The Street Apologist: Mormonism

Apologia Studios

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

So, as I said about in the prayer, talking to the

00:05

Lord, I've been involved in ministry to the LDS community since really I first heard the gospel.

00:11

I wasn't raised in a Christian home, and so I wasn't raised in a theological context and course.

00:18

I didn't understand really who Jesus was. My only understanding of Jesus really came from watching, I think at Easter time, really watched a movie at Easter that was on television about the life of Christ and everything else, and that was the context of that.

00:31

I understood there was a guy named Jesus who claimed to have died and rose again. At about 17 years old, I heard the gospel for the first time, interestingly, from Billy Graham on television.

00:40

That's where I first heard the gospel, thought what I had was a conversion to Christ, and so my story is not necessarily overly important here about God's work in my own life throughout the years.

00:52

But when I first heard the gospel and I turned to Christ and I experienced really this life change, and I was bringing a

01:00

Bible now to school because I couldn't get enough of it. I was reading it in classes, getting in trouble for reading it in classes, reading it at lunchtime, and it wasn't long after I had experienced this transformation and really this love for God that I ran into a person in theater arts class while I was reading the

01:19

Bible in high school. While I'm reading the Bible, he sat down next to me and he said, hey, what are you reading?

01:25

I said, it's the Bible, and he's like, are you Christian? I said, yeah, I'm Christian. Are you Christian? He said, yeah, I'm Christian too.

01:31

And so we're chatting and we're rapping a little bit, and then he says to me something kind of peculiar, and I'd only been a

01:37

Christian for a very, very, very short time. We're talking like a month, maybe three months I was a believer, and he says something odd to me that struck me as odd even as a new believer with really no theological training.

01:48

He says to me, he says, so what level of heaven do you think you're going to? And I thought, oh, that's, um, uh, hopefully the highest level,

01:58

I guess, I suppose that'd be the good thing to do, right? Uh, that's what I aim for right there. And so through talking, I asked him, you know, where are you from?

02:04

And he said, well, you know, my denomination is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. And I had remembered that a couple months prior to that, there was a guy that came to my door and gave me a card to visit the

02:13

Washington DC temple. And I lived around DC, and so I remember this vividly. So I go to this

02:19

Christian bookstore down the road from my house. I'd become like a fixture there. I was there all the time reading books on the floor, and I knew the owner named

02:26

Tony, and I walked in one day after school this day, and I said to him, I said, hey, Tony, could you give me any information on the denomination of the

02:33

Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints? And he says, Jeff, that's, that's not a denomination, that's a cult! And he runs to the back, he says, hang on a second, and he comes back, and he basically drops a load of books into my lap, and he says, here, just take it, you don't need to pay me for it, just read it, there you go.

02:49

And so I went home, and that night, I watched some film, some documentary on Mormonism, and I also read some books, and I ended up not sleeping that entire night,

02:59

I didn't even sleep. I went to school the next morning without sleeping the night before, just reading and digesting all this, and I was in awe of the fact that we were using the same language, but we were not talking about the same things.

03:11

And I knew very little at the time, but I was just, I just couldn't believe, and I was really stunned by the fact that this guy

03:18

I was talking to that I thought, you know, was claiming to be a Christian was, in fact, not a Christian, and so I had gone to this photocopy place before school, and I remember vividly photocopying pages and pages and pages of scripture, highlighting stuff, pages and pages and pages of Mormon stuff, and I even got a photocopy of Joseph Smith's arrest record in 1826 in Bainbridge, New York, for crystal ball gazing, and the fine that he paid, and I remember that I came with this docket of my case against Mormonism, and I came to my friend and said, hey, you're in a cult!

03:49

Take this! And, you know, I thought that was, you know, done, he'll be saved, right? So what ended up being the course of my relationship with him is that for a period of about six months we developed a really good friendship, and we talked all the time, and I ended up actually meeting with Mormon missionaries, numerous sets of Mormon missionaries from his ward.

04:10

I went with his family during Christmas time to go to the Washington, D .C. temple, and I remember on the car ride home,

04:16

I'm sitting in the van with a guy who was a black Mormon, and I remember that I'm in this hour -long car ride home talking to him about the racism and early

04:25

Mormonism, and how could you be black and be a Mormon, and, you know, I don't really know quite what

04:31

I'm doing, but I'm doing everything I can to reach this guy. So as time went by, I remember vividly we were in my bedroom one day with my friend, and we're talking, and he started crying as I'm ministering to him.

04:45

Again, I know very little at the time, but I just had this passion to reach him. And after the course of our relationship, and all this conversation leads up to this moment where I'm giving him the gospel, and he says to me, finally, as he breaks down, he says,

04:58

Jeff, I know everything you're saying is true. He says, but I can't leave

05:03

Mormonism. He says, if I leave the church, I lose everything. I lose everything. I lose my family.

05:09

I lose my friends. I'll lose everything. And so I remember that I was a believer only for a short period of time, and this verse just welled up within my soul.

05:18

I knew I had to say to him, I said, what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?

05:23

I don't even know how I knew that verse, but I did, and I gave it to him. And that really started, for me, a passion, a desire to reach people who were

05:31

LDS, because I saw in front of me somebody who actually would acknowledge that, yeah, I can see this is completely false, but I'm stuck.

05:38

I can't leave. And so that set me on a course to really want to reach this community.

05:43

But in Washington, D .C., there's not a large, large community of Mormons. And so as time goes on, and the

05:49

Lord leads, I ended up moving up to Arizona. I was competing worldwide in martial arts competitions.

05:57

I was doing televisions, movies, video games, stuff like that, and I wanted to be closer to L .A. And so I thought I was coming out here to sort of do that, be closer to L .A.,

06:04

and also to go to Bible college and teach karate as a profession as I made my way through there.

06:10

And an interesting thing happens. I come out to Arizona really not quite knowing really why it's Arizona, but the guy

06:17

I was staying with at the time gives me his car keys the first day I'm here, and he says, go ahead, take the car, drive around town, get to know your way around.

06:26

And I remember that I was in Gilbert, and I drove for one mile, and I was thinking to myself, oh, my goodness,

06:36

I've never seen so many wards in my life. Turned another mile, ward after ward after ward after ward after ward.

06:45

And I remember that I had this moment with God where I thought to myself, I know why

06:51

Arizona. I know why here. And I remember I was driving one day somewhere in Mesa, and I see this billboard up for the

06:59

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints Mormon Easter pageant. Whoa.

07:05

They're all going to be in one spot? I know where they're at. And so I didn't really know anybody out here, really didn't know any believers, and I grabbed my backpack with some of my materials to reach

07:12

Mormons, my Bible, and I went out by myself to the Mormon temple, hit the streets, and ran into James White there that first year, ran into some other guys that I still know to this day that I'm actually serving with in ministry today.

07:24

And so that was in 1996, here it is 2012, and I've gone every year to the Easter pageant and to the

07:29

Christmas lights, two events during the year. The Easter pageant is held over a period of about one week, and the last

07:37

I heard, there's over 100 ,000 people that show up over the course of that week. And it's interesting because you have a lot of people who are members of the

07:44

LDS Church, and you also have people who are non -members, and the Mormon Church aggressively uses this event to reach non -Mormons, to make appointments, to get into their communities to reach them for the gospel of the

07:58

Mormon Church. And so it's a big event for them, and I've been out there for many, many years, handed out countless thousands of tracts,

08:05

I've been in I don't even know how many conversations, no way to even gauge that. And also the

08:10

Christmas lights is the period actually we're in right now, we're around Thanksgiving into the New Year, basically the lights are up and they're busting people in from all over the valley, the lights are all up all over the temple, they spend a lot of money to do so, and missionaries are out on their feet around that temple trying to create conversations and to lead people into the

08:29

Mormon Church. And so we are there to create relationships with people who are LDS, to reach them with the gospel, and I'll tell you some stories about that, a few kind of interesting and big stories as we do that.

08:39

So really what Pastor Volkow wanted me to do is he wanted me to really come here with the agenda of getting you to come with us, essentially, okay?

08:49

And that may sound scary to some of you guys, but I want to encourage you to see that it really is not scary when you go with the heartbeat to love these people and the desire to reach them for the gospel with the very power of God himself behind you.

09:02

And so I want to give you sort of a picture of the nature of the case, the necessity for aggressive evangelism, and the nuts and bolts of how we do this.

09:10

And so those three things I'm going to touch today, just number one, the nature of the problem. Number two,

09:16

I want to talk to you about the necessity for aggressive evangelism like this temple evangelism, like what you did yesterday going to the mosque, and also

09:25

I wanted to explain what are the things you should have sort of spinning around, what do you want to focus on as you go reach the

09:31

LDS community in a context of actually on the street evangelism to reach them. And so let's start first with the nature of the problem.

09:39

Now this may come as something that most of you already know, but I need to spell it out as we leap into this, it wouldn't be proper not to.

09:47

The nature of the problem. Number one, in Galatians chapter one, famous passage really for any believer who's doing evangelism to religions that borrow from Christianity, they ape

09:59

Christianity but end up distorting the message. Galatians chapter one is a necessary point to touch because it does give you the context, the foundational context of the necessity to reach somebody who proclaims a

10:11

Christ or a gospel that is contrary to the gospel found in scripture. We live in a culture, of course, and in an age, in the spirit of the age, is that your truth?

10:23

This is my truth. Don't step on my toes. I won't step on your toes. Hey, we're Christians too. Who are you to tell me that I'm not a

10:28

Christian? So this is a necessary corrective for our culture. And when

10:33

I say culture, I'm not talking about the world's culture. I'm talking about the modern evangelical

10:39

American Christian church. Let me just say this boldly. I think that the modern evangelical

10:45

Christian movement needs to die a fiery death and be reborn. And what

10:50

I mean by that is in context of Galatians like this, you see the apostle Paul flip it out.

10:57

I mean, he flips his lid here in Galatians, probably one of the earliest letters written by Paul in the

11:03

New Testament. And for what reason? It's because of a false, destructive view of the gospel that is now creeping into the church in Galatia.

11:12

And so to that end, I'll start reading here. Paul basically opens up. He says, Paul, an apostle, not for men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the

11:21

Father who raised him from the dead and all the brothers who are with me to the churches of Galatia. He says, grace to you and peace from God our

11:28

Father and Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of God, of our

11:36

God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Now, interesting. Sounds a lot like Paul as he opens up other letters, you know, very, very praiseworthy, very hey,

11:44

I'm Paul, called by God. And if you think of Romans, the first seven verses of Romans, one sentence, seven verses, it's only one sentence glowing stuff.

11:56

Right. And like, I can't wait to see you. I can't wait to impart some spiritual gift to you. And like this long opening, very beautiful and hot and exalted and lifted up.

12:05

And here we have Paul a few verses in and here's what he does. I'm amazed. Like opens up.

12:12

Hey, it's Paul. Grace and peace. I'm amazed that you're so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ to another gospel.

12:22

Now, opening up here, what is the issue in Galatia? Grace. Paul's got to, he's got to mention that.

12:31

It's not an accident that he throws in, he called you by his grace to another gospel because you see, that's the point. If you read the book of Galatians, it's a very small letter and just a few chapters.

12:40

And the issue in this whole book is the issue of grace. That's what's being distorted here.

12:46

Now notice this, that there is another gospel message, good message being proclaimed in Galatia But Paul says that you're deserting him who called you by his grace to a different gospel.

13:00

And Paul has to mention, which is really not another, Paul's point is, is there's only one gospel.

13:05

He says, but there are some who wanted to, who are troubling you and wanted to distort the gospel of Christ.

13:13

Now this is essential. Listen to what Paul says here. This is eight verses into the letter. He just has opened up.

13:19

This is not a good, listen. You would read this to the church, picture this, you're in the church of Galatia, you're running along, you're doing your thing, you got your family, you got your fellowship, you're doing your thing.

13:30

Hey guys, the apostle Paul sent us a letter, sweet. Everyone sits down, congregations together, and Paul is now preaching from the pulpit through this letter.

13:41

All right? And you're there. Hey, we got a letter from Paul, everyone sit down. What's he got to say? He's freaking out.

13:46

Right? I'm amazed. What are you doing? You're deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ to another gospel. And he says this, guys, if, even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be anathema.

14:02

The Greek word there, accursed, we get accursed from. It is essentially the strongest

14:07

Greek word that Paul could have pulled from to describe eternal separation from God, a curse.

14:14

And so what he does here is he calls down the curse of God upon himself or anybody else, apostles or otherwise, or even an angel from heaven should come and preach another gospel.

14:25

And look, if an angel comes into your congregation, materializes in front of you, looks glorious, what

14:31

I don't even know what that would look like, but it'd be stinking awesome if he materializes and he preaches a different gospel contrary to the one that we've already preached to you, let him be anathema.

14:40

And then he does what is a very Jewish method of getting the point across for a

14:45

Jew, repetition is a way of exaggerating or amplifying what you're saying, as in Isaiah where God says, holy, holy, where it says in the scriptures, holy, holy, holy, it's a way of amplifying and screaming out this truth of the holiness of God.

15:00

Well, Paul, as a Jewish rabbi, is really pulling from that methodology as a Jew, where he's already said something that is gospel, it's set down in stone, it's pretty serious, and then he says, again, as we have said before, so now

15:12

I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed, anathema, twice.

15:22

How serious is it that we get the gospel right? It's deadly serious. God has one message of salvation, he has one means of salvation, one savior, one mediator, and that message,

15:35

Paul says in Romans chapter one, that good news is the very power of God for salvation.

15:41

If you have a message that is not the biblical message of life and salvation, you have a message of death, not of life.

15:49

A gospel that is contrary to the biblical gospel is not a message that brings life, it is a message that brings death, and it is a message in the context of Galatians that ultimately distorts the gospel of grace, which is ultimately what the underpinnings of the good news really comes down to, is grace.

16:11

This is a message about God getting his glory for saving his people from their sins, and it's got nothing to do with them.

16:19

Paul and all the apostles take pains to point out the fact that this is a message of grace all to the glory of God so that God may boast from beginning to end.

16:28

We're not in this story in the sense of stuff that we have done to attain this. This is God's message, and this message in Galatia, this false one, was distorting the message of life.

16:40

So is it essential? Very essential. The nature of the problem is, in fact, something that Dr.

16:46

Walter Martin, he's a man that has had great impact on my thinking, he's with the Lord now, he wrote the book The Kingdom of the

16:51

Cults, and I talk a lot about this because when we bring up this issue of Galatians and distortion of the gospel, you have to keep in mind something very important.

16:59

You say, well, like, what's the diff? Like what's the big deal, Jeff? Why are you harping on this? Walter Martin did it well.

17:07

He did it right. When he opened this book up, The Kingdom of the Cults, which you should have in your library, he did the right thing at the start.

17:14

Before he does the examination of each different religion and cult to show what they believe in their history and how that contrasts with scripture, he does the right thing, and that is he starts the book off with a section called

17:25

Scaling the Language Barrier, Scaling the Language Barrier, which is really important because if you're new to the scene right now, you probably have experienced this, or even if you've been in this for a while, you've experienced this.

17:39

You'll be talking to someone that's a Latter -day Saint or a Jehovah's Witness or a Christian scientist, and a lot of times

17:45

Christians will say to me, well, Jeff, I had some missionaries come to my door today, and it was the weirdest thing ever because we talked for like an hour and it seemed like we were saying exactly the same thing.

17:54

Like we had an hour -long conversation, and I can't honestly tell Jeff, like, are you sure that you're exactly right about them?

18:00

Because these guys that came to my door, they said, oh, it is grace. It is faith in Christ. He died.

18:06

Yeah, he rose. He's our Savior. Look, it's on our building, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. We believe in Heavenly Father.

18:12

Don't you believe in Heavenly Father? And the Christian goes, well, yeah, I believe in Heavenly Father, and well, don't you believe that God is all -powerful?

18:20

Well, yeah, I believe that, too. Don't you believe Jesus died for sins, and that He conquered death and rose from the dead, and that you need to have faith in Him?

18:27

Yeah. Why don't you sit down and let's break bread together? Like that's the outcome. It's like, how does this actually work out?

18:34

Walter Martin points out that when you actually engage this issue, understand that the cults have hijacked our terminology.

18:42

You can't do this conversation. You can't minister in this area if you don't first recognize, number one, the foundation truths of Scripture, but then as you get into this context, you're not talking to an atheist who denies what you're saying, your truth and everything else.

18:59

You're not talking to the agnostic. You're not talking necessarily to the person who's a secularist, who's influenced by post -modernism, who says, well, we can't know anything for certain anyway.

19:08

You're talking to a person who is not like that. You're talking to a person who is borrowing from Christian terminology in their conversation.

19:17

They're saying your words. They speak Christianese, okay? They're saying

19:22

Heavenly Father. They're saying Jesus. They're saying Lord Jesus. They're saying gospel. They're saying died for sins, rose from the dead, bled for us.

19:30

They're saying all those things, but understanding the context in relation to Galatians and false gospels is that they have essentially hijacked our terminology, and what we have to initially start with is to be able to unpack that terminology, to understand that when we talk about a gospel that is pure and true and proclaimed with power that brings life, you're talking to people who have borrowed terms like gospel from the start, and so we have to get behind that language, because 2

20:01

Corinthians 11, think about this, it gets Christians today kind of weirded out.

20:07

Like, man, will they use our language? Do we really know? Is it that important? I mean, yeah, they have a different version of Jesus in some ways, but is it that important?

20:13

Listen, 2 Corinthians 11 is not written long after the resurrection. In the context of the history of the church, this is a letter written really shortly after the resurrection.

20:24

If you figure the context of time here, and Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11 to a church in Corinth in the first century, not long after the resurrection, he says that he's afraid that they're going to be deceived by the craftiness that also deceived

20:38

Eve, and that they may even perhaps buy into, put up with a person who preaches another

20:46

Jesus, another gospel, another spirit. He basically says, you may even put up with these guys.

20:55

They may cross your threshold, bring this new Jesus, this new gospel, this new spirit, and you may even put up with them, and I am concerned for you.

21:05

Now, get this, that happened long ago in really the beginnings of the kingdom of God in the world.

21:13

Think about that. Here we are 2 ,000 years later. Should it surprise us that here we are, and there was a man in 1830, publishes the

21:21

Book of Mormon in the 19th century in America, who proclaimed a different gospel, who proclaimed a different Jesus?

21:27

Should that surprise us? It's the nature of a fallen world. Paul dealt with it, and he wants us to deal with it.

21:32

So, the nature of the problem, very specifically, is that the gospel of Mormonism is a false gospel.

21:39

The gospel of Mormonism is not a gospel that brings life, it is a gospel of death. James White, I said this on Backpack Radio when

21:47

I was with the guys, James White has a quote in his book, The God Who Justifies, and he basically, this is,

21:53

I think, an important thing to hear, he says something pretty hardcore and in your face, and I agree with him. He says, people who proclaim a false gospel are committing eternal murder, because that is what this is about.

22:05

Those are the stakes. This is about life, this is about death. The gospel of Mormonism is not a gospel that saves, and the

22:13

God of Mormonism is the same as any false god or idol that any man -made religion has ever come up with in time.

22:21

It's the same. And we are in an interesting time, and we'll mention this, not to get into politics as a major portion, although Christians should be involved,

22:29

I believe, in cultural stuff, but we're in an interesting time where you have a man running for president right now,

22:35

Mitt Romney, who is a member of the LDS Church, he was on a mission, he was, as far as I know, a bishop in the

22:41

LDS Church, and it's interesting because whatever you believe about the political scene and where we should go, that's not the issue.

22:49

The issue is, is you have organizations like Billy Graham's organization, who actually take off of their website terminology that calls

22:56

Mormonism a cult and says it's a false gospel. Why? Because it's selling out the gospel for a temporary political situation.

23:05

Now, I want to say this, say you vote for Romney, okay, great. Vote for Romney, you do that, fine.

23:12

It doesn't mean you have to accept the fact that he preaches a false gospel and has a false god. Mitt Romney is a part of a cult, he preaches a false gospel, if you were to sit down and ask him about Jesus and about the gospel, you would get a false

23:25

Christ and a false gospel, period. Alright, that's the nature of the case. Whatever about voting and social justice and everything else, all those issues aside, let's talk about what the man believes.

23:37

And Christian organizations that want to blur the distinction now between the gospel of Mormonism and the gospel of scripture,

23:45

I think have a lot to answer for. A lot to answer for. These issues are important. Now, what is the positive benefit of the nature of the situation?

23:52

Here's the positive, is that people are now talking about Mormonism. What's the positive? People are now doing

23:58

Google searches galore on Mormonism, Joseph Smith, and so I praise God because now this is part of the discussion.

24:05

I mean, think about it, two years ago, could you sit down with a random person at Starbucks and say, hey, what do you think about somebody's

24:11

Mormonism? People are like, what, what, that's an uncomfortable question, I don't have any idea. And now you can legitimately do that, you can say, hey, what about Mormonism?

24:18

People say, oh, I'm thinking about that too, like what's he believe, so it's a good context now we live in to actually use this as an opportunity to reach forward and get the message of the gospel out in contrast to a false one.

24:28

So the nature of the problem, false gospels, also underneath that, the fact that Mormonism has barred our terminology.

24:35

The second thing is the necessity for aggressive evangelism. I remember 1996,

24:43

I would meet people from that time until now, people say something like, should you really be doing this?

24:49

Man, I get that. Should you really be out there doing this? Is it really effective? People today, and again, when

24:56

I mention American evangelical Christianity needs to die a fiery death, I'm talking about the idea that we should simply be just living out the life of Christ in our homes, you know, sort of like, you know, having barbecues, inviting people over, and like, you know, if I have about five years of a relationship with this person, then

25:12

I've earned the right to tell them about Jesus. That's the most ignorant thing I've ever heard in my life, and I'd say this, that pattern doesn't meet the pattern of the book of Acts.

25:23

If our evangelism as Christians in the 21st century doesn't look like the book of Acts, then I want to say this, I don't think we're doing it right, okay?

25:30

And so I want to get to the point of the book of Acts to say, hey, God has given us a picture of the Holy Spirit being poured out on the church, the apostles proclaiming the gospel with power, and you know what's the result of it?

25:41

They go out into the marketplaces, the synagogues, and the hardest places to reach, proclaiming the gospel, and you know what's amazing?

25:47

Read the book of Acts. People are coming to Christ! It's an amazing thing, people are coming to Christ because they go into the marketplace, into the synagogue, they argue!

25:58

All Christians argue? Yeah, you should argue! Have you read the book of Acts? Argue with grace, season with grace, argue, but argue in a way that actually reaches people with the gospel.

26:09

Look at Paul's conversion, Acts chapter 9, talk about aggressive evangelism, Acts chapter 9, here you have

26:15

Saul become Paul, you have the student of Gamaliel, he is a zealous person for Judaism of the first century, he is destroying

26:24

Christians, he says in Galatians his MO was to destroy the church, that's what he wanted to do.

26:29

We know he's responsible at least for the death of one Christian, he's sending others to jail, he's on his way to actually have other

26:35

Christians placed into custody, and on the way there he meets the Lord of Glory, is knocked off his high horse, blinded, turns to this

26:42

Messiah, and watch this, it says immediately, not he took time, he really worked on his methodology, he's really trying to figure this thing out, it says immediately,

26:55

Acts chapter 9, Paul goes into Damascus, where? To a barbecue, right?

27:04

To the local cafe, now I'm sure he hung out in local cafes, proclaimed the gospel, okay, but let me just say this, when he comes to proclaim the gospel, he enters into one of the hardest places to reach, he takes a beeline for the synagogue, and what does he do?

27:20

He goes to the synagogue, he proclaims Christ in the synagogues, and you know what? He reasons from the scriptures, proving that Jesus is the

27:26

Messiah, and what was the result? People came to turn to Jesus as Savior, and you know what else was the result?

27:32

It says in the passage that they wanted to kill him, and it says that he argued in the synagogues with the

27:42

Jews, some came to Christ, some wanted him dead, people say to you,

27:47

Jeff, you know, should you really be doing that, didn't you get cussed out that time, didn't somebody throw something at you, you know, that, by the way, very rare, don't freak out about that, that's very, very rare, thousands of conversations, very rare that anything even remotely interesting even happens like that, but I say this, well, you know what's interesting, as you read the pattern of the apostles in the book of Acts, is no one's actually tried to kill me yet, so I must be doing something wrong, and that's the truth, and so if you look at the pattern in Acts, I want to say this, where are they going?

28:14

They're going to the marketplaces, they're going to the Areopagus, the intellectual capital of the world, they're going to Mars Hill to proclaim the gospel, being, really,

28:21

Paul was being brought up on charges, initial charges in the Areopagus, that wasn't just, hey, we'd like to hear what you have to say, that was them bringing him up, essentially, on initial charges to see how they could hold something against him, and riots break out, coming into a town, and a whole riot breaks out, but you know what you get at the end of Acts, you look at this picture of the early church, and you say, my goodness,

28:42

God was up to something, and my goodness, people were coming to Christ, wow, why isn't that happening today, it's not happening today because we're cowards, it's not happening today because we're afraid what our neighbor might think of us, people have said to me,

28:57

Jeff, I can't go with you, why, because I might run into somebody I know from work, do you think that I haven't thought about that, do you think that the dozens of people that I've brought with me as teams to the temple over 15 plus years of evangelism out there, that we haven't thought about the fact that we could run into people that we know, and do you know what,

29:15

I, in fact, have, I've even lost, when I owned my own business, 10 years ago,

29:21

I even lost customers who specifically left my business, sat down with me, and told me

29:26

I could never pay money to an organization where the head of the organization comes to my church and tells me that I'm wrong, but do you know what's glorious, here's what's glorious, the necessity for aggressive evangelism is all that loss is nothing but gain,

29:46

I'll tell you why, because of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that I've spoken to over the years,

29:52

I have seen people come to Christ, so many people come to Christ through our evangelism of the temple that I have at this point lost count,

29:59

I don't even know how many people have come to Christ through that evangelism, so the necessity for aggressive evangelism, know this, the gospel's the power of God for salvation, you've gotta tell people, and it sometimes means, hey, if you have 100 ,000 people showing up at an event, you know what they're preaching or proclaiming, you know where the fish are at, if you were a fisherman and you were in a boat, and you knew where they were collected, why would you go the other direction, why would you stay in a place where they're not, you know where they're at, go fishing, that's why we go.

30:29

A couple things, just as quick stories, this isn't, again, autobiographical stuff's not overly important, but I just want to give you some encouragement about this, couple stories,

30:40

I have so many, but one is the temple was wrapping up one night, it's probably midnight, it's dark outside, we're ready to leave, everyone at this point that was with me had left, and I'm walking towards the

30:49

Arby's, and I ended up having a guy run into me on a bicycle, and he starts to talk with me, and so I ended up talking with him for like an hour, giving him the gospel, telling him about the true and living

30:58

God versus the gospel of Mormonism, and so we're on the side of the temple, on the east side of the temple, down a dark street, and he starts to cry, and so I said, are you okay?

31:10

And he says, yeah, I can't talk to you anymore, I gotta go, and he takes a track and he takes off. I met that man a year later at a coffee shop, he walks up to me, he says, do you recognize me?

31:20

I said, yeah, I don't know, I don't think so, and he sits down with me, he says, we talked on the side of the temple last year,

31:27

I said, oh, yeah, you drove off, you rode your bike off, he said, yeah, he said,

31:32

I've turned to Christ, and he goes to a Baptist church in Mesa, and it was just cool how God brought this guy just, you know, full circle right in front of me, a year later at a random coffee shop, you know, and here's the thing, the guy was crying, he was in tears, oh, that's not nice,

31:45

Jeff, listen, you proclaim the truth to God, God does the work to actually bring that person's heart from a place of stone to flesh, and to raise them to life, you go out and you tell them, sometimes, you know, you hand out a track, you don't think anything comes from that, we hand out all these tracks, by the way, if you come with us, you're gonna get these tracks, it says basic teachings of the

32:04

LDS church, compares them with the Bible on the inside, and it has the gospel on the back, so if you'd like to contact us, please contact us, we hand these tracks out, sometimes they get thrown down on the ground, sometimes people say, thank you very much,

32:14

God bless you, and they walk off. I'm at a coffee shop with a college pastor, and I'm sitting down, it's like eight in the morning, we're drinking coffee together, talking, and my phone rings, it's a number

32:24

I don't recognize, I answer, it's this woman, she says, hey, I got one of your tracks, and I was just wondering, can

32:31

I make copies of it, I have a business where I work with a lot of Latter -day Saints, can I make copies of it to hand out to the people that I actually work with, and I said, of course, she said, so they could call you and they could talk to you,

32:41

I said, I'd love that, please do, and I said, but, just a quick thing, it's been a while since I handed that out, this is like around maybe

32:47

October or November after the Easter pageant, I said, it's been a while since I handed that thing out, where did you get it?

32:54

And she said, oh, I got it from a sister in Christ, I said, well, that's cool, I'm trying to figure out where this thing came from, I said, well, that's cool,

33:00

I said, where did she get it? She goes, oh, she was a member of the LDS church, she was a Mormon, until she got this track when she went to the temple, she came to Christ, and then she gave it to me.

33:10

So, here we have some random track that goes out at the temple, it goes home with this lady, she turns to Christ, gives it to another sister in Christ now, who's now making photocopies of it, giving out to her

33:21

LDS friends and family. Is it worth it? Yeah. Here's what

33:27

I'm saying, listen, if my whole life, every bit of struggle, difficulty, pain, and insult that I've endured to go out and proclaim the gospel was about that lady coming to Christ, let me just say it right now, that's a life well -lived.

33:43

Lay down happy after that. If it's about one person coming out of darkness to know their

33:48

Savior, then that's a life well -lived. It's worth it. But there's more.

33:54

There's a Mormon missionary, I'm out of the temple, I'm on the west side of the temple, one night, dark outside, and there's tons of people coming by,

33:59

I'm talking to this lady, this Mormon missionary comes out the side of the temple, he stands over, he's listening to the conversation for a while, he tries to interject a few times,

34:07

I talk to him, I'm talking to her, I'm talking to him, I'm talking to her, he'd say something, I'd say, well, that doesn't work because the word of God says this, okay, and we're talking and reasoning, and then

34:14

I notice as I'm talking to her, he's bending down into my bag. My bag's opened up right there with tracks galore kind of spilling out of it, right?

34:22

I notice as I'm looking down at him, he's bending down, and he actually puts his hand around a fat stack of the tracks, and I can tell he's about to bolt with them.

34:31

And so I bend down really slowly to him, put my hand on his hand, and I say, hey, man, I have 75 ,000 of those.

34:41

I said, I'll make a deal with you. If you can show me from the scriptures that I'm wrong,

34:48

I promise you I'll leave and never come back. I promise. And so he goes, okay, slips his hand away.

34:56

He stands up, we're talking for a little bit, so I'm giving him the gospel, telling him about Christ, who the true and living Jesus is,

35:01

I'm telling him about the gospel, and he starts to cry. And so he ends up,

35:07

I said, are you okay? And he starts to walk away. So he walks away, and then he started coming back.

35:12

Every day that I was there, he'd come back, and he'd say, hey, Jeff, what's up? I'd say, hey, man, he goes, you got a verse for me today? I'd say, uh, sure.

35:20

And so I'd throw a verse over at him and say, hey, Isaiah 4310, one God, none before and none after. You believe that there was one and you will become one.

35:27

Check that out. All right, man. Walk away. Come back the next day. Then he stayed for a little bit longer, and then he started sneaking away.

35:34

He'd say, I need to talk to you. And so he'd sneak away with me and actually a friend of mine, and we would go hide in an alley by the temple just to rap, just to chop it up, just to talk.

35:45

And my friend called me one night around midnight, and he says, Jeff, guess what just happened? I was just on the phone with him.

35:51

I said, what? He turned to Christ, a Mormon missionary on his mission.

35:57

So wow, we're like, oh, that's astonishing. Praise God. The next day we're out. I'm at the temple.

36:04

Homeboy is now in plain clothes standing next to me with tracks.

36:12

And the missionaries that are in the temple, they're pouring out to check out what's going on.

36:18

They come out, and they're like, what are you doing? What are you doing? These guys have brainwashed you. You can't do this.

36:23

And I sat and watched this man one day into his relationship with the Lord proclaim the gospel to these missionaries in a way that I couldn't even do because he had understood what they needed to hear.

36:35

He said, guys, we've been telling everybody this, but look what Luke says. We've been telling everybody this, but look what the

36:41

Bible says. It's wrong. It's false. You need to turn from sin to Christ. And his guy's proclaiming the gospel to these guys out there one day off of his mission and out of Mormonism.

36:51

Another one, and this is the last one I'll give you as a story about the need for aggressive evangelism. Like this, hitting the streets, go, therefore.

37:02

Get out to them, right? Go. Don't sit. Go. I'm at the temple, and I'm surrounded by a lot of return missionaries, missionaries.

37:13

And this is at a time, by the way, things have changed a bunch. I know Rob's been out there really pretty much the whole time

37:18

I have, at least for the last 10 years, I think. And things have changed dramatically at the temple where now

37:24

Latter -day Saints are not so engaged with discussion and rational combat and getting into the scriptures.

37:31

Now it's a lot more on the subjective side. It always was, but now it's fallen down to a level that's different.

37:38

So this is at a time where you would go out there to preach the gospel, and you may be surrounded at some point by 10, 15 people. I mean,

37:43

I've watched Dr. White out at the temple in the early years that I was there. I watched him surrounded by hordes of people.

37:49

And those were amazing conversations to listen to. But I was surrounded this night by return missionaries, some missionaries, and I remember at least this girl.

37:58

And so she is just mad. She's spitting angry at me. And so she starts to cuss me out, which is interesting for a

38:06

Mormon. She starts to cuss me out. She ends up taking my tracts that I had in my hand.

38:12

She tore them up. She threw them in my face, and she spit at me. You walk away from a night like that as a believer, and you may think to yourself in your own humanness, in your own brokenness, you may look at the circumstances and the waves crashing into your boat, and you may think, where is

38:26

God in this, and how is God ever going to use something like this? How would he ever do that? How is he ever going to use that experience in any way?

38:34

So it's a year later now. I'm at my apartment, random night. It's like midnight.

38:39

A bunch of Christians are overeating, hanging out, just fellowshipping, getting into the word together.

38:45

And there's a knock at my door, and my friend John is at the door. He's with a guy and a girl I don't know. And he says, hey, I just met them over at Starbucks before we came over.

38:52

He said, do you mind if they come and join us? They heard we're doing a Bible study. I said, of course. And so she starts to start crying.

38:59

And so they walk in, and John says, I said to John, I said, why is she crying?

39:05

He goes, I don't know. I just met her. I don't know. And so they come in. We kind of leave her alone because she's clearly distraught.

39:12

And as we're talking in my living room, a bunch of believers, and now these two strangers I don't know. And she's in the corner of the room.

39:18

She's crying. She finally, at one point, breaks in, and she says, Jeff, do you recognize me? And I said, no.

39:24

And she said, last year at the temple, you were talking to my friends. Some of them were the returned missionaries and everything.

39:30

She says, I took your tracts from you. I tore them. I threw them at you. And I spit in your face, and I cussed you out. And I said, oh, yeah.

39:39

Yeah. I remember you. We were on the west side of the temple by the Arby's. I remember your friends. You were not happy that night.

39:46

Yeah. And so she starts to cry again. And she says, please forgive me. I said, forgive you for what? She said, please forgive me because after you left that night and I left,

39:54

I had one of your tracts. And she said that I committed, committed that I was going to study your tract and what you believed.

40:02

I was going to come back the next time, and I was going to refute your tracts. you in front of all my friends." And after about four months, she said of getting into the scriptures and doing all this, she met

40:11

Christ. She turned to Christ. She came out of Mormonism, and now she was leading her Mormon friends to Christ.

40:17

So is it necessary? Yeah, it's necessary. Should you get on your feet and proclaim the gospel?

40:23

Yeah, because I say so, or because I have an experience that you should give a shot to? No, because that's the pattern of evangelism that God has given us.

40:32

And we need to be about it. We need to reach into a culture today locally where we have lots of Latter -day

40:39

Saints around us. And here's the crazy thing that's so great about it is that we know what they believe, and we can reach them.

40:46

And they're willing to talk. Many of these young guys have been on their mission. They want to have the discussion, so talk to them.

40:53

Okay, not gonna spend a lot of time today on the nuts and bolts, because really, vocab wanted me to sort of lay out the need to do this, that we're gonna do it, encourage you guys to come with.

41:03

But I just want to give you the nuts and bolts briefly. You ask the question, okay, what's the nature of the problem?

41:09

False gospel, they borrow our terminology. Two, the necessity for aggressive evangelism.

41:14

Is it a biblical pattern? Yes. Do we need to be about this? Yes. Does God work in this way? Absolutely. The third thing is

41:21

I want to tell you is the nuts and bolts. Listen, you don't have to know everything there is to know about Mormonism.

41:30

I want to say this. For me, in all the years of study that I've done, to this day, when

41:36

I know I'm about to engage in a study on Mormonism, I get excited. Here's why. The history is so fascinating.

41:42

When you read stuff on early Mormonism and its beginnings and Joseph Smith and his life and Brigham Young, it's like you're reading a fast -paced novel.

41:49

I mean, it's just absolutely, it will draw you into it because it is a fascinating study in history.

41:55

So it's not boring, okay, it's not boring. Some stuff is, and it's very boring. But this stuff in Mormonism is very exciting to read, so you'll get into it, to actually do it.

42:05

But you don't have to know everything. You don't have to know all the details about the different accounts of the

42:11

First Vision. You don't have to know all the details about all the changes of the Book of Mormon. You don't have to know all the details about Joseph Smith's wives and who he was with before he actually got a declaration of polygamy.

42:22

You don't have to know all that stuff. What you do have to know is the gospel. What you do have to know is

42:27

God. And what the Bible has to say about God and the gospel in the context of what they believe. So the nuts and bolts are very simple.

42:34

Number one, I'll lay out the test of a prophet. Deuteronomy chapter 13, verses one through four,

42:40

God says, even if somebody has signs and wonders, but they lead you after other gods, they're a false prophet.

42:46

What was the pattern in the Bible? What is the pattern in the Bible always? It's Isaiah 820.

42:52

To the law and to the testimony, if they do not speak according to this word, it's because they have no light in them. The word of God was always the standard.

42:59

Look at the apostles. What's the pattern they always have? They always ask the question, what do the scriptures say?

43:04

What do the scriptures say? Have you not read what was spoken to you by God? It always goes back to what is Theanoustos.

43:10

Second Timothy 316, all scriptures God breathed. So the testimony of the apostles and the whole

43:16

Bible is to go back to the scriptures. Deuteronomy chapter 13, God specifically says that even if they have signs and wonders, but they lead you after other gods, gods which you have not known, they're a false prophet.

43:27

So let's lay that down. Second test, Deuteronomy chapter 18 verses 20 through 22. We're not gonna do a lot of that today.

43:33

It's very simply that if a prophet comes and has a false prophecy, they're a false prophet, period. Listen, when

43:40

I bring this up to people who are Latter -day Saints or Jehovah's Witnesses, what I say to them is this. Let's be fair here. If Jesus has false prophecies, he's a false prophet.

43:49

That's where we hang on this, all right? If somebody's a false prophet, don't follow them.

43:54

No matter how good it makes you feel. What shall a prophet of man do if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?

44:00

You know that goes for us too as Christians. If Jesus isn't the Messiah, you should not follow him.

44:06

You don't get extra points, according to the Bible, for believing something that's stupid or not true. What's Paul's argument in Corinthians?

44:13

What does he argue to those who are denying the resurrection? What's he say? Jesus appeared to the 12,

44:19

James, me, Peter, and at one point, 500 eyewitnesses. If you don't believe me, go ask them. He basically says, nuts and bolts of this whole thing, he says if he isn't raised, then we're most to be pitied.

44:33

We're still in our sins, and we're liars. That's the message. Truth matters, and for Christians, it really counts.

44:41

And so when I say to a Mormon, hey, God says in Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses 20 through 22, that if you have a false prophecy, you're a false prophet, understand something, that because we're

44:49

Christians and we love truth, we're saying that applies to the entire revelation. So false prophecy makes you a false prophet, but I wanna talk with the nuts and bolts of Deuteronomy 13 and leading people after other gods, the context of contradicting what

45:03

God says about himself and what Mormonism teaches. I wanna say this, very simply, and again, we're not gonna spend a lot of time on this today.

45:13

What do we talk about at the temple? God and the gospel. I don't wanna sit and have 45 -minute conversations about Mormon underwear.

45:27

You know, I think I said on the radio station, maybe it was on Backpack, I don't even know, they all mixed together, were basically cheating and just using each other for each other's radio shows.

45:37

You know, there may be a lot of Christians that wear some very strange underwear, too. I don't wanna talk about that. All right, so where's that going?

45:44

Where's that conversation headed? Nowhere, quick. So I don't wanna talk about things like coffee, unless it's in the context of you believing that that somehow merits salvation and righteousness, but frankly,

45:56

I don't care. You don't wanna drink coffee? Fine, don't drink coffee, don't drink tea, fine.

46:02

Let's talk about who Jesus is. Let's talk about what the gospel is. Those issues are central.

46:08

Who is God? What is the gospel? Mormonism teaches a different God. They've hijacked our terminology, they speak

46:15

Christianese, cut through it, ask the big questions, and you say, well, what does it look like,

46:22

Jeff? People walk by and they'll go, right? What are you guys, anti -Mormon? They'll walk by,

46:28

I'll say something like, do you believe you're gonna become a God one day? That'll turn them around.

46:35

You believe you're gonna become a God? Was God once a man? Did he have a mommy God, daddy God before him? Yeah, that's kinda in your face, but you know what?

46:43

That cuts through all the gobbledygook. We're not talking about Starbucks and underwear. We're talking about the

46:48

God of the universe, who is he? And really what you should know is just a few simple things that Mormonism teaches about God, how he became

46:56

God one day, how you can become a God one day also, and you need to be loaded down, armed to the teeth with scriptures that proclaim the exact opposite.

47:07

That God, Psalm 90, verse two, is from eternity into eternity. He is the eternal God from all eternity into all eternity.

47:14

Isaiah 43 .10, before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. If there's one verse alone that destroys all

47:20

Mormon theology, it's Isaiah 43 .10. There is no answer. Isaiah 44 .6,

47:27

God says, I'm the first and I'm the last. Besides me, there is no God. You can't be a Mormon and believe that, no matter how you try and answer it.

47:36

God says, is there a God besides me? Indeed, there is no other God. I know not one in Isaiah 44 .8. Here's God, ask the

47:42

Mormon, does God know everything? Now, obviously there's problems with classic Mormonism with that statement, but they'll affirm it.

47:49

Does God know everything? They'll say yes. The all -knowing God says, is there a

47:55

God besides me? Indeed, there is no other God. I know not one. He doesn't even have knowledge of any other God besides him.

48:01

Those kinds of questions. Jesus Christ in Mormonism is one God among many gods. He's Lucifer's brother. He's also your brother.

48:07

He's not the creator of the cosmos in Lucifer, Satan. He's his brother. He's a created being himself.

48:13

Take him to John 1, one through three. In Archei Halagos, Kai Halagos ein prostom theon,

48:19

Kai theos ein Halagos, John 1 .1, says in the beginning, as far back as you want to go, with no reference point to stopping,

48:27

Jesus was already there. That he was prostom theon, face -to -face towards God.

48:34

He was an intimate face -to -face relationship toward the Father from all eternity.

48:41

And God, what God was, the word was. He was in the beginning with God. Everything that's come into existence came into existence through this

48:50

Jesus. Colossians chapter one very clearly says, verse 16, starting at verse 16, by him,

48:59

Jesus, were all things created in the heavens and on the earth. Visible, invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities.

49:07

All things were created by Jesus. You bring that to him, and then secondly, I want to say,

49:13

God and then the gospel. Make it simple, ready? I always say,

49:18

I think I cheat a little. Why? Because I try my best, and I'm still trying to this day, to memorize as much of the scriptures as I possibly can so that when

49:30

I'm conversing with somebody with the gospel, it's not me doing the talking. People will say to me oftentimes,

49:36

I mean, I probably preach, probably eight times a week, I'm preaching before groups of people at Calvary, Apologia, stuff like this.

49:44

People will say to me as I'll preach or I'll have a conversation with them, they'll say something like, oh man,

49:49

Jeff, it's like when you were talking, it's like God was talking right to me. It's amazing. And the truth is, he was.

49:56

Because I wasn't talking most of the time. You don't understand that all I was really doing was reading through Romans chapters three and four as I was talking to you.

50:04

So you say, I don't know what to do. Guys, hang out in the book of Romans. Hang out in the book of Galatians.

50:10

That's the context of the gospel. It's Paul's systematic way of laying the gospel out and explaining it.

50:16

And in that context, he's answering a lot of the things that are brought up in the discussion with the

50:22

Mormon, in a discussion with the Muslim, in a discussion with the Jehovah's Witness. Paul anticipates the questions and he answers them.

50:31

So what I'm gonna say to you is this, cheat. Not really. But you're just going to the gospels and you're reading through.

50:38

Take the person on the street and say, hey, I just have a struggle because you believe that it's through obedience to the laws and principles of the gospel that you'll be saved.

50:45

You believe that it's by grace after all you can do. You believe all that. You know, I struggle with that. Well, why do you struggle with that?

50:50

I struggle with that because the Bible denies that fundamentally. Well, where does it say that? Well, Romans chapters three and four.

50:56

Let's read through that a little bit. Let's look at chapters 10 and 11 where it talks about how the Jews were trying to establish their own righteousness and did not submit to the righteousness that comes from God.

51:07

Paul in Philippians chapter three, how Paul says that he repudiates his attempts to become righteous in himself.

51:15

And that he had this great resume and he considers it rubbish so that he may gain

51:20

Christ and be found not having a righteousness which is through the law, but the righteousness that comes from God through faith in his

51:28

Messiah. Paul's saying in Galatians two, if righteousness comes through the law, then

51:34

Christ died needlessly in vain. Say to the Mormon, Paul says that if Jesus, if you could do it, if you could obey

51:41

God, even with grace and faith, if you could obey God to attain righteousness, he says then Jesus didn't need to die.

51:47

Your message is a worthless message. It's a message that brings death, not life.

51:54

So what I'm saying is God, gospel, those issues, go with that. Don't worry about all the details of necessarily knowing, oh,

52:02

I wanna know who were the president's names? What was the 10th president? What did he believe? What did he say? Listen, it comes down to very simple issues.

52:08

Who is God? What is the gospel? And cut through all the language barrier, scale it and say, you say this about Jesus.

52:17

Is he Satan's brother? Yes. Okay, the Bible says very clearly he created

52:23

Satan. How do you do that? How do you work out that problem as a Mormon? That's what I really do.

52:29

I say, do you believe Jesus is Satan's brother? Yes. How do you answer God? What do you mean?

52:34

Well, God says this, right here, read that, read that. And I want them to wrestle with God at that point. Not so much my ability to dance around and show my theological fancy footwork, it's just very simple to say, how would you answer

52:47

God in Isaiah 43, 10? He says, before him there was no God for him, neither shall there be after him. How do you answer God when he says that to you?

52:54

What do you do with that? I want them to go home and wrestle with God. And that is the goal here, is to take the word of God on the street and give it to him, proclaim it to him.

53:05

And someone says, oh, I don't know if I could do it, I don't know the answers. Listen, my job is to tell the story. God saves, and he's sovereign.

53:16

There's no question, I think, in most of your minds that I am a staunch, reformed,

53:22

Calvinist, I think vocab called me on one of his radio shows, a rabid Calvinist, and whether or not you are or not is irrelevant at this moment, because what

53:32

I want to say to you is this, what you do need to believe is that when Jesus says,

53:38

I know my sheep, and they know me, and I give them eternal life, and then he says that he will bring them, they will become one flock with one shepherd, he says they will, will.

53:52

You know that Jesus has the power to save. It says very clearly in John 6, all that the father has given to me will come to me, and the one who comes to me

54:01

I'll never cast out. And you go with this, ready? He's mighty to save. We sing that song, do we believe it?

54:08

He's mighty to save. So when I go out, I tell the truth, proclaim the gospel, and I leave it up to God to do that work, and sometimes, you know what?

54:16

God has random people show up to my house at midnight to show me the fruit of that labor.

54:22

Let's pray. Father, thank you, Lord, for your goodness and mercy. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I just want to pray,

54:29

Father, that you would raise up in this room now people who laid their lives down in sacrificial missionary lifestyles to this community, to the

54:39

LDS that are here around us, and we also want to pray a preemptive prayer, God, for the work that we're doing here over the

54:45

Christmas lights season, that you would give us your words, give us humility, give us love for these people, and give us your power.

54:54

We pray, God, that your word, your words are on our lips, and Lord, let your word be fire in our mouths, and let them be wood, in Jesus' name, amen.