How To Talk To Mormons

Apologia Studios

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Pastor Jeff, I remember 30 years ago, I graduated from Kohuka High School.

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Majority of my classmates were Mormon. And I remember they asked me if I can give the opening prayer at our graduation,

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I said, what's a prayer? At the time, I grew up without a religion, because I come from a part

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Mormon family. My father is Mormon, my mom's Catholic. But I knew my grandparents taught me how to love

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God and how to love Jesus. And I would say

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I was surrounded by a lot of Mormon in the Mormon community. I'm the only Mormon here, yes.

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But you know what? In my home, we welcome any faith, whether you're a

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Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, anything, mainly what

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I do is to love God. I was taught this, God is not

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Mormon, God is not Catholic. God is God, and I love him with all my heart.

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It wasn't for God, I would be walking alone. And I always, sometimes, if I pray kind of low and kind of low self -esteem, what

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I always do, I get down on my knees, I say a pule. Pule means prayer, and I give it all to him.

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Because I was taught not to take things into your own hands, leave it to God. He knows what to do.

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We do something bad, something good, I always leave it to him.

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There are times, what did I do to deserve this? Several years ago, a while ago,

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I got laid off from my job, and I almost took my life.

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And I thought, if I do that, the only one who's gonna be hurting the most is my mom, because she's the one who practically raised me to what

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I am right now. But something told me, don't, don't do it.

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I'm here today, praise the Lord. And even though I'm not perfect, all

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I do is rely on him, because he knows what's right for all of us over here.

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Do I hear amen? Amen. Praise the Lord, thank you. Well, I appreciate that.

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I would say just, first of all, I'm so grateful that you came. I mean, it's gotta be some crazy courage to walk into a place with a bunch of people talking about your faith, that's a lot of courage.

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And I wanna say something, listen, there are a lot of people in this community that knew this was happening tonight, and you're the only one that came.

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And I wanna say that that displays a significant level of courage in you that I just wanna tell you that I'm grateful for, first and foremost.

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So. I'd like to say to some of these people here, I grew up all my life in, between Ha 'ula.

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I grew up in Ha 'ula all my life, in the same house, same everything. But my parents taught me to love one another.

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Yeah. I'd like to say praise the Lord. It's one of those, one of those teachings of Jesus that creeps into the lives of Christian and Mormon alike.

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I would only encourage you to think of one thing tonight. And that is when you said, God is not

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Catholic, God is not Mormon. I would say

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God is truth, and God has revealed himself to us very specifically.

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And one of the hardest things for us to get over with Christians and Mormons together when we talk to each other is the language barrier.

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That's the hardest thing. Because like just now, when you were talking, you were saying

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God is love. I'm like, yes. And when you say that God is there and he's providing,

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I'm just thinking that's who God is. He's God the provider. He is omnipresent, right?

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We're using the same language. The difficulty comes into when we talk about coming to him, who is he?

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Who is he? And that's the divide is who am

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I coming to? Am I coming to God who has eternally been God, who will always be

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God? Am I coming to Jesus Christ who is the eternal God?

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Or am I coming to a resurrected man with many wives in the pre -existence who became a

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God one day, who produced Jesus, and I'm gonna become a God like him? And what's interesting here is a moment ago when you and I talked during the break, you said something really interesting to me that really strikes me.

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You said, to some of the stuff you heard tonight, you said you had never heard some of this stuff.

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And that's the thing that I find most interesting today with the modern Mormon. You said you've been Mormon for how many years?

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Almost 30 years. So many of my Mormon friends today will say that to me.

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They'll say, I never heard that, or I never heard that. And it's often something

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I run into as a Christian with Mormons today is that many Mormons today have to be educated about what Mormonism actually teaches.

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It's what I would encourage you as a friend to do is to spend some time reviewing some of these important things, because I'm sure that you and I would agree with something.

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We would both say the same thing. If I said, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to the

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Father, you would say yes. We both agree with that. The question that it comes down to is which

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Jesus? Because if we have the Jesus of Islam, he is not the son of God and didn't die for sins.

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You and I both agree that's not Jesus. The Jesus of Jehovah's Witnesses is Michael the

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Archangel, the first and greatest creation of God. You and I both agree, not Jesus. This question of who is

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Jesus and how do I know God? And my desire for you is that as you work through some of these things you heard tonight, you would just meditate on those things.

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Who am I coming to? Who is Christ? How do I know God? You mentioned something as the last thing

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I'll say. You said, I'm not perfect. Ma 'am, I feel you.

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I feel you. I'm not perfect. As a matter of fact, the Bible says that we are unrighteous, dead, alienated from God.

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Far from being perfect, we are dead. My hope for you is that you would know the one who gives the perfect righteousness so that when the

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Father sees you, he doesn't see your imperfection, he sees the righteousness of his

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Son. And that's only available through faith in the true Christ. And that's the reason we're doing this tonight, my friend.