The Witnessing to Mormons Seminar

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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It is very politically incorrect to do what we're doing this morning.

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It is the common viewpoint in our culture that as long as someone believes strongly in anything, that that's enough.

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That it is in fact an example of being closed -minded, possibly bigoted, and certainly backwoods -ish.

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To feel that there are certain issues that are so important that you should go to someone and say,

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I feel you have been misled. I feel you have been deceived. May I speak with you?

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Our culture does not understand that. Our culture thinks that that is something that we should not be engaged in.

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But by the very fact that you're here this morning, at least you are interested in finding out whether that is in fact something that we should be involved in.

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And maybe you're already as convinced as I am that it is something that we need to do in regards to the members of the

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Church of Jesus Christ, Latter -day Saints, and the Mormon people. Now we may have some

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LDS people with us this morning. We may have some people who are maybe former LDS, are searching for God's truth.

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I don't know. We've announced this far and wide and invited everyone to be here.

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Some of you may have heard the program we did on KFLR a few weeks ago in which we announced this particular meeting.

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So I don't know. I'm not going to assume that everyone sitting in front of me goes to Calvary Community or that everyone sitting in front of me is a believer who would be right next to me standing out in Mesa or in Salt Lake City passing out tracts to Mormon people.

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I don't know. So what we need to do, I think, first of all, before later on this morning talking about the specifics of how we can share the

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Gospel with Latter -day Saints, is first of all we need to establish the reasons why we would gather here this morning, the reasons why for the past ten years

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I've been involved in evangelism of the LDS people. And then I need to provide you with a foundation for those reasons, and that is we are going to explain the teachings and theology of the

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LDS Church. We're going to explain it so that you can understand exactly what Mormonism does teach, and I will strive with every fiber of my being for accuracy in representing the official teachings of the

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Church. Put yourself in a Mormon's position, and you'll see why I do that.

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Put yourself in a position where someone walks up to you, and someone says to you, Oh, I see you're a

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Christian. Oh, yes, I am. I see you have a Bible there. Yes. Well, you know that thing's just a bunch of myth.

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And you know it's been disproven, and Christianity just doesn't, you know, it's untrue. Oh, really?

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Well, have you read the Bible? No, I haven't read the Bible. My Uncle George told me about it about 15 years ago.

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But I know Christianity's untrue. What is that person's integrity level in your eyes right now?

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Do you really take seriously what they've just said about your faith? No, of course not. Reverse it.

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You go to the Mormon person, and the Mormon person says, Well, you know, I really do believe that the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints is the true Church, and I believe that God has restored

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His Church in these latter days, and I believe that Ezra Taft Benson is a prophet of God. And you say,

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Well, you know, Mormonism, it's untrue, you know. Oh, really? How do you know that? Well, I saw a movie once.

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I saw a movie once on it, and, you know, that certainly should be enough for you, right? Oh, have you ever studied any of the

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Mormon scriptures, the Book of Mormon, Dr. Cone's Pilgrim Price, ever listened to any of our leaders speak? Oh, no. No, I haven't, but I know it's untrue.

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If we're honest with ourselves, we'll recognize that if we're fair, if we are consistent, if we apply the same standards to ourselves that we apply to others, there is something required of us if we are going to go to the

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Mormon person, and it's a four -letter word called work. I know, I'm sorry, but it is a four -letter word called work.

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We need to take the time to do two things. First of all, we need to take the time to know our faith well enough to communicate it effectively.

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And you may say to yourself, well, I know that, I know that. I thought that too until I spent my first two and a half hours with two

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LDS missionaries many years ago now. And when I got done with that conversation, how many of you have done that?

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I see some people laughing, oh, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. When I got done with that conversation with Elders Reed and Reese, I remember them to this day,

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I had some convictions in mind. And one of those convictions was, A, I do not know my faith well enough to communicate it effectively to someone who does not already share all my language and terminology.

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And, oh, do we Christians use language and terminology? We've got our lingo. We've got our lingo.

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We've got to realize there's a huge language barrier that exists between us and the Mormon people. We're going to talk a lot about that this morning. Second conviction

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I had is, I did not know what they believed well enough to really talk with them intelligently.

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I just didn't know. And they, being the young men they were, were not all that good at necessarily explaining it.

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And, of course, they didn't know my faith well enough to explain it to me, and so we sat there talking past each other for about two and a half hours.

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And I'm afraid that's what frequently ends up happening. We end up sitting there speaking different languages. And so, the two things we need to do is we need to know our faith, and then this morning, we need to gain an accurate knowledge of the fundamentals of the

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Mormon faith. Now, I'm going to tell you something right now, and this is where I differ some from some individuals that may be involved in this type of ministry, and that's this.

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I would rather have five people with me in Salt Lake City who know their faith backwards and forwards and are able to explain it than 50 people who can shred

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Mormonism but have nothing positive to give in reaction to what the Mormon then says.

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That's very important. There are a lot of people who will, you know, oh, Joseph Smith was this, and Joseph Smith was that, and here's this false prophecy, and there's that false prophecy, and here's this contradiction in the

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Book of Mormon, and zing, zing, zing, and I can just take that Mormon missionary apart and leave him laying on the floor, but they've got nothing positive to give in response.

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I'll never forget talking with an LDS missionary, a return Mormon missionary. He had spent two years on his mission, not in Zimbabwe, not in Guatemala, not in Antarctica.

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He had spent his two -year mission right here in the good old U .S. of A, and we spent two and a half hours talking about the

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Gospel. I'll never forget what he said to me. I did not take it as a compliment. After two and a half hours, he said to me, this is the first time that anyone has ever explained to me the difference between what you folks believe and what we believe.

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Now, this man had gone door to door in the United States of America for two years, and I had no reason, had no reason at all to distrust what he was saying to me.

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The simple fact of the matter is we cannot assume that just because an LDS person speaks often of the

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Gospel, that they've ever heard it. Think about that. If I am right, and I intend to demonstrate later on this morning that I am right in saying that the

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Mormon Church preaches a false Gospel, we cannot assume that any person that we encounter, no matter how religious they may be, no matter how active they may be in their church, has ever actually heard the

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Gospel. Some people say to us, you go up to Salt Lake City to where all the return missionaries and the mission presidents and the state presidents and so on and so forth, all these people are going to general conference, these are the hardest of the hard, and you go up there every six months to pass out tracts of witness to people?

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Isn't that a waste of time? And my response always is twofold.

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A, you cannot assume that these individuals have ever had the Gospel, the

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Gospel of grace, adequately explained to them, and secondly, my

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God can save anybody, no matter how hard someone may think that they are.

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And so, there is no neat little program to where I can give you five or six verses to memorize and boom, you're ready to go.

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You can walk out there amongst the thousands of LDS missionaries and just, ooh, it doesn't work that way.

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There's no pills, there's no programs, there's no easy way. You're going to be challenged. In fact,

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I'm going to warn you right now, I shouldn't do this before the break, but I'll trust you. I'm going to warn you right now, after we go over the theology of Mormonism and the teachings of the

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LDS church, we're going to close by doing something called role plays. Role plays.

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Role plays. Okay? And that means

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I will be the Mormon and you will be the Christian. And you know why we do that?

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We do that for a number of reasons. First of all, when we go over the theology, when you look inside your handout here and you look inside the very front cover, and I'm going to put this up on the overhead in a moment, and you look at the eternal law of progression, and we're going to go over this step by step, point by point.

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It's the central aspect of LDS theology. It's going to allow you to sort of tie it all together. Hopefully when you leave, you're going to understand what this is all about.

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When you go over this, there is a frequent reaction amongst Christians, and that is, how can anyone believe that God was once a man who lived on another planet and that Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer?

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How can anyone hold the Bible and believe that men can become gods? How can that be?

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And what you need to realize is there's an awful lot of well -read, very intelligent, very sincere

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LDS people out there. And many of them can turn you inside out with your own

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Bible. We're talking about serious stuff here, folks. We really are. It's very serious work.

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It requires preparation, and that's hopefully why we're all here this morning. And so that's why we're going to do the role play, because I get to represent to you what

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Mormonism can present to you, and how the Bible can be used to try to support some of these things.

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And I'd rather have you hear it here, in this context, where we can then stop and say, now here's how we should have handled that, rather than in a context where you're talking with the

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LDS person, and you're left going, well, I had never seen that passage before. 1 Corinthians 15 .29,

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baptism for the dead, I hadn't seen that one before, I don't know. There's nothing wrong with not knowing, but it's better to find out about it now, when you have an opportunity of preparing, than later on, when you're actually in the middle of a witnessing situation.

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So, especially those of you who sit right down front, you know, you might want to be, after the break, no one's going to be in the front section, everybody's going to be back there.

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Uh -uh, don't worry, I can see everybody in the room, and I can pick, you'd like to do that, right? Come on down, we'll have a little role play together.

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No, but I hope you'll be thinking about that, and I also mention it, so that you'll pay close attention for the next hour or so, so you'll be well prepared for that situation.

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So, here's the game plan. I believe that we have a requirement,

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I believe that we have a directive, a mandate from God, to share the gospel with all people, and that includes people who already have a religious faith.

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The New Testament is plain, that the apostles, when they went out, they would go right into the synagogue, and they would proclaim the gospel.

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Paul went right onto Mars Hill, and proclaimed the gospel to the people there who already had a religious faith.

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We must do the same thing. We must share the gospel with all people, even with individuals who would say,

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I am a Christian, I believe in Jesus Christ, but if we, if I, this morning, am able to fully demonstrate that when the

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Mormon says, I believe in Jesus Christ, their faith has been placed in a false

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Christ, then we as believers, if we care for them, and that is the only reason to do this, we'll share with them the truth.

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And I hope the emphasis came through there. If you're hoping this morning to be able to learn how to absolutely dazzle those young Mormon missionaries when they come to your door, and nothing more,

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I don't know if we have some donuts or stuff outside, or the sun's playing, or whatever, there might be something better for you to do,

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I'll be perfectly honest with you, because that's not what I want to do. I don't want to just have people out there who want to win a debate.

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And if you're LDS, I want to explain to you the reason that I do what I do. The reason that I have done this for as many years as I've done this is because I care about the

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LDS people. I want to see God glorified, and I don't believe that God is glorified by the teaching of falsehood.

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I believe that Mormonism is untrue. And therefore, on that basis alone, I must stand against that teaching.

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But God places within our hearts love and compassion for those who have been deceived.

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Because you know what? There's not a person sitting in this room who, if it were not for the grace of God, could themselves be just as deceived.

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And so I'm not better than any Mormon person. I'm not superior to any Mormon person. By God's grace,

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He has kept me from that deception. He has allowed me to see what that deception is. And if I love

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Him, and if I love other people, then I will share with others why that is deception, and how they too can escape from that deception.

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That's why we're here. Because we care about LDS people. Not because we want to win a debate. Not because we want to be able to pull our big theology sword out and get it nice and bloodied out there in the field of battle.

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But because we care about folks. Okay? So, with that said, I need to lay the foundation for saying that Mormonism, even though it claims to be the only true church on earth with which

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God is pleased, claims to have the only priesthood authority that God recognizes, claims to be the only true church that can act in the place of God, the only church with the fullness of the

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Gospel. Even though Mormonism claims this, I believe that Mormonism is not a Christian church.

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Even though it uses the terminology, I believe that Mormonism directs people to the worship of a false God, a false

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Jesus Christ, and presents a false Gospel. Those are hard words. Those are straightforward words.

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Mormon leaders have been just as straightforward in their condemnation of Christian beliefs. I hope no one will be offended if we just put it all on the table and say,

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Mormonism is untrue. And if Mormonism is true, I'm obviously false.

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Okay? There it's all on the table. Now let's discuss it. And to do that, we need to understand what

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Mormonism is teaching. And that's what we're going to do this morning. I'm going to wander over here real quickly and turn on the overhead.

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And if you will look at the inside of your handout, you have the same thing there.

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But with a handout, you can make notes for things that may not be as clear for you as you would like them to be.

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Now, obviously, it is impossible for me to cover the entirety of LDS theology in just a short matter of hours.

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And so what I am trying to do here is to provide you with the central aspects of LDS theology.

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I will fill in some of the gray areas a little bit later on when we talk about the

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LDS Scriptures and a few things like that. But I want to provide you with this central aspect because I firmly believe that if you understand this, then other statements that Mormon people make to you will sort of start to fit together.

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If you understand the central direction of LDS theology, then you'll have an understanding of why

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Mormons believe what they believe about God, about salvation, etc., etc. That's why we need to understand the eternal law of progression.

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This does not exhaust everything that Mormons believe, but it certainly provides you with a central aspect. And before I even begin, someone may ask, do all

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Mormons understand this? Well, that's like asking, you know, when you walk into any evangelical church on a

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Sunday morning and if you sat everybody down, would everyone in there be able to give you an accurate doctrine of the

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Trinity? Probably not. So you're going to encounter LDS people who will know all of it.

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You're going to encounter LDS people who know some of it. And you're going to encounter a few LDS people who think you just landed from another planet.

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When you say, this is what they believe. I remember very clearly an LDS person with whom

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I spoke that I gave my book to, and they were absolutely amazed. It wasn't so much that my book amazed them, but when

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I'd start citing from LDS leaders and LDS scriptures, it was like, I didn't know this, and this person had converted to Mormonism.

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And so they started taking these books down off their shelves. They had the books right there, they just never read them. And ended up leaving the

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LDS church because they didn't know that this is what the church believed. They had converted from a Protestant denomination and thought it was sort of like the difference between being a

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Methodist and becoming a Lutheran. You know, basically the same thing, just a different flavor. No, it's not that way at all.

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There are fundamental differences. And so you have to find out from the Mormon person you're speaking to exactly how much they know of their own theology, recognizing that in our own churches you're going to find people who are more or less aware of the central doctrines of the faith.

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And the same thing happens in regards to Mormonism as well. Now, this is sort of a circle.

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I mean, it's sort of hard to lay it out really, really well. But it's sort of a circle. And it starts up here in the corner, up here in the left -hand corner, with the two eternal things in Mormonism.

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The two eternal things. And I suppose you could actually make a case for a third. But we'll stick with the two eternal things.

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Intelligences and matter. Intelligences and matter. Well, what are intelligences?

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Well, Mormons disagree amongst themselves. In fact, I've met some fairly well -read Mormons that aren't even totally sure of the concept of intelligences.

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But intelligences might be likened somewhat to the mind, to the thoughts, to almost a proto -human being,

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I guess you might say. Not a spirit, because intelligences are placed into spiritual bodies and are made spirit children.

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So it's not the concept of a spirit, but it's sort of the essence of who we are, you might say, would be an intelligence.

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And matter is matter. You know, the physical matter that we see around us. And in Mormon theology, there's a rather interesting concept of spiritual matter and physical matter, but we're not going to spend the time to get into all of that right now.

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These are the eternal things. And one, like I said, might make a case that the concept of the priesthood is actually eternal as well.

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But intelligences and matter are the two eternal things. You'll notice God isn't.

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God isn't. We're going to find out where God comes from here in a few minutes. Now, you're going to have to trust me for a moment as to how intelligences become spirit children and where spirit children come from.

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You'll notice this is where the circularity of the graph comes from, because you have spirit children here and spirit children up here.

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This is where spirit children come from. Spirit children are the offspring of celestial parents. But since we don't know where celestial parents come from yet, you're just going to have to trust me for a moment as to how they come into existence.

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But intelligences are placed into spirit children. Spirit children have spiritual bodies.

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Most Mormons would view these spiritual bodies in an almost physical sense in the idea of growth, in the idea of hands, in the idea of being recognizable physically, eyes, nose, so on and so forth, in a spiritual sense, but without physical matter being associated with them.

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According to Mormonism, we all existed as spirit children. I'm going to apply all of this to here on planet

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Earth when we get done doing a run -through of what is going on here. We're going to avoid this little sideline for the moment and come back to Satan and the demons a little bit later on.

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But most of the spirit children enter into what's called the mortal probation, and that is, as we are experiencing it right now, human life.

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All of us live here upon a planet, and we all are experiencing the mortal probation.

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What is the mortal probation? Basically, most Mormons would express it that we are being tested.

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Our faithfulness is being tested to see if we are worthy to return and live forever in the

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Father's presence. That would be the missionary explanation, if I can call it that, the basic explanation of what's going on, that we are being tested.

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It is a time of probation. We are given opportunities to choose and to demonstrate whether our love for God is as strong as it should be.

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We are in the mortal probation, and during the mortal probation, the gospel plan is presented to these spirit children who have taken on bodies of flesh and bone here in the mortal probation.

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Flesh and blood bodies, as you and I have, spirits preexisting, being placed into these bodies.

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We are now presented with options. And the main option is to accept the gospel as it is proclaimed by the

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LDS Church. And that is the option that is seen here in this smaller arrow that goes up toward Paradise.

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And you notice the letters A and B that are defined down below here on the overhead and on your paper as well.

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A and B, the four fundamentals of the gospel is letter A. The four absolute necessary things to enter into celestial glory.

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Faith, repentance, baptism, and laying on of hands. To be more specific, faith and repentance, we're familiar with the concepts, though exactly how they play out in LDS theology is a little bit different.

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Baptism, by someone holding the proper authority. By someone holding the proper authority.

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And where is that proper authority found? But only in the LDS Church. Only someone holding the priesthood authority of the

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LDS Church. The Aaronic priesthood, absolutely minimally, most times Aaronic priests do not baptize, but if there was absolutely positively nobody else around, they theoretically could.

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But baptism, by immersion, by a person holding the proper authority.

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Laying on of hands to receive the Holy Ghost by someone holding the Melchizedek priesthood. And according to Mormon theology, the

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Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods are available only within the confines of the LDS Church.

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The prophet and leader of the Church holds the keys of the priesthood. And this priesthood allegedly was restored to Joseph Smith in 1829 and was necessary for the founding of the

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LDS Church. Just for those of you who are really into trivia and taking notes, historically, when the

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LDS Church was founded April 6, 1830, the concept of the priesthood was foreign to Joseph Smith.

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It was a later addition, an evolution, that he came up with, and in fact, then went back and changed some of the scriptures that he had written to insert the concept of the priesthood into it.

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That's a historical issue that sometimes you might want to get into if you're having a real long conversation with someone in a written form or whatever else it might be.

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But, be that as it may, these are the four fundamentals of the faith. Faith, repentance, baptism, laying on of hands.

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Those are the musts. But they're not all. There's much more beyond that.

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If you wish to gain the highest level of celestial glory, if you wish, in fact, to become a god, then there are other things that are required, mentioned here in B.

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Continued obedience to gospel rules and principles. What does that mean? Well, that can vary in regards to the particular individual

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LDS person you're speaking to, who your bishop happens to be, etc. etc. But, minimally, for the

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LDS male to gain the highest level of celestial glory, one must go through and receive one's endowment.

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And this takes us into the LDS temple ceremonies. Now, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the

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LDS temple ceremonies. You must realize that Mormons are extremely sensitive to this.

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Mormons believe that the LDS temple ceremonies are secret and sacred. The term secret having been removed after 1990, but it was part of the endowment up until 1990.

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In fact, in April of 1990, there were some substantial, massive changes in the endowments. They initially had been 90 minutes long, and then when they came back with the new version in April of 1990, they were now 60 minutes long.

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So 30 minutes worth of the endowment just sort of poof, disappeared. A number of things that were very offensive to Christians, the mocking of the

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Christian pastor, various signs, tokens, and penalties were removed just a few years ago.

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And now, when you talk with those young missionaries at your door, it's far enough removed that most of them never went through the pre -1990 endowment.

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None of them did, really. And hence, they're not even familiar with those things. They were once a part of the Mormon temple ceremonies.

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But the concept is still that the Mormon ceremonies are very sacred and very secret. And hence, the fastest way to escalate a conversation with a

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Mormon into a fist fight is to mock the temple ceremonies or bring them up in a disrespectful way.

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I can guarantee you that. I've watched it happen. It's not what I would suggest that anyone do.

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I have brought up the temple ceremonies in various contexts only when an LDS person was unwilling to own a certain part of their theology that is plainly taught within the endowment ceremony itself.

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I don't suggest that that be something that you do on a regular basis because, like I said, you do not want to artificially raise the emotion level involved in any of the witnessing situations.

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But the LDS male goes through these endowment ceremonies and receives the authority of the priesthood.

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The endowment ceremony is required of that LDS individual and, to gain the highest level of exaltation, the

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LDS man must be sealed to his wife in the eternal marriage ceremony. And the eternal marriage ceremony, of course, assumes that you've already gone through the endowment ceremony as a prerequisite to it.

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And so, these things come under this heading of B, continued beings to gospel rules and principles, receiving one's endowment.

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And, of course, to even enter into the temple, one must go through what's called the interview with one's bishop, get what's called a temple recommend.

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And the specifics of what you're asked and how you're asked it differ from bishop to bishop at times, some bishops being a little more lenient than others.

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But you're asked concerning your faithfulness to LDS beliefs, your tithing record is examined, etc.,

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etc., to see if you are worthy to gain access to the temple even to start with. And so this also would fall under the concept of continued obedience to gospel rules and principles.

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And then even once you've received your endowment, once you've been sealed in the temple to your wife, there is this lifelong demonstration of your worthiness that is required of the

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LDS individual to eventually gain celestial glory. Just because you've received your temple marriage and you've received your endowments is no guarantee in and of itself that you are, in fact, going to receive your exaltation to godhood.

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The concept of having an assurance of that is not something you're going to find too many

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LDS people expressing because it is constantly emphasized that it is faithfulness unto the end that is the final demonstration of your worthiness to do so.

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So that is the line that goes up here. The LDS person who has gone through these things, then before resurrection, and please notice the shaded line here that is the resurrection, that is where after death you do not have your body of flesh and bone, you are a spiritual individual.

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Everything here in paradise, everyone here in paradise, this is prior to resurrection.

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That's important. We'll see why it's important in just a moment. But an individual who takes advantage of these things goes directly into paradise.

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Now obviously, and of course, the lines are not meant to be exact in their size, but you'll notice that this line is not nearly as big or thick as this line here.

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There are, let's say, approximately 10 million Mormon people today, members of the Mormon church, and certainly the vast majority of them would not be considered temple worthy, but let's say we just went with 10 million people, that's still a fairly small percentage of the human population on earth today.

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So obviously, the majority of individuals, when they die, when they leave the mortal probation, are not going directly to paradise.

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They enter into what's called the spirit prison. And if you are a

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Christian here today, you're not a Mormon, this is where you are slated to go as well.

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You go into the spirit prison, awaiting the resurrection. Now, what happens in the spirit prison?

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Well, faithful Mormons from up here in paradise, we must remember that Mormonism has always been a missionary -minded church.

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And in fact, being missionary -minded extends even after death, to the point where faithful LDS people are able to come down here to the spirit prison and proclaim the gospel to those who did not accept the gospel while on earth.

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Now, again, you'll hear differences of opinion amongst some of the individuals that you would be speaking with who are

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LDS. Some of the more, I've had very hardline, I guess the term would be crusty type

30:52

Mormons, who feel that if you had the opportunity while you were on earth to hear the gospel, and it was sufficiently explained to you, no second chances.

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And I've had some elderly gentlemen up there in Salt Lake City express this very forcefully.

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Let's put it that way. It's a family time, so we don't want to say it's exactly the way they said it to me, but let's just say they told me to go there.

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Right down there in the lower left -hand corner, just straight in there. We'll just leave it at that. But there are other

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LDS people that are a little more liberal, shall we say. Some who have even said, someone such as myself, who obviously understands,

31:35

I've read the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and I've spoken with thousands of LDS people. I've even had some who say even

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I will have a second chance in the spirit prison to accept the gospel and gain access out of the spirit prison.

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But you'll find some disagreements amongst folks in regards to issues like that. But be that as it may, the faithful LDS people preach the gospel down here.

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Now, realize you're a spirit in the spirit prison. And if you think about the four fundamentals of the faith, what are they again?

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The four fundamentals you must have? Faith, repentance, baptism, and laying on of hands. Well, you're a spirit.

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So you can do number one and number two. Spirits can have faith, and spirits can repent, but have you ever tried baptizing a spirit by immersion?

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And try laying hands on the head of a spirit? Not easily done. So, what must happen?

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What has to happen in the place of those down here in the spirit prison who accept the gospel, they believe, they repent, but they can't be baptized and they can't have anyone lay hands on their head.

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Well, that's why you have what's called baptism for the dead. How many of you are aware that the

32:49

LDS Church practices baptism for the dead? Most of you are. Some of you aren't. If you go out to Mesa, and there is one temple in the state of Arizona.

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It's out on Main Street in Mesa between Hobson and Laseur. There's only one temple.

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The ward chapels or the stake centers that you see dotting the neighborhoods, those are not temples.

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There's only one temple in Arizona. There are a number of temples in Utah. There's a temple in Dallas. They're building temples rather regularly these days.

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That temple, if you go out there, and let's say you were just to stand outside and just sort of observe things for a while, you would see that during the week you'd see a number of people, frequently elderly people, but not always in any way, shape, or form, but you'd see a number of people going in and frequently they'll be carrying a bag with them.

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A small suitcase -type bag, satchel -type thing. And they'll go in and a while later they come out and they get in their cars and they leave.

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And you may wonder what's going on here. And then you may look across the street and you'll find a big genealogical library.

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And you may have, in talking with Mormon friends at work or something like that, you may have discovered that Mormons are fascinated by genealogy.

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And they're the ones who've basically bought everybody else's genealogical libraries. In fact, if any of you have attempted to do research into your own family history or into any type of history in the early history of the

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United States, you may have discovered that to, for example, get microfilm records of, like I did a study in regards to Joseph Smith and the 1820 census in upstate

34:31

New York, and you know where the microfilms came from? They came from Bountiful, Utah. And you may discover that almost everything that you need to find will come to you from Utah.

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And the reason being is that the LDS people are deeply involved in genealogical research and have basically bought everybody else's genealogical library.

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And so if you want to get genealogical information, that's where you're going to get it from. Why? Why this fascination?

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Well, the Mormon church believes that one of the functions of the church is to serve as saviors of the dead.

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To serve as saviors of the dead. What does that mean? Well, because you have to be baptized and you have to have hands laid upon your head, the only way that people can get out of the spirit prison and up to paradise is through baptism for the dead.

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Specifically, the LDS individual will research their own family history and then will go to the temple and will be baptized in the place of their dead relatives and then after they're baptized they're taken into another room and elders lay hands upon their head in the name of their dead relatives so that by doing substitutionary baptism, if perchance in the spirit prison those same individuals repent and have faith, they have then been baptized in their place, had hands laid upon their heads in their place, and they can be released from the spirit prison and go to paradise.

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Now that would mean that LDS individuals are going into the temple, they have a list of names, of course now the

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Mormon church has computerized all of this. It used to be done by hand but now it's been computerized and so in especially the older temples, some of the more modern temples this isn't the case, but in all of the older temples the baptismal font was built below ground and it was built, and it is built today on the back of 12 oxen, the statues of 12 oxen, of course.

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You can see this, by the way, how many of you have ever been to Salt Lake City and gone through one of the visitors centers up there in Salt Lake City?

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A couple of you. There is pretty much a full scale model of what a baptismal font looks like in the

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South Visitors Center at the Temple Square in Salt Lake City. You don't even have to go in, there's a big old window, you can see the whole thing.

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And it's built on the back of 12 oxen. And you have a person who's doing the baptism and you also have a recorder, an individual who is basically checking off the names as you are baptized, this individual.

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And you can be baptized 50 times in a shot. Where you're baptized in the name of such and such a person, you come up and they're starting on the next name.

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I mean, just a couple years ago they did 398 ,000 endowments for the dead in the Mesa Temple alone in one year.

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That's over 1 ,000 a day. Okay, so they're moving folks through. And so, this is what individuals are doing in doing their research.

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They are really, in essence, attempting to serve as saviors of the dead.

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That they are seeking to be used by God to help bring about the salvation of their family members who've gone before.

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And one of the main emphases of these, and this emphasis has somewhat fallen out of some of modern Mormon theology and modern

37:49

Mormon thinking, was that initially the concept was that you could not progress farther up the scale of exaltation than your family did, than the immediately preceding people in your family did.

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And so, it was very necessary that your family members receive these endowments.

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A lot of modern Mormon individuals are not quite so strong on this idea that, well,

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I can't be exalted above those who are above me. Even though, if you go back and read, for example, Joseph Smith's King Follett funeral discourse that he gave, this is very plainly a part of what his thinking was.

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But one thing that anyone who studied Mormonism knows is that Mormonism today is not the same as Mormonism in the days of Joseph Smith.

38:32

Things have changed. The church has evolved and altered teachings, changed teachings, and developed new teachings along the way.

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But, anyhow, so this is what's going on with baptism for the dead. We cannot underestimate the importance of this in LDS thinking.

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First of all, it is frequently an element of the Mormon's thinking that this is a really just and wonderful thing that God has done.

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And so, you need to recognize that the Mormon will look at the Christian who says, well, no, the

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Bible says that it is appointed unto man once to die after this is the judgment. And, you know, and the

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Mormon person says, well, no, no, no, that doesn't sound really quite fair to me. We have this other thing called baptism for the dead and there's this opportunity to hear their gospel even after you have passed away.

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But there's another aspect that's important to remember, too. This is not, dealing with Mormonism and witnessing the

39:29

Mormons is not merely an intellectual pursuit. There are spiritual forces involved.

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And I will never, ever forget the evening that I spent in a Mormon home.

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A friend of mine and I were sharing with the mother of the family and we were sharing with her some things concerning the

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Bible, concerning what the Bible said about God. We had gone through a number of the passages that you will see on the back of your handout in regards to the fact that there is only one true

39:58

God and how even though in Mormonism, Jehovah and Elohim are separate distinct gods, the Bible says they are one and so on and so forth.

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We had shared all these things and I had gotten that strange feeling that someone was listening, you know, there's someone watching you, you know, and I had had this feeling and finally at one point this 13 year old girl, 13 or 14,

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I can't remember now, I think she was 14, came down the stairs and she said,

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I want to tell you something. I've been listening to what you've been saying and I want to tell you something. I know that the

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LDS church is true and I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet and I can't answer all your questions about the

40:39

Bible but they don't matter. And I can't answer all your questions about Joseph Smith but they don't matter either and I'm going to tell you why.

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And she told me about her experience in being baptized for the dead and she told me about how she had gone in with a certain list of names and how and the interesting thing about this is she is not the only one who has reported to me this experience.

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It's been reported to me three times by three different people who did not know each other in different geographical locations in two different states.

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So this is an experience some of you who know Mormonism have heard this same story from other people. It's a common story that you will hear.

41:22

But she reported that when she went down into the baptismal font as she looked up along the wall ahead of her standing not on the ground but up along the top of where the wall and the ceiling meet she saw a line of spirit beings.

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She said they were as plain as day and when I was baptized each time I was baptized when

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I come up out of the water one of the spirit beings would smile and walk away and disappear.

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And I realized right then and there that what I was doing is by my being baptized in their place

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I was releasing them from the spirit prison. I saw it right then and there. And she said you know what more?

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We got done and they said okay you're finished and there was still a spirit being standing up there and he was crying.

42:18

And I became so upset that I said wait something's wrong something's wrong we need to check the list again.

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And you know what? You know why no Mormonism is true? They checked the list and we skipped somebody.

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And I was baptized in the place of that person, the spirit being stopped crying smiled and walked off and I don't care what you show me from the

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Bible. It happened. What do you do?

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What do you do? Well, I'll tell you what I did since I brought it up to you and you're not going to let me get off without, you're not going to let me continue on without telling you what

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I did. I explained to her, as you have to explain to anyone and this is something that Christians need to hear as well, our feelings and our experiences and even what we feel we have seen with our eyes, must absolutely, must be conformed and tested by what

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God says. And this takes us back to what Scripture is. What does

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Paul say Scripture is? What did he say to Timothy? All Scripture is what?

43:33

Most of you say inspired. How many of you? God breathed. The NIV, I believe, brings out the meaning of the

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Greek term, theanoustos, better than any other translation I know of. Theanoustos is the

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Greek term that Paul used and it literally means God breathed. Scripture is

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God speaking. Remember what Jesus said to the, to the scribes and Pharisees when he was in debate with them.

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Remember when they brought up the issue of the woman who had married the seven brothers and all the rest of this stuff and Jesus said, you are an error not knowing the

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Scriptures nor the power of God. Have you not read what God said to you saying?

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Jesus said that God speaks to men in Scripture and that must be the final arbiter in all issues, in all issues.

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Vitally important point. Vitally important point. We believe in the doctrine of sola scriptura.

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The Scripture is the sole rule of faith for the church. And any experience I have and any experience that young lady had must be tested against the witness of Scripture because that is

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God speaking. Very important thing. Directing individuals,

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LDS individuals as well to the final authority of Scripture is something you'll find yourself doing often.

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And so baptism for the dead, it's very important but realize it also functions in an emotional sense, in providing an attachment to the church.

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And that's one of the reasons, that's one of the reasons that the major prerequisite to witnessing to Mormons is patience.

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And it's patience. In American Christianity we've been taught that everything comes to you just immediately.

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Boom! Instant super Christian, instant success, have all knowledge of the Bible, boom!

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No work, no process of sanctification, no going through the sufferings of Christ so that the comfort of God may abound in our lives, just boom oh and you're there.

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No. And we've been taught in evangelism, you pass out one tract, you explain one set of concepts and if they don't hit their knees and repent you move on.

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But think about what it's like to be a Mormon person who may have, think about what it's like to be that young girl.

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Think about how many people you've told about that. Think about what it's like to be a young LDS person growing up in the church where at seven or eight years of age you go up in front of the congregation on the first Sunday of the month during fasting and testimony meeting and you get up there in front of everybody and you give your testimony and you say my name is

46:39

Brad Johnson and I love my mommy and my daddy and my brothers and my sisters and I know that Joseph Smith is a true prophet and Ezra Taft Benson is a true prophet in the name of Jesus Christ, amen and you sit down.

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And then you do it again when you're eight and you do it again when you're nine, you do it again when you're ten, when you're eleven, when you're comes along to you and says

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Joseph Smith isn't a true prophet. You think you're going to all of a sudden go ha! Okay, sure, you bet.

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No, it takes patience and it takes time. And that's one of the main reasons that just a few years ago, and I'm a reformed

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Baptist so I'll pick on the Baptist, just a few years ago for every one Mormon that left the

47:22

Mormon church became a Baptist. 24 Baptists became Mormons.

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That's why. We don't engage in patient evangelism. We don't stick to it in the long term.

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We want the easy road. We've got to think, someone who's been baptized to the dead and thinks that they saw spirit beings up there is going to take some time and we need to be patient.

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We need to be patient. If you've got the numbers mentality that determines your success in witnessing to people by the number of heads, by the number of notches on your gun, it's never going to work.

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It's not the way it works. That sermon was for free, we move on from there. Alright. Now, you will notice however that the line going in here to baptism for the dead isn't as big as the line going from here.

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For some reason there are a lot of people in the spirit prison that still don't believe. You may question as to why that is, but it takes place.

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Then you'll even notice a small group, a small line right here. That small line comes from this line right here.

48:36

You'll notice that line comes from here. Isn't this, people listening by tape are going to be going, what is he talking about? The sons of perdition.

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There are some individuals, and again Mormons will disagree amongst themselves today as to exactly who is constituted in the sons of perdition.

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But the sons of perdition are LDS individuals who deny the faith.

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Now, again, the more conservative Mormon is going to be sort of wide in his definition of sons of perdition.

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The more liberal sort of ecumenical type Mormon is going to be much more narrow in the definition of who the sons of perdition are.

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So you'll get definitions as wide as if you were a Mormon individual and you, most of the time will say you went to the temple, you received your endowments, but you deny the faith, you leave the

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LDS church, you say the LDS church is untrue, you're a son of perdition. The more common one today is, some people will go so far as to say you must have had your calling election made sure, you must have had a revelation from God that Mormonism was true and you knowingly turned your back on that, that's what makes you a son of perdition.

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And there will be all sorts of definitions in between. I've had a few people tell me

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I was one of them and I then informed them that I'm sorry I've never been a Mormon so I can't be and they didn't appreciate that either. But I guess they didn't mean it really seriously or something,

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I'm not sure. But anyhow, the sons of perdition, LDS people who deny the faith, they go to the spirit prison, but if they've denied the faith and they are not given the opportunity of baptism for the dead, they're not given that extra way out and they're the ones who go, notice the ghost that goes through that line, and this is going to be important in Mormon, that goes through the line of resurrection, at the resurrection, they are the only ones along with Satan and the demons who end up in hell.

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Adolf Hitler will not be in hell. Mussolini will not be in hell.

50:35

They are not sons of perdition. Now some few Mormons may disagree with that, but they were never members of the

50:40

LDS church, that's for sure. They gain some level of glory and most of you have probably heard that in Mormonism there are three levels of glory.

50:48

Well there they are over on the right hand side. Highest level celestial, middle terrestrial, the lowest is the telestial, and you may go, telestial,

50:56

I have not heard that term before. That's because Joseph Smith made it up. It is the first two letters of terrestrial with the last letters of celestial, and that's where it comes from.

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We can look at 1 Corinthians chapter 15 where most Mormons try to go to establish three levels of heaven, but when you go there you discover that the passage is not talking about levels of heaven at all, and in point of fact in 1

51:23

Corinthians chapter 15 when you encounter in the King James Version the words celestial and terrestrial, those are the very same

51:31

Greek terms that are translated in John chapter 3 as heavenly and earthly. That's all they refer to. Celestial is heavenly, terrestrial is earthly.

51:39

Exact same terms, but they have been developed into entire levels of heaven. Mormons liken these levels of heaven to the sun, the glory of the sun, the glory of the moon, the glory of the stars.

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If you've ever seen the LDS Temple in Salt Lake City, you'll see that on the bottom level of the stones you have the picture of stars, next level moon in various of its phases, sun up at the top.

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Three levels of glory, the glory of the sun, the glory of the moon, the glory of the stars, trying to tie into 1

52:09

Corinthians chapter 15. Now, at the resurrection, people, and there's that line again, there's the resurrection, spirits receive a body of flesh and bone.

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Flesh and bone. But only in one instance is that body of flesh and bone able to procreate.

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Lost you all, but hold on real tight. Now, what that means is those down here who enter into the terrestrial or celestial glory are basically judged on the basis of their works.

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And I've been told by some folks, I'm going to make it to the terrestrial kingdom. And Mormons will say the glory of even the telestial kingdom,

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I believe Joseph Smith was the one who said that the glory of the telestial kingdom is so wonderful that if you saw it for just a moment you'd commit suicide to get there.

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Because that's the lowest level. So if you make it a terrestrial, that's even better. And of course celestial is just awesome.

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But they receive a level of glory. The sons of perdition receive their physical bodies too.

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And then they go to hell with them. But because they got farther along in the eternal law of progression than Satan and the demons.

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Satan and the demons are cast out up here, they don't get to enter into the mortal probation, they don't get their physical bodies.

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And like I said, we'll apply this to this planet a little bit later on. But since Satan and the demons don't get a physical body, and the sons of perdition do get a physical body, the sons of perdition end up ruling and reigning over Satan and the demons in hell because they got farther along the process than Satan and the demons did.

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Now, their bodies, the bodies of those who go into the celestial kingdom, the bodies of those who go into the terrestrial kingdom, and the bodies of some who go into the celestial kingdom, because there are even levels within the celestial kingdom itself.

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You can enter into the celestial kingdom, but if you are not sealed to your wife for time and eternity, in other words, if you're a single

54:33

Mormon, and I love talking to a lot of the guys involved in the ministry who are singles, and I love giving them a real tough time about being single, you don't become a god.

54:42

There are no single gods, okay, in that sense. If you did not go through the eternal marriage ceremony, you become an angel.

54:52

Now, that may be clicking something in your mind, you're saying, well wait a minute, then in Mormonism, God, angels, and men are all the same, they're just at different levels of exaltation.

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Exactly. Exactly. God, men, and angels are all, to use a ten dollar term, ontologically the same.

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Their being is the same, but they have reached different levels of exaltation. God is an exalted man, who once lived on another planet, just like you and I.

55:32

According to Mormonism, this gentleman down here in the front, in the pink, might be the god of a planet someday, worshipped by all of his children.

55:41

Just exalted. Don't you agree?

55:52

How many of you know who the angel Gabriel was, according to Mormonism? Linda knows.

56:01

Noah. Noah. How about Michael?

56:06

Well, that's a real tricky one for some Mormon folks, because Michael's had a few changes to his doctrine over time.

56:13

Adam. But Adam was God, and there's a whole lot of stuff about that too, but that's a whole other issue, we won't get into that because that's way, way beyond our discussion this morning.

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But angels and men, when men like Noah died, I guess

56:29

Noah didn't go through the eternal marriage ceremony properly, or whatever else it might be, and he's now the angel Gabriel.

56:36

And we do all know where the ark was built, don't we? North Carolina?

56:44

Seriously? Yeah. And it floated over there. The Garden of Eden was in Missouri. I'm not pulling your leg.

56:54

Joseph Smith, honestly, believed these things. A lot of modern Mormons are not aware of these things, but they're right there in the books, if they'll just look them up, that this is a very

57:03

American -centered religion, at least it was initially. That's what's causing a lot of its growing pains now as it tries to become a worldwide religion, is it was a very

57:10

American -centered religion. Anyways, those are side issues, they're fascinating, they're interesting, you might want to get into them.

57:18

There's a lot of stuff written on that stuff, but for our purposes, we press on.

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Only those who gain the highest level of glory in the celestial kingdom, they are the only ones who are not damned.

57:34

They're the only ones who have eternal lives. You're going, we can tell you're using those terms in a way that we are not familiar.

57:43

What does that mean? The point I'm making is this. The physical bodies of the angels, those who gain angelic glory in the celestial kingdom, those in the terrestrial kingdom, the telestial kingdom, and even the suns in perdition and hell, all of their bodies are changed.

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This is their damnation. They are damned up so they can no longer progress any farther.

58:08

And how are they changed? Can't have children. You see, in Mormonism, the power of God can be described by two terms.

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The power of the priesthood and the power of procreation. Only those at the highest level of celestial glory are able to produce spirit offspring.

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Everyone else is damned. They do not have the power of eternal lives.

58:49

That is the ability to have spiritual offspring. Are there discussions about whether that can change?

58:56

Yeah, there are some discussions about whether that can change, whether you can go from one level of glory to another and all the rest of that stuff. But that's extremely esoteric.

59:03

The point is that only those who have the highest level of glory can have spiritual offspring. What do they do then?

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They have spirit children. And what do they do with the spirit children? They organize a planet. What do they do then? They put an

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Adam and Eve type of couple on the planet and they start putting spirit children into those mortal bodies and they start the whole process all over again.

59:25

Except this time, they're God. They're God.

59:31

Your spiritual offspring worship you. You are now the God of that world with your lives and you procreate spiritual offspring and you're worshiped by them.

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And when they go through mortal probation and when they prove themselves worthy, when they're exalted, guess what they become?

59:51

Gods. That's why Orson Pratt, one of the twelve apostles of the Mormon Church back in the early days, said if you take a million worlds like this world and number the particle of matter in those worlds, you'll find that there are more gods than there are particles of matter in those worlds.

01:00:11

So how does this apply to our world? Well, it applies primarily to the

01:00:18

God of this world. The God of this world is Elohim. E -L -O -H -I -M.

01:00:24

Elohim, which most of you may know, is the Hebrew term for God or gods in the

01:00:29

Old Testament. Elohim was once a man who lived on another planet.

01:00:37

Some Mormons will disagree with this next statement, but Elohim was in a fallen state. At least some of the early

01:00:42

Mormon apostles indicated that he was. Some believe that Elohim functioned as a savior to his world, so he was never in a fallen state.

01:00:49

But the point is Elohim was once a man. He lived on another planet. If he was in a fallen state, proved himself worthy in the mortal probation by faith, repentance, baptism, laying on of hands.

01:01:01

He went through and was sealed, received the priesthood authority. The priesthood, you'll notice, the priesthood authority precedes

01:01:11

God. God can never become God without the priesthood. The priesthood really is a superior power to God.

01:01:20

God doesn't really have any power separate from the priesthood in reality, when you think about it. Anyways, he, when he died, was exalted, he was a polygamist, he brought his wives with him, and he organized this planet.

01:01:38

His first born spirit child was Jehovah, or Jesus.

01:01:45

Jehovah is Jesus in LDS theology, but Jehovah is a separate and distinct God from Elohim.

01:01:51

Elohim is Jehovah's father. Hopefully I see a few people writing a few things down here, because this can get a little confusing.

01:02:01

Elohim is Jehovah's father. Alright? First born spirit child.

01:02:09

He had other spirit children, because he has many wives. He's had billions of spirit children.

01:02:17

There are still billions of spirit children waiting to get a physical body. One of those spiritual offspring was named

01:02:24

Lucifer. Lucifer.

01:02:31

Who became Satan. We'll tell you how in a moment. We are all the spiritual offspring of God the

01:02:40

Father and one of his heavenly wives according to Mormonism. We are all the literal spiritual offspring of Elohim and one of his celestial wives.

01:02:49

So we're all at least half brothers and sisters in that sense. Same father, possibly different mothers.

01:02:55

Because God is a polygamist, he has numerous wives. But we are all the literal spiritual offspring of God the

01:03:03

Father. And if Jesus is a spiritual offspring of God the Father, and so are we, what does that make us in relationship to Jesus?

01:03:10

Brothers and sisters. And so when you go into the Mormon ward chapel, you will hear LDS people referring to Jesus as our elder brother.

01:03:18

Literally. Our elder brother. If Lucifer is also the spiritual offspring of God the

01:03:25

Father, what does that make Lucifer and Jesus? Spirit brothers. Exactly.

01:03:32

Now some Mormons don't understand what my strong objection to that is. Most Christians will say, you believe

01:03:40

Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer. And Mormons say, well, we all are. There's no necessary connection between the evil nature of Lucifer who became

01:03:49

Satan and Jesus, and that isn't the objection. The objection is, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ created all things.

01:03:57

Colossians chapter 1, verses 16 -17. For by him were all things made, whether in heaven or on earth, visible or invisible, with principalities, powers, dominions, or authorities.

01:04:05

All things were created by him and for him, and he is before all things, and to him all things hold together. Jesus Christ is the eternal creator.

01:04:11

He's not the spirit brother of Lucifer. And since Lucifer himself is a creation, Jesus is Lucifer's creator, not his spirit brother.

01:04:18

And the objection is reducing the eternal God who has eternally been to a creature. That's the objection.

01:04:28

Now, what happens? You have Elohim, God the

01:04:34

Father, Jehovah who is Jesus, the Holy Ghost, but Jehovah and the

01:04:42

Holy Ghost do not have physical bodies. Elohim does. In fact, in the

01:04:50

LDS scriptures, Doctrine and Covenants section 130, you may want to write this down, verse 22.

01:04:58

It's in all of our literature if you want it, if you don't get it down. Doctrine and Covenants section 130, verse 22.

01:05:03

The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's. The Son also, but the

01:05:09

Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.

01:05:14

Now, this is written at the time of Joseph Smith, when the Son now had a body of flesh and bones.

01:05:20

But prior to his incarnation, the Son, Jehovah, Jesus, is a spirit being.

01:05:28

The Holy Ghost is a spirit being. Elohim has a body of flesh and bones that he received at his resurrection from this other world.

01:05:35

And, of course, I hope you're, it's very plain. That means there was a God before him that he worshipped, and there was a

01:05:41

God before that, and there was a God before that, and so on and so forth. There are billions of gods. Mormons will disagree whether they are in this universe or not.

01:05:49

Some Mormons have developed the idea that God creates new universes. And so our universe is Elohim's universe, but there were many universes before Elohim.

01:05:57

And Elohim was once a man in another universe. But, however it is, those gods are out there. Well, what happens?

01:06:07

A Council of the Gods is called, and Jesus, Jehovah, presents before the

01:06:15

Council Elohim's plan for Earth. And, basically,

01:06:22

Elohim's plan for Earth is that he is going to give everybody their choice as to whether they accept the

01:06:31

Gospel and as to whether they become exalted and become gods, whether they follow God's plan for their lives.

01:06:37

Lucifer, however, has another plan. And, basically, he's going to deny man's free agency and force everyone to become a god, force everyone to be exalted.

01:06:50

And a vote is taken, and Lucifer's plan loses. Elohim's plan, as presented by Jesus, wins.

01:07:01

And Lucifer becomes angry and upset, and he storms out and he convinces some of God's spirit children to fight in rebellion against Elohim.

01:07:12

They lose, they're cast out of heaven, Lucifer becomes Satan, his followers, the demons.

01:07:21

Now, you then get into an area where a lot of modern LDS are unaware of this, but historically the concept in Mormonism was that there were other spirits that were not as intelligent in the pre -existence.

01:07:36

They did not fight as valiantly against Lucifer and his followers in the pre -existence, and as a punishment for their less than valiant efforts, their less than intelligent standing, they are marked when they are born here on earth with the mark of Cain.

01:07:56

Anyone happen to know what that is? Black skin. Yes. Now, the reason

01:08:04

I say that a lot of Mormons are, your older Mormons know that well. They may not want to talk about it, but your older Mormons know that well.

01:08:09

A lot of your younger LDS people, since June 8th, 1978, when the priesthood was given to the blacks, are honestly ignorant of the fact there ever was a point when blacks could not hold the priesthood, and when they were considered in the light of what was believed by Brigham Young and the early leaders of the

01:08:31

LDS church. They aren't aware of it. And the sad thing is, even though there was basically no missions work amongst the blacks in Africa up until the revelation in 78, now they're going like gangbusters.

01:08:47

And fortunately, most of the people in Africa don't know the background of the LDS church's teachings in regards to these issues.

01:08:55

So, Adam and Eve are placed on earth. There's a lot of, like I sort of mentioned to you in passing, there's a lot of controversy about this.

01:09:04

Some of you may have heard, and I guess I should just mention very briefly, there are even some Christian books out that inaccurately say that the modern

01:09:12

LDS church teaches that Adam is God. Brigham Young taught it, but the modern

01:09:20

Mormon church doesn't teach it. There are some really wild and crazy theories of some people that I know of have come up with to try to get around the

01:09:28

Adam -God doctrine and to basically say, well, Brigham Young was teaching what we're teaching today. But the point is that to say to a

01:09:35

Mormon today, well, you believe that Adam is God is inaccurate. They consider that a cultic belief and would reject that.

01:09:41

Some of the polygamist fundamentalist groups in southern Utah believe that or northern Arizona believe that, but the

01:09:48

LDS church does not. And unfortunately, there are some books out, even by some fairly well -known authors, that make the mistaken statement that Mormons believe that Adam is

01:09:57

God, as if Adam was actually Elohim. But I'll just mention that in passing and move on from there.

01:10:04

Spirits are placed into these physical bodies, the process begins. When the time comes for the

01:10:11

Savior to be born, the time comes for Jehovah to take human flesh.

01:10:18

How many of you, again, have taken some of the missionary lessons? Just a couple of you. If you ever listen closely to what is said, you'll hear it expressed in the following way.

01:10:32

I remember when I first started studying Mormonism, I thought about this one term that's used in the Bible of who Jesus is, the only begotten

01:10:39

Son of God. And I thought, well, wait a minute. If we're all begotten children of God, how does

01:10:46

Mormonism understand that phrase, the only begotten Son of God? Listen to the missionary lessons.

01:10:51

Listen to the Mormon who's expressing it to you. You'll hear three little words added on that 99 % of the people here never understand what the significance of it is.

01:11:02

Jesus is the only begotten Son of the Father in the flesh.

01:11:09

Three little words. In the flesh. What does that mean?

01:11:16

Well, it's interesting. Professors at Brigham Young University are beginning to produce what might be called apologetic works.

01:11:31

Works that attempt to identify Mormonism as a part of what can fit into mainstream

01:11:37

Christianity. Dr. Robinson, for example, put out a book called Our Mormons Christians. And a couple years ago,

01:11:43

Dr. Daniel C. Peterson and Dr. Stephen Ricks wrote a book entitled Offenders for a

01:11:48

Word. And in this book, Dr.

01:11:54

Peterson identifies the doctrine I'm about to present to you as the speculations of 19th century

01:12:01

Mormon leaders. And I've been in correspondence with Dr.

01:12:06

Peterson and Dr. Ricks. In fact, last October we had the wonderful opportunity of doing two hours live on KTKK in Salt Lake City.

01:12:17

Myself, the host of the program, a Mormon attorney, Dr. Daniel C. Peterson of BYU, and Dr. William Hamlin of BYU.

01:12:23

So, two Mormon PhDs, a Mormon attorney, and me. Sounds like a joke. Live call -in, too.

01:12:29

You get some interesting calls in Salt Lake City when you do what I do. But anyways, in corresponding with Dr.

01:12:36

Peterson, I have had to ask the question, because he says that this doctrine is not a part of what

01:12:44

Mormons have to believe. If he could tell me one Mormon leader that had denied this teaching, and he really hasn't been able to do that, every

01:12:51

Mormon leader that I know who ever addressed the issue of what the only begotten Son of the Father in the flesh means, has said the same thing.

01:12:59

And this is what they've said. I'm going to be straightforward. I'm going to be blunt. Elohim had sex with Mary.

01:13:06

Period. I mean, I don't know how much more blunt I can be. But you read through the sources, you read through the statements by LDS Church leaders, ancient and modern, they all say the same thing.

01:13:23

Elohim begat Jesus Christ in the same way as we beget our children.

01:13:28

And remember, Elohim has a body of flesh and bones. He can do this. Very plain.

01:13:34

Very straightforward. And I have spoken with very well -read LDS people today who will affirm that that doctrine must be believed because it is because that Elohim begat

01:13:47

Jesus that Jesus had the ability to rise from the dead. To take his life back.

01:13:53

To be immortal. Because he had an immortal father. And this is to be found in LDS priesthood manuals and so on and so forth.

01:14:02

But it's one doctrine that even though it's plainly there, and we have, it was our theological journal previous to the, it was two theological journals before, we can provide you with pages of quotations from LDS sources all affirming the same thing.

01:14:20

But it is a doctrine that probably you'll find more

01:14:25

LDS people today who aren't fully aware of it than you will who are. At least that's been my experience, especially among some of the younger people.

01:14:32

It doesn't seem to be emphasized as much. Though you'll find others who are very open about it. I mention this in my book,

01:14:38

Letters to a Mormon Elder. I was staying at the west gate of the temple in Salt Lake City. And the west gate's right next to the tabernacle.

01:14:47

You know the Mormon Tabernacle? Mormon Tabernacle Choir. And that's where the choir comes through. I was staying at the west gate, passing out tracks, and they had set up sort of a barricade type thing across the street that allowed people to come across and through the west gate into Temple Square.

01:15:03

Big tall fellow. I mean, the fellow takes steps, it must have been about two times the step, the distance of mine, comes whipping across and I can tell he's in a hurry.

01:15:13

But I was taught to tract by Wally Taupe.

01:15:19

Some of you know who Wally Taupe was. He's the missionary of the Mormons that was beaten in the

01:15:24

L .A. riots, was in a coma, died just last November. The long lost beating victim in the

01:15:31

L .A. riots, no one ever wanted to talk about because the guy was out preaching to the looters. But Wally never gave up.

01:15:38

And so Wally taught me to tract a long time ago. And if someone's moving by fast, you get yourself in position and you walk along with them.

01:15:45

As far as you can, up to not going on the property, you walk along with them so they've got a chance to see your tract. So that's what

01:15:52

I did. And I offered him a tract. And he looked at it, you can tell he got this look on his face like, do

01:15:58

I do this or do I not do this? Comes to a halt, turns toward us, and my friends will tell you

01:16:05

I'm rarely speechless. I mean, really, there's very few times that I don't call without something to say.

01:16:11

Mike's going, oh yeah, you better believe it. He stops, he turns around and looks at me and he says, you know what's wrong with you people?

01:16:20

Well I've heard that a few times in Salt Lake City and I've got a catalog of the answers to that one. Which one am I going to hear now?

01:16:27

You think sex is dirty. Huh? And there

01:16:34

I stood. I'm waiting for the explanation on this one. He says, you don't believe that God the

01:16:41

Father could have sex with the Virgin Mary to create the body of Jesus and that's why you're wrong. Turns around, right through the gate. And there

01:16:47

I stood. Okay, well I think

01:16:52

I tried to say something as he went through there and stuttered and stammered and didn't get very far. He was real open about it.

01:16:59

It was refreshing that someone was real open with the fact that God the Father is the physical

01:17:04

Father of Jesus Christ in the flesh and that's where you're all wrong. Most people will not quite be that forward and direct in stating their belief in that particular theology, but according to the teachings of the church, according to the leaders who've ever addressed the subject, from Brigham Young down to Bruce R.

01:17:22

McConkie and Ezra Taft Benson, they've all said the same thing. They'll use the term virgin birth, but the point is that she was a virgin at the time of conception and that's not a miracle.

01:17:31

The miracle of virgin birth is that she was a virgin at the time of the birth. So the term virgin birth will be used, but it doesn't mean what we understand that to mean and what the church has always understood it to mean down through the ages.

01:17:44

God the Father is the physical Father of Jesus Christ. Elohim begat the physical body of Jesus Christ here on Earth.

01:17:53

Jesus then is the spirit brother of Lucifer. He's begat by Elohim. Early Mormon leaders, and again here's something a lot of modern

01:18:02

Mormons don't know, but early Mormon leaders very plainly taught that Jesus was a polygamist. That he was married to Mary, Martha, and Mary Magdalene.

01:18:10

Very, very plain. It's found in the Journal of Discourses, but modern Mormons will say, well that's not scripture and so you can't hold us responsible for the assumptions of some of these individuals who taught some of these sermons, even though they were supposedly apostles and prophets.

01:18:23

The atonement begins in the Garden of Gethsemane. In fact, if any of you go with us out to the

01:18:31

Easter pageant in Mesa to pass out tracts, listen closely. Almost all the specific

01:18:37

LDS stuff has been taken out of the pageant. It's been taken out so that it can be a proselytizing tool.

01:18:43

It can be something to help people to get into the LDS church. It looks just like anybody else's

01:18:48

Easter pageant. Except for a couple things, that if you know Mormon theology, you hear it.

01:18:54

If you listen real closely, you will hear Jesus in the Garden and you'll hear songs being sung that will talk about how he bore my sin in Gethsemane.

01:19:05

The atonement begins in the Garden when Jesus' sweat as it were drops of blood. It is finished upon Calvary, even though there are some

01:19:14

LDS leaders who have sort of just let the cross fall off and basically say that when

01:19:21

Jesus came out of the Garden, our redemption was finished. It was completed. But most

01:19:27

Mormons understand that the atonement begins in the Garden. It's finished upon the cross. His blood does not cleanse from all sin.

01:19:36

Some of you already have the tract entitled Blood Atonement in the Mormon church. There are certain grievous sins that you can commit that the blood of Jesus Christ will not atone for.

01:19:45

What are those sins? Depends on who you talk to. Depends on who you talk to.

01:19:51

Modern Mormons are going to limit that way down to something like shedding of innocent blood only. Back in the days of Brigham Young, it was a little bit wider in regards to what was a blood atonable offense.

01:20:04

But denying the Holy Ghost, shedding of innocent blood, these are considered offenses and you may go, well, you know, is that really still a belief?

01:20:13

How many of you remember Mark Hoffman, the Salt Lake City bomber? Boy, how quickly they forget.

01:20:21

He was the fellow who killed a few other people. He was the forger. Remember, did you hear about the salamander letter?

01:20:27

The salamander letter was in time and all the rest of the stuff. Well, Hoffman was the one who forged it. And he was returned

01:20:33

LDS missionary. Family LDS. And when he realized that people were starting to get on his trail and finding out that he was forging these things, he sent letter bombs to people and killed some people.

01:20:46

And then blew himself up. Bomb underneath the seat of his car went off. Must have hit one of those the roads in Salt Lake City are really bad.

01:20:53

And boom, the car goes up and he lives. But this is something most people aren't aware of.

01:20:59

I heard almost nothing about it. Picture this in your mind if you can.

01:21:06

As they are wheeling Hoffman into the surgery room, he's just had a bomb explode under his seat in his car.

01:21:12

He's probably not feeling well, okay? He's in critical condition. His father is running along next to the gurney as they're going into the hospital into the surgery room.

01:21:23

And you know what he's saying to his son? Mark, if you did this, you need to confess so your blood can be spilled and you can be with the family forever in heaven.

01:21:32

Into the surgery room. I would feel real good going into surgery.

01:21:37

My dad just told me if I had done it, I need to confess so my blood can be spilled. Because I know what blood being spilled means.

01:21:43

I need to die. And I'm going into surgery. Thank you, dad, very much. But this is the concept being you have shed innocent blood.

01:21:52

The only way you're going to get to be with the family in heaven is if your blood is shed to atone for that sin.

01:21:59

Because the blood of Jesus Christ will not atone for that sin. And in fact, when they pulled

01:22:10

Hoffman's family, what did Hoffman get? What was his sentence? Life. There were a number of his relatives that were disappointed he didn't get the death penalty.

01:22:22

Because in Utah, you know how you can kill somebody? Shed their blood.

01:22:32

Mormon belief. It's there. A lot of modern Mormons who are converts, something like that, they may not know of it. But it's there.

01:22:38

It's in the books. You can look it up. And it's a blasphemy. Upon the finished work of Christ.

01:22:46

No two ways about it. So Jesus, his blood is not cleansed from all sin. He's resurrected.

01:22:53

Mormons argue with each other as to whether he was a god beforehand or afterwards. Some Mormons say, well yes, he exercised the authority of God in the

01:23:00

Old Testament, but I spoke with one individual just recently. Well, I'm in contact with him all the time through what's called the

01:23:07

National Mormon Echo, through computer conferencing. And this individual has served as what's called a doctrinal expert for the church.

01:23:17

He's fairly well read, especially in Brigham Young and things like that. And it is his opinion that Jesus will get the opportunity of marrying and raising up children so he can be fully exalted.

01:23:32

Other Mormons believe he's already been fully exalted. Some even believe he was fully exalted before he came to earth.

01:23:38

It depends. I've seen big debates raging between Mormon people about which position they want to take on that particular issue.

01:23:46

But the point is, Jesus becomes one God amongst many gods. He's not even the main

01:23:51

God for this world. The Father is the God for this world. Jesus Christ is a

01:23:56

God. The Holy Ghost is a God. Even though there's great speculation, well, will the Holy Ghost get to come to earth during the millennium to get a body?

01:24:06

That's what people wonder about. Question. Now, you're sitting there going, it's 1040, we're going to take a break here in a few minutes.

01:24:18

And you're hopefully remembering what I said at the beginning, and that was, I need to lay a foundation for the statement,

01:24:26

Mormonism is not a Christian faith, and we as Christians have a responsibility to evangelize

01:24:31

Mormons. In light of what I have said, and there's much more that could be said,

01:24:38

I would submit to you that the Bible teaches that God has eternally been

01:24:45

God. Psalm 90 verse 2 says, before the mountains are brought forth, wherever thou hast formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art

01:24:59

God. God created all things.

01:25:07

That includes intelligences and matter. Joseph Smith said, God never had the power to create the spirit of man at all.

01:25:15

God can't create spirits, he can only beget them. The scripture says in Zechariah 12 1,

01:25:23

Jehovah creates the spirits of man. He forms them. I submit to you that the

01:25:30

God taught by the LDS Church, the God taught by Joseph Smith, is not the

01:25:36

God of the Bible, is totally foreign to the God of the Bible, and is an idol. And hence, the worship of that God is idolatry.

01:25:46

I further submit to you that the Jesus Christ of the Bible is, as Colossians 1 16 -17 says, the creator of all things.

01:25:56

As John 1 1 says, has eternally been God. That he is not the spirit brother of Lucifer.

01:26:02

That his blood cleanses from all sin, and he was virgin born. That his sacrifice on the cross of Calvary is sufficient to forgive all sin.

01:26:15

And on that basis, the Jesus Christ taught by Mormonism is a false

01:26:20

Christ. As Paul warned, there would come those who would come and preach a false Jesus.

01:26:27

And in light of Jesus' own words in John 8 24, where he said to Jewish people who were staying no farther away from him than you're staying away from me, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

01:26:38

They believed Jesus was a man. They might have even accepted him as a prophet or even as Messiah, but they would not accept him for who he claimed he was.

01:26:46

And Jesus said to them, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

01:26:53

I submit to you there is no salvation in a false Jesus. The spirit brother of Lucifer did not die upon the cross of Calvary.

01:26:59

The spirit brother of Lucifer can never redeem you from your sins. And hence, a Mormon person who puts their faith and trust in the

01:27:04

Mormon Jesus is not saved. The gospel of the

01:27:11

LDS Church is a gospel that directs you to a false God and a false

01:27:16

Savior. It does not understand the grace of God. Second Nephi chapter 25 verse 23 in the book of Mormon says, for it is by grace we are saved after all we can do.

01:27:30

My friends, it is by grace you're saved in spite of all you've done. Not the other way around.

01:27:36

In fact, in the book of Moroni, in the book of Mormon, chapter 10 verse 32, yea, come unto

01:27:45

Christ and be perfected in him and deny yourself of all ungodliness. Listen closely. And if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness and love

01:27:56

God with all your might, mind, and strength underline it, put it in bold, then is his grace sufficient for you.

01:28:05

That by his grace you may be perfect in Christ and if by the grace of God you're perfect in Christ you can in no wise deny the power of God.

01:28:11

Do you hear what's being said? If you will deny yourself of all ungodliness, if you will love

01:28:17

God with all your might, mind, and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you. No one can deny themselves of all ungodliness and no one can love

01:28:30

God with all their might, mind, and strength outside of the grace of God. If you must do those things to gain the grace of God, you are lost and hopeless.

01:28:43

And so the gospel of Mormonism is not good news, it's bad news. It does not bring about salvation.

01:28:52

Therefore I feel I've laid the foundation, a false God, a false

01:28:58

Savior, and a false gospel. That means we need to evangelize these folks because we have the true

01:29:09

God and the true Savior and the true gospel to proclaim to them. Is it easy to do?

01:29:15

No. It's not easy to do. Someone who has a pre -existing faith structure is difficult to talk to.

01:29:23

But must it be done? Yes. Who's going to do it? Well, who's doing it right now?

01:29:31

Remember the conversion rates I gave you? 24 to 1? As Pastor Mark and I prayed this morning,

01:29:41

God's got to put it into your heart to go in it for the long haul, to be patient, to share the gospel with individuals, even when they may reject it in your face the very first time.

01:29:57

If you love them, you'll do it. A couple more things that I think are sort of necessary to give the full perspective in regards to the

01:30:12

Mormon position that are not a part of the overhead that we were looking at, and really just mentioned briefly in the materials that have been handed out to you.

01:30:22

Some of you have picked up the track, but it is translated correctly. It deals with the topic of the

01:30:27

Bible, so on and so forth. Let me just make sure that you have an idea of the

01:30:32

LDS Scriptures. You'll see a lot of folks, the missionaries, they have two books of Scripture.

01:30:40

They have the King James Version of the Bible, and then they have what is normally referred to as the

01:30:46

Triple. The Triple Combination. This contains the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the

01:30:52

Pearl of Great Price. The three other books of LDS Scripture that are part of the

01:30:58

Mormon canon of Scripture. You may have seen they have different sizes of these. Sometimes they put them all together in what's called a quad, which when the big size is enough to be a lethal weapon if you nailed somebody with one of those.

01:31:10

And then you've got little teeny tiny. I've got a little one that's about yea big I call the eye strain version that I carry with me when we're out at the temple or something like that.

01:31:18

It's very difficult to read. But, the Book of Mormon very, very briefly allegedly the history of the ancient inhabitants of this hemisphere written upon golden plates in reformed

01:31:31

Egyptian hieroglyphics supposedly revealed to Joseph Smith. And he supposedly received them in September of 1827 and he translated by the gift of power of God into the

01:31:40

Book of Mormon. It supposedly recounts the movement of Lehi, his sons

01:31:48

Nephi and Laman, some of the other sons to this hemisphere. There were some who had come before and so on and so forth.

01:31:54

But the founding of two competing nations, the Nephites and the Lamanites here in America.

01:32:02

And the Lamanites were evil, cursed with black skin. The Nephites were generally good. Jesus comes to the

01:32:08

Americas, establishes a church here and eventually in 421

01:32:13

AD the Lamanites wipe out the Nephites. The Book of Mormon is hidden in the ground and Joseph Smith is shown where it is many, many years later.

01:32:23

A lot of problems with the Book of Mormon historically, anthropologically, textually, all sorts of other things in regards to the

01:32:29

Book of Mormon. The Doctrine and Covenants is primarily, primarily the revelations of Joseph Smith that he claimed to receive from God and so most of your theology of the

01:32:43

LDS Church will be in the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. The Book of Mormon does not contain almost any of what we studied in regards to the unique doctrines of Mormonism.

01:32:52

There's a real simple reason for this that most Mormons are not aware of if they would examine it historically and see if this is the case.

01:32:57

Joseph Smith did not come to believe that until at the end of his life when he wrote the Book of Mormon.

01:33:02

He didn't believe any of that. Joseph Smith never claimed to have seen God the Father until the late 1830s.

01:33:09

The Book of Mormon was written in 1830, published in 1830. Most Mormons think that Joseph Smith from the very beginning was claiming to have seen

01:33:17

God the Father and Jesus Christ in what's called the First Vision. Historically that is not the case.

01:33:23

The version of the First Vision that is a part of the Pearl of Great Price in the Mormon Scriptures is not written until 1838.

01:33:29

The simple fact of the matter is the reason you won't find a lot of Mormon doctrine in the Book of Mormon is because when Joseph Smith wrote it he didn't believe it.

01:33:36

His theology was changing rapidly at the end of his life and I honestly believe this is just my opinion, but I honestly believe if Joseph Smith had been given another five years there would be no

01:33:46

Mormon Church today. I really believe that because he was becoming so self -contradictory and his theology was becoming so wild that if he hadn't been killed in 1844

01:33:56

I don't think we'd be here today. I don't think we'd be discussing Mormonism today. We'd be discussing some other group probably, but we wouldn't be discussing

01:34:02

Mormonism or at least Joseph Smith. Anyways, he died in 1844 and during the 14 years between the writing of the

01:34:09

Book of Mormon and his death his theology changed radically. That's the story of the

01:34:16

Book of Mormon. Doctrine and Covenants, a number of Joseph Smith's false prophecies such as section 114 are found in the

01:34:23

Doctrine and Covenants. The Pearl of Great Price is sort of a mishmash of things that were accepted as scripture in the 1880s including sort of a rewrite of a section of Genesis, a section of Matthew, and then one of the weirdest books, and I mean it, even

01:34:37

Mormon people sort of scratch their head about it. It's called the Book of Abraham. We have a tract out there entitled,

01:34:46

Men is not God. You may have thought it was a typo. I may be a bad speller, but I'm not that bad. People think it's,

01:34:52

Man is not God. No, it's Men is not God. It's specifically supposed to be that way. Men is an Egyptian God who appears in facsimile number two in the

01:35:01

Book of Abraham. To make a long story short, Joseph Smith claimed to be able to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics, and so he translated what we've now discovered to be the section of the

01:35:12

Book of the Dead, the Book of Breathings, from an Egyptian mummy, actually two Egyptian mummies, into what's known as the

01:35:19

Book of Abraham today. He ended up translating one paragraph of Egyptian into five chapters of English, which was a rather tricky thing to do, but he never got a word right.

01:35:29

Most Mormons are not aware of this. Most Mormons know about the Book of Mormon supposedly being translated by the gift and power of God, but here the

01:35:36

Book of Abraham comes along. We can check him out and see how he did, and he didn't do very well. He never got a word right, in fact, and yet the church has done a masterful job,

01:35:44

I think, of pretty much keeping most Mormons unaware of the Book of Abraham as being the single best example of Joseph Smith not being a prophet of God.

01:35:53

But anyways, that's found in the Prograve Price. Functionally, and here's where we get real practical again, functionally, these are the ultimate authority.

01:36:07

The Bible is viewed through the grid of these. The 8th

01:36:12

Article of Faith in the Mormon Church says we accept the Bible to be the Word of God as far as it is translated correctly.

01:36:20

Now, what does that mean? Well, for the majority of LDS people that you're going to speak to, what that means is when the

01:36:31

Bible disagrees with Mormonism, the Bible is wrong. That may sound very strong, but that is my experience.

01:36:40

I remember very plainly speaking with an LDS woman out in Mesa at the

01:36:46

Temple grounds, and we were talking, and I went through a number of the passages that you have on the back of your sheet here in regards to the existence of God, Isaiah 43, 10, 44, 8, 45, 5.

01:36:59

I had quoted all these to her, and she listened respectfully. And I sort of got done, and I said, well.

01:37:08

And she said, they're all mistranslated. And I said, well, ma 'am, do you read

01:37:14

Hebrew? Because they're all from the Old Testament written in Hebrew. No. Have you read any books that would indicate that these passages have been mistranslated?

01:37:24

No. Well, why do you think they're mistranslated? Because they disagree with teaching the church. And so the concept for most

01:37:33

LDS people is the Bible has been mistranslated. It contains errors and contradictions. And hence, the

01:37:39

Book of Mormon, being revealed by the gift and power of God, does not contain these errors and mistranslations.

01:37:45

The Doctrine and Covenants, direct revelations, Joseph Smith, etc., etc. They end up functioning as the ultimate authority for the

01:37:52

LDS person even over the scriptures themselves, over against the Bible. Because the Bible allegedly has been, you know, entire books are supposedly missing and all the rest is stuff like that.

01:38:02

So, that is important. And what it requires you to do,

01:38:07

I hate to tell you, is more work. Yes, w -o -r -k, work.

01:38:13

One of the chief benefits that I have derived, certainly, from dealing with the

01:38:20

Mormon faith in an apologetic sense on the front lines, is that it has just been one of those many things that has pushed me into a study of the background of the scripture, of the text of scripture, of the reliability of scripture.

01:38:35

And see, this is something that I think every Christian should know about whether they ever witnessed to a Mormon or not. Now, if the

01:38:41

Lord uses a Mormon to push you into that because a Mormon says, well, you know, look at the

01:38:46

King James, or look at this translation, or look at that translation, or look at here it talks about the book of Gad the seer.

01:38:53

Where is that book? And look at over here in Colossians. It says that you're supposed to read the epistle that's coming from Laodicea.

01:39:01

Where do you have that? I'm not going to answer those questions. You can find out on your own. You know, things like that.

01:39:08

It pushes you into a study of the background of your own faith. And I think that's a very, very important thing that you need to do.

01:39:16

And if it functions to make you a stronger Christian along those ways, that's great. And that's why we have such tracts as But It Is translated correctly that addresses the common errors in understanding, the common mistakes the

01:39:29

Mormon person makes in regards to the history of scripture. And that's something that you need to be prepared for.

01:39:35

One other thing that you will encounter over and over again.

01:39:40

I don't know if we had any of the tracts back there. I didn't look. But we have a tract on the testimony of the

01:39:46

Holy Spirit. Does anyone have one of those? Did we bring any of those? Or what?

01:39:53

The testimony of the Holy Ghost? Doesn't look like we do. We have a tract, and we'll have to try to track some down, that deals with the

01:40:03

LDS belief in what's called the Mormon testimony. And I'd say if you encounter anything over and over and over again, it will be the

01:40:14

LDS testimony. And it basically goes like this. When you're talking to a Mormon person, sometimes it will be the first thing you run into.

01:40:22

Sometimes they will attempt to defend some things for a while, and then they go to the testimony. The better read, better prepared

01:40:29

Mormons, it's going to take you a long time to get to the point of the testimony. But eventually, if you push hard enough, you push far enough, what you're going to hear is the testimony.

01:40:38

What is the testimony? Well, basically, it is falling back upon a spiritual experience, and saying look,

01:40:48

I have prayed about the truthfulness of the LDS Church. I do not believe

01:40:53

God would ever mislead me. I do not believe God would ever, in any way, shape, or form cause me to feel that something's true when it's not.

01:41:02

I've prayed about the LDS Church, and I have received a testimony of the Holy Ghost that is true.

01:41:08

I felt my heart burn within me, or some people describe it as the burning bosom feeling, as it's described in LDS scripture itself.

01:41:17

And I can't answer all your questions. I can't tell you how many times I've had missionaries say to me, now

01:41:22

Mr. White, I'm not a scriptorium. And in fact Mr. White, I don't know as much about Mormonism as you do.

01:41:29

But I'm going to tell you something. I have a testimony. And I'm going to tell you that I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

01:41:35

Saints is true. I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet, that Jesus is a Christ, and that Ezra Taft Benson is a prophet on earth today.

01:41:41

And I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. And everybody, all the other Mormons in the room, go Amen right along with it.

01:41:47

And you're going to hit it, and you're going to encounter it over and over and over and over again. I cannot tell you how many times

01:41:54

I've heard it. Those of you who have gone to Salt Lake, or out in Mesa, you're all smiling, going Oh, yes. Boy, have

01:42:00

I heard that. You can't discount it. You can't discount it.

01:42:05

There are some who would basically try to discount it by saying Well, you had this feeling.

01:42:12

Did you have some pepperoni pizza that day? Something along those lines. And they try to dismiss it along those lines. And I don't think that works.

01:42:19

I think it's meant to point out the absurdity of feeling that my emotions are the basis of truth, but you can't discount it that easily.

01:42:31

I think, again, just as in talking with that young lady who had seen the experience and dealing with the testimony, there are certain verses that I go to in walking down the line and talking with the person in regards to their testimony.

01:42:45

And I put them in a sort of a certain order and provide certain context that you may want to be prepared to work with.

01:42:52

In fact, it is so common to encounter this that even if you say, let's say you feel that you do want to go out and witness to some folks you want to pass out some tracts.

01:43:03

We suggest you focus on certain areas like the doctrine of God or who Jesus Christ is and what salvation is. Those three areas.

01:43:09

Memorize some verses in those areas. But no matter what you do in those areas, you're going to encounter the testimony so often that you'll probably want to add to your list some of the passages that you're going to deal with in talking with the

01:43:19

LDS person. And some of those that I would suggest to you I'd say the single one that I would suggest to you would be

01:43:27

Acts chapter 17. In Acts chapter 17, if you have a Bible, the reason I suggest you refer to it is so that you get the context of what's here.

01:43:39

The main verse you'll want to memorize is Acts 17 11, but you'll want to sort of read through the chapter so you have an idea of exactly what's going on here.

01:43:47

The reason I say this is when I present this to the LDS person, I'll frequently go through a number of other passages where I'll point out, for example what

01:43:53

Jeremiah says. The heart is desperate, sick, and wicked. Who can understand it? Who can trust it?

01:43:58

Different translations render that differently. And that the wisdom writer said that the ways that a man considers to be right, the ways that a man would think are right, and of course that's what the

01:44:11

Mormon is thinking, is this makes sense to me. It feels good to me. The end thereof are the ways of death.

01:44:18

The end thereof are the ways of death. Men can be deceived. I go through a number of passages like this, but I focus on this one and I point out to you because we have limited time with one another this morning.

01:44:31

Acts chapter 17, I try to provide the background. I try to provide the context so that I'm not just sitting there rattling off verses at somebody.

01:44:40

That really doesn't accomplish a whole lot to rattle off verses. In Acts chapter 17 beginning at verse 10, you have

01:44:48

Paul and Silas and they're on a missionary journey and they enter into the city of Berea and what

01:44:55

I try to do is I'll try to give the context now here's Paul and Silas and they come into the city of Berea. These people have never seen a

01:45:02

Christian before. They've never heard the gospel before. Paul and Silas begin to preach the gospel.

01:45:08

Now how are these Bereans supposed to find out whether this is true or false?

01:45:16

Are we told that they got down their knees and they saw a burning in the bosom? Are we told that they prayed all night long to see if these things were so?

01:45:26

No. Acts chapter 17 verse 11 says that these were more noble -minded than those in Thessalonica.

01:45:33

See, they just got kicked out of Thessalonica. They got ridden out on a rail. These men in Berea, are they more noble -minded?

01:45:40

The scripture recommends the example of the Bereans to us. Why? They were more noble -minded than those in Thessalonica.

01:45:47

Seeing they received the word with all readiness of mind and what did they do? And searched the scriptures daily whether those things were so.

01:45:58

When Paul and Silas preached the gospel, the Bereans took the message that was preached to them and they went to the scriptures.

01:46:05

Which for them would have been the Old Testament. They wouldn't have had the New Testament this time. It was still being written.

01:46:11

Most of it hadn't even come into existence yet. They go to the scriptures and they take what the apostle is saying and they compare it with the scriptures.

01:46:21

That's what we're to do. We are to do that and not only that, there's something else we learn from this and that is that there will be perfect consistency between the preaching of here the apostles as they're out on a missionary journey and what

01:46:38

God has already revealed. You see, that's the key issue. The Mormons will say, well, don't you think

01:46:46

God could say something more? Don't you think God could reveal something more? There's two ways of handling that.

01:46:53

If you've got forever and a day, if you're in a long -term correspondence with somebody, if you're in a situation where you're going to be seeing somebody on a regular basis for a long period of time, you can go into the whole discussion of the sufficiency of scripture and the canon of scripture and these are some complex issues.

01:47:10

When you're standing on a street corner and you've got about five minutes, you don't have time for that unfortunately. In that context, what

01:47:16

I do is I say, look, the issue of whether there's more scripture or not aside, there's one thing that is obvious from the basis of this passage and many others.

01:47:25

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. I ask the person, isn't the

01:47:32

Bible described as the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth? Yes. The Spirit will never contradict Himself, will He? No.

01:47:38

The Bereans were able to recognize that this was in fact the Word of the Lord because of what? Because it was consistent with what the

01:47:46

Spirit had already said in the Scriptures. When I compare the

01:47:51

LDS Scriptures with the Scriptures that I know were given by the Holy Spirit of God, I find contradiction after contradiction after contradiction.

01:48:02

You have 2 Nephi 25 -23, Moroni 10 -32 against the entire New Testament presentation of the grace of God.

01:48:09

Romans 11 -6, Romans 5 -1, over and over again. You have contradictions between what the

01:48:15

Doctrine and Covenants says and what the Bible says about who God is, about who Jesus Christ is, what the Holy Ghost is, etc.,

01:48:20

etc., etc. The Holy Spirit of God will not testify to something that is untrue.

01:48:28

If the Holy Spirit of God inspired the writing of the Bible, He did not inspire the writing of the

01:48:35

Doctrine and Covenants because they say different things. And the Holy Spirit of God does not give a testimony to anyone that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God when he wasn't.

01:48:50

And if you have a testimony of a spirit that Joseph Smith is a true prophet of God, that tells you something about the spirit that is testifying to you.

01:49:01

You've got to direct the person back to that which is objective, that which we can both examine and open up and that is the

01:49:08

Scriptures. That's what you've got to do in dealing with the testimony. And there are some people, folks, who will not let you do it.

01:49:17

I'm going to tell you that right now. I have talked with some LDS people. They could care less what was presented to them.

01:49:23

A couple of you were with me when I spoke with an LDS missionary for a couple meetings last year.

01:49:31

And in the last meeting, a stake missionary came. And that's exactly what happened to that individual. It did not matter what fact you presented to him.

01:49:38

You could lay it right out there on the table. Here is the fact. Here it is in black and white. And he would look at it and say, it doesn't matter.

01:49:47

I know Mormonism is true. There was no reasoning with that person. The reasoning processes had ended.

01:49:54

There weren't any. There was one ultimate authority. I know Mormonism is true. Period. End of discussion.

01:50:01

That's it. And is that frustrating to run into such a person? You better believe it is.

01:50:06

Is there anything you can do about it? You can pray for them. The best you can do.

01:50:13

You can say, hey look, if something ever happens in your life that causes you to recognize that you've been in error, that you've been deceived,

01:50:23

I'm here. I will continue to pray for you. But there's no sense in beating your head against a wall forever and a day in a situation where no fact you present is going to do anything.

01:50:37

But you stay available and you pray. And it's frustrating, but that's just the way it is.

01:50:43

Of course, I like being in a situation where I can start off by laying a foundation in regards to these things.

01:50:50

If I have the opportunity of being in charge of the conversation at first, I will start off immediately by saying, well you know,

01:50:57

I think we need to be open to examining what we believe on the basis of the Bible. I think we need to be to recognize that we ourselves are not infallible and hence we need to always be coming to the scriptures.

01:51:09

And always be ready to be changed by what the scriptures teach. And I try to make sure that we've got an agreement on that so that when we get into the conversation, that back door has already been closed.

01:51:21

And the person has already agreed with me, yes, we do need to look to what the scriptures say. If you can do that, that obviously is a good thing to attempt to do.

01:51:30

Okay. Some of you, I noticed, have had experience in trying to talk with LDS people.

01:51:37

And when I brought up the testimony, you were going, oh yes, have I encountered that. That is a very important area.

01:51:44

And that's why the very first chapter in my book, Letters to a Mormon Elder, is on that.

01:51:50

You would think it would be on the Bible or God or something like that. The first chapter, I lay that foundation.

01:51:57

It's what you've got to do. It's what you've got to do. And if you work with us out at MESA or anything like that, you'll encounter this over and over again.

01:52:05

Now, as an introduction to putting some feet on this and talking about how we actually end up doing the witnessing encounter, if you have the little brown sheet or, mine's blue, you've got the same map sort of on the back and small reproduction on the back of this sheet that has pictures of various folks talking with people up in Salt Lake City.

01:52:41

This, some of you may recognize, is a little bit of a map of the

01:52:48

LDS Temple out in MESA. And if you'll notice, March 29th through April 3rd,

01:52:55

March 29th through April 3rd, is the running of the Easter pageant in MESA, Jesus the

01:53:02

Christ. It's a large theatrical production put on by volunteers in the

01:53:07

LDS Church. Very well done. No question about it. Pretty much all the missionaries in the

01:53:14

Arizona Tempe Mission will be there sometime during that time. It's one of the main proselytizing tools the church uses locally.

01:53:22

As I mentioned, most of the specifically Mormon elements have been removed from it. It used to be very heavily LDS. Now it's pretty much everything that would cause a

01:53:32

Christian to go, huh, has been removed. Just a couple things left in there. Like I said, the atonement in the

01:53:38

Garden of Gethsemane and so on and so forth is still there. Tuesday, it used to run

01:53:44

Monday through Saturday night and thankfully about three years ago they dropped the Monday performance because boy by the sixth night

01:53:49

I was about ready to fall over because we go out there every single night. And what we do is we meet over there next to the

01:53:58

Arby's there on the corner of Hobson and Main Street. And we get everybody loaded up with tracks and we track at the main areas there.

01:54:08

You'll notice this is the main area right down at the corner. And then there's a gate down here right next to the temple that we send folks down to.

01:54:15

Pretty much just men though because it gets a little dark down there. And we've had a few interesting experiences down there, shall we say.

01:54:22

And then there's another spot down here on this corner that's a little bit of a quieter area. But this is the main area right here.

01:54:29

There's very little on -site parking up here. So there's a constant stream of people coming across Main Street.

01:54:35

And then the stage is right here the performance is down here in the front lawn of the temple. And we go and we don't attempt to disrupt anything.

01:54:47

We're not trying to keep anyone from going. We're not trying to make noise so people can't hear it.

01:54:52

We're there for only one reason and that is to distribute literature and share the gospel with anyone who wants to talk with us. We're not there to do anything other than that.

01:55:01

And so we're very careful in regards to where we stand and the whole nine yards. But it runs for five nights.

01:55:09

Anywhere from 60 to 75 ,000 people attend over those five nights. So you're running anywhere from 8 to 12, 13, 14 ,000 people a night.

01:55:17

Friday and Saturday nights are the biggest nights as far as the number of people who attend the Easter pageant. This is one of the opportunities we have coming up.

01:55:26

It's very interesting to stand someplace and pass out tracks. I'm not sure how many of you have done it before. If you have a really strong aversion to being ignored as if you don't exist, you might not want to do this.

01:55:39

That is, I would say, the primary response of most folks is if they don't want to deal with you, then you are not there.

01:55:48

You know, it's you are there. No, you are not there. You do not exist. You can ask. Until they're right next to you.

01:55:54

You can ask some of the folks who have been out there. Mike, Kathy was out there last year. Kathy loved it though.

01:56:00

Kathy thought it was just wonderful. The kids liked her. She's like a mommy figure.

01:56:06

Why are you doing this? You'll have to ask Kathy about that some other time. It is quite an experience.

01:56:13

We try to begin at 6. We get done between 9 .15 and 9 .45.

01:56:19

We're out there Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. So you don't have to be there five nights. If you can only be there one night, that's great.

01:56:26

But if that opportunity does exist, if you would like to be a part of that type of work. Now, what happens in situations when you're going to hand a tract out to somebody.

01:56:38

In fact, I'm going to steal someone's tract. Who has a tract? One of my tracts

01:56:43

I can steal from someone down here. Aha! Okay. Thank you very much.

01:56:50

Don't forget to get it back from me. Okay, I have one of our tracts called Grace Plus Works is

01:56:56

Dead. How do you like that? One of our more popular tracts. It goes well especially in Salt Lake City. And it deals with the

01:57:01

Gospel. And it deals with the concept of grace and works and works salvation and all the rest of this stuff. Let's say

01:57:07

I have a whole slew of these and a small Bible. Notice I said small

01:57:13

Bible. In other words, if you attempt to carry a wry study Bible with you out there, your one arm will be about two inches longer than your other arm by the end of the night.

01:57:22

I can guarantee you that. And you will not be appreciative of carrying a large Bible out there. It gets to be a long time, especially

01:57:29

Salt Lake. It's the same. This is a little King James thin line with big enough print that you can actually read it.

01:57:35

There are smaller versions, but remember you are standing under a street light. And so if you need to read it in the dark and it's one of those really micro print versions, hopefully your eyes are a lot better than mine are.

01:57:46

Or the other person's eyes are better than yours are too. Either one. So, I have a stack of tracts here and I'm standing there on the corner and here comes a group of folks.

01:57:55

What kind of conversations am I going to be getting into? Well, here's some of the normal ones.

01:58:01

I hand a tract out and notice I'm handing it to them so they can read the title. This does not work well.

01:58:08

What's that? I don't know. You hand it to them so they can actually read what you're attempting to hand to them and you step toward them.

01:58:13

You don't get in their way. You step toward them so they can see it. And you try to smile even though sometimes it's after about the fourth, you know, go get a life.

01:58:22

It's sort of hard to smile all the time, but you just trust the Lord and smile anyways.

01:58:29

Anyways, you hand a tract out and some of the conversations you're going to get will be, hmm, what's this?

01:58:39

Is this anti -Mormon literature? Immediately. We've been out there a long time. This is our like 10th or 11th year of doing this.

01:58:49

Why can't you guys just leave us alone? That's another conversation not exactly starter.

01:58:55

That's a hard one to start a conversation with. But if you're fast, you can start a conversation there by attempting to explain why you would come out here and stand on a sidewalk and pass out tracts.

01:59:06

But other people will look at the title of the tract, Grace Plus Works. What does that mean? So in other words, you may want to pass out a tract that is relevant to the topics you want to discuss.

01:59:16

If you want to discuss who Jesus Christ is you pass out the tract on the Mormon Jesus. If you want to discuss who

01:59:22

God is, you pass out a tract, one God or many. You want to pass out a tract that's going to naturally lead into the conversations that you want to deal with.

01:59:30

But when you're in a witnessing situation, there are some things you have to keep in mind.

01:59:35

A, what's the context? Am I at lunch with a coworker?

01:59:42

Am I out in Mesa, standing on the street corner? Am I talking to a relative that I'm going to see frequently in the future or infrequently in the future?

01:59:50

You need to keep all those things in your mind to determine what direction you want to go and how you're going to get there.

01:59:57

If you're out on a street corner, you may not have a long time. Again, you may. We've had some conversations last well into the night.

02:00:04

But most of the time you may not have a whole lot of time. So you need to have a direction you want to go a point you want to make, a message you want to communicate, and you've got to keep it in your mind.

02:00:15

Because I cannot tell you how many people fall into the fatal error, the fatal flaw to use a term that will have some significance to some of you, in regards to the witnessing situation.

02:00:28

And that is if you were to chart, okay, we're going to use the wall back here.

02:00:33

If you're going to chart the topics that you ended up having in the conversation you just had with a Mormon it looks like this. You started here, went here, went over there, up there, around the corner and ended up somewhere over there.

02:00:43

And by the time you get done, they walk away and you go what did we just do? We ended up talking about the suns.

02:00:50

How did that happen? I'm confused. If you don't have a direction to go, guess what's going to happen?

02:00:57

You're not going to go anywhere. You're just going to go around in circles and you're going to talk about every subject under the sun and you're going to end up in dead ends that are true dead ends.

02:01:05

I mean, there are certain subjects that you do not want to spend time standing on the street corner discussing. For example, polygamy.

02:01:13

No, avoid. Stay away from it. It's not going to do you any good. It really isn't. But you'd be amazed at how many people end up sitting there in somebody's face and talking about polygamy as if it had anything to do with anything right now.

02:01:27

It doesn't. Dead ends, you want to try to avoid them. If you have a direction you're going, that is vital.

02:01:35

You decide, okay, I want to make sure that if I get into conversation with somebody that the direction

02:01:42

I'm going is establishing there's only one true God. The reason I want to establish that, of course, is because Mormonism doesn't believe that.

02:01:51

Mormonism has Elohim and Jehovah and the Holy Ghost and there were gods before God and so on and so forth. I want to go there because the

02:01:59

Gospel is based upon a belief in the one true God. And it's the one true

02:02:05

God who saves. In fact, I may want to use Isaiah 43 .11 where the one true

02:02:10

God, Jehovah Elohim, says that he's the only one who saves. This is the direction I want to go.

02:02:16

That's my goal. That's where I want to go. Alright. You get into a conversation. What's going to happen?

02:02:23

If that's where you're going, then it's like you're on a road. And if you're on a road, let's say you're going up I -17 here and you want to get, well

02:02:35

I know, this last Tuesday I rode my bike from my home in Glendale to Sunset Point north of Black Canyon City and back again.

02:02:44

It was a 101 mile round trip. I like doing weird things like that. Now, as I'm going up I -17 they all of a sudden did something.

02:02:54

They're resurfacing the road. And in your car, that may not bug you, but boy, it was terrible on my bike.

02:03:00

I may have to get off I -17, say, at Happy Valley Road for a moment to go around some construction.

02:03:08

But am I going to stop at Happy Valley Road and go that direction? Or that direction? No. I'm going to find a way to get back onto I -17 so I can get up to Sunset Point.

02:03:18

It's the same thing in your conversations. When you're having a conversation with someone, they may bring up an issue that really is not where you want to go.

02:03:27

It's really not going to take you where you want to go. The key to successfully controlling those conversations and getting your point across and explaining to someone is thinking of it as, okay, here's a brief detour.

02:03:42

This person has asked me, I want to talk about the fact there's only one true God, and this person has just asked me, well, don't you believe that we believe in Jesus Christ?

02:03:53

Okay, now that's still related, but it may be going off in a direction that if I keep following this too far,

02:04:00

I'm going to end up way far away from where I want to go. It's like I've just gotten off at Happy Valley Road, and now

02:04:06

I need to try to find an on -ramp back onto where I want to be. I want to get back to the doctrine of God.

02:04:12

And so in your mind, and this isn't something that I can train you to do, it's something that with experience you get once you understand that this is what you're supposed to be doing.

02:04:21

But with experience, you learn how to build those bridges back to where you want to be, back to the topic, and you stay on one topic.

02:04:30

I can't tell you how many people have come to me, and they were real frustrated. They just had an hour long conversation with a

02:04:35

Mormon person out in Mesa, and they just had to admit, I can't think of a single topic we didn't cover. But we didn't cover any single topic well enough to do anything about it.

02:04:45

We went all over the place. We chased rabbits through so many different forests, I don't know what's happening.

02:04:52

So, the important thing to do is to have a direction, to have a topic.

02:04:57

If it's your first time out witnessing, you're going to want to memorize scriptures. Oh, did I say memorize scriptures?

02:05:04

Yeah, I did. Because you know something? When you're standing with a group of, say, young people around you, and there's five or six of them, the 28th book of the

02:05:15

New Testament called Concordance. I won't hack it. It doesn't work too well to go, well,

02:05:22

I know there's a verse on that, hold on just a second, let me see if I can find it. Fifteen minutes later, here it is!

02:05:27

The topic of conversation is ten topics down the road now. And you've just now found it. We need to memorize the

02:05:33

Word of God. That's been one of the greatest positive effects in a person's

02:05:39

Christian life, in my Christian life, has been the memorization of God's Word to be able to be out there doing those things.

02:05:46

It's very important. I'm not saying, you know, you say, I just have terrible time memorizing scripture. Well, maybe this will give you a good reason to do it.

02:05:54

I don't know. But the point is, that's a real important thing to do. And what we encourage people to do, especially if it's their first time out, is pick a topic.

02:06:01

Doctrine of God. Memorize the scriptures relevant to it. Isaiah 43 .10 44 .6

02:06:07

and 8. 45 .5 through 6. They're listed on the back here. If you look at our tract, One God or Many, they're listed there.

02:06:15

Memorize those scriptures. Not all the scriptures about the priesthood. Not all the scriptures about some other topic.

02:06:22

The ones that you're going to deal with and focus on that. And then maybe the next time you go out, let's pick up another topic and we'll memorize some of the scriptures about that.

02:06:31

But having the Word of God ready and able to share it with someone is extremely important.

02:06:37

I'm not saying that you can't do it if you haven't had the opportunity of memorizing those verses. But I'll tell you one thing.

02:06:45

I brought up the fact that there's a 24 to 1 conversion rate. Remember? I think one of the reasons is this.

02:06:52

We rightly emphasize that the Bible is the Word of God. But how often do we treat it like it is?

02:07:01

You hear what I'm saying? If we really believe that this is

02:07:06

God speaking to us, how often do we memorize it? Give yourself a little test.

02:07:14

And you're all going to start throwing rotten eggs at me here in a moment, but give yourself a little test. How long have you been a Christian? Number of years.

02:07:20

Put it in your mind. For me, that's a number of them. Multiply by 10.

02:07:27

Can you quote that many verses? You should be able to. That's less than a verse a month. Think about it.

02:07:35

Can you right now quote five verses and say there's only one true God? Five verses that teach the deity of Christ?

02:07:41

I can guarantee that Jehovah's Witnesses will be able to quote 15 that allegedly deny the deity of Christ easily.

02:07:50

Ten verses that teach salvation is by grace through faith. How about two that teach the Holy Spirit's a person?

02:07:58

Well, everybody knows that. Jehovah's Witnesses don't. Everybody knows there's only one true

02:08:03

God. Mormons don't. Ew, he's being mean!

02:08:13

Well, serious work. I'm hopefully challenging you to memorize the

02:08:19

Word of God and to have it ready. Because when you have a group of 10 or 15 kids around you, or 10 or 15 missionaries up in Salt Lake, whatever it might be, you do not have the time and the luxury to be looking through the concordance going, well there's a verse somewhere about that and I don't remember what it is.

02:08:34

That doesn't mean that if some type of conversation demanded that you look up a verse that you hadn't memorized, you can't do it.

02:08:40

The point is we want to try to get a message across efficiently when we're witnessing, especially out on the street.

02:08:47

Sure, in a situation where you've got a long time to talk with somebody, it's not as readily important.

02:08:53

But when we're going out and doing missionary witnessing, which is what we're talking about in Mason and Salt Lake, it is important.

02:08:59

It is very important. And so I would encourage you to do that.

02:09:05

My own experience was that when I first met with the missionaries, I had 189 scripture memory verses when

02:09:14

I first met with them. And six months later, once I started, the

02:09:19

Lord just really lit a fire in my heart to go share with LDS people. And six months later

02:09:25

I had 654 verses memorized. Because I wanted to be able to go out there and do it.

02:09:30

I'm not saying that that's something that you have to do. That's just something that I did. And that's, I think, very helpful to be able to work with the scriptures in that way.

02:09:40

Because some of these verses have never been explained to these folks in the way that you're going to explain them.

02:09:47

Many of them have never seen them before. So it's important. So, there are ten little things that I put on the back of this that I want to go over real quick.

02:09:58

And then we'll do just one or two role plays and then I'm going to let you out of here. Sharing with Latter Day Saints. Just ten things that I think are vitally important on the basis of my encounters with them over the years.

02:10:09

Be patient. That includes patience in the long run.

02:10:15

Whether it's like in corresponding with somebody or with a relative or a friend. Or patience on the street corner.

02:10:22

I'll never forget a missionary who was about yea tall in Mesa.

02:10:33

Got into my face right here. And he literally did this.

02:10:40

Someday, I'm going to be a god and you are going to worship me! In my face.

02:10:51

Now, my pastor My pastor has said many times,

02:11:00

Jim, God has gifted you to do that kind of thing. He hasn't gifted me to do that kind of thing.

02:11:07

If someone talked to me like that, they'd need dentures. Patience.

02:11:15

Because you know what? Seven years later, I met him at the south gate of the temple in Salt Lake City and we started corresponding.

02:11:26

If I cussed him out in return, he wouldn't be talking to me seven years later. Be patient.

02:11:32

Number two, be aware of the language barrier. You've heard the language barrier all morning. What's the language barrier?

02:11:39

When I say God, I mean the God of the Bible. When the Mormon says God, he means

02:11:45

Elohim, the exalted man. When I say Jesus, I mean the Jesus Christ of Scripture, the creator of all things.

02:11:51

When the Mormon says Jesus, he's talking about his elder spirit brother. There is a huge language barrier.

02:11:57

A massive language barrier. In fact, one of the most frustrating things that most Christians go through is they ask all the right questions.

02:12:04

I mean, you go out on an outreach visit and you've been trained what questions to ask.

02:12:09

Do you believe in Jesus? Yes, I do. Do you believe he's the son of God?

02:12:15

Yes, I do. Do you believe he died on the cross for your sins? Yes, I do. Have you repented of your sins? I certainly have.

02:12:20

Well, hello brother! And you haven't communicated anything because every word you've used meant something totally different.

02:12:29

In Mormonism, you have universal salvation. One kind of salvation is universal salvation.

02:12:34

You know what saved means to most Mormons? Resurrected. So you say, are you saved?

02:12:41

Well, yeah, I'm going to be resurrected. Hitler is saved. He's going to be resurrected. Everybody is saved. It's a free gift of God's grace because Jesus Christ rose from the dead so everybody else is going to be resurrected.

02:12:50

Big deal. You see, for us, saved has to do with individual salvation.

02:12:55

The highest God has for me in the Mormon mind, that's exaltation. Language barrier.

02:13:00

Don't communicate. You must be aware of the language barrier and hence be able to ask your questions and communicate in such a way that they understand where the differences lie.

02:13:10

And really what you're going after in a question that you're asking. Number four, focus upon the central truths of the faith.

02:13:17

What are those? There is only one God who can save. Jesus Christ is our Creator, the all -sufficient Savior, and salvation is

02:13:23

God's gracious gift. I honestly believe that's where you must focus. And if you can maintain a focus on those subjects, if you never have to get into the

02:13:31

Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph Smith, the First Vision, Nephites, Lamanites, or anything else, that's great!

02:13:37

You don't have to. I don't think you should if you don't have to. Why do we ever get into some of those things?

02:13:44

You say, well, some of your tracks are on Joseph Smith, they're on the Book of Mormon, whatever else there might be. What are you saying? Try to focus on these other things.

02:13:51

The only reason that you need to get into those things is if you're talking to an individual who already has such a strong belief in Joseph Smith, that they're not hearing anything you're saying about the

02:14:01

Bible. They're not hearing anything you're saying about the true God. And you'll notice, if any of you pick up Letters to a

02:14:07

Mormon Elder, in Letters to a Mormon Elder I talk about the testimony, the reliability of Scripture, and immediately go into the Doctrine of God.

02:14:14

And then all of a sudden, in the middle of the discussion of the Doctrine of God, I have to go into the discussion of Joseph Smith. Why? Because what happens is, frequently when you start pressing some of the clear teachings of Scripture on who

02:14:24

God is the Mormon all of a sudden backs up and says, well, you know, I've never seen those things before,

02:14:30

I'm not really a Scriptorian, but I know one thing, Joseph Smith is a prophet of God and he said differently. And now

02:14:36

I'm going to have to deal with Joseph Smith. Now I'm going to have to deal with the Doctrine and Covenants. Now I'm going to have to deal with the Book of Mormon. But if I don't have to do that, there's no reason to do that.

02:14:43

And like I said, I think it's a travesty that that young missionary could tell me that he went for two years in the

02:14:49

United States of America and no one had ever explained to him clearly the difference between what he believed and what Christians believed on the

02:14:54

Doctrine of Salvation. I'm sure there's some folks who attacked Joseph Smith with him. I'm sure there's some folks who attacked the

02:15:00

Book of Mormon with him. Like I said, I'd rather have five people who can clearly express what they believe in a positive way than fifty people who can shred the

02:15:08

Book of Mormon but could not explain to a Mormon the difference between his Gospel and the Gospel of Grace. Okay?

02:15:15

So, focus on the central truths of the faith. Fifth, be prepared to share why you accept the Bible as the perfect authoritative

02:15:22

Word of God. That's what I was just talking about. Folks, it is a wonderful thing to learn more and more about the

02:15:31

Bible and why we can trust it. I have debated atheists all across this land in writing, in stuff that they've published, so on and so forth, and the more supposed contradictions and errors in the

02:15:47

Bible have been thrown at me, the more as I dig into them I find the Bible to be true.

02:15:53

I have not found anything thrown at me that when you looked at it long enough you could find out that there is an answer to it.

02:16:00

And so, I hope that you will dig into the Word of God and find out where it came from, why we can trust it.

02:16:06

There's a lot of folks out there saying a lot of silly things about the Bible these days. We need to really be students of the

02:16:12

Word. Number six, avoid side issues that lead to blind alleys. Like I said, polygamy. You want to have a nice, hot argument with a

02:16:19

Mormon? Argue polygamy. You want to get anywhere? Don't argue polygamy. I mean,

02:16:24

I fell into that trap a few times early on. It was amazing how the emotion that came out in defense of it, but where did it get me?

02:16:33

Absolutely positively nowhere. Seventh, if pre -existing belief in Joseph Smith and the

02:16:38

LDS Church stands in the way, make sure you can back up any statements you make when dealing with Smith or the Church. Important!

02:16:46

Very important. Boy, I might get in trouble here.

02:16:54

There are people who maybe for the right reasons or the wrong reasons, want to try to witness to Mormons.

02:17:03

And they're willing to use arguments that if those arguments were turned against the Christian Church, would make us look just as silly as they make the

02:17:10

Mormons look. In other words, they use inconsistent arguments. And they do so under the guise of, well if it works, use it.

02:17:20

Folks, you've got to realize something. If you present ten solid arguments, if you present nine solid arguments against Mormonism and one that isn't, guess which one they're going to focus on.

02:17:32

It's human nature, folks. Once you catch somebody at one lie, they may have told you nine truths, but are you going to trust the nine truths?

02:17:41

We must be consistent in our argumentation. If we believe in Christian truth, then we should hold the highest standards of truth.

02:17:50

And that means we should not be willing to use weak arguments. And so, if we want to approach a person think about it.

02:18:00

It's just like I said at the beginning. If you're going to talk about Joseph Smith, and if you're going to talk about the Church, if you're going to make statements about history, you better be prepared to back them up.

02:18:13

You cannot expect someone to just simply decide that you are the greatest living expert on the subject, so they'll take your word for it.

02:18:21

In other words, don't make claims about things that you can't back up. That would be a basic thing that everyone should understand, but for some reason we take a lot of heat for it.

02:18:34

I've personally as the head of this ministry taken heat for not only emphasizing that point, but for pointing to other things that are put out there.

02:18:41

And there are books you can buy in the Christian bookstore on Mormonism that I could not even begin to recommend to you.

02:18:50

Because they are inconsistent, they use poor argumentation, and they're unfair. They're unfair.

02:18:58

And I take heat for that. Well, fine. I'll take heat for that if that's what needs to be done, but I think as Christians that should be second nature to us.

02:19:07

It should be absolutely second nature to us. So, make sure you can back up any statements that you make.

02:19:12

You can back up all the statements you want to make, as long as they're true. But make sure you can back them up.

02:19:17

Eight, don't get in over your head. Utilize support systems. I've seen people who, you know, got on their white charger and headed off towards Salt Lake City.

02:19:27

They're going to save the Mormons. Utilize support systems. And I think there's another very relevant portion to that too.

02:19:37

And that is, when people leave the LDS Church I think it's vitally important that they be discipled, they be put in a solid

02:19:48

Christian Church, and that they not be forced or coerced to get involved in some quote -unquote anti -Mormon ministry.

02:19:58

Some of you know that I know of a person here in the Valley who left the LDS Church went into quote -unquote ministry to Mormons, and is today a

02:20:08

Mormon again. People need to grow in grace.

02:20:17

They're a new believer. Just because they've come out of the Mormon Church doesn't make them an expert on Mormonism. If the

02:20:24

Lord calls them to that, eventually, fine. But first things first. First things first.

02:20:31

But you, don't get in over your head. Make sure that your elders, people that you know in the

02:20:36

Church, know what you're doing, and why you're doing it, and that they can support you and give you counsel in it. Remember, 24 to 1.

02:20:45

Just keep that thought in mind. Nine, share positive, challenging Christian literature.

02:20:50

This is another rather unusual one. But you cannot assume that the

02:20:56

LDS person has even a semi -decent grasp of what we believe.

02:21:03

And so one thing that you may want to do if you have an opportunity over time to share with someone is share some books that have absolutely positively nothing to do with Mormonism at all.

02:21:14

Charles Haddon Spurgeon's All of Grace. All of Grace. Spurgeon's classic. Great thing to share with somebody.

02:21:22

I sent The Holiness of God by R .C. Sproul up to a Mormon fellow in Utah.

02:21:29

I mean, that ain't exactly what you'd normally expect somebody to send along. But it's a solid work that emphasizes the holiness of God.

02:21:37

A completely different God than that Mormon is familiar with. It may be one direction that you may want to go.

02:21:43

And finally, live the Christian life not just in being kind and compassionate but in living a holy, separated life.

02:21:50

Not because you have to but because you love God and wish to bring Him glory. If you live a

02:21:56

Christian life where you seek to glorify God, you are a walking, talking contradiction to the belief that the

02:22:06

LDS church is the only true church on earth. You're a walking and talking contradiction without presenting your very first argument.

02:22:16

And notice the emphasis that I put at the end. Living a holy, separated life.

02:22:22

What? Because if you don't, you won't get saved. Because if you don't,

02:22:28

God won't love you. Because you gotta earn God's grace. Because you're trying to fulfill

02:22:34

Moroni 10 .32. Because if you don't do this, then God's grace won't be sufficient for you.

02:22:39

No. Mormons need to understand that their striving for worthiness will never get them anywhere.

02:22:50

We have to be made worthy by Jesus Christ and by His grace alone. They can never stand before a just and holy

02:22:58

God clothed partially in Christ's righteousness and partially in their own.

02:23:05

You either stand before God clothed in His righteousness, which He provides in Jesus Christ or you go to hell.

02:23:14

That is all there is to it. Remember the parable that Jesus told about the marriage.

02:23:25

Go out, invite him to come in. When the master comes in, what did he find?

02:23:32

He found one person wasn't wearing a wedding garment. What did he do? Threw him out into outer darkness.

02:23:40

Oh, that's mean! That's unfair! Context! Context!

02:23:48

The person that put the wedding on had the responsibility of providing the garments.

02:23:55

If he didn't have a garment, it's because he didn't accept it. He was going on his own.

02:24:02

He was cast into the outer darkness. The only wedding garment that's going to be accepted at the marriage supper of the

02:24:09

Lamb is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. The Mormon is not going to be wearing it.

02:24:18

That's what we need to share with them. We live a life that's holy.

02:24:26

What does Ephesians chapter 2 say? If any of you are planning on heading home right now to memorize some scripture and you're going to memorize

02:24:34

Ephesians 2 .8 -9, how many of us know Ephesians 2 .8 -9? For by grace are you saved through faith, and that now of yourselves is the gift of God, not of works that any man should boast.

02:24:42

What does verse 10 say? If you memorize verses 8 and 9, don't you dare not memorize verse 10.

02:24:49

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which

02:24:55

God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. We are not created by good works. We are not maintained by good works.

02:25:01

We are created in Christ Jesus unto good works. And that is one of the most vital passages to share with LDS people.

02:25:06

We live a separated and holy life because we wish to bring glory to God. That's the message that we have to get across.

02:25:17

That sermon was free as well. Unfortunately, it leaves us with very little time for any type of role playing, unfortunately. But those are the things that you need to put into your heart.

02:25:28

These 10 things will help us in sharing the gospel with the LDS people. Okay? Now, I've thrown a lot of stuff at you today.

02:25:40

I've thrown a lot of material at you. If you're already familiar with Mormonism, hopefully you were able to field pretty much all of it.

02:25:47

And hopefully it was helpful to you. If you weren't familiar with Mormonism, you may be going a little unclear. Our address and telephone number is on the back.

02:25:57

If you got one of the brown sheets. And if the Lord lays on your heart that you wish to be involved in the witnessing work.

02:26:08

Don't let anybody put you under any pressure to do it. There are certain people who have personalities that are not commensurate with this type of work.

02:26:15

I'm going to tell you right now. You are no less of a Christian if you do not go out with us to Mesa. If you are not the type of person that can handle confrontational situations, you may not want to think about it.

02:26:30

But if the Lord has placed upon your heart a desire to do that, look this material over and get in touch with us.

02:26:37

Talk with Kathy. Kathy was out there last year. She can give you some personal experiences if you're here at Calvary.

02:26:43

Some personal experiences of what it's like. But talk with us. But no matter what, if you're a believer, whether you go with us or not, please pray for us.

02:26:52

Pray for us during that week. Pray for us while we're in Salt Lake City. It happens every six months. It's really easy to know when we're in Salt Lake City.

02:26:59

The first Saturday of April. The first Saturday of October. That's when we're there. Pray for us.

02:27:06

Support us in that way. Raise those petitions before God. But you know something?

02:27:12

If you're here, I've had a lot of people who've said, isn't it weird how

02:27:17

I attended a seminar or I read a book and the next week this guy comes along and I didn't even know he was a

02:27:23

Mormon and lo and behold we start talking about Jesus and I got to share with him. You may get to do the same thing.

02:27:33

Hopefully you'll be better prepared. And hopefully we will be the ones sharing the message of truth with them in a knowledgeable way, in a way that's effective that the

02:27:44

Lord will bless. Rather than it only being the little fellows on the bikes with the white shirts and the dark ties knocking on folks' doors.

02:27:53

In fact, they may knock on yours. They may knock on yours. And hopefully you'll have a good message for them.

02:28:00

I want to thank you for being here this morning. It's a Saturday morning. It's about 20 minutes after 12.

02:28:06

You've given of your time. I appreciate that. And like I said, we are here to be of assistance to you.

02:28:12

We deal with other groups other than Mormonism as well. And so if there's anything that we can do for yourself, for your church, please feel free to let us know.

02:28:21

And let's close with a word of prayer. Our Father, we are so thankful for your word.

02:28:27

We are thankful that though we were undeserving, you in your grace have brought us to new life in Jesus Christ, that you have protected us from being deceived as so many other people are deceived.

02:28:42

Help us, Father, to realize it is not because of our goodness, but your goodness that we are here this morning.

02:28:49

Father, we pray for the Mormon people. We pray for those who may use the name of Christ, but have been deceived about who

02:28:56

Jesus Christ is and what salvation is. Father, we pray that it would be your will to use us to spread the word of Jesus Christ, to spread the gospel of grace amongst those who continue to strive to be worthy, who continue to strive to earn something.

02:29:16

Father, we truly pray your blessings upon the missionary efforts that are coming up. And Father, I pray your blessing upon those that are gathered here right now.

02:29:26

Father, bless them for being here. Father, direct them in their studies in the future as they memorize

02:29:32

God's word. And Father, I pray that those here will be faithful in giving a good testimony of Jesus Christ when the opportunities are presented to them in the future.

02:29:41

We thank you for your many blessings. We thank you for the love that you've shown us in Jesus Christ. For it's in his name that we pray.