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CPC Sunday School | Heathens & Heretics: Mormons (8-6-2023)
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This is the first in a series about cults and world religions. The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding and refuting these beliefs from a biblical perspective. They mention that they will discuss major religions such as Mormonism, Islam, and Jehovah's Witnesses, and explain that it is important to engage with these belief systems in a respectful and compassionate way. The goal is to recognize the lies and deceptions and bring people to the truth of God's Word. The speaker also relates this topic to previous discussions on apologetics, the Holy Spirit, and heaven and hell, showing how they are interconnected. They recommend a book called "Kingdom of the Cults" as a resource for understanding these religions. The overall message is to stand firm in sound doctrine and engage with others to share the truth of the gospel. This is the very first in this series that we're referring to as heathens and heretics or otherwise known as cults or world religions. We're going to start with a little bit of an introduction of overall what we're going to be accomplishing for all of it. Before we do that, we'll come to the Lord in prayer. Father in heaven, thank you so much for the goodness that you have for us, your love, your steadfast mercy. Moreover, that you have given us Christ, that you have brought us near to be a people who worship you rightly. We pray, Lord, that we would reverence your word, trust it, and please you only because you are our one place for salvation. Thank you for the good God that you are to us in Jesus' name, amen. All right. So just by way of format, we're going to be looking at several other world religions or cults, spinoffs. I'm going to get into what I mean by that. You may have various features talking more about the history and background, or it's important to have an idea of the cultural influence that we have a little bit. So if you have some little spinoff sect that really doesn't represent more than about 10,000 people, it might not be worth our time. So these are the major world religions. We're going to look at what those people believe, the tenets of core doctrine, their worldview as much as we can, make some distinctions and refute them from scripture, and then always we place our faith in the truth of God's word, which is abiding and infallible. So today we're going to be talking about the Mormons or the Latter-day Saints. Also in this series, we're going to be looking at Islam, secular naturalism, those people who really don't believe in anything besides just nature is God. Even Pentecostalism, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jehovah's Witnesses, these are the major people that you're going to end up encountering because these are the worldviews that, at least in our part of the world, are most common in the faith systems that those people hold. And this is keeping in line with some of the things we've talked about in the last few months. So what we're not doing when we do this, it's important that we do not take a College World Religions 101 class and then present that here. We are not the coexist people. I have an agenda. We believe something is infinitely and unspeakably true. There's a truth to scripture and the depth that we are claiming, that these people are claiming an antithesis to that. We do not wish to coexist. So this is not unbiased observation, this is me saying this is what God has told us and we are going to take what they say and say, no, that is not what the Lord has said. So also this is not just a methodology, this is not how to do theological jiu-jitsu and win a debate with an opponent, because at the end of the day, these are people who are eternal souls, who are image bearers of God and we need to engage with them because we are to struggle for the truth, but we're not to do so just to win. And I know early on in my Christian walk, there's kind of a cage stage when you meet other people who are world religions. You're let out of your cage and you're like, now we're engaging with that. And it's tempting sometimes to win an argument just for the sake of winning an argument. We always need to be respectful of them and understand where they're coming from and having compassion on them because fundamentally they have been deceived. And the state of their soul is the most important thing, not winning an argument. So it is true that building relationships with people is far more important for us to do in the long term as opposed to winning an argument in a particular day. You may have various opportunities for that. You may be standing outside a grocery store and you get approached by a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses. Now you're not going to have an opportunity to build a long-lasting relationship with them that day because long-lasting relationships don't happen in a day. But this is probably most useful for your friends and neighbors, people you work with, people who are in your sphere of influence, so that we can have a longer standing witness to them over time. So again, we are not unbiased in this because we have a mandate. We have been told to go make disciples and teach them to obey the commands of Christ. And so that's where we're starting from. So my theological underpinning to this is not neutrality. So what are we doing in all of this? We recognize, as Ephesians tells us, that our fight is not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, and against the spiritual forces of evil and the heavenly places. These people are deceived, demonically deceived, in darkness. And unless they are shown the light, they will not have a way to get out of that. So the goals for this entire series, we're going to recognize the lies that these people have been taught to believe from their source, who is their father, the devil, the father of all lies. We're contesting for the faith. We're giving a reason for the hope within us, inasmuch as it's good for us to speak to someone else, it's also good for our faith and among our own community that we build each other up to say, well, you know, I was confronted with this by my idea, my coworker. He said that this is the truth about the nature of God, and it's safe for us and good for us to remind each other of what God's Word truly says. I hope today, particularly, we're going to trust more fully of God as he has revealed himself in Scripture. And then again, when we're confronted with these ideas, we're to take every thought captive. We're to engage with them and say, is that what God's Word says? Is that what God's Word says? And that's exactly what we see Christ do when he's tempted by Satan. Satan says, what about this? He's like, that's not what God's Word says. It is written. It is the key cornerstone for us to grasp with. So I'm not also saying that anybody who is not a PCA Presbyterian, they're all going to hell. You did not hear me say that. I did, in fact, am not saying that explicitly. There are levels of conviction that we need to have an importance over the orthodoxy we have. We're going to start from the bottom and work our way up. There's people with preferences and persuasions that I've used this slide in a couple of other weeks in other series. So it could be that someone is persuaded that, you know, we need to be grape juice only in this communion thing. I'm certainly not even going to split church over that. It could be that someone says, no, baptism is only for believers. We are going to split churches over that. We're going to say, this is so important to us and our doctrine, and we believe that this is orthodox. So we're still brothers, but we're probably not going to fellowship in the same way because we believe it's a big enough distinction that we should each go our separate ways. We will work hand in hand to spread the gospel. We will still encourage those people and support them in the proclamation of the truth on core doctrine, but we are going to be slightly different. What we're talking about in all of these cults, these heretics and these heathens here, these are first-order problems. These are salvific. To deny the deity of Christ, to fundamentally change the nature of who we believe God is, to have a worldview that is entirely different and incongruent with scripture is them's fight in words. So that's what we're talking about today. And so you may think, all right, well, this kind of feels like totally a far field from everything that we've been doing so far, but it's not. So we've done a series on apologetics, the Holy Spirit, we did heaven and hell, and now cults. That seems a little bit off. And so what I want to hopefully persuade you is that this is all one thought. So with apologetics, we're confronting people's worldviews and their ideas, and we're coming from the presupposition that God's word is authoritative and that all knowledge is found in truth and trusting in God's word. In the Holy Spirit, we're seeing the second or the third person of the Trinity making that word effective to bring people to salvation, helps us trust in the spirits, work in evangelism, and then depending on the Holy Spirit for our own personal sanctification. We talked about heaven and hell. This really shows us the cost. This shows us, one, the benefit that is derived to us, and there are so many benefits for us in Christ, but also our eternal salvation and our being with God forever in heaven, and the cost of not understanding correctly, not having a faith that is self-evident. So that leads us now to cults. These are people with other worldviews, like apologetics, who have a misunderstanding of the truth of Scripture. They do not apply the idea of the Holy Spirit correctly, and so what we're going to do is hopefully give you some tools to better recognize heresies, heresies meaning doctrine that is taught or beliefs such that if you believe it, it is damnable, and refuse those, particularly about the nature of God today, and we depend on God and his word to defeat that darkness in advancing his kingdom. And this is very much in keeping with what we just preached recently. As for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. We care deeply that we are teaching what accords with sound doctrine. So Walter Martin, in the book Kingdom of the Cults, and Dr. Walter Martin is now with the Lord, but he wrote this wonderful book, and if you're looking for something, it's a resource to say, well, you know, I've got this Muslim friend, or I've got this guy that says he's a Jehovah's Witness, and you want to know what it is that these people believe. This is a wonderful book. It's pretty thick, but in very succinct and clear terms, it shows the history of what these various world religions believe, and his desire is, through all of this, I've heard many talks that Dr. Martin has given, he says, you know, I want you out of this cult, but I want you in Christ. That is the heartbeat of his ministry, and it was very effective. So he makes the definition of a cult as a group of people who are gathered about a specific person, or that person's misinterpretation of the Bible. Now, we could say that, you know, like, well, the Muslims don't really, they have the Koran. Well, yeah, they also will accept the Bible, too, and we'll get into that a different day. Or, but in particular, there's something interesting that happened right around the Reconstruction era and the Civil War in the United States. There's a lot of new ideas coming through. If we think about the historical context of that time, the Enlightenment has come fully bloomed. The Industrial Revolution has changed the way that people live and do business. We're no longer an agrarian society, people moving to cities. There's a change of ideas. Darwin's papers and ideas are making their way through academia, and so there's this advancement, this progress. People think that we can shirk off the old ways, the superstitious beliefs, and then we can really advance as human beings now. And it's fascinating that the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, and I'm not putting dispensationalism in that camp, but there's some hyper-dispensational tendencies that all come about right around the 1860s to the 1890s. So we have a spring of various different worldviews that happen all at the same time. Yeah, absolutely. So for those of you who couldn't hear Paul in the foreword, Dr. Martin really says the reason that so many of these errant teachings are allowed to proliferate is because churches have not been teaching what occurs with sound doctrine. It's because we have taken our eyes off the road or our hands off the wheel, if you will, and we've allowed these groups to spring up and thrive. Nature abhors a vacuum. If you have a moment where people are no longer teaching God's Word, then somebody has an opportunity to gain a foothold and teach something else. And when they speak authoritatively, people can be misled. Ian? Yeah, that's a very good point. When we were in Georgia, I worked with a lady who started a Baptist gal, very, very active in her church, started dating a Muslim. I'm like, what are you doing? They're not so different from us. I'm like, what? It's because of what you're being taught. Yeah, yeah. I'll keep going. All right. The field is ready for the harvest. Absolutely. So today we're going to get into Mormonism. I, as a backstory, came to Christ when I was about 17, and I had a whole bunch of Mormon friends and a whole bunch of Christian friends. And boy, in the quad, eating cafeteria food, that made for some really interesting conversations. And I came to faith after being an atheist. There were no believers in my family whatsoever. And some of you have heard this story. My chemistry teacher in high school really pushed back on me in this really Socratic way of making me test my assumptions and asked me, well, how did you come to that conclusion? And I believe, well, you know, the Bible is ridiculous. You can't believe any of that stuff. And he said, well, which part of that really bothers you? I said, well, you know, the, I don't know. He's like, did you read it? No. He's like, oh, so you're making an argument out of complete ignorance. Checkmate. And so I read it. I was going to show him. I was like, well, yeah, fine, I'll read. And so I get my way through Romans and checkmate again. I read scripture. And lo and behold, it does what it sets out to do. So in that time, I have a lot of questions. And I'm asking my Christian friends and my Mormon friends. Mormons were very enthusiastic. They had all the answers. I even went to Mormon church for a little bit. And having read through the New Testament halfway one time, I still thought to myself, that doesn't quite seem like the thing I just read. So I have a particular fascination with these people. And it is the quintessential American religion. It essentially says, God did once and so can you. If you strive enough, you too can do what God has done. And that is so patently false. We're going to get into some of the reasons why we should not find these people to be credible. So just by way of overview, we're going to look at their current cultural influence. Look at their back story. Because the origin story of Mormonism, I think, is probably the strongest evidence against it. If you were to be objective. I mean, if you can take it on its face and just say, this is how you guys started, it's preposterous that they are where they are today. We're also going to look at what they actually believe. And we're going to compare that with the Bible and say what the truth of Scripture is on some of that. There are so many things to cover today that I have omitted a great number of Scripture references. We're going to just kind of take me on gospel for that. If you want notes and line items and proofs for all of this, particularly when it records to what they believe, I can provide all that for you. But there's just simply too much to cover. So we're going to kind of keep it going. So there are currently about 17 million members worldwide, centered mostly in the Americas. And they've put out 62,500 as their latest as of 2021, full-time missionaries. When we say missionaries, we all have seen the young men going two by two on their bicycles. This is what we're talking about. These are not people who have gone through theologically rigorous training. These are young men with tracks who are told to propagate one particular set of stories. There's a plan. It's interesting to me that the home of most multi-level marketing schemes in the United States of America and also Utah, because it's actually the way that they run most of their church. And if we're looking at just the United States, they're absolutely everywhere. If you don't have a Mormon friend right now, you may just not know that you have a Mormon friend. And you will certainly have a Mormon friend shortly. If we're on our way to church this morning, Stacey wrote you. I've passed two, at least, wards. They call them not churches, but wards. And they're absolutely everywhere in the United States. They're probably best known for their tabernacle choir, and these people are a singing people. They are noted for their sense of family and belonging, the community, which is part of the hook that they get people on also. Outside of the temples that they erect, they every year have Christmas and Easter performances that are quite a spectacle. Actually, one of my co-workers, he is a Mormon, and a lot of the material I've put in here is born out of conversations I've had with my buddy, Rod. And actually, his wife and her brothers run what they call the Millennial Choir. This involves people from 40 states, and they pay money so they can have their kids be part of this event. And so this is a way that they're actually supporting three families on this show choir that they tour around, release albums. The singing and the pageantry of Mormonism is really profound, whereas we prefer a more subtle, understated, simplistic form of worship. This is an evangelistic tool that they've exploited very, very well also. We're talking about temples. Some of the earliest temples we see in Kirkland, Nauvoo, Illinois. Their flagship, of course, is Salt Lake. They have another massive temple in Washington, D.C. And these are grand edifices. They're beautiful to look at. I don't have time to cover it interestingly enough. There's a significant amount of influence of Freemasons, and there's a lot of Masonic imagery and architecture that's involved with Mormonism. So that's another rabbit trail that we could get down. We're going to skip that just to say that they do erect these large temples, and they're central to their theology of what God's plan is for us to do now. Speaking of that, they have 118 new sites that are slotted out to have new temples worldwide. There are 47 temples that are currently under construction or are scheduled for groundbreaking. So here's a map of where temples are all over the United States. There's one in Dallas. There's another one in Fort Worth. They're all over. I don't know my United States geography well enough to remember which state is that. South Dakota. So probably not enough people. Not enough people yet. So if we look at the LDS Church today, they are run by the prophet. Yes, prophet. They believe he is prophet. And then the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. And underneath that, you have a whole number of regional presidents and supportive staff. So this is a well-organized Episcopalian type, meaning that there is a hierarchy. So this is much more in league with the Catholic Church. So we have a Presbyterian form of church government, that there is some connectivity, but we're not like Congregationalists where everybody is completely an island. The hierarchy and the structure of Mormonism makes them particularly effective. All of the tithes and offerings go back to the Mothership Flag office, and they are able to use that to establish new churches very effectively. It's also interesting that when you look at Mormon churches, the architecture is like one of three different designs. They have an economy of scale on that, where they're architects, and they're planning commissions, and they're building guys. If you were a Mormon church builder, if that was your job, you would go and make the same church building all around the United States. So when you go from one Mormon church to another, you don't feel very much at home because you're exactly in the same place you were at your last place. So over here on the bottom right, we have supporting offices. These are general officers, and then within that, there's the Relief Society, Sunday school teachers, there's people over young men. So they do have women in leadership roles. That's kind of what you're taking a look at. But those are supportive in nature. And so they're not egalitarian in such that they believe that men and women can equally hold office, and that's yet another rabbit trail we could go down. Only the men have the ability to hold a priestly office in the Mormon church. But there is still a lot of opportunities for leadership, even for women in the Mormon church. So they have the presiding bishop of the local congregation. Presiding bishopric, this is going to be the guys who are basically the regional directors, and then you're going to have county and then area directors. You may have three or four area directors within a city. The pastor is the bishop. And so all of their offices are non-paid positions. They have people volunteer because they are, after all, striving after exaltation, and we'll get to that. And then the elders are any young man between 18 and 20 who is serving his mission. So the Mormon church has everybody gets an office very, very fast. This is also well-timed for our current appointment of offices. So on that note, you become a deacon as a young man between 12 and 14 years old. So if we applied that same logic to us, there would be quite a few more deacon candidates, I think. And their job is to watch over the church and to fulfill what they refer to as the Aaronic priesthood. So they believe that Aaron, Moses' brother, was given this priesthood, and then all the Levites come from that. And so these young men are to do the work of the church. These young men are also involved at the temples, taking part in what they do as baptisms for the dead. And there's all kinds of work that even from the youngest age, these young men are given a title, some importance, and a lot of buy-in. So if you've grown up in the Mormon church, this is work you're doing actively to support that. And if you're a father, of course, you have your son become a deacon almost immediately. Baptism happens for Mormon kids at age 10 across the board. It's just when it happens. It doesn't matter the child's maturational level. They just say, well, it's going to come along with that. And then again, elders are the young men who are 18 to 20 as they're serving missions. They're always an elder, but afterwards, all of the men and women in the church are referred to as brother, brother Juan, sister Juan, whatever that would be. All right, so there's a little bit of the structure, but now let's get into the origin of this fabulous character, Mr. Joseph Smith. Doesn't he look like if you just put some high school football pads on him, he'd be the varsity quarterback? Blue eyes, blonde hair, 100 yards there. Fantastic. All right, so he's a fascinating character, and my position is that Joseph Smith is a charlatan and a fraud. I can't get into all of the things behind his conversion story, but he and his family were noted for taking part in many occult practices like divination, seeking after treasure. And this makes its way back even into the theology proper of the Mormon church. So he was born in 1805 in Vermont. He was sick as a young man. He had a bone infection that required surgery and then required him also to walk with crutches for about three years. His family moved from upstate New York or to upstate New York from Vermont, which is about a five-hour drive, if you're interested, and not at the time, though. They did not use Google Maps to get there. They probably had a cart trail. But what's interesting about where they moved to in upstate New York is this is, again, because we're talking about the time period, this is where Finney had really done a lot of revival movements. There's a lot of influence of the Second Great Awakening where Finney believed that we could take the necessary context. If we just have all the right information, if we could make the emotional environment such that we could have, as Finney says, a revival any time we wanted one. And so there's manipulation of the psyche of the masses toward their religious affections built into the water here. So in 1820, he's around 14 to 16 years old. He claims that he has had this vision where, and the vision, we'll get back to, a personage, at least two personages, came to him and told him that he was praying in the woods and he believed, I just need to know which of these churches should I belong to. And he said that this angelic being came to him and said, none of those churches are correct. All of their preachers are corrupt. All of their creeds are, quote, an abomination. And what you need to do is form your own new church. So three years later, another angel visits him and tells him that you need to go to this hill where there are hidden buried plates. This is the Hill Cumorah in upstate New York. And you are to dig them up and you're going to write the scripture that I have told you. It takes another seven years for Smith to translate from these golden plates and then publish the Book of Mormon and he establishes the LDS Church thereafter. So these are the picture of what the gold plates would have looked like. We're going to get into that in depth because it's worth our time. And here is the angel that came and gave him the gold plates and also the Urim and the Fumim, which he refers to many times. This is basically a magic pair of spectacles so that he can read the plates. So the plates were purportedly to be written in a language called Reformed Egyptian, which does not exist. And he used the magic eyeglasses so that he could read the plates is what most missionaries will tell you. But we're going to get to the fact that he actually doesn't need any of that. So he receives this message that he is supposed to rebuild the true church. Well, I don't know if you have a 14 or 16 year old kid, but if something like that happened to my son, he would probably come and tell me about it. Joseph Smith did not tell anybody that that happened. In fact, that was not included in the history of Joseph Smith until 1932. So two years after he published the Book of Mormon, he doesn't tell anybody about it. After he started the church, he said to his congregation, well, yeah, God came to me in a vision. Well, it's convenient that you wait roughly 16 years down the road before you mention something as important as being visited by the Lord. The name of the angel initially was Nephi, and it changed to Moroni. So when you talk to a Mormon today, they say, well, the angel Moroni came and talked to him. Which angel came and talked to him? Because, again, if somebody gave me such an unusual name as Nephi, I would probably remember that and it wouldn't change over time. So we'll kind of get beyond that. So the question that we have in this first vision idea is who was it that Joseph Smith said visited him and what was he told? And depending on who he's talking to, that changes. There's at least 10 different accounts of this first vision that are found in their historical literature. So the earliest account, he was visited by the Lord. And in the things that he is told, the first time he says he's forgiven his sins, there were not two people. There was no pillar of fire, no host of angels. And when we say the Lord, he says, well, it was actually Jesus Christ who came and visited him and tells him that all of the churches are wrong. And then he at one point is speaking to a rabbi, trying to convert him. And he says, well, actually, my vision was that I saw a pillar of fire, not an angel, but a pillar of fire. And he gave him a little grace on that. There's forgiveness of sins. Now there's two people within this pillar of fire, not one but two. And there's a host of angels present. But he doesn't say anything about all the churches being wrong. And this keeps on going. There's various different propositions that he has put forth as far as who was he visited and what was he told at the time. So the thing about lies is it's really hard to keep them straight. And so there are sources for all of that. One of these comes from the first vision history from Joseph Smith. This is canonized for them. But there's so many documents of various different stories. So if you have 10 different versions of this, you can see why this is problematic. Well, if you present this to a Mormon, what they're going to say to you is, well, you've got four gospels. And each one of them is slightly different. Slightly different, but not like this. This is entirely different. It would be as though the gospels say that Christ has come to forgive sins. And then sometimes they don't say that. Sometimes they say, well, you're on your own, but you've got to do all the work on yourself. There's a massive problem with his history in that. All right, let's get to the plates. So because there's this pattern in the storytelling of treasure hunting. And one of the things you'll find common to that, this is like many themes that we see in literature, that you'll try to dig up the treasure, but then you'll be blocked by an evil spirit. So Joseph goes out three times before he's able to finally dig up the treasure, which if you look at literature, the fiction works of the time that fits in with the folklore, there's often some kind of spirit that blocks you from getting it. You didn't try hard enough. You weren't pure enough at the time. So lo and behold, on his fourth attempt, he's able to actually dig up the plates. So he removes them with a stone on top. He digs it up, and we find a stone box. And within it, he finds the golden plates and the Urimothum. And so he describes the plates as being eight inches by six inches, a square block. Well, the thing about gold is that it weighs 1,200 pounds per square foot. And given his dimensions, the plates would be approximately 200 pounds. So he describes wrapping them up in a piece of linen and carrying them under one arm. On his way back to his home, which his mother in the journal says is three miles away, recalls this young man had a bone infection and walked with crutches for three years. And yet he is able to farmer carry one armed 200 pounds of solid gold three miles. I find that incredulous. Moreover, on his way back, he was attacked by three men. Each of them were armed with a musket. He had to jump over a log. And I don't know about you, but I can't jump holding 200 pounds. And maybe you could get the jump on one guy at one time. But if three men are after you, I don't know that you can run three miles holding 200 pounds of unarmed. So more problems with these. So Mormons will often say, well, there was a discovery of this Pyrgy plates, which are plates of gold. So around contemporaneously, this is later on, this is maybe discovered in the 1980s. And the Mormons say, see, we have found other places where people have written on plates of gold. So here you go. Joseph Smith story is credible. The problem with that is there are these three plates and they are very, very thin. And they each contain around 67 words. Well, the Book of Mormon has around 270,000 words. The witnesses who have seen these plates reported there were about 14 in numbers. So those plates are maybe about 14 of them. And that means that there are around 19,000 words per plate. So this is either written in gold microfiche and he is able to see it super small. Or the other possibility is that the characters contain significantly more information than what we're used to. But that is essentially like saying that the prayer hands emoji is the full equivalent of the Book of Luke, which also contains 19,000 words. Again, I find that incredulous. So even if Joseph Smith did have these plates, he didn't actually use them or need them. So this is a picture of his seer stone. What Joseph Smith would do is he would have a scribe. There are the plates wrapped up in the same linen that he carried him home with. They're present, but they're not actually used. He didn't flip the pages and then write down what he wrote, what he was able to read, because he admittedly himself said that he could not read Reformed Egyptian, but the Holy Spirit helps him translate this. So Joseph Smith put his special stone, his magic rock, into a hat and then would put his face into the hat. And then what he said spiritually, the words would appear before him, and then he would have his scribe write it down. And if it was a misspelling or if it was something, the word would stay there until it was correct. So even if you have the plates, why do you have the plates? Why go through four years of digging them up if you don't actually need them? If you can put your face into a hat with a magic rock and God will just tell you what you need to know, it would be much more believable if he just said, God said all of this to me and didn't have anything about magic plates in there. It takes a lot of faith. It takes a lot of faith to be Mormon. There are three men who helped him, the scribes who were helping in the printing. One of them is this guy, Martin Harris. And Joseph Smith told Martin Harris this story, told him, I want you to be part of this, I want you to help me do this. And Martin Harris owned a farm, and he sold part of his farm so that he could help pay for the publishing of this. And conveniently, and we're going to see this happens a lot, Joseph Smith received a revelation from the Lord, and the Lord says, I command you, speaking to Martin Harris, that thou shall not covet thine own property, but impart freely for the printing of the Book of Mormon. He warns, misery you shall receive if thou wilt slight these commands, yea, even the destruction of thyself and thy property, impart a portion of thy property, yea, even a part of thy lands, and save all support for thy family, pay the printer's debt. So God tells Martin Harris, it's so important to do this that I will smite you if you do not give Joseph Smith the money in order to get this done. So his wife, Lucy, also found that incredulous. And they were working on a translation of the Book of Lehi. And so Lucy Harris says, all right, Martin, if this is real and you've been translating this, we're going to take this, and she takes the pages and she locks them in the bureau, and she says to him, go back to Joseph Smith and tell him you've lost it. You've lost the work, but no problem, we'll be able to translate that again. So reluctantly, her husband does that. And Joseph Smith is very upset at the time. He says, I need to go pray. So after a little time of praying, he comes back and he says, the Lord is angry with us that we have done this thing, and he's not going to let us translate that same book again. But what he will do, he will let us tell the same story from the Book of Nephi instead, and so the Book of Lehi is now missing, but we do have the Book of Nephi and the Mormon scriptures. So she knew that if there were any changes, if there was any way that we can compare A to B, these two scriptures, that he wouldn't be able to do it if he's just making it up. Well, conveniently for Joseph Smith, the Lord got angry with him and they got a different book instead. And Mormons will tell you, see, that's proof. If you're looking at me with wide eyes and say that doesn't make sense, you're right. So in summary of Joseph Smith obtaining all of this scripture, there's no reliable account of his first vision. The Lord came and spoke to him in whatever way that was, and one of ten of those is either true or none of the ten are true. He's known for treasure hunting and magic and witchcraft beliefs, and Mormons tried to downplay that, but the fact is that everything that are in the story to obtain these golden plates are reliant upon him having this belief system. So no treasure hunting, no gold plates. The gold plate story is impossible, and they're actually unnecessary for them to have this. And without all of this divining and astrology and automatic writing, these trances, things that are absolutely occult practices, there's no way that we can obtain Mormon theology. So he publishes the Book of Mormon in 1830. Actually, a group of people get a hold of this after it's published in Ohio, and they start to believe it. They're like, this is great. He's got a lot of converts simply by the book getting out there. So Joseph Smith moves to Ohio, and as their numbers grow, we see Joseph Smith, as he's obtaining more power, God seems to be telling him a whole lot more things. At one point, there's a group of people who believe this, and they say, well, we too, God's talking to us also. And so there's kind of a vying for the power structure of who should be the person who's leading the church. Well, God came and told Joseph Smith via, Smith says that Peter, James, and John appeared to him. They came to him physically, and they told him that we want you to start a new priesthood. So earlier we referred to young men having the Aaronic priesthood. This is now the Melchizedek priesthood that he will refer to. And they said that you are going to be the prophet over the whole church. So problem solved. Power structure is now made right. Joseph Smith has complete power over the entire church. So among the various interesting things that Joseph Smith said, he believed that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri initially, and that the new Zion was going to come down in Missouri. And so you'd understand where, having just gone through the Reconstruction era and the chaos that was the American Civil War and everything changing, that there's something in the air that people are susceptible to, ideas that are pushing them towards the end of the year. How can the world, after having lost 400,000 men in the Civil War, how much longer could this possibly go on? And so there is a shift in theology over time. But initially, Mormonism is teaching this eminent end times eschatology. Even the name of it is that they are the Latter Day Saints. They believe that we are in the last days and God is restoring his church at this last moment. So the residents of Missouri, yeah? Your date said 1835. Yep. So you were just talking about post-Reconstruction. You're right. You're right. This is when Mormonism is grabbing a deeper foothold thereafter. So I'm conflating. Yeah, this is still early Mormonism, right? Fair question, Martha. So in Missouri, the residents of Missouri have all of these people who are Mormons now teaching this strange doctrine, and they're coming in and starting to take things over. And people are not taking very kindly to that. They've got all these new people coming in, and they have a very different non-Orthodox belief system. So in order to support himself, Joseph Smith raises an army. The largest militia in all of Missouri is actually controlled by the Mormon church at that point. And he tells their people, God is going to give us this great victory in battle. Well, there was actually a plague that broke out among the troops. I don't know whether it was like a dysentery. They all got sick, and they had some bad weather. And then, lo and behold, the militia breaks up. So when you say that the Lord has said we're going to fight this battle, and then we're going to win, and then you don't, this causes problems. Well, the answer for Smith always is, well, we're just not being faithful enough. God is punishing us. God has taken away his favor. He's going to give it to us, but then he's changed his mind. And the Mormon God is God that changes his mind all the time. So also, they created a banking venture that people were not in a formal bank. So the authorities in Missouri, because there's several loans that don't come to fruition that the Mormons have taken out of the church proper, the Mormons are, excuse me, Joseph Smith is charged with bank fraud by the authorities. And so this is why they end up fleeing back to Illinois. So in Nauvoo, Illinois, Joseph Smith has become the priest and prophet over the entire church. He is the mayor of the town. He has total control over everything that's going on. And this is when the theology of Mormonism really starts to change. So now that the LDS Church is centered there, and his doctrinal innovation of recovering this lost knowledge really starts to ramp up. This is when the Mormons introduce new ideas like baptism for the dead, the restoration of priesthood. The Masonic influence becomes much more prominent. He has this elaborate plan that he's laid out for the Millennial Kingdom. And whereas before he believed when they were in Missouri that God was going to come back down and bring Zion here, he now says, well, what he's going to do is he wants to send us out. And there's this theocratic vision that he has for taking over all of North and South America. So he becomes much more histrionic and grandiose in his thinking. So this idea of Zion that he has talked about has become far less a refuge from this impending tribulation, but instead becomes a building project where he's got this theocratic kingdom that Joseph Smith is seeking to take over. Interesting also, if you get to this part of his life, he's multiplying lives like you can't believe. And that's all in his time staying in Nauvoo. So this is Joseph Smith's age as he's going along. And this is the age gap between his wives. Some of them are a little older than him, but the vast majority of these young women that he has married are below the age of 25. And the youngest, I believe, was 14. So it doesn't really happen until they get to this place where the polygamy really is developed. And speaking of polygamy, you know, you may think to yourself, Joseph Smith's wife would have a problem with that. Well, conveniently, God comes to Joseph Smith and says that she's got to go along with it. And in their scripture today, we're going to get to their scripture, but in Doctrine and Covenants, which is one of their books, this is in there, number 132, speaking to Emma Smith specifically. For behold, I've revealed to you a new and an everlasting covenant. And if you abide not that covenant, then you're damned. For no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory. And then later on, he says, and I command my handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and to cleave unto my servant Joseph and none else. But if she will not abide this commandment, she shall surely be destroyed. Again, later on, again, verily, let me say and let my handmaid forgive my servant Joseph his trespasses, and then she will be forgiven her trespasses. So if your husband is marrying multiple, multiple women, you would have a problem with that. But God said, if you don't forgive me for the things I'm doing, then you'll be damned. But if you do, then I'll forgive you too. It's convenient that any time that Joseph has this insurmountable theological problem, God comes in and bails him out and gives him exactly what you would expect. This does not sound like the Lord. This is not the God of scripture. So he is in Nauvoo, Indiana, or Nauvoo, Illinois. I keep saying Indiana. He's in Nauvoo, and he has significant conflicts with the people who are there. There's a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor that starts publishing information about Joseph Smith and his polyandry and his polygamy. And Smith is in conflict with a couple of men in his church. These two men are the ones who have sourced all this information to the newspaper. Well, Smith conveniently has these two men who are vying for power, excommunicated. And then it's reported that he then attempted to marry both of their wives. So these two men are Mr. Law and Mr. Foster. They have started a reformed LDS church. So they accept the Book of Mormon, but none of the rest of the stuff that Joseph Smith is saying. And so they are opposing him in the newspaper. And because he has such power over the city, he has the printing press destroyed. And because it was done in a violent way, the local authorities actually arrest Joseph Smith and have him waiting in jail. So a mob breaks out because they don't want him to stand trial. And they come into the jail cell, and they shoot his brother in the face when they open the door. And Joseph Smith is shot in the back as he is fleeing out the back window. So things have gotten out of control in Illinois. And they move, because of all of the political distemper that they've caused in the state, out to Utah. So the leader that takes over after Joseph Smith is Brigham Young, who takes the freeness with his philosophical theology and really runs with it. Brigham Young, and this is in some other scriptures, has taught things like Adam-God doctrine, meaning that Adam is God the Father. Blood atonement. There are certain sins for which a person must say, well, I have transgressed, and so my life can be taken from me so that human sacrifice ends up its way in there. And Brigham Young also believed that the blacks and the Indians bear the mark of Cain, and they are therefore unworthy to have the priesthood. There's no redemption for them unless they really try hard, and then maybe they'll be born again white in their next life. So the racism that is through Brigham Young, and he's a man of his time, but it's so discongruent with any kind of idea of scripture. He takes the wives thing and goes with it a lot harder. This is a political satire after his death about all of the wives of Brigham Young. This becomes a huge problem for the Mormons as time goes on, and the United States begins to persecute them by the army. They're saying, you cannot do this, and so they send the army out. And so there's a large sect of Mormons that actually have moved their way into northern Mexico, and there's still large communities that practice bulgamy in secret. So these nice people have a whole lot of beliefs in their background that most of them don't know. So this sounds absolutely outlandish and insane to most of us, but the truth is that your average Mormon focuses on the family, the togetherness, the communities they feel. When you go to Mormon church, everything is provided for you essentially. So if you just rolled in and you didn't have any faith background at all, and you say, well, these people are talking about Jesus. A lot of Christians seem to be talking about Jesus. That's good. And if you're not doing well, they have a food pantry. If you need financial support, they will take care of that. The theology is so built in. In culture, this is called love bombing. If you're in, you're as in as you could possibly be. You need a babysitter, that will be taken care of. You need an activity Wednesday night for your kids to do. Every single one of those churches has a basketball court. There's so many things. They're involved. But if you just go a layer deeper and say, well, what is it we actually believe, then you find yourself saying that can't possibly be the case. Most Mormons are ignorant of their history, and most Mormons are ignorant of their theology. They're not encouraged to be Berean about it. If any of you had any kind of question with Scripture, the first place we would all turn is Scripture. And with them, it tends to be, well, that's just what we teach. Well, they can rationalize it at the time. But the mark of a true prophet is one that his prophecies come true, and God does not use perfect men to accomplish this as means, but he will not use such unholy men. So what is it that they believe? The average Mormon. So most of them, if you dig a little deeper, they will tell you about this idea of eternal progression. And some of their prophets have said in the past that as God was once, man will become eventually. They believe in eternal marriage. They believe that we are sealed for time and all eternity. Polygamy is downplayed because God changed his mind about that in the early 1900s. They believe that ultimately everyone will be saved. Even if you're a Christian, you just may not reach the highest level of exaltation. And they believe tremendously in the testimony of the Holy Spirit, that God will give an impression to each of you. And when you have a Mormon missionary come and talk to you, they're going to ask you to read something and say, how does that make you feel? Do you have a burning in your bosom? Do you have a stirring in your heart? And the way that they say that you can know something is true is because you will feel that it's true. They believe that there is a premortal existence, that all of us are spiritual beings that have always existed after God and his heavenly wife bore us as spiritual children, heavenly wife or heavenly wives. If you know Mormons well enough in certain circles, if you get along really well with somebody, they might say to one another, I bet we have the same heavenly mother. Because God, in all eternity, they believe is a polygamist. We pass through a veil of forgetfulness and we're finally, we're given this trial on earth. So at our birth, we're judged by the events of our life. When we die, we return to the spirit world, waiting for the resurrection. And at final judgment, depending on how you've done in life, you will either receive the celestial, terrestrial, or telestial kingdom. So basically, if you are a worthy Mormon, you can become a god. Christians might go to the second level or Mormons that didn't do really well. And then people who are the lost noble savage, they will get a lesser heaven, that Joseph Smith said that it's still so good that if you could see it, you would kill yourself to go there immediately. So we're talking about scripture. They believe in four books. Outer Darkness is reserved for apostate Mormons and people like Pastor Evans. They believe in the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, Doctrine of Covenants. So they believe that there is, at the time of the apostles, this great apostasy, there was a significant amount that was lost in scripture. So they believe the Bible as long as it's translated correctly. Again, this is what Joseph Smith said that the angel told him that all of their creeds are abomination in his sight and that those professors were corrupt. This is why Pastor Mark will be going to Outer Darkness. They draw near me their lips, but their hearts are far from me. So they believe that they're missing all of the key pieces. And so this idea of Mormonism will say, well, you have a glass half full of water. We just want to fill it all the way up to the top. We have the things that you're missing that were lost in the early church. So again, it's correct as long as it's translated correctly. So the story of the Book of Mormon is that there is a prophet about 500 B.C. His name is Lehi. God tells him to build a boat and sail to America. His two sons and their descendants turn into two warring tribes. The good son had light skin. The bad son and his descendants all had dark skin. The bad son and his descendants eventually took over and conquered the noble line, and so what we're left with is Native American Indians. So Jesus appears to them after his resurrection and preaches the good news. He heals their sick, establishes the church, but things fall apart after time. And so the Nephites, the good guys, meet a tragic end, and finally God is going to come back and restore all of that with Joseph Smith. So I glanced over that very briefly. There's archaeological problems. They talk about there being elephants, chariots, coins, temples. There is no such thing on the northern United States continent that looks anything like that. The linguistics. If you take the original languages of the Native peoples and you work back, are there any things that are in common with Middle Eastern dialects? There is absolutely none. The Native peoples of the United States are not Hebrew in their genetics. There is scientific evidence to say that that is not so. Well, God could have changed their genes. If you can believe that, then you could still be a Mormon. And there are textual inconsistencies, meaning that the story of what happened, there's no physical evidence that there's any of this stuff that's ever existed, and that could be a whole other hour in itself. Whereas, and here's our opposition, this is an ossuary box. So when somebody of very high stature in the time of Christ were to die, they would put them in a tomb, and then later, if you were a significant enough person, they would put your bones into this box. This is the box of Caiaphas, the high priest, who at the time of Christ was serving as a high priest. We have Caiaphas' bones. We do not have Jesus' bones. There is physical evidence. So when we see names and dates in the New Testament, people, the son of so-and-so, you could have at the time gone and talked to those people, but there is so much physical evidence. There's whole branches of even atheists who believe of the biblical storyline at the time. The archaeology of the Old Testament and the New Testament is so easily demonstrable, whereas in comparison with the Mormons, none of that is the case. So they believe in the book of Abraham also. This is really interesting, and I wish we could go into this in depth. So if you look on the LDS website, the problem with the book of Abraham is they're in Illinois, and if you can imagine yourself in the 1950s in the space race in the United States, going to space, everybody was talking about it. Well, they had just really unearthed some tombs in Egypt. They did not have the Rosetta Stone yet, and so we have all these hieroglyphs, all these mummies, and people have brought mummies to the United States. They're like traveling shows. And so the people say, well, Joseph, you can translate Reformed Egyptian. They've got these scrolls. Why don't you take a look at these scrolls? And when he looks at the scrolls, he says, this is the book of Abraham. Lo and behold, God has given us more scripture. So he takes literally these hieroglyphs and these facsimiles. These are actually from the book of Abraham, and you can find them in Mormon books, and he says, this is God's word, and he writes the entirety of the book of Abraham out of this. It's in their scriptures today. And then the Rosetta Stone gets discovered, and that's not what this says at all. You find that this is like a classic Egyptian funerary text. This is about the Pharaoh going and being with the gods. This is not about Abraham coming to Pharaoh and a plot to kill against him. The whole story of the book of Abraham in the Book of Mormon is utterly refutable because we can read hieroglyphics today. And so the Mormon Church, there's an article on the LDS website that says it's about the historicity of the book of Abraham. And this is, again, from their website. It says, the veracity and the value of the book of Abraham cannot be settled by scholarly debate concerning the book's translation and historicity. The book's status as scripture lies in the eternal truth that it teaches and the powerful story it conveys. We really like it, and we're going to keep it even though we know it's not true. So they also have another set of books. This is the Word of Wisdom found within the Doctrine of Covenants. Doctrine of Covenants is things where you find practical advice for living. This is why Mormons do not drink alcohol. There's no tobacco, why they don't drink coffee. The actual thing for coffee is a prohibition against hot beverages, which would limit you to soup, I would assume. It also tells them to limit meat intake. So really, if you're consistent as a Mormon, you should be saying, well, we also shouldn't have any of the rest of that stuff. If you're an Orthodox Mormon, and there are some of them who really say, well, we believe this book is Mormon and none of the rest of that stuff, then you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater and pick and choose. But when they feel a conviction of the Holy Spirit, then that's what they rely on. And is that the Holy Spirit? No, that's just the way you want to go. So is the Mormon your brother? Because they say we're the church of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is in the name. We should be able to do, you know, we're brothers and sisters. But Romans, it tells us, for such persons do not serve our Lord, but their own appetites by smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the hearts of the naive. And that's the point, I think, in this, is that these people purport to be messengers from God who believe in Jesus Christ, but it's not the same Jesus Christ. And so they're not brothers because we do not have some key theology. So Orthodox Mormonism would teach that Adam is our father and God, that God existed as an exalted man with a body on a star that is called Kolob. He was once a child with a father before him. The problem with this is that that means that God was a God after he became God, and his father was a God after he became God, and you have a chicken-and-the-egg thing that goes on literally forever. God has not always been God, but he progressed and became a God of this planet, and there is a council, a plurality, many, many, many gods, an infinite number of gods. So when the Hindus have a million gods, the Mormons trump them seven days a week. Whereas Christianity teaches that God created Adam from the dust of the ground, that he does not have a spirit, he does not have a body, but he is a spirit, that you should worship him and him alone, not any other gods, that he has always been God from all eternity, and that even in Isaiah it says that he doesn't know of another god. Jesus taught that there is only one God. In Mormonism, Jesus is a created being. He's one God among many. He's the spirit brother of Lucifer. Essentially the story was that Lucifer had a plan to save everyone. Jesus had a plan. God the Father told Jesus, we're going to go with your plan, and Lucifer rebelled. That's not what happened. Jesus creates all things. Nothing has come into being that was not created by him, including Satan. But Jesus is an eternal God. There's some teaching in Mormonism that Jesus even had wives, or in heaven Jesus had wives. The bride of Christ is the church. In Mormonism they also teach that God the Father had physical relations with Mary, and this was the production of Jesus. Most Mormons will not understand. They would say immaculate conception, but they don't mean that. If you actually read their scriptures, they say God the Father came down and knew Mary, and that's how Jesus came to the earth. But no, that is no. What is the responsibility of a Mormon? You've got to learn to become God just like God did before you, that only men who are worthy will become God someday, and it actually teaches also that if you do not practice polygamy, that you will not have the highest level of exaltation, whereas our slot, our responsibility, as we understand it as Christians, is to enjoy God and glorify him forever, not to become him, but to enjoy him as he is because he is everything that we need, to walk in obedience out of love, not to earn anything, and God explicitly commands us not to multiply wives. So when Mormons talk about salvation, they believe, yes, it's by grace, but it's not grace that is all-sufficient. It's grace after everything that you can do, that you must be worthy, live in obedience to the precepts that's taught in Mormon scripture and the ordinance of Christ. You must be water baptized for salvation, and that you must confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Joseph Smith is a true prophet. Again, this is definitional of a cult, that if Joseph Smith doesn't give you the passport to heaven, that you're not going to get there. This is the belief that one man's teaching, that one cult of personality is the person that which everything, that's the fulcrum on which the entire axis spins. And so this is, of course, not true. It is by grace we've been saved through faith, not of works, lest anyone should boast. The man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Baptism is only a sign in the seal of the covenants, and that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, not Joseph Smith, that you shall be saved and raised from the dead. Jesus says that he, and he alone, is the way, the truth, and the life, and that nobody comes to the Father by him. This is the longer discussion where there's a section called the King Follett Discourse. It's this young man who was killed falling into a well, died, and this is a sermon that was preached by Joseph Smith at that man's funeral. And so this is where Joseph Smith simply states that we have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity, and I will utterly refute that idea. So it is core to Mormon doctrine that God was not always God. So when somebody says to you, like, we're Christians too, we believe the same things. No, you don't. They don't believe in the same Jesus, they don't believe in the same gospel, they don't believe in the same God. And Paul tells us in Galatians that there is no other gospel. O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Was it before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed and crucified? Let me only ask you this. Did you receive the Spirit by works or by the law, by hearing or by faith? Are you so foolish, having begun in the Spirit, are you now being perfected in the flesh? Mormons believe that there is work for us to do still, that we must participate in temple worship, that we must make sacrifices by way of our times, offerings, tithes, baptisms for the dead. They have these people very busy doing a lot of things. And it's because they've basically recapitulated this idea of temple worship as necessary, but the veil is torn and that Christ is the new veil from which we enter in access to God and that we are not a temple built with human hands but a temple built with living stones. Sometimes they will object and say, like, well, Joseph Smith, you guys have all these different denominations. You've got Baptists, you've got Presbyterians, you've got Episcopals, you've got Lutherans, you've got all these things, but we have the restored church, the one true church. But depending on how you look at it, no, that's not true because Mormons have a whole lot of denominations based on which charismatic leader they broke off at the time. Recall that there were some guys in The Ohio that had just had the Book of Mormon and they just believed that. There are some Reformed Mormons, they recall themselves, who only believe the Book of Mormon and the Bible. Still, they add in all of these other things about the nature of God which are erroneous. So what does the future look like for them? And I want to finish probably right here because I'm already over. So there is one branch of people who, again, if you have this idea that there's this great apostasy, that Christ, although he says that Peter is his rock on which he will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it, either Christ is wrong when he said that, when he says that I will establish this church and the new revelation will go forth and accomplish what I have set it to do, or you believe that, well, yeah, Jesus said that, but then everybody fell away and then he came back to restore it because it really got messed up. What would prevent someone as a Mormon today from saying, well, the Mormon church has really gone off the rails and a new charismatic leader steps in and says, God talk to me too. They don't have any ground on which they can say the new revelation is not completely valid. And so that's an enormous problem for them. There could be, and there are large, there's a subset of Mormons who are returning back to more orthodox beliefs that are earlier Mormon doctrines that don't have God changing his mind on things. These people are still practicing polygamy faithfully today because after all, if God said that's what you've got to do to become God yourself, then you would. And then there's another branch of the progressive movement that has moved its way through. In the same way that we see practice in mainline churches kind of falling apart where there's a lack of fidelity to scripture. This is also the case in some aspects of Mormonism. There is a liberalizing of the Mormon church. Whereas in the 1980s, people would have a much better understanding of Mormon doctrine and say, yeah, we're going to become God. Now people say, well, we don't know. That's just what they teach. And we're not sure about it. They all, they refer to it as just a mystery. But as the secular left creeps more and more into the Mormon church and the old leadership dies off, we may very well see Mormonism go the way of mainline churches in that they're going to have a loss of even fidelity to their scripture. And so where will Mormonism be? I think that we see people who don't really believe it anymore. But the problem is when they don't, if they leave Mormonism, if they say this is just too much and this is nothing that, I don't know that we're going to go along with this anymore. They don't leave Mormonism and end up coming to Christianity. They leave Mormonism and then they typically move to atheism because they've been so burned by essentially the number one problem I think that we have with Mormons is they've been taught to only trust the Bible as much as it's correct. And so if that's your core belief that you can't really trust the word of God, when you leave Mormonism, you don't end up coming to Christ afterwards. It's not like you re-examine Christianity because you've been taught from the very beginning that you can't trust scripture. Noah. Well the pattern of the history of Mormonism is always that whenever something becomes inconvenient they get new revelations. That's right. The reason that they got rid of polygamy was because that was one of the requirements that they put on Utah. If Utah wanted to become a state, Mormonism had to get rid of polygamy. That's how they got new revelations and polygamy is no longer allowed. And then in the 1960s, they had new revelations that black people are able to be saved now, which had always been part of their doctrine ever since the days of the British government that black people were forever... Cursed, right. But whenever something becomes inconvenient they get new revelations that contradicts what they've always believed. That's a great point. And one of the things I've said to one of my Mormon friends is what are you going to do in church leadership when the United States says that you must have gay marriage, that you must allow this? He said, well, we would never do that. I'm like, really? Because you back down on polygamy and you back down on race relations exactly at that point. So what do you think the odds are that God won't change his mind on that? So it's interesting that when Joseph Smith was killed, if he would have lived longer, if he was not martyred for this, it's very likely that Mormonism would have imploded on itself because the doctrine was changing so fast. But we are huge fans, of course, of saying, you know, the grass withers and the flower fades, of course, but the word of the Lord stands forever. And that's the one thing that I really want to impart today is that we have a faith that is rooted on the truth of Scripture that is unchanging. And that is the opportunity that we have to actually share with Mormons because, again, they're lost. And we need to show them the goodness of God and his faithfulness to his word over time. So I'm already seven minutes over. And if you have questions afterwards, I could talk about this for days. Father in heaven, thank you so much for the opportunity to gather here as your people. Thank you, Lord, that you've given us your perfect word, that you are faithful to it, and that it will never perish. We pray that we would make much in the name of Christ today. In Jesus' name, amen.
