SHOCKING TESTIMONY of an Ex-Mormon turned Christian!

well hey hey hey everybody alan parr here super excited that you all are joining us today this is an exciting day i am very very pumped up about this conversation i don't want to call it an interview but it's really just a conversation between myself and another uh young man that i had the privilege of uh getting to know recently and uh hopefully going to become a instant friend his name is michael wilder i'll bring him on in just a second but i just want to lay a few ground rules today and first and foremost i just want to make sure you understand that this conversation today and this topic that we're talking about really is not so much about mormonism specifically but is really a broader topic of how do you find the courage to leave a movement or a religion or a denomination that is unhealthy or toxic or might even be considered a cult in some way right because that's really what we're talking about here is you've grown up in something you're comfortable with something it's convenient you're afraid that maybe your family or your church or somebody is going to see you differently if you decide to go against what you've always been taught whether it's oneness pentecostalism whether it's jehovah's witness whether it is seventh-day adventism and you see some issues with um what they teach whatever whatever it is um that you're in whether it's a charismatic church or pentecostal church once again those are christian we believe that but there might be some things that you might be seeing that are different from what you see the bible says how do you find the courage to kind of move past that right and so that's really the broader topic that we're going to talk about today but also in addition to that i want to make it very very clear guys that we're not here to bash anyone that we love mormons because we know that the lord jesus loves them right and so we're not here to put them down we're not here to speak negatively about any anyone from that organization we respect them we love them we may disagree with their teachings uh in some very specific areas but this is not a passing session in any way and we're here to love them so with all that being said guys i want to bring on my guest micah wilder and uh and we're going to jump right in so uh micah how you doing today man good to see you doing great allen thank you for having me yeah awesome awesome man uh so uh just super excited that you're here thank you for giving us your time and um we're just excited man to hear your story your testimony the power of jesus christ and guys what the lord jesus christ can do whenever we fully truly give our lives to him and and come to him with a place of hey i'm wanting to re be genuine about seeking to know your truth and how god will be so faithful to reveal his truth to you so guys uh once again as you know how i do with my live streams i always jump right in because i respect your time i don't want to do a whole lot of um kind of fluff so what i'm going to do is i'm going to pray for us and then i'm going to give you an agenda an outline of what we're going to cover in this conversation and then we're going to jump into it and then we're going to do some q a towards the end all right so let's pray heavenly father we thank you so much for this day we give you praise honor and glory i thank you for micah i thank you for his testimony i thank you for all the things that you're doing in his life and through his ministry and his family and god i pray that those that are watching live as well as those who will watch the replay later will be some what encouraged and emboldened to really know what it is that uh your word says as well as to have the courage to be able to leave any sort of toxic environment that might not line up with your word i pray that you your spirit would lead us and guide us in this conversation it's in christ's name we pray and give thanks amen amen all right guys so this is what we're going to talk about today all right i got five things that i want to talk about in this conversation with micah number one i want you guys to be exposed to his experience in mormonism all right so he's gonna talk a little bit about his uh growing up in mormonism and kind of what that was like his family and uh and just just just kind of what his childhood was and then the second thing we're going to look at is what are some of the main differences in beliefs between mormonism and christianity now i do have a video on my channel that i'll put in the description of the video you can watch that a little bit later but it's better to have somebody who grew up in it to really break it down for us so that we can understand exactly how mormonism is different from and similar and different from evangelical christianity so we'll talk about things like how do they view jesus how do they view the bible right how do they view the afterlife things like that and then we're going to transition to micah's journey out of mormonism and this is really more of his testimony as as to how god brought him out of the mormon church and then we're going to look at some tips for how you and i can witness to mormons right so you may live in it like me you may live in an area where there's a lot of mormons right or members of the latter church of church of jesus christ of latter-day saints so how is what are some best practices that we can use as we seek to reach them with what we believe is the truth and then finally we're going to talk about some general advice for anyone who might be stuck in a cult or or just an unhealthy environment and how do you navigate out of that right so that's what we're going to talk about today guys and so with all that being said we're gonna jump in and i'm gonna let micah do a lot of the heavy lifting here and um micah why don't you uh first and foremost just kind of tell us a little bit about your experience uh growing up in mormonism what was it like um you know kind of tell me what what is it like in the mormon church uh growing up yeah so i grew up in a very loving mormon home my parents had actually converted to mormonism before i was born and so my siblings and i were raised in in mormonism in a very devout mormon home i actually grew up in indiana so i'm from the midwest it's not an area that's very saturated with latter-day saints and so growing up we were definitely the minority um we went to church every week we prayed together we read our scriptures we we very zealously did everything that we could to live out the tenets of our faith my parents were great examples of that they were very loving in doing so and they were very sincere um i i think the best kind of comparison scripturally is is what paul said to the romans where he said speaking of the jews that they have a zeal for god but not according to knowledge and so i i would say that aptly described me and my family and really the mormon community is people who were sincere for god but ignorant as to the only way to be made right with god and so when i was about a freshman in high school um i had a huge paradigm shift in my life uh cultural shift my female and i moved out to utah which of course as most of you know is the heart of mormonism and so my mother got a job to be a tenured professor at byu my father was a high priest in the mormon church and i went to a high school that was saturated with latter-day saints ninety-eight percent of our student body was mine and so every aspect and every facet of my life became incredibly deeply rooted and entrenched in my religious identity right so all of my friends my culture my community my reputation everything that i knew and loved became part of my identity within mormonism and so as a young man naturally i i grew up with this love for god and with an understanding that he loved me and so i wanted a relationship with him more than anything else but the problem was is i was taught that i had to establish my righteousness with god through my adherence to the commandments in the ordinances of this religious system so in order to establish a right standing with god i had to prove myself and i had to make myself worthy by being the best mormon that i could be and so naturally that propelled me to to kind of be a mormon of mormons right as as paul was a hebrew of hebrews and i really took pride in trying to show god that i was good enough to receive the the greatest that he had to offer and his love and his grace and forgiveness and so i was a very devout mormon i was a very passionate mormon very zealous and i believed it with all of my heart wow so um how what does the discipleship process look like for mormons and i asked that because i'm very interested whenever i look at other other faiths right because as christians i mean we grow up when we go to sunday school and if we don't get what we need from sunday school we're kind of just what i'm trying to say is that there's a large percentage of christians who don't know what they believe and why they believe it right so how are mormons raised to really know what they believe and why they believe it i mean is it is it an intentional process or is it just kind of like christians where you just kind of hope that you know it kind of rubs off on you no i think it is very intentional and i think they actually do a really good job of instilling right there their belief system you know in in in their youth i mean i remember from the time i was four or five years old singing these primary songs that contained doctrines of mormonism and so we'd go to church and our church services were three hours every week when i was growing up and then we had midweek services for youth but in addition to that i mean mormonism is more than just a church you attend on a sunday morning it's a culture it's a it's a lifestyle and so that culture permeated even our home right so i remember sitting down with my my parents and reading the scriptures and talking about mormon doctrines and you know reading books and doing all these things to really saturate us with what we believed was truth and so like i said there was a sincere zeal there and i think that we were very well trained in the doctrines and you know the the tenets of mormonism but unfortunately you know those doctrines and tenets are not centered on truth in the word of god they're centered on man-made revelation and so i was putting my hope and my faith in things that that could never save me yeah yeah wow that's awesome i forgot to mention something earlier guys if you're watching this on the replay just know that there will be timestamps below this video that will jump you to you know hopefully you'll watch the entire thing but if you're just one of those people that just want to get to certain parts of the video we get that we don't like it but we get that so we're gonna have time stamps below so that you can um you know jump to different parts of the video that you know best suit you so um okay awesome well thank you so much for giving us that perspective of what your experience was like growing up in mormonism and so i think that people from my audience they probably really probably want to know now like some differences between mormonism and christianity and um i'll just start with a few but like how do mormons view jesus because at the end of the day guys it's not enough anymore and i hope everybody gets this if you don't get anything else out of this it's not enough anymore to ask people do they believe in jesus because there's a lot of organizations that believe in jesus there's a lot of denominations a lot of i mean satan believed in jesus right um uh it muslims believe in jesus the correct question that you need to be asking is what do you believe about jesus that is really going to tell you everything that you need to know about that person's belief system but what do mormons believe about jesus yeah i really appreciate you bringing that up alan because there there is a distinction between the jesus that i was taught and knew growing up and the jesus that i now knew as has been revealed through the word of god and so i had this perception of jesus i mean there were there were core tenets that we would have agreed with right so i mean i believe that jesus was born of a virgin that he was lived a sinful life i believe that he died on the cross for my sins that he was buried and that he rose on the third day right so i believed all of those things however the very nature of jesus himself was that he was a created being and in fact the nature of god himself was that god was not the only god and he was not from everlasting to everlasting but had actually been exalted to godhood through faithfulness to the eternal ordinances and commandments of mormonism so ultimately god himself was once a man and we believe that we could become gods through this process of eternal progression and so jesus was created by god in the spirit world pre-earth life you know you're gonna have to break that down a little bit later right because that's a mouthful right there like you just you just you just went like yeah yeah i'm gonna have to ask you to break that one down a little bit like oh actually i'm asking you to break it down a little bit now like explain that to me again like and i i know it but i i want my viewers to understand so god is what and jesus is what and and and okay break that down again so so god was once a man okay and and through progression of obedience to eternal commandments right he became god so he was not always god and so god created jesus so jesus himself was not an eternal being he was actually created by god the father and so you do have a very distinct difference as you view the nature of god that i was taught growing up and so we would view jesus as the savior but we also view jesus as only part of what was necessary in order to attain eternal life so yes jesus died on the cross yes he shed his blood for our sins but that wasn't all so we then needed to do our part in addition to what christ had done we had to follow certain commandments and we had to perform certain ordinances and we had to you know live a certain lifestyle based on the commandments right and moral codes that we were given by our religion in order to then attain eternal life and so yes it was god's grace through christ but it was grace plus our own efforts and our own merits yeah yeah so guys i hope you just picked up on what micah is saying it's a works based salvation and you guys know i talk a lot against that and a lot about that on my channel right anytime you add anything to what christ did on the cross and you add works to the finished work of jesus christ on the cross that is what paul calls another gospel and he's clearly says in the book of galatians if anyone preaches to you another gospel other than the one that i have preached to you let them be anathema let them be anathema let them be cursed right because he said that's not a gospel and so what micah just described right there is a false gospel that you have to believe in christ yes but then you also have to do some of these works so mike i'm going to follow up with that i too okay to their credit every and i happen to know a lot of mormons because i live in an area where there's a lot of mormons and every single mormon i've ever met in my life they are the nicest people you will ever meet i know you probably heard that before right they're they're so nice i've never ever met a mean mormon right is that somehow kind of is that just like coincidence like they're all nice or is that somehow kind of connected to this this fear that okay if i don't adhere to this then i may not be able to experience this eternal life which in a moment guys we're going to talk about what eternal life actually looks like for mormons but can you speak on that is it just coincidence that they're all nice or or what i think that's a i think that's an interesting observation um i i think it's naturally kind of cultural within mormonism and i don't think it's um um you know deceptive means to where they think that being nice is gonna get them into heaven i think it's rooted in who they are as a people and and that's why i say that i love the mormon people and and actually i think that there are aspects of their culture uh that we as christians could probably learn from you know their zeal for what they believe and their their loving kindness toward others the problem is that they're not rooted in truth and so i think that that kindness comes from really what they're taught right and that was what we were taught growing up it's the way that we tried to live our lives we tried to emulate jesus the best that we could and and it's interesting because jesus was always our example but i was never taught that he was my substitute if that makes sense and so i was trying to emulate jesus i was trying to be like jesus i was trying to live like jesus but i never recognized that jesus wasn't necessarily saying live like me he was saying trust in what i'd done for you right that's that's what he was doing he was our substitute and he lived a way that we could never live in order to bring us to reconciliation to god and so i think that mormons you know they have this sincere genuine desire to try to emulate jesus to be like him and and to be kind and loving to others but unfortunately they're not doing it rooted in the truth of the word of god they're doing it you know believing in a in a system of laws and works that can never save them okay perfect answer and perfect segue because i want to talk about this you mentioned the word of god right so here's another question how do mormons view the bible and um you know it's my understanding that there are you know four different um documents or i don't know if that's the word i want to use but sources of truth or authoritative sources of truth within the the mormon church or the mormon belief system can you talk a little bit about what are those four documents how are they different how did they come to be and then where does the bible rank as it relates to these four documents i just threw like four questions at you at one time but i trust you can feel them so tell us a little bit about what is what is truth what does authoritative truth look like in the mormon church yeah so that's one of the things that's unique uh about mormonism is that it actually has four books of scriptural canon okay and the bible is one of those four and so they don't believe that the bible alone is the sufficient revelation of god that it is the sufficient word of god they believe that god has spoken in other times through other people and that revelation has been recorded and is also the word of god and so you have the bible the book of mormon the doctrine and covenants and the pearl of great price and so each one of these books is distinct and different um the the one that is probably placed in the highest authority is the book of mormon i'm sure many people have heard of the book of mormon they believe that it is god's dealings with the ancient americans and that it contains you know the word of god as revealed through prophets in the ancient americas and so the problem is that when i was growing up i didn't view the bible as the highest authority and what i mean by that is there is actually a tendent of our faith that says we believe the bible to be the word of god as far as it is translated correctly and then the next phrase is we believe the book of mormon to be the word of god period and so there was always this caveat with the bible that it was not translated correctly or that it had been corrupted or that it was untrustworthy and in fact in the book of mormon it says that many plain and precious truths have been removed from the bible that's why we need these extra biblical sources because they fill in the gaps of what is missing from the the bible and the other thing is in the book of mormon in the introduction it states that a man will get near to god by abiding by the precepts of the book of mormon than any other book okay so right there it essentially establishes itself as the highest spiritual authority because a man is going to grow nearer to god through it than any other source so naturally as a young man growing up when i read that i said well i want to be close to god right i want to follow god i want to be in right relationship with god and so i really dove into the book of mormon i read it several times i didn't have the same emphasis in the bible although i did read portions of it now mormons will say they believe in the bible and they do believe in the bible but again they don't believe that it's the only word of god so they will kind of pick and choose elements from the bible that seem to support their doctrines and then they will kind of ignore those which contradict the doctrine or say that it's mistranslated now in addition to these four books of scriptural canon the mormons also believe in what they call modern day revelation which means that they have a prophet a living prophet who they believe holds the same prophetic authority as moses or abraham or isaiah in the old testament and that he is a mediator between god and men that he speaks to man the word of god and he can reveal new scripture and new commandments and new doctrine in addition to that they believe that there are 12 apostles today with the same apostolic authority as the apostles in the new testament and that they too can receive revelation from god and they can communicate to man the word of god so not only are you asked to trust in these extra biblical scriptures and teachings but you are also asked to trust in these leaders that speak the word of god and in fact they have said publicly numerous times that the words of the living prophets and apostles supersede the words of written scripture so if the the prophet comes out and gives a doctrine or a command that will actually take precedence over anything that's written even in their scriptural canon wow okay wow okay the wind uh you're doing a great job of explaining all these things i appreciate that um so along those same lines tell us a little bit about joseph smith and is he the sole author of the book of mormon are there multiple authors um you know tell us about i guess he received this he claimed to receive a revelation or a vision so tell us a bit about the origin of the book of mormon and this is the part that kind of blows my mind is how can how can mormons put their faith and their trust in a document that has been created by someone who claimed to have this revelation and what if and that's one beautiful thing about the bible is that you have 40 authors writing over you know um you know 1500 year period and three continents and you know so it's it's it's confirmed uh from one author to the next but to put all your faith in a document that is given through vision seems a bit shaky so can you tell me a little bit about the origin of the book of mormon yeah so so joseph smith did not claim to author the book of mormon he claimed to translate it and so actually within the book of mormon there's a story kind of similar to the bible where you have god dealing with prophets over multiple generations right and even multiple continents so they would kind of claim the same thing they'd say well the bible has multiple authors right over multiple generations so does the book of mormon the problem is is joseph smith was the sole source of the translation of this book of mormon i mean we can go back to the manuscripts of the new testament right of the old testament we can see right how those manuscripts were were you know transmitted over time and and and those things but now we have this soul book that's coming from one sole source uh claimed by revelation and authority of joseph smith and and you know it's it's certainly suspect um he claimed that an angel from heaven visited him and that he was led to golden plates that were written by these prophets and recorded and then he translated those golden plates into english and that is what we now know is the modern day book of mormon to kind of go along with that one thing that i want to point out because you said how can you believe that like how can you put your trust in in a man essentially when i was growing up we did not test things against the word of god as i now do and specifically the bible right we tested truth by our feelings so we confirmed the truthfulness of the book of mormon based on a a witness of the holy spirit that came through what they called a burning in the bosom meaning this i was told to pray about the book of mormon to get on my knees and to ask god if it was true and i would go through the experience i would fold my you know arms and i would pray and if i felt good in my heart if i felt good feelings inside of me then that was confirmation to me of the truthfulness of the book of mormon and so i wasn't looking at it from an archaeological standpoint i wasn't looking at it from a historical standpoint i was looking at it from a spiritual standpoint god is this true and that's really how i tested all truth as a latter-day saint that's how i tested whether the prophet was true whether the apostles were true whether the church itself was true whether joseph smith was a true prophet as he claimed and i had these what i would call spiritual experiences right i now know that they are deceiving spirits you know that were leading me astray because in first john 4 1 right that we are to test the spirits to see if they are from god for many false prophets have gone out into the world unfortunately i was testing things through the through my feelings right and therefore i was being deceived by my own heart i mean jeremiah 17 that the heart is deceitful it's wicked above all things jesus in matthew 15 says that out of the heart comes false witness so if we rely on our own feelings if we don't test truth against the written and revealed word of god that was delivered once for all to the saints then we open ourselves up to the susceptibility of being deceived by false doctrines false christs and false teachings and i love how you shared galatians chapter one that even if an angel from heaven comes to you proclaiming another gospel then do not receive it and so because that angel is called morani moroni or moroni moroni our pronounce somebody criticized me when i did my video because i pronounced his name wrong i thought i called it morani or moroni and it's moroni correct okay okay yeah so so we can't put our hope in spiritual experiences we can't put our hope in feelings because we're susceptible to deception when we're doing so we have to put our hope in the word of god we have to test all things against the written word and then we can separate that which is truth and that which is false awesome awesome so guys i got one more theological question that i want to throw micah's way and then we're going to talk a bit about his journey um and what god did in his life which is really the crux of what we're here for um because we could go on and on as a theologian i could go on and on this is fascinating me but talk to me a little bit about the afterlife like what does salvation that's a better question like what do what do mormons believe about salvation and how do you get to heaven right and and what what is heaven what is hell um what is what's the ultimate goal for a mormon and what does that look like yeah you talked about a little bit earlier but go ahead yeah so so the mormon church has a very unique kind of doctrine and theology as it relates to the afterlife because they ultimately believe that there are three levels of heaven each level is based on right the individual worthiness of a person and so you have three levels the the bottom level is basically for the worst of the worst right murderers rapists sinners of the worst kind are still saved in some sort in mormonism so they go to the lowest level of heaven called the celestial kingdom now the middle kingdom it's called the terrestrial kingdom that is for people who are good people who live good lives uh christians who have professed faith in jesus but people who rejected the the authority of the mormon church okay so it's kind of like the the the best christians uh and maybe the worst mormons go there oh and so they do believe we're going to heaven correct correct yeah but again and we'll distinguish what heaven is because right heaven to them god only dwells in the highest level of heaven the celestial kingdom so as a christian i would say that there is no heaven outside of the presence of god right right um and so for them the highest level of heaven called the celestial kingdom that is where god the father dwells and in order to attain the celestial kingdom you have to be baptized into the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints the mormon church you have to receive the gift of the holy ghost and then you have to go through a lifetime of following the laws commandments and ordinances of the the mormon religion in order to achieve the celestial kingdom so there are certain works in the temple there are certain ordinances that an individual must perform and do and then be faithful throughout the rest of their lives they must pay tithing they have to live moral codes they have to even get married there's all these requirements that are necessary for an individual to get to the celestial kingdom so when we talk about so a lot of mormons will say you must misrepresent what we believe we don't believe that works are necessary for salvation the problem is that we have to define terms if i say salvation as a christian that means eternal life in the presence of god right there's no other definition of salvation but as a mormon salvation just means eternal life after this life right and that can mean in one of the three kingdoms and so i like to distinguish when i talk about salvation when i talk about eternal life i'm talking about the best that god has to offer right i'm talking about eternal life in his presence and you cannot achieve that in mormon theology outside of the laws and the ordinances and the works that an individual must must do and adhere to for salvation um okay now along those lines what is what is this whole deal about the planets and and you'll you'll be a god of your own planet and the more offspring you have they'll be they have their own planets as well like that got really i'm just gonna be on that that part got really weird for me when i started studying mormonism and trying to prepare for the video like can you break that one down a little bit and then guys i promise we're going to get into his testimony i'm just i'm just really trying to understand that yeah and actually before i answer that let me just finish the last one because i realize i omitted okay okay hell what is the mormon view on hell they don't actually believe in a hell they have something called outer darkness now outer darkness is outside of the three kingdoms of god outside of the three saving right eternal paradises and that is reserved for satan his angels and for those who have a full knowledge of the truth and ultimately turn away from that truth so you can make an argument that apostates like myself could be going to outer darkness because we had a full knowledge of of the authority and the truth of mormonism and yet we we rejected that so as far as these are not necessarily discussions that i would have with a mormon at least not at the beginning so when we talk about gods and planets and these other things i do want to say these things can be offensive to mormons because they see them as kind of sacred doctrines that are that are deep doctrines they're not things that a lot of mormons talk about and there are some mormons that don't even know or understand these doctrines but the idea as i mentioned before that god himself was once a man who progressed to be god so they believe that every human being has the potential to progress to become a god ourselves right so the god that we know the god that we love the god that we serve and worship he himself was just a man on a planet however many eons ago who ultimately earned his godhood right through faithfulness to the commandments of these eternal laws of mormonism and so they believe that we have that same potential so so when we're saved and we're in the celestial kingdom we're actually in a process of continually progressing of continually perfecting ourselves until ultimately we ourselves become gods we ourselves then can create our own worlds and populate them with spirit children that are birthed spiritually and then we can send them down to these earths you know in order to go through the same process that we do that's what they believe the purpose of life is it's it's this eternal progression and to clarify something i said before that i know kind of confused you mormon theology teaches that we actually lived in a spiritual state before we came to the physical earth right i remember our spirits actually existed in a pre-earth life where we were being taught and prepared and coming to earth and receiving a physical body was part of this eternal progression that we would go to in order to ultimately ourselves become gods and then produce children who would go through that process as well so if you really think about it or you've ever heard that mormons believe in billions of gods which again it's not a great argument because it's it's kind of deeper into their theology but in essence it's true they believe that anybody can become a god and that millions maybe billions of people have become gods it's just that as it relates to us there is only one god and that is god the father but he may have a grandpa or a great-grandpa god somewhere else in another part of another universe you know who was his god and and so forth okay great great and um i'll get in trouble if i don't ask this so then this this is my last question before we get into your testimony but can you talk to me a little bit about this whole idea of of polygamy in the mormon church and is that even a thing anymore is that kind of an old school type of thought because that you know a lot of time when people think about mormons they think about oh that's the that's the religion that the guys can have a whole bunch of wives and you know like and and and so like where does that come from is that still being practiced or is that kind of you know shunned in the in the um in the mormon church good question and i think it's an important question and it's a very sensitive thing you know for a lot of mormons so again when we're when we're engaging with latter-day saints we have to be careful the types of topics that we engage with exactly um because it can be offensive to them and and one thing about me about our ministry is we always want to have integrity right we want to accurately represent the teachings that we were taught we don't want to exaggerate them um and so i actually want to defend the mormon church a little bit here yes polygamy was an essential part of mormonism in its early days so when joseph smith founded the church in 1830 um eventually polygamy was brought on board and it was actually taught as a doctrine that was necessary in order to get to the celestial kingdom um amazingly so it was actually an essential part of what they believed was necessary for eternal life and so the the prophet who who succeeded after joseph smith brigham young also taught that and so it was taught and practiced throughout the 1800s eventually it was outlawed it was banned in mormonism they they seized practicing it around um you know 1900 and ever since then it has been shunned within the mainstream mormon church if an individual is found practicing polygamy in the mainstream mormon church they're immediately excommunicated so it is not something that is accepted or tolerated however the problem was joseph smith and brigham young taught these things as eternal truths and they taught them even doctrinally and they are actually in some of the mormon scriptures so the problem is that there are people that still follow those things so they actually believe that the mainstream mormon church has apostatized by you know removing polygamy from their doctrines so there have been many hundreds of offshoot groups that actually practice and live out the doctrine of polygamy because they believe that it's necessary for salvation in fact one of the members of adam's road lila lebaron she is our lead singer for our music ministry she actually came from a mormon polygamist offshoot group in northern mexico and that is her testimony her father is a polygamist and and god rescued her out of that and brought her to the grace of christ and so it is something that's still very prevalent um in different aspects but within the mainstream church of jesus christ of latter-day saints mormonism is no longer tolerated um and and it's no longer part of their practicing doctrine and i'm glad that i clarified that guys because see this is a great example of how you can hear certain things that are being thrown around about particular groups and if you don't do your due diligence and study and read and really research you'll start to have conversation with people and they're like dude you're totally misrepresenting what we believe we don't even do that anymore like who does that i don't know anybody in my community that does that that's why it's important to kind of do your due diligence okay now let's transition now to the most important thing that we want to talk about today and that's jesus and how he got a hold of your life and your testimony of how god kind of took your life in a complete different direction so um you know first just kind of tell us a little bit about your experience you know at what point in your life did you start to experience a little bit of doubt as it relates to what you were so taught and it was ingrained in you uh in terms of the mormon faith to where you are today with being a fully devoted follower of christ what what did that transition look like for you and when did that happen yeah so when i was 19 years old i served a two-year mission for the mormon church i'm sure many people are familiar with the mormon missionaries they've got the white shirts and the ties and the name tags usually they're out riding their bicycles so i went on a two-year mission at 19 and i was sent to orlando florida for this two-year mission trip and so again i was a very devout very zealous very passionate young mormon man um i i was not somebody who doubted my faith i i had friends that did i knew a lot of people that had questions or uncertainties but i never had ever questioned or doubted the core tenets of mormonism i had a testimony in all of the principle pillars of this faith and i was ready as a mormon missionary to go out and to make converts and one of the things that was an important part of our doctrine in the mormon church is that we believed we were the exclusive true church of jesus christ on the earth we were the only true church and the only one with the proper authority from god and so i wanted other people to have the truth that i believed the mormon church was offering me and so i went out very passionately as a mormon missionary trying to make converts i was i felt like i was a good missionary i was well spoken and i was successful in making converts and so i was about four months into my two-year mission trip when i encountered a baptist minister and attempted uh unsuccessfully to convert him to the mormon church just as evidence of how zealous i was for my religion and so i sat down with with this this loving christian minister and i want to just preface this by saying pastor benson was his name and and he was the the most kind loving compassionate gentleman that i had engaged up to that point of my mission and the reason why i bring that up is because i met a lot of christians who did not treat me like christians should treat non-believers and it's an important part of my story was people that said well you're in a cult and you're going to hell and and get off my doorstep and don't ever come back we're not interested in your message and then they would say we're christians and i say well i don't want anything to do with you because why are you treating me this way and i know that as we travel with our ministry adams road we talk to a lot of people and sometimes they'll come to us in tears after we've shared our testimony and said that was me like like i i realize i've been mistreating the mormon missionaries or the jehovah's witnesses or whoever the whole point is that as as christ followers everything we do is done through the lens of love i i remember nabil kareshi said that on his deathbed and it really stuck with me because his ministry was so centered on love like alan's ministry is so centered on love if you know kostihin like his ministry is so centered on love like we can be so bold in truth but we speak the truth in love amen paul said to the corinthians let all that you do be done in love right so we have this standard this paradigm that was set for the church and that is that we are to love one another as christ has loved us and that will be the identifying mark of the christians and so pastor benson had this unique love and and he just he engaged with us in a way um that really opened my heart to him and so we sat down with him and had this long conversation about doctrine about what we believed and why we believed it and uh with without you know being too long-winded ultimately pastor benson lovingly shared the gospel with me in a way that i had never before heard it my entire life so here i am a 19 year old bold zealous mormon missionary sitting in this baptist pastor's office and i'm hearing about the sufficiency of christ for the first time in my life the sufficiency of the blood that was shed on the cross of calvary to cleanse me of my sin and to make me right with god that jesus had paid the full penalty for my sins right that he had satisfied the demands of god's law he had satisfied and taken upon himself the wrath of god as this propitiation for my sins and that receiving that by faith was the only thing that could make me right with god that i was not reconciled to god through my works through my righteousness through my merits you know through my adherence to all of these laws and ordinances that i was saved by grace through faith and this is not your own doing it is the gift of god so that no one can boast and so here this gospel message is planted in my heart in a way that i i'm i'm taken aback because i've never heard the love of god presented to me in the way that it was presented to me that day and it was so simple and it was so beautiful but simultaneously i couldn't accept it because it's it was too simple and it's it was contradictory to everything that i'd ever been taught my entire life of believing that i needed to do my part right i needed to contribute to my own salvation through my faithfulness because if not then i was just like everybody else and i kind of had this prideful nature where i wanted to believe that god loved me more because of the things that i was doing and i think that's human nature i think the most difficult thing for us to remove from from salvation is our self right we don't want to remove ourselves from the equation of our own salvation because we want to believe that for some reason god is saving us because of us not because of what christ did for us and so the end of this meeting and this is really the catalyst that changed my life i was very angry um at pastor benson and people say well why are you angry if you're just hearing the gospel i wasn't angry because pastor benson was mean he was very kind he was very gentle he was very respectful and loving in the way in which he shared the gospel but i was i was convicted right i was pierced by that two-edged sword that the word of god that is living and active and i couldn't contend with it and it really angered me and so the last thing pastor benson shared with me he said look you don't have to trust me and i'm not even asking you to trust me what i want you to do what i challenge you to do is go home pick up the bible and read it like a child yes and he said i promise you if you do that god is going to change your life he's going to open your eyes and you will see for the first time in your life what good news really means and so that moment that day in 2004 was sorry it was a turning point in my life because this seed was planted in me and i didn't know what to do about it and in my pride i said you know what i'm going to read the bible because i want to prove that pastor benson is wrong and isn't it funny how god will find us wherever we are he'll find us whatever our motive is whatever our heart is it doesn't matter how much we are his enemy god showed his love for us and that while we were still sinners christ died for us even when saul was on the road to damascus the the lord said saul saul why are you persecuting me and he came and he revealed himself to saul and changed his life and i feel like in a sense i was like saul on my own road to damascus as a mormon missionary going about putting people under spiritual bondage and leading them away from the saving gospel of christ and it didn't stop god and his love and his mercy and his hesit right his his steadfast love toward me to pursue me in that love through his word and so although my heart was prideful initially i started reading the bible as a mormon missionary not wanting anything in my life to change not believing that anything in my life needed to change only simply that i was going to disprove the gospel of grace uh through reading the bible and so i opened up to matthew chapter one i made a commitment to read the new testament in its entirety which i'd never done up to that point in my life and i did that for the rest of my mission and in total i read the new testament 12 times from beginning to end and that's how god changed my life wow man dude man i'm like i'm over here man and i'm i'm literally almost in tears man like i i i confess dude i i almost damn man like i just man that that that just was that guys this is the power of god man this is this is the power of god how god can change a person's life this is why we do what we do this is why i i contend with you all i beg you i plead with you all to read the bible don't take what alan says uh you know as as perfect right don't take what your pastor says is perfect don't don't don't don't look at what other youtubers say oh that's perfect read the bible for yourself and let the holy spirit reveal to you the truths of the word of god like that's why this ministry even exists that's why micah does what he does right because we don't want you to take our word we want you to have that experience and that encounter for yourself so man thank you for sharing that i have a couple follow-up questions like what what was the rest of your mission like four months in and you're you're pierced with this truth that you have to kind of deal with and wrestle with what does the rest i mean you got what 24 months what's the other 20 months were you still were you still trying to convert people to mormonism but yet still at the same time wrestling with this new testament truth and how did you how did you effectively do that if in your heart you're like man be a mormon but gosh i'm starting to have some doubts like what did that look like for you oh it was a challenge i mean i the the thing about my story is that it was it was such a gradual change that took place over time because people kind of assumed while you read one verse or one thing happened and all of a sudden everything made sense i mean i was slowly being washed by the water of the word of god right i had this blindness this spiritual veil that sat over my eyes through the religion in which i had been raised and so it took god's word continually pouring over me to slowly remove that blindness and so every time you know every book every chapter right every verse i would read i was learning something new god was opening my eyes to something marvelous and different passages would begin to implant themselves into my heart i remember you know ephesians 2 right but even even before 8 9 which we all know so well but ephesians 2 4 but god being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with christ by grace you have been saved and and i started to have this awakening that i was dead and i was blind and and i was hopeless and i was this this sinful wretch that had no hope of making myself right with god based on my adherence to the laws in the ordinance of mormonism and i began to see clearly that my only hope was in christ my only hope was in what he did for me and that i couldn't boast in or trust what i was doing for god i could only receive by faith what he had done for me and i was going through this process where god was showing me micah my love for you is so much greater than anything you've ever imagined in your life and anybody who's in a workspace religion you can't fully know the love of god because you don't know that you don't have to do these things that you're trying to do that you're endeavoring so hard to earn god's love and earn his forgiveness and and earn your way into eternal life and god's saying no the whole point of the old law was to say man can't do it by himself you'll never be good enough based on your merits therefore i have given you the greatest offering of love that the world will ever know and that is jesus christ and i remember like first john 4 was another very just life-changing passage that says in this the love of god was made manifest among us that god sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him and this is love not that we have loved god but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins and i came to this awakening and that's the only thing that i can really describe it as it was uh an understanding of the depth of god's love the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards me in christ who say god is offering me something that i've always wanted but i could never feel like i could fully attain right that's what works based religion causes is we're we're continually trying to get something that we can't ever get and then all of a sudden through the word of god i'm realizing i can have everything that i've ever endeavored to earn by my own efforts right i can have salvation i can have eternal life i can have the guarantee of knowing that i am in right standing with god to know that my sins have been forgiven and washed away through the blood of christ wow and so i had about three weeks left of this two-year mission commitment and i was slowly going through this transformation process and i got to the point where i fully recognized what jesus christ had done for me and i received by faith that one act of righteousness that brings justification and life to all men and i was born again through the spirit of god i died to my old self i was raised into newness of life through the holy spirit and like paul says if anyone is in christ he is a new creation the old has passed away behold the new has come and so here i was a born-again mormon missionary wow wow okay so now now we got a transition to what did the process look like now for for leaving the church that you you knew and loved um you know how were you treated you know what was the transition like for your family how do you go back from a mission people expecting you to come back from a mission even more on fire for mormonism now you're telling people hey i've i've found jesus um you know well what what we believe is that what i now believe is the true jesus you know what was that like how were you treated and what was that transition all about yeah so it was a terrifying prospect because once i had come to saving faith in christ i knew that that saving faith was going to come at the cost of the life that i knew and loved like you mentioned and and i was afraid of doing that but i also knew that what i had what had been given me in christ it was it was greater than anything that i could ever lose and uh in fact the the the way that i came forward about my newfound faith was that in the mormon mission system it's a tradition that the missionaries that are concluding their missions are supposed to stand publicly in front of their missionary peers and their mormon leaders and share a testimony of what they've learned throughout the course of their two-year so it was my turn to to go through this process only two days after i had become born again so i got up there and i shared my new testimony my new faith and i told my missionary peers and my mormon leader i said the one thing that i've learned as a mormon missionary is that jesus is all that i need that i am saved by his grace alone not by my works and i'm and i now know for the first time in my life that i have a right standing before god and it's it's because of what he's done for me not because of what i've done for him and then two days after that public testimony my mormon leadership called me into a meeting where i was you know questioned about my newfound faith question about my doctrines and and i knew at that point that if i was forthright about the change that god had made in my life then it was going to come at the cost of of my familial relationships my friends my community my reputation even my you know education and career path through brigham young university that i would have to lose all of those things in order to find christ and um there may be people listening to this that are experiencing something similar you're in a place in your life where you know that god has revealed truth to you and that truth is going to come at a cost but the gospel calls us to discipleship jesus says whoever wants to you know be my disciple then deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me because whoever loses his life will will find it but whoever you know finds his life will lose it and so i realized that god was calling me to lose the life that i knew for something greater and that something greater is the gospel and the gospel is worth the loss of all things that's the beauty of what jesus offers us is he gives us eternal satisfaction eternal fulfillment in a way that nothing and no one in this world can there's no marriage or child or job or house or career or anything in this world that can ever give you the satisfaction that you will find alone in jesus christ and i remember having read john 6 35 where jesus says i am the bread of life whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst and and i held on to that i held on to paul's declaration of philippians 3 that everything i once counted is gain in my life i now consider those things as loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing christ jesus is lord and so i held on to that i went back to utah i faced my byu professor mom and my dad and my siblings and my culture my community and just told them that that jesus was enough that he was all sufficient for me and i encouraged them to read the bible like a child because i knew how the word of god had changed my life and i knew that it could change them as well and i know that as we see people in our lives that are non-believers it's easy for us to give up hope and to say well god's never going to save that person god can't save a mormon missionary or a byu professor or an atheist or muslim or drug addict or or whatever and yet that's the whole testimony of the gospel is that it saves the unsavable i mean it is the power of god into salvation to everyone who believes and i'm a witness of that and i i am a testimony of the power of god's word to transform the hearts and lives of of lost men like myself so i gave that challenge to my family and to this day my mother my father one of my brothers and my younger sister uh have all come to a saving faith in jesus christ have left the mormon church and whoa our old performing full-time in ministry and so wait wait wait wait wait wait wait hold on slow down wait whoa hold on i didn't get that part of your story before so wow hold on who in your family has now come out so the the first two people were my older brother and my younger sister my brother at the time was a senior at brigham young university um and he was saved by the grace of god and he actually was on a full scholarship for piano performance and he walked away from his career never graduated and and began to to serve serve god in ministry my parents they had so much more to lose i mean you got to consider the cultural repercussions of of leaving your faith in mormonism for my mom it was her tenured professorship right i mean this was her job her financial security my dad it was his his business his clientele his relationships their reputation in a community that was 98 99 mormon um but the awakening that happens when we approach the word of god through the eyes of a child with that humility of saying god teach me truth right open up my eyes and uh and and god can do miraculous things and and my parents you know we're reading the new testament um for the next year or so and god was showing them things and revealing to them the the supremacy of christ and in that there was nothing that mormonism could offer them um that they couldn't find in jesus christ and that he was so much greater and so uh my mom was actually saved through the gospel of john um which is which is awesome and the power of the message of god's love revealed through the apostle john and my father later on and they were both born again my mother uh resigned her tenure ship at brigham young university uh they left utah moved to south florida and in their mid-50s completely uh started over i mean they were they were literally born again in every sense of the word um and god has been using them they've been bold witnesses my mother wrote a book uh back in 2013 called unveiling grace that was published by zondervan and she's been all over the world sharing her testimony of how she was rescued by the grace of god and uh and we're just simply trophies of god's grace i love what paul says we are we are jars of clay right and we contain a treasure within us and that treasure is the gospel and so our testimonies are not to say look at me it's to say look how good god is that he saved me like look at the depth of his grace that he could find someone like i was and that he could give me the the hope and salvation that is found in christ alone wow that's that's powerful man i i don't even know wow that's powerful that is so powerful guys i'm i'm i'm i'm weeping because i know that the lord is challenging some of you to give up something he's challenging you to give up something i don't know who this message is for guys but um i can promise you that whatever it is that the lord is tugging on your heart to give up he's got something so much more powerful so much so much greater for something so much greater in store for you than whatever it is that you feel like you have to hold on to whether that's a relationship that you know you need to get out of that's toxic that's not good for you right whether it's um whether it's a church environment that you grew up in that you know is not right and your family's there and everybody's there but you know it's not right right or or maybe maybe it's a a job that that he's calling you away from because it's compromising your morals or whatever and and you're thinking that you have to hold on to this and the god won't take care of you if you obey him and if you respond to his his his leading and i'm telling you i'm a living witness i've had sacrificed so much and now looking back it doesn't feel like a sacrifice right when i gave up my job as an engineer to pursue a ministry or to go to seminary when i was 22 years old at 24 like that felt like such a big burden but now looking back is the best decision i could have ever made guys i was engaged to marry a woman at 2002 and i thought this was the girl i was gonna spend the rest of my life with and several months into our engagement i knew it wasn't right i had bought a dress i or she had brought a dress i bought a ring we had put money down on a reception hall everybody in the church knew we were getting married was publicized everywhere but i knew right here it was wrong the lord was pressing on my heart it was wrong it wasn't right and people asked me like how did you find the courage to give that up same thing that mike like when you know god is pressing you you can't you can't fight it guys you you know that you have to obey right and giving up that career as an engineer giving up that relationship that i thought was everything to me at that point and then knowing that i wasn't going to get married for another 16 years after that right but it was all worth it guys because when you follow god you can't go wrong guys so i just want to just say micah just before we continue on with with the rest of this thank you for sharing that because i didn't know that your family members came to christ see guys because micah listened to the prompting of the spirit of god and what god was trying to do in his life he started a revolution of other people that he's been able to bring to the saving faith of christ um which which leads me now into this question sorry guys i just i got emotional because i just god is god has done so much for for me and i know that much of much of what i've experienced in my life and much micah can testify to his his life he never would have experienced this if he wouldn't have paid attention and follow the prompting of the lord on his life but with that being said micah tell us now about your ministry like what does adam's road minister i assume it's it's something along the lines but i don't even know guys i'm learning this for the first time as well tell us tell us a bit about what you do man yeah so so after i concluded my mission god began to save people in my life like one of the first other people that got saved was one of my best friends who was a mormon missionary along with me for those two years in florida his name was joseph warren my high school girlfriend alicia who is a student at byu she got saved as well we're now married so god all of a sudden i was seeing that the word of god does not return void and i was seeing the power of the gospel message in the lives of all these people around me and so a handful of us that were out of the mormon church had been born again uh we actually began a ministry called adams road and we all had this kind of common passion of doing music and so we knew that the word of god is what had changed us and the word of god is what could change other people and so we we kind of set out on this mission to take god's word to take scripture and to put it into song i mean not that there's not a lot of good christian music out there but we actually just literally wanted to take scripture and put it to music and allow people to listen to the word of god and so for the last 15 years we've been doing that we actually have 10 full-length studio albums that are all centered on the word of god even on our lyric sheets you can see where every verse references for for every line that's in each song and so we actually um we kind of follow paul's direction in first corinthians 15 where he said then what then is my reward that in preaching the gospel i can offer it free of charge so as to not make full use of my right and so we actually offer all of our music free to the world um so you can go on our website adamsroadministry.com you can download all of our music we have a lot of other resources there as well and we go out on the road about four to five months out of the year we live on a tour bus and we we travel and we visit churches and we share our testimonies we share our music and we equip and encourage the the body of christ to fulfill our purpose which is to go out and to make disciples and to proclaim the gospel to all of creation and to fulfill the great commission and so we've been doing that now for 15 years and just praise god for you know the the strength and sustenance that he's given us to to be able to do that and uh and i've written my testimony now in written form has been a part of our ministry it took me 15 years to complete um but but it's finally available now and and it's it's just a witness of of the power of god it's not a testimony that i'm great or did something to deserve what god offered me it's that god gives us something even when we don't deserve it that's his unmerited favor yeah praise god man thank you so much um so let's transition now a little bit now to this question here um you know what advi well actually not that one uh what what's the best way for those of us who are evangelical christians to witness to mormons a couple people are asking in the chat are mormons christians and guys okay so that's actually another question that you can answer do mormons consider themselves christians are they trying to identify as christians or are they trying to identify as something different um how do they want to be seen and identified and then um obviously we we feel differently about that but um can you speak a little bit about that before you talk about um what you would consider some best practices for how we can witness to those who are in the mormon church yeah so absolutely the mormons would identify themselves as christians in fact when we were mormon missionaries we said we were the only true christians uh so we we believed that we were the exclusive true church and followers of christ and so um there has definitely been more of a deliberate shift i would say in the last 10 years or so where the mormon church has tried to enmesh themselves more into mainstream christianity right into kind of this evangelical christianity and so they're emphasizing the bible more they're emphasizing jesus more because i think that they want to be considered part of the body of christ um and so that's actually a dangerous thing because those lines are being blurred with a lot of people where uh people who are unaware and maybe people who are watching this or are commenting right now um are uncertain as to whether or not mormons are christians and i can't speak to the individual because i was technically a christian when i was a mormon missionary right but the the mormon organization the religion itself does not teach historic orthodox christian doctrines it does teach and propagate a false gospel i mean i just have to say that bluntly it is not the gospel that saves in the gospel that's revealed in scripture and so um because of that and once we know that and understand that we we need to have a heart to want to witness to them right so we meet a lot of christians that say well mormons are just the nicest people in the world and i say well being saved isn't about being nice that's not the standard right all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god so there's nobody who's going to be saved by being a nice person or being a sincere person we are saved by the blood of christ period and so the mormon people they need the gospel because they are trusting in their own works and in their own efforts to gain entrance into the kingdom of god yeah awesome awesome guys um that's awesome uh last question i have and then we'll open it up for some questions guys just so you know um micah does have a book that i'm gonna make sure that you guys get your your hands you know if you want more about a story where i'm gonna show you how you can get your hands on that so uh just stay tuned for a little bit but um uh you know what what advice would you have we kind of touched on this a little bit but what advice would you have somebody's watching this right now they're they're in they're in a they're in a cult or they're in an unhealthy toxic environment or in a church environment that is just not consistent with the scriptures how what what advice would you give them for how they can get out how do they find the courage to leave and and and how do they how do they do that um yeah yeah i know there's probably good pragmatic advice that could be given but i'm i'm i can only speak to to spiritual and and and what i experienced is that there is no there's nothing in this world that is not worth losing for the sake of christ and so there's nothing that you can give up or walk away from that isn't worth losing compared to the surpassing worth of what you're going to gain in jesus and so i know that seems like the sunday school answer but the reality is is that when we find the sufficiency of what christ offers us we have to hold on to that we have to trust god and take him at his word and believe that he will provide for us no matter what loss we incur for following jesus and so my motivation has been people you know people like alan or people you know people like our brothers and sisters that are in countries in this world who are not friends of the gospel and people who face literal persecution and torture and death for the sake of following christ and it kind of is humbling to me as an american christian where i say you know what if i have to lose a friend or a job or relationship or a money or or house or something else then let it be because the gospel is worth the loss of my life and and we have the examples of scripture you know the apostle paul and peter and people who literally went to their own deaths knowing that they had something in christ that was worth losing their own life for and so if you're in a situation where you are facing that loss where you're afraid of losing it then then hold to christ and trust in christ and believe in christ and know that if you have him you have everything that you will ever need in fact our ministry slogan in adam's road is jesus is enough and so all of our free materials and everything say jesus is enough and it's not just you know a fun catch phrase it is the summation of the gospel that what we have in christ is all sufficient to satisfy our every need yeah praise god man praise god um so micah tell us a little bit about you know um micah has a book guys and uh i'm gonna pre-order it um uh as soon as we get off this stream here because um this guy's this is my first major conversation with micah obviously we had some preliminary conversation before coming on but man let me just before i just get into your book let me just publicly affirm you man you god what god is doing in your life and through your ministry man is just powerful and you're so well spoken you're so uh you have such a heart a kind heart man and and what you're doing and i i just want to say man continue to do what you're doing continue to to let god use you to be a light because you're making a huge difference you're doing the work you're doing the evangelist the evangelism and um just want to affirm you man you just to continue to do what you're doing because god god has just definitely gotten his hand on your life man and it's just a pleasure to to meet you to to hear your story and to see what god is doing so um can you just tell us a little bit about your your book man and um you know what it's about and and why you wrote it and kind of and kind of kind of go from there yeah so the book is called passport to heaven and um i actually began this process of writing my story just a few days after i got home off of my two-year mormon mission and i felt a very clear and distinct call from from god that i needed to communicate my story i was actually a very meticulous note taker and journaler throughout my two-year mission i i journaled daily and i was writing all of the things that i was learning all the things that i was coming to know through the word of god and all these conversations that i was having with people that god had placed in my life and so i began to draft out this story and the uni the unique thing about the book is that it's not about me as a person it's not about my life about my interests it's not some lifelong biopic it's actually uh only encompasses the two years of my mormon mission from the very beginning to the last day and how the grace of god rescued a young pharisee and so it's my testimony it's it's simply how the word of god changed my life the things that i came to realize through the word of god and how it ultimately culminated in god rescuing me by his grace and then the repercussions of what it means to be a follower and a disciple of jesus christ and so my hope is that it's an encouragement you know not only to non-believers to be able to hear the gospel to mormons to know why jesus is worth losing everything for but also to to the christian body to know how god deliberately placed loving christian vessels in my life who shared truth with me and shared truth with me in love and i often think about that man pastor benson and how he so lovingly shared the gospel with a young mormon missionary and how because of that one seed that he planted in my life how that not only grew to fruition but ultimately led to to millions of other seeds being planted and countless other people coming to know the gospel of jesus and i and i want to encourage the believers there to to not give up hope um when you see people that we deem or label as too far removed from god's grace being able to reach right we kind of have these people groups that we just say well that's a tough mission field mission mormons are very difficult to reach or jehovah's witnesses or you know seventh-day adventists or or whatever you know and and we kind of label them as as being too far removed from salvation and a lot of times we don't even bother sharing the truth with them because we say well they're just going to reject it what's the point well the point is that we are called to plant seeds and we are called to water seeds and god and god alone will do the growth and so my encouragement to you is actually the encouragement that i got from pastor benson after i shared my story with him after i had become born again and one of the things he said to me that i've never forgotten is he said when i walked out of my office that day he said i felt like i had failed god he said i felt like nothing i said to you made any impact on your life and and i've thought about that like how many interactions do we have with non-believers where it's not necessarily a positive one in the moment right how many uh dialogue or discussions do we have that end with them being angry or offended or upset or hurt and we just kind of go well that was a wasted opportunity that didn't work and yeah and what i've learned is the word of god doesn't return void there is no such thing as a wasted opportunity if the gospel message and the word of god are being shared and so we have to have that boldness and we have to have that that truth within us to say i want to plant these seeds i want to water them i'm not going to worry about how the person's going to react i'm not going to worry about what their response is going to be because i love them enough to share truth i love them enough to get out of my comfort zone to embarrass myself you know to put myself out there knowing that true love is the proclamation of the gospel of jesus christ and and if we love these people then we need to fulfill our call as christians and that is to to share god's love to the world you know what guys and and guys if you don't get anything else out of this discussion get this be available to the lord you never know how god wants may want to use you in the lives of someone else guys check this out i'm just going to briefly tell you when i was uh 22 years old i was in kansas city missouri i was working at an assembly plant all right i was working at an assembly plant i don't even remember the guy's name but he had a small startup church a storefront church maybe 30 people that's it he had a big old afro he was a bi vocational pastor so during the day he worked at the assembly plant and then at the weekends and at night he was preaching somehow now i look back and see it's a god's sovereignty in his providence he and i started having conversations he found out that i played the piano and then i preached well somehow or another he invited me to his church to play the piano played the piano a couple sundays after that he said hey uh do you teach the bible i said well you know i've had ideas of teaching the bible before but i've never actually preached or done anything like that he said well why don't you put together a sermon and i'll let you preach in my church and at the time i was like i don't even know where to start you know what preach i don't know what to do the seed that he planted in my life at 22 years of age right giving me the opportunity to preach at his church and the way i felt at that point of standing up in front of the people and preaching for the first time it was like life had just happened for me it was just like this is now what i'm called to do for the first time in my life i knew clearly this is my purpose this is my calling i don't even i don't even i think i was at that church maybe a few more times and then i went back to detroit michigan which is really where i was based out of and i never ever saw that guy ever again like i said i don't even know his name right but he made himself available he impacted my life in us in a way that seemed small to him but turned the whole trajectory of my life so guys i say that not to put the focus back on me but to say that when you just make yourself available to the lord the lord can do some amazing things in and through your life that you may not even recognize the person that you're impacting may not ever come back and say thank you they may not even remember your name right like i don't remember this guy's name but you can have a significant impact so don't ever underestimate because you're not a pastor you're not a missionary you're not a organist at your church you're not a worship leader you are enough just being a christian that's available to the lord being led by the power of the holy spirit so i really want to speak that into people's lives to know that god can use you if you're available all right so i i don't know that was for hopefully for everybody but uh micah we're gonna take a couple questions that people have uh because um man uh we'll take a few questions guys maybe about 10 minutes or so and then we'll wrap this thing up but um if you guys have any questions at all for micah specifically because you guys ask me questions all the time let us focus on on micah put a cue in front of your question and guys if you've asked a question before i've not been able to actually get to it so just ask it again if you have a question we'll put your question on the screen so you need to be comfortable people seeing your profile and your question on the screen so that way we can address your questions all right but uh while we're waiting for some of these questions to come on uh you know micah thank you so much for um you know for for what for what you're doing and i i definitely appreciate that um and let me here's here's one robert says uh let's see here robert says question one from robert is uh let me put that in the middle here if god the father was once human and he had to follow the eternal commandments where did or who gave those commandments for god the father to follow how would a mormon answer that's a good question that is actually a great question so they they they believe joseph smith actually explained this and he had a ring and he explained it as the the eternal round and so there's basically no beginning and no end of this eternal progression of gods right so that actually the truth is eternal the the being of god is not if that makes sense so like these truths exist outside of of god because god was once a man and progressed to be god so these truths were there and then there's kind of this this this round circular eternal progression of gods becoming gods becoming god so there is no beginning and there is no end but that's a great question because it doesn't really make logical sense um but yeah good question yeah awesome uh regina says where do you begin speaking to truth to a mormon like you know you've got a mormon neighbor or whatever what's the where do you start that's a that's a great question yeah i mean so much of that depends on what is your relationship with the individual right as as so much of relational evangelism is um but if you kind of have an established relationship i would say that the advice i would give for a starting point um is sin and salvation and what i mean by that is what is your sin right before god and how are you reconciled to god so so what do you have to do to be in right standing with god and and so the best thing in in these types of situations is to engage in dialogue by asking questions right because naturally one of the mistakes that we see people a lot of make is we have presuppositions we say well mormon doctrine teaches that you believe you can become a god well the mormon may have never heard that and they might not personally believe that so we need to do a good job of of of pulling out what is their personal belief like what do they believe as latter-day saints because they may be somewhere on a large spectrum of belief even within the mormon belief system and so once you do that you can start to engage with them on what is sin what does that mean with our relationship with god and how do we fix that and of course you know we know biblically the answer is that christ alone is the only way to fix that he alone is the way to reconciliation to god and so i think that that's always a good starting point uh one thing that i think a lot of mormons um struggle with is knowing if they have forgiveness like like being able to say with assurance that they know that they're forgiven of their sins i think if people would have asked me at that time of my life i would say well i don't know but i'm doing my best is is a response that you'll probably get a lot and so i think that that is an important point there is a way to know that we're forgiven of our sins and it's not based on our works and our righteousness it's based on the righteousness of christ that's imputed to us and and this is what that gospel message is and of course we need to know the word of god and be able to communicate the word of god and and share the word of god as we're given those opportunities awesome awesome i love that um okay here's another good question uh from christian kidsvids does the mormons bible have the same revelation like john i'm not sure if i understand that but but actually this actually gives you a point a question do they do they have their own translation of the bible or do they largely go by the king james or kind of what yeah yeah good question so the only uh authorized translation in the mormon church is the king james version so any other modern translation they would kind of dismiss um however they they don't believe that the king james version is perfect now joseph smith actually uh did his own translation of the bible it's called the joseph smith translation and so there are footnotes on on several passages throughout the bible in that king james version the bible that we had in the mormon church that has joseph smith's translation of those things and many of them are are in stark contrast to what is there and so um it is interesting because they they use the king james but then they also use the joseph smith translation as well to kind of correct elements in the king james that they believe are wrong um okay good now robert said he had another question so i want to put that up there where does the line of gods end where does the yeah okay so i'm not sure if you know what he's talking about there but yeah well i i think it's kind of what i explained before there is no beginning and there there is no end right so this line of gods is continual and it's going to go forever so there is no end and there is no beginning again i didn't make up the doctrine that's just what what joseph smith taught um so you kind of have this eternal nature that is that is continual yeah okay good another question here um and and this is this is one i failed to kind of ask earlier because i kind of thought we touched on it but we didn't really touch on it significantly like how do mormons and this is kind of related to this question but how would mormons view those who defect from their church and you mentioned it earlier about you're now in the lowest level of of you know um lowest level of afterlife but you know how do they treat you because obviously they based on their moral code they're still called to love right because that's part of their moral code which is very interesting but how would they express that love to you when they know you are like the lowest of the low you had the full knowledge of of mormonism the truth the only truth and you've rejected it what does what does that look like uh yeah i think it varies right it varies based on the individual uh on the family um i was very fortunate that my family was was very loving and understanding not necessarily always 100 um in agreeance but they certainly um loved me through that process but i mean no i i've i'm seen as an apostate right in mormon circles i've actually been been warned about by the mormon leadership to people i mean they're warned to stay away from us that were false teachers uh that were false prophets you know that that and people try to use any way to discredit us to say that well we don't we didn't really understand the doctrine or we never truly believed it or we couldn't leave the commandments right they'll try to find any reason or excuse to discredit our testimonies and so um yes i mean i have lost several lifelong friendships because of it i have people that that since i came to faith 15 years ago have not spoken to me since i i have certainly been called every name in the book uh which is kind of why i avoid any type of uh reading comments on social media and other things um and so they meant that for your own mental health absolutely but just in general yeah i mean i would be seen as an apostate because not only am i not only did i leave mormonism but i have also made it a distinct purpose to go and proclaim the saving gospel right i'm doing you're trying to pull more people out of my mind i'm contradicting uh the gospel in mormonism and and exposing it as being you know contrary to the saving gospel and because of that i think naturally you know there there's a lot more um blowback because of it yeah you're you're a troublemaker um yeah but that that that's awesome um here's a probably a quick one you can answer and we'll take a few more um ria says how do you oh no not this one um but this is not a bad question but emelina says what verse really brought you to christ the most was there any particular verse you obviously met first of all guys thank you so much for the super chats uh having that chance to even look at those but thank you for all those who are um you know donating to the to supporting the ministry uh we really certainly appreciate that um you mentioned earlier is kind of a gradual kind of a deal but you know was there any specific verse that you um you know that you you that kind of took you over the edge yeah that's a tough one there there are several i know i shared several earlier um i i would probably go back to john 6 35. i know i already shared that but if people weren't listening earlier jesus you know after he feeds the 5 000 he then says i am the bread of life whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst and i think that that's that's my favorite or or the one that really brought me to christ was was that showed me that that christ was all sufficient that that having jesus and and knowing what he offers means that we will always have everything in him and that's the hope that every christian needs to have like that needs to be our testimony like if we can't lose something um and not be satisfied in christ then then we need to to turn back to to god and we need to put our hope in jesus alone and and that was a scripture that i think really helped me come to that understanding that jesus is enough yeah awesome take a couple more um now kelsey willard says are sdas similar to mormons now i'm going to go ahead and answer this one um guys this is a this is a very um uh tough this is a tougher question that is not necessarily our focus today but i will say this [Music] historically historically in the christian church uh leaders have considered seven members of seventh-day adventists um to be christians because of their now i want to be careful how i'm saying this okay members of the christian church historically have considered members of the sda church to be christians because there is a much greater similarity in doctrine between sda and evangelical christianity versus mormons and evangelical christianity there's a bigger gap right for instance the inheritance of the scriptures the inerrancy of scripture um you know afterlife all the things that we talked about there's a bigger gap between mormonism and evangelical historical christianity versus sda there's just some different there's some differences and they are i'm not going to downplay them there's some differences in theology and and understanding and and if you want more about that guys i have at least four videos on my youtube channel where i go into a lot more depth of what i believe are some of the differences between adventism and evangelical christianity but we're not here once again to bash it's just a difference and one of the one of the guys one of the marks of a mature christian is somebody who is able to disagree without disrespecting i have friends that are adventists i have family members who are and i love them dearly and we can disagree but i don't disrespect them because we disagree so go back on my channel and search for about three videos i did and i also did a live stream similar to what i'm doing with micah with a member of the seventh-day adventist church only differences he didn't defect from the seventh-day adventist church he is still um very much involved so go check those out if you want a little bit more about that um i don't know if you want to add anything to that at all on this with this question yeah i won't get you i won't get you in trouble alan the only thing i'd say is we've actually as a ministry had the opportunity to minister in several uh seventh-day adventist churches across the nation and the only thing i would say is there's a lot more individual autonomy within each individual church than there is in mormonism where you have a very structured hierarchy right that determines the doctrine so we've actually been to some seventh-day adventist churches that are very you know evangelical um you know and then others maybe that are less so so i think that's kind of interesting it's not as structured doctrinally to where there's a little more autonomy within each individual congregation to kind of determine uh you know certain things that they choose to emphasize or not emphasize yeah awesome um okay man there's so much there's so many other questions but we're i'm gonna look for one last one i'll be one respect i want to be respectful of micah's time today but i'm gonna look for one last question um uh let's see what's this person saying would they teach the mormons oh okay this is not a bad one um would they speaking i'm assuming of the mormon church leaders would they teach you as a mormon missionary how to defend your faith against christians when knocking on people's doors that's a great question and with perfect one to end bond because could you would you not have been prepared for a pastor benson who is going to come at you and be like hey with all due respect this is what the new testament and you say as a mormon that you believe in the bible is one of your four core documents this is what the bible says and this is what your book says and that's another question that i didn't even get a chance to get into today is how do you reconcile the contradictions between the documents now you mentioned earlier that it's just more so like hey well if the book of mormon says this and the bible says this the book of mormon wins and i'm assuming that's kind of how it is but how do they train you to defend yourself when a christian stands up and says hey this is this is where you're wrong yeah that's a great question so prior to going on your two-year mission or i said the first portion of your two-year mission you actually go to a place called the missionary training center and it's in provo utah and it the whole purpose of this missionary training center is to equip and train missionaries to be able to go out and to communicate their faith and to be able to defend their faith so it's it's very like it's very regimented okay you're you're in classes eight to ten hours a day learning the doctrines learning the scriptures learning how to communicate them and learning how to defend them so yes they were actually like we would do role-playing scenarios where we would sit down with a quote-unquote christian and they would ask us questions that you know are part of these kind of standard things that christians will use in order to uh you know try to engage with a mormon or show them how their doctrine is incorrect and then we would have to be able to answer or respond to those things and so yeah we were very well equipped and a lot of christians maybe if you've met with the mormon missionaries you'll probably see that they're very good at that because they've been trained to do so um but of course it's very surface level you know for example uh if somebody would say well ephesians 2 8 9 says that we're saved by grace through faith right so we know that there's no works that we could do well we would go straight to james chapter 2 and we would say well faith without works is dead right and all of a sudden it's like yeah we got him you know as if the two are contradictory or something like that and so we would kind of you know have a response to a lot of these common objections uh even galatians one that even if an angel comes and and our answer to that was it's the same gospel that we're proclaiming the same god you know so like we had i always had an answer all these things yeah yeah now of course if somebody really knew the bible well like pastor benson then we were then then it was a whole nother story because it was difficult to you know try to defend all of those things but we still you know we were we were very well versed even in the bible at least the verses of the bible that seemed to support the doctrines of of mormonism wow wow guys uh micah i've had a lot of interviews on this channel and i can tell you this this ranks up there is one of my one of my best collaborations i've ever done on this channel man you did such a great job fielding the questions um presenting yourself and your testimony it was so heartfelt and um i just want to end just by asking you to share where people can kind of um reach you you know what's the best way for them to follow you to get in touch with your ministry and also to support i don't know if you have any um links where people can maybe donate or support or anything like that and if he does guys i'll have them send those my way and i will include those in the description of this video and that way you guys can find out more but just for those listening um tell us how they can best reach you and follow you and uh and then we'll kind of dismiss from there yeah so the easiest way is just to go to our ministry website it's it's adamsroadministry.com and it has all of the available resources that we offer as a ministry my contact information is on there you can email me or any of the other members of our ministry team um that's probably the best way we're also on social media on facebook instagram um and as well you know if you feel led to to support the book and to buy the book you know it's it's a great resource not only for a christian but it's actually was written in a way that you could hand to a mormon and i would um because it's done with you know i tried to do it with as much grace and love and present the gospel you know as clearly as i could throughout that book so um yeah those are the best ways to communicate with us the other thing i'd like to mention is that um adam's road as i mentioned before we like we we tour every year and so we're actually getting ready to embark on a four-month tour all across the united states uh so if you go to our calendar you can see us all of our events are free you can meet us get free cds you know free gospel materials hear our testimonies um and we are pretty much gonna be in every corner of the united states all the way from the northeast to the midwest we'll be all the way out in california up in oregon and pretty much everywhere in between and so if we're coming anywhere near you we'd love to meet you in person and uh and share with you in in the grace of christ amen hey that's awesome guys so guys i'll put some links in the description and uh micah thank you so much for your time today this was amazing um i learned so much about you as well as you know um you know the differences of mormonism versus evangelical christianity and uh just continued blessings on your life and what god is doing in and through your ministry so everybody we're gonna sign off now thank you all for those of you who hung with me the whole time uh hopefully you enjoyed this and if you want me to do more of these types of collaborations and interviews let me know i've got several already lined up um you know moving forward and so i'm just super excited about some people that we're gonna have coming on i think you'll enjoy and uh we'll go from there so thanks so much everybody god bless and uh uh friday uh i got a real special video coming out for you guys on friday you don't want to miss it so god bless bye

Channel: THE BEAT by Allen Parr

Views: 116,143

Rating: 4.8952513 out of 5

Keywords: allen parr, mormon church, mormon church exposed, mormonism vs christianity, lds vs christian, latter day saints beliefs about jesus, latter day saints versus christianity, leaving the mormon church, leaving the lds church stories, what do mormons believe, what do mormons believe about heaven, coming out of mormonism, leaving a cult

Id: StXOOhYZvEI

Length: 102min 11sec (6131 seconds)

Published: Tue May 25 2021