Unveiling Grace Podcast

Responding to the Mormon Missionary Message is an excellent new book that covers exactly what LDS missionaries are directed to teach their investigators from their manual called Preach My Gospel. The authors, Corey Miller and Ross Anderson, explain the LDS culture (persecution-sensitive) and the LDS testimony (“Don’t confuse me with facts, I have a feeling”) as a foundation for understanding the LDS people. Then, the book gives biblical responses to each of the missionary teachings. We see this book as invaluable to Christians with a heart to witness the biblical gospel to LDS missionaries telling truth in love.

MacKenzie encourages Christians: it’s ok not to have all the answers for LDS friends and missionaries. Simply tell them, that's a great question. I’ll research that and get back to you. This past year, MacKenzie has helped an LDS woman, Janet, in her transition from LDS faith to biblical understanding. She says at first Janet had an anxious emotional response after discovering how different LDS teachings were from biblical teachings. She needed just to be heard--to process what she was learning out loud--in a safe place with supportive friends. 

MacKenzie Jones is a young Christian woman who witnessed to LDS missionaries for 3 solid years by inviting them into her apartment, feeding them popcorn and water, playing board games with them, and discussing Scripture—both sisters and elders. She shares that she learned her own faith better through those years of getting to know the LDS and their faith. MacKenzie encourages Christians to step into conversations with LDS missionaries by simply asking questions and sharing Bible Scripture IN CONTEXT. Stick with the Bible. Love and respect them. Do not try to prove them wrong, she says. They are just kids. We discuss specific passages of Scripture LDS missionaries often bring up (they use the King James Version of the Bible) whose clarity comes through context.

The LDS church was studying the Old Testament. The LDS teaching that Eve’s taking of the fruit in the garden was a “fall upward” disturbed Brad. He knew that God wanted relationship with man and that Eve’s choice created a separation between God and man. When the LDS OT manual got to the part about the tabernacle, Brad knew the symbolism of the tabernacle and later the temple pointed to Jesus and that when Jesus died on the cross, there was no more need for a temple (Matt 27:51). Although while researching, he found information from ex-Mormon atheists online, Brad knew there was a God. So, when he came across the YouTube channel Hello Saints, he reached out to Pastor Jeff, who became a pastor to him as he struggled with his mom’s diagnosis of brain cancer and later cared for her. Although he felt peace after giving his mom an oil anointed LDS blessing, he felt the same peace when a Christian woman prayed for his mom without the oil. Brad’s mom, strong in her Christian faith, wrote a book before she died called, She Gave Me Carmel Apples (https://suevrooman.com/). After she passed, Brad dove into the Bible, using Christian commentaries and writing in the margins of his Bible; he decided the LDS gospel was way too complicated (see Romans 10:9-10). He gained an assurance his mom was in the presence of God without any LDS ordinances. His hand is not too short to save (Isaiah 59:1). Brad went to see Adam’s Road, stopped wearing his LDS garments and declared this decision brought healing. Brad is in the process of giving up his LDS membership; he found a supportive Christian community. He says the best way to describe what happened to him is simply: Jesus is enough.

Brad joined the LDS church as a single man in his 30s when LDS missionaries knocked on his door. He sensed some things they taught were a little off according to his Christian upbringing but he put them aside because he saw good in the service the LDS people did for others. He did wonder why they kept asking him about his family. The first chink in his LDS faith happened when he fell behind in his tithing. He knew without it he could not go to the temple. He also wondered why the LDS “pulled out all the stops at Halloween but at Christmas, nothing.” He began to have serious questions about the LDS church when he recognized the extra-biblical teachings in the LDS lesson manual he was asked to use to teach the LDS faith to prisoners in prison ministry. He also was thoroughly confused about the differences between the LDS explanation of the events in the Garden of Eden and the Bible’s telling of them.

A second miracle occurred in Brad’s Mom’s life (see the book She Gave Me Carmel Apples). Although she had been adopted as an infant in a closed adoption, God supernaturally connected his mother with her birth mother. Reconciliation and healing flowed for them. Brad wanted healing, too, but never really shared his sexual, drinking, or spiritual battles in a way or place that brought the deep healing he sought. He was placed in rehab and kicked the alcohol habit but was bitter about anything spiritual. Then one of the counselors challenged Brad to get up early each morning and just feed the birds. He began to reconnect with God through nature. Mike reminds us we all sin every day and quotes 1 John 1:10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. Starting over in a new city, the LDS missionaries soon knocked on Brad’s apartment door…

Brad was an only child born to a single mom, Catholic, living in public housing. When Brad was in elementary school, both he and his mother chose the simple gospel of grace. Brad had heard it through The Wordless Book by Charles Spurgeon and accepted Jesus at a Bible Club. His mom prayed with a pastor’s wife and was immediately and miraculously healed from a cigarette addiction. At 14, Brad attended a Christian training program on a college campus to learn to teach the gospel in a Bible Club like he had learned it. But there, his older roommate sexually assaulted him several times. During college and after, feeling broken, Brad struggled with drinking and lived the gay lifestyle for about 10 years, questioning whether he was truly saved. Today, he said he clings to the promise in Acts 13:39 and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.

Gayle encourages LDS to study and learn—about LDS history, Joseph’s life, and how the Bible contradicts LDS teachings. She tells two profound experiences where she felt God was directing her, just recently, into Christian ministry. To do what? To combat legalism. If you are in Christ, you have a ministry. The LDS church teaches in their Third Article of Faith, “We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by the laws and ordinances of the [LDS] Gospel.” To a Bible-believing Christian, salvation by one’s own works in any measure constitutes legalism and negates salvation by grace. Eventually, Gayle’s entire family left the LDS church—except for one sister. Even her parents gave their lives to the biblical Jesus. Scriptures addressed in this episode: Romans 10:9, John 5:24, and Revelation 12:11.

Gayle and the Wilders discuss what the Bible says about how one becomes born again or saved. Gayle’s mom was generational LDS; her father was a convert to the LDS Church out of the Baptist Church. Of their 6 children, one was a traditional Christian, the other 5 were LDS. That traditional Christian sister took 16-year-old LDS Gayle to a Christian revival in New Mexico where she was so overwhelmed by the Spirit, she went forward and gave her life to Jesus. Gayle was grateful for her one year at BYU where she realized the LDS prized their unique scriptures above the Bible. She left Mormonism and never looked back. Gayle encourages us to grab onto His garment, to grab onto Jesus alone.

At the end of the last episode, Daniel delineated what he learned by attending Christian churches and reading the Bible about the changing nature of the LDS God compared to the Invisible God who never changes. He begins this episode by discussing the Holy Spirit. Daniel thought he might never feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in biblical Christian faith, but he was surprised. Some turning points in choosing biblical faith were: 1) being humbled and filled with the Holy Spirit while reading and understanding the book of Galatians, and 2) learning more about Joseph Smith (see the devotional that impacted him by Dr. Jayson Kunzler, BYU-Idaho business management faculty member at https://www.byui.edu/devotionals/jayson-kunzler). Daniel asked himself, "Do I follow Joseph Smith or the Jesus of the Bible?" Oddly, the third thing that changed his heart and mind was 3) reading the Book of Mormon, specifically Alma 5. When everything LDS was swept away, only faith in Christ remained. Daniel was amazed, how was it possible he was closer to God after leaving the LDS Church?! He felt so much joy and peace, gaining a deeper relationship with Jesus when leaving behind all that Joseph had added.

After his LDS mission, Daniel attended Law School at BYU. He met an amazing wife, generational LDS; they were sealed in the Draper, Utah Temple and have 3 beautiful daughters. It was his wife who first began deconstructing her LDS faith when she read the 149-page Letter to My Wife. She grew up with a lot of shame associated with the LDS church from feeling she could never measure up, even though she was active and served a mission. An LDS friend shared with her what she had learned about Joseph Smith’s coercive and inappropriate polygamous relationships. When his wife began attending Christian churches and heard the gospel of grace, it freed her and transformed her overnight in a way that moved Daniel to attend with her. He came to love the simple gospel of grace from Romans 8 and the way Christians worshipped God.

Daniel Ortner grew up Jewish. His grandfather died in the holocaust; his other grandparents were sent to a work camp in Siberia. In high school in South Florida, a Christian girlfriend introduced Daniel to Isaiah 53. The passage greatly piqued his interest in this suffering Messiah. However, his mother was diagnosed with cancer and Daniel became angry with God for taking her, leading him to profess atheism in college at Brandeis University where he debated Christians. But 2 years of atheism left him empty. Then the LDS missionaries found him. He joined the LDS Church at age 21 and says God spoke to him outside the Boston Temple. He served an LDS mission in the same part of Russia where his grandparents had been in a work camp (Novosibirsk, Russia). Daniel embraced the idea that man could become a god but not that God had been a man.

Although the LDS missionaries seemed to exemplify this love Lillie sought from God, she recognized that they were denying God by pursuing Him through salvation by their own works. After hearing Micah Wilder’s YouTube testimony (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0mckI8Xfl8), she realized salvation comes by grace through faith in Christ alone, not through any special church, ordinance, or priesthood power. The moment this grace-message clicked, her heart was changed, her eyes opened, and she received the baptism of fire. Lillie read in Acts that the Holy Spirit came by an act of God; God did not require LDS priesthood. Discovering, miraculously, that she lived in the same town as the former LDS missionary whose now Christian testimony had helped point her to the Truth, Lillie connected with members of the Adam’s Road ministry. Lillie’s Christian mom returned home to Texas praising God. And, Lillie developed a heart to witness to LDS. She is now a valued member of the very ministry, Adam’s Road, that helped her see that salvation came by grace through faith in Christ and that Jesus was enough.

The night before her scheduled baptism into the LDS Church, Lillie’s Christian mom and her friend’s mom tried through the night to talk her out of joining. Lillle felt attacked and interrogated but agreed to delay her LDS baptism. Who to trust, the LDS missionaries or her mom? She knew the answers she sought were in the Bible but how to find them? The next day they all attended Lillie’s friend Trevor’s baptism into the LDS Church. She was surprised that the focus there was on Joseph Smith not Jesus; there was no cross in the building! That afternoon, her mother wanted her to watch some videos and the missionaries wanted her to talk with Mormons. In desperation, she turned to God in prayer, “Help me to know You. I want to hear what You want to say to me.” Then her mom found Micah Wilder’s testimony online and Lillie was spellbound by this undeserved love of God he spoke of and by this simple gospel of grace (Romans 5:8 but God shows his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us). Lillie was broken and knew that Jesus was enough. She did not need to belong to a particular church to be saved.

The LDS missionaries asked Lillie, “What do you believe about Jesus?” These missionaries seemed so zealous, so passionate, so genuine in their faith, she and another young man in the apartment complex began taking the missionary discussions. A month later, they both committed to be baptized into the LDS Church. Lillie knew nothing about LDS history or Joseph Smith, she hadn’t read the Bible, so, she explains, she didn’t even know what to ask the missionaries. The night before her LDS baptism, her Christian mom surprised her by flying in from Texas. The discussion began at midnight. Lillie was angry at her family. Didn’t they understand she was seeking faith in God by joining the LDS Church?