Overview and Observations: "The Journey to Jesus: Finding Christ after Leaving Mormonism" by Brandi Bronson

In this episode of Witnessing Christ, Pastor Mark and Calvin dive deep into The Journey to Jesus: Finding Christ After Leaving Mormonism by Brandy Bronson. This compelling book chronicles Brandy’s faith crisis sparked by doctrinal inconsistencies and historical revelations from LDS sources. As her trust in Mormon teachings unraveled, Brandy embarked on a search for truth that led her to the Bible and ultimately to Jesus.

Join us as we explore her journey, from the initial cracks in her LDS faith to her profound discovery of biblical truth. We discuss key stress points like the reliability of the Bible, the LDS emphasis on feelings over objective truth, and the pressure to suppress doubts. Brandy’s narrative not only provides a powerful apologetic for the Bible but also serves as a compassionate guide for those who feel trapped between faith and truth.

Whether you're a Christian witnessing to Mormons, a former Mormon wrestling with doubt, or someone seeking to understand the differences between LDS doctrine and biblical Christianity, this episode offers valuable insights and encouragement. Tune in and discover why Brandy says, "I left Mormonism because of its problems, but I stay with Christ because of his promises."

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FAIR USE NOTICE:

This podcast explores published works written by former-Mormon Christians, highlighting their journeys to faith in Jesus Christ and their insights into the transformative power of the gospel. As part of our episodes, we occasionally quote excerpts from these copyrighted materials.

We do so under the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law (17 U.S. Code § 107), which allow limited use of copyrighted content for commentary, critique, education, and discussion. Our use is transformative, offering biblical reflections, theological analysis, and witnessing insights to help Christians share the gospel in love and truth.

Our intention is not to replace or replicate the original works but to provide thoughtful engagement that encourages listeners to seek out and purchase these valuable resources for themselves. All quoted content remains the property of its respective copyright holders.

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of Witnessing Christ. This week, it's just Pastor Mark joined by Calvin. Calvin, thanks for being here. Hello, yes, excited. Yeah. So over the next few episodes, we're going to take a little bit different approach and we are going to be reading and then responding to reviewing and reacting to a. Number of newer books on the LDS, outreach So we're going to take a look at some that are written by Latter-day Saints that have become biblical Christians and now they're just telling their story about finding Jesus and others. Have written books in order to help Christians share the gospel with Latter-day Saints. The book that we chose for this first episode, is kind of a combination of those two, where we're gonna hear a little bit about someone's journey out of Mormonism to biblical Christianity. But even more than that, it is packed with all sorts of topics and doctrinal discussions that would be very valuable for the witnessing Christian to share with their active or former Latter-day Saint, maybe atheist friends as well. So, Calvin, tell us a little bit about this book, the journey to Jesus finding Christ after leaving Mormonism by Brandy Bronson. Yeah, so like as you mentioned, probably 70% of the book is just her describing the truths of Christianity compared to her former faith and how she slowly learned about them and learned about the historicity of the Bible and that kind of thing. So much of her narrative is just contained in the first, five or six chapters and then a little bit sprinkled throughout the way. so yeah, She was your stereotypical active church, going LDS family. loved Sundays. She said, because they felt very deep and insightful. there's that language, you know, you have Jack Mormons and Molly Mormons, right? Molly Mormons are the types that follow every rule and Go to every event and that kind of thing. Jack Mormons are the exact opposite, where they are skipping church and not really involved in the culture. she said, self-professed said that she was more on the Molly side and the Jack side. But not to the nth degree, you know, she played sports, missed some Sundays and stuff, but by and large, in general, your average, solid Mormon upbringing. And then it wasn't until, a few years ago. I don't exactly know the exact timeframe of it. Yeah. It sounds like about 2020. kind of during the pandemic was blowing up our country and everything else. Yeah. So there were some political issues going on and she kept it very vague, which I think was good because that's not the point of the book that, you know, the book she, she was writing was more so on the, the doctrine and, The Bible So she said there was some political issues and she didn't like the way her church leaders were responding to it. And it put this little stone in her shoe. maybe these prophets are just men. And if they're just men, can they make mistakes? And if they can make mistakes, who's really in charge here? It was that one little doubt was the start of it, and then from there she got sent to famous websites like Mormon think and the CES letter. so she, was exploring those websites and then, and then spending a lot of time also on the LDS churches, gospel topic essays, reading up on all the church history things. She's reading up on, Joseph Smith, the book of Abraham, all these usual kind of. Tough points where there's a lot of historical issues and, her faith and trust in Joseph Smith starts to crumble. And again, a lot of this was from the LDS's own website and she's learning things that she wasn't taught when she was growing up. But now here it is being said on the LDS Gospel Topic essays, so. that appeared to be the major breaking point for her is she starts to not just read things that she would Have considered anti-Mormon, but directly from LDS resources themselves from the LDS website starting to see inconsistencies between what she had been taught in primary or seminary. even at Institute. And now she's reading this directly on their website and saying, why did they teach us one narrative here? And this is a completely different one here. And they're saying well, maybe this one was wrong and this one is the correct one. Well, my entire faith has been built on this other one. Yeah. One in one in particular was how did Joseph Smith translate? the golden plates? She learned and all that, you know, All the art is him sitting next to a table with the golden plates and he's translating the golden plates to get the Book of Mormon. And then, I forget what triggered her to it. Maybe it was on the gospel topic essays, but then she learned about the stone in the hats where he actually had the seer stone. Put it in the hat. And that actually lines up with the original testimonies of Emma Smith and Martin Harris. And then, her younger brother. was learning this new narrative with the stone in the hat at BYU but when she was there years earlier she learned, nope, he translated the golden plate. So there was, there was a change like at this. Collegiate institution. Now they're swapping the narrative. And so, yeah, little things like that. Inconsistencies with how things were said. This is how you put it. from, from LDS own sources was really getting to her. and then once she gets to this point in her faith crisis, the book shifts and she starts Going more doctrinal, deconstructing LDS church claims and then, working her way, into how she came to trust the Bible, so. Yeah, I have read probably a dozen or more former Mormon stories of coming to know Jesus, and this was one where The time spent on the shelf items, or stones in the shoe was very brief. it was, my whole world came crashing down because I started to read things that didn't line up anymore. And for many in that place, they very quickly not only deconstruct Mormonism, but also biblical Christianity. And throughout that's going to be one of the things to really kind of keep a pulse on is why didn't she go to atheism or agnosticism like so many in this position? And as we start to hear her journey, as she calls it her journey to Jesus, for so many, the reason they go straight to atheism or agnosticism is they've never really encountered. The true Jesus of the Bible. And so it's not that they are turning from him. They never knew him. And so I think that's gonna be one really interesting part of her story is how does she come to know the true Jesus of the Bible after Mormonism? So. Dive us into maybe some of the aspects of specifically first Mormon doctrine that perhaps you gained a better understanding of from this book. So let's focus first on. Were there any aspects of Mormon doctrine? And then we'll focus on how did she unpack biblical doctrine, maybe in a way that is helpful for the witnessing Christian as well. So one. Yeah, there's two major things about, about Mormon doctrine. and then the first would be, about part of the way through, let me find the page here. It's a, it's a pretty long book too, for people listening. It's a 300, and... fifty page book with like twenty pages of citations at the end. Like this is a, this is a great. It's meaty. It's, it was great. but let me see if I can find the quote. Yeah, so she's talking about the difference between the emphasis in the Mormon church on subjective feelings, personal testimony, how can you tell what is true versus the Christian view? And so then she, she says on page 124, I was encouraged to grow in my faith through my personal subjective experiences and those feelings formed the foundation of my testimony. Also, using my subjective experiences to share my faith meant no one could attack it. After all, who can refute my feelings? And she shared some stories about how she would, bear her testimony to friends in high school and such. And no matter what they said, she didn't feel any different because... there's no argument here. It's just what I feel and that is true. and so that's something that I've, I've picked up on. in reading, Ensign articles and, like general conference talks, it gets all over the place, but just said so succinctly, like, no, it's subjective truth and it makes it kind of hard to engage. because we Christians, we want to go to, what's the chapter and verse? Like, why are you saying what you're saying? And we love to, have proof passages. And there's maybe a little bit of air in just like throwing 700 passages out at somebody and saying, all right, Groom, point made. Like, But, you know, we still go to the word and there's, there's objectivity to it. It doesn't really matter what we feel. It matters what is true. feelings. she even said quoting somebody, feelings follow truth. Like truth comes first and feelings become, subjected to it anyway. So that was, that was something she spoke about it a lot. That was just one little. Yeah, and I really appreciated that section. She had a larger quote where she said the experiential leads to their truth talking about in Mormonism. However, using signs or inner peace as one's litmus test of truth gets murky. Real quick. Not only are there obvious reasons why this is problematic, but using feelings to decipher truth can also evolve into idolization as we end up worshiping a feeling or sign. Instead of the God whom we believe is sending such signs and impressions. For many Latter-day Saints, yeah, the feelings and the emotions connected to them become the very basis of their faith. And therefore, in a sense, the things that they are worshiping in their lives and just a really good way of seeing it there. Yeah, one last, quote on that. Just simply put, she said this, the blinder the faith, the more valiant it is. and now she's learned you don't have to have a blind faith. You don't have to just trust and suppress. later on in the book, she referenced, Elder Uchtdorf, the doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith. And how she advocated that if we really want people to like own their faith, you got to give them space to challenge and wonder and ask the questions but why and to own it and she was never given that chance. And now in Christianity, she's just very thankful for that. difference in Christianity, and then this whole book is her going, all right, let's look at objectively now. Let's reason through it. a change in how she finds truth. Yeah. Any, any other Mormon doctrines that the book helped you gain a better understanding of, or at least her perspective on that Mormon doctrine? Yeah, There were some things where I didn't necessarily like, learn anything I didn't already know, but just the way she walked through it was amazing. And that was the LDS, Opinion on the Bible and is it reliable or not? she was taught that There was an arbitrary religious council that was selecting books and choosing what to be in it. And so then it's unreliable. and then she walked through how that, what she formally believed as an LDS member was completely not true. And so I didn't necessarily learn anything new, but it's always fun to. To read about, oh, yeah, this Bible really is reliable. So, that was just really fun. It was this 25-page section and just the way she went through the Old and New Testament. That was just really fun. Again, not necessarily a new nuance, but she was... Calvin, I assumed that part of her book would have been like your jam, your bread and butter, man. so Calvin recently wrote an article for our Jesus Enough site on why we can trust the Bible. And so. Yeah. I was assuming he was like, wait, wait a minute. Why didn't I read this first? There's some good stuff in here. No, I mean, I actually thought about this. That article that we wrote is mostly on the New Testament. In the Old Testament, we just kind of I mean, you know, there's, we said some things about it, but she, she had a lot of good stuff to say about the Old Testament. Makes me want to go add a part two or something. Yeah, I think we should. Some good stuff. Absolutely. So let's, let's start looking into, you know, were there any major stress points? So we talk about forgiveness, life eternal with heavenly father, worthiness, Did you pick up on many stress points with Brandy other than just truth? I would say it was obviously a big stress point. Were there any other common stress points that came out in this book that would be helpful for us in our outreach strategies? Yeah, in the early part of the book with her narrative. Talking about, her first steps to reading non-church approved material. Like we said, most of the stones in her shoes were from approved church material because it was inconsistent. but, reading these websites, Mormon think in the CES letter, she said, swerving outside of the approved lanes felt immoral. It's this pressure that if you read anything That isn't sustaining and supporting the church and its truth claims than it's of the devil. she remembers horror stories of these people who start reading anything other than church approved stuff and then they go off the deep end and And then now she felt guilt for reading it, but also, realizing that there's something to be said here. This isn't just. Vain spiritual attacks. Like there's actually reason here in these, non-church material. So that, that big stress point pressure, it's kind of hard to, For them to first, for Mormons to read this outside material anyway. Yeah, no, absolutely. So as, as we continue to unpack this book, one of the things that I want to help us kind of put into perspective here is As I read these books, often I am thinking, who would I give this book to? Which type of individual that I'm serving, whether it's a Christian or a struggling Mormon, a former Mormon. And at the start of the book, Brandy does a pretty good job of setting up like, as a Christian witness who doesn't know anything about Mormonism, you will learn this and it will be helpful in this way. To my current Mormon friends and family and acquaintances, it will do this. To the former Mormon, now atheist, I'm hoping that this will accomplish this. As I read, I guess I was more led towards thinking, yes, this is valuable for Christians to a certain extent to really understand From a former Mormon's perspective, how they came to trust number one in the Bible and trust number two in the God of the Bible and finally that Jesus is God. But I personally felt that this book is probably best designed for the former Mormon, now atheist or agnostic. because she does such a good job of giving a biblical apologetic for the Bible. would you agree with that? That, that maybe, you know, her intent was to kind of make this for Mormons. But I wonder if it's actually post-Mormons that it might be a better fit for. Yeah, either those, how do we say it, like one toe in with the Mormon church or then leaving it, like those who are already well on their way or out. Yeah, I would say so because that was kind of I think part of the reason this book would service that type of person the best is because that's who she was. She left and she didn't go into a, you know, far version of atheism. She stayed agnostic. and then worked through it. So like, just, just, just because that's what exactly what she experienced, you know, somebody who's in that same place before they go off the deep end to atheism or before they've even fully left the church, you know, that. She's writing to that exact person because that's who she was for years as she worked through, like you said, the apologetic for the Bible and for this doctrine and theology and stuff. Yeah, but I, yeah, like you said, I think there still is a merit because, you know, we had, we'd taken notes on this. My largest section of notes was on stress points, just by, because when she's talking about these doctrinal comparisons, She'll then suddenly have a paragraph or two about how this always confused her when she was a Mormon. And so then I think, Finding those doctrines that are confusing or misunderstood or she said multiple times about how once she came to trust the Bible and then trust And believe what it said, she realized she was never even really listening to Christians when they were describing like the Trinity or the priesthood or, You know, the relation of grace and works, you know, she was tearing down kind of anyway, and we will get into that. So I think, yeah, I think it's primarily like you said, but you know, the Christians can get something out of it too. Absolutely. And I think just seeing, you know, for, for many Christians, one of the, the most difficult. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Anything organized religion. And so I think in this sense, just reading through this book to see like there's hope, for one, for those that have left Mormonism without actually having Jesus in their life already, there's still hope for them too. you mentioned an ally. I like, would maybe one way to say it. Like, it's not, it's not like she said, she, they took her and her husband years to trust church leaders again. And so, you know, I'm most people, I think leaving the LDS church would be in that same boat. And then, you know, this is kind of, it's an ally. It's a, it's a peer telling them things, not some organized religion. So. Absolutely. I think there's that huge value there. You mentioned you had some other stress points. What were some other stress points that. Yeah, so, reading things out of the narrative, I'm, I've got a bunch here, So I think things about like polygamy was a big thing for her. It was sort of though, You know, this is kind of like maybe one of the more well-known kind of points about, about Mormon doctrine and stuff. So the, you know, polygamy, it's practice. Is it a condoned in the Bible? Is it not? Is it still a practice in the church? And one thing that was really tough for her as a wife was it still is a teaching that in the celestial kingdom there is, there will be polygamy. that's, that's part of it. So she felt a lot of stress and pressure and unease as a wife to how she put it, share her husband with other women in this eternal afterlife. And, you know, when she, then she's described how her and her husband, when they came to Christianity, were still kind of off put because. There is no marriage in heaven. It went from plural marriage to no marriage. So still wasn't quite what she wanted, but, it was better than, than what she previously thought. So that, that was one too. I just really felt for her because. You know, I'm married. We're both married. I'm married now like that. I can imagine like. That's, that's just unnerving. Like, oh yeah, in this life, it'll be fine. But like, oh man, up there, like, you know, how am I going to keep my husband's attention? Or, you know, is he going to value, you know, stuff like those kinds of questions can. Yeah. Something you said there, Calvin, about it's. It's even different than what I wanted. and the Bible is even different than what we would want. And I think that's something that I sense throughout this is Brandy getting to a place of realizing that so much of Mormonism is really designed on. Human ideals of this is what we would think we would want for an afterlife or this is what we would want when it comes to our relationship with God. And even as she talks about how people react when they leave Mormonism, that's still the same thing. It's just a different version of those wants and desires. You still become your own God just in a different way. Yeah. Other, other stressors. Yeah. One. So there was some other little things about like legalism and, You know, we already kind of talked about the scriptures and stuff like that. So, you know, she, I think she's quoting, she's, yeah, she's quoting Dennis Prager when she kind of believed God was the celestial butler. and I liked that idea where she felt, You know, you do something wrong, the Holy Spirit's taken from you, you have to work your way back into his good grace, you do the repentance process, and then he comes back. But then conversely, if you obey, then God is sort of bound to bless you. If you're doing what the church lays out you're supposed to do, then God has no option. He's stuck. He has to bless you. He's a celestial butler. And so, I don't know if this was necessarily a stress point that she felt. I can't quite remember if she felt that when she was in the LDS faith, but looking back, she sort of... Sort of felt like she was shaking her head at herself and go, man, like, I can't believe I used to think that. It was sort of this, slightly humorous, Yeah, that she had that low of a view of God that he was just her butler. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess one, one last one, this one's kind of a big one that I think we can, we can understand and Christians would be good to keep in mind is the. What it looks like to people in the LDS church when their friends or family or neighbors or ward members leave. she, she knew what they would say because she said it. She knew what they would think and feel and believe because she thought and felt and believed that. Where somebody leaves and they just want to go sin, Or they leave and they start having this sort of crisis moment because they're, I mean, obviously everything you thought was true, you're now, is crumbling before your eyes and kind of go through this crisis. And she used to think, oh, that was a, Something that confirmed the truth for her because, oh, if you stay in the church, you're all happy and content. You try to leave and I'll look what happens. And so she talked about how. She just kind of had to accept that these things were going to be said either to her or behind her back and just not worry about it. Just, and that was, I think. That was part of the reason she was writing this. I think near the end, she kind of had this concluding bit about, you know, hey, there's other reasons to leave the church besides you want to just go sin and drink coffee and get tattoos and stuff. And so that's a real, real community pressure to, to leave. That prevents you from leaving the LDS church. That's something to keep in mind. Like it's, it's going to be hard if you have a friend or somebody who's in the process of leaving or left, like that's, that takes time to, to deal with that kind of community, pressure and, and ostracization and stuff. So you just, you know, be patient and help those people. Cause that's, yeah, I can't imagine what that's like. Yeah, absolutely. Really, really well said. And I think one final stress point that I don't know if she ever used these specific words, but just the. The idea of cognitive dissonance where this thing that you've been taught your entire life you've been filtering all information and all truths through your perceived. Idea of the way that things are and then things start to not line up anymore and that just puts you in a place where your entire worldview is under attack and. I, I've never been there in my life, but I can only imagine, you know, she was in her early twenties when she starts to unpack all of this information that is a direct affront to everything that she has built her life on. And I applaud her for not just throwing as she later talks about baby Jesus out with the bathwater, but that she actually does the hard work of saying just because this was not true. Does not equate that the Bible and biblical Christianity is not true too, because so often that is the case. You know, God had obviously done some sort of work in her heart, whether she realized it or not, to keep her connected to saying like, I need to know if there's a greater truth out there. So. Let's start talking about that, that search for truth and kind of walk through for our listeners. What, what did she do to like figure out truth and figure out God? It's kind of an interesting process. Yeah, first to that point though, I had another note, you know, you talked about how just because Mormonism isn't true doesn't mean all religion isn't true. And she said she kind of had this realization that she left the LDS Church and rejected its truth claims but held on to The LDS claim that there is no other church except for them. And how, she kind of realized, like, why am I, why am I still... In my core, believing these prophets that the only possible true church would be the Mormon church, even though now I reject that church. Like she's sort of, like you said, cognitive dissonance. And she kind of realized that. She goes, wait a second. That doesn't make any sense. If I'm, if I'm leaving this church, let's, you know, leave that truth as well. but yeah, so how did she, how did she, get to trusting the Bible? So... She started, like agnostic. She, as she said, doesn't have enough faith to be an atheist. And she really worked through a lot of those like classical arguments for God. the uncaused causer, you know, the, was that the cosmological arguments and the argument from design and all these, you know, Arguments. And she says, God to me was the embodiment of a transcendent standard of morality and of an absolute reality in general. And then she said that was a good starting point. You know, before she figured out like which God is correct. And that's really, I think, as we've mentioned, really abnormal for people leaving the LDS church is to have this sort of. Okay, but, you know, to get to this sort of general deistic worldview of there is a God, he is absolute morality, that these arguments, cosmological and that kind of stuff, lead you to. So she spends, I don't know, twenty thirty forty pages just going through those arguments and then from there moves into the historicity of the Bible. And yeah, we already talked about that, how the Old Testament, she has a lot to say about the Old Testament. Yeah, so was there anything when it came to her study of the Old Testament specifically that whether it was new or just well said that you think would be good for witnessing Christians as they talk about the Bible? Yeah, so just generally the pattern she kept coming into was the trust we can have in the Old Testament has only increased. With archaeological archaeological finds and research and that kind of thing. We find more and more and more that lines up with it, whether it's artifacts from Egypt that hint at. Hebrews being slaves, I forget the year, but, you know, around the time when they would have been slaves according to the Bible's timeline. Or it's the Dead Sea Scrolls. Which showed that no yes really you can keep a script reliable for thousands of years and have it be pretty much the same as when you started. the Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeological support. And then the one, the one, Yeah. Like the, the one about the slavery was brand new to me. she talks about like Wesley Huff who is now of, of fame with, because of his interactions with Joe Rogan and stuff, but this was written before that. So she, she, she knew Wesley Huff before Wesley Huff was cool. Yeah, yeah. So, Stuff like that. And then things about like the Hittites and you, you know, stuff like this, like things that I, well, I was unaware of some of these little archeological finds that, you know, I know the big ones, the Amarna letters and you know, the, The very steelys, Moabite stone, that kind of stuff. But she brought to my attention some new ones. I go, oh, that's pretty cool. And then she just kind of tied it all together in a really cool way. And then went into the New Testament after that. Which that was a lot of what was contained in our Jesus is Enough article and the perfect article about, you know, the variance and the number of manuscripts actually supports it and the variance, you know, ninety-eight 99% of them don't mean anything and they're obvious and that kind of thing and walked through just how, how unique the New Testament is when it comes to historical manuscripts and textual criticism and that kind of thing. so if you're looking for. As a Christian witness to the LDS faith, if you're looking for a explanation of the historicity of a Bible with kind of a Mormon flair, These thirty pages would be a good place to go. Absolutely. And she did her research, you know, she quotes from Josh and Sean McDowell in the book Evidence That Demands a Verdict from Jay Warner Wallace and cold case Christianity. And then, Wesley Hoff, as you mentioned before, like she did her research. you and I were talking about this earlier that. It's almost a updated Mormon version of Lee Strobel's A Case for Christ where she Did everything she could to kind of almost in a sense disprove the Bible for herself, but in doing so in reading all of this, she's like, wow, there is way more evidence for the Bible than there ever was for the Book of Mormon compelling evidence for the Bible. That was never there for the Book of Mormon. No, absolutely. Yeah, that's, yeah, I like that. Anything else when it comes to the doctrine that is presented in this that you would say, all right, the chapter on The historicity and validity of the Bible that we have today being the true word of God. Were there other doctrinal chapters that you would say, yeah, this was a highlight or wow, she just. Articulated this so well that the witnessing Christian would gain a lot from this. Yeah, I kind of mentioned it before. You know, as sort of a stress point, but then she kind of walks through the doctrinal comparison. Or is this, is this in the doctrine section or is this later on? Oh, no, it's I think it is the pitfalls of legalism. She's got a little chapter on that. I think it's just six, seven pages. Yeah. and, you know, page 225, if you're following along at home, I guess, she just walks through, like, what is legalism? How does Mormonism fit into it. How is it a trap? how, what does that mindset do to you? What is the Christian, solution to that? How does it, how does the Christianity work? heal that mindset. so like just six pages there tight because I mean, if you're not, if you don't have a gospel based religion, you have legalism. There's, there's really only two options. Either you're. Following the system of rules and it's on you or it's not on you. It's on God. So that's, you know, universally applicable, but like we said, it has this Mormon flair to it. So if you're witnessing to specifically do a Mormon, that'd be a good place to kind of get a Mormon, the Mormon brand of legalism. Yeah, and so many of the resources that she quoted from here were not written specifically for a Mormon audience. They were written In a general sense, and I really appreciated the quotes that she had from CJ Mahaney in The Cross-Centered Life. this quote specifically where she Said legalism claims in essence that the death of Jesus on the cross was either unnecessary or insufficient. Wow, that's that's Mormonism at its core right there. It says, in effect, your plan didn't work, God. The cross wasn't enough, and I need to add my good works to be saved. Legalism is essentially self-atonement for the purpose of self-glorification and ultimately for self-worship. It is the pinnacle of pride for me to assume that by my good works I could Ever morally obligate God to forgive me justify or accept me. Yeah. Wow. Like bells and whistles should have gone off for her as she read that. Like, oh, that that's Mormonism right there. Mm hmm. Yeah, and what you just said brought up made me think of another thing that sort of focused on the self. It's self-glorification and she said, She, I can't, I won't, I don't have the pages, but she sort of broke down how Mormonism takes that to the nth degree where, you know, you are gods in embryo and you're looking for your own Self-glorification, you know, you're going to become exactly like God. You, you do these good things, not really, I mean, yeah, you took, yeah, to worship God, but primarily so you can progress and become like him. the focus is really, really turned inward. So one of the things I'm asking the interns to focus on as they read through these books is how did this Impact you and your empathy and your zeal for reaching the Mormon community. Was there anything in this that just. Helped you just have even a greater heart for the work that we're doing of proclaiming Christ to Mormons? Was there anything in here that just like, oh boy, this just got me fired up for this or gave me even more empathy? Yeah, she had, it was, it was really quite funny the way she said it was near the very end. she's kind of starting to wrap things up a little bit and she's talking about how. She's talking about the Christian view of the law. What's its purpose? And what is man by nature? Is he good? Is he bad? What can he do? Can he do anything? That kind of stuff. And how she talks about how This talk of, we might call it total depravity, but just of our sin and we can't do anything. She said, this used to make me uneasy around Christians, feeling as if they were reveling in some sort of self-deprecating ideology. and I sort of, I sort of smiled at myself like, yeah, I guess from the outside it might kind of look like that, but You know, you don't really recognize the beauty of the solution that Christ did or enacted until you realize the size of the problem. And, you know, just empathy and zeal, like I want to, I don't know, it sounds weird, but I want to convince people they're terrible so I can show them how great God is. Said kind of pithily, but Yeah, just, you know, how do we get around this? How do we, how do we preach the law? How do we talk about the The, you know, how stuck we are in our sin without maybe coming across as if we're self-deprecating. But anyway, so that, that was something that really struck me is, you know, there is, there isn't really a law in our proper sense of it in the LDS church. Yeah. No, really well said and I think every time I read one of these books I have something to learn myself too and something to like just grow in my own zeal and empathy and for me it was just. All of the ways in which he reviewed like these are things that I was taught as a Mormon that now as I'm leaving Mormonism are definitely impacting the way that I view The Bible and God and Christianity. And so many of those, I think we as biblical Christians, we don't, we don't fully understand that we've, we've never been in a place where we were taught. That this other book is of greater authority than the Bible and that the Bible is full of errors. And now the one thing that we had built our entire world on, we realized is a lie. This one's a lie. And the one that I've been told is filled with lies. Why would I trust that one now? Yeah. And like, I think that just helps us to say, wow, this is why this is so hard. This is why when someone is leaving Mormonism, they're not just right away picking up the Bible and saying, now this is the thing I'm going to build my life on. No, they've been told that this is a faulty foundation. And so we need to rebuild that foundation. Yeah. Like, like we said, take, it takes time. Be patient. Like you said, we can't, we don't know. We don't know what that's like. it might take a long, long time. And I think related to that is the. We mentioned it before, the trust in pastors and church leadership. You know, similarly, they're not going to just, on average, not just going to pick up a Bible and say, this is it. They're also probably not going to walk into another church and say, this is it again. It's just another Well, we call him pastor now instead of bishop, but what makes him any different, you know? So, you know, she talked a little bit about, too, how she came to understand what Christian worship actually is and how it took her a while to want to be plugged into the body of Christ, to be fed, to worship God and stuff. And that takes time, too. You know, it takes, took her a few years, I think, her and her family. Years after, even when they came to believe in Jesus and trust the Bible, they sort of did, homeschooled. Christianity, I think is the church homeschoolers is how she called it. And after it took a while, even though they believed to say, actually, no, let's, let's go to a church. So yeah, it just takes time. Everybody's different. So. Absolutely. No, good, good perspective. Any stories or illustrations? So often in our Christian witnessing, it's, we, we teach people how to use stories and illustrations. Mormons are used to using Parables and stories to make points. Were there any specific stories or illustrations that jumped out at you? It would be helpful for the Christian witness to have in their back pocket. Yeah, well, this is, I mean, like we said, most of this book was Her explaining doctrine. and there was a couple of times when she started, when she acknowledged, you know, how this would land on LDS members ears. So, I guess I don't, I don't know if this exactly applies to your question, but she told a story About like, you know, what, what was her perspective of the LDS scriptures and the LDS faith before she left. She tells a story about how, I think she was in college, she's walking, she's in Provo. Walking around the temple, listening to general conference talks on her headphones and just, you know, staring at the beauty of the temple and the backdrop against those, those gorgeous mountains there in Salt Lake City. And just how you know that kind of experience and I thought that's kind of like that that sounded just exactly parallel with what a lot of Christians do with Psalms or listening to like listening to the Bible as you walk around and just praying while you're enjoying the beauty of God's creation. And how, you know, they're having similar experiences just with these faulty materials. It's not really an illustration for, You know, witnessing, but it just, I don't know, just that little story really kind of struck me and helped me to understand kind of who we're dealing with. Yeah, yeah, who we're dealing with ultimately that we're dealing with Satan who takes good things. Intellect, will, emotion and completely distorts them for his own purpose and sometimes in such subtle ways That they look like the real thing, but their focus is just off. And that's why it's not the real thing. And I think this is something I've been thinking a lot about is how Satan is just good at his evil where, right now during the season of Lent, I am preaching for our midweek Lenten services on Psalm. 130 the the out of the depths I cry to you and I'm focusing a lot on Luther's concept of on which is like the trial and tribulation that we go through in life and one of the things that he really brings out is how. Satan takes the very law of God, which is good, the law of God, and he uses it to accuse us constantly. And to convict us and it's just, he just, it's fascinating how he unpacks how, how Satan can take a good thing that God uses for a good purpose and he uses it in a evil purpose. And the same thing is happening in Mormonism where he takes good things and just distorts them a little bit so that they become a really bad thing. So for me, that helps with the empathy, helps with the zeal, helps with kind of the stories as well. Yeah, one, well, I'm glad you said that because that brought to mind something else. The same kind of thing. I sort of saw the devil's tactic for the first time. And she was talking about, you know, was the atonement accomplished in the Garden of Gethsemane or the cross? And at face value, that alone seems like kind of a weird thing to be like a major doctrinal difference between two churches as to the place where it was accomplished. Because ultimately... You know, if you believe Jesus atoned for the sins of the world, does it matter whether it was in the garden of the cross? You know, like as long as shouldn't the thing that matters is what he actually accomplished. But then I thought about it. You know, if, if, if the devil were trying, you know, the devil basically couldn't take on the cross head on there. The Bible says too much about the cross. And its meaning in such simple language about, you know, free grace and save, you know, you know, through, through the cross. the Bible says too much about it for the devil to take that on head on. He had to kind of sidestep the issue. So, you know, I, I, you know, how can we read the devil's mind? But. He sort of made people believe that the cross wasn't important or that, as she put, they're worshiping the knife that killed your brother. That's how she kind of viewed it. It's this, you're worshiping torture and death. And so if you get a group of people to not to think the cross isn't important, then when they stumble across a verse that talks about the beauty of the cross and barrier cross and what Christ did on the cross, now you can sort of Already you have this, the devil has this kind of mechanism to block your mind to that gospel truth. So, you know, he distorts and he twists, but he also sort of, you know, makes things slippery so that you... This, this gospel doesn't exist in his. No, that's, that's really well said and great insights on the cross where so often Latter-day Saint theology wants to jump right from Gethsemane to the garden tomb. Without going to Golgotha. And that's intentionalized by Satan. As you said, if he can make the cross, which is a stumbling block to Jews, Gentiles and to Mormons. Irrelevant and unnecessary in the whole equation and force us to take our eyes off of the finished work of Jesus and put it right back on the unfinished work of ourselves again is ultimately what he's doing with that. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. As you were working through, were there any just really practical things that came to mind when it comes to Our outreach to Mormons, anything where you're just like, you know what, this gave me an aha moment in my own work with missionaries or with dozens of folks you're interacting with online or those that you interact with in person. Any kind of aha moments, just practically speaking? Yeah, I just, you know, I was thinking as I'm reading this, we should probably proclaim Christ rather than debate Mormonism. You know, I just. Oh, wow. Yeah. Who knew? we should make like a pillar out of that statement there, but anyway, you know, she talked about how subjective her faith is and That combined with the fact that all these things, the historical issues and the weirdness of the doctrine, it's all online. It's already debunked online. And she, she was reading some of those sources like we, you know, we can outsource that job. but let's just talk about Jesus and proclaim it. we don't need to get into the nitty gritty of historical details. There's other places for that. And then also, as she mentioned, because when she bears her testimony, it's so subjective. Arguments don't really work. You can't It doesn't work. She's confirming her feelings. So what's maybe more impactful is you just do the same thing, but with a biblical twist. Talk, you know, just kind of open up a little bit. Talk about, How Christ changed your life, how these words have a profound meaning and effect, how you've, you know, lived this truth, what it means for you, how it affects your day-to-day, that kind of thing. I think that can go a lot farther than that. You know, definitively proving that this combination of passages shows that Jesus actually suffered on the cross, not the garden, kind of a thing, you know. so yeah, proclaim Christ rather than debate Mormonism. It'd be a good way to say it. Well, I'm glad you're just on board with our pillars here now after reading this. Yeah, I think one thing for me personally that it did emphasize was sometimes as Christians we get a little bit lazy When it comes to our, like, knowledge of where the Bible came from and why we can trust the Bible, like, well, it's God's word, so we're gonna trust it. Have we ever done any major research ourselves on where the Bible came from or the manuscript evidence for the Bible? And so I think, you know, this is. We're definitely not a traditional apologetics ministry here at Truth and Love, but at times when it comes to our conversations with Mormon missionaries or others, it is valuable for us to be able to say, Hey, hold on a minute. As you're telling me that we can't trust the Bible because we don't have, a, a chain of authority when it comes to this happened, this happened, this happened in the translation process to be able to say, ah, no, no, no, no. You need to do your research. let me show you some research that I've done showing where, why we can trust the Bible, where the Bible came from, that it wasn't just a group of men that arbitrarily got together and said, these are our favorite books. Let's make a Bible. but where the Bible came from and why we can trust it. And I think it's valuable for all of our faith lives then, to be able to have confidence that the sixty-six books that we have in our Bible We know where they came from and we know why we can trust them. So I think that was for me just a good reminder. Yeah, I'd agree. You know, maybe, maybe a thousand years ago in the middle of Europe, you didn't need to know that because everybody knew the Bible was correct. So that isn't something you need to, you know, faith can exist without knowing where the Bible came from. But today, you know, along the lines of always be prepared to give an answer. Sometimes that might mean you need to know at least a little bit of like, well, no, there's actually more to it. Maybe you don't need to, you don't need to become a Wesley Huff and, and you know, all the details. Or even a Brandy Brunson when it comes to it. Yeah. Yeah, just know there's more to the story and if you want to, that's a fine thing and she talked about that too, how Like a reasoned faith. The mind, you know, God gave us a mind for a reason. You know, it's not just something we have to keep suppressing and focus on our feelings. No, you can, you can know things and that's part of growing in your faith. It's not only that, you know. Pure head knowledge isn't, isn't, isn't everything, but it's part of it. And so, yeah, no, I agree. I liked, I liked that. That was something I noticed as well. Any just final kind of personal reflections on this story? I know the book wasn't exactly what I was expecting it to be. It was much more of, as we mentioned, kind of a case for Christianity than a true just Unpacking or, my shelf broke this way and this is how I built a found or God built a foundation for me. It's very different, but, I, I found value. what, what value personally did you take away from this? Yeah, one thing I appreciated with what she, or how she wrote, it never felt like she It never felt like all these passages and these arguments were like bullets in her gun that she was firing back at this church that harmed her so. She wasn't using this, these True and solid arguments as weapons against her former way of life. She kind of had this balance, never condemning needlessly letting things stand on their own merits, but not being afraid to say, nope, this was wrong and here's why. I don't, I guess I'd love to know if you kind of felt that too, but she, she felt very evangelical in what she was presenting, especially because she had the The current member or about to leave member in mind. Yeah, I, I would agree with that 100% and that, that was actually what I was going to tell Brandy was one of my biggest takeaways from this was that she was able to Whether it was suppress the anger and the animosity that she has toward the church that most former Mormons do have or just get past it. In a way that says like, yep, that that's a part of my life still, but that's not the thing that I need to be addressing right now in this book. I need to be focused on the proclamation of Christ and pointing people to the truth. That she is now building her life on, you know, spending fifteen chapters further destroying the false thing. Isn't going to do her or anyone else any good at this point. and so I think she knew her audience. I think she knew that, So many have heard the tried and true arguments before that now she needs to trust in, in God's word and let, let it sit for, let it stand for what it is. Yeah, and she, to that point, at the very end, she said she left the church because she saw problems with the LDS church. Now she's staying outside of the LDS church because she found Jesus. And she says, even if tomorrow some new historical thing came to light that proved without a doubt that no, Joseph Smith did not practice polygamy was all a lie. She'd go, she'd go, okay, great. I'm glad that didn't happen, but I'm following Jesus now. It's not a reason for, you know, I left the church maybe because of some polygamy issues, but I'm staying out of the church because of Christ. And, yeah, that was, yeah, that was a really cool way for her, a really cool perspective for her, to be able to look back and say that kind of thing. Yeah. Awesome. One other, one other, little personal reflection. We've kind of talked about it kind of, I think, throughout this episode a little bit, but just talking about how the LDS Church changes a lot. You know, what she learned about how Joseph Smith translated Allegedly versus, was changed, you know, even at the collegiate level. And then she talks, she had, she said some words about how doctrines that were foundational to her belief are now kind of seeming to be on the backslide a little bit. You know, like her becoming God, becoming a God was like the thing for her to focus on. And now it's a little more wishy-washy. you know, and things like that. So it's, it's. It can be tempting, I think, to kind of pin down the really nasty beliefs that the church has held and still technically are on the books. But it changes so much. It's, you know, it's riding with the cultural tides. It's suppressing its history. Almost because there's a kind of a gaslighting element to it. Like, oh, no, we never taught that before and don't think that kind of a thing. So it's not... I don't know. It was kind of eye opening to me because I feel like at times I'll like to quote like miracle forgiveness or something like one of those really punchy, older general conference talks. And that just doesn't mean anything to people. So it's just not worth it. It's not a battle worth fighting to show that there has been change. Like, just deal with the individual and You know, proclaim Christ and do that kind of thing rather than trying to prove to them that their church once taught this, but now it's not, but it doesn't do anybody any good. So that was something else that I kind of reflected in my own approach. Absolutely. I think one final thing in this is maybe impacts my outreach approach, but also just I felt this was one of the places where she articulated something in a way that maybe I'd never thought of it in exactly this way. It's on page 298. Where she starts to write about that believing in starts with self-examination. And she says, It's clear that acknowledging a handful of religious facts is very different than pushing all your chips into the middle of the table declaring you're all in and then sitting back with a sparkling water in hand confident that you've bet on the right hand. But how does one begin to legitimately trust in Christ? Well, it turns out this trust requires us to start with patient zero ourselves and take a good hard look in the mirror. And she goes on on the next page and says, so what do the scriptures say about me? At first, I needed to know that what I was reading wasn't a bunch of corrupted accounts of power hungry men or ignorant translators. It was now time to internalize the truth and understand the implications of what the Word of God claims about my own nature And how I relate to my creator. And from here, she really goes on to talk about two words. And she doesn't use these that we've been using a lot lately of. Really, you have to have a proper anthropology, a proper view of yourself in order to have a proper theology. And so I think this was something that she started to realize was throughout my life, I have been trying to declare myself more righteous than other people. And that's how I was building my relationship with God. And she writes on page 300, she says, it was now clear. I was and am now no more righteous than my atheist neighbor next door. I was on the same playing field as anyone else. No matter how many times I agreed to support the Girl Scouts in my neighborhood or donate to the local food shelter, I wasn't any more righteous than them. Ouch. Talk about a demotion and then she goes on to talk about how she really came to understand her own unworthiness and in understanding her unworthiness that helped her see the worth. And the value that she has in Christ and in him crucified. And I think that's something that increasingly I am focused on in my outreach is. Both personally talking about my own unworthiness, but also helping others to see that place where we need to give up trust in ourselves and our worth and our value. and that's so such an unpopular message in the world we live in today that it's constantly saying, oh, you've got such great intrinsic value. You're, you're enough. Now to show ourselves that we are not enough so that we can then say Jesus is enough, another one of our catchphrases. They keep popping up. Yeah.

Unknown So Kevin, you, you had some thoughts on just You know, this, this book builds a lot on, on truth claims and the truth claims of the Bible and how instead of having a faith that is pretty much built on emotions and a church that says like. You know, you can trust in these experiences and those are the things you're going to build your faith on that. We want to have a proper balance. Um, you had some thoughts on just. As Christians and as Christian witnesses, we want to present the truths of the Bible, but we also understand that there's something else supernatural here at work as well, that we also need to be confident and interested. So tell us a little bit about your thoughts on that. Yeah, so, the Mormon church is swung so far one way on the spectrum of, rational, evidence-based versus feelings-based. And it's all feelings, all feelings, all feelings. And so she rightly... Discovered no way. No, I can use my mind. I can be prepared. I can learn and study and grow and learn stuff. And that's part of worship and and faith building and that kind of thing. I mean, Paul. Himself points to the historical reality of the resurrection as the foundation of faith. if Christ were not raised from the dead, our faith is futile. in first Corinthians fifteen um, But, but every now and again, I wonder if we sort of overemphasize the reasonableness and the evidence and the absolute truthness of where if you just thought better about the evidence and you'd come to know the truth. ultimately, we are, we are by nature dead in our transgressions. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God. It's in Romans eight We're blind, dead. Spiritual corpses. And no matter how much that corpse tries, it can't even think to begin to analyze the evidence and then put his faith into something. Um, so, you know, the spirit is doing this work, but kind of, as you mentioned, we wouldn't know any of this stuff about God and Christ or any of it unless he told us. Unless he came into our hearts and took, took out the heart of stone and put in the heart of flesh and put in this new breathing spiritual life and then gave us this knowledge about Jesus and the cross and redemption. and then buttressed with that are all these wonderful arguments and proofs and history and historical nature of it. Like that's all part of it. So I just wonder if. it's kind of a Western cultural phenomenon. If we go a little too far to how reasonable and obvious this stuff is, because after all, you know, it's foolish. It's a stumbling block to the Jews and it's foolishness to the Gentiles. This stuff is not intuitive. You need to be told by the Holy Spirit these things and be convicted. So, It was great to see her shift to this more nuanced fleshed out faith. Yeah, I thought it was just some thoughts. I really appreciate that, Calvin, because I think one could get the impression with reading through a book like this that, oh, if we could just almost in a sense recreate The research journey that Brandy went on with everyone, if we just gave them the right things to read, That it should just be rationally obvious to everyone that God is true, the Bible is true, Jesus is true, when in the end, as you were just saying there, we're dead. We cannot come to that rational conclusion on our own. This is a Supernatural working of the Holy Spirit through the power of his word. but we cannot by our own thinking or choosing believe in Jesus Christ or come to him. And even if you read the right. Apologetics textbooks, the Holy Spirit is ultimately the one that is going to lead us to faith and confidence in Christ rather than faith and confidence in ourselves. I think it is just a valid word of caution that we don't ever get to a point of thinking like, oh, if we just get the right resources in front of people, then 100% those resources are going to be So verifiable to the individual that now they can make the proper decision for Jesus. No, the Holy Spirit is at work here and we need to trust in that. Yeah, so sow the seed and then go about your business and the Holy Spirit's gonna do the work. Um, yeah, that's, there's all over. We just talked about this in a previous podcast episode too, those seed parables and how You're scattering gospel seeds and then you go, then God's gonna make that grow. That's not, it's not a reasonable thing. It's not a rational thing. You can't argue somebody into faith. Um, sow the seed and part of sowing that seed might be the historicity and all that kind of stuff, but it's, yeah, it's ultimately the Holy Spirit making it. Yeah. And, what Brandy did so well in this book is what, what, A lot of Christian apologists like Lee Strobel do well is they remove some of the major stumbling blocks. That become almost non-starters for people in order to have an encounter with the true living word of God is, well, I'm not going to read this because this is this is foolishness. There's no historical evidence of this. So maybe to move some of those barriers out of the way so that someone can actually read the Bible and come into contact with God's word. That's a huge value that I see here. Yeah, and she said just as much. Like, she learned all this stuff factually and now she had sort of a now what? Phase. So, um, yeah, yeah. Good things. Awesome.

Unknown Yeah, any, any final thoughts, Calvin, on this book? so, a lot of what she has to say is very general and, about arguments with historicity and stuff. Every now and again, just given our, our faith background, When she's describing certain doctrines, I kind of go, well, I wouldn't necessarily say it that way, or I might have had some disagreements on, some points there about, conversion and baptism and these kinds of things, but, but by and large I was with her a large, large majority of the time. and I don't know what faith background people listening are coming from. If they're reading this book, I think you can still appreciate it. A large majority of it, even if you don't necessarily agree with her on some of these points of, doctrine and belief So it has merits, even though every now and again, I go, ah, can we say it that way? Maybe, maybe not that kind of thing. So that may be just something to say there at the end. Yeah, and I think one of the things to say with this, Brandy Really started unpacking her shelf back in 2020. And then this book was written just in 2024. So this woman has been on a. Wild journey for four years and the amount of research that she's done to date is incredible. And so what we're seeing here is someone that is still learning. Still learning about the Bible, still learning Christian doctrine. And she gave us a behind the scenes look at her journey, her research to date. And where she's at even, a year after writing this book might be different than where she's at when she hit publish on Amazon So I want to give her a little bit of grace in that sense. No, yeah, yeah, I know it was, yeah, a couple, just a couple places, but, you know, like everything we've said so far has just been, you know, top notch. Absolutely. Well, Kevin, thanks for doing the hard work of reading through this. I wouldn't say this book is for everyone. It's a much heavier ask to work all the way through this. It's just fantastic. Filled with all sorts of doctrine and, historicity about the Bible. But if that's your, your cup of tea, then by all means, check out The Journey to Jesus, Finding Christ After Leaving Mormonism by Brandy Bronson. Calvin, thanks for your work on this one. We'll look forward to the next time that we get to talk, proclaiming Christ to Mormons and empowering Christians to witness together. Have a blessed day. Thanks. You too.