Rescued by Grace

No Compromise Radio

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:12

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. And finally, after a long hiatus,

00:19

Pastor Steve Cooley, the Tuesday guy, you're back. Well, I had to wait till, you know, the petition got up over 50 ,000.

00:26

Once it hit that, I felt like, sure, I can come back on now. Is that 50 ,000 on Patreon or like just signatures?

00:33

That was change .org. Nice. Power to the people. Aren't you the mayor of the town you live in now,

00:41

Holden? You're the mayor, I think. I'm the honorary mayor. Okay. Basically observed by my wife and I.

00:50

How many grandchildren are you up to, by the way? Seven. Seven? Yeah. You think you're capped? I think we're pretty steady at seven, yeah.

00:57

You think they're gonna adopt or anything? I can't rule anything out, but not as far as I know.

01:02

I mean, no rumors yet. Well, as you can see, if you're watching, because some people will only be listening, we have

01:10

Mario filming us today. And so I thought, Steve, what we would do is go back to the beginning.

01:17

The very beginning. Not quite. Your beginning. So today's show is kind of get to know

01:24

Pastor Steve. Now we've done it in bits and pieces over the years, but never one whole show that includes a video, especially since you're so nicely dressed and either you overdressed and I underdressed or something.

01:37

That's pretty typical. That's pretty typical. I have another question for you. Have you ever preached a sermon lately that's 57 minutes or longer?

01:48

No, I really try to restrain myself. Yeah, why would that be a good thing to do? Well, because 57 minutes, for some people they can carry it off.

01:59

It was a snow day. Come on, it was a snow day. It's okay. All right, so today on No Compromise Radio Ministry, we have

02:06

Pastor Steve Cooley and what we're going to do today is I'm going to ask him some questions and essentially it's going to be, we could probably call it,

02:15

Steve Cooley, a trophy of grace, right? How the Lord graced you, saved you. Here's your testimony, as it were, right?

02:24

He wanted to say something else. I did, I did. For those of you not in the know, he wanted to say testifony, but I -

02:32

Gonna test a line. Yeah. That's right. So start us off, Steve, with your background.

02:38

Maybe you've told us before, but I think this will work well for the entire show. Not the, I was born in a log cabin thing, but the real story.

02:47

I grew up in the Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. I think my mom became a member when

02:54

I was about three. So really it was the only church I ever knew. We would go to church to the best of my memory pretty much all the time.

03:04

And early on, that meant three times a day on Sundays until they consolidated the meetings.

03:11

I mean, from the time I was 12, priesthood meeting, and then you'd go home for a while, and it was

03:17

Sunday school, and then you'd go home, and then it was sacrament meeting. They finally consolidated all that.

03:22

But anyway. Let's stop there just for a second. I think it's interesting. What would a priesthood meeting do? It was just the men, right?

03:29

So from 12 on up. So the deacons would meet together, deacons being 12 and 13.

03:37

The teachers would meet together. The elders are 16. Close. The teachers would meet together.

03:42

The teachers would be 13 and 14 -year -olds. The priest would be 15 and 16, and 17 -year -olds, basically.

03:51

And then the elders would be, for the most part, I mean, basically when you were, let's say, 19, you would be made an elder if you went on a mission.

04:03

Otherwise, you were probably waiting to your early 20s. So there were two divisions of the priesthood.

04:09

I don't want to go into great detail. There's the Aaronic priesthood, and then the Melchizedek priesthood. And the Aaronic priesthood was for, basically, either new believers or for male, of course, and or for young men, right?

04:25

Okay. I was just listening to a podcast a while ago, and it was talking about divining rods and Mormonism and all that stuff.

04:32

And Joseph Smith was into trying to find water and dousing and divining rods and everything.

04:38

I didn't know about that. He was a bit of a magician, you know, and peep stones and all the things that he did.

04:45

What's a peep stone? Basically, it was something that you would use in a bag, and it was just another way of like a magic eight ball kind of thing.

04:55

Okay. But he was good at defrauding other people.

05:04

You know, I mean, he was very convincing. I'm confident if we met him, we would think this is a very overpowering personality, a very convincing person.

05:16

Kind of like you. Not at all like me, no. Let's just get straight to the underwear.

05:21

Did you have to wear special Mormon underwear? I never did. And I mean, I really try to be careful about how

05:29

I talk about things because I don't want to unnecessarily offend people, but I would hear legends and myths about the different things from the, they're called temple garments.

05:40

But I also, you know, I grew up in a family where my mom and dad divorced when I was eight, which was about the time

05:48

I got baptized into the Mormon church because that's when you get baptized. You get baptized at age eight.

05:55

So for me, it was March 2nd, 1968. I was confirmed a member on Sunday, March the 3rd, 1968.

06:02

And then from then on, I was a member of the church until my late 20s.

06:09

But my stepfather, my mom got remarried when I was maybe 13, somewhere in there.

06:17

And my stepfather wore temple garments. Of course, my mom did too.

06:23

They were sealed in the temple. And, you know, it's supposed to be that the standard for going to the temple is much higher than just coming to church.

06:35

You know, you have to pay a full tithe, which means 10 % of your gross. You have to not partake of certain foods, basically coffee, alcohol, that kind of thing.

06:48

You have to not swear, not go to R -rated movies. You know, there were a series of things that you weren't supposed to do.

06:56

And if you didn't do those things, you were considered worthy of going to the temple, so. Remember back in the day they had rated

07:02

M movies? Yes. So you could see M movies was fine. I don't know, you know, but I definitely remember

07:08

R -rated movies were right out, as we like to say. Steve, as I think about the Lord's providence and placing us in certain spots in life with parents and what we're taught, even when it comes to religion,

07:22

I grew up as a Lutheran. And so I can look back on my liberal Lutheran church and say, at least

07:29

I was taught the Trinity. I was taught Jesus was the God -man, literal resurrection, literal miracles,

07:38

Bible's real. And so I see the Lord's hand in all that. But with you, what did you, was it just negative things you learned?

07:49

Were there certain moral things that the church taught you that helped you later in life? How would you assess the

07:55

Mormon church? I don't mean that it's a right religion, but was there anything that good that came out of it or the

08:02

Lord just used for good in the Mormon church? Well, you know, I would say because the

08:08

Mormon church has so many activities and other things, it really does kind of act as a restraint especially on,

08:19

I would say, young men. Is it perfect? No. But I think two things basically

08:24

I took out of it. One is I genuinely love the people in the

08:30

Mormon church. I mean, a lot of them, very kind, gracious, and helpful, literally the sort of people who would give you the shirt off their back, wonderful, marvelous people.

08:43

Served my family even when I was young and into my 20s in many ways.

08:50

So I think that's one aspect of things that I learned. But the key thing I learned, and it was something that really started weighing on me in my later teen years.

09:01

I remember sitting on the hood of my Mustang, I had a 69 Mustang my stepmom gave me.

09:06

Nice, two -door? Yeah, it was super nice. I really, I liked that car. Had the awesome

09:12

AM eight -track radio. No FM, AM eight -track. Anyway, I remember sitting on the hood of that vehicle and saying,

09:21

Mark, there's one thing that bothers me.

09:26

And he said, what's that? And I said, I just have this constant guilt.

09:33

And I don't see, I don't know the exact wording I used, but I don't see a remedy for sin in the

09:40

Mormon system. We believe in Jesus, we believe that He died for our sins, but it's up to us to kind of stop sinning, to perfect ourselves.

09:54

And I said, I just don't see it. I can't stop sinning. How old were you? 16, 17.

10:00

Interesting. And I remember him saying to me, just kind of like chuckling at the whole idea that this would be a problem for me.

10:09

Because ultimately in Mormonism, what you're striving for is perfection and Godhood.

10:17

I mean, you are destined to be a God and not small

10:22

G, big G. And you're going to have your own planets and all these other things.

10:28

And to me, that just seemed like I was so unworthy of that. I couldn't even get that.

10:34

So he just sort of chuckled and he said, don't worry about it, you'll get there. And I never got there.

10:45

It just never happened for me. I'm sure that there are many perfect people, but I wasn't.

10:50

It's like evolution, if you just have enough time, it'll all happen. So fast forward a little bit, tell our viewers and our listeners kind of the crisis that you had that the

11:01

Lord used to get you to think about the Bible and the Lord and to save you. Well, I mean, there were several crises.

11:08

I'll try to summarize and move along here a little bit. But one of them was, in my probably mid twenties,

11:16

I don't remember who recommended this book or how I found out about it, but maybe it might've been something

11:21

I read in a magazine or a newspaper or something. And I thought I have to get this book.

11:26

It was called The Mormon Murders. And so it was about this, and it's been a series now on Netflix, I think it was.

11:35

And essentially what it was, was this guy in Salt Lake who started creating these false documents that had the appearance of being written by Joseph Smith.

11:46

And he made them look so good. He was an expert forger. And so -

11:52

Made them look old too, right? Yes, yes. And he had these chemical processes and he would bake them in this oven.

11:58

And all these different kinds of things he was doing. And so they really seemed genuine. And the church would buy these and test them and they believed that they were legit.

12:10

So I'm reading this book and this guy, as the FBI starts closing in on him, they didn't really know who he was, but they sort of were getting the idea that there was a scam going on.

12:20

And I don't remember all the details, but essentially he decided, his name was Mark something or other, he decided that he was going to throw the police off his trail.

12:30

So he started building these pipe bombs and blowing people up. He blew up a bishop and just did, he would put them in their cars and they would blow up.

12:37

Well, eventually he got injured with one of his own devices, lost part of his hand and had to go to the

12:44

ER. And when the police started talking to him, that's when his whole story kind of unraveled. Long story short, when the press talks to the acting president of the church, he wasn't the president of church, but that's a long story.

12:58

The acting, the person who was acting in favor of these older men.

13:05

And they asked him, well, do you know this gentleman? Whatever his name was. And they said, you know, no, we don't.

13:12

And he was the guy who'd been the mediator and brokering all these deals and buying all these documents.

13:18

And I just thought, he lied. He's the guy who's supposed to be the spiritual figurehead of everything and he lied.

13:27

And so that caused me a problem. Then there was also kind of what was going on in our local area where we had five, essentially congregations meeting in one building.

13:39

And the only reason that was going on, and so it was crazy. I mean, it was like the building was being used 12, 13, 14 hours a day.

13:46

I mean, it was just ongoing. And the reason we couldn't get another building is because we didn't have enough full tithe payers.

13:55

And so now every week they're just pounding the pulpit, demanding that more people pay a full tithe, call us in for more than just our annual accounting for tithing and demanding more, more, more, more, because until we -

14:10

Did you have to show them literal statements? No, they just kind of would say, are you a full tithe payer or not?

14:16

And until we got to whatever the percentage was, the church would not authorize the money to build a new building.

14:24

And I thought, church's got all kinds of money, right? I mean, a vast amount of wealth,

14:31

I could detail all that, but I won't. But I just thought, this is not right. And so there were just a growing number of things in my life where I thought, this is not right.

14:41

This is not, by this time I was an elder, and this is not right, and I just stopped going.

14:49

And there were some situations at work, I mean, I was involved in a shooting, some other things, and I wound up going to a department shrink.

15:00

I was a deputy sheriff in Los Angeles County. And the psychiatrist said to me, he said, you know what,

15:09

Steve? He said, you're codependent. And he gave me some books to read, and he said, you need to go to a 12 -step meeting for codependency.

15:20

So I went, and it was during that meeting that I just thought, I'm listening to people.

15:28

And one person said the meeting was about turning your life over to your higher power and admitting you were powerless, and you were codependent, whatever that means.

15:38

And so I'm listening, and somebody says that their higher power is Jesus. And I go, okay, my higher power is

15:44

God, okay? My higher power is this group. And I remember looking around the room and just going, have you checked these people out?

15:53

Because this is not my higher power. But you can't say anything, you can't laugh, so I'm just like,

15:59

I'll bite my cheek. So I'm biting my cheek. And there's something worse that's going to be said, because I know this story. One woman says, she said, my higher power is part of my brain that I've designated to be my higher power.

16:14

And I bit my cheek so hard, I was confident that I was bleeding, because I just thought this is the craziest thing

16:21

I've ever heard. So I left the meeting that night just thinking, okay, I don't know about this whole 12 -step thing.

16:28

What I do know is I believe there's a God, and I believe there's a God, not because of Mormonism, because I pretty much,

16:35

I'm done with all that, because the God of Mormonism is too much like me. He's just a better version of me.

16:43

And I said, but I know there has to be a God because there has to be somebody who is going to punish all the wrongdoers, all the evildoers that I run into on a daily basis, whether it was in patrol or in custody, in the jails, because these people are really, really bad.

16:59

I mean, by comparison, I'm thinking I'm pretty good, right?

17:06

So I leave and so I stopped and I asked a friend who

17:12

I knew was part of a Bible study for police officers. And I said, hey, do you still have that?

17:18

And he said, yes. And so I started attending that. And it was really the prototypical bad

17:25

Bible study, because we had so many disparate views. There were charismatics and Calvinists and evangelicals and just this whole hodgepodge of theological perspectives.

17:37

And so it was usually more of a, this is what this verse means to me kind of Bible study.

17:44

But it got me reading the Bible. I thought you were gonna say, with alliteration, charismatics,

17:50

Calvinists, complementarians, Kiliests, Catholics, confused, all sorts of people.

18:02

And it really did not help me a lot, but it got me reading the Bible. And I just remember reading, and I mean,

18:11

I remember exactly where I was. Reading Isaiah chapter nine. And when I came across the

18:17

Christmas verse, it says, a child will be given to us and he should be called wonderful counselor.

18:24

And I just started thinking about the counselor part because I've been seeing this shrink and just thinking wonderful counselor and recognizing that it spoke about Jesus, mighty

18:36

God, et cetera. And I thought, unlike my psychiatrist, psychologist,

18:45

I think he probably was, who knew something about me, but not that much,

18:51

Jesus knows everything about me. And then it just hit me like, really like a proverbial ton of bricks.

18:59

He knows everything about me and loves me anyway and died for me.

19:07

And I could just remember just bawling my eyes out and going, I don't know what to do with this.

19:14

And I think I went and took a shower. I was just like, I don't know what, but I couldn't,

19:22

I just couldn't sleep. The idea was just too thrilling for me. And there's a lot more to what was going on right then, but it was definitely a turning point.

19:39

And I think, a moment where the Holy Spirit revealed to me who Jesus was. Steve, that's wonderful.

19:47

Did you at the time say to yourself, or were you studying the Bible and recognizing the

19:54

Jesus of Mormonism created, not omniscient, not truly

20:00

God, et cetera. Did you say to yourself, all right, I know Jesus is the

20:06

God -man now because I'm seeing that in the Bible. How did that all work? That's a great question because the reality is,

20:12

I just thought, I knew I, the funny thing is, in spite of the fact that I was just like on cloud nine,

20:21

I knew within short order I had a problem. And that problem was, Mormon theology is very non -Trinitarian.

20:32

Anti -Trinitarian. And so I thought, okay, I have to basically unlearn everything that I've been studying and understanding my whole life.

20:44

Who is Jesus? Can I really believe that the Holy Spirit is a person?

20:50

So all these kinds of things, and I'm having, I'm going, I know I'm supposed to believe in the

20:55

Trinity, but I spent my whole life denying the Trinity. So where am I on that? And so it was really kind of, that part of it, a process.

21:09

And I don't know what to say about that other than the fact that I knew what I knew and knew that there was a lot more that I needed to know and needed to grow in and needed to learn.

21:20

And the Lord provided an answer for that too, so. It seems to me,

21:25

Steve, and you would agree with me on this, people that have a non -Trinitarian background, or like you said, anti -Trinitarian background, when the penny drops that Jesus is

21:35

God, everything else takes care of itself. And I don't mean the Holy Spirit isn't in itself, but theological topics, the

21:43

Holy Spirit's deity, et cetera. I mean, if I wanted to try to convince a Oneness Pentecostal person about the

21:49

Trinity, I probably wouldn't start with the Holy Spirit and his attributes and his intellect and his will.

21:55

I'd go straight to the deity of Jesus because once you get that, everything else takes care of itself. Yeah, and, you know, but even so, and I'm trying to think of what study

22:03

Bible, I had old Ryrie study Bible back then. It was probably New American Standard. Yeah, so no, actually it was

22:09

New King James. I think that was the version of that one. Mormons, you could do authorized version in the

22:15

Book of Mormon, only King James version, right? King James, yeah, back then, I don't know, I don't know where they are now, but back then it was just King James, you know?

22:22

So even our prayers were these and thousand, you know? And sometimes, you know, the really good prayer warriors would, you know, doeth, you know, all those kinds of things.

22:36

We got Mario's laughing here. Lord, whatever you ordaineth, you know, and those kinds of things, you know, if you're really spiritual.

22:43

When you move from being a deacon at age eight to an elder at age 14. No, no, you're not a deacon until 12. I'm sorry, baptized at age eight.

22:50

I know you don't want to say a bunch of crazy things and dishonor, you know, some

22:55

Mormons or whatever. Leave that to me. How many times were you baptized? Proxy baptisms for the dead, right?

23:02

Yeah, so I don't even remember. I mean, it was just, it was a lot. I mean, it was somewhere between 25 and 50.

23:07

I mean, I could probably look it up on the internet and somebody could tell me what they do, but I was somewhere in my, somewhere between 12 and 14 when, because this didn't happen all the time, but every once in a while they would offer this opportunity to be baptized for the dead.

23:24

Baptized, you know, according to 1 Corinthians 15, 29, is it, by proxy for other people that have died because in Mormonism, if you die without believing the

23:37

Mormon gospel, right, having never heard it, then they believe that you get a second chance at it.

23:43

But the baptism, which is vital for, you know, salvation, that has to be done on earth.

23:52

So they spend a lot of time, that's why they do all the genealogy and all these, because they have to baptize people for the dead.

23:59

Then they have to be married for them in, I want to say in absentia, you know, but they substitute marry them too, you know, because they have to be sealed on earth.

24:12

How about this, Steve? I've never thought of this. Would Mormons get baptized on behalf of deceased people in the

24:19

Bible? Adam, Eve, David? I'm sure they did. Well, I mean, it's hard for me to know exactly who they got baptized for, but I'm sure anybody that they thought, like more likely, you know, people that didn't seem to be believers maybe in the

24:35

Old Testament that were named. But yeah, I mean, like all sorts of people probably got, you know, baptized by proxy there.

24:48

I think it might be good for our listeners and viewers to hear from you, Steve. If people have friends that are

24:54

Mormons or non -Trinitarians, what's a good approach for evangelism?

25:00

What's, I mean, obviously law and gospel, but insights maybe that you can give that would be helpful?

25:08

That really is, I mean, it's a good question. And here's one of the reasons why, because they will basically insist to you that they're

25:17

Christians. And, you know, I had a discussion with a returned missionary who worked with me, you know, in one of the jails.

25:29

And I can't remember his first name, but I do remember his last name. It was Moore. And I remember asking him, you know, if he thought he was a

25:39

Christian, he said, yes. And he said, well, we follow Christ. We believe that he died for our sins. And, you know,

25:46

I kept asking him questions and he kept giving me biblically correct answers.

25:51

And this vexed me. I mean, this really bothered me because I thought, okay, I know enough to know that you and I are not on the same page.

26:00

So I had to think for a while. And I thought, what can I ask him that will force him to reveal to himself and to me that he's in fact not a

26:08

Christian? So I said, let me ask you something, Elder Moore. I said, was there ever a time when

26:18

Jesus did not exist? And because Mormon theology teaches that Jesus is a created being, he had to say, and he paused and he was looking for some wriggle room.

26:30

I didn't want to say it. No, he did not want to say it, but he just finally said, yes. I go, okay, there's the dividing line.

26:39

And so my advice would be, you have to talk to him about the person of Jesus Christ. Even the work, they will, for the most part, agree with you, because they've changed a lot of the verbiage, what it means and whatnot.

26:53

And so they will agree with you on a number of things. But where they cannot agree with you is that Jesus Christ is eternally

27:01

God. They cannot agree with you on that. They might, they'll try. And that's why

27:07

I think I might've even asked that question. He was like, oh yeah, we believe that. And what he means to say is, like there was an eternal purpose for him to be

27:15

God or the father set his special affection on him. And then in that sense, he was destined to be

27:22

God. No, no, no. Did he always exist? And they will have to say, no, he did not.

27:31

Seems to me that even some of this talk, Steve, with those that believe in eternal subordination, in the

27:39

Trinity, or functional subordination, right? It's like, oh, did he always exist?

27:45

They would, of course, believe that. But did he always exist as the eternal son equal with the father, equal with the

27:52

Holy Spirit? One nature, one essence, one will. Very, very interesting. Yeah, it's.

27:58

Well, who said something about the Trinity that if you talk more than two minutes about the

28:04

Trinity, you'll fall into some type of heresy, if you're not careful? I do. But it's true, isn't it?

28:12

I mean, it's difficult, you know, unless you have notes and you're very careful, right?

28:18

To talk about the Trinity and not commit some kind of heresy. But, you know, getting back to the

28:24

Mormons, they've been, apologists, you know, such as returned missionaries and others have been pretty well -trained so that they don't, you know, fall into a lot of traps.

28:39

But, you know, that's the ultimate question. Has Jesus always existed?

28:45

Was there ever a time when he did not exist? And they're ultimately forced to say, sure. You know, just,

28:52

I mean, if you asked them if they were being honest, they would also say there was a time when the father did not exist.

28:57

I mean, that's how ultimately other Mormonism is. If you did stay with the

29:05

Mormon church and did get your own planet, what would you call it? Probably Coolville.

29:12

You know, something like that. Mario, I don't even know how long we've been going.

29:18

We're at 30, okay. Well, Steve, thank you for the insight today and especially that golden nugget that we got in terms of evangelism.

29:30

Very, very helpful. I'm thankful that the Lord saved you, that we became friends, we get to minister together. Me too.

29:36

You can always write us, mike at nocompromiseradio .com. Our info, our, I think you have an email address, don't you?

29:43

Yeah, it's mormon at nuke. Steve at Nuke Radio.