Dialog on Real Mormons Talk Show (iPhone video)

well why do orthodox christians or your mainstream christians say that members of the lds church are not christian so we're gonna have open and frank discussion no pun intended frank if you're here uh we will be having a open and frank discussion so this is not for the timid at heart possibly so you might want to adjust your volume when you sit just in case you're standing by maybe you want to click the button or something just in case so let's get into it let's sit down at the walk-in tank aaron let's go to our guest all right all right so aaron we will have a open and hopefully pleasant discussion i know you have some of your members here what church are you a member of it's called the mission church so the boarding christian church in south jordan born in the church okay southern utah okay um and what's the what's the denomination or is it is it not the knowledge part of an association of churches called the converge network i think but i mean really we don't really self-identify by denomination of christians or believing christians people from a lot of different denominational backgrounds come so we're not christian mutts gosh you're kind of like us lds months maybe all right i'll throw braids i heard somebody say i'm a stallion baby purebred purebred okay all right so let's get into so let me just ask you point blank we got facebook up because i know some people might want to we do so we are live on our facebook page um real mormons real talk so you can ask us a question or ask a question for aaron and we'll get an answer for you yep so uh and then we'll take some questions from the audience as well all right so aaron what are your thoughts when i say that mainstream christianity does not consider members of the church jesus christ of latter-day saints christians would you agree or just be invested i agree okay so why do you think that is uh well personally why it's not it's not a an axe to grind a culture or a tribal issue it's not because it makes us feel good to say that uh we want to be good neighbors um but it's really a theological issue it's really about who god is and what the gospel is and so in a nutshell it's because we see there to be radical differences in our views of the nature of god who we're supposed to worship be in allegiance to affections for and the gospel of grace how do we get right with god forgiven by god adopted by god it's very precious and core to us so even though people we might love dearly are good neighbors and uh really good role models for us in terms of work ethic and ethics when when those core issues are off we feel like we have a duty to categorize it as non-christian okay okay so what core duties or what core issues how do you feel are you i think the lowest hanging fruit the most the starkest difference i can put out there to help people understand just how radical this is sometimes i ask people in utah do you believe heavenly father was maybe a sinful mortal before he became a god and this is all on the basis of that traditional couplet as man is god once was as god his man maybe evil lorenzo snow couplet so i asked people do you believe you think heavenly father was maybe a sinful mortal before he became a god now about two-thirds of the people i ask that to here in utah will say something to the effect of yes or or probably or maybe or something that effect that's a very different answer than i get in the christian community in the christian community as i'm defining it here a hundred percent of christians would say heavenly father was never a sinful mortal he was always holy part of what makes god god part of what makes god special in class by himself is that he's always been holy by himself not depending on another for his holiness not receiving any gifts of an ancestry of the gods or didn't have to become a god so when we sing to god on sunday morning or throughout the week or when we pray to god part of the core the theological foundation of that is having in mind a god who is holy holy holy is the lord god almighty who was and is and is to come as the angels say in revelation 4 so that's the biggest issue i think i know not not every lds person i can stereotype is believing one thing or the other but that would be the general issues that the lds faith traditionally holds that heavenly father is a part of an ancestry of gods that he's not necessarily the first of all gods whereas the historic christian faith says heavenly father is the first of all gods the greatest of all gods the most high not relatively more high not like me telling my wife you're the best cook in the universe that's just hyperbole um we say god is the best god uh we don't mean it with hyperbole we mean it quite literally and how do you get that information how do you how do you come to that understanding of i quote in revelation 4 verse 8 holy holy god one of my other texts that i go to is in isaiah the context is comparing the great god of the bible the great yahweh the great jehovah how is he different from the false gods the pagan gods and god boasts in himself he's bragging rights right he's he's uh he's asserting his credentials for why he's worthy of our worship and one of the things he says sets him apart is in isaiah 43 10. before me no god was formed nor shall there be any after me so the god that christians worship he's got no genealogy he's got no ancestry he's he can't thank anybody for helping him become who he is today because he's uh hell says from and through him and to him or all things to him be the glory forever if there's a heavenly grandfather or if heavenly father has to give credit to some other god above him or before him for who he is today then we ought not to be heavenly father we ought to be worshiping the first of all gods so that brings me to this question then so if we say that there was no god before god and that there was no god after god and we're looking at it as from the perspective of what we can understand as humans in our limited understanding already if we say or we look at that scripture and we take that scripture and say literally that there is no god before god there is no god after god is it possible in your mind to conceive the possibility that god is grafted from an existence that god always has been god god always is god and that there is no god before him and know god after him being could it possibly be a family as one so i'm understanding you correctly you're asking what if yeah i'm just asking you just because i know as humans we look at it from a perspective of let's say well god is god he's god all by himself he's never had gods before him or or god after him from what you're saying from the scriptures if we're looking at that scripture from a literal perspective literally we look at it and from our understanding my son is my son and we're not united he's him and i'm me he'll never be me and i'll never be him however however we are one in one sense that that's my son my name will continue to go with him throughout his name or throughout his family throughout his generation generations can go back and look at myers and go here here here here here as one and so i'm asking you to consider this is there a possibility or in your mind can you concede that because i think god is greater than where we can go right now i think we have a piece of an understanding of who god is and to limit that by saying um god is god and he's always been god and he'll that's all no i'm just saying it's a limitation i think i think it's limiting from this perspective that if you're saying that uh as you said members of the church believe that god is or was a man that walked on the earth today or walked through the that was a man who had yet to become god that's a qualifier and i believe god became a man the word became flesh and jesus christ okay but so again the qualifier the qualifier would be a man who had yet to be exalted as god okay so i'm really thinking about a personal identity though i'm not thinking about an abstract category there's a really good analogy to this maybe this makes sense to you sometimes i hear people talk about um like i said was heavenly father maybe a sinful mortal one of the responses i get this is in the same ballpark maybe you'll be thinking is well i should be okay with that because of the power of the atonement that the atonement can take a center and make something very great out of them and so i'm limiting it instead of the power of the atonement by not allowing god to have ever been a sinner the the the tricky nuance there is if heavenly father was a sinful mortal it would not have been jesus christ who had atoned for his sins it would have been the it would have been a uh a spirit sibling of heavenly father following the pattern it would have been some other savior on other another planet accomplishing another atonement so the basic idea frigging young developed this idea in his own sermons is that there would have been for every generation a different god and a different savior so here's my point some people say the power of the atonement and what they mean is the power of the atonement accomplished by many saviors across different generations of the gods they're abstracting that category power of the atonement just like maybe perhaps you're doing here with god there's an abstract category of grafting it or orson pratt talked about god is like the sum of all godly attributes that have all ever been acquired by uh any any person you know brought together when i say god is the best and the most high i'm trying to be uh as i'm not trying to be abstract at all i'm thinking about the personal identity of god who is yahweh that the god who has a name in scripture jehovah yahweh that particular god has always been most high there's no heavenly grandfather uh none of the side of them before them i sometimes ask people who was the first god there ever was and they're like man we got no idea and i said well in isaiah 44 god says of himself i am the first and i am the last besides me there is no god and that seems very personal it doesn't seem to be an appeal to an abstract category across all the gods in the genealogy okay so you believe that's the foundation as i'm as i'm listening and you kind of my personality is one where at first i kind of sit back and listen so as i'm as i'm listening two things come to my mind number one i think some sometimes we complicate our relationship with god with details and number two um i feel like seeing god as a man who has walked in my shoes makes him a more approachable god one of the first lessons i remember learning at my my father's knee he would always tell me when i would get a little mouth that he would say son you have never been a father but i've been a son and because of that when i didn't understand certain things as i was growing up i knew i could then go today and say you know what dad you know what it's like when your dad doesn't get the fact that come on the pretty girl just invited you to the dance and you need a new set of clothes right now you know he would understand those very um personal details of human experience young boy childhood and i don't know that that i really want a god who doesn't understand that who hasn't who hasn't lived that because when i come to him in my crisis of faith when i'm at the the crossroads when when the the pool of the world is on me i need to know that i'm praying to someone who's felt that i i don't think it makes him any less god because maybe he may have made some mistakes in some other life because i know i'm gonna make some mistakes and so when i go to him and i say hey you know father this isn't working for me i want to pray to to a god who understands that there are times when it's hard so i i don't know if that's a a tenet of church doctrine that i i really want to debate i really want to change i really want to argue that i really want to say no that's not it because i really hope that is it i really hope what is it that that that is pure and firm doctrine that as man is god wants laws and as god is man may become because that gives me hope that he can look beyond my flaws and still see some greatness in me as the son of my father i hope that in all of my flaws that by the time i take my final breath that somebody can say to me you are just like your daddy yeah and if they can't i have lived a lot of work for them yes so it was really interesting and look hebrews the greatest sympathizer the greatest empathetic high priest there ever was never sinned the person of jesus christ the book of hebrews is is esteemed as one who has never sinned and yet he's the most intimate closest uh empathizer we sympathetic high priest we have so here's what's really interesting about this if we say that's not good enough i need something better or more some people have said well we also need a father who actually sinned what we're saying is jesus's ability to empathize with our sinful temptations isn't good enough c.s lewis had a really interesting observation when we sin it's like we're giving in to something there's a pressure it's a temptation and when we finally just give in to the sin the pressure is released what's interesting about jesus christ is he never gave him that pressure so he had an intensity that built up over time of the temptation to sin that he never gave into so he is more able to empathize with our temptation to sin than anybody one more point here this is what's really cool about christmas is that in the bible you have this great eternal most high holy separate in a class by himself species unique god uh he's worthy of our worship because he's in a class by himself what's interesting about christmas is this omnipotent god becomes a little weak baby this omniscient god becomes a little learner this guy who is everywhere becomes a god who is spatially right there in a manger so the the incarnation as christians called it not that men would become gods not that we would have a father who knows what it's like to have been a man who became a god instead it's rather that god became a man that in his condescending love in his humility philippians 2 talks about this that although he was equal with god he didn't count that as a thing to be grasped or held on to and yet in humility he descended from his infinite glory to uh being a major smelly animals and i guess that's probably another point of doctrine that is different because i see god the father and jesus christ the son as two separate entities and so what i celebrate on christmas is the entry of jesus christ the son into the world to do the will of god the father and so i guess i i wouldn't see christmas as the day that that god became man and came to earth because that that would have happened if we're going with our previous former doctor that would have happened and can i give you a text but did you ask me sure hold on let me ask this question too uh before you before you go to that text so that's the fundamental or basic difference that says the mainstream christianity will not accept or will say that well no mormons are not christians or members of the church of jesus christ of latter-day particularly they believe those things we describe here so let me ask you this real quick with that being said then how do you justify in the mainstream christian world who's christian because fundamentally there's so many different doctrines amongst christ amongst mainstream christians and the arguments that mainstream christianity has amongst themselves outside of the lds church how do you determine in that category who's christians or are they all christians in that category and just the lds are all to the side so really quickly um right directly answering the question yeah uh john 1 1 in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god that's really don't worry awesome he was in the beginning with god without him was not anything made he created all things without him was not anything made that was made um so here i think but the really interesting follow-up it says i think it's verse 14 john 1. and the word the word was with god who was god became flesh and dwelt among us we have seen his glory glory is that the only son of the father but to directly answer your question um put it let's common ground connection point a little bit here uh in the lds faith as a as i see it um and pardon the rhetoric it's just a matter of speaking yeah good that's about 15 million members now is that right so we're right there i like to say if a denomination is a variation of belief there are 15 different uh sorry 15 million different denominations of the mainstream faith so if there's any any level of variation counts as a domination that every person has his own denomination right what really matters both to the lds faith i think okay and and to basically christianity is that there's a core right so lds people might disagree on some nuances or periphery but in general there seems to be a historically a core set of beliefs for the baptismal interview for example like those are the things that we really expect people to basically believe likewise the mainstream christian faith says well here's some here's some core things who god basically is and the the finished work that of jesus christ that he accomplished on the cross if i'm trusting in christ and his work alone for my forgiveness of sins if i've had a basic repentance experience a born-again experience of change of heart and i'm not trusting in myself anymore i'm not looking to the world anymore i'm looking to jesus and what he's done he's enough for me jesus lord jesus please save me when uh when we're in a local church and there's a new believer we're diagnosing maybe we need to get baptized we're looking for that core set of beliefs even though there might be a ton of stuff on the periphery that we disagree on what's really cool about uh evangelism by the way downtown when i go with my friends and do evangelism we're typically from about five six seven different churches with really important variations of belief but we share a core uh love of the basics of the gospel so yeah you're right a lot of variations people say there's uh tens of thousands of denominations of mainstream christians i'd say there's hundreds of millions of different denominations because every single person is different what really matters is the what's really cool for me experientially is when i was in high school you hang out with clicks i was a nerd computer science guy uh you know i'm not hanging out with people who are good at sports like that i have people who were socially like me when i became a christian and went to college and got involved with a campus group called campus crusade for christ we had this amazing unity of jocks and nerds of socially awkward people socially abled people just just you know 100 different categories of people who came together and stuck together as a social unit not because we had any like amazing social common ground but because we had a spiritual common ground our unity our blood so to speak our shared unity was that christ had forgiven our sins and that he he was more than enough jesus had we have a relationship with him i'm sorry that's that's the core i guess my my where i'm coming from is is a little bit of a place of pain because i grew up in the south i grew up in georgia and i remember when my high school finally got a chapter of fellowship of christian athletes and i remember going to that meeting a fellowship of christian athletes and i made no secret of the fact that i was born and i was proud of it and i remember someone asking well why are you at fellowship of christian athletes and and mormons are not christian and i said whoa like first of all by what authority are you granting my membership into christianity number two my church actually bears the name of jesus christ number three i can trace my authority to proclaim the gospel of jesus christ back to jesus christ and by virtue of christ to god the father so if anybody should be at this fellowship of christian athletes meeting i should have been the first one through the dark can i turn it around yeah absolutely so uh at least from where we're coming from every single christian uh is forgiven of all their sins they're adopted by god the indwelling gift of the holy spirit child of the holy ghost they have eternal life they're secured by the father they're completely accepted and justified so as i understand it'll be a standard doctrine if i wanted the remission of sins i would have to have a baptism done by proper priesthood authority and if i wanted to have if i wanted to receive the gift of the holy ghost i would have to have the laying off hands by proper priesthood authority same thing goes for the new testament doctrine of adoption of the receiving of eternal life so as i understand standard lds doctrine or teaching at least from the manuals if someone isn't in the lds church they are not if they if they especially if they're they're rejecting well let's just say they have not received baptism or the layout of hands by proper priesthood authority they do not have remission of sins or the gift the reciting and dwelling gift of the holy spirit so to turn it around if lds people don't believe that non-mormon [Music] professing believers in jesus don't have forgiveness of sins and don't have the gift of the holy ghost i actually think it would be bad for mormons to call us christians i actually think that these people should say look you guys are not true christians because where i am i'm so busy trying to stay on the on the path that it really doesn't matter to me if people are proclaiming to be christian or not because that that's just a title that there's that's just a title and i think it matters more well what are you doing because you have this title of christian and let's go back let's let's go back to what you said too and i agree with you what you said to cody let's look at this one of the things that you said was that our doctrine says that we don't believe that people outside of the elders church are forgiven or don't have a remission of their sins they don't have a complete remission of sins so i don't even know and then that would be i guess i about the gift of the holy ghost you have the influence of the holy ghost right now because of the of how the gift of the holy ghost is bestowed and uh given to us now we believe that god is a god of order of honor that everything god does he does decent and in order and so it only makes sense to us and to me let's look it only makes sense to me because i can internalize and personalize and then you can piggyback and if anyone else wants but it only makes sense to me that if god is a god of decence and an order and everything in god's house is done orderly x y z abc that he would have a way that things are done in the christian faith or the christian world that i was in before i became lds the baptist had a certain way that they received the gift of the holy ghost uh the pentecostals had a certain way the methodists had a certain way some of them didn't believe in the gift of the holy ghost and when you go and you look at the umbrella of christianity you see a bunch of confusion when you look at well how did he he got the whole well how did where and if god is a god of order and you got all these things all over the place and you just looking and you just like wait a minute this which one do i go to how do i where am i gonna fit in so we believe that god is the author of order and our enemy is the author of confusion and so and you got order right here and the enemy is the author of chaos and we got we know exactly what we're doing and how to do it and we got internet over here you got well what you oh hey so you got clarity over some issues in lds faith right and there's diversity right if that's what you want you want to call it clarity and diversity so i'm saying there's there's there's things that typically every audience person strongly believes i i'm not trying to be controversial in the lds faith uh there's a core common set of beliefs but there's outside of that there's a there's things that lds people internally have different opinions on right different speculations as far as when they're having like what whether uh we can be worshipped when we become gods whether heavenly father has multiple spouses whether heavenly father is the first of all gods uh yeah i think how we solve that or how we put that and there's a script in document coverage and i'm trying but basically it says of tenants thou shalt not speak but proclaim this faith repentance baptism laying on a hand by the gift of the holy ghost and endurance to the end i think that that's just let me recommend an audience book to you guys um it's a book that it was sold in desert in the morning all right wait for baptist preaching teaching is that so this used to be sold at deseretbook.com it's a book called this is my doctrine the development of mormon theology to buy a byu guy named charles harl maybe harold metro doesn't say his name but he traces the doctrinal development of beliefs and uh you know i've attended a few uh meetings of mormon apologists and there's like some real serious party disagreements just a one more example out here um this is really really special and important and personal to me there's a book by spencer campbell called the miracle of forgiveness and uh yeah i heard that one yeah so yeah there's uh what some in in other communities called mormon neo orthodoxy out of the byu religion department and i'll just give you one key text here to illustrate it second nephi 25 23 says we're saved by grace after all we can do now the traditional interpretation of that since the 1950s as i understand it is that if we fulfill a set of preconditions of requirements and qualifications of worthiness and earning this this thing that we receive this grace about as i see it at the uh late 90s there was an author he wasn't the first one but he really popularized he wrote a book his name's stephen robinson and his name he wrote a book called the leading christ and in it he popularized the idea that when he says we're saved by grace after all we can do it's not teaching that you've got to do all these things and then you get the grace he said it was pretty much in spite of what we can do or not withstanding all we do so there ended up being some diversity within the lds faith over what kind what was a good interpretation of that verse but more importantly what constituted the forgiveness i'm sorry the repentance that leads that that brings forgiveness spencer kimball's teaching uh man you've got to clear the urges out of your mind you never do it again and then you can be forgiven and you guys at byu were saying well maybe it's a lot easier than that i think it's more realistic than that i'm not trying to bash any guys i'm just saying there's real diversity there's real diversity among christians there's real diversity too but it really matters you have to ask yourselves what's the hill worth dying on for me it's not the mode of baptism for me it's not uh for me it's not whether or not you think i'm christian yeah it's just about the hill that i'm gonna die so just start talking too much just some background on me so when i'm not here doing this or singing with the choir i am a behavioral scientist that's what i do i pick apartheid behavior i try to understand it and he watches me am i being inspected for me religion is a lot like other human behaviors and at the very core of it it's about relationship what is the nature of my relationship with god what is my relationship with christ what is my relationship with the holy ghost what is the nature of my relationship with um baptism with whatever and just as therapists you know people people generally come in and they talk in terms of symptoms and not necessarily in terms of problems so so when they come in they don't say i have bipolar when people come in what they throw at me is one day my mood is up one day my mood is down i'm a little depressed and then i'm real mannequin when i'm in it and qvs is on and spent all my money and things like that and so in order to con consolidate the list of symptoms so that when i talk with other therapists i don't have to give the laundry list of symptoms we have a label we have a label for individuals who feel a little sad and teary loss of energy loss of appetite loss of interest in things we call that depression and what that label is telling us this is the nature of this person's relationship with optimal functioning and so then everybody who has that type of relationship with optimal functioning then can choose to either carry or reject the label depressed i'm with you there are people who say the nature of my relationship with god is he is aware of my human experience because he's been there and he's overcome it the nature of my relationship with christ is he came under unfavorable circumstances and he didn't sin and then on a thursday night on a dark dark day thursday night where he could have experienced it perhaps by revelation he chose to experience it in the flesh he took upon him not just my sins but my agonies my disappointments he knows what it's like to fail your driver's license test on your 16th birthday so your mom got to take you to school the next day and that's not real he understands that type of disappointment and and my relationship with the holy ghost is when i'm about to mess up he's going to tap me on the shoulder he's not going to call me to come he's going to call me well my parent's a sport you don't want to do that and he's also the great teacher and testifier of truthing as we read in john 14 26 and so that the nature of god is what he said in amos when he said surely the lord would do nothing when he revealed his seekers unto his servants the prophet if you say that is the means by which i'm going to let you know what's up then i'm going to make sure that you have prophets and so that is the nature of my relationship with all things spiritual that i'm going to associate with people who have a similar relationship and maybe we're going to call it mormonism or maybe we're going to call it latter-day saints or maybe we're going to call it the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints whatever we're going to call it but are different denominations or religions or whatever it is simply a gathering of people who have similar relationships with spirit spirituality and you know why once i understand what's going on inside my own head i don't need another doctor to to come and diagnose me i know what's up i'm not functioning i refuse to adult that's my label i think you probably agree with me in general principle here that one of the biggest issues in counseling is worldview and identity our big assumptions about life what we're really after how we do how we're defined and how we identify right so for me one of the core principles of the gospel is that identity comes before true holiness i need a new identity i need a new way of thinking i need a new worldview and i need it i need to see myself rightly with god in relationship to him and all my behavior and me dealing with my greatest deepest problem which which like you would agree it's not outward behaviors i've gotta hopefully we agree here my deepest problem my deepest aaron's deepest problem is sin my carnal uh enemy uh resistant nature inside of me to god uh i i need that crucified i need that replaced and renewed i need to be born again right jesus said he who sins is a slave to sin so this is what happened to me in high school i i realized that i could try really hard even with god's help i could try really hard to do good works uh to be a better person uh to make progress but i never could do enough to be righteous enough to to receive forgiveness i i i knew by by the standard i was assuming i thought i've got to be worthy and qualified and good enough and god will accept me and love me forgive me and justify me the turning point for my life was me saying god i'm desperate and god said you're not desperate enough and i said god i'm desperate he says you're not desperate enough and i got to the bottom where i thought i can't trust myself i'm not there's nothing in me that can ultimately make me my own righteousness right with god and so i finally got to the end of myself and i said god i'm i'm rotten down to the deep core of me i need you to forgive me and completely in spite of who i am i need you to go straight down and forgive all of my sin and just do it now as a free gift and it was like this huge burden came off and it was like god's saying yeah you got it it's kind of yeah therapy world let me say there's one thing let me say this one thing it's kinda like the welfare system what you just explained right now so you don't have to go to work you just get a check um but hold on hold on so so what we said if i'm hearing you right because because i've been over there on that side and i get i get the whole welfare system that i don't got to go to work you just don't send me a check but at some point when you know better you do better you should do better so i get the whole will never be good enough to earn god's grace i get that i see what you're saying and i know i've talked to a whole lot of folks who say well you know mormons believe that you work your way into heaven but it's not about the work it's not about trying to work our way into heaven the scriptures teach us that heavenly father said if you love me you'll keep my commandments and so it's about understanding that it's progression in the christian community where there's so much confusion about who we are where we are and it's about we gotta get this and we gotta get that in that community i totally get the constant i need welfare i need a check i can't do the work i can't do this so god i need you to help me and if that's the kind of god you're saying we serve one that says i understand all your can't do's and because you can't do i'm going to do it for you all of the time never never amen never ever preaching never ever will you ever have to help carry that cross never ever will you have to live the gospel never ever will you have to love your neighbor never ever will i require you to exercise the fruits of the spirit i'm just going to give you a check can i give you two times you can give me all the text you want but it still sounds like welfare if you want me um this isn't just tit for tat me trying to the bible bash here like that this verse is the verse that god used in high school my life now you do know that in the christian community and this is why i brought a [Music] but i don't want a bible bash i could go right with you but i'm trying to refrain because one thing i do know if we start going scripture for scripture it's gonna remove the spirit well let me tell you a story about that and if we if we if we go scripture from scripture it's gonna become a a whole we can battle with the scriptures all day long let me just tell you what god used in my life this is the passage i what happened was i started reading through the new testament and i said god i want to read the holy testament in a month i didn't actually complete that but i got the most of it the the the moment in my life where it seems like god took his foot and he put it on my chest he says i win i win and and and i have to say to god you win i lose you win god is when i was going through romans romans chapter 4 uh verses 4 and 5. this these are the verses god used to change me verse 4 says when a man works his wages are not counted to him as a gift but as his due so if you work as a pizza delivery guy and you get a paycheck it's not christmas gift you earned it you owed it it's indebted to you but verse 5 says and to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly his faith is counted for righteousness and in my life i thought that's me i'm ungodly i i can't i'm not gonna uh succeed if i'm trusting a god to justify the god because i'm not godly and i said i want god i can't earn this and so what it says is if you if you work for it in verses four and five if you work for it god won't give it to you but if you stop working he says to him who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly his faith is counted for righteousness now one more thing one more thing yeah not only that you're talking away on way out of context because if you go and you look at romans yeah you're a sentence okay check this out if you're working in romans don't give it to me yeah if you look at romans in general who's paul talking to you romans the romans right so there are a whole lot of things going on in romans right so let's look at romans chapter eight there's therefore romans chapter eight let's start at verse one there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in christ jesus who walked not after the flesh but after the spirit for the law of the spirit of life has made me free from the law of sin and death for what the law could not do but what the law could not do and that it was weak through the flesh god sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and forcing condemned sin in the flesh of the righteousness of the righteousness that is still that is fulfilling in us who walk not after the flesh you know what after the spirit did you do it i did i rewind again but so hold on hold on so hold on i'm on the road now i'm on the road call me butter anyway so there's my point is there's a whole lot going on in romans so if we're talking to the romans who rule everything at this point who are the the the alphas uh of the world right now that's ruling everything and paul is trying to teach to the romans i can understand that in a roman context kind of like here yeah there's nothing that you can do good enough right as a roman there's nothing that you can do good enough that's going to cover up your own sin to the romans but when he was talking to the philippians he had a different message when he was talking to the ephesians he shared something different with the ephesians so my point being this is it my point being this is that if we look at the scriptures and we say that this literally manifests itself to me and i'm to take this literally not spiritually we're going to be totally confused and we're going to be sitting up here arguing about scriptures but what we have to do is we have to take the scriptures from a spiritual perspective and look at the scriptures spiritually and dissect them from a spiritual perspective there is no way there is no way in i want to say god's green or heaven yeah no way in heaven right now nowhere in heaven that god would take the principle of work and negate absolutely absolutely absurd in fact didn't i believe it was nephi put it this way it says wherefore do the things which i have seen that your lord and your redeemer should do for for this cause have they been shown unto me that you may know the gate by which you should enter the gate by what you should enter is repentance and baptism then cometh the remission of your sins by fire and by the holy ghost and then he asked this question but who i would ask after you have entered in by the way if you're done he says not it is simply not about having faith repenting being baptized receiving the gift of the holy ghost god is a god of doom in fact if you're trying to get to god and you're creeping up on him from behind you're gonna get to d and o before you get to g so if you're trying to catch up with god you're going to get to do before you before god i'm feeling like real man that was my job that's the wrong i think i my own experience it seems flipped and here's how this is when i was in high school i hated my mother uh irrationally told it was his mom uh anyway i'm just like hey no seriously oh personal note i hated my mother uh for bad reason i was an irrational teenager but i had a bitterness toward her i thought she was holding me back for what i wanted in life and i thought she was difficult and irrational well when god saved me when god forgave me when i was at my lowest the the logic that quickly followed my life i remember being in a car with my brother and a neighbor friend and we were just well they were they were negatively critiquing they were they're talking smack about my mom and normally i would have joined in yeah can you believe her and the logic the new gospel logic in my life was wait if god forgave me when i was ungodly in a rational god forgave me when i was unworthy and unqualified and i had not done the dno if i got to the g before i got to the d.o then maybe i should love my mama like god loves me and so this this beautiful thing started to happen in my life these difficult people in my life uh paul says in colossians forgive as you have been forgiven and there's this beautiful story where uh this woman comes and watches jesus you got to the doom well because you had to ask well let me one more thing one more thing the beautiful stuff got you to do because you had the ass that's right let's say they don't just have hatred they start passing out forgiveness the order is crucial one more thing in luke 7 this woman comes and wipes jesus's feet with her hair and uh people i think madness judas are an apostle other apostles like that's expensive stuff you should have sold that give the money to the poor and jesus he uh he laser sharp focus he looks at peter and pete said peter there were two debtors one with 500 denarii 150 denarii they're the one they were indebted to forgave their debts which one of the two do you think is more loves the mastermind peter's like the one who was forgiven more the one who had the forgiveness the bigger debt and jesus looks at this woman and he says this woman came in she's been kissing my feet wiping my feet with her hair he goes on jesus goes on to say he who is forgiving little loves little now here's my big point my greatest commandment in life from god is to love god and love people i am most empowered to keep god's commandments when i get to the g before the dmeo if i have an identity of being forgiven freely by the lord jesus christ and his work and his work alone on the cross i am most empowered to fight my own hypocrisy to put the death and deeds of the flesh i can most i can i'm most able to do the dno and this is all gospel issues for us mainstream christians when we flip it it's false gospel in galatians it's when you flip it it's it's a completely different you take something very vital away which is agency because if you don't do anything if you don't ask if you don't do nothing it's just like guys are you forgiving you forgiving you forgiving you get a car you get a car you get a car you get a car you know and and it's you you've got to at least ask so there is a dude there's a process you got to ask heavenly father is not going to just take your agency and we're gonna get up here and we're gonna have to go ahead and make that point because we gotta take some questions yeah here's the thing and i i heard this in your start about changing how you saw your mom which by the way your relationship with god look a lot like your relationship with your mom but that's a whole nother of the show y'all have to talk with one on one yeah okay post some pictures of some butterflies in the behavioral sciences we we talk about this idea called reification that as human beings we somehow forget our own authorship of truth you created a truth about your mom that ironically sounds a lot like the truth you created about god when you chose to take authorship of your truth about your mom and create a different truth about your mom you started to see her differently just as when you saw god not as this being who was waiting to punish you this being who was so out of reach then you you had a a new way of seeing god so when you change the way you see things the things you see change amen conversion at the very core is about changing the nature of our relationship with god yes sir so and i guess what where i'm getting stuck is i never saw myself as being so unworthy so ungodlike that i couldn't feel that he loved me i was always taught i am so much like him that this foolishness that i thought that i wanted to participate in was just so out of character for who i am that that was not me that was me forgetting who i am and when i chose to change the truth about who i am i'm a son of god and within me is a seed as it were with the potential to become like god some of this foolishness in the world that was not for me we got to take some questions can i just say thank you for now after doing the dialogue and having the spirit of god this was i really appreciate you doing oh absolutely let's take some questions yeah let's take some questions i know some or some statements comments yes i love what i've i'm really loving what i'm witnessing here because being a christian christian comes from christ right christians mean christ like our follower of jesus christ would we all agree with that absolutely yeah so are you a follower of jesus christ i try my best yes don't try that there is no tragedy are you a follower of jesus christ yes i am are you a follower of jesus christ i'm a follower of the particular jesus who created absolutely everything are you a follower we're of his word you know he taught he came and he taught us how to live and he he atoned for our sins that's the christ i'm talking about is that the christ you're talking about i know i'm not trying to be difficult i just i'm just yes i know yeah well um you know one of the things jesus you're not answering me i'm sorry i'm not trying to be difficult yes or no is this the jesus christ that are told for your sin does is that why do you love him isn't it because he atoned for your sin or is that not one yeah he died for me when i was his enemy yeah so isn't that why you love you why is that not why you love him oh it's a huge reason why i love it oh but there's there's another reason why you love me okay and and and how about you is that why why do you love jesus christ well he made me too well okay do you agree with that too i agree with that okay so you all agree with that and that he died for your sins i'm not sure we do agree um well you just answered my question and you said yes did jesus christ create your spirit or intelligence i'm sorry i'm not trying to take it away so i don't think we agree because that's all right i'm not trying to pivot from you okay i don't think we agree because beneath the surface of the words uh as i understand standard mormon theology i'm not trying to stereotype anybody but standard mormon theology as i understand it is jesus is not responsible for begetting or creating our spirits or intelligences that was the work of heavenly father and that he jesus himself was begotten in the heavenly father okay then i asked this question yeah so you're you're separating jesus christ and heavenly father right so they're not the same people in the so here's i'm just asking because i'll give you an awesome answer you're dividing them and so i'm just wondering so you said jesus did this but heavenly father did that let me help you out okay please most lds people who i talked to about the trinity issue no i'm just asking you yeah yeah this is what i say to that okay most people think that trinitarians believe that heavenly father and jesus christ and the holy spirit are one person with different modes but that's not the trinity the trinity is that the father son and the holy spirit are one god and three distinct persons who are in relationship so i do differentiate them as persons but not as different beings of god okay so you you were talking about you were separated though right distinguishing the two persons the father and the son okay so you do believe that they're in relationship even they love each other uh they've never been out of relationship they never had a beginner relationship and you do believe that the father is the father of jesus uh i would not say um pardon the crash language i would not say sexually i would not say uh i'm not trying to be difficult but yeah the contents behind those words as i understand it in classic mormon theology is that heavenly father has stopped this you're making this too difficult okay i'm sorry you really make it i'm just asking you a simple and and honestly when you start telling them what they believe i don't want you to think yeah i mean i just asked you a question and if you just answered your question i asked him the same question as i asked him as i asked you just answer your question don't tell us what we we believe absolutely or what he believes and and how is different i just ask you i i was once a baptist even a baptist missionary and so the jesus that i knew that i had a relationship with the jesus has saved me that changed my life that i grew to love as my best friend as a baptist when i converted as an lds it was the same jesus did you can i ask you a question let me finish that i'm sorry it was the same jesus and and the relationship i had with jesus christ is the same as it was as a baptist that's why you know i think it's very unfortunate when we start separating people or judging people or saying i'm a christian and you're not a christian christian is follower of jesus christ and having a love for the savior because of what he did for us and and the main thing he did for me he loved he loved me and he and because of his his gospel has changed my life and and has spoken to my mind and my spirit is the same jesus i'm telling you it is the same jesus it's the same relationship you tell me no you don't know how you know what relationship i got with jesus christ i don't tell you what kind of religion that's why you ask me for questions okay i know but but you can only speak for you you're right and i don't know you that's right you don't know me and i was baptist and i was strong baptist he was told that i i was a baptist missionary in liberia west africa but then the spirit told me to join the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints i didn't i went in kicking and screaming i did not want because the music i was like i can't handle this i can't do this but you know when i joined the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints the is it's the same gospel it is the same gospel that will get us in it's that relationship with jesus christ it's the his word that's what we're that's what it's all about when we die i mean there are people who don't know whether jesus christ you know uh jesus and our father in heaven and the holy ghost is one day but they have a relationship with jesus and the slaves had a relationship with jesus they knew jesus and and in terms of father in heaven i don't know maybe they looked at jesus and father in heaven is the same being but but it's that relationship with jesus christ because you can't get to the father anyway unless you go through jesus so right and and so i i say i say to you that these men are christians they believe in jesus christ and they believe in following the gospel his gospel it's the same gospel or honestly it's the same gospel whether or not we we are sealed to our families forever and ever is to me is neither here nor there we'll know when this life is over whether or not i was before i was born is neither here nor there i know jesus that's what matters is that all the intricacies of the is did it happen this way or this way it's your relationship with jesus christ and his gospel his truth so i say we're all christians and let's stop fighting let's start fighting we're christians we we're followers of jesus christ and we love him and we we try to to to do as he would have us do because he loved us first people before we even loved ourselves he loved us so much that he suffered a pain that no mortal man could ever suffer he did that for me personally matthew few things yes please in the gospel of john chapter 8 jesus tells jesus is firecrackers sometimes right he says some pretty provocative things in john chapter 8 jesus said i'm telling you the truth i'm sorry no wait i'm sorry i'm just i was just getting my son i was quoting jesus man in john chapter 8 jesus says to the pharisees i tell you the truth before abraham was i am and they picked up stones to throw at him because they understood what he was saying uh implicitly he's identifying himself with the great god of exodus uh moses says who shall i say sent me and god's like you tell them the great yeah i am you tell them i am that i am send you so when jesus says i tell you the truth before abraham i am he goes on uh they know he's making a claim to deity later on he says unless you believe that i am you will die in your sins so let me just introduce a third party here to help you understand how i'm thinking about this jehovah's witnesses they claim to be devout disciples of the lord jesus christ to take the name of the lord jesus christ upon them they claim to follow all of his teachings but they do not believe that jesus is divine in the sense that most matters i would look at my jehovah's witnesses friends my neighbors and i'd say look you don't know the great i am yet uh you need to know jesus as the great yahweh so one more thing here one of the things that paul says about jesus to lift him up and make him so unique and worthy of our adoration and worship he says in colossians 1 that jesus verse 15 is the image of the invisible god the firstborn of all creation for by him all things were created whether thrones minions rulers principalities everything was created by him and for him so here's why this matters to me as i understand classic mormon theology that's my qualifier not stereotyping anybody here classic mormon theology as i understand it teaches there's a host of things jesus did not create he did not create the planet that our spirit grandfather was born on he did not create our our intelligences he did not create matter uh he did not create the planets that all the other gods and the ancestries i'm sorry all the other yeah all the other gods and all the other planets of the ancestry that gods created the god of the sorry the jesus christ of mormonism as i understand it created a subset of things in reality the jesus christ i'm pointing people to have a relationship with to worship to have a direct prayer relationship with even is that jesus christ who created everything and i look at what the mormon church has said about jesus and i'm not trying to be difficult with your promise but i'm just saying the doctrine's so different that i think we have different jesus christ you know a key phrase that i heard you said as i understand it of the mormon faith and so i will i will extend this invitation to you it might be time to talk to wayne's 12 year old friends [Laughter] [Music] it's a story behind us to talk to the missionary because i i feel like they lowered the age to 12. that's big news i think if it might do you some good to sit down with a practicing latter-day saint ask your questions read the book one of the ways that i avoid a bible match is i teach from the book of mormon i'll never get into a bible match when i'm teaching from the book of mormon read the book of mormon and right at the very end moroni gives us a challenge to first read with the intent of gaining understanding to ask with the anticipation of getting an answer and then this promise about the power of the holy ghost you will know the truth of all things if you really want to know if mormons are christians reading mormons real talk is not the place to get that answer but on your real needs in real prayer in a real conversation with a real god [Applause] do you believe that's true if you pray that the lord will let you know whether or not the romans are christians and he said but read the book of mormon so you have some information and then that you have read the book of mormon so you have some information and then pray to your father in heaven do you think he'll keep you the answer i think he gives answers in his voice i'm sorry two things i want to go back to your mother [Music] i want to go back to your mother you and your friend your brother and his friend are putting down your mother why uh you frustrated with her not being gracious to her was shocking okay was she involved in drugs or something or bad behavior my mom was a good mom she didn't deserve that so then you guys are the ones involved in the bad behavior oh yeah that's us it's our sin okay well it's our dude you kind of answered a lot of the questions from the bottom of my heart you spend more time dissecting the bible instead of reading and studying it because everything you have said there's an answer to and i'll give you this if you really follow it well two verses before and when it starts in the first verse go two verses after amen and you have to read the bible verse right always read the context okay but it seems to me you pick out the ones that say or justify your feelings or justify your knowledge and i'm saying you were number one have never prayed to the spirit to our heavenly father jesus christ to direct you you take it based as a man i can just tell you how i try to do things in psalm 119 david prays lord open the eyes of my heart that i made me hold wondrous things out of your law so when i preach scripture i need god to open the eyes of my heart i'm stubborn and rebellious by nature so i need god to change me open my eyes he also says through paul he says show yourself study to show yourself approved somebody who's rightly dividing the word of truth so what i want to do is i want to think really heavily about the context uh you know and if you're right if i'm just justifying my feelings and my experiences by taking scripture out of context i move on at fault here and you guys are right to give me the grief over that well i don't want to give you grief oh no i'm not that's not i want to tell you what you're missing ask the lord to open the eyes of your heart don't put on shames well you know let him open the eyes of your heart so that you can see clearly amen let me finish the the one thing i'm telling you that you're missing is your heart is not involved in this it's your mind you're psychoanalyzing what you're reading and then justifying it into your heart and i'm saying throw all that out read and then ask heavenly father after every you can do it after every verse that's how i had to learn because i'm a dummy i had to study and then ask heavenly father if this was true until i finally did it enough that he gave me the answers let me reverse the challenge take the romans 4 verse 4 and 5 challenge by starting at chapter 1 verse 1 and then just following the flow of paul as he builds up an argument and a point and a picture all the way up to romans 4 and just ask yourself one question and do don't do this by your mere intellectual prowess do this asking god to open your eyes and help you see through here's my question when romans 4 verse 5 says god justifies the ungodly does that make more sense in context or does the just does the joseph smith translation make more sense when he switches it to say god justifieth not the ungodly that's my challenge that's it well you know again we we have to look at what we have look at the context right and not only that when you when you're looking at the context again don't miss something very vital a lot of times when we read the scriptures we read the scriptures and we take them from face value and we take them literally we have to take the scriptures spiritually because they were written that way and i think that's that's the struggle when it comes to faith we we we want to confine god to the capabilities of our mind when he is best comprehended in the capacities of our hearts by saying he's the god of everything he's he's greater than we could possibly even imagine but our imagination so but you know the because the the therapist and he said this is about control issues because if we can dissect god and understand him then we can control how god moves in our lives or anybody who's ever been in love knows or when the heart gets in it right you lose control right and so the idea of of having god function in the heart yeah and we can't control it oh no well everybody on one point here in jeremiah 17 it says the heart is is just deceptive it's so wicked it's hard to even understand who can really understand it our temptation our our bent as fallen carnal humans is is not to take the truth about god for what it really is our temptation is to make god in our own image that's how we box him and that's how we limit him we want to conform god to what we want right instead of conforming our wants to what god has told us this is the great temptation of the human carnal idolatrous bent uh roman in romans chapter one paul says that there was a great exchange that people exchanged the glory of god uh the truth about god for lies and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator okay we gotta take another question brandon yeah hey um yeah yeah okay it's good so uh first of all i wanted to say i think it's really commendable that anybody wants to be more spiritually minded uh wants to seek the will of the father um but what i notice a lot of times when i'm talking to my earliest friends and maybe even a little here tonight is that when we get to talking about scriptures we a lot of times maybe fear away from that and say well we look maybe like what you said earlier you know we we don't want to take it literally we want to take it spiritually and one of the things that you also said is that we want to avoid confusion because and i agree god is not a god of confusion but when we make statements like we want to interpret that scripture spiritually that has no no base meaning it seems like you know what what does that mean and uh and i'll give an example there's an article in one of the major newspaper publications around here a while back about an lds teacher who taught a class based on one of the gospel topic essays that the church had put out it was i think it was about blackstone priesthood and you know a very sensitive issue and he was teaching based off of what the essay said because he felt like he had a spiritual confirmation from heavenly father telling him to teach that but then his priesthood i think it was the high priest maybe i i don't know exactly who it was but they told him his bishop told him that he shouldn't be teaching that because the spirit told him that he wasn't supposed to and they had a disagreement about what the spirit was actually telling him it seems to me that if we veer away from the scripture that we actually get more confused because that's the reason we have the scripture to tell us what god wants us to know well it's not the fear away from the scriptures right let's not let's not get that confusion or confused or not take it literally yeah it's not that we're bearing away from the scriptures but when we're in a setting like this a lot of times we can end up bible bashing i know when i was before i even joined the lds church amongst christians we battled with prison with scriptures and i'm sure that that still goes on in the christian community that they battle with scriptures and that's just not what we what we want to do and we gotta because that that that is the fundamental difference between the law of moses and the new law the law of moses was a very um direct particular do this in this way take this many steps on the sabbath tie this kind of not on the sabbath type of law and then jesus said basically if i'm speaking speaking everyday terms we we we're going not necessarily about what you're doing with your hands but what are you doing with your heart jesus said that the old law says thou thou shalt not kill but i say unto you he who is angry with his brother again a condition of the heart he who is angry with his brother is in danger of judgment and so i think there comes a point where we have to start living the spirit of the law and the spirit of the word of god because that that the literal word of god was shut down red lobster would it not well in the old testament um if we were to take the word of god literally every man who who takes a a woman to wife better have an extra room or extra house because one month of one week a month she won't have to move out well and you better go to your mama house to eat because during that month she's supposed to be in the kitchen yeah he said it he said that's what the literal word says i'm right with you i'm just saying that but you can't ask me questions uh first of all i want to say i really like you guys i had a good i had a great time talking to you wayne earlier it was i felt good about it man i felt like family with you and i don't even know you that was not in regards to the word of god and and battling with verses i i understand what you're saying man i get i hear your heart on that and i think that if we remove you know the love of god and the spirit of christ from what we're saying it's it's dead it means nothing so i agree with you on that point my issue would be jesus in matthew chapter four when he had to deal with the adversary you know with satan you know was just all he did all he did was quote scripture you know a man does not live by bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the living god so i think that it's got to be with the right heart always because of your heart's dead who cares but i think that using verses and quoting scripture is given to us as an example by jesus specifically as a way to deal with you know whoever might disagree with you and i it can get hard it can get contentious and we shouldn't be you know so contentious and if we're not keeping the greatest love loving god loving our neighbor i don't care what else somebody says you know what if they can't be loving to me first i don't need to listen to what they're saying clear down here but i think that using scripture uh the word of god as an example of how we should deal with you know people who disagree with us i think is very scriptural and a good thing to do and as a member let me just say on behalf of them i'm gonna give you 60 seconds because we gotta wrap up and they keep telling us we gotta go and i know we way over time so go ahead 60 seconds i just wanted to say something real simple on behalf of my christian brothers and sisters who came here just to be with us i got people from the mission people from the rock people from other churches here um we love you guys and care about you and uh i hope i'm not unnecessarily difficult um but i want to let you know that uh i think when i think about you guys i love you guys and uh that sounds cheap you know i'm really gonna have to live that out and show that so i don't even have to say it right but i just want to let you guys know i'm not here as an enemy or a difficult person i don't care about you guys i know that's what that's exactly why we've invited you i appreciate it that's all i got man thank you thank you so much you got to wrap it up to kobe you got the last of kobe isn't for us oh my goodness for this week is simply you know sometimes it's not really about learning to dance in the rain sometimes it's about learning to worship in the storm because when your knees are bent and your eyes are closed and your wheel is surrendered their god will be found amen you've been listening to real mormons real talk i'm your host wayne myers and i'm tacoverjacksonvan keep it real or keep it to yourself [Music]

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Length: 82min 14sec (4934 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 24 2021