George Stewart's story of why he left Mormonism after being a Bishop for 30 years

hi my name is Callum Jack I'm pastor of cornerstone Community Church we're gonna do an interview this morning that I think you will find fascinating George was a bishop in the Mormon Church for thirty years as well as being a member of the Mormon Church for 50 years and we're gonna interview him just to give him an opportunity to share a fascinating story about how he got into Mormonism and then how what happened to lead him to trust in Jesus Christ as his Savior and in His grace alone for salvation so I hope that you are able to stick with us listenin and just listen to this fascinating story of a lovely man well George there's a lot to talk about this morning what I'd love to do is just take us through you have need to take us through the chronology of your life just a story of your life and because I think it is fascinating and I love hearing about it I love talking with you and hearing you just share it but let me start just just tell us a little bit about yourself about your background and where you were brought up and so on okay I I was born in 1946 which the historians among us will realize that the war had just ended so I was a baby born after a war exciting I was brought up in the south side of Glasgow and my parents were wonderful people good I would say Christian my father was not a Christian but they had good standards I had a good young life I safe secure educated at Insurance Academy in Glasgow and went through my life as any young boy goes through his life up until I was about 15 16 years old I attended the Church of Scotland and was evolved as a boys brigade I was a sergeant and the Boys Brigade and attended Sunday school there so I was a Protestant and I enjoyed that didn't think much about it until one day a couple of young men knocked my door there were Americans and they came from Utah and there were Mormons the story that you'll probably ask me more about is what happened from there but pretty normal young gay quite happy with life and I went on maybe you will ask me later on about business but went on to have a successful business career yeah well tell us about that just in time sure like grains yeah your professional life yeah I served in working with some interesting companies I originally worked for Safeway a large food store American food store and I spent 10 years of my life there I went on from there to work for TSB Bank I was a consultant with them I also worked for large companies like cable tell and t-mobile and and senior roles I always had great stressful roles in my life and in management I went back to University when I was 50 and gotten a degree in business management and I'm proud of that I'm proud of the achievement was Indies II trust me but I managed it so that helped set me up to provide a good lifestyle for my children I have four children plus eighteen great-grandchildren and two s sorry 18 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren so we've had a busy life I have a wonderful wife who has been loving and supportive so yes pretty full life mmm yeah so you hinted that one day a couple of Americans came knocking at the door and you want to just tell us what it what you what transpired for certainly as I said I was 15 16 years old and I was always fascinated by America you know I remember old Archie comics when the bike you know newspaper boys got margin massive rewards for being a newspaper boy and I love the American thought and these young boys were pretty impressive they were very upbeat very smart quite intelligent and they caught the this saw my attention and they got it and I became embroiled with them and their concepts and was happy to do it you know it brought me friends they brought me contacts and it brought me religion which I really to be honest didn't really have before they brought religion into my life and it was great so yeah I've no no regrets over that involvement I just didn't know the deeper part of Mormonism there was no obvious to me at that time and wasn't taught I mean I think one of the things that will fascinate folks is because not everyone knows a great deal about Mormonism I mean tell us a little bit of it sort of the faith and practice of what it was like yeah its promises are quite wonderful I mean they believe at the end of the day that the church was restored and the apostles and prophets are on the earth even today and that can be quite attractive to people who believe that God still talks to his people through prophets so yeah there it is an appealing gospel very community driven it's all about friendship and companionship and doing things together so for a young person easy to get caught up in that whole and I did and I I put a hundred percent into it and out of that and a very young age I became a leader you know there were there were only small groups then but there was about three million Mormons in the world at that stage today is our reasonable sick Steen million but at the end of the day I was happy to be part of it and my mother and my sister both were members as well so it was natural my dad never bet that was my dad mm-hm so you would have a congregational meeting on a Sunday what yes yes it's the and those days it was actually two separate parts of the day so you would go in the morning you would go to Sunday school and then in the evening you were back for sacrament and so it was quite an involved a sacrament was speakers and taking the sacramental bread and water and the day the morning was Sunday School where we read the scriptures and and became involved later on the church changed that concept into a three-year block so instead of people having to come over there which made sense so but three hours is still a long time to be a church and recently they have just changed that to a two-hour block so people are at church for two hours but yeah and and then during the week there will be activities for youth and speech festivals and and all the things that go along with being a Mormon so very busy and that was a secret they kept you very busy yeah so you really didn't get a chance to think too deeply about the doctrines of the church you were more involved in the practicalities which for me was great yeah and you you know you give it your all and you ended up being a bishop yes I was comparatively young when I became probably in my twenties and I was called as a bishop there's two different ones there's a bishop and there's a branch president a bishop is award so award would be a group of people maybe a hundred hundred and fifty people we meet together and they would have a bishop in charge of them and then it would be a steak which is a group of warts or maybe five six and they would have a stake president I later served as a member of a stake presidency so I ever I have had an amazing experience and knowledge about the church I do understand it I do know what it takes yeah and you know that that's part of the problems that I face later on as I investigated it yeah yeah I mean there's lots I'd like to talk about there there's a sacrament of bread and water which you mentioned there have been feature talks will will talk about these so again so you would have the local wards there was a sort of group that's a stake and then what what tell us about the Mormon temples because obviously that's Mormonism does it that's a big yes it's very different anybody can attend a local Mormon Church yep remember non-member whatever but a temple is a different thing you have to be specially interviewed in 1/10 the temple and it's to interviews you would have an interview by your bishop yeah and then one by the snake president now what they're looking for is you're a demon to the church so they're interested and if you pay atai the they're interested if you're serving well they're interested in if you're not dealing with people who run contrary to the church so anti-mormon literature is frowned upon so there is about seven questions or more that you have to answer so your bishop signs it and then you go to another meeting with the Snape who asks you the same questions and he has to sign it so before you can enter the temple you have to have what they call a temple recommend and and that's to allow you the right to enter so yeah it's quite complicated and a temple doesn't open on a Sunday it's only open during the week and in that there is rites and performances and marriages etc which I can go into in greater detail later but it is a sacred place not secret you know they wouldn't make a difference between secret and sacred but amazing buildings there's over a hundred and sixty four of them in the world today and growing to over 200 so the temples are very important focus in a community and once you've got a temple they tend to get growth because of that mm-hmm fasting and I mean as in the sessions that we'll have following will unpack some of these ya think yes they are interesting so Georgie you know you've been in Mormonism for 50 years I mean your are totally committed to it you know helping serve within it and and so on your brought your family up in it but you're here partly because things changed and you've sort of questioning the teaching of Joseph Smith and convinced that actually Jesus teaching is very different in the Bible I mean what happened where did the cracks or tear I do think that the answer to that will come deeper later on as we go further into it but my disillusionment with church leaders became an issue and began to make me think who are these men I really don't know I know of and reveal them and was impressed by them in many ways but suddenly my concern about their motivation began to worry me it did start with a major mall that was built in Salt Lake it's called a City Creek and it was built costing about five billion my concern was or impact that that have on where we live seem beneficial to people who live in so Lake but you know why was money being spent on building a shopping mall didn't get it and that began to make me ask some deeper questions there were some powerful people came into the people like Jeremy Reynolds who brought out 20 questions to us a church CES director who'd ignored them Grant Palmer who was a CES director who left the church who had an amazing influence on me CES what is yeah Church education system so these this was an educator paid by the church to run Church programs so I began to listen to them and firstly my reaction was from you know they're talking rubbish then I realized that the women there were some key one talk that I heard from a church leader who was called an elder with Dorf he's a German and he used the words don't you notes and that didn't ring with me I think you have to do you know I think the secret of any Christian is to doubt and to ask and to inquire and I felt that I was stymied in that very much so that started the process which lasted for three years I investigated it group ulis like read all the stuff that I needed to read against and for and much of my concerned came from church for stuff and then they were admitting that there was false-9 cracks mm-hmm so in terms of I mean I think the future will go into them in more depth but give us some highlights just in terms of obviously beginning with Joseph Smith himself and I'm young and yes you know the yes sir their whole enigma of Joseph Smith is very complex we have a man who on the surface appeared to be a man of God a prophet yet when it was investigated further we found that the anomalies in his life were quite dramatic he had an affair with a young woman called Fanny Alger who was only 17 years old who lived in his home and he had that from his wife he and many ways portrayed a man of faith yet these actions deny that he I mean it's it's really meet for a long discussion but at the end of the day he claimed to be a prophet Deuteronomy makes it very clear what the judgment is of a prophet unfortunately Joseph fails in that prophets revelations need to come to fruition and with him they didn't okay so yeah it des started a snowball of events there made me ask some serious questions and then thankfully I know that God listens to us I know that he listens to my pleadings and through the Holy Spirit he directed me to the New Testament and that was exciting suddenly once the took away the trappings of Mormonism in all their Scripture and went back to the New Testament it came alive to me and my the one that I stress almost to they are very powerful but first Corinthians 15 1 to 4 where it clearly states the Christ died in the cross for us he was buried in the term and on earth thought they rose that is the true gospel of Jesus Christ and that was never taught in the church the Mormon Church teaches works never thought that to kill her faith status after all you can do your work son important grace toward they are like filthy rags so that excited me and and I have come to a clear knowledge in my head whether that be right or wrong that there is two Gospels there's a gospel of works as taught by Moses or there's the gospel of Greece as taught by Jesus Christ and Paul the Apostle Peter and Paul taught it to the Gentiles and is clearly that died Christ died for our sins and we don't have to make up that we will do it because we want to know because we have to here's the difference here's the robe yeah yeah no exactly and you took a lotta bite in when we've been chatting Galatians as well and just the empire that has what were the specific issues hit me so hard Galatians 149 when I read that Paul was upset with the people of that time and he said they said he said to them why have you drifted away from the gospel why have you believed man and even angels and that one came to me like a big thunderclap it was an aha moment when I suddenly said angels Moroni you know how did the Joseph gets it he got it through an angel and who was this angel whether that angel come from know we all have the imagination the angels are you know up there with their wings flying about but the Scriptures teaches that there's bad angels as well there's angels that even Satan came in light of any angel you know so we have to be very careful I realized I'd been deceived mm-hmm yeah which is not funny no no and that's been a there must've been heartbreaking and one of the most emotional experiences of my life was to go through the last three years I was stripping a my belief system and I was deconstructing it and I had an amazing family who I love they were very involved in the church and my heart breaks that I have caused division with them but I want them to know that I love them and I will do anything for them but I cannot under the Galatians guidance because it was clearly Paul said that if we believe in the other doctrine we are attached and I don't want any of my family to be a curse so I'll preach that until the day I die there should be quite simply not willing that's not the case so I mean I can only imagine some of the hardship that on the internal turmoil that you've been going through so what is it that's kept you going what is it that keeps you nice okay wonderful question and I believe that the Scriptures the New Testament has saved me I think I've realized that I had created a war ground scriptures and it was involved with the Book of Mormon parallel great price the Doctrine and Covenants and it was almost like going for a meal where everything is laid on the table and you don't know what she eats so you finally have to make a choice and I think that for many Mormons that is the massive thing on the table that they have all of that scripture but are now able to focus on the key one which is the Bible the Word of God the true answer to all of our question or manual for living and so the Bible became and as I began to read it and I began to I love to color in scriptures that appealed to me and I look back and I realize boy the teacher marries it did teach about the fallacy of works it was all there and I never saw it because it wasn't encouraged for me to see it it didn't fit the large church concept of control of manipulation of an actual involvement it didn't fit that and that's what broke my heart because I believed it all 100% and suddenly it crumbled like a straw man it just disappeared on me so yeah wasn't nice yeah and it's a hard one for everybody who intends to go along that path but surprise that needs to be taken mm-hmm and ultimately when all that kind of things fell away what we left with okay at life of a family who is still loved and I cherish I was left with a really good wife who I love and cherish but they were damaged by my decisions because their life was pretty clear-cut serving forward and snow anymore and they have to live with the father who and husband who is confused about the belief system so yeah for me that that was my biggest challenge and is today tomorrow and forever now I have to handle it I have to seek for truth I have to believe in truth but my saving grace repair back to is the Bible it is the word of God and unfortunately the Mormon Church gives a note on it because it states the Bible is true as far as it's translated correctly that Cristo mm-hmm and you can't know the Bible mm-hmm yeah and in regard to Christ what does he mean do you know yes you know I we had this amazing image within the church about Christ and he did look a bit like a movie star you know he was a bit like Brad Pitt or something and when I read the scriptures I realized that when Judas went in to arrest to get them to arrest Jesus the soldiers didn't know he didn't they couldn't he wasn't floating about half way up in the air he was just an ordinary man and it took Judas to go up and kiss him on the cheek to identify him that taught me that that wasn't the case that I was being portrayed through the church and the images of him he would be dark-skinned wouldn't lyrically lived but here we have this very white and intangible so Christ came to me as a person who throughout his ministry which was only a short time he never wrote anything down he did write in the sand once but he never wrote anything down II just lived the gospel he was God in flesh and that was a big moment when I realized that the teachings that I had of God three separate being three different gods and I could become a God suddenly began to seem like a nonsense you know when God you know one of the winning purpose warned in essence and that was powerful very powerful mm-hmm and grace oh wow I mean that was that was the overriding thing I I had a discussion with one of my church leaders when I was I put in my resignation to the church and it's taken them nearly seven months to formulate it and she's very worrying but as we talked he said well the situation is that Christ has done so much for us but we need to make the difference we need to buy our works in our efforts make up the difference and I realized that that was wrong I realized that Christ died for all of our sins and that he took upon himself on the cross our sins and they are forgiven of us as long as we 1st Corinthians 15:1 2 for as long as we believe on Him we are saved that's contradictory to what Mormons teach mm-hmm well George has been wonderful to talk with you this morning do you think yeah I look forward to hearing more as you just talk about the things that you've discovered and and yeah thank you for your time s'mores pleasure and I look forward to our further adventures thank you thank you

Channel: Cornerstone Community Church Stirling

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Id: v3L3Y_t82hk

Length: 26min 24sec (1584 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 22 2019