesus Christ as separate, distinct physical persons. Never happened, but we have an entire chapter on the subject.

01:22:08

While we address those things, we've always used them as bridges to get to these three issues. That's where we want to go.

01:22:15

That's what we want to communicate. Number five, be prepared to share why you accept the Bible as the perfect authoritative word of God.

01:22:21

The aetherical of the Mormon church, the aetherical of the faith of the Mormon church. We accept the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly.

01:22:30

Which for most Mormons means, it's been corrupted. And so once again, as in almost every apologetic situation, you're having to focus specifically upon the authority of the

01:22:40

Bible, the transmission of the Bible to time. Avoid side issues, leave blind alleys such as polygamy and so on and so forth.

01:22:46

Number seven, a pre -existing belief in Joseph Smith and the LDS church stands in the way. Make sure you can back up any statements you make when dealing with Smith or the church.

01:22:54

That's what I just mentioned, but I'll mention it again. It's one thing, it's fine to say, well,

01:23:00

I heard somebody say once X, Y, or Z. But when people come to us and say, well, I heard a professor once say that, you know, the

01:23:07

Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that Jesus never existed or something like that. We cannot expect to have any more credibility with somebody else than we would give to those people who really haven't done enough work.

01:23:17

Don't get it over your head. Utilize support systems. Don't jump on your white horse. Your boss tried to save all the Mormons at the

01:23:22

Anchorage Temple today. I've seen people get in real trouble when they do that kind of thing.

01:23:27

You really need to be grounded when you're doing this kind of work. We do not allow anyone to pass off tracks of this in any of the things we do.

01:23:34

The non -members of Christ honoring Bible -believing churches. The non -members of the church don't even bother. And responsibility for the overshadowing of souls.

01:23:49

Number nine, share positive, challenging Christian literature. I remember once one extremely intelligent

01:23:54

Mormon fellow that I was corresponding with, I sent him scrolls of work on the nature of God. He ended up using portions of it in an

01:24:02

LDS Bible study. Talk about something freaky. But share positive, challenging

01:24:07

Christian literature. Not just Christian literature about Mormonism either. They have not heard about the holiness of God.

01:24:12

They have not heard we believe about God. And that can be used by the Spirit. Finally, live the Christian life, not just to be kind and compassionate, but in living a holy, godly life, not because you have to, but because you love

01:24:23

God and wish to bring Him glory. Since the Mormon church believes they're the only true church on Earth today, even though they were sort of getting a little more post -modern, bushy -bushy about truths and other religions, that has certainly been the historical position.

01:24:36

And so when you live a life that demonstrates that that is not the case, that is, of course, extremely useful to you.

01:24:47

I talk real fast, but that's because I've got a lot of stuff to run up to. We're obviously recording these things.

01:24:52

You might want to go back over there. If I recall correctly, this presentation might be on their website.

01:24:58

You guys can change the link. I don't know which one it is. But the information is there. Very quickly, in the last five minutes,

01:25:04

I'm sure everything is as clear as possible. You couldn't possibly have any questions about Mormonism.

01:25:12

The translation of the Bible. Last time I talked to a Mormon, they actually had a corrected version of the

01:25:18

Bible by Joseph Smith. And so when we came back to Scriptures, they said, well, Joseph Smith corrected that one.

01:25:23

Joseph Smith corrected that one. Yeah, actually, it's called the Joseph Smith Translation. It's from 1981 onwards.

01:25:29

It was printed in the footnotes, the margins, of their King James Version that they provide. It's also available as a separate volume.

01:25:36

He didn't make all that many changes. The changes he made demonstrated his ugly cluelessness to the nature of Scripture and the transmission of Scripture and things like that.

01:25:44

One of the changes he made is when, in Romans, Paul says God is one who justifies the ungodly.

01:25:49

He changed that to God does not justify the ungodly. It gives you a good idea of just how completely lost Smith was as to the

01:25:55

Gospel. But, yeah, that's another area where things are changing.

01:26:01

Some Mormons will very much trust the Joseph Smith Translation. Most are just not all that familiar with it.

01:26:08

And the vast majority of texts that you'd be using to witness to Mormons are not impacted.

01:26:14

Because when Joseph Smith began doing that work, and there's argument as to whether he ever finished it or not.

01:26:19

It seems he did. But when he first began that work, he was not yet a polytheist.

01:26:25

That only developed in the middle 1830s, which is why the First Vision story develops as well after that period of time.

01:26:32

It was not a part of his original experience. And so most of the verses just aren't changed in it.

01:26:38

There are only a couple that are. Remember which ones they are, too.

01:26:44

Yes? Well, the only connection to the

01:26:51

Mormons and Masons is that Joseph Smith went to the Masonic Lodge, and he basically plagiarized and stole various portions of the

01:27:01

Masonic Temple Ceremony and incorporated it into the Mormon Temple Ceremony. And so while the

01:27:07

Mormon Temple Ceremony has changed a lot, some of those elements have been removed. Especially back in 1990, they shut down all the temples in the world for a week and then restarted them.

01:27:17

And the endowment ceremony went on from 90 minutes to 60 minutes. They took out a bunch of stuff that people had found offensive.

01:27:23

And yet, many of the symbols they do, such as drawing the hand across the neck, across the chest, across the bowels, which were meant to indicate ways in which you allow yourself to be killed or you to reveal the secrets of the temple, ended up in the

01:27:37

Mormon Temple Ceremony as well. And some theorize that the people who stormed MacArthur's jail in June of 1844, resulting in gun battle, in which

01:27:46

Joseph Smith was killed, even though he was shooting back. I love how Mormons refer to Joseph Smith as a martyr.

01:27:53

I've not met too many martyrs who were shooting back. But anyway, most feel, many feel, that they dressed as Indians.

01:28:02

They were actually the Masons. And they were getting Joseph Smith for revealing the Temple Ceremonies. So yeah,

01:28:11

I remember once going through the Temple Ceremonies in the class. I had a 32nd degree Mason come up to me afterwards and said,

01:28:17

I know exactly which levels you could have gone through with exactly which. And so we're all confused about that.

01:28:27

And so are the Mormons. Is the original God then?

01:28:33

There is no original God. That's the big problem. There is no original God. That's how Mormons try to get around the question.

01:28:40

Look, if we have an increasing number of gods today, then logically you can go backwards in time to where there had to have been the first god.

01:28:49

Well, what is god before he's a god? He's a man. So who created the first man? And they can't answer that. So the way they get around that is to say, no, you can't go back to a starting point because there's an infinite number of gods.

01:29:00

And you can't exhaust infinity. So there's a reason why, for example, there has never been, and I don't think there ever will be, a scholarly commentary on the

01:29:11

Book of Romans produced by a Mormon. They can't. Polytheists can't engage in monotheistic text in any meaningful fashion.

01:29:20

It just produces a jumble of gibberish. And so there are many

01:29:27

LDS philosophers. And they're trying to come up with coherent defenses and stuff.

01:29:32

But my take on it is that the trend amongst those is away from Joseph Smith and toward a completely different perspective, not actually following Joseph Smith himself.

01:29:43

Yes, sir. Hey, there's millions. Aren't they getting caught up on the acceptance of new people coming into the city?

01:29:53

Well, remember, the majority of living Mormons are not temple -worthy. There are not 12 million temple -worthy

01:30:01

Mormons in the world. There might be half a million temple -worthy

01:30:07

Mormons today. And I understand there's been lots of people who have been born.

01:30:14

And their idea is during the millennium, they will be totally caught up. During the millennium, that's one of the main works they'll be doing, is making sure they're caught up.

01:30:25

But how it works when you have 200 people in the same family, and they all want to be baptized in the same list of ancestors and stuff like that, honestly,

01:30:34

I'm not sure exactly how they handle that. I would have a feeling that possibly they would allow for baptism more than once, simply because they wouldn't want to discourage a young person from being baptized for someone they dug up in their genealogical research that their cousin dug up 10 years earlier.

01:30:54

Yes, sir. As far as Joseph Smith being a prophet, a true prophet, what are the most obvious examples that you would say, one or two, that he is a false prophet?

01:31:13

Twofold answer. A false prophet is demonstrated in two ways. He presents a different God, and he gives false prophecies himself.

01:31:21

Obviously, the demonstration that Joseph Smith presented a different God is fairly straightforward. As he himself said, we have imagined the supposed

01:31:29

God is God from all eternity. I'll refute that. You may take away the veils, which you may see. Psalm 90, verse 2, from the last materializing of our

01:31:36

God, Isaiah 43, 10, 44, 5, 6, so on and so forth, all covered very in -depth in my book,

01:31:41

Letters to a Mormon Elder, out there. There's also a chapter in the book where I go over a couple of the prophetic false prophecies of Joseph Smith.

01:31:49

You will find entire long lists in some books. I suggest you beware of that.

01:31:56

The weaker the case you present, what the Mormon's going to do is, if you present a weak case, and they can come up with a plausible answer to that, they will not listen to any of the other examples you give.

01:32:07

And so when I give examples of Joseph Smith's false prophecies, I stick with the ones that you can absolutely nail before without question.

01:32:14

And I don't go into the other ones. My favorite is section 114 of the Doctrine and Covenants. It's a prophecy about David W.

01:32:21

Patton and how he is to go on a mission the next spring accompanied with others, even 12, including himself.

01:32:27

David W. Patton did not live the next spring. He was killed in a gun battle. The other 11 people did not die.

01:32:34

I have an entire section of the book where I go through every possible explanation that's often offered for that particular prophecy in D &C 114.

01:32:43

And from LDS sources demonstrated that they just don't fly. And so letters from a

01:32:48

Mormon elder, I think there are still some available out there if you want to take a look at that. Real quick, I just have the last one.

01:32:54

Yes? If they believe that we can become God and start our own planet, then in their ceremonies, who exactly do they worship and who do they pray to?

01:33:04

You're only to worship the God that begat you and that runs your planet, because you don't have direct knowledge of these other gods and the other universes and things like that.

01:33:15

So there is, however, in Mormonism somewhat of a conflict over, there's a tussle right now that's ongoing as to the relationship of the

01:33:24

Father and the Son as far as worship is concerned. And that actually goes back a long ways. But they would say that their worship is directed primarily and first to Elohim, God the

01:33:34

Father. These other gods, they may be out there, but the idea of worshiping them, since they have not revealed themselves to God.

01:33:42

OK? All right. That's a lot of information in 90 minutes.

01:33:47

As I said, letters from Mormon Elves will be very, very helpful to you. Thank you very much. It's close to work. Father, we do ask that this time that we have spent will be utilized by you in equipping us and causing us to be bold witnesses for you.

01:33:59

And when we see those who have been given a false gospel, a false Christ, a false God, a false scripture, and a false hope, may we be quick to speak the truth, and may we do so with honor toward you and with love toward those who have been given a false message.