Let's pray. Father, we do love you and we thank you for bringing us here tonight. I'm particularly thankful for the work of the Holy Spirit in my life and the lives of these precious brothers and sisters here who know you as their Savior. We don't want to take that for granted, Lord, as we talk about another Religion that doesn't have the gospel. We thank you that we do. We thank you that you have opened our eyes. Pray that your spirit would be here tonight working and helping us to understand and to apply and to be ready to give a reason for the hope that we have with gentleness and respect as we interact with those in the Mormon faith and all the different branches of Mormonism. Lord, I just ask for your help tonight. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Welcome, thanks for coming out. This is the second part of the Mormon topic, and they asked me if I would speak tonight because I came out of a church called the RLDS Church, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is a child, I guess, of the Mormon Church, and I'll tell you a little bit more about that. As I, I wanna do three things tonight. First of all, I wanna tell you my story, how I grew up, what I learned, and then how the Lord saved me, and then make some applications. Second thing, kind of encourage us to be thinking about how we can engage our neighbors and our friends, co-workers that are Mormons, and then we'll do a Q&A time. So be thinking along the way tonight, any clarifications, any questions, things that we might need to talk about. It's really overwhelming, all the different doctrines and covenants. That's one of the books that they have, because things have changed over the years. And I heard the phrase, and I really would agree with it, that the more you learn about the Mormon Church, the less you know. I mean, it's just so complex and overwhelming. But interestingly, I talked to Shane Griffin, who many of you might remember, used to come to our church. He's really become very knowledgeable about the Mormon Church. He goes out to Utah. and interacts even here in town. He gave me some statistics and things, but he said really the predominance of those he interacts with, particularly men, don't really know a lot about their faith. They may have grown up in it, they're married into it, that's their culture, their families, their friends, and that's their life, and you really start searching a little bit, they really don't know the doctrines. So in a sense, that gives us hope that the Spirit can work, just like you'll hear my story. How many of you know a Mormon or somebody in your life that you know that's in this church, Mormon Church, RLDS? Quite a few. I mean, in this area, according to Mormon statistics, in the greater Kansas City area, there are 35,000 Mormons. Gladstone has a population of about 25,000, so just think about Gladstone and a half, if their numbers are accurate. That's a lot of Mormons in this greater Kansas City area. A lot of history here in this area, so that's partly the reason a lot of them are here. We have a new temple over Shoal Creek there on 435, so that's a big deal to them. We need to be ready, like I said, to give a reason for the hope that we have, and not to be afraid of them, to engage them, to discuss with them, ask them good questions, and we'll talk more about that. So, my story is this. I grew up in Raytown, down towards Independence, and Independence is, like I said, a lot of history there of the Mormon Church. Joseph Smith, you know, Jason talked about some of that last week, and Interesting character. You wonder why did he have such a following because he, I asked Shane this, and just really some odd things. In fact, even now I think the Mormon Church has published some things or released some things that do show that Joseph Smith was not really who he said he was. He did have multiple wives. He did lie to the government, some things that for years they denied, and now I think they're actually coming forth, partly because of the internet. There's so much more information out there. it's being exposed and they have to kind of, I guess, come clean a little bit. But I guess Joseph Smith was kind of a charismatic guy. He was a dreamer. He obviously had a good way of speaking and he could remember things. He read and he gave people hope, I think. In the 1800s in this area of the country, a pretty depressed area, people didn't have much hope and so I think they got on the bandwagon and then created a following and then at a point he becomes, he's martyred. So that always helps when you die in your cause and then people take up your cause and go. So I grew up in the RLDS church and that church broke off from the Mormon church about 175 years ago as the Mormons headed west under Brigham Young. There was a group that stayed here and said, we are gonna stay and we think that a descendant of Joseph Smith should be our leader. And so I guess there was a 13 year old boy named Joseph Smith the third, I believe. And so I guess as he grew up, they put him in place. I don't know a lot about that and don't know that really matters, but the point was he, there's this group called the RLDS Church that stayed here. And interestingly, as I grew up, I didn't learn a lot of the doctrines of the church. We were somewhat nominal church goers. We would go some, my parents, were both RLDS. My dad's family, all my aunts and uncles and I don't know how many generations on his side is where the RLDS came from. My mom had gone to Graceland College up in Iowa and that's where she met my dad and she'd gone with a friend and didn't really have a faith but joined the church because she was up there. So then here they are raising their kids, the next generation of RLDS. I have a brother, a younger brother and a younger sister. You know, it's interesting, you know, the thing I remember about being in the RLDS church was whenever somebody asked you what faith you were, you would say RLDS, or Organized Latter-day Saints. Oh, so you're Mormon. And the big thing is, no, we're not Mormon. It was always this, no, we're not Mormon. And I don't ever remember knowing exactly why we weren't Mormon. It's like, I just know we're not Mormons. But as I've studied more and heard more, I just see so much of the Mormonism that was in the RLDS church. Obviously, if they, still called themselves the Latter-day Saints. So growing up, I was basically a moralist. As any non-Christian is, we think that we can be good enough to get to heaven. And just like we've been talking about from Daniel, on the scales we're found wanting, and yet what do we do? We rationalize, we justify, morality by comparison. We look around and say, well, I'm not as bad as him. I'm not as bad as them. And so we justify in our mind, I guess, that we are good enough. And I, as a kid, decided I wanted to be a dentist. It's kind of unusual as an elementary kid to have a goal like that. But my dad had kind of planted that seed in my head. And as I grew and learned more about it, I continued to say, yeah, I think that's what I want to do. So it really became all about my goal. It was all about me, really. So what do I need to do to get to my goal? And I got the grades, you know, make the connections and so forth. And so that's where I headed. I went to Grayson College, just like my folks did, and still was a moralist. I hung out with some guys that were much more entrenched in the RLDS church. It's an RLDS college. And yet still, we were somewhat moral. We'd go to church and, you know, We didn't do the bad stuff. I guess you kind of, there's levels of sin that I guess you can justify. We didn't drink coffee, Tim, you know, so that was... It's funny, as I've studied about that, it's called the word of faith, I think they call it. Joseph Smith started this years ago, and he came up with, you know, no strong hot drinks, which really they translated to coffee and tea, and now they've said it's basically no caffeine. even today they make fun of me on the elder board that I don't really like coffee. And it's like, I can't help it, it's in my genetics or something, you know. But it's not sinful to do, it's just. So I graduate college and go to dental school. I'm pursuing my dream, right? And interestingly though, I thought of this the other day that when I was at my dental school interview, I hadn't thought of this for years, the guy that was interviewing me, one of the professors, I had a relative who was the anatomy teacher at the dental school, and he was getting ready to retire, and I said, oh, Dr. Butterworth is my relative, who was totally into genealogy. Another thing that I now realize why they're so into genealogy, because the Mormons do these different ceremonies in their temple, baptisms for the dead, so they have to know their genealogy so they know who to get baptized for that's in their family that might not have been a good Mormon. So anyway, he was so fascinated by the fact, and he said, well, he's Mormon. Are you Mormon? No, I'm not Mormon. And he said, well, what's the difference? And I'm like, uh, you know, here I am on this dental school interview and he's trying to talk some church and I just, you know, couldn't really tell him much. And he finally backed off and he let me into dental school. But it was just funny that he was so fascinated by that. So I'm moving through dental school and, um, First day of dental school, I met a guy that I really am still friends with today who's a Nazarene guy, or he was Nazarene, and he was a very moralist kind of guy. And so we'd hang out and go to parties and have our soft drinks or whatever and hung out. He was a good friend. It wasn't until my third year of dental school, I guess, that life started kind of caving in on me. You know, I was this, if I plan it, I can do it. Third year of dental school, talk to Caleb, talk to anybody that's been in dental school, it's where it really gets hard because you're thrown into the clinic, you've got all these requirements you've got to get, you've got to go find your patients, patients aren't very reliable, sometimes they don't show up, and you've got a timeline where you've got to get things done, and you're doing procedures that you may have done once in the lab, and it's just stressful. Plus you've still got a full academic load of classes. So I just started really struggling. I started just worrying and feeling this weight or this burden on my back, you know, and started seeking. I truly became a seeker at that point. I remember just thinking, I've got to get some help here. So what did I do? Started going faithfully to the RLDS church. It's really the only church I really knew. And so I was just hungry. I'd be sitting there wanting to hear from God and just nothing. I would leave those services and just think, this is just nothing. What in the world? And I kept going and tried to get involved. My friend that I mentioned at the dental school, he and I started going to a non-denominational Bible study at the dental school in the morning, and this thing was all over the place. Unitarians, Catholics, I mean, it was just all over the place. But in the process of us going to that once a week in the mornings, we met these two young girls who were dental hygiene students. So they were quite a bit younger than us, We kind of hit it off, all four of us. So we started kind of as a foursome hanging out. And we had a good time for a few weeks. And then my friend and one of the girls started kind of pairing off, kind of dating, which was fine. And then the other girl, I thought, well, we can still hang out. And she said, no, I don't want to do that anymore. And I said, why? And so we sat down and we talked. And I'll just never forget this conversation because it was really powerful in my life. It still kind of takes me up. It's interesting. So she said, oh, I know what church you go to, Earl Diaz Church, and I don't believe you to be a believer, a Christian. I don't believe you to be a Christian. And it would appear that we're dating if we go out with this other couple, and I don't date non-Christians, so I can't go out with you. And I was just blown away. I was just like, she doesn't think I'm a Christian? What in the world? And instead of making me mad, which you might think, well, that's why we're so afraid to tell people the truth. It stirred me up. I was just like, I've got to figure this out. What in the world is she saying I'm not a Christian for? So I go to my Nazarene friend and he couldn't help me. He was just, I don't even know to this day where he is with the Lord, but he referred me to another guy that I had an acquaintance that was at the dental school in a graduate school program. And he met me for dinner and told me the gospel. I forgot to tell you one other thing. I had grown up my whole life up until my senior year of high school and I'd never heard the gospel, never heard why Jesus came, never heard what he accomplished, never understood why we celebrate Christmas, why we celebrate Easter. And this was going to church, okay? Not a good church, but going to church. Until I went to a high school youth rally with a friend and he took a Catholic kid and I to this youth rally at a Baptist church. there in Raytown, and I heard the gospel for the first time, and I thought, wow, okay, so I get it. Intellectually, I kind of ascended to it. I go, that's good to know. That's great to know. That's why Jesus came. Didn't change my life at that point. I used to think, I wonder if I was converted there, but I'd look at my life in college, no fruit, no disciples. I mean, I don't think I was converted yet, but I'd heard the gospel. It helped me. So then, you know, my friends telling me the gospel, and I go, I've heard, I believe that. I mean, I really didn't have any problem with it. I just didn't know anything about it. And so instead of putting, you know, words in my mouth or beliefs in my heart, like we tend to want to do, you know, as we learn all this crazy Mormon doctrine and kind of go, well, you guys believe this and the Mormon guy, or all this, and I go, I didn't know that. I'm sorry. So don't assume that they even know their own doctrine because I didn't. So she, uh, So, let's see, where was I? So, my friend tells me the gospel and I say, I get that, I believe that. And so, like I said, instead of going back and saying, well, you know, you guys are different. He said, well, let's start reading the Bible. Let's start studying the Bible. Let's start a discipleship program. I don't think he said that, but basically he started mentoring me and, you know, got me involved with a good church. It was interesting, back at the Baptist Church in Raytown is where I'd, where I'd heard the gospel. So eight years later, here I am back at that same church, hearing good Bible teaching at the time. I think it still is a decent church. And then, got involved with a Bible study group called Bible Study Fellowship, BSF. It's all over the world, international studies, really pre-reformed. It's a good study, and it was a young adult class here in Kansas City at the time, and 250 young adults. Carrie was there, I met her there, and great long-term friends that we met, because these were serious-minded young people that really wanted to study the Bible. So, you know, it was just an interesting time. So for about a year and a half, I mean, I was just so hungry. I would just sit there under that teaching and just eat it up and started memorizing scripture. We went through the book of Genesis. I really learned about faith, seeing the faith of those early church people, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. And then God just really started blessing my life in a way that I really still marvel at. It was very much like a mountaintop experience because all the The stress at the dental school as far as the procedures and the requirements and then boards, three days of intense boards that any dentist would have to tell you that's probably the most stressful days of his life. I cruise through that. It's just like the Lord was just booing me up and bringing me through these hard times, showing his faithfulness. I just really felt like I needed that because then when I graduated dental school, bought a practice and kind of go back in the valley and it gets more challenging. One little memory I have, I remember just my parking, in the parking lot where I, my third year dental school, I remember just going out to the car at the end of the day and just feeling, oh, this weight, like I said, on my back. And it was, it was more than just, just stress. It was sin. You know, I just had this Pilgrim's Progress kind of picture of sin on my back and going through these months. And I remember opening my door one day and have that burden anymore it just is gone and I can't tell you what day I just it just was a process of God opening my eyes to the to the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ and saving me through his gospel. So several things that that I want to bring out about my story and how we need to really be ready, like I said, to give a reason for our hope and speak the truth of the gospel and love to these people. First of all, like I said, don't put words in their mouths or beliefs in their hearts. So say your next door neighbor is a Mormon. It can be intimidating, and they may be a faithful Mormon. They may go to their ward regularly. They have wards or congregations, and then they have a bishop, I believe they're called, of each ward. So I'm back to the Mormon church now. That is, their social life, their work life a lot of times are just really in these Mormon circles. But get to know them, honestly. Get to be a good neighbor. They're going to be a good neighbor to you because they're very works oriented. So be a good neighbor to them. And it's vitally important that we find out how they believe. Ask them questions and see what they think about their church's beliefs and get a sense of, have they grown up in it? Did they marry into it? What's their life like? And really get to know them. Shane's wife, Laurel, interacts with a lot of the Mormon women and she said so many of them really struggle. Because of their theology, they've got to be really good wives to their husbands because I can't tell you exactly how this works, but in heaven, they've got three levels of heaven, but God will call the husband to this level of heaven, but then he calls his wife. And if he doesn't call his wife, she's not going. So she's got to be a good wife, please him, and then manage all the kids, because they usually have a lot of kids. She says a lot of them are depressed. A lot of them take antidepressants. They just really struggle. And so they'll usually talk about their problems to non-Mormons, because they can't really share that to each other. She says they just kinda open up to her, and Shane says the same thing about the guys. They're just very willing to talk a lot of times. If you really take the time, and don't feel the pressure, I gotta get him saved. We just get to know these people. Love them, get to know them. We need to avoid wrong motivations, you know, like either irritation with their religion, or bitterness maybe, or wanting to be right and prove them wrong. You know, you're not gonna wanna debate them and win the argument if you're gonna really win them over to grace. Here's another issue. Even if they lose faith in their religion, I've seen this happen a lot, so the Mormon Church says they're the one true church that's really going to have the opportunity to get to their, according to their definition, the highest level of heaven, which is called the celestial level. But even in the RLDS Church years ago, it used to say it was the one true church. Let me clarify one other thing, too. So the RLDS Church in the mid 80s, when I was at Graceland, they started kind of going a little bit liberal. They started saying, we're going to ordain women into the priesthood. And that really upset a lot of the RLDS people. And so then there was a branch that broke off called the Restoration Branch of the Reorganized Church of Latter-day Saints. It's just crazy. I think the Mormon Church has more splinter groups than any other religion out there. even in Utah. So when Brigham Young or whoever decided we're not going to do polygamy anymore, of course, there's people that branch out. Well, we want polygamy. We want these things. And so it's crazy. So our LDS Church proper became Community of Christ. So if you see Community of Christ around, they're much smaller. kind of a dwindling, they've really basically become a liberal protestant denomination. They don't say that they're one true church. They are ordaining gay and lesbians. Their mantra, their gospel is world peace. It's all about world peace. If you go look at their independence temple, spiral temple, you go in there, it's all about world peace. And so they just don't understand peace with God. They would think that there's many paths, universalists really. So there's just kind of a wandering group that don't have the gospel, and yet, in fact, this is so interesting. Today, I had a patient in my office, new patient, she works at the Rachel House, with Cheryl Whitten, and 25, I believe she's getting married and moving to the East Coast, but I just started chatting with her, and it's like, oh, Rachel House, where you go to church and all, and she lives down in Independence, and I said, where'd you go to high school? She said, CPRS. You probably don't know what that is. I said, yeah, I do, Center Place Restoration School. She goes, how do you know that? I said, well, I used to be RLDS, and our school plays them in sports and so we got talking about that and she'd gone to that school K through 12 so she'd been really indoctrinated in the restored RLDS church and I said, did you ever hear the gospel? No, she said I hadn't heard the gospel because she's become a believer now. She hadn't heard the gospel all through just like me so once again confirming These churches have no gospel. They don't know grace at all. It's all of works. And so pity them. I mean, feel sorry for them, pray for them, and then speak loving truth to them about the grace of the gospel. So she confirmed what I have seen, that when people leave these churches, they tend to just leave church. They tend to just become agnostic or atheistic. Because if you think, well, the One True Church is dead, or there's nothing there for me, why would I do anything? So when you talk to them, and they may, you know, if they're interacting with you about doctrine, or whatever you happen to be just talking to them about, they'll take you on rabbit trails. They take everything out of context, even when they use the Bible. They don't know their Bibles. They don't even know the Book of Mormon a lot of times. But they will take you on rabbit trails. But take them back to the words of Jesus. Or say, hey, are you a Christian? Or they'll say, I'm a Christian. I'll say, I'm a Christian too. That means we follow Christ. Let's look into the words of Christ. Take them back to the hope that they might fall back on. So if they end up leaving the church, in fact, Shane has asked people, he said over the years, if you were to ever leave the Mormon church, heaven forbid, and you get disgruntled with the Mormon church, could you still believe in Jesus? And he said about half of them will say, yes, I could still believe in Jesus. And half are so focused on Joseph Smith and the doctrines of the church that they would fall away. So we'd rather them fall on Christ, fall on the gospel, than just to fall away. Engage them prayerfully and humbly following the prompting of the Holy Spirit and to be patient because we know God gets his man. He chooses and he brings those in and so we need to be tools of his and to be patient and to be praying for them that the Spirit would be working Ask them to define their terms during conversation, because they really do focus on trying to use similar terms that we do about Jesus, about faith, about a lot of words that we would say, wow, sounds like you, but you have to ask them more about that. Delve into it and really get a sense if they understand, for it's by grace you've been saved through faith, and they may say, yeah, I agree with all that. Well, tell me more about that. Well, Jesus made a way for us to work for our salvation. And they get salvation and they get justification and sanctification messed up. We understand justification is a free gift. Then we work out our sanctification. They don't understand that at all. So we want engagement. We want to get them to explain how their faith works, which may lead to frustration on their part. they may be closer to the gospel than you realize. This girl, I asked her, so when she converted, so she went away to college, went to Warrensburg, and she said, she was telling her roommate about the RLDS church about Zion, and that Zion's gonna be in independence, and that Jesus is gonna come back there, and she says, as I was telling her this, I started thinking, this is really odd. It's just funny how she'd just been trained, learned it, and been indoctrinated, but as she's telling this new roommate, she's thinking, do I really believe this? And so she got involved in some campus ministries, a good church, and the Lord did a work in her life as well. Avoid rabbit trails. Like I said, take them back to the gospel. Leave them with questions. Leave them with a stone in their shoe, something to think about. And if you can do this very graciously, like Shane was saying, Like I said, the LDS.org, I couldn't find it. There's so much on there. But articles, he said, the Joseph Smith Papers, I believe, was a work of, I don't know if you know about that, Justin, where they've actually got material on there where it brings out some of the truths about Joseph Smith that kind of aren't very flattering at all. And so you might even just say, you know, I heard about something. I was on the LDS website and reading about it, and get them kind of wondering, like, really, what's the deal with him? Or it used to be just that, they would call anybody that was against their church anti. And it's kind of like the Jehovah's Witnesses. They don't want to really expose themselves to anything that's against what they believe, and so they kind of protect themselves. They're in their own little world, and they don't want to test what they believe. And so, you know, try to maybe even ask them some questions or get them talking, just like this girl started talking about Zion, and she starts thinking about, like, well, that doesn't really make any sense, you know. And the fact that there's no archeological evidence that the Book of Mormon really is true. I mean, all this history that supposedly happened that you can't call the Smithsonian and say, I wanna see a Moroni sword. I mean, there's no such thing. So if we can graciously cause them to have some doubts, that's hopeful. The reality is, it's very low odds that a Mormon is gonna convert to Christ, just by the numbers. but our hope is in the Lord and the work of the spirit. We want to be faithful and we want to be obedient to give a reason for the hope that we have with gentleness and respect. What questions do you have? I want to just kind of, I've got some more material, but I'd rather kind of interact as far as thoughts and strategies and am I calling Justin or Tim for some help? Yes, Reese. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting question. He's asking, you know, they mess up salvation, sanctification, and justification, really, that whole process, as far as how it happens that we would be... They really don't think we can have assurance of salvation. They really think that if you ask them, are you forgiven, they're not going to say, yes, I'm forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ. They're going to say, I hope so, I think so, or I'm trying, something like that. And so, you know, you could go piggyback off that. In fact, one of their, I think there's five steps to forgiveness. And one of the steps of repentance or forgiveness is you'll know you are forgiven when you never sin in that area again. And, you know, the reality is we live in flesh and we know we will all struggle with flesh until the day we die. And so they have to kind of justify that or have this heavy load that once they fall back into another sin, then all that sin comes back on them. So it's a real burdensome religion. There's no, there's not grace like we are thankful for to give us freedom. So yeah, you might even just ask them, of course they think that, you know, salvation by grace alone is a pernicious doctrine of the reformation. I mean, that's kind of what I've heard. So they, and the other thing I heard too is they put a lot of authority in the Mormon priesthood. So if there are men in their priesthood, they really listen to that authority. And we are really nobodies, you know, because we are just, here's how it works. They've got this highest level, the celestial level that only good Mormons will go to, not average Mormons, good Mormons, practicing Mormons that have done all the works that they needed to do. And then there's this terrestrial level and then telestial level. So the terrestrial level is the second level, I believe, And that's where we'll all go according to them. They think we're not bad, you know, most people are going to go to that middle level. So it's almost kind of like Gnosticism where they think they have this extra knowledge. And so when you're talking to them, it's, I always feel like they're just kind of patting you on the head. You guys aren't bad, you know, kind of get it, but you really don't get it. We, Caleb and I had lunch with a Mormon oral surgeon and he lives, practice is just really close to us. And so we refer to him some. And so we went out to lunch with him. And he broke the ice, and he said, well, what do guys like you think about guys like me? And I said, wow, okay, so let's talk. And so Caleb and I both got to share. I told him my story a little bit, and Caleb talked about, we talked about the gospel and grace. And he listens, kind of patronizes this, but he's actually the, he is the bishop. What's God saying about that? I don't know. He is the bishop of the Platte City ward. I mean, so he, he knows his stuff and he's obviously very involved and very active and a sharp guy, you know, just a lot of Mark. I mean, there are a lot of them are doctors and educated and just great folks trying hard. Um, but just don't know the gospel. Yes. No, the RLDS Church does not do the two-by-two Mormon missionaries. In fact, Shane told me that he read that 40% of those guys, when they come back from their mission, leave the church, at least for a while. They may come back, but 40% And so you wonder, are they disgruntled? Are they frustrated? Are they burned out? Who knows what? And the other thing he told me is they'll keep missionaries in a region for only six weeks, and then they'll move them to different regions. And I think partly to keep them from maybe interacting with Bible-believing believers that might start really influencing them, so they're gone. Then the next group come. Yeah. Yeah, those Mormon missionaries are. Yeah, they've been equipped, and they're ready to debate, argue. Yeah. So here's another thing. Be careful. I've, I've, I've talked to people that have had them in their homes, you know, try to say, well, let's, let's meet weekly. Let's, and, and you know, there are guys that, you know, guys like Justin are equipped to do that and that's fine, but be careful because it, it can start to really be dark. I mean, it can start to, to weigh on your family. I mean, it's just like you're inviting darkness into your home and, and so don't ignore them. If they come to your door, chat with them a little bit. Here's what I tell them. I tell Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, either one, I say, you know, I grew up in a religion very similar to what you're in. I'll tell them, I'm not going to tell you what it is, but here's very similar. Basically, you know, as far as people say you're not Christians, that's kind of what I'm relating to. I say, you're basically putting your hope in a guy that started a religion in the 1800s. This is the eternal stuff we're talking about. This is important stuff. You need to test what you believe. Get on the internet, say, what's wrong with Mormonism? What's wrong with Jehovah's Witnesses? So I'm trying to put a stone in their shoe. I'm trying to stir up a question to say, hmm, maybe I ought to see what they say. You know, they're not supposed to do that, Jehovah's Witness particularly. They're not supposed to read anything that's not Watchtower. So, and I just say, you know what? I mean, God showed me some things and I, so. Yes. Yes. Really, okay. Yeah, she's saying she's kind of found intimidating in the past and people that she's known that are Mormons going through school with them and so forth. They have regular meetings, and what are they doing? Are they studying the Bible? Do they know the Bible? And I would say, no, they don't. They keep them very busy. It's intentional, I think. So you create this world. In fact, when you, so say you, You get married, start having kids, and you're kind of moral, but you don't have any real discernment about what church to go to. You say, we're going to go find a church. And so you say, well, let's look at the Mormon church. They're clean-cut people, and there's one right there by us. And so you go in there. They're not going to tell you any of the wacky doctrines, I'll tell you. They're not going to. They're going to bring you in. They're going to love you. They're going to get you involved weekly with all these different activities. And then it's not for a year that they would ever take you into the temple, and that's where they start doing the really kind of mystical stuff, kind of Masonic stuff that's going on in there. So, it's kind of interesting how they, it's cultish, you know, they come in, bring in, brainwash you, and get you involved, and then to leave the Mormon Church is hard because you're so hooked in at that point. So, Shane did tell me that, I said, you know, what do they do? You know, it's like on Sunday morning, three different services, and he said the first service would be either a testimony service, where not a testimony service like we would know, a testimony service where they're gonna, a couple different people are gonna get up and tell about how they had this warm inner feeling, this burning of the bosom when they first read the Book of Mormon, and how they had this assurance that the Book of Mormon is true, or that this church is the one true church, or that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, or that Thomas Monson, the prophet now, So it's all about church. It's all about their world there. And then I think the second service is where two different people will give a speak about a topic that's kind of maybe moralistic or whatever, not using the Bible typically. And he said, picture a sixth grade speech class. I mean, that's how really it's very poorly done. Typically these people don't have any theological training. They're all lay people, even the pastors or the, bishops of the order are not. That was my experience growing up in the oral district, very poor rhetoric. I mean, very poor, even if they were trying to exposit the Book of Mormon, they don't do it. They don't know what they're doing. And so it's very topical, very shallow. They don't know, I mean, unless they're studying, unless they're in the deeper things, they're just probably very shallow and trying to be moral. Yeah. Well, they've got the Book of Mormon, they've got the Doctrine and Covenants. So the Book of Mormon was written in the 1800s by Joseph Smith, kind of the beginning, and it is basically a compilation of a variety of things that were going on in that culture. A lot of King James, you know, just stuff right out of the King James Bible. There's a lot of stuff from different books, like A View of the Hebrews, which talked about the Israelites had come over and become Indians and things like that. And then it contradicts itself so many times and it's been corrected so many times that it's just really crazy. In fact, Justin told me of this older couple steeped in the Mormon tradition by family, by training, and she was actually a translator, translating the Book of Mormon into other languages, and just started having some questions and sat down with her husband and basically God saved them. got him out. But she said she remembered in eighth grade, or not grade, as a pretty young child, maybe eight years old, telling a classmate about her faith, about the Mormon faith, and her friend said, that's blasphemy, and turned around and walked off, and this woman, grown woman, older woman, never forgot that. So that's that challenge of speaking the truth, gently, as gently as an eight year old would say, that's blasphemy, I guess, But she never forgot that. And then so as God started to stir up questions. Yeah. Yes, right. So the doctrine and covenants started right away, and that was new revelation from God that the prophet would receive as things change is all of a sudden slavery is ending and say, Oh, Well, God doesn't want us to have slaves anymore, or God now wants us to start ordaining blacks, or God now doesn't want us to have multiple wives. So the doctrine of covenants over the years has basically been the winds of change that the church has gone through. Tim, what were you going to say? Yes, that was the 35,000, that's LDS, right. I don't even know how many Community of Christ and then this restoration branch, I don't even know. So it's significant when you think about it. That's a decent number of people around our culture. This is Mormon, LDS, yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, she's saying there was an RLDS man she knew years ago that was a faithful worker, good work ethic, good moral guy, but he put a higher value on the Book of Mormon, Dr. Covington, even the Bible. And really, I think that Joseph Smith said that the Book of Mormon is the most important, truest book to get you closer to God than anything else. And so, you know, it doesn't take long if you wanted to start to research that a little bit to start to show some of the errors. There's plenty of material out there if you really are interested in this. Even on sermon audio, I listen to a lot of different sermons podcasts on there, just whatever resources. I mean, you could get as deep into this stuff as you want, but do we really need to? Just like we've talked about, when we, you look at counterfeit dollar, don't study the counterfeit dollar, study the real thing, and then you'll recognize the counterfeit by the real thing. So we know, we need to know the word, which we are, we're learning it, studying it, and let the other come around. Let me get Marty here first. Yeah. So, well, as far as the reliability Bible picture, the telephone game, you know, as far as the old game where you say something, it gets passed down and by the end it's laughable as far as what's actually being said, it wasn't even close. That's how they picture that the Bible got brought down to us. So they thought all these problems, all these errors, Joseph Smith was the one that needed to come in and he was the prophet that clarified, corrected, started some of these things that the original disciples wanted, but it fell away. So they don't put a high value on the inerrancy of the Bible, I wouldn't think. Authorized or something like that, yeah. Joseph Smith added that. Yeah. you know, the gospel for the Americas. Right. Yes, so Joseph Smith basically, I think, did some corrections. I think it's called the authorized version, maybe. It's thicker and so they still have that, but they don't seem to know it. They don't know in context for sure. Everything is taken out of context. It's proof text. Yes. Yes, their view of structure is right so far as correctly translated, right? Right, you know, there's an error, so we don't like it, we're not going to follow it. Yes? Yeah, yeah, Lucifer and Jesus were, they think they were brothers, and then But even God the Father became God by obeying the laws of the priesthood that were supernatural, that had been here forever, eternal. And then Lucifer and Jesus came to God the Father and presented both their plans of how the earth should work. I mean, it's better, worse than science fiction. Right. Okay. Yeah, yeah. But I don't even know if a lot of Mormons even know that. I mean, it's like, and then, you know, a Mormon man can become a God, he can have his own planet, because it's just this cycle of keeping the laws, being faithful to the Mormon church, and then you can keep progressing. Yes, one more. Infinite gods, right, right. They really push the family, you know, they say we're all about family. They say the family can be sealed in the temple and stay together forever, but then there's even hypocrisy in that as far as, you know, so if the man becomes God and has multiple wives, and then one of their kids becomes a god, so the family's not really together. and then being baptized for the dead. I mean, for somebody who has lost a loved one and they're not sure, you know, it's kind of a palatable thing to say, well, you know, join our church and you can actually do work on their behalf to make sure that they get to the right place. So, you know, thankfully, we have the real Word of God and we have assurance that it's true and we have a Holy Spirit that lives in us. In fact, interesting, I was just reading about the temple. Chalice was just talking about the symbolism of the temple and the tabernacle in the Old Testament and how it goes away in the New Testament because God dwelling among his people was the whole point of the tabernacle temple. But then Jesus comes. makes a way for the Holy Spirit to indwell us as believers. So we don't have a need for a temple to go find God or to interact with God. But here they are really stuck in these ruts of building these massive, beautiful temples that they go do these ceremonies. They don't have any concept of a Holy Spirit dwelling in us, to have assurance of their salvation. So those are all the things I just want to remind us. Just have empathy for them. And they are intimidating in a lot of ways, I understand. but don't be intimidated by them. We have the spirit of God in us and they don't and they need it. Right. Yeah, taken back to the Word of God basically is what he's saying. I knew some folks that moved from Kansas City out to Utah. He was a youth pastor at a Baptist church somewhere out there. And he had a lot of ex-Mormons in their church. And I said, so how does a Mormon become a Christian? And they said, short story, they get a hold of the Word of God and they start reading it. It's just the power of the Word. It doesn't come back void. So that's powerful, yes. Ceremonies, yeah. Yeah, they have to be, there's certain qualifications. Good standing, tithing, doing all those different things. In fact, there's some YouTube videos of a guy snuck in a camera into one of the ceremonies, and it's just interesting to watch. It's narrated by a speaker, you know, not a guy standing up in front. He's just standing up there, and they kind of do these role play things. It's just, you know, like he had a Mason, Masonic background, so you can kind of see some of the ceremonial mysticism that came into those ceremonies. And so, like I said, pity him, because they are, they just have no depth. In fact, this girl that I met today, she said some of her bridesmaids, she's getting ready to get married, are still in the RLDS church, or restored, yeah. And she said sometimes that, and she talks to them, and some of them are just kind of on the fence, whatever. And she said they'll maybe hear something like a little devotional or something, and they'll say, that was so good. And she's just like, they have no idea. I mean, they just are starving. If God is working in their life to draw them, they are starving for truth like I was. They may be a real genuine seeker. God may be bringing them, but they need truth of the word of God. So graciously, let's give it to them. Let me pray, and then we can continue to discuss afterwards. Father, we do thank you for our time, and I pray that you would be giving us a heart for those around us, even bringing people into our lives that are lost, and we could be encouraging to them in the gospel. Pray that you would help us not be intimidated by them, but to graciously love them. We thank you for our salvation. We don't want to take it for granted. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.