Today on the Evangelist Podcast, we're talking about how to witness to a Mormon.
SPEAKER_02The Evangelist Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_03And now we're taking a slightly different. We're going to start by looking at how to witness to a movement.
SPEAKER_05Yes, it's part of a series we're going to do that looks at people who already believe a whole bunch of stuff. Because we've spent a lot of time talking about uh secular people, a lot of time talking about the atheism, and in particular the new atheism. And uh I've just sort of realized you can get stuck into that kind of stuff when even your your average box tendered atheist uh will go out of their way to say, well, I'm an atheist, but I'm not like that Richard Dawkins fool. Um and uh in in some ways, you know, I've been sucked into that, into into uh addressing a very small minority um in the world in terms of their their own beliefs because they get a lot of airtime. Um where it's actually you know, I hope everybody knows that atheism is shrinking around the world. Um I mean it's the collapse of communism of I think of a sort of nineteen percent to atheist uh in around about the year nineteen eighty, and then and thirty years later it's shrunk to uh less than ten percent. And uh and it seems to it's gonna start to shrink even further. So for all the noise that they make, atheism isn't by no means the biggest flight of the pie. So let's think about uh people who already believe stuff and how we reach out to them.
SPEAKER_03And uh so we're we're gonna start with uh with Mormonists. Yes. Quite quite a big um demographic in America, isn't it? Yeah, more sort of America than other places.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it it is as American as apple pie, really. Mormonism sort of started by uh uh Joseph Smith, that that you know prophet who is very much a pioneer and an individualist and didn't like authority over him, but he was a go-getter and he, you know, started up his own thing, which is very much, you know, uh work hard, be you know nice to your family, and and and and of course Jesus was American. Or at least he came to America and uh you know all all the great uh and important things uh according to the Book of Mormon happened in America. So it is incredibly American, but they're incredibly evangelistic. Yeah. And we'll think a bit a little bit about why they're very evangelistic in this episode as we talk to uh a real expert from Utah, Bill McKeever, and uh he will he will let us know uh uh what the history of uh Mormonism is, um uh the belief stuff about the Book of Mormon, and then we'll go on to perhaps in the future episode, we'll go on to in in our interview uh thinking about how to engage uh the Mormon on the doorstep or uh in ongoing life.
SPEAKER_03Okay, excellent. Well we'll we'll get on to that uh in a minute. Uh before we go on, I wanted to tell you about the Speak Life Daily. It's a free pocket-sized booklet that tells uh 31 stories of what God is doing around the world. It's also got information about what uh we're up to here at Speak Life as well as some devotional content. And you can get a copy by going to speaklife.org.uk slash tep. You can sign up there via post or via email. It's uh a very valuable booklet to get. Just before we uh jump into the interview, Cliff, just uh update us on uh what's happening with uh Speak Life here.
SPEAKER_05So yeah, so we've uh had a very uh jam-packed summer. Um getting ready for a lot of different things. For instance, uh I've written a Christmas book and that needs to get out um and has gone out to the publishers, and uh uh they'll turn that around fairly quickly and and uh lot to do with uh uh four kinds of Christmas. Uh look out for that, albeit an online um personality quiz. You can figure out what kind of Christmas you are. And uh yeah, you can take the quiz and you can read the book and you can watch the video and you can share it with friends. Just a little way of uh of explaining about Christmas. Uh and also been getting ready for the uh learning hub. So union is a very exciting way of uh training for ministry, getting degree-level theological training, um, but doing it in context, doing it with other people. So we've got four guys down here in Eastbourne who on Mondays were having our lectures and uh we're having a great time uh uh chatting through big issues like Old and New Testament, like church and mission, and learning some Greek and uh yeah, things like that. So uh that's that's been great because I think it's really important to raise up evangelists who are theologically minded and uh that's part of what we're doing.
SPEAKER_03And they'll be sort of going with you to uh evangelistic uh missions and things like that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so um I've got seven or eight um different mission weeks uh coming up in this next sort of academic year, and um uh some of them will be coming to some of those uh missions, whether it's to universities or whether it's to churches, um helping uh you know to getting getting their hands dirty in uh evangelistic experience alongside uh hitting the books and and learning their Greek and their doctrine.
SPEAKER_03Excellent. Okay, so uh to the interview that you've uh uh who's this chap that uh you've uh interviewed that gives us a bit of his background.
SPEAKER_05This is Bill McKeever, and uh he has been renting out uh to Mormon for the best part of 40 years, and uh he is very, very good at it lives in Utah, in in uh uh one of the other Salt Lake City. Uh so he's uh he's really in the thick of it. And uh so he he is fantastic. And and before we listen to um the interview, in which he'll introduce himself a little bit more, it's really worth people knowing that he is actually coming to the UK. And uh it would be great to catch him. Uh I think after you've listened to this interview, you'll really want to uh learn some more from him. Um so I've just got the dates here. So he'll be uh in Bradford on the 19th of September, that's uh uh a day conference. Uh he'll also be in uh Northern Ireland in Bangor uh on the 22nd of September, that's an evening thing. Uh he'll be in Dundee in Scotland on uh Wednesday the 23rd of September, that's also an evening thing, and he'll be down in London on the 26th of September, and that is uh again a day conference uh that you can go to on that Saturday, the 26th of September. So whether it you're in the north or the south or Northern Ireland or Scotland, there's something for you. And uh and I think once you've heard Bill McKeever, you'll really w want to come along and get really well trained in this kind of outreach. Okay, good. Well uh let's hear then. I'm joined by uh Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry. Uh good morning to you.
SPEAKER_01Good morning, Glenn. Good to be with you.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, great to be with you. You're you are in are you in Salt Lake City, Utah, or somewhere else in Utah?
SPEAKER_01I'm actually in the Salt Lake Valley. We're about twenty minutes south of Salt Lake City proper. So we are right in the heart of it all.
SPEAKER_05Okay, fantastic. And how how long have you been in the heart of Mormon territory?
SPEAKER_01We made the move up here back in spring of 2004. Uh it wasn't like it was something very new to me since I used to come up here all the time to do outreaches and research and things like that. So it wasn't any type of a culture shock when I moved up here. I was pretty much familiar with the territory. But it has been a remarkable move for us as a ministry because we are right in the heart of Mormonism, and it makes it easy for me, for instance, if I needed to do some particular research, I've got, you know, the libraries are right here. I've got the University of Utah, just not too far away, plus the downtown LDS Church Library is available to me as well, and so it makes it very easy to do what I do up here.
SPEAKER_05And how do the locals kind of view you? Because I mean, I I I'm imagining you've got you know big signs outside the building, Mormonism Research Ministry. Um how how do they take to you being there in their midst?
SPEAKER_01Uh, you know, it's kind of mixed. Uh some Mormons, of course, don't have a huge problem with it, though they don't agree with you know what I'm doing or the conclusions that I have regarding Mormonism. Uh but like where I live in in Sandy, which is a suburb of Salt Lake City, um, you know, it's not like the neighbors invite me over for a lot of uh activities and events. Uh it makes me wonder sometimes how many of them even know what I do sometimes.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Um but I have had good conversations with those in the neighborhood that do. Um but for for the most part, you know, I I think it's it needs to be made clear that the Mormons, for the most part, are very nice people, trying very hard to be very good people. I know one of the accusations that I often get is that I'm trying to disparage Mormons, and I that's really not true. My disagreement is certainly with the Mormon theology, and I certainly do have questions about Mormon history, but as a ministry, we want nothing but the best for the Latter-day Saint people, and we feel that the gospel, as it's presented in the New Testament, is the best not only for Mormons, but for everybody. Now, naturally, a lot of Mormons misunderstand that mission effort, and I I think sometimes, Glenn, some Mormons just need to feel persecuted as well. And this, I think, substantiates their faith to them because they've been told over and over and over again that the reason why people you know critique their faith is not so much that they have a genuine concern for them as people, but that they don't really like Mormons. And that certainly isn't our case here at Mormonism Research Ministry. And I think a lot of Mormons that we've come in contact with personally would testify to that very issue that we're not angry with Mormons. We don't dislike them at all. We are genuinely concerned for them as individuals.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And we might get into that issue of them feeling persecuted and and and how we deal with that in our witness to them. Um but uh can I just ask you how how you got into this kind of ministry in the first place?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, a lot of people are kind of curious about that because I was not raised as a Latter-day Saint. Uh I became interested in Mormonism as a young man. I I remember distinctly in my schooling years, my high school years, of having a couple of Latter-day Saints in one of my classes. It was a journalism class that I was taking, and they tried to tell me about what they believed, and I really wasn't interested at the time. I had really no interest during my high school years in religion at all. It wasn't until afterwards that I started giving the Bible a real good look. And I had a Christian friend of mine that started sharing the gospel with me. And as when I became a Christian in 1973, in late 1973, all of a sudden I was having these encounters with Latter-day Saints, either through where I was working or in other circumstances. And as I started talking to them about what they believed, they started sharing what they believed to me. Now, I was a brand new Christian, and certainly I did not have a real refined theology, and so I was intrigued by some of the things that they were saying to me. And I started looking into some of the claims that they made, looking at some of the Bible verses that they were giving me that they felt supported their view, and as I started looking at them and reading some biblical commentaries on a lot of the texts that they were using, it became clear to me that many times, most of the time, these verses were being used very badly. And as I started presenting rebuttals to my Mormon friends, naturally we were starting to go back and forth, and during that process, I was learning more from them as individuals regarding what they believed as Latter-day Saints. So it just started growing on me. One thing about Mormonism is you can't separate Mormonism from American history, and I love American history, and of course, with the westward expansion during the 19th century, the Mormons played a huge role in that with the pioneer movement in the 1840s, and you just can't separate the two. And so it was easy for me to study this both from a theological perspective as well as a historical perspective. And the more I started looking at it, and naturally having LDS friends, the more I became concerned for my LDS friends. Because as a Christian, truth means a lot to us. And I was finding that a lot of things that they were believing, even regarding their own history, wasn't really based in truth. And that's really what gave me the spark, if you will, to really look deeply into Mormonism. It was out of a genuine concern for the friends that I had at the time and was very close to at the time. And you figure that was back probably I would say in early 1974 or mid-74 that I started really looking at Mormonism seriously.
SPEAKER_05Gosh.
SPEAKER_01More as an effort to be able to communicate effectively with my LDS friends.
SPEAKER_05Goodness me, so for the last forty years you've been dealing with these kinds of issues.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and I've seen a lot of changes in Mormonism over the years. Not so much huge doctrinal changes, but certainly policy changes that have come about. And of course, ministry has changed dramatically since the nineteen nineties with the introduction of the internet, and that's just changed how we do things uh immensely.
SPEAKER_05Yes. What what I mean, I I sometimes hear reports of kind of Mormonism kind of uh hemorrhaging numbers and and and that kind of thing in more recent years. Is that true? What's what's kind of happening to the demographics?
SPEAKER_01That's absolutely true. In fact, uh spokesmen for the LDS Church have attributed that to the internet. The free flow of information has just changed everything. I remember when back in the old days, okay, when everything was hard copy, I would get letters from Mormons living in Utah, for instance, requesting information from us, but telling me specifically, do not put your ministry name on the outside of the envelope, because I have a Mormon postman, I have a Mormon postmaster, I live in a small Mormon town, and if they see that I'm getting information from an organization that's critical of Mormonism, it's going to be problems for them. That was in the old days. Well, now with the internet, there's that free flow of information where a person can look at this in the privacy of their own home, and they're free to search all sorts of various websites. And one thing I think that is happening is a lot of Latter-day Saints are finding that when they go on to sites that are critical of Mormonism, we're all saying basically the same thing. We're all citing a lot of the same sources, and one thing I think that shocks a lot of them is that the sources we're citing are their own sources.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_01And I found citing primary sources is one of the more effective ways of challenging a Latter-day Saint and getting them to look seriously at what they've been told.
SPEAKER_05Hmm. Can you just uh give us uh uh there'll be a a range of uh views and uh a range of kind of expertise in our listeners in terms of what they know about Mormonism. Some some will know quite a lot, some will just perhaps know the name Joseph Smith. Can you just give us a a potted guide to Mormonism, where it came from, and some of the distinctives?
SPEAKER_01Sure. Mormonism was born in upstate New York uh when a young man by the name of Joseph Smith claimed that he was visited by an angel Moroni and told him about some gold place that contained a record of the ancient inhabitants. Now it might surprise some Latter-day Saints that are listening to me that I didn't begin with the first vision. The first vision is a part of Mormon history, quote unquote, where Joseph Smith had claimed that he was visited by both God the Father and Jesus and told by these personages that all the churches were wrong, their creeds are an abomination, and their professors are all corrupt. The reason I didn't start with that is because really the first vision is a later invention of Mormonism. Joseph Smith was not talking about the first vision for the first several years of Mormonism. It doesn't even become well known among Latter-day Saints till probably around the early 1840s. And I really think that Joseph Smith invented the whole story just to give himself some credibility in the eyes of his followers. But the main part that Mormonism, most Mormons are very familiar with, of course, are the old plates that the angel Moroni, who once inhabited the American continent as a human being, see, Mormons do believe that some human beings, after they die, will be resurrected to become angels. Others will be resurrected and eventually become gods. And Moroni comes back to show Joseph Smith, according to their story, where he buried this ancient record that just so happened to be not very far from where Joseph Smith was living at the time. Joseph Smith eventually translates these gold plates into English and that.
SPEAKER_05With special glasses, is that right? Special spectacles.
SPEAKER_01Well, he had what he called the Urim and Thummum, and this was a set of he called them spectacles. And he would look through these rocks, these these uh well, I don't these stones, I don't know how how else to describe them. He would look through them, and the reformed Egyptian characters on the gold plates would somehow be seen by him as being English. Now that's one version of how the translation took place. Of course, the big news that hit here on August 4th was that Joseph Smith, in fact, used a sear stone. A sear stone uh that Joseph Smith had was a chocolate-colored, egg-shaped rock. And for the first time, the Mormon Church published pictures of Joseph Smith's sear stone. And this story broke in early August, and it has just rocked the world of many Latter-day Saints who never even heard about this story, were not familiar with the sear stone and the hat, how Joseph Smith would take this rock and put it in a hat. He would draw the hat closely to his face to exclude the light. And according to David Whitmer, one of his scribes, he described this translation as in the darkness the spiritual light would shine, and Smith would read something in the darkness to a scribe, the scribe would read it back, and if read back correctly, the characters on the stone would would change and go on to the next set of characters. This is now how the Mormon church is admitting that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. Now, we've been saying this for years. A lot of ministries critical of Mormonism have been talking about the Sears Stone for a long, long time. And many times when we would bring this story up to Mormons, asking them if they were familiar with it, many would deny that that ever took place like that. And they would accuse us, of course, of lying about Mormon history. Well, now the Mormon church is actually admitting what we've been saying for decades. And naturally, a lot of Latter-day Saints are very shook up about this. But I'm kind of glad it's finally happening because it has given us a lot of credibility, I think, in the eyes of many Latter-day Saints who did see us as merely being anti-Mormons, quote unquote, who want nothing more than to make Mormon feel bad or look bad. So we've kind of been vindicated by this, as well as a lot of other gospel topics essays that the Mormon Church has been producing on their official website, lds.org. And a lot of the topics that they are talking about now in these gospel topics essays are again controversial issues that we've been dealing with for a long, long time. And it's been kind of nice to see the Mormon Church actually vindicate our research after that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, well, I'm sure. And and and so I suppose people are shook up because it it's uh it sounds so much like a Ouija board, it sounds so much kind of kooky stuff in terms of the sear stone, and that's a that's a bridge further than reading through crazy spectacles.
SPEAKER_01I mean Well, even the spectacles part, even though a lot of Mormons have are familiar with the story of the Urim and Thummim and the breastplate that was allegedly buried with the plates, and how Smith would attach these stones to the breastplate and look through them, most Mormons are are, even though they may know of the alleged Urim and Thummim, they don't normally picture Joseph Smith translating the plates that way because most of the pictures that the Mormon church produces do not show him even using those. Now, there is one picture that I came to find, and surprisingly, not very many years ago, where it did show Joseph Smith in a drawing looking through these spectacles, but that's the only picture I've ever seen that the Mormon churches put out, and that was a long, long time ago when they produced that. Like I say, I only found out about this picture a few years back. But most Mormons visualize Joseph Smith translating the plates through the the pictures and paintings that the church has produced. And most of those pictures show Joseph Smith looking directly at the plates, many times running his fingers across the plates.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01And so that even though they may know of the Urim and Thumbum, they don't normally picture Joseph Smith using them in the translation of the plates.
SPEAKER_05We'll get into how we bring up some of the more strange claims in a second, and and and how you how you handle that in witnessing situations. But um but let let's think about so the the Book of Mormon and and and what particularly what what what major claims is the Book of Mormon making?
SPEAKER_01Well the Book of Mormon claims, as I said, to be a record of an of ancient inhabitants that lived in the American continent. According to the story, it begins in 1 Nephi, that's the the first book in the Book of Mormon. It talks about a man by the name of Lehi, L-E-H-I, who was told by God to take his family and to flee Jerusalem around 600 BC, or about the conquering of Jerusalem, around 587 BC, really. And he ends up taking his family and going across the ocean. Now, which ocean specifically is a matter of controversy in the Mormon Church. Some have said the Atlantic, some have said the Pacific, and so there's really no actual official version of this by church headquarters. So anyway, he gets to the new world. Lehi gets to the new world, and the story begins with two of his sons. He had several sons, but two of them, primary, primarily in the Book of Mormon, are Nephi and Laman. Laman is, I guess you could say, the bad son, the rebellious son, and Nephi is the good son. Followers of Laman end up turning dark. And this is what the Book of Mormon talks about. They they end up, their skin starts turning dark in following Laman. Because in Mormonism in the early years, your skin's color had something to do with your spirituality. And so this ends up being the catalyst for the whole story of the Book of Mormon, as far as the dark-skinned Lamanites and the light-skinned Nephites warring against each other for hundreds of years, until ultimately the dark-skinned Lamanites uh kill off all the light-skinned Nephites. Moroni being one of them who buried the gold plates. We don't know what actually happened to Moroni. He's one of the last figures in the Book of Mormon narrative. But it's basically a story of what was going on between these people groups in the ancient Americas. Now, there's no evidence at all to support this narrative. There's no evidence at all. In fact, the Mormon Church doesn't even really have an official position as to where the Lamanites and Nephites lived. There are theories that have been put out there by BYU scholars, it's Brigham Young University, and there are other theories that others in the Mormon Church hold to, and there's kind of this big disagreement within the Mormon Church as to where the Book of Mormon people live. They have what they call the Heartland model, and I don't know if you're familiar very uh well with Glenn Beck, who's very popular over the latter.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, Glenn Beck is a Mormon who believes in the Heartland model. He believes that the Book of Mormon people lived in the United States area proper. But then you have another view, which is called the limited geography theory, and this is a group of men and women who believe that the Nephite people and the Lamanite people live down in Central America, around Guatemala and Mexico and places like that. Well, these two groups don't get along very well when it comes to this subject, and it's kind of fun to watch them argue back and forth. Now, personally, I don't think any theory really fits the Book of Mormon geography all that well.
SPEAKER_00Sure.
SPEAKER_01But still, these are the two theories that are postulated by Latter-day Saints, and there is no official position by church headquarters as to where they really live. The church kind of lets the people believe what they want on that. But that's really the Book of Mormon narrative in a nutshell. And if you read the Book of Mormon, uh I I've often used this expression that when I read the Book of Mormon, I don't really get the impression I'm reading a story about ancient Mormons. They sound more to me like confused Protestants when it comes to the theology of the Book of Mormon. And that would make sense because that would fit Joseph Smith to a T.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Tell me more about Joseph Smith.
SPEAKER_01Well, well, Joseph Smith uh was born to a relatively very poor family. His his father was very suspicious of organized religion. His mother had become a Methodist uh for a short time. Uh he was uh it's well given the story that is given to the LDS people, Joseph Smith was curious about religious subjects, and he claims in his testimony, and this is where the first vision story comes into play, that there was a religious excitement in the area where the Smith family was living in upstate New York. And because this revival or this religious excitement ended very badly with the churches involved arguing as to where the new converts were going to attend church regularly, Smith gives the impression he was confused as to which church he should join, and this is what causes him to look to the Bible, and he reads in James 1.5 where it says, if any of you lack wisdom, let them ask of God. So Smith takes this verse as his proof text and decides to pray regarding which church is true. And according to the official account that all Mormons pretty much believe to this day, Smith claimed that he was visited by God the Father in Jesus and was told that none of the churches were true. They were all wrong, and creeds were an abomination and their professors were corrupt. This is where Joseph Smith, Mormons are led to believe, felt that he was called of God to restore true Christianity. This was the beginning point, where Joseph Smith eventually feels he's called by God to restore true Christianity, and this is what Mormons believe to this day, that they are practicing and believing, like the early Christian church practiced and believed. But according to Mormonism, hundreds of years after Jesus walked on this earth, and eventually all his disciples were all dying off, his apostles died off, there came to be what Mormons called the great apostasy. In other words, there were no longer any more true Christians on the face of the earth. They may have professed to be Christian, but they did not have this priesthood authority that Joseph Smith claimed was lost during this time period, making it necessary for God to restore true Christianity through Joseph Smith. And this is what Mormons do believe. They believe that they alone represent true Christianity. The Mormon Church is the only true church on the face of the earth, and Joseph Smith is a true prophet of God who was called by God to restore the true Christian faith back to the earth.
SPEAKER_05Now, Joseph Smith himself uh was a felon, is that right? I mean, what w what what was he like as a character?
SPEAKER_01Well, Joseph Smith, uh, according to the people that lived around the Smith family, there was not a lot of positive things said about the Smith family. Like many in the area where they live, the Smith family was not wealthy at all. They're very poor, and they were very much involved in folk magic, and of course, this plays a role in Joseph Smith and the Sear Stone that I mentioned earlier. But um, Smith uh wasn't a a felon, he he but he was arrested and tried for as a glass looker in a court in March of 1826, and this was the result of Joseph Smith claiming that he could find buried treasure using this rock that he found while digging a well with his brother Hiram, this sear stone, the picture of which has been published now by the church just recently. And of course, a lot of the locals looked at Smith uh suspiciously. Okay, and some of the comments made about Joseph Smith were not very flattering. But of course, a lot of Latter-day Saints look at those comments in in the context of his calling as a true prophet and look at very look at it very similar as to the accusations made against Jesus. See, they persecuted Jesus, they said terrible things about Jesus, and this is the same thing going on with Joseph Smith.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01But really, when you look at some of the claims, there there's there's some truth to what they were saying. I mean Smith was doing some things that were questionable in the eyes of many.
SPEAKER_05Help me to understand some of the their theological positions. Now, if if if we were talking about uh an Orthodox Christian church, we'd ask about, you know, who is God, who is Jesus, what is sin, what is salvation. Can we do the same for m for Mormons?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_05Who is who is God? Yeah, go on.
SPEAKER_01Well, in it God, according to Joseph Smith, is he he he made a lot of statements regarding who God is, and this is what has caused a lot of concern among the professing Christians at the time. One of the things that Joseph Smith claimed towards the end of his life, now remember, a lot of his strange doctrines came came towards the end of his life, not so much in the beginning of his quote-unquote ministry. If you read the Book of Mormon, as I mentioned, it sounds like a bunch of confused Protestants, and there's a lot of things in the Book of Mormon that I don't think many people would have a real serious objection to. Is it consistent? No. But there's a lot of King James English in there, and there's a lot of plagiarism from the Bible in the Book of Mormon that gives many people the idea that it has an air of being somewhat biblical. But Joseph Smith, towards the end of his life, made it very clear when he said, We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea and take away the veil so that you may see. Well, what he just refuted, of course, was Psalm 90, verse 2, which talks very clearly about be God being God from everlasting to everlasting. But he also refuted the Book of Mormon, where it says in Moroni 8.18, basically the same thing that it says in Psalm 90, verse 2, that God was always God. Well, Joseph Smith starts changing this towards the end of his life and giving the people the impression that God was once a human being like us, that he lived on a world similar to this earth, and through his efforts he became the God that he is today. But not only that, humans have the same potential that the God of Mormonism has. That they too, by living a right life and believing correct principles, can also become gods and rule over their worlds as well, if they are eligible to become exalted as they understand. So clearly this is not the God of the Bible.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah. And so the question who is or who made God is not uh an absurd question for a Mormon. Somebody did make God, I suppose.
SPEAKER_01You would think so. Now, it's not to say that Mormons don't believe that God, the one they call Elohim, is an eternal being. But this is where being very careful about how we ask the question becomes very important. If a Christian was to ask a Mormon, well, do you believe in an eternal God? a Mormon could say yes because they look at God as well as all human beings as being eternal beings. We all existed throughout eternity. So this is why it's important for the Christian to ask their friend, well, do you believe that your God was eternally God? Now, if they're familiar with the teachings of Joseph Smith's later teachings, they would not be able to say yes to that question, which makes it very clear that the God they are talking about is not the God that we are talking about.
SPEAKER_05And so then who is Jesus and what's his relation to Elohim?
SPEAKER_01Well, Jesus, according to the Mormon scheme of things, is the firstborn of heavenly father and heavenly mother, what they call the mother in heaven. They believe that God is married, uh, and depending on which Mormon you talk to, some may even admit they think he's a practicing polygamist. That was a very common idea in the 19th century when polygamy, plural marriage, was being practiced among the Latter-day Saints, and that through this physical relationship between Heavenly Father and His and Heavenly Mother, they are creating spirit children. And we all are one of God's spirit children. And then when we progressed as much as we could possibly progress in this pre-existent state, it became necessary for us to be sent to earth to be tried and proven. This is what Mormons call our moral probation. We are here on earth to prove ourselves worthy to get back into the presence of God and to eventually become a God ourselves. Jesus, or Jehovah, as they call him in the preexistence state, is the firstborn spirit son of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. And somehow, and I'm not quite sure how this all works because it's very inconsistent, Jesus became a God in the preexistence before he came into mortality, which obviously is something that even his own father wasn't able to do, and certainly something that none of us were able to do, because we're all here in this mortal state to prove ourselves to get back into the presence of God. But that's who Jesus is. He's the firstborn spirit son of God the Father and Heavenly Mother.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01And it's and and so he came down and he lived a life, and many Mormons look at his life as something that we should stimulate. This is what they are trying to do. They're trying to copy the light and the actions of Jesus while he lived here in mortality.
SPEAKER_04And what's the meaning of his death to them?
SPEAKER_01Well, his death uh enables them to also well, they they will die also. They certainly believe that. But they believe that his resurrection paved the way for them to be resurrected also. But see, after after mankind is resurrected, Jesus really doesn't play a role in the resurrected Mormon's life because if they are exalted to Godhood, now everything is focusing on them. They are merely following a pattern that they believe has gone on since eternity passed. And so Jesus really doesn't play a role in their eternity, as we as Christians certainly would insist he does. And so it but even their idea of eternity would be very different than what Christians have historically understood and believed.
SPEAKER_05Yes. And so we uh have a doctrine of sin in Adam and redemption in Christ. Um how does that relate to to their view of sin and salvation?
SPEAKER_01Well, Mormons believe basically that mankind is good. They they don't really have a doctrine of total depravity or anything like that. That mankind has the ability to believe and to do the things that he's supposed to do. And so they they do believe in in the doctrine of sin, and they do believe that there needs to be a forgiveness of sins if a Mormon hopes to achieve exaltation. This is where a huge problem arises, because in order to receive the forgiveness of sins in Mormonism, there are two main things that have to happen. One, you have to repent of those sins. And of course, Mormonism, while it has a doctrine of repentance, they define it very differently than the way we as Christians would define it. For us as Christians, this metanoia is as a turning, uh certainly a turning, a change of heart, a change of mind. But in Mormonism, it goes a step further than that, to where true repentance is not only a confession of your sins, but it's a complete abandonment of the sin, or I should say, of the sins. When I ask Mormons what the definition of repentance is to them, it's pretty textbook. You confess and you forsake. You ask a Mormon, well, how many sins must you forsake? They'll tell you all of them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So my next question then is, well, how are you doing it that? I've never met a Mormon who's done that. And yet that is a requirement for exaltation is to repent of all your sins. And then, once you've done that, you're required as a Latter-day Saint to live all the commandments. In fact, Spencer Kimball, the twelfth president of the Mormon Church, in a book he wrote called The Miracle of Forgiveness, said that the only way that a Mormon can have the assurance of this exaltation, the assurance of forgiveness, is if they truly repented of all their sins and they're keeping all the commandments. That's the only way they can have this assurance. You can understand why a lot of Mormons don't have that assurance. It's because they're not meeting those two requirements.
SPEAKER_04And then what's their view of the future beyond death?
SPEAKER_01Well, of course, they're hoping to uh reach the celestial kingdom. In Mormonism, it's been taught that there are three levels of glory, three degrees of glory, the top being the celestial kingdom, which in its in the celestial kingdom there are three more levels. And so Mormons are hoping to get to the top level of the celestial kingdom, what Mormon leaders have called the Church of the Firstborn. And then below that there's what's known as the terrestrial kingdom, and then there's below that the celestial kingdom. Celestial kingdom is for good Mormons who have forsaken all their sins and kept all the commandments, which tells me it's going to be pretty empty. And then you have the terrestrial kingdom where a lot of good people go, even good atheists will go there.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01And they will never be able to become gods. They will never be able to visit those that are in the celestial kingdom, but it's not a bad place. Jesus will be in the terrestrial kingdom told by Mormon and Mormon leaders.
SPEAKER_05I'll go for that one then.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, then you have the celestial kingdom, which is below that. This is where the wicked of the world go. And still, though, Mormons have said that even the celestial kingdom, though it's one of the lower kingdoms, is not a bad place to spend eternity. Now there's another place called outer darkness. But outer darkness in Mormon theology is reserved primarily for the devil and his angels, Lucifer, the spirit brother of Jesus. Lucifer will be there as well as all of our spirit brothers and sisters who followed Lucifer in what Mormons called a war in heaven, they will also be in outer darkness. Now, some Mormons have used the threat against fellow Mormons who are doubting their faith by saying that if they leave the Mormon faith, they could end up being a son of perdition and be cast into outer darkness. Technically, even according to Mormonism, that's pretty unlikely because to be a son of perdition in Mormonism, you have to basically have full knowledge of Mormonism, believe it to be true, leave the Mormon church and fight against the Mormon Church, knowing Mormonism is true. I don't know a lot of former Mormons that believe like that. So to classify it as a son of perdition is it's going to be very rare. And besides, who has full knowledge of anything, really, when you think about it?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01But this is but that doesn't mean that they can't use that as a threat against those who are maybe doubting the Mormon faith. And I hear this many times. I I've talked to many people who are struggling, many people who have left the Mormon church and who have told me that they were accused of being either a son of perdition or headed in that direction. And that becomes a huge force in keeping a lot of Mormons quiet and keeping them in the church, even though they may not even believe a lot of what the church teaches.
SPEAKER_05So what does it look like in a day-to-day felt like the average Mormon kind of they I mean they pray? They read their Bible, they have faith. Does the day-to-day experience of a Mormon differ as much from Orthodox Christianity as the theology of Mormonism?
SPEAKER_01They they do have, many of them, have a regimented type of Where they do schedule time to pray and they read what they call their scriptures. Now that could be the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, or the Pearl of Great Price. Or they could spend time reading their official magazines or church manuals and things like that. So as far as the religious aspect is concerned, I find them to not be much different than professing Christians. Now, naturally, who they're praying to, what they're praying about, and the scriptures they're reading would certainly probably be different in some regards. But again, Mormons, like I said earlier, are trying very hard to be very good people. And it's reflected in our culture here in Utah. I mean, I I love living in Utah. I I I certainly don't agree with the theology of my neighbors, but I have to say, my neighbors for the most part are very good people that would probably do just about anything for their neighbors if given the opportunity to do so or saw a need in order to do so. That's commendable. I don't have any problems with that at all. And that's something I have to overcome here working in Utah because many Mormons are under this misunderstanding that somehow we don't like them as people, and that that is a hurdle. That is something we have to come here ministering in Utah. That definitely is a struggle sometimes.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Because as I said earlier, some Mormons just have to feel like they're being persecuted, and that then dedicates better than what they believe.
SPEAKER_05Yes, many Christians are the same.
SPEAKER_01Um that that's probably true. It's probably true.
SPEAKER_05They have uh tend to have a very evangelistic faith. Why?
SPEAKER_01Well, that's that's a great question. But you're right, they do. They have tens of thousands of full-time missionaries that are going out there door to door, uh, talking to people about the Mormon faith. Um the the missionary program, Glenn, I think is ingenious because many of these missionaries are young people. Most people don't expect a young person to have a very uh full understanding of what they're trying to actually convince other people to believe. So when let's say a Mormon missionary comes to a person's door and let's and they ask them some hard questions about their history, they may not know. And most people can give a young person a pass on that, whereas it would be more difficult to give an adult a pass on that. You would expect an adult to have at least done some homework on this. So the missionary program is very ingenious in that regard, in that a lot of these young missionaries can get away with a lack of knowledge on some of these issues, and people will turn a blind eye to it. But still, they they have an effective force out there, and many people within the Mormon church, rather than engage with a lot of their non-Mormon neighbors, will oftentimes pass the person off to the missionary and let the missionary do the uh proselytizing. We see that a lot.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01So usually when you hear stories of missionaries baptizing several people while on their two-year mission, it's probably because those people were handed off to them by other members in the church and not necessarily a primary contact that they may have had.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Now that's not always the case, but in many cases that I was done.
SPEAKER_05Because I often think, you know, they they expend so much energy on door-to-door evangelism. It must be working for them on some level, mustn't it?
SPEAKER_01Well, if for nothing else, the missionaries become living advertisements for the Mormon church.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01People see them, you know, walking around or on bicycles or driving in cars, and so if they have any interest at all, they probably know that they're a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So they become living advertisements. Uh, how effective they are has kind of been fluctuating over the years because of the fact that a lot of people are getting familiar somewhat with the claims of Mormonism before they were ever approached by a missionary. So they're already under a lot of s suspicion regarding what this church stands for, making it more difficult for the missionary to quote unquote sell their product to them. And uh so the numbers are going down uh exponentially. And what I mean by that is the convert baptism rate, which is a number that we have often used to kind of give us an idea of how the church is growing or not growing, it's been going up and down. Uh, last year it was up a little bit, but for the most part, let me just say this the Mormon Church convert baptism rate peaked back in 1990. That's a long time ago. They had over 330,000 converts back in 1990. They have not gotten to that number since. And and so, even though the church is now fifteen million members, and I'm I don't even think the great majority of those are even active. In fact, I know they're not from articles and stats that I have looked at. But even though the Mormon Church portrays itself as having a membership of fifteen million right now, the convert baptism rate hasn't been really keeping up with that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And it kind of goes up and down. If you put it on a graph, it actually heads down in the downward uh spiral, you might say. The Mormon Church is aware of this. They're also aware that a lot of people are leaving the Mormon Church. And that has become a big issue with the church headquarters, and I think this is one reason why the Mormon Church has had to come out with these gospel topics essays on their website in a hope of explaining their questionable history in a way that may keep a lot of the people in the church. I don't know how these essays are going to convince a lot of people to join the church because their transparency, and that's a word that's being thrown around, even though it's transparent in some areas, it's still not totally transparent, but the transparency of these essays, I would think, would cause a lot of people looking into Mormonism to really be turned off by it. I mean, nobody really wants to read an essay where the church admits that Joseph Smith, for instance, had as many as forty plural wives, and that you know, some were as young as fourteen at the time, and that he was actually marrying married m uh women. That doesn't appeal to a lot of people. Especially since Mormons don't criticize him for this. They will usually say things like, Well, he was a prophet of God, he was commanded to do this, that's why he did it. In other words, they excused Joseph Smith in this kind of behavior. And Smith never repented of these this type of behavior. He always justified it by claiming God told him to do it.
SPEAKER_03So that's uh Bill McKeever talking to you, Glenn. Uh what sort of struck out to you about the uh what he said?
SPEAKER_05Well, I I just think it's it's really interesting the more you speak about and speak to people of other faith, it really does deepen your own faith and um it brings to mind some of the big issues that we need to be thinking through, even as Christians. It's something that it's something about reaching out that actually teaches to your own faith a little bit better. And I think reaching out to monetors is one of those ways when you start to the goodness of the good news. We need to see how it's flighting it can be when it gets perverted. Um, so yeah, lots of encouragement there to get into this kind of stuff, even really for the sake of flexing yourself and getting your own faith um straight in your head and in your heart.
SPEAKER_03We'll put those states that you mentioned on the uh on the show notes.
SPEAKER_05Yes, uh if you want to go film a favor again, Bradford on the 28th of September, uh Bangor on the 22nd, uh D on the 23rd, and London on the 26th of September.
SPEAKER_03Okay, and those will be on the show notes. If you go to speakclife.org.uk slash TEP, uh you'll find the relevant episode to click on and uh we'll have all the those dates on there. So we're gonna we're gonna speak to Bill a little bit more next time. So until then, see you next time.