Pastor Mark Driscoll doubles down on his anti- Mormonism and bad timing for his
accusations and what is a Christian? Who defines that? We as Latter-day Saints
believe that we are Christians. Let's talk about what that means. There are things that I think nonldds people need
to understand about what they would call Mormonism. And there are things that we
need to understand. We don't need to acquies to try and fit into a group that
doesn't have all of our same beliefs while still understanding that there are some core beliefs that we do believe in
that are often times misrepresented, especially by bad actors like Mark
Driscoll. Now, this episode is brought to you by Gospel on the Nile. You're not going to learn more about the temple
outside of being in the temple, I believe, than going on the Gospel on the Nile tour. It's hard to even call the
ruins that we go to ruins. They're in such incredible condition. And plastered all over the walls is the temple,
including the ritual embrace at the veil. There are two dates coming up in March 2026. The second one on March
17th, you might consider because immediately following we are going to
Israel, the ultimate Holyland trip where we will be spending Holy Week in Israel.
And the highlight is we will be at the Garden Tomb on Easter day. So you can
fly out to the Middle East and stay there for Easter. What an incredible experience that would be. I'd love to
share that with you. You can go to quickdia.com, go up to the top to trips and events, and scroll down to Gospel on
the Nile. Here we go. [Music]
All right. So on the last episode that I did, I brought up Mark Driscoll as an example of anti- Mormon rhetoric that
creates hateful feelings among many people. And in as in all groups, there
are bad apples. There are people that are on the fringe. There are people that are unstable that grab onto this
rhetoric, this hateful rhetoric that is. And here's how you understand where the
line should be for anyone. It is very uncchristian, right? The line is you
don't dehumanize people. And that is what Mark does to Latter-day Saints. And
instead of making a change after my episode and so many Latter-day Saints came out on X and everywhere else
talking about his rhetoric and the inappropriateness of what he says about
Latter-day Saints and his timing on doubling down after the tragedy in
Michigan at the shooting and fire in Grand Blank, he still comes out
and is in an anti- Mormon mode. Imagine this. It is so uncristlike. It is
ridiculous. And he deserved to be called out for this. Now, I want to go to his post on X for a second to start off
here. Uh here's what he said right after the event on Sunday. This was good,
right? The murder of innocent people is evil, no matter if they're Jewish, Muslim, Mormon, or Christian. We're
going to get into that a little bit later as he separates Mormon and Christian. So, a positive thing coming
from him here immediately after. But then he takes a big turn and uses this
opportunity of news of tragedy to push
an anti-ormon agenda. That's exactly what he's doing. He's saying, "Well, the Mormons are in the news. I'm hearing a
lot of people feedback, what about the Mormons and their doctrine? It's a it's a big topic. And here, less than a week out, he is going to go after the Mormons
again." By the way, he has another post here on September 29th, peace if
possible, truth at all costs from Martin Luther. I'm going to bring that back up to him as well. He then follows up on September
30th. I've been hearing a lot from folks on X about the comments I've made on Mormonism.
These were tweets from weeks to months ago, and as Christians, our first reaction when people are hurting must be
to love them. But apparently immediately after that first reaction, it is to
accuse them and to throw stones at them. He continues here and he says, "We can
love and pray for Mormons without loving and accepting Mormon theology." Great. Which we must reject in its entirety.
Fine, whatever. But this is where it it takes a a a very dastardly turn.
late on October 1st. He then comes out and says a lot of Christians on X are who are struggling with confusing Mormon
doctrine, right? That he's gonna now take this chance, right? He's going to take the opportunity here to go after
Latter-day Saints. Lots of Mormons on X insisting they're a denomination of Christianity. Again, we we need to talk
about this. I've got an exciting resource I'm going to make available for
free tomorrow morning. Can't wait to share it with you all. It's free as long as you give him your name and your email
address. And of course, this is just another anti- Mormon publication, a short
publication that he and others have put out. The the idea that you have to focus on
someone else's religion so much, it means there's a real problem with with
your own security, your own spiritual security. So then this morning, he puts this out
here. Uh, it's kind of got the cover looking like it's a Book of Mormon cover. Are Mormons Christian? It's a
very important question. I'm glad he puts that out there. Are Mormons Christian? He's going to have a very different idea than I do, but there is
some nuance to this. Are Mormons Christian? 10 irreconcilable
doctrinal differences between Mormonism and Christianity. And here's the post he puts out with it.
says, "The Real Faith team, this is his team, has gotten so many great questions from our Christian family over the last
few days about Mormonism, what it teaches." Yeah. And how it differs from
Christianity. They put together this fantastic resource. Yeah. Fantastic. and
I wrote a forward for it that will hopefully help many gain some clarity on
what Christianity is and isn't because he is the supreme authority on defining
Christianity. We all know this. Now, I'm going to cover the publication here in a minute, but a little bit more here on
his tweet thread. A sneak peek from the ebook Real Faith just released on
Mormonism. When faced with the historical sources of their own faith, the conversation quickly changes from
we're Christians to we're the real Christians. Okay, that's where the
evangel evangelism can begin. We love and pray for Mormons and this resource
from real faith will equip you to engage with them. Again, think of the context here of of what of why why he's bringing
this up right now. It is opportunistic. He's getting all these email addresses.
It is it's in in the face of tragedy. He he's exploiting things here. And
again, I'm going to go into this here, but it's not just a matter of disagreement. There can be disagreement.
There is disagreement. We are not the same in many ways. By the way, I noticed here in his bio, I knew he was in
Arizona, but he's right here in Scottsdale. This is my hometown. I'm recording here from Scottsdale. So, uh,
hey Mark, if you see this, if you want to go grab lunch sometime, I would love to sit down with you and just talk
things out. Not in a debating fashion, not in a uh not in a vitriolic fashion
at all. I would just like to talk about some things here. In the meantime, let's
talk about your words that you put out in the forward of this book. You can see on the cover here, he's got
his name at the bottom. A real faith resource source forward by Mark Driscoll. So, let's just go over this a
little bit. I'm not going to go through the whole extent of this. This would be too long of an episode to go through the
whole thing. Uh the table of contents are basically it's just two chapters, right? There's one on 10 differences
between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Credle Christianity. First of all, I love this.
I love that he is calling it Credle Christianity. That is what it is.
It is creedle Christianity. And the biggest differences can be defined by
the creeds versus the restoration, right? The creeds versus the
restoration. Those are the differences primarily. Now, there are other things that we get, you know, we really get
into uh works and grace, especially with the uh the Protestants, the evangelical
Protestants. There's differences in terms of of of Mormon theology of Latter- Day Saint theology where we're
talking about pre-existence and the three kingdoms and exaltation. These are big differences. They're big
differences. And this is one of my points, you know, for Latter- Day Saints. Don't get caught into the same
trap that these guys are getting caught into, right? Which is they're they're trying to separate, well, this is Christianity and and and this is not,
right? That's what this whole thing is about. There are a lot of differences. So don't get caught up in a sense of but
wait, we're Christian too in the sense that you think Christianity is Christian. That isn't true. There are
differences and we want to make sure that we mark those differences. Those are important to us. So if you sense
when you are speaking about being Christian, which you should,
we are very very Christian.
Just keep in mind that you if you feel yourself trying to talk your way into trying to be part of
their club or or part of their beliefs that are different from ours, then then
you're going off track. And sometimes I see Latter- Day Saints do that. It's more important for them for to in other
words to to gain acceptance than than it is to stick with the truth.
So again, there it's a it's a it's a a very fine-g
that that when when we're and very nuanced when we're talking about the term Christianity and what that means,
but it's an important discussion. We need to talk about it a lot more, right? And then their second their second uh
chapter here is on Mormon polygamy. So, you know, as if that I I don't know.
There's two chapters and one whole chapter of this is based off of polygamy, which is rather odd to me. But
let's go on and just take a look. All I want to do I'll do a little bit beyond this perhaps see how long this goes. But
I want to just talk about the forward that he has written here and what he's gone into. He uses 1 2 Corinthians
11:3-5. So, he's going into biblical references to try and discredit Mormonism here. And I'm not going to
fully go into the the arguments that he's giving here. That's not my point for this episode, but I want I do I do
want to put some some response to to some of these things. Right? So, this is what he's got
here for 2 Corinthians 11:35. He says, "But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your
thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ." Okay. So, what he's what he's implying
here and and and and this is why it's so convoluted and his entire argument
begins to fall apart here. What he's implying here we by referencing this this uh this scripture here is that our
thoughts are going to be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. So he's implying that we have some type
of a a devotion to Christ, some type of a worship to Christ, but that it is where our thoughts are
being led astray. Okay. Now we continue here. For if someone comes and proclaims
another Jesus, this is where you get the phrase, you believe in another Jesus.
To some degree we do, but we would say that this applies to those that are not
of our faith. We would use the scripture the same way that Mark is using this,
right? Another Jesus than the one we proclaimed or if you receive a different
spirit from the one you received or if you accept a different gospel from the
one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. So here here's the thing
on this that I think has to be discussed against. I'm not going into this very deeply, but
that's your perspective, Mark. The gospel as you see it is your perspective. That Jesus as you see it as
your p perspective. Tell me in the Bible where we don't follow Jesus.
Tell me in the Bible where we don't follow Jesus. Or tell me where we don't believe in the Jesus of the Bible.
That's what I want you to do. Don't take a scripture here with reference to it and just a mass amount of accusation and
implication and and and put it for your own gain in in the debate. That that doesn't work
real well, right? Because we see this scripture in a similar way that you do, but flipped
on its head. Okay? So, it's not really what you think it is.
You're speaking at this from your where you stand. We speak on this and we're make
reference to this from where we stand. Therefore, we both believe in the
scripture. So again, I think the best thing for you
to do is go back and when you put up something like this, you have a reference to this, make make something, make a claim, an implication
where you see that we don't believe in the Jesus of the Bible because that's what you're trying to say.
The second one he uses is guess what? Shocker. Galatians 1:8. But even if we
or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed.
Now again, this is a a verse that we would also use. We could also use this
verse and in the same way that you do, but to use it I is is really to me it's
a weak scripture because you're not really putting it into context,
right? What what does that mean that no angel can come to anybody and speak the truth and speak gospel? Let me give you
a list here real quick of angels visiting in the Bible, right? Okay, you've got Hagar in the wilderness.
You've got Abraham at M. You've got Sodom and Gomorrah. You've got Abraham and Isaac. You've got Jacob's dream.
Jacob re Jacob's wrestling. The angel of the Lord to Moses. Angel leading Israel.
Ba Balam's donkey. Joshua near Jericho. Gideon's call. Birth of Samson. David's
census. Elijah fed by an angel. Daniel the in the lion's den. Daniel's vision.
Let's move to the New Testament. You've got the announcement to Zechariah from Gabriel, the announcement to Mary from
Gabriel. You've got Joseph's dreams. Uh you've got the announcement to the shepherds, you know, that we use for
part of the Christmas story. You got the angels ministering to Jesus. You've got Jesus in Gethsemane,
uh which you find uh I think it's just Luke where we get the angel there. Uh you've got the resurrection. The angels
announce Jesus has risen. You've got the ascension. Two angels tell the disciples that Jesus will return in the book of
Acts. You've got angel frees. Angel's angel frees apostles from prison. Uh
that happens a couple of times. You've got Philip directed by an angel. You've got Cornelius's vision. You've got Peter
freed from prison. You've got Paul encourages encouraged. You've got the revelation to John,
right? The revelation to John is given through an angel. and
a as far as it's written in in the book of Revelation, you've of course you've also got the the angel that is going to
bring the gospel of the world to the world listed in in the book of Revelation. So, it's it's a horrible
argument. It really is. I wish people would stop using that. There are things where you could bring up to show
differences, right? That that you can show where there are differences. Why don't you use
those instead of trying to create this dark, horrible, cultlike, satanic
version of a religion of eight almost 18 million
people. Now, by the way, as far as cults go, as because you've brought this up many times about the Latter-day Saints
being part of a cult, a demonic cult, Mark, that's what you say. You fuel the
fire for crazies. That's what you do, buddy. You fuel the fire for crazies.
A demonic cult. Can you show me a cult that has been
around for 200 years? Can you show me a cult that goes out openly to the world
to bring its message, its missionaries, its scripture to the world? Can you show
me a cult that is uh that that brings out the fruits
of the Latter-day Saint faith? The humanitarian aid, the labor, the rescue
uh missions that that go out after disaster, natural disasters around the world that do reach out in an interfaith
manner to to other faiths to your faith, Mark.
And yet you still must create this idea that we are a demonic cult. And you use
the term cult because you know exactly what connotation goes along with it.
It's dark and it's satanic. And that's what you want to provide as an image to
those that hear you. Again, Galatians 1:8. But if even if we or an angel from
heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, will you tell me where our gospel is
contrary? That's what you should say. What is the contrary gospel? Because
it's not that Jesus healed the sick. It's not that he is divine. It's not
that he died on the cross. That he suffered in Gethsemane and then rose on the third day. and that we should all
have faith in him and that he is the savior and the redeemer of the world which is the core of the Latter-day
Saint religion, the core of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I
dare you to defy that. I dare you to say that
that is not the core of our religion. Now, he gets down here in the second paragraph early on and he says, and this
is the question. This is an important thing and I actually agree with him on a couple of things. But he says, "However, there is a controversial question that
needs to be answered. Are Mormons Christians?"
Are Mormons Christians? Okay. And then he says, "Within Christianity, there are three primary branches of Christianity.
Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant." Okay. This is according to him. Now,
there's going to be three things here. There's one thing that unites all three of these. Let's go over that in a
minute. Each of these three kinds of Christians disagrees and on open-handed secondary
issues while agreeing on close-handed primary issues. Our unity is around our
agreement and our diversity is around our disagreement. Let me ask you this, Mark and other pastors. Why isn't our
unity around our agreement? and our diversity around our
disagreement because there is an awful lot that we do
agree on, right? The very cores of the gospel we would agree on. I guess that's
a it depends on what you think is the core of the gospel. But I would say as I said
before, Jesus was born divine. You're going to show you're going to you're
going to imply that he wasn't that we believe he wasn't. He was he was the son of God. He he suffered in Gethsemane,
died on the cross, and was resurrected the third day. And that he is our savior and redeemer. And we are to have faith
in him for redemption, for a a a reconciliation to God.
That's our belief. And you don't ever say that. You never say that. And you know that that's true.
You know we believe that. Let's go on here then. Oh, what what what I was
going to say is what those three groups have in common, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, is that they're all creedle
Christians as Mark had said previously, right? They believe in the creeds. We
look at the creeds. This is where the difference is. And this is what you should be shouting from the housetops
is about those differences, especially the creedle part portion of
this. We believe that the creedle, the creeds come from man.
They're not scriptural and they are not biblical in our minds.
But those three groups put a very large
amount of credence in the creeds of faith in those creeds.
And we don't we don't think that those come from revelation. Right? That's that's the difference.
You are a creedle Christian. I am a noncredle Christian.
Credle Christian, noncredle Christian. Because God, the Holy Spirit has been
working through his church in every generation and culture. It is important to humbly accept the fact that we are
not the first people to study the scriptures and must accept that godly people have come to the same conclusions
about the most important close-handed primary issues. Okay. These matters were settled in various church creeds. A
deviation from the church creeds is a deviation from the core convictions of the Christian church while claiming to
be a church which is by definition a cult a little bit here in a second.
Right. Well well you've you've you've wrapped something up here very nicely. I think again we don't accept the creeds.
You accept the creeds. And that is the primary difference because those creeds go very fully into the nature of God.
And we have a very different idea of the nature of God.
And you bring those things up in here and and it's brought up in here several time in the 10 things that we differ on.
That's that's great. That's fine. That's truth. That's truth. We do differ on
that. We don't want to be the same. You act as if you're in some type of defense as we're claiming to to agree with your
group in on certain things. We don't. We don't and we don't want to. Why are
you so insecure about it? He then goes on and gives this strange description about cults. He says, in the
most basic sense, there is a difference between a cult and a religion and how each presents Jesus Christ. A cult
starts off as Christian or at least professing to be Christian and then veers off course into false
teaching that is out of line with the scriptures. Show me where we're out of line with the scriptures
and history of the c Christian church creeds. Okay, I'm glad you're separating
scriptures from creeds. Okay, we do not go outside of the scriptures. You might interpret them
differently than we do, but we don't go outside of the scriptures. What we do go outside of are the creeds.
Creedal Christian, noncredle Christian. Okay. A world religion never claimed to
be part of the Christian church. And its portrait of Jesus does not pretend to follow the teachings of the Bible.
Uh we we don't claim to follow the teachings of the Bible. Are you kidding me?
You know, the most recent Pew research on on this, there's massive religious studies show that Latter-day Saints are
the by of any denomination of Christianity
know the Bible better than anyone. That's right, Mark. They know the Bible better than anyone.
In second place is evangelical Christians. So, so what are you saying here? In our
study that is churchwide, two of the four years that we do for study, every
four years we go over the same thing. Two of those four years is on the Bible
and we're pretty good at it. So, this is what Billy Graham has to say
about this back in the 80s in a newspaper article that he wrote. He said, "In general, I would say a cult is a group which follows religious ideas
which are not in accordance with the Bible." Show me where we're not in accordance with the Bible. By the way,
I'll find little things where I don't think you're in accordance with the Bible. Are you a cult?
Sometimes cults will have certain writings for which they claim supernatural authority in addition to the Bible. Okay, that is Billy Graham's
interpretation of that often. And I guess we could talk about, you know, what we find in the book of Jude and
other places with with uh the book of Enoch, right? Where there are numerous
references and almost quotes out of the book of Enoch in the New Testament.
Where is the Book of Enoch in your Bible? While cults differ greatly from each
other, they have in common one thing. They reject Jesus Christ and the Bible as our authorities.
Okay? Not us. Not us. And they attempt to disguise this by talking a great deal about Jesus.
But frequently the test of a cult is found in their answer to this question. Let's see what he says here. How can I
be saved? If the answer is anything other than trusting Jesus Christ, then the group
may be a cult. Well, that would be part of our answer.
And our idea of salvation is a little bit different than yours. And that needs to be talked about and understood.
It's not the same as what you say, but we do believe in salvation. This is
always interesting to me because this is also a matter of perspective. The next line is this. This is particularly true.
If they say they alone have the truth and salvation is found by joining their
group. What would you say about me joining evangelical Christianity?
Is salvation found only in your group
or in in what you're saying is is is broadly Christian? There's a lot of people that are a part
of Protestantism that would say that Catholics aren't saved and Orthodoxy is pretty firm on their
view of things as well. Let's go on here because I think this is an important thing to understand about Christian and
Christianity in those definitions. He says, "What makes cults particularly confusing and dangerous, this is back to
Mark Driscoll here, is that they use Christian terms but have completely different meanings of them for them and
twist the scriptures." Listen what he says. And twist the scriptures like Satan did when he tempted Jesus. Again,
you see the correlations that he always tries to bring in here. Satanic, demonic, cultish. The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka Mormons, uses the name Jesus, but
teaches that he was purely human. What? But teaches that he was purely human in
his life here on Earth and that because he was radically obedient to God's commandments, he would become a God of
another planet someday. Will you tell me anywhere where this is taught? Anywhere
where this is taught. You're lying, Mark.
You're lying. This is not a mistake. I know you know that we believe that Jesus Christ is divine and is the son of God.
I know you know that. This is bearing false witness to try and steal man your position your your position and to try
to make us look like we're not Christian. It's a lie.
One scholarly book on Mormonism summarizes their cultic and counterfeit view cult again view of Christ saying
the Mormon scriptures do reference Jesus Christ as the son of God and their articles of faith open with the
assertion that Jesus Christ is the son of the eternal father.
That's right. That's what our scriptures say. Indeed, the Mormon doctrine of God is often confusing to Christians because
it uses the language that is familiar to them but means something completely different. We go on to learn. Then he
puts this in here. For Mormonism, the eternal eternality of God means a prehuman spiritual existence. True.
Highlight it all you want. Followed by a period of probation in a physical body. True. And then evolution to a status of
godhood once again. Perhaps that is also nuanced.
That is something you don't really understand and and very few people understand our doctrine of exaltation.
It is very different from you. It is and it's very different from the rest of
Christianity. But things that are heard of originally
that have no context to them, no foundation to them, you should at least understand what we mean by this.
I mean even the orthodox believe in uh theosis right
the thrust of this idea is that humankind itself is destined to become a
god probably very few and and what do we mean by a god we mean
someone who has become perfect remember Matthew 5:48 be therefore perfect even
as I right your father in heaven is perfect So that
is sometimes very wild idea to uh to the rest of Christianity and
that's fine. Bring it up all you want. Use it as a tool if you want Mark and
we'll we'll talk about it from our side and and what we mean by it. At least it's honest here. And here's where we
get a difference again in the creeds. And this is something that is very confusing to first of all to Latter-day
Saints when we hear people talk about things like this. And then it's very confusing to people outside of uh the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to to understand this doctrine of the Godhead which is not the trinity.
Right? He says, "Surprisingly, Mormons believe that father god is father of all
people including Jesus." That is correct. That is correct.
They say we are all by the way again very nuanced. There has to be context put into this.
When you are have never been exposed to these types of things, it's you might come back to it and there's just like
kind of this bumper sticker reaction. But there is context to this and it
needs to be explained even just a little bit. Right? For example, we don't believe that Jesus Christ, the core and
the essence of who Jesus is, was created by God the Father. We don't believe
that. You may not know that. You probably don't know that. We believe that he is an eternal being. We also
believe that we are all eternal beings that we have always existed.
So the term father of Jesus Christ and all of us
there there's a lot of things that that could mean but Jesus Christ has always
existed. That being has always existed. Thus they say that Jesus is their elder
brother. He is. That's what we believe. That's right. At least that's true. Right. along with one who fell and
became Satan. Remember when Governor Huckabe when he's running against Mitt Romney brought this up and he does the
same thing because of course he's running a political battle here and he does the same thing and try and throw
something completely out of context where where people he knows that Christians will have zero context and
understanding of what our theology is. So he says, "Yeah, those Mormons, don't
they believe that Jesus is the brother of Satan? It's you you do the same thing, pastor.
You do the same type of thing." And so he says, "This means there is in essence no difference between Jesus and all
other humans." That that's not what it means. That's false. We worship Jesus Christ. And you even go to the point
here of taking something else completely out of context. Grab this is a wonder.
You would say this of the media. same thing where they'll go out and they will grab uh u you know something completely
out of context, something on the fringe, something that is that happened once out of thousands of times and use it
and use it to put to to create a point to push their agenda. You're doing the
same thing. And I know you know this isn't true, but you put it in there anyway, right?
Lastly, Mark says, "Mormons do not pray to or worship Jesus. We don't pray to
Jesus." Who do we pray to, Mark? Why did you put that in there? We pray to a father in
heaven. So, you know that we don't believe in the Trinity. You know, we believe in a Godhead, but
you you're going to keep that out of there. We pray to God the Father
just like Jesus taught in Matthew. Oh Father which art in heaven,
we are following Jesus's example. We don't worship Jesus. There's another lie. And I know you know that. I know
you know that. You are lying. Everything about our worship is focused on Jesus
Christ. from our our sacrament meetings on Sundays to the temple. It's in the name
of the church, Mark. Then he goes off and brings out of context a quote from Bruce Armaconi, one of the apostles. He
says at a talk from Brigham Young University, this is out of context obviously. He says, "We do not worship the son and we do not worship the holy
ghost." Well, we don't worship that in the same way. We believe all of the glory goes to the
father. And there of course we have to understand what that means. What does the glory mean? Well, the same thing
that Jesus said, right? Not my will but thy will be done.
As he says to the father, you know, Mark and you pastors know, well, most of you
pastors know that we worship Jesus Christ. Those families in Michigan
in Grand Blank, they were worshiping Jesus Christ in that meeting.
You won't even call it a church that they were killed in. You won't even call it a church.
I I I'm not going to go into the rest of
this. You guys can go to X and get the the publication for yourself. You've got to put in your name and and email
address to get it. But he goes on to talk about the scriptures. He talks about the Book of Mormon. He basically
does what a lot of honestly unfortunately a lot of evangelicals do is they put this false dichotomy up of
the Book of Mormon versus the Bible. You know, we as Latter- Day Saints, we see that example like what are you talking
about? What in the what in the world are you talking about? What do you mean verses?
We believe in the Bible. Mark, you know we do. So why are you putting up that dichotomy?
I understand your idea of soloscrura would say that there is no other scripture. Fine, highlight that. Show
that as a big difference. It is a big difference. But to say that it is the Book of Mormon versus the Bible,
that that for Latter- Day Saints, that just doesn't even compute. When we teach Sunday school, when we
give talks in sacrament meeting, when we are at activities and fire sides and
devotionals, we teach from the Bible. Mark,
stop with the false dichotomy. Lastly, just a focus on this idea of
Christianity and and what that means. I just want to kind of put that part together here to finalize this episode.
We are Christians. And and the reason you can't say that
we're not Christians or or or whether you're a Latter-day Saint or you're not a Latter-day Saint,
if you seed that that we're not Christian,
the problem with that is is that you immediately give license to other individuals to think that we don't
worship Jesus Christ, that we don't have faith in him as our redeemer and our savior.
which is the core of the gospel of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The core
that that that removes and guts everything from us of what we do, of who we are, of what we
believe. President Nelson, who just passed away, right, gave kind of this identity
hierarchy. And the first three things we should look at, as he says, as far as being an identity for a Latter-day Saint
is number one, you're a child of God. Number two, you're a child of the
covenant. We believe in covenants. And number three, you're a disciple of Jesus Christ.
That's who we are. And that's why we are Christian. A very quick narrative
overview of the Book of Mormon is you have the Nephites and you have splinter
groups from those Nephites that go off to another group of of people called Lammonites. The dissenters from the
Nephites are all Antichrist. The Lammonites are Antichrist. The Nephites
worship Jesus Christ. You get in scripture in the Book of Mormon those that are antichrist calling
the Nephites Christians. Calling the followers and disciples of Christ Christians.
Why are they calling them Christians? because they believe in Christ and because the dissenters and the Lamonites
do not believe in Christ. That is the whole battle of the of the of the Book of Mormon. The whole conflict is based
on the doctrine of Christ. Now again, I want to reiterate here that for
Latter-day Saints, the idea that Christianity more broadly has of what
the term Christian means is different than what we have. If you looked it up in the dictionary, it's going to be
exactly what apply to us. Exactly. It would apply to us worshippers of Jesus
Christ, people that believe in the divine, the divinity of Jesus Christ as the son of God, that he's the redeemer
and their savior. But your idea, Mark, that you're giving about what Christian
means is focused on the creeds where we find the trinity, which is not biblical,
by the way. It's not biblical. It's in the creeds. And I'm not arguing about
this here, this doctrine, but I let's just keep it straight here. This is why
we call ourselves Christians. And for someone to call us say that we are not a
Christian, what it does is, you know, the first reaction what it what we should you should say you're not creedle
Christians. That's what you should say. We'd be fine with that. Totally fine with that.
We are not credle Christians. But Latter-day Saints, when someone else that is Christian tells you that you're
not a Christian, what they are saying, just understand, is that you don't believe in the creeds. You don't believe
in the trinity. That's why you believe in a different Jesus, which is a a ridiculous thing to say,
right? Again, you're you're paring the scripture to uh in Corinthians to to
make it sound like it's like like we don't believe in Jesus Christ. To the point that yesterday I
saw a tweet from a guy who actually went out there, right? Because Latter- Day Saints are at the high end of
communication right now in a topic of online discussion and he says, "You guys don't even believe that Jesus was divine
and that he resurrected." Why would he say that? He's obviously
ignorant of of our beliefs, but why would he say it? And where would he get it? He gets it from things like this,
that they're not Christian. The Book of Mormon versus the Bible,
cult, demonic, sat, satanic.
That's where he gets it from. So having said that, pastor, we are
never going to see that we are not Christian. because we know the implication there.
We know what what would what would go along with that which is exactly what you want. Having said that, we don't
agree and believe in many of the things that you believe in.
That is what you wrap the def definition of Christian around those things. The nature of God, the trinity
may for some of you even works. That is not our definition of Christian. and
we're going to hold tight to the definition, our own definition of what Christian is. The reason we don't like
you saying it is not because we agree with you on everything or we don't agree
with you on everything. It's because you are asking us to seed the very core of
our worship and of our beings. And we're not going to do that.
Thanks for listening.
