Dr Lynn Wilder testimony

[Laughter] [Music] you know the Scriptures say we are compelled to love and Michael and I certainly feel like we are compelled to love our Mormon neighbors we talk to Mormons every day and pretty much Mormons who are questioning their faith I don't know if you have any idea but Mormons are just streaming out of the Mormon Church right now in 2011 one of them Mormon General Authorities Marlon Kay Johnson said that it's an apostasy like their church has never known before and that hit the news so of course from my point of view because I talk to people every day like Ron wonderful wonderful folks it seems that many many people are leaving you know when I first got saved I had this dream that God was just pouring out water that all the reservoirs had broken in the top of the mountains over the Mormon people and that the Holy Spirit was just pouring out over his people and it appears as if he's calling a remnant out and so this is so fun for me I cannot do it enough I hear these wonderful stories just within the last hour or so somebody on Facebook connected and said they were coming tonight so God always does something and he's amazing so we love our Mormon people and all we do is tell the story of what God did in our life yeah yeah so it's it's our unique story and anybody who has come out of Mormonism or any kind of legalistic system they also have a unique story and I just love to listen to people's stories just real quickly here Lyndon ight were very very active in the LDS Church back in 2005 you know I was a high priest and there was I was totally sold or more we lived in Alpine Utah which is about 99.999999% LDS a very beautiful area up against the wall sati mountains and I was the happiest Mormon you ever could meet and I known I always thought that you know I can't wait till I'm you know in my 60s that someday I can go out and talk about Mormonism well that has come true I'm in my sixties and now I'm out talking about Mormonism but not exactly what I had planned you know 13 years ago so I was made a high priest again we're not saying this to boast because we only boasted one thing and that's across but to let people know that we were really committed okay that we were not so-called Jack Mormons I was made a high priest when I was 36 I served in the High Council for like nine years I've served in multiple bishoprics in Indiana and Utah we worked in the Chicago temple for like 10 years I used to play God behind the curtain and to do all that fun stuff we taught seminary we taught you know you name it we've done it okay she was really society president she was a tenured professor at BYU she's state primary president and you know a lot of people say well we never really had a testimony and I said that's interesting if we never had a testimony then all those state presidents that called me to multiple callings must have gotten it wrong in the general authority to call in to teach at BYU he must have gotten it wrong so we were really really committed so so life was wonderful as as a Mormon in Alpine Utah life is perfect and tell this Jesus gets in the way okay so so moving on here this is a great verse and this is not applicable just to us this is applicable to every person out there who is doing who is doing work I want to be careful in that word who's who's helping people understand who Jesus is okay we all have a story and we read this it says who saved us and called us to a holy calling not because of our works again not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began Wow so nothing that we'd done we've done nothing to justify to speaking out but God has put us in this story God called us into the oldest church to call us out that's I truly believe that now and and it's only his handiwork that could have done that because I didn't want to come out so so this is us a few years ago Wow you know everybody last when they see this because they realized that I haven't changed any Aneta lens changed a lot so it's okay so there's pants will be back there in my closet they're going to come out and fashion next year okay could he get into here is empirical evidence that we were baptized okay and we moving on here here we lived in Muncie Indiana home of Garfield the cat and David Letterman all kinds of important people came out in West Indiana and so we would drive from Muncie Indiana to Washington DC that was our temple okay 13 hour drive and we would go there as often as we could now later on when we say we work ten years in the Mormon temple things was a lot easier later on because we had a Chicago temple we only had to drive four hours away to get to it we do that a lot of weekend traffic so but but anyway this is just a picture of us and don't get the idea that we went to the Washington Temple we went in and we came out with three kids that didn't happen okay but we would take our kids and take a babysitter and get multiple hotel rooms to go in to the temple the babysitter would watch the children we would go into the Washington DC temple and do endowment work temple work between 10 and 12 hours a day 3 or 4 days that's how dedicated we were so moving on here and 1999 things started changing so I'm going to give some time over to LAN okay so I might keep the coin to allow me to talk so I might need so okay well I'll give it to her okay and you have to understand you know I will stay up here because if Lin makes any errors okay I will gently correct her okay I won't be mean and I'll just point out a couple things one time she was speaking to a bunch of people and she said something about the gospel was for all of mankind I said LAN not mankind its people kind so anyway anyway it takes a little bit of high priest it's like radiation it has to get out of you over a period of years of control but anyway take it away land I feel I'll start at the beginning with me in 1990 as Mike was talking about loving being a Mormon we're living in Indiana and I'm Relief Society president I'm really involved in the church I'm working in a homeless five homeless shelters I was director of education programs for five homeless shelters a day and a half a week raising my kids you know life's good one night I go to bed at about 2:00 a.m. I hear somebody say my name and I sit bolt upright now I did not know the story of Samuel and Eli in the Old Testament and I had no clue that God could speak to you really you know I feel like in Mormonism I was always throwing my prayers up kind of as this righteous thing that I was doing to try to connect with God but he didn't really expect him to answer me because the God of Mormonism that I knew had a body of flesh and bone and that limits him materially right he can only be one play at one time so I just kept thinking unless I'm dying or something's really serious he's got more important things to attend to right so wasn't used to this some kind of relationship thing or he could actually show up for me next night go to bed about 2:00 a.m. Lin bolt upright up all night can't go back to sleep third night Lin 2:00 a.m. fourth 9/5 night six night now if you're if you're a Mormon mom you got kids I had elderly in-laws I was watching and this part-time job you know and I'm really society president and my phone's ringing all day long I am starting to get really tired fourth night Lin fifth night Lin six night this one on 14 nights in a row I remember counting the nights and at the end of the 14th night I'm really exhausted right now so Mormon I was taught to be very respectful to God use the endow but now I'm at my the edge right it's six o'clock in the morning it's the fourteenth night and I remember going to my knees and saying look if you have something to tell me just tell me cuz I can't stay up another night I someone spoke to me and said I need for you to go back to school no Mormon woman is supposed to do that the Prophet had just told us to come home from our typewriters we didn't have typewriters but it was you know a signal that you come home from your jobs and have lots of kids so we had just been told that and then I have this weird kind of spiritual experience that seems to be telling me the exact opposite this was kind of this beginning of this conundrum thing where God is maybe doing something but honestly I didn't trust it was odd I took one class at the local university for a doctorate because I already had a master's and I hated it and so I didn't go back and about four years later it was 1994 I was in this horrific automobile accident somebody came sliding across an intersection on ice and hit me and I was laid up for the next year and a half went to physical therapy probably three times a week hour-and-a-half lying on a table somebody working on me and have voice start coming back again remember I asked you to go back to school so I thought maybe it's God you know so I signed up I got a job teaching at the University so I could pay my tuition and I'm teaching early-morning seminary so here's the here's the LDS lady's schedule right I'm getting home at midnight after I've been studying I sleep for a few hours I get up at 5:00 I teach early-morning seminary then I'm teaching an 8 o'clock class at the University I come home and I've got to get kids to dental appointments and soccer games and all that kind of stuff get supper on the table and then get to my night classes I just have no idea if nothing else you should have great empathy for the life that LDS folks live and the effort to become perfect right to feel like they have to please God and know in order to be reconciled to God so I finished this doctorate and when I did in 1999 Mike and I went ah maybe God wants you at the Lord's University maybe that's what this whole spiritual experience was about right the awesome thing about God is he created all the stuff he said before the ages began for his purpose not for my purpose for his purpose right who knew that Mormons would be flooding out of the church when all of this story comes to be wrapped up right I didn't know that God knew that and he's planting all this cool stuff that's happening so I'm at BYU that my second year there I get assigned to teach diversity because our accrediting agency is forcing BYU to teach diversity they hadn't taught it they didn't want to teach it but in order to keep accreditation that was part of what they had to do was teach diversity and I was low man on the totem pole right I've just gotten hired so they assigned me to teach diversity my boss over me actually apologized said we will not use the term social justice but you know we're going to do what we can do to teach diversity and I'm like I love this thing I spent my life working with kids and gangs and drugs and teens who are pregnant you know every color on the face of the earth and poverty and inner cities and I was like oh hey I'm on this I like this right my very first class my BYU students start telling me about something called the curse of Cain as I'm trying to tell them that all cultures have value and stuff you know look I've been a Mormon 25 years at that point I never heard of the curse of Cain I'd never heard of it so my students start telling me it's in the Bible right well the issue is I'm Mormon I don't trust the Bible and I remember thinking that's stupid Bible that it would teach something a name like that right you know what it's not in the Bible I never went to read it I just believed what they told me and I didn't trust the Bible so I wasn't gonna mess with it anyway it was years after that I mean God worked with me for several years over this issue one time I was speaking at this National Convention prevent presenting a paper and a Native American stance and start tackling me so I can't speak saying what are you doing talking about diversity blacks couldn't even go to BYU in the 1960s whoa now I joined church in 77 that was news to me I don't know anything about that part of church history so I go back to the University now I'm asking them is this true the associate dean in my college gives me a book called the church and the negro from the 1960s some of the most filthy racism I've ever seen in their words of my own prophets I'm having such a time with this what am I gonna do with this I mean I can't live with this I can't defend this right and then it occurred to me all remember God sent me back to school maybe he wants me to fix the racism problem in the Mormon Church how funny is that right as if I were somebody special well again it took me another couple years to realize that was not going to happen because there were 26 scriptures in the Book of Mormon and in the pearl of great price that said dark skin as a curse says that today it actually still says today in the Book of Mormon that when the Lamanites who had the dark skin became righteous like the Nephites the light-skinned people when they turned from unrighteous to righteous their skin turn from dark Twite and I didn't know that was in there because nobody pointed it out to me and the church certainly does not teach these kind of things the church I knew wasn't racist right but here's this conundrum it's in the scriptures and I'm thinking if my church tries to take that out of the scriptures what does that do to Joe's Smith's credibility so I'm struggling with some of these things God's kind of softening my heart over these issues Mike's heart is being softened over the polygamy issue Doctrine and Covenants 132 teaches that polygamy is an eternal principle that will be lived in the next life right and Michael is really kind of struggling with that so um God had softened our hearts over these issues if you've read the book now you can see the people our oldest Josh on this end and on the other end is Micah who got saved on his Mormon mission Matt and Katie are baby okay so Josh served a mission right after 9/11 to Russia and Belarus very tough mission he lost 50 pounds on his mission they were attacked by skinheads and mafia and it was it was dangerous but you know after a hard experience like that he was pretty attached to the church because he felt like he'd sacrificed and done something that made him a special Mormon right second son's a pianist he was a piano performance major at BYU and he went to Denmark for two years on his mission they both served honorable missions here is my mo zealous kid for the gospel Micah and if you don't know that is his envelope from the Prophet telling him where the Prophet is sending him on his mission where God is sending him on his mission the post office in Alpine Utah actually called us at 5 a.m. and said your son's mission call is here you don't have to wait till we deliver you can come pick it up if you want so this is about 6:00 in the morning after we'd picked up his mission call Micah's mission call was to Mexico City but Michael says God sent him to the emergency room notice what spin to his emergency gown now that's a zealous kid for the Gospels not yet on his mission but he's making sure that he's properly representing the Church of Jesus Christ right right there in the emergency room as a Mormon I believe this scripture is who we were at the time we had a zeal for God but not according to knowledge not according to the Bible not according to God's knowledge according to the knowledge of Mormonism which is not God's knowledge very similar to the Jews at the time Paul's talking about the Jews they have a zeal for God but not according to knowledge being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own righteousness see Mormonism is workspace' righteousness we were actually earning our way and I certainly did not see it that way but the definition of eternal life and Mormonism is families together and you have to go the temples to do that you have to earn your right to go the temple by doing things like tithing and living a health-code and there's all kinds of stuff you have to do so of course Christians see that as work space try Jesus here's Micah because his long had collapsed he ended up stateside instead of in Mexico City and he went to Orlando Florida on his mission Bible Belt full of evangelicals many of whom knew their Bible better than he did now Michael was so jealous so zealous for Mormonism that he decided if he could convert a pastor to Mormonism then the pastor would help him convert the entire congregation he really believed this could be done so three weeks out on his mission he made an appointment with a large african-american Pentecostal pastor who's now very good friend of ours Matt Shaw and mica said when they were done presenting the Mormon gospel Matt threw up his hands and started praying God break the spirit of blindness over this young man like I said it freaked him out never seen anybody pray like that you know and pay attention that prayer right it's right out of the scriptures blake break the spirit of blindness unstop their ears right open their eyes that's right out of the scriptures so three months out on his mission he tried to convert a Baptist pastor who listened to the discussion and then very kindly said I can see you're very zealous for your gospel but this is not the gospel that Jesus presented and his puzzles in the New Testament and then Micah said he opened up Ephesians 2:8 9 saved by grace not by works lest any man should boast like I said that hit him like an arrow through the heart he'd never heard that verse before right and so what do you do with a conundrum like that well that particular pastor challenged Micah to go home and read the Bible as a child with no preconceived notions and and then he promised him that God would change his life and he'd never be the same if he would do that Micah said the only reason he ever opened the Word was because he wanted to prove Mormonism was truth surely if it was true will be proven through the Bible right and then he was going to go back to that pastor and have it out with him and and show him how Mormonism was proved to the Bible I have a Mormon friend who wrote a book a couple of years ago called a biblical defense of Mormonism this is a Mormon apologist right well Christians say there is no biblical defense of Mormonism and we were put on the radio out of London in 2014 on a debate over the idea was there a biblical defense of Mormonism after that our debate he said he decided Mormonism was not defensible he began questioning his face then he has since come to the Lord Jesus Christ and just been on fire to help other Mormons see the gospel God is so good right Micah ended up reading the New Testament a dozen times on his Mormon mission and it was he was being washed by the water of the word and three weeks before the end of his mission he went to his knees gave His life to the Jesus of the Bible phone rings mission president says Micah you're three weeks from going home I'd like you to stand in front of your fellow missionaries and bear testimony of what you've learned over the last two years now what 20 year old kid has the courage to do something like that he literally could lose his parents he could lose his girlfriend he would have lost his scholarship at BYU I mean every and he's 20 what do you have where do you go right but he had such a profound experience from reading the word and by developing this personal relationship with Jesus II didn't have any Christians that he could actually talk to about this stuff that he was willing to stand and bear testimony of Jesus now that's you know Mormons would say that's not a problem right we believe in Jesus the Micah's mission leader had this inkling that something was up with Micah so he gave a two-hour training before Micah's testimony that you don't have a proper Mormon testimony if you don't say Joseph Smith was a prophet we have a living prophet today Book of Mormon is the word of God and we're the only true church and Jesus is our Savior Michael studies listening to that training thinking wow sounds like Jesus is almost an add-on at the end gets up bares this tearful heartfelt testimony of who Jesus is how he there's only one mediator between man and God nuts the man Jesus Christ talking about how he atoned for him on the cross he's talking about the cross in the blood these are foreign concepts right and Mormonism and yet it seemed to be received really well but the problem was he left off the other four parts of Mormon testimony two days later his mission president calls him in and does like a four hour Inquisition on what his testimony what his beliefs are asked him to give up his temple recommend tells him he's no longer worthy to be a Mormon missionary that they are putting him on a plane immediately sending him home and excommunicating him from the church the other thing they told him was that he had the spirit of the devil in him and that he was Nana Christ I know that's hard for people to believe and wait you think that sounds weird to you hear the good parents back home with this Ella's son for Mormonism we get a call that they're sending our son home because he has the spirit of the devil in him and so I'm quizzing them what's the issue well he professed this god of grace right and I'm thinking so he's a little confused we have the same God as as a Christians right so what if he's a little confused and he just believes in grace instead of like temple ordinances and works can't you just like loving that why do you have to like crucify him I was we were so confused again God you know he does his thing well Micah came home and he had gotten saved because he had been challenged to read the Bible as a child with no preconceived notions and he said he had no idea how to evangelize anybody but he challenged his entire family to just do that please he begged us we actually had to put him on a plane get him out of Utah within 48 hours of him being sent home because we didn't want to mix communicated we couldn't figure out why I was in so much trouble so we just got him out of Utah and um he begged us to read the New Testament serious problem for me because I didn't trust Bible because this flood is what Mormons have for standard works of scripture the Book of Mormon the pearl of great price the Doctrine and Covenants I believe they all came directly from Jesus but the Bible was suspect right so I didn't spend much time in the Bible I spent my time in the ones that I trusted so if Mike is challenging me to read the Bible this is Mormon scripture it says we believed Bible to be the Word of God as far as it's translated correctly but we believe Book Mormon to be the word God so we believe Book Mormon was perfect right most correct book on the face of the earth but the Bible is sometimes mistranslated this is why Joseph Smith said about the Bible I believe the Bible is it read when it came from the pen of the original writers but ignorant translators careless transcribers are designing and corrupt priests have committed many errors what do you know about how the Jews and the Christians copied the Bible do you know anything about that do you know that if they found one two three small dots or tittles that were wrong on one manuscript in an in a year the entire thing was thrown out they were very accurate the other thing is we have oh mike always likes me to do this last one there many things in the Bible which do not this is Joseph Smith as they now stand accord with the revelations of the Holy Ghost to me at North another word some Holy Ghost was talking to Joseph Smith and what he was saying wasn't lining up with Bible so Joseph Smith was following this Holy Ghost thing that was talking to him this is what the Book of Mormon says about the Bible after the Bible had gone forth through the hands of the great in abominable church that would be the Catholic and the Protestant churches that there are many plain and precious things taken away from it and because of these things that are taken away and exceedingly great many do stumble in so much that Satan has great power over them that's what I believed about the Christians still in the Book of Mormon right but because I loved my son Mike and I started sitting up at night in 2006 reading the Bible and I'm starting to read things in the Bible that it can be trusted that it has power that sharper than any two-edged sword that God sends it out it comes back with this amazing result right I didn't make any sense to me do you know that the Bible actually says 3,800 times that it's the Word of God do you think he's trying to tell us something yeah and as I researched eventually I figured out let's think about this mistranslation thing there are more than 5,800 [Music] manuscripts original manuscripts in greek alone of the new testament now some aren't full you know of the New Testament parts of the New Testament what this means is of any one passage of scripture we probably have 800 copies do you think of somebody made a mistake in a jot or tittle we'd be able to see that with 800 copies you know I don't know that Christians even know these things but you're bible is so amazingly preserved right but as a as a Mormon I didn't know any of that and no Christians ever told me that we lived in Indiana which was Bible Belt for a long time no one ever told me any of these things 25,000 archaeological digs that prove the Bible people places events you go to Israel you pick up pottery where you go and there's evidence evidence evidence evidence heard to me as I'm reading the Bible it's as if God wants me to find him the evidence is overwhelming did my book of Mormon have anything no in fact the evidence for the Book of Mormon was really weak like the Book of Mormon says there were elephants here in Mesoamerica years ago were there all we say the horses weren't even here until the Europeans brought them here right but the book Mormon says there are horses it said there were steel and there's all kinds of stuff that there's no historical evidence of for the Book of Mormon and here's the other thing to pebbles full of maps the Mormon has no Maps nobody knows where it happened where's Arahama is this does starting to leak you know there's linguistic evidence of the Bible there's botanical evidence there's secular history historical there are people that didn't even believe in Jesus from the first century who wrote the people were running around saying that Jesus rose from the dead there's evidence everywhere right I did not know any of that and I didn't know any Grisham's who told me that well the more I read this Bible it was like it was all new to me even though Mike and I had taught the Bible in Worman seminary whoa all of a sudden now I'm paying a little more attention to it Mike took this picture in Israel that's me right there what all of a sudden I'm paying attention I'm reading things in the Bible that are bumping up against Mormon doctrine and it's starting to be a problem this one just blew me away right I told you 20 years I did genealogy and ten years we worked in a Mormon temple I thought I was closer to God in the Celestra room of Mormon temple than anywhere else on earth that's what I'm talk and God says twice an axe that he doesn't live in temples made by human hands I remember going what so either that is true or what Mormonism teaches is true but I mean come on you don't have to be too intelligent those are logical opposites they can't both be true at the same time right although a lot of postmodern folks these days ignore that kind of logical stuff when I read John 6:44 I had this strange idea that God was somehow drawing me drawing me drawing me drawing me to Jesus it's another huge conflict with what I'd been taught in Mormonism look at this passage from the Book of Mormon Mormonism is a little bit prosperity gospel it says those that keep the commandments of God are blessed in all things both temporal so big houses cars job health right and spiritual that's prosperity gospel so we had a nice house I had a nice job you had a nice job we thought God was pleased with us and that's why we had those things and then I get into the Bible Oh No over and over the saying things like they hate me so when I set up residence in you they're gonna hate you you're gonna have persecutions you're gonna have trials you know it's like what this is not the gospel of Berman ISM I delight and and not only are going to have them you're going to have joy with them you're going to love them it's a good thing when you're weak you strong you know that's an exact opposite gospel there you go opposite gospel this was the one though that I really had to scratch my head over I read this verse over and over and over trying to figure out what it meant in the beginning was the word okay I think that's Jesus and the Word was with God and the Word was God Jesus wasn't God from the beginning he worked his way to godhood that's what I had been taught for thirty years and that's what I believed so either this is true or that was true right so I thought well I'm going to investigate a little the Mormons use the King James Version of the Bible but they published their own actually got in a lawsuit here recently for publishing stuff they weren't supposed to about King James but we won't go into that I had somebody call me tell me he just won a lot of money from the Mormon Church for all this but um they use the King James Version of the Bible but they publish their own so in the footnotes on each page it'll take the reader to the pearl of great price The Book of Mormon their cross reference to other Mormon scriptures instead of cross reference to other bible scripture so if I didn't understand something the Bible said it would just take me to the Book of Mormon or the Doctrine and Covenants for clarification right so I'm going to say okay I've got this problem with John 1:1 because it's saying Jesus was God from the beginning but the Mormons are teaching me that he worked his way to godhood so I'm going to see what my Bible says my Mormon Bible says about John 1:1 so I go there and it's got this footnote and the footnote says for clarification go to the jst you know what the jst is before Joseph Smith died he fixed everything in the Bible that was wrong from one end to the other and it's called the Joseph Smith translation the Bible I didn't really know this existed in Mormon as might heard of the jst but I know he done this for the whole Bible but he did so here's what Joseph Smith changed John 1:1 - in the beginning was a gospel preached through the son and the gospel was the word and the Word was with the son and the son was with God and the son was of God and I don't know what that means but that doesn't mean in the beginning was the word right and then I realized Joseph Smith had changed the entire first chapter John which is a chapter all about the nature of God who God is I'm going whoa maybe we have a different God and maybe that's why Michael is in so much trouble makes sense yeah my little brain is waking up here the apostasy if the Mormon missionaries come to your door one of the first things they're going to teach you is after the original Twelve Apostles died the church went into an apostasy full apostasy so when the Catholics rose up that was an apostate Church Protestants rose up maybe a little bit in the right direction but apostate Church Jesus original Church did not come back until Joseph brought it back in the eighteen well their website actually says 18 20 but the church was organized in 1830 all right now I'm starting to read in the Bible that completely refute that idea that there was a great apostasy and what was blowing me away with some of these things came right from the mouth of Jesus Christ and here's one of them on this rock I will build my church jesus says and the gates of hell prevail against it and I'm like so did Jesus not know his church was going to apostasy did he know that he was going to set it up and it was going to fail or is that mistranslated what's the problem here because you've got exact opposites right in fact when I talked to Mormon missionaries and they I let them teach me about the great apostasy and I'll say to him that really confuses me because of something I read in the Bible do you mind reading this out loud and telling me what you think it means right they will not be aware that that's in the Bible so I did this to a sister missionary not so long ago she's reading it out loud her whole face gets beat red you can just see the conviction going whoa like I didn't know that was in there and I sure don't know what to do with it you know and then the answer is always well we don't know all things you know we just don't know everything yeah well that's not the only verse there's tons of them so if I'm doing this with Mormons gently gently only using questions never telling them what the Bible says never telling them what to think never making statements always just planning those questions gently gently gently they might eventually say to me well I don't actually believe that the Bible is reliable and so this is what I say back to them so do you believe the words of Jesus are reliable and almost 100% they'll say yeah so I just stick to the words of Jesus and I can tell you there are enough words of Jesus that completely refute the ideas of Mormonism and yet Mormons are not aware of them I was not aware of them so I'll say to the missionaries so what do you do with all those verses that are the exact opposite of Mormonism in the Bible and they'll say oh there's nothing in the Bible that's opposite Mormonism well if I would point one out could you explain it to me or I'll say what do you do when Jesus says one thing and Joseph Smith says the exact opposite and they'll say oh there's nothing that Jesus said that's not exactly lined up with Mormonism so see how you can use the word which doesn't return void and plant questions so that somebody will go searching 30 years in Mormonism I had Christian parents I lived in the Bible Belt in Indiana everyone I knew would have said they were Christian I had Christian siblings Mormon missionaries knocked on my door we went into Mormonism no one ever said you know that might not be a good idea anybody ever sit down with me and say you know Mormonism might not line up with Bible not one time not one person that I recall and once I read the Bible gave my life to Jesus was profoundly change I went through a little stage of anger did you not love me enough to tell me how to get saved how many friends you have they don't know you're Jesus that you've never opened your mouth and said wow you know what Jesus did today freaky I'm reading the word and the answer to my question pops right out at me I don't think we ever pepper our conversation right with this amazing Jesus of ours what if you ruin the underground church in the Middle East or in China I mean for those people Jesus is everything right examine yourself what is Jesus to you to us we would give the rest of our lives to do this if anybody will just listen right and we see Mormons coming sorting the differences giving their lives to Jesus everything changing one after another after another and yet here's the problem we go to the Christian world and talk to them there's kind of this parallel Christian world going on in Mormon territory and there's this Mormon world and they're kind of nice to each other socially the kids are on the same ball teams and stuff but we don't ever talk about things that matter so when these poor little Mormons are questioning their faith do they ever think to come to you for answers no because you know what Mormonism taught them they have the Bible so they have a little of the faith they have a little the truth we have the fullness of the truth we have four books of Scripture they only have one and there's subject to being wrong right so when folks are done with Mormonism and a lot of them leave over historical issues that you can find on the internet why would they ever come to a Christian for the answers they think you had the same God and what if they decide the Mormon God's impotent and they assume you have the same one and he must be much more stupid because he only had one book of Scripture do you see where I'm going think about where you might open your mouth and I beg you to do so here are some of the other things I had to struggle through you know in the Mormon Church it's the organization that saves you much you have to become a member and be baptized into their church although they'll tell you you're saved but you're saved to a lower kingdom I won't go into all of that right now Mormons do not use the cross so after I got saved I took off Mormon garments that I'd worn for thirty years put on this cross and I wasn't allowed to have it on BYU campus so I started wearing high net clothes hiding my cross it's a great story in the book unveiling grace about how I lost my cross on campus one day and God supernaturally got it back to me and I sat in my car in the parking lot and just bawled and bawled involved having some small view now as a new Christian of how big this God is how personal he is how he shows up how He loves you how he leads you and that he called you for a purpose this whole thing going up I remember one day after I got saved just crying to my third son who'd found Jesus on his mission and saying I'm so sorry I raised you for 30 years and something that I now believe it's not true he was lightyears ahead of me in faith he said mom don't you see God created a whole story from the beginning if you guys had not gone into Mormonism if you hadn't been there for 30 years if you and dad hadn't have been so active you if you hadn't known the doctrine so well if you hadn't been abhi why you prefer who in the world if God hadn't a saved me on my mission which like doesn't happen every day who in the world would listen to us right God created this for a ministry for such a time as this how many ministries are there that reach back to Mormons you'd be surprised there aren't that many there may be a handful of us and we all kind of work together it's a it's a great thing that we do together Mormons do not do the cross and part of that reason is I was taught the atone happened in the garden of gethsemane not on the cross yeah and of course yeah this when I came upon this this just this verse first Corinthians 1:18 the message of the Cross is foolishness foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are saved it is power of God it's all about the cross and blood right you can't bring to the foot of the cross anything anything to add to what Jesus did for you on the cross as a free gift grace is a free gift and then I started running across some of these scriptures one of the teachings that we do in churches is to go through the entire New Testament and look at every false Christ's false gospel false spirit false teacher you know false apostles scriptures they're all over the New Testament within 20 years of Jesus death Paul had to write the book of Galatians why because people were already distorting the simple gospel that he had brought but the whole New Testaments full of those kind of warnings right even an angel of light comes bring to you another gospel let him be accursed right over and over and over and over these warnings this is an interesting story so I've been at Florida Gulf Coast University for the last ten and a half years and I'm an advisor on campus for our Christian group and I often said to our two pastors on campus please let me talk about the false Christ's scriptures to the kids and he would say to me oh we don't have any JW's around here oh there aren't that many Mormons here you know we're in Florida we're in the Bible Belt these kids were they were brought up Christian they're good right so I write our family story and that's a long story - definitely god thing and Zondervan publishes it and they send me on six month book tour and I have to take a semester off the university to go on book tour so I come back like January first from the book tour and start the new semester and the pastor's come to me hysterical because the Mormon Church has sent missionaries full time to our campus what they didn't have earlier when I was on tour targeted our Christian group converted one of our leaders who had just gotten baptized over Christmas and is now begging all of our Christian youth to come to Institute on campus and then they wanted me to talk talked to her I said she's baptized she won't come near me I'm considered an apostate now you know beforehand I might have been able to talk to her but you can ask her but I'm sure she won't even have lunch with me and that was the case but I was allowed then to talk to the Christian kids and go through the Scriptures and honestly I don't think they knew anything about them I would ask them real basics like who are the false Christ's after do you know that do they want people in Hinduism or Islam thus Christ's and false teachers are folks that try to operate within the body but they're distorting the gospel why do they do that Matthew 24 that even the elect would be led astray people who love Jesus have a zeal for God want to be saved and are marched off in the wrong direction if that doesn't honk you off it should give you a heart for those of us like me who didn't know any better right and yet had a great zeal for Mormonism and then of course how do you determine truth in Mormonism it came down to feelings determining truth and as I'm reading through the Bible this just blew me away wait a minute the human heart is wicked so the feelings that come out of the human heart might not be trustworthy that was a new idea to me I did not know that Satan could counterfeit good feelings I just assumed any weird spiritual experience I had came from God I now I actually go through in the book unveiling grace back through some of those strange spiritual experiences and go hmmm that one probably did not come from God like for instance when I got my patriarchal blessing and Mormonism patriarch lays his hand on my head and they give you it's kind of like a future blessing it tells you what your future is and it tells you which tribe of Israel you're from because Mormons believe they're the lost ten tribes so it's also a replacement theology believing that they are the true ten tribes the true Jews right puts his hand on my head and I feel this incredible electricity just surged through my body and all my life I thought that was God telling me right the Mormon Church is true and I'm special and this patriarchal blessing is really worth something whoa hurry the Bible and says Satan can counterfeit that kind of stuff can even appear as an angel of light that stuff was really scary that I didn't know what was true what wasn't true how do you figure it out and this verse I love because I'm like God when I joined Mormonism I would stand at the pulpit during fast and testimony Sunday and I would fall I know Mormon Church is true I know Joseph Smith was a pop but I know these are God's people you know I really believe that and I could get emotional I had all these feelings about that then I read Matthew 15:9 mmm these are evil things that come out of this wicked heart one of them listed is false testimony Wow all of that emotionalism all of that crying can be completely false if it's not connected to the truths in the Bible so what you have in Mormonism is just emotionalism but what you have in Christianity is logic evidence fulfilled prophecies and sometimes there's a feeling or subjective component but you can't go completely to that feeling or subjective component it has to be tested against the word and if it lines up thank you lord it's probably from God and if not you better run as fast as you can right and that's what I've learned about that ah yeah well after 10 months of reading the Bible I came upon this this okay so I'm this intellectual person I I'm a journal editor for a professional journal right and I've written all these professional papers most of my writing is very very boring and I come to this first so I'm reading all these scriptures I'm starting all this stuff out and it's as if God's talking me says these are the very scriptures that testify of me yet you refuse to come to me to have life and it occurred to me Wow so I can sort things out intellectually I can decide what's true or not from the scriptures but at some point I have to make a decision for the Jesus of the Bible surrender everything and lay it all at his feet and that's scary and then my life is no longer my own it's his and wherever he takes me mark and I are like are we gonna have to get a trailer are we gonna be like traveling out you know we just do we just go where God sends us and what we do what he is purposed us for and there's so much joy in that I cannot tell you the people we saw last night on their way out that love Jesus and want to keep Jesus and want to know for sure who he is and what he teaches this is just so such a wonderful thing to do and then I hit this verse whoever hears my word and I'm like okay I think I'm getting there and believes in Him who sent me okay I do I do has eternal life wait wait wait wait wait wait in Mormonism I had to wait till the end of my life to see if I done enough good works and then God's grace might kick in do you know that's the exact same thing islam teaches do you know the similarities between Islam and Mormonism Joseph Smith called himself the second Muhammad he knew very well another angel brings another gospel in the beginning that experience is scary probably demonic then they then there's an angel it's all bright starts out as an Abrahamic faith gets added to by the Quran by the Mormon scriptures right becomes a work space faith instead of a gray space faith do you know that in Islam there are five pillars of Islam and one of them is you have to make them pilgrimage to Mecca sometime in your lifetime do you know that if you didn't make a pilgrimage to Mecca in your lifetime your relatives can do it for you in proxy after you're dead does that sound familiar I know this because now the book unveiling grace has a couple of Muslim converts who are reading the whole thing from works to Grayson soaking their eyes right and one of these wonderful converts had been to Mecca been on the Hajj I think he said nine times so he's teaching me all these amazing things he said do you know when you get there there's this white building and you wear white clothes and you go in there with your family and you make covenants and I'm like you have got to be kidding me Wow and then you never know if you're saved till you get to the end of life if you've done enough good works God's grace will kick in and save you and then the last similarity of course is your reward in heaven for righteous men is more than one woman right how interesting right how interesting and yet do we study these things the rest of that verse was I can have eternal life right now and I will not be judged because I've been judged at the point that I accept my Lord Jesus Christ I'm covered by his blood he indwells me and everything changes new life death and life and you cross over from death to life and there was one day when I just asked the Lord please I wanna cross over I don't know a lot about anything but I give you the rest of my life I was 54 years old I'd been Mormon for 30 years and he turned me another direction Wow his life changed God has showed up in my life at the most amazing ways I knew when I made that decision I couldn't go back to BYU right the honor code says if you leave the Mormon Church if you're a student you can enroll in classes you can't graduate my oldest son was a senior and He gave His life to Jesus left the Mormon Church had to walk away from a piano performance degree and not graduate I was tenured at any other university that's a guarantee you have your job but at BYU if you leave the Mormon Church you have to leave campus because they don't want that influence on campus so I knew I couldn't go back in the fall I did not have another job it's June of 2007 I'm standing in my kitchen and Alpine Utah watching the Sun go down over the mountains my phone rings this lady says I'm the Dean of the College of Education at Florida Gulf Coast University I have your Vita in front of you no I'd like to offer you a job I fall to my knees I throw the phone out here and I'm going you can even get me a job I never applied for I knew nothing about Florida Gulf Coast University and I had not applied there and I had no clue how she got my Vita but God two weeks later we packed up went to Florida we've been there almost 11 years [Music] [Laughter]

Channel: Calvary Chapel North Phoenix

Views: 2,418

Rating: 4.3684211 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: SuKlyJux0_c

Length: 66min 19sec (3979 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 26 2018