Mormons Hearing the Truth about Eternal Progression

Apologia Utah

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LDS Church teaches that going through the temple ordinances, going through all the processes, doing good works, and then of course the grace of God comes in to play with that, that if a man makes it to the celestial level, right, and he calls upon the name of his wife, the secret name, and he is given intelligences and power to have his own universe, his own creation, much like this one which

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Elohim, Father God has. So that's what LDS Church teaches, that God was,

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Elohim was once a man and now he progressed to Godhood, to where he is today, and he receives worship.

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So our question is, it says, So all throughout scripture what we see is there's fundamentally one

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God, just one, not one that was before him, not the men here on this planet who can progress and become gods of their own universe.

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So what do you think of that? What do you think of eternal progression? What are your names?

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Wade. Wade. Andrew. Cool. I'm from Gilbert, Arizona. Oh, right on. Yeah.

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Nice. Yeah, we're from, well, I live in Maricopa right now. I live in Phoenix, yeah. Oh, wow.

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Yeah. Where do y 'all go to church? We go to Apologia Church in Mesa. It's a Baptist church.

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The bad word. Baptist. I'm just kidding. I'm just messing. Sometimes they're like, oh, we've talked to our

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LDS neighbors and they're like, oh, Baptist. Oh, boy. I'm from California.

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Oh, right on. Yeah. Cool. Have you studied that doctrine much? Yeah. Oh, you have?

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Yeah. So what do you think? Okay.

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And we will always worship him no matter what. Okay. So he will always be our God. Right.

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Okay. All right. So my concern, though, is it's almost like an escalator.

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Okay. So like Elohim is on the escalator and a man in this world is below him and he kind of directs worship to Elohim.

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Then the guy after him worships him and then worships him. Because remember, the goal is to become a

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God, to have your own kingdom. This might help. The King Follett Discourse says, by Joseph Smith, King Follett Discourse, he says, you have imagined and supposed that God has been

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God from all eternity. All eternity. He says, I will refute that idea, take away the veil that you may see.

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You've got to learn to become gods, which comes into direct conflict with something like Psalm 90, verse 2, where it says, before the mountains were brought forth, wherever you form the earth and the world, from everlasting into everlasting, you are

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God. He is the only God. So there is no escalator. That's what

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I'm trying to get at. So I know you'll worship Elohim, but we're concerned that whoever progresses here, let's say that guy, you know, he goes through everything and he's done well and he's a great member of the

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LDS Church and God's favor is upon him and he becomes a God and he gets that power, then the people in his earth -like, you know, situation will then worship him.

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So then he's getting worship that we believe is only supposed to be given to the one true and living

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God. Does that make sense? I see where you're coming from on that. Yeah.

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It's important, right? Yeah. Do you have any like...

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We're mainly here just to preach to you guys the true gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who the true

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Jesus is, because we find there's fundamental differences, and I think you guys would agree, Joseph Smith would agree, he says that all of the denominations are corrupt, professors are corrupt, we're abominations, right?

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Those are Joseph Smith in his First Vision account. It's in the beginning of the book of Mormon. You can read it. I mean, we just got to be honest with ourselves.

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It's not another denomination. You guys believe in a fundamentally different Jesus. So 2 Corinthians 11 verse 4 states that there are people who will come and will preach a different Jesus, a different gospel, who have accepted a different spirit.

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You can look it up. 2 Corinthians 11 verse 4. But you can go into Galatians chapter 1 verse 6, where it says that even if an angel from heaven comes and preaches to you another gospel, let them be a curse, let them be an apple.

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But in terms of the question, though, is we can see in scripture that there are people who will come and preach a different Jesus, just like the

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Jehovah's Witnesses preach a different Jesus, just as Christian science preaches a different Jesus. Right.

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Let me give you an example real quick. So Jesus in the Bible, in the

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New Testament, states that he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

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In the Greek, the word firstborn means prototikos, which means the heir of all things, because that word is even ascribed to King David.

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He's not the firstborn in his family. So we're not talking about someone who's born from spiritual offspring. It says he's the image of the invisible

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God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him, all things were created on heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.

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Whether thrones, dominions, rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things and in him all things.

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Talking about Jesus. This is Jesus. In John chapter one, it says in the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was

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God. All things were created through him. There was nothing that came into being that was not created through him and for him.

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However, the LDS gospel presents a totally different Jesus. It says he's the spiritual offspring of Elohim and one of his goddess wives.

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And that Lucifer is his spirit brother, right? But scripture teaches differences. So if we are presented with a different Jesus, then you may have a fictional atonement for your sins.

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Your faith may be placed in the wrong Christ. And our hearts are burdened for you guys. We want you guys to know that you can actually put your faith in the true and living

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God of scripture. Jesus says, heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words by no means will pass away.

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John 17, 17 sanctified them by the truth. Thy word is truth. But the LDS church teaches that the

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Bible is missing many plain and precious parts and then teaches you, you can become a God one day. Harken back to the beginning of Genesis.

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What did Satan do to Eve? You said, did God say that? And guess what? You can become just like him.

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It's the same way I presented from the beginning of time. And that's why our hearts want to hear it. Our hearts want to hear that.

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It wants to hear we can become God's one day. Jeremiah 17, nine says our hearts are deceitful above all things. Desperately wickedly we know them.

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And there's two tests of the prophet. Deuteronomy 13 states that the prophet or dreamer of dreams arises among you, produces miracles, signs, and wonders, but leads you after another

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God, a God which you have not known. What's that? Can I open?

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Who? Um, the temple square? Um, these ladies might know. I'm sorry.

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Oh no, no, you're good. I think you can walk through. Okay. Thank you.

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So it's with a burdened heart that I come here to tell you guys today that you can put your faith in the true and living

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God. You can repent of an organization that teaches a false Christ. You can come to have true knowledge of saving faith and enjoy impeccable in the relationship with Jesus Christ.

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Not an organization that states that his sacrifice just helps you achieve something. No. To me as a

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Christian, his sacrifice is everything to me. I am nothing without him. I'm nothing.

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I'll never become a God, but my goal is just to glorify him and enjoy him forever. Does that make sense?

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Yeah. Thank you. We appreciate your testimony of the savior. We know that he is the son of the living

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God and we know that he loves each of us and that this beautiful Easter weekend we get to celebrate that he lives.

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Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah. Just think about that though. Resurrection Sunday's tomorrow.

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Could, if Jesus is not God, if he is just creating the pre -existence, could he really actually atone for sin?

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Because when we offend an eternal God, we deserve an eternal punishment.

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So an eternal being, Jesus, needs to take the wrath of God that we deserve so we won't go to hell, so that we would be saved.

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So in LDS doctrine, when you have a created Jesus who had a beginning, then how is he going to take our sins upon him?

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It's just kind of, it doesn't make sense philosophically or theologically. So we want to give that to you.

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You know, we know you've got to talk with other people. We don't want you to lose faith.

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We're not here like, wow, these guys are talking to us. Let's put the guard down. They're robbing us of our faith.

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That's not what we want to do. We don't want to rob you of your faith or community or family.

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We want you to join the community of evangelical Christians to, we'll help you, we'll be there with you, and we want you to maintain your faith in the true

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God. We know it costs probably almost everything to leave this, right? Your parents, maybe, you know, significant others, whatever it may be.

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But Jesus says to count the cost. This is not the true church as much as Joseph Smith said it was the restoration.

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So we want you to keep faith. You know, just look into some of what we're saying. Look at the false prophecies of Joseph Smith online, and it undercuts everything he's ever done after that.

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It dismantles this whole thing. So that's our that's our call to you. So we'll leave you with an elbow bump.

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Yeah, thank you. We respect your beliefs, and we're grateful to meet you. We hope you have a really good Easter Sunday. Thank you. We will.