The Mormons: Who They Are, What They Believe (2015) | Full Movie | Dr. Lynn Wilder

[Music] actually grew up a Christian I would say nominal Christian went to church every week but never cracked open the Bible and really didn't know much about my faith it was August 1977 I was teaching school my husband was home during the day two Mormon missionaries knocked on our door and he let them in not only did he let the men he was kind of enamored with them we invited them back twice a week for about ten weeks the Mormon missionaries said they believed in the Bible but the Book of Mormon was a companion book and they kept giving us assignments to read from the Book of Mormon and at the end of that ten weeks they out of the Book of Mormon gave us a challenge to go to our knees and pray about whether the Book of Mormon was true we were expected to get a burning in the bosom that confirmed to us that Mormonism was true my husband did have a spiritual experience and then we both joined the church within six months of joining the Mormon Church I stood in front of the congregation bawling and bore testimony that I knew first of all that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God that he had restored the Lord's only true church on the face of the earth I knew that the Book of Mormon was true that Joseph Smith had brought it to the earth and that it was the most correct book on the face of the earth I knew that the Mormon Church had a living prophet at the head and that that prophet spoke for God and I knew that Jesus Christ was my Savior and that the Mormon Church was his church [Music] at the time that Joseph Smith was born in America he was born in 1805 in Vermont he was part of a whole group that were kind of into the mystic into the supernatural into the occult and and so when he and his family moved over into upstate New York a few years later he was he and his family were basically swallowed up into the Second Great Awakening which was a time of revival in the United States but during this same period the Smiths were very much involved in magic money digging where they would use a magic stone or some sort of magic device like a divining rod to look for buried treasure for most of it he used a seer stone and he would put that into a hat and he and his father and some others claimed that they could find buried treasure and they charged a fair amount of money over the years there were a lot of rumors at the time that Captain Kidd or some pirate could have hid treasure in the area so a lot of people were looking for these buried treasures unfortunately they never found any treasure and in 1826 all of that caught up to them and Joseph Smith was actually taken to court and was found guilty of something that was called glass looking and glass looking refers to literally looking into a seer stone with the intent of finding buried treasure many revivals were going through the whole New York New England area it was a time of extreme religious excitement people dancing people throwing their hands up in the air singing chanting seeing visions snake charmers the whole bit and Smith's mother wholly bought into that and she had it in her mind that at some future date one of her sons would become a prophet and so that's the environment that Joseph Smith grew up in [Music] Joseph Smith claimed that in the spring of 1820 he went out in to the woods nearby the home to pray to ask God for Direction what church to join he claimed that God and Jesus appeared to him as two totally separate people with actual physical bodies and that God told him not to join any Church that they were all an abomination in God's sight all their Creed's were an abomination and that God had to work for Joseph Smith to do and so in the sacred grove experience that he had in 1820 the current prophets told us today that this is the foundation of our religion if this is wrong then our foundation is incorrect because without that we have no authority coming from heaven to tell Joseph that all the man-made religions are incorrect right around 1823 Joseph Smith was again praying in his room this time instead of out in the forest and in response to his fervent prayer an angel appeared in his room and he told Joseph that his name was Moroni he was sent by God to tell Joseph that God had a work for him to do and that he was to go to a location to find a sacred book written on golden plates Moroni would have been the last person in the story of the Book of Mormon the last man to engrave on the plates that then hit the plates away in a stone box in a hill by Joseph Smith's house saw Moroni at this point is a deceased person that they claimed had now become an angel that told him where the plates were buried and so within a couple of days of Moroni visiting him he goes out into the forest and sure enough he finds this hillside now known as as the Hill Cumorah he goes into it and he discovers a stone box he uses a lever to lift open the box and inside is the book with made out of golden plates however even though it's there he cannot take it for another four years and so every year at the autumnal equinox he goes out he checks in with the angel Moroni and finally in 1827 four years later after the the initial visit the angel Moroni allows him to take the book the Urim and Thummim which were a special set of glasses that were called translators that Joseph Smith would use to translate these golden plates out of a language called reformed Egyptian into English and there was also a breastplate in there and I believe a sword he describes them as being six by six by eight rectangular plates of metal in a stack that were held together by three rings so we're talking sheets of metal here that are stacked up and so Joseph takes all of these treasures back to his house and he hides them actually he hides them in a number of places he moves them around because in his history he claims that people are constantly trying to steal the plates from him now this record supposedly was written in it says in the Book of Mormon it was written in the language of their fathers which would mean we assumed the language of the Hebrews but in reformed Egyptian and the reason for it being in reformed Egyptian was supposedly that it took less space than writing it in Hebrew which wouldn't really make sense because Hebrew would have been a better shorter language than Egyptian to write something in but that's the claim and I think the reason Joseph decided to say it was written in reformed Egyptian that no one could read to explain why he alone had the gift to translate it and it wouldn't be taken to scholars to translate was a hidden secret changed language that only God could tell you how to translate it and so starting in 1827 he starts translating the plates now this is interesting because instead of using the Urim and Thummim to do the translation he actually uses the seer stone once again in the Hat and the other part of it that is so interesting is that the golden plates are nowhere in the room they're not on the table they're not in another portion of the room in many times they're not even in the house so really he's not translating them it says if the seer stone is feeding the text to Joseph in English that he then recites out loud for the different scribes to then write down as the Book of Mormon after Joseph Smith was finished with them he gave them back to the angel Moroni and the angel Moroni took them at that point when you look at the Book of Mormon you will see that much of the Book of Mormon contains copied phrases out of the Bible there's chapters out of Isaiah there are a lot of stories in the Book of Mormon that would sound like Bible stories there was a lot of speculation at the day that the American Indians were from the Lost Tribes of Israel so I think Joseph Smith just collected bits and pieces from everywhere the Book of Mormon was written supposedly to show how God also have the American Indian in mind in terms of his long-range plans and for this reason we have the account of the Lost Tribes of Israel sailing across the Atlantic 600 BC or so and they landed in the Americas and split into two groups the goods and the bads you might say the righteous people were the Nephites and the unrighteous people were called the Lamanites and the ulema and Lamanites and the Nephites fought many different battles then they had peace for a while and finally the lemma Knights were accursed by God because they were evil so this is what it states in the Book of Mormon it states this wherefore as they were white and exceedingly fair and delightsome this is the Lamanites that they may not be enticing into the people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them and so he separated the people so the righteous people the Nephites were white and the Lamanites which were cursed were the dark-skinned people tragically the Nephites were defeated by the leaven i'ts and the result was the ulema Knights being the only brand left when Columbus discovered America the people of the Lamanites became a part of the darker skinned races in America the Indians the the people in South America and Central America one of the problems for the Book of Mormon is that all of the information about the Society of the Book of Mormon people's doesn't fit what we do know about the American Indian and this is a problem for the Mormon Church they don't have any artifacts they don't have any Maps they don't have any sample of the writings that have come from a source other than Joseph Smith so they're faced with this problem of not even knowing a location for the story if you look in any book of Mormon there's no map in it they can't agree whether it all happened up in the northeastern part of the United States over all of North and South America or just amongst the Mayan and you will find Mormon scholars that argue for all different places for the story which tells me there's no artifact there's no sample of anything or you would at least have a starting point if indeed these are lost tribes of Israel well then there ought to be some DNA similarity between the Indian stock in the Americas and the Semitic stock very careful tests have been made and the results absolutely no correlation whatever the Book of Mormon speaks of them having horses and elephants and we know those weren't here until the Europeans came the Book of Mormon speaks of them raising wheat we know they didn't have wheat before the Europeans the chariots and steel swords that they use in battle are totally foreign to the American Indian there there just was no such technology there there are a lot of things that just violate the truth about what was existing here in the Americas at the time of the Book of Mormon peoples in the early stories of Mormonism its talked of the plates as being gold or golden Joseph Smith referred to it both ways I don't think Joseph had any idea how heavy gold would be I have a set a model made up to the size he said that it's made out of lead which weighs less than gold and that weighs 118 pounds if his plates to the size and dimension he describes were made out of gold they would have been over 200 pounds this becomes a problem because according to his story he got the plates out of the hole so you have this box of plates that he picks up and runs two or three miles home through the woods with a couple of men chasing him and there's just no way you could run that far carrying plates of gold when the Book of Mormon was finally completed interestingly enough Martin Harris one of the founders of Mormonism along with Joseph Smith the one indeed who was sold part of his farm in order to pay for the printing of the first edition of the Book of Mormon in 1830 he had asked Joseph Smith he would be kind enough to jot down some of the characters in the golden plates that he was translating and Joseph Smith was kind enough to do that and then without Smith's permission he sent it to a professor at Columbia University in New York and he was an Egyptologist now this is before the translation of hieroglyphic because of the rosetta stone in 1837 that's going to come seven years eight years later and the professor at Columbia University immediately looked at it and said this is not Egyptian at all this is someone's doodling and at that point of course they never used that information in the future because it would discredit those characters in supposed reformed Egyptian a language that never existed Martin Harris was Joseph Smith's second scribe he gave Joseph Smith a considerable sum of money which angered his wife and she kept pestering him for some kind of evidence about this this book that that Martin Harris was working on with Joseph Smith well a hundred and sixteen pages come home with Harris his wife looks at it and according to the most widely publicized accounts she throws it in the fireplace burns it all up in her mind if this is truly from God Joseph Smith will be able to retranslate and come up with the exact same material Joseph Smith always thinking comes up with a revelation from God saying that because Martin Harris allowed his wife to burn the 116 pages in the fireplace he was not going to read translate that material make it available for the world instead he was going to translate a completely different section altogether so he prints the Book of Mormon first and then a few months later starts his church the Book of Mormon becomes the worm on the hook to get you to accept Mormonism they say well if God spoke to people in the old world surely he would have spoken to the new world and and that we have the record and so they would give you a Book of Mormon and ask you to pray about it when you read the book of Mormon you would see Bible language these and those like the King James it would have a lot of Bible verses and phrases it was sound very similar so this would give people the impression wow this this really may be a Christian thing but if you're going to accept the Book of Mormon you have to accept Joseph Smith as a prophet and once you accept him then you're going to come in to their church [Music] [Music] the Mormon Church starts out in New York and included a lot of the semesters and associates in the area but Joseph sent out missionaries and some missionaries went to Ohio in that process they converted a Campbell Light Minister named Sidney Rigdon & Rigdon was able to get a majority of his congregation to come in to Mormonism so at that point Smith moves the whole church out to Kirtland Ohio and also a contingent to Independence Missouri where they're trying to set up Zion the true community of God he's gaining converts left and right they get to the point where they want to build a temple they need to raise money as the temple is going to cost a lot of money they form a bank but he can't get a charter for it so when he publishes his money the Kirtland Safety's at society banknotes he has to go back and retype over the bank notes that it's an anti banking establishment because they don't have a charter for a guarantee on all of that money that they take in Joseph Smith prints out $3 and $4 bills and he issues them out as currency well they weren't worth the paper that they were printed on well that works for a while until you have a run on the bank and the word got around that the Mormons didn't have enough capital to really support the currency they were distributing and so that expression that that you hear from time to time today phony as a $3 bill actually has its genesis in the Kirtland society bank there was such a public outcry over the tremendous amount of money that was taken from the people of Kirtland that Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon actually were tarred and feathered and then they fled to Missouri well that was kind of like going from one pan into another people in the different communities didn't want him around they were seen as a heresy group kind of a cult and voted as a bloc they weren't sure what their political leanings were there were also charges of counterfeiting of illegal transactions or misuse of funds there were a lot of areas of concern and enough so that the people the Gentiles as they recalled surrounding these these different cities and counties got increasingly angered and so there was violence back and forth there was violence on both sides around that time a group comes into being that are called the Danites or avenging angels of death and they're a mormon vigilante group that conducts violence on the people surrounding them all of the violence on both sides was later called the missouri mormon war and one final result of that was that the governor at that time issued something called an extermination order which basically told the mormons get out of Missouri or face severe consequences and so they did and that caused them to move to Illinois to a town that Joseph Smith would later call now Moo now who was probably the biggest and best of the settlements when the Mormons moved to Nauvoo Illinois they basically took a swamp and build up a great city there and it worked very hard and it was a wonderful beautiful city and actually grew to be the largest city in Illinois at that point it was even larger than Chicago Joseph Smith set himself up as the mayor of the town and he created his own military unit or paramilitary unit called the Nauvoo Legion however they got about 2,800 men in their militia so it's about a third the size of the United States Army at that point this gave concern to the surrounding areas people were worried here's this odd cult group led by this man that the community thought was kind of crazy that are raising this army and they all vote as a block so they could go to politicians and make deals on I can deliver so many thousands of votes what are you going to do for me there were many things that gave people concern about the Mormons but behind the scenes there was actually an evil thing going on that a lot of people didn't know about even the Mormons who led them themselves was the fact that Joseph Smith and the leaders other leaders of the Mormon Church at that point were secretly practicing polygamy now he first started in polygamy in the 1830s but it became an open practice in the 1840s at now who one of the problems with this is it had to be kept extremely secret because the Illinois had a law in the books against bigamy so they were worried about being arrested so in order to keep it secret Joseph Smith's looking for a way to bind men under a strong enough oh that they wouldn't be talking around about polygamy he also at time openly embraced the Freemasonry at the time that the Nauvoo Lodge was created there were only 200 Mason's in all of Illinois in a matter of months virtually every Mormon male in the Nauvoo area became a Mason this was a society that took secrecy and oaths very seriously so I think he thought this might be an avenue for a way of keeping his own men faithful and keeping his secrets the way these people were elevated in masonic rites was it caused a lot of concern with the main lodge because when Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery became Masons they became Masons one day and then 24 hours later they became Grand Masons 33rd degree Mason which is unheard of that takes years decades to to grow in Masonic lore and everything when the Grand Lodge in Illinois heard about this they threatened to shut down the lodge in Masonic rites you have various signs and tokens and handshakes all or most of these were directly absorbed into the priesthood rituals the endowment all of the main rituals of Mormonism almost without any modification whatsoever when the Grand Lodge of Illinois discovered that that was too much for them to bear they considered Joseph Smith a loose cannon so Joseph Smith when he was bringing up leadership he would explain to them and again this was not talked openly to the general Mormons but that lega me was an eternal principle and it needed to be practiced progressed on to godhood and so as leadership came up they would introduce that practice to and people would agree to it when Joseph Smith started practicing polygamy he didn't just marry young single women he also was marrying married women that had living husbands as different ones of his male followers started putting the pieces together and realizing the extent that this was going to they got considerably concerned that this was just looking like a free-for-all and not something that God would have ordained then he started approaching different men in his leadership for their wives some accepted this and let him have their wives as a plural wife but some rebelled and one of the men that rebelled was a man named William law so he and several others rebelled against Joseph's ability to just pick and choose whatever woman he wanted set up an opposition newspaper that they named the Nauvoo expositor exposing his polygamy exposing his political aspirations exposing his doctrine of plural gods and they said in the issue that in coming issues they were going to get more specific on all these areas well this raised a great concern to Joseph Smith he was the mayor of Nauvoo and Joseph Smith as mayor declared the press a public nuisance for printing slander he had his novel legion or some other group come in and destroy the press they went out and just pulled the whole thing out in the street and broke it up smashed it so that they couldn't do another issue of their paper they only got one issue out and so when that was destroyed the governor of Illinois said we cannot allow printing presses or freedom of the speech to Zubin to be stopped and this is how Joseph Smith got arrested and was put in a Carthage Jail Joseph's brother Hyrum was also in there and Mormons smuggled in various weapons to the two of them including a revolver clubs knives so when Joseph Smith was in the Carthage Jail he really didn't have any fear because he thought the novel Allegiant would come and rescue him because the Mormons had the largest Legion in the Illinois at that point and so is this a matter of time before he would be rescued but before the Legion got there there was a mob that gathered outside of the jail and so Joseph was basically going to shoot and fight his way out of the jail and when the mob came up the stairs Joseph Smith did open up the door and did shoot until his gun locked up and I think he shot three people two died immediately and another one I think died later on he and his brother are trying to get out through a window and at that point Joseph Smith issues the masonic cry for help is there no help for the widow's son and he goes down in a hail of bullets he and Hyrum both but that whole concept of the gunfight going on in the Carthage Jail was never ever taught to me as a Mormon that Joseph Smith had a gun or anything and and was never taught to us as a Mormon why he was arrested and what happened with the Nauvoo expositor that was all left out it just states that he was arrested and put in jail and you know the fact is that Joseph Smith just didn't stand there and be shot but he was defending his life and who who came against him we really don't know some people think it was actually Mason's that dressed up because Joseph Smith had actually taken their procedure from the Freemasons and incorporated it into the Mormon temple endowment we don't have any empirical empirical evidence of that when Joseph Smith died and his brother with him it left the Mormon Church at with a leadership vacuum the Mormons hold a conference because now their prophet is gone they need a new prophet Brigham Young comes forward basically takes control of the conference and assumes the role as prophet Brigham Young is my great-great grandfather my mother's maiden name was young and so Brigham Young stepped into the role of leader of the church later proclaimed himself to be a prophet and was the one that organized the Mormons to leave Illinois to start their trek west they were looking at coming out to what we now would know as Utah but they were looking at it because it was not part of the United States at that point it was a part of Mexico and so when the Mormons headed west and came to Utah they thought they were leaving the United States government right after they get here you have the spanish-american war and America and the United States acquires that territory and it becomes the territory of Utah which put the Mormons back in the United States rule as the Mormons grew in Utah they sent more and more missionaries out around the world to make more mormons and eventually they started saying you shouldn't come to Utah to gather to Utah you should stay in your own communities and so as they sent out missionaries they started to grow Mormonism in other countries and at this point they have their Book of Mormon in I think a hundred and some odd languages and they're in more than 150 different countries around the world so they're a growing presence a growing missionary effort last year I think they had about 80,000 young missionaries around the world you [Music] it's really a rite of passage and Mormonism for young men to serve two year missions for the Mormon Church it's kind of your growing up time into manhood it's expected if you can imagine this it's customary in Utah Territory for the postman to let the family know that the mission call is here and in the phone ring and I you know jumped outta bed ran to the phone answered it and it was the local post office and they said you know elder Wilder we've got a we've got a letter for you and I was so excited so my mom and I jumped in the car and we went down a local post office picked it up came home and this is you know 6:30 in the morning and and we sat there at the couch and I remember you know holding that letter in my hands and just feeling special the Mormon prophets supposedly prays to decide where your kids go on their missions Michael was actually supposed to go to Mexico City his lung collapsed in the Missionary Training Center and God sent him to the middle of evangelical Christian country Florida we lived very dedicated lives just Mormon missionaries we would get up at 6:30 in the morning and we would do studies for about three hours and then you know between 9:00 and 10:00 we'd go out and for 1112 hours until 9 o'clock at night we would precise and we would share the Mormon gospel and we would knock on doors and we would ride bicycles and we would talk to people on the streets and and the reason why we did this you know 7 days a week 365 days a year is because we truly believed that we had the message of the gospel and that what we were bringing them was going to bring them you know eternal life and so I had that testimony in my heart and I wanted other people to have what I believed that I had well it was pretty difficult I would say the majority of the time people didn't want to have anything to do with this a lot of times the response was for people to you know tell us we were going to hell or to slam the door on our faces and a lot of these people were people that claimed to be Christians and you know it was really difficult it's very disheartening at first but eventually got used to it and and you know did the best that we could people often ask us well are you guys Christians and I was always very confused as to why they would ask us that because in our mind we were the only true Christians we believed that we were the one and only true church on the face of the earth and we would point right to our nametags that says the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints and we'd say you know Jesus Christ is the center of the name of our church we of course are Christians we love Jesus we believe that Jesus has saved us we believe that we're saved by grace and we baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost and you know I would always wonder why are people asking us if we're Christians when we are in fact the only true Christians who you know live the way that the Bible tells us to live [Music] Mormons believe that their Christian but they are not Christian their theology is definitely not biblical and their understanding of who God is is not biblical the essence of Christianity is of course best expressed in the Creed itself we believe in the Trinity we believe in the deity of Christ we believe in the atonement and the cross the fact that salvation is achieved for us by God himself in Christ and by faith in Him we have salvation those are the basic tenets of Christianity now in Mormonism we have maybe some of the same phrases but we didn't have the same meaning the Mormon idea of God is very different from what Christians believe they believe that Heavenly Father is an exalted man that he once was a human being and has progressed and become exalted and along with Heavenly Father there is a heavenly mother who have spirit children and that all of us are also spirit children of Heavenly Father and heavenly mother the heavenly mother is probably according to Mormon doctrine the first wife of Elohim God our Heavenly Father and that he has multiple wives because of the Mormons believe in polygamy and there's no way that all these billions of spirit babies could have been born through one heavenly mother so we know that God is a polygamist but Heavenly Mother receives the reverence of being identified it because she's the first wife and we lived in this pre existence with Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother learning and progressing growing until it was our time to come to earth as a person Mormons teach that Lucifer the son of the morning and Jesus Christ our brothers that Jesus is the first born spirit child of God the Father the primary Heavenly Mother and that Lucifer is the second we were spirit children in heaven we saw God had a body we wanted to be like him so he said okay let me create a world for you so you can go down and suffer and learn to choose right and wrong there was a large war in heaven between Jesus and Lucifer over a plan of salvation I was taught that Jesus's plan was that he should come to earth so that he would be an example for us that he would teach and that he would sacrifice himself so we could become resurrected Lucifer's idea was that he would force everyone to become followers of God and problem with that was that it took away the free agency of man in other words the Mormon believe that all people have the ability to make the right choice to choose for themselves and the council the gods chose the plan of Jesus and thus the story evolves that Jesus came down born of the Virgin Mary died on the cross defeated Lucifer and that's kind of the how it all worked out in the beginning when Heavenly Father put Adam and Eve on the earth he gave them two basic Commandments the first one was to multiply and replenish the earth the second one was to not eat of the tree of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil but Eve understood that you could not do both things that Adam and Eve were like children in the garden they were naive and they also were not able to bear children Mormons teach that had Adam and Eve not disobeyed God ate of the fruit of tree of knowledge of good and evil that no other children have been born and man kind the spirit children would have never had the opportunity to come to earth be born and work out their salvation so they could become gods and goddesses their own on their own planets so they consider Eve's choice to taketh fruit and become mortal as a good act it was a good thing so they speak in terms of Adam's fall as a fall upward and it's imaged in a sense of falling up a stairwell that they're climbing towards a higher position but stumbling on the way but the stumble was necessary as a part of the journey when Satan told them that they would become like God they could become like God if they be ate of the fruit they took that as meaning they could then have children they would know good and evil they would be able to make choices in their free agency and that they would be able to progress so it was an important step for them in their pathway because they wanted to become like God [Music] Mormons use the same words that we use they baptize in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit but they have a totally different concept of baptism in the Mormon Church children are baptized by immersion when they're eight years old when I was baptized we understood that I was being forgiven for the sins that I had committed in the past it does not remove original sin and it doesn't take care of any future sins they will commit the dichotomy of that whole thing is this an eight-year-old child has not reached the age of accountability according to Mormon doctrine so baptizing an eight-year-old child for the forgiveness of sins is an oxymoron because they up to that point have really committed sins because sin being sinful in the Mormon Church means that you have knowledge and that you're accountable for those transgressions like a three-year-old child steals a cookie out of the cookie jar okay he was told not to do it he steals at that stealing but he's not a cattle brick he's not he's not eight years old he really can't differentiate right and wrong now an adult who joins the Mormon Church and is baptized yes baptism at that point according to Mormon doctrine washes them of their sins prior to their baptism and should however they sin again of the same kind of sins we all send the same kind of sense then those sins return to them it's pretty egregious the atonement of Jesus Christ according to Mormon doctrine is a complete perversion of the biblical concept of atonement you will not find a cross on any Mormon you will not find a cross on any Mormon building in any Mormon Church Ward in any Mormon temple because Mormons believe that Jesus accomplished the atonement in the garden of gethsemane when he went there to pray and he said father remove this cup from me but not my will but thine be done and sweated great drops of blood when he sweat the great drops of blood and prayed for the sins of all mankind in the garden that's where the atonement was accomplished also there are certain sins that we commit that are exempt from his atonement and that brought in the what they called the doctrine of blood atonement blood atonement concerns itself with murder and and multiple adultery these were considered to be sins that were so grievous that they fell outside of Jesus atonement necessitating the person shedding his own blood to atone for those crimes and that is why Utah is or was up until recently one of the few states in the Union that still offered the firing squad because by being shot your blood is being shed Mormonism has redefined the major words of Christianity and that becomes confusing when people talk to them so when they speak of being saved they mean that one will go to heaven but that's not the same as having eternal life a Mormon might say to you that he believes in grace but he's seeing that as the down payment on his eternal life so that Jesus atonement becomes only part of the equation of the what gets you back to Heavenly Father it's Jesus Christ plus Mormon church membership Mormon priesthood Mormon temple ritual in order to have eternal life so when they speak in the Book of Mormon about it being saved by grace after all we can do there meaning that grace is only a part of our eternal life and so like it's like one fifth of the equation on the other four-fifths are our own efforts or our own participation in Mormon right and as a missionary we would tell the potential converts of those that we were proselyting that the Christian concept of grace is flawed that you can't just confess Jesus with your lips and be saved you have to you have to have works to prove your love and your adoration for God and Jesus Christ and the salvation that was extended to you through Jesus Christ's atonement Christians believe that God's grace is without any preliminaries that God even before the foundation of the world will that we people could be saved by faith in the son Jesus Christ whom he would send no activity in our part is necessary no preliminary getting ready for God's grace is necessary either it's God's full free and final gift from beginning to end the Mormon version of grace is we are saved by grace through faith after all we can do putting it on us if you ask him Mormon or if he were to die that day does he know where he's going to go he would tell you no he doesn't know because he isn't sure whether he is worthy enough how does one become worthy it's by going through all of the different rituals it's by following the word of wisdom it's by doing the family home evening it's by going through the endowment it's by getting the the dual priesthoods it's by getting sealed with your family it's by working with the baptism of the Dead celestial marriage you must work out your salvation in the Mormon Church [Music] there are three heavens in Mormon theology the celestial kingdom where the good Mormons go the terrestrial Kingdom is the second kingdom it is where all the good people who were not Mormons who did not believe in the Mormon doctrine will go the lowest kingdom is where all the murderers adulterers thieves and the bad people on earth will go according to Joseph Smith he taught that if we could just glimpse the glory of the Telestial Kingdom which is where they're really evil people will be stuck he said you would kill yourself to get there that's how fanciful his thinking was the outer darkness or what we would consider hell is reserved for Lucifer and his angels and for apostates those who understood and accepted the LDS Church but then have fallen away and as an apostate being cast in outer darkness the sole criteria for that is this not our rejection of Jesus Christ but our rejection of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and the Mormon Church because I love Jesus Christ but according to Mormons I'm going out of darkness with the devil and his angels it's extremely difficult to know that you're responsible for your own salvation you're always filled with guilt and with shame you're always questioning whether or not you've done enough or what you've done is the right thing you're always busy you don't know if you've ever been forgiven their responsibility to saving yourself is overwhelming because as a Mormon male you're not just responsible for yourself because if your priesthood and the vast majority who you know strive to get married in the Mormon temple and have eternal covenants with their wife and try to raise a family and have an eternal family it's it blisters your brain it's I think it's somewhat soul destroying transitioning into Mormonism did mean that things had to change in our lives Mike actually had some beer in the refrigerator and when we got baptized the missionaries made him pour it down the drain Mike smoked a pipe he had he needed to give that up we needed to change the way that we dressed we had to dress more modestly there were lots of rules and regulations that had to be stuck too including a health code before you can obtain a temple recommend which you need in order for eternal life you must be sealed to a worthy spouse in the temple and you must go to the temple to get an endowment those are instructions that you need to know how to be resurrected so that you can go live with Heavenly Father it's actually a work space system because you can't get your temple recommend without doing things like pain tithing for at least a year holding a calling in the Mormon Church not that you choose that the leaders choose for you living the health code and attending church regularly [Music] in Mormonism there is a great sense of obedience obedience to God would mean you would take pay your tithing go to all your meetings be fully faithful all your life because those are necessary if you want to have your family with you forever you have to do all of the ordinances of Mormonism when I have my teenage years I think I really understood the weight of what it meant to be a good Mormon and follow the rules and do the work that you are supposed to do it is this like being on a treadmill to perfection they just keep going and going and going and they never know if they've done enough to merit eternal life in the Mormon Church there are an enormous number of meetings a typical Sunday morning or last three to four hours they start out with their first round of meetings which is the priesthood meeting for men Relief Society which is their women's organization m.i.a which is their youth group and primary for their little ones after that they attend Sunday school the Sunday School also had the adult classes there was usually a gospel doctrine class and a gospel essentials class the gospel doctrine class was the big who we're going to talk about deep stuff here and the gospel a gospel essential classes for the weaker Saints are the new members of the Mormon Church to teach them kind of the basics of it and after that they have what they call sacrament meeting sacrament meeting is basically a meeting where they have a congregation member speak they do singing and then they pass what they call the sacrament which is white bread from the store and water and the young men they pass it around and anyone is encouraged to take it there's no limit on that and on one day a month instead of sacrament meeting they have what they call fast and testimony meeting and a fast Sunday is usually the first Sunday it's always the first Sunday of the month and in that meeting you're supposed to start fasting for 24 hours the debuted day before or like you have dinner at 6:00 that night and then you don't eat dinner again until 6 o'clock Sunday night during the sacrament portion of that meeting there were as opened up the floor to people get up and they come up and you know most of it's very emotional and they cry and they talk about how they loved the Prophet and they're so grateful for brother so-and-so and sister so-and-so in the ward who's really helped them out and they talk about how much they love Joseph Smith and they know he's a prophet and the Book of Mormon is true and that were the only true church on the planet and I'm so grateful like I'm I'm a member of this church because I would be so lost without Mormonism that's a fast and testimony meaning basically testimony follows is pretty much a script I believe in the Mormon Church that it's the true Church of God I believe that the Book of Mormon is true I believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God called reorganized Church bringing the church back to the world I believe that Jesus is the Savior it pretty much follows those main lines and may throw in a in a personal story or two but also it is is just you know people restating what they're supposed to believe it's not really a testimony because there's no historicity to the Book of Mormon so to say that he was a prophet how do you know he was a prophet I mean it's it just goes back to the way that they're prepared and really brainwashed from a very young age to get up there and and make these these statements whenever Mormon gives a talk or gives their testimony they'll say and I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ amen and to me as an ex-mormon and a Christian I very egregious because I personally testified to falsehoods that I thought were true and I sealed them a name of Jesus Christ that is to me it's almost blasphemous you know it's it's seriously taking the name of God in vain because I'm saying in the name of Jesus Christ this is true and it wasn't true disturbs me today every Mormon is required to perform some kind of job or service in their congregation or in their steak and you can either accept it or reject it but if you reject it we would also make you feel that you are now rejecting what the Lord has called you to and in many cases you would be called to positions that you may not really want to serve and do in the LDS Church but if you're a true-blue Mormon you will then accept that because it's a calling from the bishop it's a calling from the high priest group leader it's a calling from the elders quorum president or somebody that has authority over you to a certain responsibility and if you really believe they're inspired of God to give you this calling and then you will do this calling to the best of your ability like it or not you will do it and of course they don't get paid anything they're all all the LDS people who do these are our laypeople volunteer people even your bishops and your state presidents are lay folks not paid but volunteers to do this work but it's important because you're serving the Lord and you're working on your own progression working on your own way to become exalted in the teachings of Mormonism the priesthood Authority is everything the two priesthoods essential and Mormonism is the Roenick priesthood and it gives you the authority to baptize and then the Melchizedek Priesthood or what they call the higher priesthood it gives you the authority to give people the Holy Ghost it gives you authority to do work in the temples and so forth the Aaronic priesthood is or is given to boys when they're 12 years old if they're worthy and they desire to have it and they're ordained to the office of what's called a deacon at age 14 they're ordained to the office of a teacher and at age 16 everything being equal they're ordained to the office of a priest and they'll remain in that office of a priest until they're 18 years old or choose to go on a mission and then they were deigned an elder on Mondays the Mormons have what they call family home evening it's an evening that the family spends together they spend it in scripture reading and in song and playing games the most important thing is of course is that they teach the Mormon principles and doctrines and even the little ones are encouraged to participate and do scripture readings the Mormon home evening was actually instituted because Mormon families were so busy with all their church jobs that they the men particularly weren't spending any time with their families a temple recommend in the Mormon Church is the approval card of going to the temple and to be able to reach the highest degree of glory to live in the presence of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost you have to go to the temple and the only way you get to the temple is by a temple recommend well a temple recommend is your it's your badge of authenticity in the Mormon Church a stamp of approval that I have done enough good things arrived adhere to Mormon doctrine sufficiently that my bishop and my state president sees me as being worthy to go to the house of the Lord you see the Mormons think that their temple is the house of the Lord and that he actually dwells there the first time people will get a recommend to go to the temple is if you're going on a mission then you have to go and take out what they call your endowments the other time that you would go is when you're a person who is going to be married married in the temple and you would go take out your endowments with your soon-to-be spouse and then you would go in for the marriage ceremony which they call the ceiling now if you have someone who is not a worthy Mormon who can't receive a temple recommend then the other partner will not be given a recommend because it is for the purpose of the ceiling or the celestial marriage and that's one of the things they'll use to leverage against you if you have problems they can pull your temple recommend and all that makes you feel horrible that oh my gosh I've lost my temple recommend there's just no way I'm gonna become a god I'm never gonna have salvation I'm gonna lose my family I got to get my temple recommend back I got to do more works and be better as a human being and repent and it's the Sidious I was very unhappy that I couldn't go to the temple very envious of my friends and I would we would talk about it but they couldn't tell me what went on in the temple because that's a secret they take an oath not to tell so I was never married to a man who was a worthy temple person it does affect you and it does affect your social standing in the ward because you are not considered a worthy temple member and it is draining on you as a human because you know that without going to the temple you cannot go to the celestial kingdom that's what it's all about is having that celestial wife and that celestial family and in the life after when I say celestial I'm talking about after you're dead you become resurrected then you get to continue on as husband and wife and my wife and I were sealed married in a Mormon temple under the auspice of the new and everlasting covenant so as long as we are married and don't break that covenant then any child that's born into our household as automatically in the group when you go to the temple and you need to do that your whole life your temple recommend will only last for two years and it has to be renewed and you can't got to keep doing it doing it and doing it to ensure your exaltation so a lot of people datas give up they just said I can't live it and they become like middle Mormons they don't have temple recommends they'll say I'm just going to be happy with the Middle Kingdom and that's all I can do and then the other people are working like crazy to obtain that exaltation or living in the celestial kingdom when do you know you've done enough never you've never done enough you can always do more you've never achieved you've never arrived and that is the that is the true crux of mormonism bind you down tie you down work you to death make you feel incomplete as a human being because you're not doing everything that you're supposed to be doing because in the Mormon temple you take oaths and Covenants and one of those oaths and Covenants is that you'll dedicate your life to the building up of Zion and doing the work of God in the Mormon Church and then you swear that and in the old days you swore it with your own life if you didn't do these things your life would be taken right into masonry again so it's something you're never gonna win you're never gonna get that brass ring it's like the carrot in front of the horse he's never gonna he's going to chase it but he's never gonna get it and maybe on his deathbed if God is willing and God is merciful and you've made God happy and your works that pleased God he might stick that carrot in your mouth at your death and save you it's it's it's that's truly where it's at there is no end to the race [Music] on Sundays and during the week we went to what we called a ward building it's very similar to Christian churches where you go to church on Sunday and then you have activities for youth and people during the week but the special place was a Mormon temple and actually not all Mormons are worthy to go there but you all desire to be worthy to go there I remember when I was 14 going to the temple for the first time and actually going into the temple and being able to participate in the ordinances that go on inside the temple was was an amazing experience for me and I remember that feeling you know walking in there and being able to go further than I had ever been able to go before and feeling that that burning in my chest and knowing that you know this was the house of the Lord and it was definitely an unforgettable experience for me at that point in my life what goes on in the Mormon temple two things mainly first instructions to know how to be saved to the highest heaven there are three heavens in Mormonism and to the highest degree of the highest heaven that only is for your first temple visit though anytime you go after the first time you go in proxy for someone who's dead [Music] I've been commissioned of Jesus Christ i baptize you or do we have with [Music] like baptized or anything and of the animal [Music] [Music] it's really important for Christians to know and understand what actually goes on in the temple higher than 97% of all activities that go on inside of a Mormon temple are for and in behalf of those who are dead it's not a place for Sunday worship it is a place where the most important rights within Mormonism are conducted because this is where proxy baptisms proxy ceilings proxy ordinations to priesthoods ceilings meaning husband and a wife being married or children being sealed to a family and an eternal structure according to Mormonism and these people are all dead when a man or a woman goes to the temple they go once for themselves in the lifetime so I'm in doubt for myself one time but to recede to keep earning my salvation I have now got to save the dead which is explained in doctrine covenants so every time I go back to the temple it's never for me personally it's for doing the endowment for the dead this is what their ancestry research is all about and they've done a great job with this genealogy stuff but it's all based in getting people's names who are not members of the Mormon Church who have never been at the temple and then they take these names into the temple and a person live like myself would act in their behalf I maybe be baptized for them I received the priesthood for them I receive a washing for them I go through the endowment I might be sealed for them as a husband to a wife but it's all done in some houses name there are people who are literally engaged in baptism for the dead or what is also called proxy baptism and this goes on in all of the temples around the world even though I didn't go to the temple as an adult as a youth I did go and participate in the Baptists for the dead we went as a youth group to do this work and I probably was baptized for two dozen people that day and this was considered a great privilege that you were being a type of Savior to this person you were opening the door for them to go into a higher level of heaven they believed that through this proxy baptism they are able to rescue souls who are either in some kind of Mormon hell or limbo and give them a second chance at Salvation the Mormons believe that when people die they go to a place called the spirit world and there's two divisions in the spirit world one's a spirit prison and the other one's the good part of the spirit world that's not a prison and those in spirit prison are the ones who haven't accepted the Mormon gospel and so dead people spirits go that are Mormons over to the spirit prison and they teach these people about the Mormon gospel and there's really no communication as to who accepts it up in this theoretical world and who doesn't so the Mormons just shotgun approach it and they do the approxi works for everybody on the planet that's their goal they want to have everybody baptized in the Mormon Church they want to have endowments for every man every person on the world in the Mormon Church they want everybody to have a celestial sealing marriage in the Mormon Church they want all the children even though they the children might be two years old and they died or died in infancy like they did way back I mean that was common and 100 years ago all those things all the things that are given to live Mormons they bestow by-proxy onto dead people if you could go from the very beginning of baptizing somebody and then then receiving the priesthood and the washing and anoint it could take four to five hours to walk some by our way through the whole temple process including the ceilings so it's a long process as to give one person fully saved and so by doing that they believe that these people didn't have a chance to hear the Mormon gospel in this life maybe they were born in 2000 BC or something you know and if they accept the Mormon gospel then they could have an opportunity to work their way up that ladder that proverbial ladder to the celestial kingdom well in Mormon theology the man is the key to salvation which sets up almost a Stepford Wives sort of thing and makes the woman be this this willing participant in all of these these rituals in order that she might gain heaven as well and of course then all of that leads to the progression of souls the eternal progression as it's also called where if the man and and wife once sealed at the temple do all of the things that are required of them in the afterlife they will then become gods and have a planet and spirit children and start the whole process again somewhere else but as a man I was a priesthood holder I had a responsibility of leading myself to the temple to be endowed leading my wife there to the temple to be endowed because in the temple endowment I'm given the instructions that I will resurrect her if she's gonna be my wife and hereafter then I know her special name and I will call out that name and raise her from the dead she's not raised by Jesus but by me through the priesthood going to the temple the first time I had no idea what I was getting into in my day when I went through the first time they did what was called the washings and anointings a very Masonic ritual after the anointing they put the garment on you which is the Mormon secret underwear so weak they call it a temple garment and it's put on you as a reminder of the covenant that you make in the temple which is the last big thing you have to live up to as a Mormon and the service is a reminder for that and they also promise you there will be a shield under protection to you that it'll it'll help protect you from the buffetings of the devil and you're instructed to wear it the rest of your life and there's only there's only specific things that you're allowed to take it off for and some people don't even do that like in sports or having sexual relations with your wife or whatever the garments themselves are very Masonic in origin you can go to any book on masonry and you'll find the three things the square of the compass and the ruler and those are represented in the Mormon garment the square is honesty the compass is that all truth can be circumscribed into one great hole and then the navel mark which is really the ruler that you know everything can be ruled or you can measure it and then they also put one in the knee which is the knee mark which the Mormons added that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ according to us that square rule encompass is also represented in the veil of the Mormon temple the veil is actually inside the temple is a huge sheet it's split on the sides that you can open up and it has cuttings in it that hands can go through and it has certain markings that's symbolic of being having the authority to go into the celestial kingdom into the presence of living with the God the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost in the endowment ceremony there are four key secret handshakes that are given to the audience members in the temple and they're given by an ordained temple member a worker and these little handshakes are taught to you for one specific purpose you have to be able to give the secret handshake and the code words associated with and the phraseology associated with each individual handshake in order to get into heaven because that shows that you have the passkey to get past the Angels that stand as sentinels guard the way to the Tree of Life when we go through the temple veil it's just exactly what's going to happen in the future when you die you're actually going to come to a real veil and there's going to be a test there that you have to have the right handshakes the right answers to the questions before you can progress into the presence of God the Father and then God will open the veil grab that person by the hand and pull them through and so if you don't have the handshakes if you don't have the phraseology or the secret passwords you can't go to heaven [Music] it's really strange because Mormons actually believe that the original temples going back to the time of Moses and up to the time of Christ and the last temple fell in 70 AD under Titus when he destroyed the place that they practiced the same things at the Mormons practice and that's how blind the Mormons are if they did a little bit of research and they studied some history and they looked at some archaeology they'd understand that there was no baptisms for a dead in any temple in Israel at any time under under the old mosaic laws it was a place where there were sacrifices you could bring a pigeon a dove a duck whatever whatever was authorized under those laws to make atonement for your sin there was no baptisms for the dead they didn't seal people together for eternity there was no garments no washings and anointings no endowment ceremonies where you swore allegiance to the Mormon Church under the penalty of death if you didn't follow through that was all concocted by Joseph Smith and his friends you back in 2005 Mike and I were living the Mormon dream we loved living in Utah we called it Zion I had this prestigious job at Brigham Young University my husband was a high priest and always had leadership positions all of our children were active in the faith all of our sons served Mormon missions and our daughter was nannying in a household of eight children and that was how she was to be prepared for the next life we believed we'd been gathered there by Heavenly Father one day in January of 2006 Friday about noon my phone rang and it was Micah he was still on his mission and he's not allowed to call home so I knew something serious was up all I heard on the other end of the line was mom it's over [Music] as a young mother I really started to have doubts about things that I was taught by the Mormon leaders and I would ask questions if it didn't seem right I would question it and they did tell me in several times that I should stop asking questions my journey out of Mormonism began before I even recognized it I believe that God had been working on me for a long time so I decided that if I was going to be a better Mormon if I was going to do the work and understand then I needed more education I needed to read further and study harder so I really understood their doctrine I figured if I could do that then that would help me become a better Mormon but it did just the opposite when I was in high school my mother started having questions about Mormonism but then I met Gerald and we started dating Gerald was also a fifth-generation Mormon family like me but he had started to have questions about Mormonism so I started studying I started researching and I started finding out that statements about the first vision that Joseph Smith had completely fallacious he told five different stories five different times learning about Joseph Smith's multiple wives about Joseph Smith marrying women who were married to other men and why he was really tarred and feathered the Mountain Meadows Massacre killing the franchard party out of Arkansas and ripping them off with their gold fooling them shooting them all in the head there was there was a lot of really ugly things that I started to find and I just dug deeper and deeper and deeper it just it was crazy I just couldn't believe what I was reading they don't teach that stuff when you're just a regular member my mother was the one that had first initiated questions about Mormonism to me and so her comment to me was well okay you don't believe it but that doesn't mean you have to leave when your pioneer stock and you're part of the Mormon community you stay in the community whether it's true or not but the absolute last straw was that no matter how much I did no matter how much work I did how perfect I was I could not go to the celestial kingdom unless I had a partner who was worthy because for a woman a man who has the priesthood he was a worthy priesthood holder is the one who holds the key to my salvation as a woman and though there was pressure from believers and non-believers in Mormonism of staying part of the community and it was almost like an ethnic identity you stayed part of the group and I finally came to the conclusion this is horrible this is not right it's wrong that was an epiphany and it was physically ill for a couple of days because of I was distraught it was heart wrecked I didn't know where to go so as my mission was coming to a close I only had you know probably a month left and it was coming to the point where I was supposed to get up in front of my missionary peers and my leaders and I was supposed to share my testimony and just days before that experience I remember sitting down and opening up the Word of God and I remembered flipping the Hebrews chapter seven and and in doing so I realized that I don't need Mormonism I don't need a religion I don't need a church to be saved I only need a relationship with Jesus Christ and I only need faith in what he's done for me and when I came to that moment of realizing that that was the most terrifying moment of my life because I realized that if that were true that if Jesus Christ was all that I needed then everything that I had been taught my whole life and everything that I had believed it was wrong and so I just [Music] moved away from the church took it took years and it was very difficult and it was very painful the first year out of Mormonism I cried a lot it just seemed like every time I was around any kind of family or friends it was this constant badgering of how can you tear your family up this way how can you say you love God and love your family and yet take a stand that makes everybody unhappy just before you go home from your two-year mission trip that's the opportunity where you're supposed to get in front of all your missionary peers and your leaders and there are probably 60 or so missionaries out in the audience and share your testimony of what God has taught you over the last two years of your life is a Mormon missionary now it's expected that your testimony is going to be that your faith in the Mormon Church has been strengthened because of your two-year mission experience I mean that's just the expectation I remember getting up there and standing at the the pulpit in this Mormon Chapel and looking out over all these missionary peers and friends and people that I love with all my heart who are my brothers I was shaking and I was so afraid because I didn't know what I was going to say or how it was going to come out but the one thing that I could say and the one thing that I knew for sure was the Jesus Christ was all that I needed and that was my very simple testimony to these missionaries was that I knew that I was saved because of what he had done for me and I knew that I wasn't saved because of my works but by his grace and that it wasn't about belonging to a church and it wasn't about being part of a religion it was about believing in and accepting what Jesus Christ had done for me and and I shared that witness in front of the whole audience and I just remember seeing kind of stone-faced reactions mica was sent home from his mission three weeks early I'm not even sure how I knew but I knew his belief in the Mormon faith was over his mission was over everything was over and that set up in me an anxiety that was so horrendous because that meant he'd be leaving my eternal family that meant he was now cancer that might need to be rooted out before it infected anyone else in the family that was my thinking that was my mindset in Mormonism and yet I love this son I loved this son and I couldn't imagine having to do that unfortunately probably half of the people that leave Mormonism will become atheist or agnostic but Mormonism sets you up for that because it tells you all your life that if Mormonism isn't true nothing else is Joseph Smith called Christians and Christianity the great of Babylon there have been other Mormon leaders throughout Mormon history who have said equally aggressive things about either Christians or Christianity now in more recent times the rhetoric has toned down some throughout your life you hear the Bible denigrated that it's only true as far as it's translated correctly so that you grow up with this diminished appreciation for the Bible you are taught all your life that all the other ministers are wrong they're all teaching false doctrine the Bible's changed you can't believe that so when you lose Mormonism the tendency then is to throw it all out and say well I'm not gonna believe any religion then when I finally left Mormonism I was angry I was angry at the LDS Church at the teachers at the people at my family I had been betrayed all my life that was my feelings so I stumbled around for 13 years looking for God in all the wrong places so the the big offense was really becoming a Christian because my family took that as a direct insult to them that well so what are you saying about us that we aren't Christians and I said well Mormonism isn't Christian it's not teaching salvation through Christ alone it's teaching temple work and adding to the gospel of Christ so there were a lot of tensions a lot of discussions a lot of arguments from some people and they decide to actually leave the Mormon Church we'll lose everything they have they've lose their job their family their housing there's if especially in a small Mormon town you can be ostracized you just there is nothing that it it doesn't take away from you so after I got kicked off my mission I got sent back to Utah and my family they kind of all had different reactions my younger sister really embraced me with with open arms and she was actually already in the process of becoming a believer because of some of the things that I had shared with her during my mission one of my older brothers he also was very open we sat and talked for like six hours all night the night that I was home in Utah and I was able to share with he and his girlfriend the gospel my parents you know they were so they were so grounded in Mormonism for 35 years it was a lot more difficult for them to accept what was happening to me they never stopped loving me they never stopped showing support for me but they did question you know why I was leaving Mormonism and and I was able in a very short way to share the gospel with them to encourage them you know to read the Word of God as Mormons we didn't really trust the Bible we trusted our Mormon scriptures above it but because we loved Micah we said we would do it when I began to read the Bible all of a sudden God opened my eyes to all these conflicts with Mormon scripture things like acts 17:24 God doesn't live in temples made by human hands what I worked in the Chicago temple 10 years John 1:1 in the beginning was the word the Word was with God and the Word was God wait a minute Jesus was God from the beginning well then he couldn't have worked his way his way to godhood that's what I'd learned in Mormonism over and over Ephesians 2:8 9 saved by grace not by works lest any man should boast this wasn't the same gospel I became obsessed with reading the Word of God the other thing that was apparent to me was that this Jesus of the New Testament was not the Jesus of Mormonism for a couple of reasons first he taught a different way to salvation so that couldn't be the same Jesus a whole number of things that said in the Bible that the atonement happened on the cross but I learned in Mormonism the atonement happened in the garden when he sweat blood so confusing such different doctrines and yet one thing that became clear to me over the weeks as I began to be washed by the water of the word was that these were not the same Jesus's and the Jesus of the Bible was able to save his atonement covered all sins the Mormon Jesus atonement doesn't cover all sins there's some unforgivable sins I realized that Jesus of the Bible was bigger the God of the Bible was bigger the God of the Bible was a spirit so he could be omnipresent which meant he could hear my prayers he doesn't have to sleep eat you know he could be out his work all day long and yet the God of Mormonism has a body of flesh and bone it materially binds him to one place and it also means he can't hear everybody's prayers at once these were things that God began to open my eyes to and really the choice was do I believe the Mormon Jesus do I believe the biblical Jesus or is there no Jesus at all [Music] it's interesting it took me ten weeks to go into Mormonism it took me ten months of reading the New Testament to realize I had a different gospel and I wanted the Jesus of the Bible during all those years I was a new Mormon Church you know I could ask myself where was God where was the true God and I think he was there all time but he had to put me I think through this experience and draw me out later because having lived in the LDS Church in the Mormon Church for all these years I had experiences I would have never received and I can speak with authority about what Mormonism teaches what the temple is like and now he's brought me out so now I can speak openly about that and it's just been a great journey and I'm I I give it all to Jesus because it's his glory and it's his name and it's his righteousness that I am saved I think one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of Christians make is when they have the opportunity to speak with the Mormon missionary that they see them more as as an inconvenience rather than an opportunity to minister it's hard for Mormon missionaries knocking on the door people shut doors in their faces they yell at them they spit on them that for me personally when I was on my Mormon mission I will never forget the Christians that acted like Christ to me and I will also never forget the Christians that did not act like Christ to me and it was those that embrace me with love and shared the gospel to me with love that eventually God used them to change my life what would have happened in my life if no one had offered Micah that gospel the fact that they offered him that gospel brought salvation to my whole house what should you do with a Mormon missionary I say feed them take them in love them listen to them care for them and then offer them the gospel of grace these are young men and young women who need the gospel of Jesus Christ they are lost they do not know Jesus as their Lord and Savior and they need the love of Christ and we as Christians need to show them that love and embrace them with love and to share with them the love of God through Christ Jesus and the grace of God you know all those years and Mormonism I had Christian family I kind of suspected they thought we weren't in a good place but I don't remember one time that anyone ever stepped into a conversation with me to try to talk to me about my faith compared to the biblical faith and when I got saved I was a little irritated for a time did you not care enough about me to offer me the gospel of grace when the Mormon missionaries come to your door you need to open your door as hard as it is and you need to have compassion for these young people your attitude needs to change from I don't want to be bothered - these are people who have been deceived and they'll ask you if they can tell you a little bit about their religion and what they believe and say sure if you'll let me tell you what I believe so listen to what they have to say and then very careful about word choice make sure you're very clear tell them who Jesus is tell them about the forgiveness of sin that they can be forgiven totally and freely for all time that's what grace is they don't know grace their scriptures and even the Bible tells us that we are to be perfect and they hear that all the time but they hear you need to become perfect so we need to tell them yes the Bible says you need to be perfect not become but be and I always like to tell them I am perfect that's a shocker for Mormons to hear but then I add I am perfect in Jesus Christ and what he's done for me so let them in don't turn them away let them in and drop that seed you won't see anything from it but you don't know what God will do with that you know my whole life is a Mormon Jesus was only part of what I believed I needed to be saved now that I'm a Christian I recognize that Jesus is my salvation that he is everything he's the only thing that I need he is the way the truth and the life and that he has paid completely and in full the price for my sins on the cross of Calvary and to have gone from having such a burden on my shoulders of believing that I had to be worthy of my own salvation to now having the freedom of knowing that Jesus Christ has done it for me it's it's the thing in my life that I treasure and value over everything else knowing that Jesus Christ has done it and the work is done and then I am free in him [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Vision Video

Views: 31,373

Rating: 4.622776 out of 5

Keywords: Christian Videos, Christian Films, Christian Movies, Religious Movies, Films, Movies, Entertainment, Feature Films, 2016 Christian History Institute, Dr. Lynn Wilder, The Mormons Who They Are What They Believe, The Mormons: Who They Are, What They Believe Movie, Full Movie, Who They Are, What They Believe, The Mormons, What They Believe Full Movie

Id: SyhD4b1ZuTo

Length: 97min 34sec (5854 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020