There Was Zero Chance He Thought He’d Ever Come Back - Phillip Graehl's Story - Latter-Day Lights

What happens when you leave the faith of your childhood behind—only to discover it again decades later?

In this episode of Latter-Day Lights, Philip Graehl shares how he went from growing up as a member of the Church without much personal faith of his own, to developing a powerful testimony of Jesus Christ and the restored gospel later in life.

After building a successful career as an orthopedic surgeon, Philip realized something was still missing. That search led him first to the New Testament, then to the Book of Mormon, and eventually back to active participation in the Church. Along the way, he also learned how to deepen his own faith while loving and respecting family members whose spiritual journeys have taken a different path.

Through repentance, spiritual experiences, family trials, and years of learning how to balance conviction with love, Philip came to see that faith isn’t about having a perfect life—it’s about continuing to turn toward Christ when life gets messy.

He also shares the inspiration behind his book, We Believe, which he wrote as an “olive branch” for Christians and others who may be curious about the beliefs of Latter-day Saints and willing to take a closer look.

*** Please hit SUBSCRIBE to get our latest episodes, and hit the SHARE button to help us share Phillip's story and light with others. ***

To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/F_VYLAUL7vs

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To READ Phillip's book "We Believe", visit: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GPGL17P3

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To READ Scott’s new book “Faith to Stay” for free, visit: https://www.faithtostay.com/

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Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/latterdaylights

Also, if you have a faith-promoting or inspiring story, or know someone who does, please let us know by going to https://www.latterdaylights.com and reaching out to us.

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Transcript

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A Book Gift From The Host

Scott Brandley 0:00

Hey there, as a Latter Day Lights listener, I want to give you a very special gift today. My brand new book, Faith to Stay. This book is filled with inspiring stories, powerful discoveries, and even fresh insights to help strengthen your faith during the storms of life. So if you're looking to be inspired, uplifted, and spiritually recharged, just visit faith2.com. Now, let's get back to the show.

Welcome And Why Stories Matter

Scott Brandley 0:29

Hey everyone, I'm Scott Brandley.

Darla Brandley 0:32

And I'm Darla Brandley. Every member of the church has a story to share, one that can instill faith, invite hope, and inspire others.

Scott Brandley 0:40

On today's episode, we're going to hear from a man whose spiritual experiences have helped to show him the light that God desires for all of us to have as his children. Welcome to Latter Day Lights.

Marriage Cancer And The Power Of Prayer

Scott Brandley 1:17

Yeah, we're excited to have you.

Speaker 2 1:19

It's a story I like to tell.

Scott Brandley 1:21

Well, before we jump into your story today, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, my friend?

Speaker 2 1:27

Well, I'm currently a retired uh orthopedic surgeon. Uh, spent my career doing hip and knee replacements. I have one son who is living with us uh here. Uh, graduated college last uh year. My wife uh is also a physician. Uh, she's not a member of the church. She is finally retired, uh, has had a struggle with some pancreatic cancer the last couple of years, but is doing quite well with uh some of the newer medicines that are out now. And uh it looks like what used to be almost 3% survival rate has now escalated to years and years. So we're really uh appreciative of the work that's been done on the medical front and uh for the thousands of prayers that have come her way. So that's been a another part of uh of my story, but that's a little bit than what we're talking about tonight.

Darla Brandley 2:21

Wow, that's good to hear she's doing better.

Speaker 2 2:23

So yes, we're grateful.

Scott Brandley 2:26

Well, I think prayer is powerful, right?

Speaker 2 2:30

Yes, prayer. Uh I'm a believer in prayer, and you know, I think that you know, people all over the country and numerous temples and friends of who knows how many different denominations, but just people who love her and have prayed for her, and then her own uh faith has been a big part of that as well. She said right out, you know, it's a terrible disease. I'm gonna fight it with what I've got. And if the Lord says it's time for me to go, that's fine. I'm not anxious to go, but if that's his will for me, then that's what I'll do. But in the meantime, I'm gonna give it my best and do everything I can uh that's offered me and see if we can't get through it. And so far she has.

Darla Brandley 3:18

That's wonderful. That is so wonderful.

Speaker 2 3:20

Yeah.

Scott Brandley 3:20

Well, we wish her the best.

Darla Brandley 3:22

Yeah.

Speaker 3 3:23

Thank you.

Scott Brandley 3:23

So we're excited to hear your side of that story and hear a little bit more about that, too, I'm sure. So why don't we turn the time over to you and you tell us where your story begins?

Speaker 2 3:34

Well,

Growing Up LDS Without The Gospel

Speaker 2 3:35

I was born in uh Utah Valley Hospital in Provo, Utah. Um, my dad, who was doing uh veterinary school in Colorado State, and my mom, they were home in Provo for summer vacation when I was born. They had been married in the Salt Lake Temple, but from that point forward, never really saw them in church. I do have some memories of giving a talk in primary when I was young. My mom did take us to primary, me and my brother, I have a, but we never had any gospel discussion at home, no scripture reading. We didn't even pray at meals. But because I had a lot of uh cousins who were members and were active and were going on missions and all these things, I had a peripheral, you know, sense of what activity in the church looked like. I just didn't have it in my own life. My mom was the instigator in keeping uh my me and my brother going to primary and getting us baptized. The only thing I remember about being baptized, and this really has stuck with me. My mom said, Well, before you meet with the bishop, you got to learn the articles of faith. So that's about the only thing I knew going into my interview with the bishop was the articles of faith. Didn't know anything else. And I had just memorized them because I was a good student and I knew how to memorize, but there wasn't much understanding that with that memorization. When we went to the stake center for the baptism, it was one of those Saturdays where there was lots of you know, eight-year-olds that were getting baptized, and they went through the list, and one by one we were all baptized, and then got to the end, and I was the last one. And it turns out that there was nobody there designated to baptize me. My dad, he was not at all interested in church. There I am at the stake center, waiting to be baptized. Uh, everybody else has cleaned up and got their clothes back on, and they're looking around like, well, who can baptize this young man? And the leading church official there, I don't know if it was a bishop or the state president, looked at a young man and said, Will you baptize him? And he kind of gave you one, oh man, you know, because he'd just gotten all dried off and put back together. So he begrudgingly, it seemed, went and got redressed and ready to go. And I went down in the font, and then he uh uh submerged me, except my foot came up. So it wasn't a good attempt at first. So then by then he was so exasperated when he had to do it again, he literally just shoved me down under the water, making sure he didn't have to do it a third time. Oh, what I remember about my baptism. So it wasn't that traumatic to me because it was just something I was doing because my mom wanted me to do, and not really having a feel for what it represented and all that kind of thing. Yeah, you know, it was it was sort of all lost on me. After

A Rough Baptism And A Drift

Speaker 2 7:06

that, when I was about five, I moved to Southern California, and so I began my sort of formative years down there. And Southern California, as it turns out, is one of the more worldly places uh in our country. It's a trend-setting place, and let me just say, not all the trends are that recommended in the long run. But I did love my cousins, and just about every summer we would meet in Provo, um, and we would have great times playing in the orchards and things like that. Of course, as time goes on, I start to get rumblings about what the world thinks of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And a lot of things were disturbing to me, polygamy, you know, fiddle, does your dad have three wives, you know, things like that. And a lot of derogatory things said about the church and it not being a Christian church. And then I look at my family members that were in the church and I go, they look like pretty great people to me. They're they live good, clean lives, and there's nothing strange going on. And I wasn't motivated at that point in time to really do any exploration of it. I was caught up in the world, enjoying, if you want to use that word, uh participating would probably be a better word. Um, I thought I was enjoying it at the time, but I I really wasn't. But you know, living the life of going to the beach and exploring things uh as a teenager that uh were not exactly in the uh church handbook. But I was a good student, and I, despite all this stuff, I went to college, I graduated from the University of Utah, and then went on to medical school all the time, still partying and having a good time. Went right through my residence in orthopedics, and at that point in time I met my wife, and when we were courting, she got wind of the fact that I had family that were members of the church. And she said, Are you a member of the church? I said, Well, technically I am, but you know, I've never really gone to church. Well, she said, What are the chances that you're gonna at some point in time become active in the church? I said, zero. And so we went on from there. We went to Australia. I did a postgraduate uh fellowship in sports medicine down in Australia. We had a nice time down there. I came back and started practice, and she started to practice in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She had done internal medicine uh as her specialty. And about two years into that, she decided I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. And so she applied to dermatology and got in here in Dallas at UT Southwestern in the Department of Dermatology. And we came back here to do her residency. And then she actually stayed on as faculty at the medical school and was a great resource for them. And she received a lot of patients from outside of the university setting because she was very good at taking care of medical dermatology. So here I was, I'd started a practice in Albuquerque, I'd come to Texas and restarted the practice, and everything was up and running, and we'd bought a house, we had two cars in the garage, we had we're going on vacations, we had money in the bank. And

Success Without Fulfillment

Speaker 2 10:58

as I sat down and thought about things, it was like, okay, I've done everything that the world has told me is gonna make me happy. So why don't I feel that happiness, that fulfillment that I am expecting? And at that point in time, my wife said, you know, I can see you're not all that happy. She goes, When I feel that way, I read the Bible. I said, Oh yeah, well, that's great for you, but I don't think so. But eventually I sort of took her up on the idea.

The New Testament Makes Christ Real

Speaker 2 11:34

I started in the New Testament and started with Matthew. And, you know, by the time I got to the Beatitudes, you know, Matthew 5 and 6, I said to myself, this Jesus Christ, he's the real deal. He is who they say he is. He is the Son of God. And I said, you know, to myself, even if there was nothing after this life, what he is teaching us, we'd have the most perfect life if we all followed what he was teaching. So I really gained a strong testimony of the Savior, his atonement, and um what was available to us through that atonement and resurrection. My grandmother had given me a triple combination when I had graduated from college, and I'd never thrown it away. It was in a box that got moved every place that I moved to. And so I decided to pick it up and I started reading it. And it was like a well, by the time I was halfway through Second Nephi, I was just on fire for lack of a better word. I mean, so much knowledge was just pouring into my brain about wow, this is why life is the way it is. There is a plan for us here. And I was so excited. And all this was kind of going on without my wife picking up on it, which was unfortunate. But eventually I came to her and I was like, man, I'm really excited about this. Here, listen to this. And I was reading, reading to her Moroni 10. And by the way, at my holy ghost, you can the truth of all things. I thought, man, this is, and she just came unglued. She got angry. So there was this great thing going on in my life, which seemed to be upending her life, and that's been an issue ever since then. So

The Book Of Mormon Lights Him Up

Speaker 2 13:44

we're having our 40th anniversary here in a few weeks, uh, first part of October. That's another good story because uh we got married on the 4th of October. And if I'd have known the way things were going, I would have never got married on General Conference weekend because some uh end grouping celebrations have had to short circuit uh general conference, as will this one, the 40th. Uh we're going out to La Jolla and stay in a nice hotel on the beach and so forth. It's been a real struggle for both of us because she's never accepted the fact uh that I'm an active member. Interestingly, though, she has had several good friends that are members of the church. In fact, one of them is our current bishop's wife. So she doesn't necessarily say, you know, I'm not going to talk to her or whatever. She treats everybody. She suffered from what everybody in the world suffers from. It's all the misinformation that has been published and whatnot about the church. And that's really one of the reasons I wrote the book that I wrote, because I'm talking, you know, the thing that's funniest to me, you know, I say funny, is the propensity for Christian denominations to pick on the church and routinely call us a non-Christian church, which is very interesting to me and sad to me. I think about the Savior telling us to, you know, if we're not one, we're not his. And the message that we're sending to the world, and I talk about not our church, but the body of Christianity in general, is like, look at these Christians, they're all yellow and screaming at each other, telling them I'm right and you're wrong. And that doesn't really send the message, I don't think, that uh people that are trying to spread the good news of the gospel ought to be doing. So that was one of the things that prompted me to write this book.

Why He Writes For Christians

Speaker 2 15:59

And I I'm really excited about Christians learning more about the church, about the church doctrines, because it fills in so many of the gaps that the Bible gives to us. And I speak about this in the book. Talk to myself, I wonder what happens when they get to First Corinthians and they read about baptism for the dead. And you know, there's one verse in the whole Bible about baptism for the dead. Or you go um further, and there's Paul talking about a man caught up to the third heaven, and that's the only place you see that. And in Jude, you see one verse that talks about the first estate. You know, there's just all these little tidbits floating through the Bible that traditional Christians got no frame of reference to put that into a fund of knowledge. So I think they just ignore it. The other thing that I think is too bad is that a lot of Christians tend to take as gospel, no pun intended, what they hear from their pastors at the pulpit. And there is a lot of, you know, anti-Mormon stuff that comes from these Christian theologians, which I think is another sad commentary. I've never heard in 33 or 4 years of attending the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I've never heard anybody, bishop, state president, or even somebody in a sacrament meeting talk say anything ill about another Christian denomination. That I think is too bad. I think there's a lot of curiosity that people have about the church, that if something was presented to them that explained a few things, they might say, hmm, you know, that's interesting. And so I thought myself as, you know, being a, you know, I'm not working for the church, I'm not a bishop or a state president, or I'm just an average guy in the church. If they got my opinion or my understanding about the church, they might say, hmm, well, maybe all these things that I've heard about the church aren't necessarily true. Let me look a little bit harder. I certainly don't want anybody to think that my book would be a good way to learn about the church compared to the Book of Mormon. But if you go to the Gospel Library app, there is a ton of information about the church, its policies, its doctrines, its beliefs. But there's so much of it, if you're just trying to rummage through it, you're it's gonna be hard to get a coherent encapsulation of what's going on. So in this book that I've written, it's called We Believe Membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Christian conversation. It's basically an invitation to people, Christians, but anybody, if you've got a are you are you interested in knowing maybe a little bit more about the church and not just relying on things you see on the internet or things you hear from your pulpit? So I try to condense it and I put in a lot of my own personal experiences in the church to try to just let people see that, yeah, this guy isn't trying to propagandize us, he's just telling us his experience and and and so forth. Uh, the whole time I'm writing the book, I'm praying to Heavenly Father, the Heavenly Father, I I know this is not supposed to be taking the place of the Book of Mormon, but if one person reads it and then decides to look at the Book of Mormon, talk to the missionaries, and ultimately get baptized, to me that that'd be worth all the effort. It's really not been trouble. It's just I've been really excited about it. I've really wanted to let people know more about the church and have them find out for themselves instead of relying on questionable sources. So that's what sort of brought me along in this. Well, so the book gets published in January, and you know, marketing hasn't been all that great. I finally hired a firm, and it's interesting because I want to sell a lot of books, but I don't care if I make money on the book. You know, I just want people to read it. What I've decided to do is that if the book ever does make any money, uh, whatever royalties I get, I'm gonna donate to the church. My whole intention, yeah, I want it to be a million seller, but I don't want to make a million dollars on it. That's kind of coming from it. So I thought I was done after that book come out, and then I oh, I should probably stop and tell you about how the book actually came to be. Because

Confession Repentance And Real Relief

Speaker 2 21:17

so, well, let me just tell you a little bit about my conversion story. As I started to catch fire in the gospel, I thought to myself, well, what am I gonna do? Maybe I can just go to church and sit in the back. And I'm then I thought to myself, no, you're gonna, if you sit in the back and you're a new face, you're gonna be swarmed by people. They're gonna come over, they want to know who you are, and blah, blah, blah. So I said, that's not gonna work. Well, I did know a couple of physicians at the hospital I was working at. So I'm 38 at this point in time. So I talked to one of them and I said, I need to find out what ward I'm in. And Who my bishop is. So he didn't live in directly in my area, but he lived in my state. So he contacted the state president and they did a little research and found out who it was. So I called the bishop and I asked him if I could meet with him. And it was on a Saturday, and I was really nervous. And you know, it was one of those things where I want to call him, but I don't want to call him. And I got the courage to call him. And I was thinking to myself, I'm going to bust if I don't give this information to somebody and get it off my chest. And she said, Well, this was Saturday. He goes, Well, how about Monday? And I said, Oh, yeah, that'd be great. So in the meantime, I wrote down on a legal pad every conceivable sin that I'd ever committed, uh, from the smallest to the greatest. And I said, Well, I'm going to go talk to this bishop. I'm going to tell him everything. And so he was gracious enough to have me into his home and remember sitting in his living room and crying my eyes out and tell him the sad, sordid story of my life and how I wanted it to change. And I was there for about four hours talking to him. And he said, Well, I really appreciate you coming in. He said, What we're going to have to do is I'm going to have to convene what's called a bishop's council. And you're going to have to come in and tell this group of gentlemen the same story you've told me. And I said, I'll be happy to do that. And I couldn't wait to get it done. He says, Oh, I'm going to tell you what things can happen out of a bishop's council. You know, you could be excommunicated. And he told me a few more things, I think this fellowship month and a few other things. And it was really strange to me as he said that. And he said, Well, you wouldn't be able to take the sacrament for a year. You could come to sacrament meeting. And then he said something that my internal response to it was just flabbergasting to me. I was a man of the world. I had never donated anything to the church or paid tithing or whatever. He said, and you wouldn't be able to pay tithing for a year. And my job just dropped. And I thought to myself, oh no. That just about took the wind out of my sails. And after the fact, I think the way I must have thought about that was this is the way I can show the Lord that I'm really in, that I'm going to pay tithing. And so he said if I was excommunicated, I wouldn't be able to uh pay tithing. Oh man, that just dropped me to my knees just about. Well, anyway, I sat through that council with these wonderful Melchezik priesthood holders. I cried my eyes out just like I'd done with the bishop, but it felt so good to get rid of it, of the sin and the effects of sin. I don't know why I ever feared repentance. Repentance is the release from sin. It's not the uh punishment for sin. Well, I thought everything was good, and I was walking on air for the whole next week, just about, and then what later in that week I was walking down the hull in the hospital and just thinking about how great life was, I could have sworn I felt somebody tap on my shoulder, and I heard a chuckle, and I turned around and there was nobody there. And then all of a sudden, what entered my mind was a sin, a rather egregious sin, that I had forgot to tell the bishop. So I fretted about things until Sunday, and after sacrament meeting on Sunday, I went up to the bishop. I go, Bishop, I gotta talk to you. And he said, Okay. And he was still smiles from the last week and so forth. And so I went into his office, just the two of us, and I told him, I said, I am so, so sorry. I had forgotten completely about this. I guess I had buried it so deep that just didn't come out. And I said, I'm so sorry, we're gonna have to convene another council and do all this other stuff. And he sat there and looked at me and was very quiet for a while. And then he pulled out his uh scriptures and he turned to Isaiah about the scarlet and white description of sin and so forth, and he sat there very contemplatively, and then he said, I want you to know that I am a judge in Israel as a bishop, and I have the ability to make a decision on this without another counsel. And he said, This will go no further than between me and you. And I said, Are you sure? I go, I don't want to be cutting any corners and getting any special treatment. He said, No, this is my judgment, and I am a judge in Israel and in charge of this world, and we'll just go forward from here. I was relieved, but I was also a little tentative about I don't want to do anything that's not kosher here. But his assurances and so forth, I finally came to grips with the fact that he had done what the spirit had told him to do. And so that's where I left. My first

First Callings And A Sacrament Vision

Speaker 2 28:41

calling was Sunday school president.

Darla Brandley 28:43

They really pushed you right in there.

Speaker 2 28:46

Yeah, well, I guess I'm getting a little uh ahead of myself. So they ordained me a priest, which they often do as an adult, and then you'll probably get called by the priest quorum to bless the sacrament sometime. And I said, Well, okay, that'll be good. And you know, several weeks went by and nothing, and then one Sunday morning I woke up and I had this very strong impression to memorize the sacrament prayers. And right before sacrament meeting, the um I guess it was the first counselor in the priest quorum called me and said, Would you be able to do the sacrament blessing today? And I said, sure. So then I really started trying to memorize and memorize and memorize. And then, of course, when I got there, uh I saw that they had the little card taped on the microphone. But it was good that I had done it because as I bowed my head to bless the bread, I closed my eyes and I just started saying the prayer. And this is one of those experiences that wonder if you should tell. I've told it to some of my family members. But as I spoke, a scene came into my mind of the Savior passing the bread and the cup at the Last Supper. And as I became aware of what I was seeing, I stumbled in what I was saying, and I kind of snapped out of it. But the Spirit had actually been carrying me along with the prayer unbeknownst to me. And then once I kind of broke the chain, I had to hurry up and look down and see where I was. But that was a very spiritually uplifting moment for me to have had that experience. And I don't think what I was seeing was the actual scene. I think I was seeing a compilation of images about Christ at the Last Supper and so forth. But what it conveyed to me was that I was in the process of doing the very same thing that the Lord had done for his apostles. And that really impressed upon me the value and the responsibility of subordination, and that it's all about blessing others and doing things for others. So that was a really cool experience. So then I get called a Sunday school president, and they said, Well, you're gonna be Sunday school president, and you're gonna have two counselors, and then they said, if you don't mind, we'd like to recommend who you might choose as counselors. Well, you know, I'd been in the board for four weeks. I didn't know anybody, didn't even know a president. Did, you know, at that point in time it sounded like a pretty big deal. I've worried that it's one of the easier callings. But anyway, they they gave me these two good brethren to choose, and they basically guided me through. We had a wonderful gospel doctrine teacher who had just been called, a nice lady who had the wonderful knowledge of the gospel, but was scared to death of teaching. So here I am, this at Sunday school president. And so people start calling me. I can't make it on Sunday. Can you find a teacher for me? And of course, I didn't know if that's the way you're supposed to. I said, well, okay, sure. And then my counselors finally said, you need to tell the teachers that if they can't make it, that's fine. You call and find the substitute, and if you can't find one, then come to me. Well, so four weeks into it, I get a call about 30 minutes before Sunday school is supposed to start. The gospel doctrine teacher who is at her wit's end because she's scared to death has finally had enough at week four. I I can't make it today. Okay. So here I am. Well, I'm not going to find too many people. So here I am, a guy that's been an active member for four weeks, and I waltz into the gospel doctrine class and I teach the gospel doctrine class. Now, I looked at the lesson, and I'm sure that my lesson was about as rudimentary as teaching arithmetic to PhD students in calculus. But there again, it was very important for me to see that it wasn't what I knew. I needed to be able to just talk and say what I knew. What I had a testimony of. I didn't even aware at that time that that's really what it was. You know, what I had, I believed, and that was a testimony. That was interesting. Now, since I've been in the church, or I've taught seminary, I've taught gospel doctrine four years, I've taught elders quorum, I was elders' quorum instructor, high priest group instructor, the seminary calling thing.

Seminary Teaching And Knowing The Youth

Speaker 2 34:19

The bishop called me in and asked me if I could be the scout master, if I agree to be the scout master. And I said, you know, bishop, that's gonna take me away on weekends, Wednesday nights. That's just gonna make my wife a little bit more upset with the whole situation. And he goes, Well, would you be willing to seminary? I said, Yeah, that'd be great because it's in the early morning. She's not even up yet, and it'll never take away from me being present during her day any more than any more than my job did, which did plenty on its own. So probably the two most challenging callings in the church at the time, scout master and seminary teacher. I got what I consider, I guess, was the lesser two evils based on my family circumstances. And the bishop was very, you know, as I explained to him my home situation and so forth. He says, I think that's a really good idea. And he needed a seminary teacher too. Those are both hard positions to fill. And really the blessing from that was not so much the gospel information that I picked up on. It was really getting to know the young people and to be able to converse with them easily at church. And I knew a little bit about them. And to me, that was really the great thing about teaching seminary was getting to know the young people in church. Um boy, they've got it rough these days. I'm I'm telling you, the world is so messed up. But it seems to me that they're rising to the challenge. Yeah, there was a while there where the number of missionaries started to kind of dip a little bit. And then after they lowered the age for males and then females, I mean, it's just taken off like crazy. But I thought I sensed a little bit of apathy and a little bit of a lull in things there for five or ten years, they've really taken off again. So I'm really excited to see how well the young people are meeting the challenge. If they're fortunate enough to have an active family, if they don't, and even if you've got parents who are teaching you at home, you're always gonna have the child that says, Oh, the heck with this, you know, on this, I'm not buying into this. You know, you've always got that possibility, but you want to have the best chance of seeing your kids through. You really gotta be there for them, you gotta teach them. And

Parenting In A Mixed Faith Home

Speaker 2 36:59

unfortunately for me, I felt like I was walking a tightrope. My wife was a Methodist, my son, he would come to church with me one week and church with my wife the next week. And the emphasis on teaching the gospel at home really isn't there in the Methodist church. Church on Sunday, and you pick up what you pick up, and you know, they had a youth group like most churches on Wednesday and that kind of thing. But there really wasn't a strong commitment to teaching the gospel in the home. You know, I didn't want to be seen as trying to woo my son away from her and her church while at the same time I lamented the fact that I wasn't doing more for my son. He was actually baptized into both churches. And it's interesting, if you're a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and you want to be baptized as a Methodist, if you're just another Protestant denomination, they just take and consider your uh your baptism good, I think, from the other place. But I read online, I went, okay, you can be baptized, but if you're a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, then you have to renounce the church and have your name taken off the church rolls. So I said, okay, this is an easy problem to fit. I'll just have Karen get Matthew baptized first. And that happened before eight years old, you know, so they baptize infants and small children. So, but I figured, oh, this is perfect. Because Karen wasn't against me getting him baptized, she just didn't want me indoctrinating him, you know.

Speaker 3 38:46

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 38:47

So it it was always walking a bit of a tight rope. And now my son's had his own issues. He's uh very interested in learning. In fact, one Christmas he asked me if uh I would buy him a copy of the Quran because he wanted to read that. He's very interested in knowing what's going on, and so I bought that for him. It was in English, it was one that was Arabic and in English, uh, alternating pages. But he came away with that thinking that was not the route he wanted to go. Went through the scouting program of the church, he became an Eagle Scout, graduated from college last year. And unfortunately, he went to an episcopal school, and like a lot of people, you get a book, you start a first page and you read through. Well, if you do that with the Bible, you're gonna get the Old Testament first, which is Genesis, isn't too hard to figure out, but you get a different version of who Jehovah is, perhaps compared to Jesus Christ. And he took issue with the fact that God allowed slavery and all these other things that to his progressive becoming mind just didn't seem kosher. He said, if that's the way God really is, I don't think I can believe him. We've had a lot of discussions about that, and I've told him just keep looking. He's a seeker of truth, I know that. And so that's all I prayed for. I just say, Heavenly Father, just keep him looking for truth. I'm certain that when the time comes, his heart will be softened enough to accept it. And like me, I didn't mention, but I really believe that even though I wasn't active for all those years, I think having been given the gift of the Holy Ghost, I can look back and see things that I didn't know were inspiration actually happened to me. I

Spiritual Impressions Through Science And Work

Speaker 2 40:59

outlined one of those episodes in my book. I was in high school, and I had this vision come into my mind. The teacher was handing back test grades, and you know, she was talking about the standard deviation and the mean, and here's the high and the low. And all of a sudden I had this vision in my mind. So all these lines and little lights on them, and the lights were moving from right to left, and then there were these dividing lines that didn't intersect the horizontal lines, but they sort of divided the field up into three segments. And over a period of years, I finally figured out that okay, all these lines are each one of us, and the little line is we're either in the pre-mortal worm, we're in the mortal realm, or post-mortal. And we're moving, sometimes we're moving slow, and sometimes we're moving fast, and sometimes we're even going backwards. And I finally figured out that this was just a vision of the plan of salvation, and that we get to mortal life and we progress, but our progression isn't just a constant rate. You know, it's slow and fast, and sometimes we go backwards a little bit. But at the time I started thinking about it, you know, I thought it was just a real clever idea that I had come into my mind, and I was really pretty sharp, you know, to think about that kind of thing. I had an experience in high school as well. A teacher, he was a real good physics teacher. He was hard-nosed and he expected a lot. But one day, just out of the blue, and he had a real commanding voice, and he goes, you know, I don't know how anybody can look at that periodic table of the elements and tell me there isn't a God. And that's the first time anything like that had ever been suggested to me. And I thought to myself, oh yeah. So there's one electron, and the next one has two electrons and three, and and then these are all act similarly. And yeah, it seems pretty uh amazing to think that that's just all gonna happen on its own. You know, but just little things like that through my life that I think the spirit helped me interpret, even though I wasn't necessarily always worthy of the influence of the spirit.

Darla Brandley 43:31

Yeah, but he will give you the truth of all things. The spirit can testify the truth of all things, even the periodic table, even your vision of the premortal and mortal existence, you know, all those things can be testified by the spirit, can tell us the truth.

Speaker 2 43:47

Yeah, I agree. And I think there's any truth. Here's what I think about man and his being so proud of himself. You know, all these big inventions. That have come over the course of time, and this, that, and the other. And the inventors, a lot of wanting to take the praise for them. You know, I think if everything that is good comes from God, then what that tells me is that every good idea also comes from God and is dripped into our mind for the benefit of everybody. And I've seen that in medicine too. I, you know, I put in a hip replacement, and real grateful patients would come back and say, you know, doctor, you've really given my life back to me, and I can't thank you enough. And you know, immediately I think I would get uncomfortable with that. I said, Well, I'm glad you're feeling better, but you know, I really can't take but a small portion of the credit. I mean, there's been men and women who spent their lives developing these things. I had great educational opportunities to be taught how to do these things. All these things have come together to give you this outcome. But I was just the instrument today or this time in your life to get that done. Now I didn't invent them or anything else, but it made that part of my career all the more meaningful because I came to a knowledge of where a lot of joy comes from. It comes from gratitude, it comes from you being grateful to the Lord, but it also comes from you being able to do something that somebody expresses gratitude to you for. You know it wasn't you, and that makes you even more humble. So gratitude brings you joy. It also brings you humility if you're receiving it from somebody else, unless you want to stand up and beat your chest and say, Yeah, I have such a great guy. But in looking back, those special experiences taught me a lot. It taught me a lot about where I am. I'm just a member of this great mass of people. And look, we're all trying to do stuff to help one another. Even if I've got a business and I'm trying to make money, most of the time it's a business that does something, well, up until maybe recently with the internet and so forth. But you want to provide something to somebody that they don't have otherwise.

Gratitude Humility And Becoming Zion

Speaker 2 46:38

And that's where I think we are in the church right now, and that's where I think we're going with this new schedule. It's like the Lord is saying, now I've told you to lengthen your stride, and you've been doing okay, but here's what I want. I don't want you to come to Sunday school or priesthood or relief society and sit in your chair like you're a little bird in a nest with your mouth open and expecting the teacher to shove it down in your mouth. I want you to come already knowing the lesson, already having thought about it. I want you to come ready to contribute. And because we really need each other. I mean, the and after all, I don't know how long we think we've got to become a Zion people, but that's what we're trying to do here. We've gotten so focused on individual conversion, family conversion, and I think the next step is okay, this has all got to come together. We've all got to be one family, we've all got to be bringing each other in, sharing what he doesn't know that you know, and vice versa. And I can really see the progression and that we're heading, hopefully, to becoming a Zion people.

Darla Brandley 48:07

Yes. I love that. I feel like Henry Father is just asking us to do a little bit better, to be a little more, just a little more, just a little more, and just keeps adding like becoming more and more like Christ, right? Just that little more. Every change that he makes, or I guess not change, but like um something added to our what we already do is just that little bit more that we can do to become more like Christ.

Speaker 3 48:33

Yeah.

Speaker 2 48:34

And I agree, and I really can see the value in you've got to get a testimony for yourself, and you've got to get that, and then you've got to be able to teach it. And the best place to teach it is in your family where everybody loves one another and this kind of stuff. In the end, we're all just one family, and so we all gotta be teaching each other. So I'm excited, and I just got called again as Elders Quorum instructor, so it's gonna be fun. We're gonna split the do with another uh gentleman as well, who's a great teacher. He's an attorney and he's in his probably mid to late 30s, and he just gives the greatest lessons.

Speaker 3 49:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2 49:17

And what makes him great is that we're all participating and learning from each other. So and I think that's where we're all headed.

Scott Brandley 49:26

I have a couple thoughts I want to share. Hearing your story up to this point, you definitely have some unique perspectives just because of the way that you were raised, coming back into the church, having a wife that's not a member, and how that and and then your son who's look searching for truth. So you have this really interesting dynamic because you're trying to navigate through what through what you know to be truth, but still being mindful of your wife and your son and helping them on their journeys too. And I also agree with what you said earlier, how a lot of churches out there kind of set up a wall, right, against us as members of the church. But there is that curiosity on the other side of the wall, and people don't necessarily want to admit it because then they have to accept some realities that they might not want to admit. And it's been interesting hearing your story to get to this point. I'm seeing the some of the difficulties that you have in your family dynamic to try to navigate through. Um, because like it's obviously you love your family.

Speaker 2 50:48

Yeah, and my dad, conservative guy, my mom was conservative, and you know, it was one of those it's my way or the highway kind of things. And I've seen so many kids in families where there is sort of well, I hate to say it, but you know, why are we going to church, Dad? Because I say so. You know, it's kind of a compulsory type thing. So you can see why kids rebel against that. I don't want to not have structure and discipline, but the people that can deliver it, reproving be times with sharpness and afterwards uh conveying a sense of love, that's a hard thing to do. Unfortunately, I take after my dad a lot. I get angry and do things that say things that aren't helpful. And there's thank goodness there's repentance. And the Lord has already told us, I don't care how many times you have to repent, just do it and bring your godly sorrow to me. And he said 70 times seven, even that's not very many. I'll even go beyond that if I have to. So that is the one thing that when I get discouraged, I just say, okay, Phil, you know that that wasn't the right decision.

Hope Depression And Trials As Opportunities

Speaker 2 52:04

And I still beat myself up a little too much and get discouraged, but I've kind of gotten away from that. I'm saying, okay, Heavenly Father, I messed up again. I'm gonna have to start over, I'm gonna repent again. But here's my here's my promise to you, Heavenly Father. I'm not ever given up. I'm never giving up. And what's come to me out of being a member of the church is you know, you talk about faith, hope, and charity. I still haven't got up the rung to where I'm the pure in heart, but I have an undying hope, even when things get bad. It's like you walk around in a mist, kind of huddled over, and everything is dark and you're just kind of shuffling along. But every once in a while, if you just stand up above the heads of everybody else and look, there's a bright light always out there. So no matter how bad things get, if you've got that hope, you know things are gonna get better. Trust in the Lord. I don't like some of the afflictions I have. I don't want them, but I'm gonna go through them and I'm gonna ask the Lord, okay, what am I supposed to be learning from this? Hopefully, so I don't have to go through it again. And I've changed my way of thinking. I never think anymore of challenges, afflictions, and say good things. I just think of everything as an opportunity. So something bad is happening, it's an opportunity for me to typically learn something, oftentimes about myself that needs changing. But everything is an opportunity to learn the good, the bad, and that has really helped my mental state. I've struggled with depression on and off. But when I'm focused on what the gospel brings and can bring, and what Heavenly Father wants it to bring to us, then that hope just keeps kind of bubbling up. So that's been a blessing to me. Because right after I became active, oh, my mom got cancer, my grandmother had big-time surgery and almost died, my dad had colon cancer. And I thought to myself, after the fact, I seem pretty lucky that I got the gospel in my life before all this stuff happened because I can really, I mean, I'm I'm sad for my parents and I pray that they'll get better and all these things, but I just had a whole different outlook on what afflictions really are, and said, okay, well, you just gotta go through them and you pray for them. And if things don't work out, well, then you'll struggle for a little while, and but you'll in the end know that the plan's still in effect for them, and it's still in effect for you, and you're gonna be have the opportunity to be with them again. The gospel's great. I I don't know how people without the fullness of the gospel are dealing with these times.

Darla Brandley 55:21

I am so grateful.

Speaker 2 55:22

Yeah, there's a lot of Christians that get it uh as far as their faith in Christ and their hope in the atonement and so forth. So I don't want to, and believe me, any missionary effort from any denomination that's bringing news of Jesus Christ to people, I think that's a great thing.

Darla Brandley 55:46

It is wonderful.

Speaker 2 55:47

That is so true because they meet somebody else with something more. I love that what President Heakley said in that one address. He said, Bring what you've learned and see if we can't add to it. And I think that's just a wonderful invitation for us as uh church members. And I hate the fact we get in yelling matches with people because there's some pretty um harsh things said about the church and about members of the church. And uh it's sometimes a challenge not to become angry and contentious and those kind of things in response.

Darla Brandley 56:26

It just makes the problem worse.

An Olive Branch For Tough Questions

Scott Brandley 56:28

Of course, we can't do that because that so thinking about your book, I wrote a book too about faith for people that are struggling or like maybe have fallen away. But the impetus of that book came because when I was a bishop, I had two families leave the church, and so I'm seeing a similar pattern here with you in your life where you've had some unique situations in your life, you want to try to bridge that gap, even within your own family. So is that part of why you wrote your book? Yes, is there something there?

Speaker 2 57:06

There is, you know, it's sort of like the Old Testament prophets. You have one prophecy, and it means something for the people of their day, a little bit unique, something for the people in the meridian of time when Jesus Christ is on the earth, and then another unique meaning for those in the latter days. So, yeah, I wrote it for my wife and I wrote it for my son. I wrote it for anybody who's curious. I think my wife started the book, but she hasn't finished it, and I don't know that she will, but she at least looked it over and read it. I don't think my son has read it. It's interesting. I think that he wants to look at other things with an unbiased mind. But we talk about doctrine in the church, all things about you know the Garden of Eden and those kind of things, that when you know the nitty-gritty details about it, it all makes sense. You know, I don't know how many Christians I've said, boy, if if Eve hadn't eaten that apple, we'd all be up in uh heaven, just all living a great life. And saying, sorry. That just ain't the way it is. And that's you know, so when you can take Bible verses like that and take doctrine from the church and then weave them all together, and it becomes a flowing story that makes a lot more sense. I'm a war missionary as well. So there's a lot of Baptists in Dallas, and of course they have a very low opinion of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of what they get saints. But we were we were having a discussion, and I was on the phone with missionaries, and I told them really, we can talk about these things all day long, but you really have to find out for yourself. And the best way that I know is to read the Book of Mormon. And he balked at that, and I said, and then there are some people who may be so fixated against the church and what they've heard about the church that they might consider even reading the Book of Mormon to be a blasphemous activity.

Speaker 3 59:14

Yeah.

Speaker 2 59:15

And I got the impression that that's where he was, that he didn't want to know it. And the other thing is that some people don't want to read it because they have a suspicion that it is true. And if it is true, then they've got to make such massive changes in their life that they can't fathom that whole idea that that would be something they could actually do. Because you you've heard all the stories. People join the church, their family disowns them, and they're not within the friend group anymore. And it's a big change. But as I look back on it, it was a change for the good. Yeah, I lost a lot of friends who really weren't the kind of friends I wanted anyway. I found more like-minded friends, but you can't stop there and become insular. You've got to grow in the gospel, and then you can go out and look after those that were perhaps maybe a bad influence on you, and try to be a good influence on them. But mine, I've got a good friend in the board who used to play football for BYU and an attorney and so forth. And we have long conversations, but our mantra for life is messy. You can try to have the perfect family, and you can try to do everything you're told to do. And guess what? You're just not in charge. It doesn't mean you shouldn't try. And of course, the Lord says that keep my commandments, and we try, we don't always, but the keep trying.

Darla Brandley 1:00:57

That's the important part. Keep trying. Time and time again. Do we fall? Yes. Did we keep trying? Yes.

Speaker 2 1:01:04

Yeah.

Scott Brandley 1:01:05

For sure.

Speaker 2 1:01:06

Yeah, every I had a friend, and every time something came out, you know, like, oh, let's say, when was it? Not too long ago, this issue with the financial stuff with the church, and there was a whistleblower saying that this, that, and the other it happened. And I had a friend who would something like that would come up and he'd he'd look at and say, Yep, but the Book of Mormon's true. And Elder Holland said the same, something comes up you don't know about, that doesn't mean you throw everything out. It's true that you had in your heart. And that's been of help to me too. Because you, you know, we all hear things, it's like, oh shoot. Interesting thing about that story was I saw this whistleblower that was interviewed, said, Yeah, the church has all these hundreds of millions of dollars, and it's all back here, and they should be doing more humanitarian work and so forth with it. And I thought to myself, I said, well, those of us who are believers know that there's something big closer than it there's ever been before. It's called the second coming of Jesus Christ. And things are gonna get really bad for a lot of people. And I think there's probably some wisdom that's beyond our pay grade that the church leadership is doing to be prepared for that eventuality. And the other thing about religion that's I think is a stumbling block for a lot of people, it was for my mom and dad, my mom especially. You think if you belong to the true church that all your leaders are perfect and it just doesn't happen. You know, the state president in my mom's stake when she was a young girl got prosecuted for tax evasion and was sent to prison. Like, well, yeah, you know, unfortunately, people are people and men are men. That's even the worst part of it. Women being women is that's pretty good most of the time, but men being men is most of the time, that's that's a real challenge.

Darla Brandley 1:03:08

Yeah, but people are people and we all have faults. And just because you're in a leadership position doesn't mean that you can't make wrong decisions.

Speaker 2 1:03:18

My mom and dad were born late 20s, early 30s, grew up in a depression, World War II in Salt Lake. And back in those days, that's the only source of sociality was the church. If you wanted to go to a dance, well, you went to the church. If you wanted to play softball, well, you went and played on a church softball team. That's basically what there was. And so I think the the offshoot of that, and I feel sorry for my parents in that way, is that they they got carried along in the sociality of the church without ever gaining a testimony of the church. Because my wife one time asked me, like, Dad, well, why didn't you ever serve a mission? And my dad just bluntly said, Well, I guess I never had a testimony of all that stuff. And I thought, yeah. Even growing up in Utah, you got your own set of challenges. Growing up in Southern California's got his set of challenges, you know, growing up in Russia's got his set of challenges, and they're all different. And overcoming them is all what we've got to be doing. It's all just for like hours. I love gospel discussions, I love hearing people's experiences. You know, you're in sacrament meeting and somebody gives a talk and tells a story or reads a scripture story, and that's good. But if they can transform one of their own experiences into an example of that story, it just means so much. Because you can say, hey, that doesn't just happen to David, it happens to everybody. You've got a big challenge you gotta overcome. That there's a big Goliath out there for all of them. So I think Sharon's story, and I tried to do that a little bit in the book. I

A Second Book And Last Thoughts

Speaker 2 1:05:04

thought I was done writing books, but I've got another one in the publishers now, and it's called We Choose Christ: Christian Discipleship in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, salvation to exaltation. I'm anxious to have that come out and sort of be a uh I cover a lot of the same material, but some new and and then the stuff that's repeated, it's in the greater depth. That's wonderful.

Speaker 3 1:05:36

Yeah, I love that. That's awesome.

Scott Brandley 1:05:39

Yeah. Well, this has been awesome, Philip. Yeah, you have some amazing stories and experiences. And if you could share some thoughts about what you want people to get out of your book, and then some final closing thoughts.

Speaker 2 1:05:56

Well, my book is an invitation for people who Have some curiosity about the church to explore if perhaps what they currently know is either not true or incomplete, and see if they'd be open to hearing a little bit more of a story. Not from a church president and not from a Protestant minister, but just some guy who decided to hop on and see what happened. And I can tell you it's a great ride. It's a different ride than you've been on. And in some ways, it'll seem more difficult if you choose to follow it. But course of that journey will be so much different, and you'll have so much more uh conviction that the path you're on is correct, that it's worth whatever struggle is going to come out of it in the process. And I believe that all humans are gravitating towards two things truth and love. And I believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the surest path to that truth and that love. And one of the great things about the church is that you get to help other people find that path with you. And you can help each other from then on. So it's a great thing.

Scott Brandley 1:07:33

Well,

Where To Find We Believe

Scott Brandley 1:07:34

tell us one more time the name of your book and where people can find it.

Speaker 2 1:07:39

So the book is called We Believe, Membership in the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter-day Saints, a Christian Conversation. You can find it on you know Amazon, and it's both an ebook and paperback. I am having an audio book made, but that's still a ways from coming out. If you're a member of the church, I don't think you're gonna get anything doctrinally new to you. You might find my experiences described as interesting and maybe um helpful. And I my audience really isn't a member of the church, except for one avenue. If you buy the book and read it, and you think you might know somebody who said, you know, I might think so-and-so might like to read this who's not a member of the church, then I think that'd be great.

Darla Brandley 1:08:38

Could it give maybe some insight into how to approach questions from people?

Speaker 2 1:08:45

You know, I don't know. The whole last half of the book is questions that I answer. It's like, why aren't there any professional clergy in the church? What does the church say about homosexuality? What does the church I thought the Bible said that Peter was going to be the head of the church, and you say it's Joseph Smith, and guess it's neither one, it's Jesus Christ. But you know there's a lot of things that people counter with towards members of the church.

Speaker 3 1:09:12

Yes.

Speaker 2 1:09:12

This is why you're wrong. And don't you just hate being told what you believe from somebody who's a non-believer? I mean, that's the kind of thing I thought for myself. Now, this is really off. Somebody doesn't want to counter what I'm saying with what they believe. It's they're telling me, oh no, you don't believe that. You believe in a different Jesus and you believe in, you know, all this other stuff. I just thought to myself, okay, we've got to stop. We've got to put some real information out there. I realize, you know, not everybody's gonna be interested, but I do hope there's enough curiosity to get people, which I think it's the period people with curiosity, they might look at that book first and then be happy to talk to the missionaries, whereas they may not be that happy to talk to the missionaries without a little more background going in. That's my that's

Share The Story And Submit Yours

Speaker 2 1:10:10

my hope.

Scott Brandley 1:10:10

I like it when you submitted to be on the show. You your book helped to extend an olive branch. And I like that metaphor because I think you're right. Sometimes it would be nice to have something that could smooth out some of those edges or maybe bring that wall down just a little bit so their curiosity can help them to open their hearts a little bit so that they can learn, right?

Speaker 2 1:10:34

And if we could just not yell at each other, if we could just face each other, have a little civil discourse. It's like I sort of had a cynical approach on it with uh I was talking before, and I thought, yeah, if you're gonna hate me, I at least want you to be sure of why you hate me. You know, don't take a bunch of false heads and stuff that's been floating around for the last 200 years and make your opinion on that. I realize I can't make everybody happy, and there'll be plenty of people who think time full of baloney.

Darla Brandley 1:11:07

Yeah, and like you said, if you help one person, right?

Speaker 2 1:11:10

If you don't like it, okay.

Darla Brandley 1:11:12

Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:11:12

Yeah. If I ever run into one person who says, you know, when I read your book, I decided to take another look and the rest is history, I'd say, Oh, I'd want to give them a big hug and say, Thank you, thank you, thank you. It'd be like the guy who said, Doc, you've changed my life because you gave me that new hip. But this would be a much better change of life than being able to walk straight. Oh, now that's metaphor, too. Walk straight, straight narrow path. Yeah, I think there's a well analogy going on there.

Scott Brandley 1:11:43

Well, awesome, Philip. Thanks so much again for coming on and sharing your story with us. And thanks everyone for tuning in. Thanks everyone else for tuning in to hear Philip's story. And if you have a story that you'd like to share similar to Philip, him sharing his story today, go to latterdaylights.com and let us know, and we can have you on the show. And go check out Philip's book. We're gonna put the link down below in the notes. And also go and hit that share button, do your five-second missionary work. Let's get Philip's story out there so that we can help people that need to hear this message to hear it, to be able to get those questions answered about the church so that we can get that wall down and help them and some of those questions and curiosities that they have. Thanks again, Philip, for being on.

Speaker 2 1:12:34

Thank you.

Scott Brandley 1:12:35

Thanks everyone for tuning in. We'll talk to you next week with another episode of Latter Day Lights. Until then, take care. Bye-bye.