Respectfully Engaging the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Richard, talk a little bit about how your family got involved with being associated with Mormons, and –

My oldest brother was having health issues, and the doctor said you’ve gotta move him to a drier climate, you know, some place like Denver or Phoenix or Salk Lake City, and just providentially around the same time, my dad had been at a pastor’s conference there in the Chicago area, and he had heard some speaker talk about Mormonism, and how there was just actually no evangelical witness there or very little evangelical witness at the time.

And it was just one of those things that really resonated with my dad and my mom, and they had a passion for evangelism, and between my brother’s health issues and God laying that upon their heart is like that’s how God led them. So he resigned the church in ’53 and went out there, basically just kind of a tent-making type ministry, and was involved in church planting for really the rest of his life.

They had six kids. I’m the youngest of those kids. Five son, a daughter, and all of us ended up going into ministry. All the boys came to Dallas Seminary. My sister married a guy who had come to Dallas Seminary, so all six of us graduated from his seminary.

And Ned’s probably the strongest Mormon I know. I mean, three biological kids, but he’s adopted seven kids which is a big part of Mormonism, you know, spreading their gospel just through adoption, taking in kids and all that.

And so he comes out of the woods, basically, saying “Everyone’s wrong, and I’m gonna have the answers.” And so from there, he proceeds, of course people who study Mormonism, you know, they’ll say, “Well, he went on to join a couple different churches,” but whatever, but Mormons would say, “No, he stayed faithful to that.”

And then over the course of the next 15-16 years, he had a series of other visions, and one of those visions, by the time he was about 30 was from an angel named Moroni whose father was Mormon, and Mormon was a prophet that had recorded the story of some Jews who had left Israel right before the Babylonian captivity.

They went to Ohio, got driven out of Ohio. Went to Illinois, got driven out of Illinois. Ultimately, in Illinois, finally Joseph Smith was actually murdered or he was put in jail and then the stories vary, but he’s trying to escape from jail and a mob ends up killing him, and so they viewed him as a martyr, and that’s when Brigham Young ultimately takes over the main branch, and then they migrate to Salt Lake.

And that all happened in about 1845, they ultimately went to Salt Lake in 1847, and this is long before Utah’s a state, long before that part of the world is settled, and their desire was to actually become their own nation.

But the choice was Brigham Young wanted to continue the practice of polygamy and Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith’s first wife – because Joseph Smith ended up having like 49 wives. Probably had more, but at least 49 that they’ve documented, and there was basically a power struggle, and the choice was, “Are we going to be polygamists or are we gonna be monogamous?”

And Sidney Rigdon and Emma, Joseph Smith’s first wife, definitely did not want to be polygamous, but they lost the election. Brigham Young was a more charismatic, dominant leader, and so the vast majority of people went with him.

That’s the group that went to Salt Lake. Sidney Rigdon, Emma, and a few other followers, went to Missouri, and they became the reformed, or the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. That’s RLDS, and now they’ve changed their name to, what was it?

But ultimately, the prophet, and I forget the name of the prophet at that time, had a revelation that polygamy, this world is not capable of handling a doctrine so sweet was polygamy, so God’s gonna delay the practice of that. So it’s not that they don’t believe in it, it’s not for this time. It’s not for this dispensation.

And so they stopped practicing it, and then Utah became a state. And it’s interesting that some of the military bases in Utah were actually established by the federal government to make sure they really did enforce this anti-polygamy.

And so like Warren Jeffs and that group that are in Colorado City, Arizona, Utah, it’s right on the border there, and even the ones that are out here in El Dorado, Texas, they’re all part of the fundamentalist Mormons, and they do practice polygamy because they said that’s what Joseph said we are supposed to do. If we ever stop doing it, we’ve lost the truth.

He had a little quip that went, “As man is, God was once. As God is, man may become.” And so essentially, you, I, we could become gods. If we live our life right, we could become gods. Our God, the Father, he once was a man on some other planet, some other universe, and he was such a good guy, did what he was supposed to do so well, that his god made him a god, and gave him his own universe, his own solar system, and so he’s doing that.

And there’s a Mrs. God. In fact, there’s many Mrs. Gods, and they had children all in preexistence up in heaven, and the oldest son is Jesus. That’s why he’s the Son of God, but we’re all children of God. And so, in fact, Satan is the second born of God and Mrs. God, one of the Mrs. Gods, and so we’ve all been sent here to prove our worthiness, and the ones that really do well, will someday be granted deity, they’ll become a God and get their own universe and solar system to do with as they please.

Since 1980-1985, basically their strategy has been to change and just become another Christian denomination, and as part of that change, they talk about salvation, they talk about faith, they talk about redemption, but they all have totally different meanings. They’ll talk about blood atonement, Christ dying for our sins, but when you really scratch under the surface, you find out that it’s still a works-based salvation that they’re preaching.

I mean, the murders, the terrible people, they will go to the lowest heaven. I think it’s the telestial. And they’ll maybe spend some time in a place called hell, the Lake of Fire, but ultimately, because Jesus died for their sins, they’ll end up in the telestial kingdom.

We’ll go the telestial kingdom, but the good folks that just are not Mormons, they’ll go to the middle place, and then the Mormons will go to the celestial, but the really good Mormons will go to the middle of the celestial, and God will let them become a god.

Well, just because you’re a Mormon, and just because you jump through the various hoops doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re guaranteed to be a god. It’s like it’s all based on the quality of your life, and so someone that has really done the stuff, they will end up in that center section.

The rest, who maybe were good, but just not good enough, they’ll be some sort of servant to God, they’ll be some sort of administrator in God’s kingdom or something, but they’ll be in a great place, far better than where we’ll end up, according to them, but they won’t necessarily get to be a god. But the goal is to become a god who then has many wives and can go populate his own universe.

And the prophet has two counsellors, and so it’s the prophet and two counselors, and then below them are 12 apostles. And so those 15 men are basically the powerbrokers of the church, and then below them, there are 70, the Council of 70. And so those 85 people are the power structure, and then it’s a pyramid below that.

The prophet is basically the voice of God. When he speaks, you know, for God, what he says is true. In fact, there’s statements from just even 30 years ago that if a current prophet says something that contradicts a previous prophet, you’re supposed to accept that current prophet as the current information.

His first counselor who will most likely become the next prophet, and the guy is 93, so he’s not gonna live that much longer, his first counselor is the retired chief justice of the Utah Supreme Court, Dallin Oaks. These men are not theologians. It’s not like they’ve gone off, studied theology.

My dad, you know, I refer to my best friend, Ned, Ned’s dad was a postman. He pastored that church as a volunteer. It’s all lay-led. No one’s a theologian. No one is encouraged even to really study. I mean, Mormonism is one of those religions that basically when it comes to your religion, you are just encouraged to not think. You’re encouraged to have faith. it’s like, “Don’t investigate that.”

They hardly knew each other, they didn’t know what was going on in their lives because these people went to this church over here, and those people went to that church over there or these people went at 9:00 and these people went at 10:00, and these people over here went at 1:00.

Someone will stand up and say what’s going on in his life and ask for prayer, and then someone else will do that and do that, and do that, and then they’ll take sacraments. They might sing a few songs, and that’s the sacrament meeting. They’ll have the priesthood meeting which is kind of the men’s meeting, teenagers and men, and they’ll teach about their priesthood and all of that. I mean, the whole thing is very elaborate.

You become an uranic priest when you’re 12 and you become a Melchizedek priest when you’re 18. That’s when you get to go to the temple and you go through the temple ceremonies.

Marriage for eternity, when a man and woman get married, they’re not just married ’til death do us part, they’re married forever because we’re gonna go to heaven, and hopefully this guy’s gonna become a god and I’m gonna get to be Mrs. God. And so we’re married for eternity. Baptism for the dead is based off of 1 Corinthians 15:29 where Paul talks about “else what are they gonna do who are baptized for the dead if the dead rise not at all.”

And they were even taught, my friends were even taught that if you paid attention when you’re under the water, that person might come back and thank you for baptizing them. You know, this is a person that’s been dead 200 years, but, “Wow, thank you Ned for finally getting me going on the way up.”

I mean, family is forever, and that’s a huge thing, and it’s like if your family is falling apart, your marriage is falling apart, come to the Mormons. They probably, to the average person, seem like they have more going on in terms of how to put together a family than anyone else. It’s not true, but that’s one of their shticks.

In fact, in the workshop that I’m gonna do, I’m gonna show a YouTube video of a guy whose wife and daughter were killed by a drunk driver, and he is talking about how he found the ability to forgive this teenage drunk driver for taking his wife’s life, and he did it through faith and trust in his heavenly father in and in his son, Jesus.

And I mean you watch it, it’s an incredible story, and it’s what the Mormons are saying, “This is what our religion provides.”

And we always say, and we’ve said it in this series, no matter what religious movement we’re talking about, the first thing you wanna do is getting a GPS on someone and where they are spiritually, just get to know them well enough to know what drives them spiritually, etc., and we’ve already suggested probably some things by what we’ve done.

You know, there are different kind of Mormonism. I have no idea, and I probably should’ve asked this earlier, in the spectrum of not just the three different kinds of Mormonism that are out there, I suspect, as in all religious movements, you have people who are tight adherence, if I can say it that way, and people whose association is a little looser.

And so I think this is where you’re going, but that’s why, in reality, if you engage a Mormon, you don’t start talking about these wild and crazy things that Joseph Smith or Brigham Young taught because they wanna forget them.

The internet in particular has helped them come out and recognize, “Boy, we’ve got some weird beliefs,” and they are working like crazy to mainstream themselves without changing their core doctrine of a works-based salvation and the chance to become a god.

And so if you went at someone that way, they’d just put up a wall, totally turn them off. I think the best strategy in engaging Mormons is what I actually heard from a guy named Micha Wilder. Micha Wilder was a missionary, Mormon missionary down in Florida. He was from Salt Lake, actually from Provo area.

His mother actually taught at Brigham Young. She was a tenured professor at Brigham Young, and he went on his mission to Florida, and he called on, I think a Southern Baptist pastor, and the Southern Baptist pastor just challenged him to do, to read the Bible and think.

And so this kid, for nearly two years, read the Bible and thought, and by the end of the time, he recognized that Mormonism was not accurate, came to saving faith in Christ, and now he’s got an evangelistic ministry, two Mormons and trying to warn people about Mormonism.

It’s kind of like when we study the scriptures and there’s things we don’t understand seem to be apparent contradictions, it’s like you dwell on those, those things are gonna deteriorate your faith. So that’s their strategy. You dwell on these weird things that were in our history, it’s gonna deteriorate your faith.

And interestingly, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young taught that the reason people’s skin was black was because up in heaven before we all came to earth, those black people had been rebellious against God. Now, me, because I was born in Salt Lake about 15 miles from the temple, I must’ve been really good up in heaven because I got white skin and born close to the original temple. You know, you weren’t so good, but you still got the white skin.

A person born in deep dark Africa, half a world away from the temple and with dark skin, he must’ve really been a scoundrel up in heaven. That is what Joseph Smith and Brigham Young taught. Now, they don’t believe that anymore. They kinda brushed that under the rug, but that’s why they couldn’t hold the priesthood. Well, in ’78, I mean, the civil unrest and all the stuff that’s going on, it’s like the handwriting on the wall was, you know, “If we’re gonna progress as a religion, we gotta get rid of this doctrine,” so lo and behold that at a strategic time the prophet has a revelation.

In fact, my mother always sarcastically said, “He had the revelation within days of when the Howard Hughes will was proved to be a fraud.” One of the wills of Howard Hughes was gonna give all his money to the Mormon church, and then it was proved to be a fraud.

Well, the day that judgment came down was within days of when the prophet changed the new cycle and said, “Oh, now we’re gonna allow the black men to have the priesthood.” So now, it’s like that whole part of their theology is gone, irrelevant and things have changed. And they’ve done that with dozens of areas.

And I would say basically, encourage that person as you have opportunity to just investigate the word of God and to really think about what they believe. And I believe the scandalous stuff, I just keep that on the bookshelf. Maybe someday they might ask, but all of that stuff’s coming out, and so even the Mormons know that they have scandal in there, so they’re going all kinds of things to counteract that. But I would say do like that pastor did for that missionary.

And yet I, not because I was intentionally doing it, but I lived as good a quality of life as they did. We didn’t drink, we didn’t do drugs. They morality, all that stuff. And that impressed them. It’s like, “Why as this guy living as good a life as us or even better, but he’s not doing it for the reward. He’s doing it out of a relationship.”