Giving the Gospel to Gen Z
2 views
Deacon Andrew Soncrant of Apologia Utah met these interesting young men on the streets of Provo.
Sometimes Giving the Gospel to Gen Z can get a little sus, but the Gospel always prevails.
- 00:00
- What's up guys, how are you doing tonight? So good. What are we talking about? Yeah, I'd love to talk with you guys if you have a few minutes.
- 00:07
- Are you guys LDS? Oh yeah?
- 00:13
- What's your name? I'm Tyson. Tyson, what's your name? I'm Spencer. Spencer, did you guys grow up here in Utah?
- 00:20
- Yeah, we grew up down in Payson. Oh, down in Payson. So how long have you been LDS for?
- 00:26
- I don't know, just kind of raised that way. You guys both go to BYU? No, I go to UVU.
- 00:32
- Cool, and you guys have just been like lifelong friends or whatever? Yeah, pretty much. Since like 6th or 7th grade, yeah.
- 00:38
- Oh, sweet, sweet. Have you ever heard the gospel presented to you by an Evangelical Christian before? No, I have not.
- 00:44
- No? Like the LDS gospel? No, not the LDS gospel, from an Evangelical Christian.
- 00:50
- Have you ever, Tyson? No. Are you going to go on a mission? Uh, maybe. How old are you?
- 00:56
- I'm 20. You're 20? Okay, gotcha, gotcha. Whole family's in the faith? Yeah, pretty much.
- 01:02
- What about you, Spencer? What does your family believe? My family's LDS. I grew up LDS. Like, we were in the same boat, you know, but I don't really consider myself that anymore.
- 01:11
- What changed that for you? Um, I don't know. You don't know? I don't know,
- 01:16
- I was about to go on a mission and then I kind of thought about it a lot more and I was like, I don't know if this is true, but I took a little deeper of a dive into what it is, you know, and I just went with it.
- 01:33
- Gotcha, understood. Let me tell you guys this. In John 1, verse 1 through 3, it says, And the
- 01:39
- Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were created through Him. There was nothing that came into being unless it was created through Him.
- 01:49
- And the Word we know, in John, it says, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, referring to Jesus. Among us?
- 01:55
- Yet dwelt among us. Not the game among us! Sounded a little sus there. But, um, the beautiful thing about that is is because in that scripture it's showing us that Jesus Christ has eternally existed as God.
- 02:06
- That He was not the spiritual offspring of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother.
- 02:12
- But instead that He always was God. Interesting. Yeah, and it says that Jesus took on flesh and died on the cross for our sins.
- 02:20
- Like, what do you know about sin, Spencer or Tyson? Tell me. It's things that you do that are bad.
- 02:28
- Why are they bad, you think? Well, according to, like, Christianity it's because God commanded, has these commandments, and if you break those, that's a sin,
- 02:39
- I guess. Yeah, it's something that's against God's character. It says in, I believe, in 1 John, it says that sin is a transgression against the law of God.
- 02:47
- So God is a holy, just, and righteous God. So He loves, right? You know, God is a loving
- 02:52
- God. But He also hates, because He loves, right? I love babies, therefore I hate abortion, because it murders babies in the womb that are separate human entities from the mother.
- 03:02
- Just for example, right, you can love and hate. So God doesn't look upon sin with favor, but we're all born sinners.
- 03:09
- Because we come from Adam, that's what the Bible says. It says no one understands God, no one seeks God. All have gone astray.
- 03:15
- So since we are sinners, that means God will judge us. Right? So, I'll give you an example, like, have you ever lied?
- 03:24
- Spencer, Tyson. There we go, right? Yeah, what would you call someone who's lying all the time?
- 03:39
- A baller. You're funny. You know, exactly, you would call that person a liar.
- 03:44
- And it says liars do not have their part in the kingdom of heaven, but they're part of the lake of fire. So God condemns that.
- 03:50
- Just one lie, right? God, since He's a holy, just, and righteous God, our destination is hell.
- 03:57
- But the beautiful thing about Jesus is that He's the eternal God who took on flesh, died on the cross for our sins, so He took my sin and placed it on the cross, because it required a sacrifice.
- 04:08
- But the only sacrifice that can appease the wrath of a holy, just, and eternal God is the sacrifice of an eternal
- 04:14
- God. So now I have peace with the Father, right? Because of the blood of Jesus.
- 04:21
- I inherit His righteousness, He took my sin on Him, and now when I stand before God, I'm clothed in the righteous robes of Christ.
- 04:27
- There's nothing that I can do for it. I can't work my way into salvation. It's a gift from God. That's what it says in Ephesians chapter 2.
- 04:34
- Have you ever done shrooms? Absolutely. You have? Yeah. Dude. I was a, well,
- 04:40
- I don't know about that. I was a horrible sinner, my friend. I didn't do just shrooms. I did a lot. Is that sitting?
- 04:46
- Yeah, absolutely. It's called pharmacheia in the Bible. Get some of the sinner, bro. You need Jesus. We all need
- 04:51
- Jesus, man. Trust me, you did. Oh, yeah. Trust me, I did a lot more drugs than just shrooms when I was 15, 14 years old.
- 04:58
- I was doing really bad things. But knowledge doesn't come from pharmacheia, which would be sorcery in the terms of shrooms, right?
- 05:07
- Knowledge comes... I'll be honest with you. I've had a lot of cool experiences and learned a lot about myself and honestly the world around me while on those trips.
- 05:17
- And I know it's obviously self -medication, maybe not the best. I've had very cool experiences that I'm sure you've seen.
- 05:26
- I absolutely understand what you're talking about. So, I mean, if you think about it this way, in the LDS faith, they say pray about it.
- 05:32
- If you get a burning in your bosom, then you know the Book of Mormon is true. I think you switched it for something else.
- 05:38
- Because now you have an experience, a feeling that you are going towards for truth.
- 05:44
- You're using your feelings, just like the LDS church does. Can you lick tree frogs? You can lick a tree frog.
- 05:51
- I mean, there's people that scrape the... There's people that take the tree frogs, but what they do is they take some of the saliva, like the gooey film on them, and then they turn it into a dust and they smoke it.
- 06:03
- Yeah, so that's... Don't give me any ideas. We don't live anywhere close to where you can do those things.
- 06:09
- I know, yeah. But what I'm saying to you is, the Bible clearly tells us that our experiences don't determine truth.
- 06:15
- It's God's Word that determines truth. Facts. Well, we've got a show to go to, but I appreciate the words.