Well, I’ve been asked by several people to write a blog about my time in Utah, so here it is! We left on Saturday, July 11th on a plane from DFW Airport headed for Salt Lake City. One thing I noticed about airlines since the last time I flew…it costs a whopping $15 to check your first bag! That part wasn’t fun. And you’re not allowed to bring any liquids onto the plane that are over 3 ounces…which forced me to check my bag. Grrrr. Anyways, on the plane, I couldn’t help but wonder if the lady that I sat next to was Mormon. She noticed me listening to Hillsong on my iPod, and told me she loves them, and that she was going to see them in concert later this year. We got into a conversation, and I found out that she was actually not LDS (Latter Day Saint). I told her we were on a mission trip, and she thought that it was cool and wished me luck. We arrived in Utah, and met two ladies at our baggage pickup – Miranda Garrison and Bethany. Miranda was on a solo mission trip from Alabama, whereas Bethany was one of the actual missionaries in Utah. We went and got our rental car, then drove out to where we were staying in Ogden. We stayed at a place dubbed “The Blue House”, which is right across the street from Weber State University. We ate some pizza, sang some praise and worship, and then that was about it for that night. The next day was Sunday, and we all got the chance to attend the first service of a local Protestant church that was being planted called “The Peak”. It was held in someone’s backyard, and they had free food, so I was happy. Ha. We then went to a Mormon Ward at 1 pm, which is what a local Mormon church is called.
As soon as we walked through the doors, I felt an evil presence come across me. There were two head statues in the front of the building, one of Joseph Smith, and one of Jesus. It was just downright creepy. I saw a guy walking through the hallway, and asked him where we all needed to go, and he lead us to a Sunday school class. Yes, we all attended a Mormon sunday school class. It was rather funny, because with us, about 1/3 of the class was Protestant. We ended up watching a video on Joseph Smith and the spreading of the gospel around the world. We then went to something called a “Sacrament Service”, and listened to several speakers and watched as they did communion (we didn’t take part of course). One thing I noticed about the speakers, is they kept hammering the fact that all of us were so valuable….our lives are very valuable. It made me think of Acts 20:24, which says, “But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God.” Anyways, after the service, we invited several congregants back to The Blue House for dinner. None of the people from the college age singles Ward came, but a couple that Jessica, Melissa, and Miranda G. invited ended up coming. It was awesome! Their names were Tony and Anna. We all got into a very good conversation with them as we ate. I originally wasn’t feeling good, and didn’t talk to them much at first….I actually had to go lay down on the couch for a while. I soon realized that I was missing why I was here…and that was to share the true Gospel with these people. So I said a quick prayer, sucked it up, got a bottled water, and went out and talked to them. I got to bring up quite a few points, such as being saved by grace through faith alone, and not of works. I shared a lot of important verses with them, and they seemed to listen with an open heart. The next day we actually received a note from that couple on our door telling us how much they enjoyed talking to us. They said it was very spiritually enriching, and that they were going to start reading their Bible more. It was a real blessing to all of us! We ended up going to the local Temple and Tabernacle in Ogden that day, where we once again got into a very deep conversation with two Mormon missionaries, that were actually from Texas! One guy was from Allen, and another from Beumont. I talked for about 20 minutes with them, doing nothing but sharing the truth with them. They ended up giving me a Book of Mormon, I took it and said thanks, and then took it home and began highlighting verses to help me with witnessing throughout the rest of the week. (Surprisingly, a lot of strange Mormon doctrine can be refuted with the Book of Mormon). Later in the week, we went to the Temple Square in Salt Lake City, and the 12 of us split up in to teams of 3. On my team it was Raechel, Caity, and me. I think we had a good team, even though Raechel had to remind me to let them talk too (I have a bad habit of monopolizing conversations at times…) But anyways, we first toured the Conference center, which has 22,000 seats….bigger than an NBA arena. Our tour guide was extremely nice, as was this man and his son that I met named Matt and Brady. They told me a lot of what they knew about all the paintings and stuff that we looked at, and then, at the end of the tour, I got the chance to witness to the two of them. I talked a lot about how the Bible doesn’t tell us to pray over the truth of a prophet so that God can reveal that he is a true prophet, but rather to examine what he says to see if it stacks up against the rest of the Bible and if what he says actually comes true. After that, we went to the Church History Museum, where we got into a really good conversation with a young guy named Tye. He was fun to talk to, because everytime he would give his own opinion on something, he would throw his tie over his shoulder to indicate that it was his opinion, and not the LDS Church’s. We talked for about an hour, and got into some very deep issues. After that, we all ate, then Raechel, Caity, Miranda, and I went and saw a movie on the Temple grounds called “Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration”. It was very much propaganda, and extremely inaccurate. The man had about 33 wives, and only 1 was depicted in the movie. When he was killed by an angry mob, they left out the fact that he shot two people before being killed himself. He just took the bullets like a saint. I can remember after the movie ended just having a sense of outrage build up inside of me. There are just so many people that are deceived by this! I could really tell the Holy Spirit inside of me being offended. The outrage quickly turned to compassion though, as I saw that there were many people crying. They don’t know they’re in a cult. It’s our job to give them the truth! It just motivated me all the more to witness to these people. Later, we got the chance to attend a seminary class at the Institute of Religion at Weber State (they allow visitors). We went and sat in the class, and no one even noticed that we were visitors, much less LDS. At the beginning of class, the professor writes names up on the board of who was going to give an opening prayer, what Hymn they were going to sing, who would read the thought of the day from the scriptures, and who would close the class in prayer. I raised my hand when it got to the thought of the day. The professor wrote my name up on the board, and I was good to go. I actually chose to read a verse from the Book of Mormon – Alma 11:26-29: “And Zeezrom said unto him: Thou sayest there is a true and living God? And Amulek said: Yea, there is a true and living God. Now Zeezrom said: Is there more than one God? And he answered, No.” Now, anyone who knows anything about the Mormons knows that they believe that our God is only God of our universe. They believe there are other gods out there somewhere that govern over their own universe. Apparently, the Book of Mormon goes against their own beliefs. It actually sparked a rather interesting discussion in class. Later on, the professor gave us copies of the page of the book to cover different topics of so that we could compare LDS theology to something called Zoroastrianism, or something like that. I got the topic of marriage, BINGO! I knew God wanted me to bring up Mormons and their polygamy, primarily that of Joseph Smith. And as far as what ended up happening…let’s just say the professor raised his voice at me, very angrily, when I said, “But didn’t Joseph Smith have anywhere from 27-33 wives? And didn’t he actually deny that he had even more than one at all during his lifetime to the public?” He did, LDS historians confirm this, but the Professor dodge my accusation by saying that, “No, Joseph did not commit adultery!” Then he went on a big tangent trying to justify him, all in a very harsh, angry tone. One other Mormon student added, “Man, you sound like you’re going to fight somebody!” and the professor said, “Well, I take these things very seriously when someone accuses a prophet of God of adultery. I don’t know why we even spent this much time on this topic, but I guess we needed to for someone in here.” I ended up going up to the professor later and explaining that I wasn’t accusing Joseph of adultery, but that he denied that he had plural wives to the public, and only told the people “who could bear it” about his plural wives. That next morning, we all tried to attend another class, but we were stopped by the Director of the school, Steven Page, and the assistant director, Raymond Kelley. They very cunningly took us into the conference room, and very nicely said if we had any questions about the institution, that they’d be happy to answer them. I didn’t feel like talking at this point. I was angry that we weren’t going to get to attend a class, and on top of that, I’m not really much of a talker during the mornings, so I just sat there in my chair as the rest of the class asked general questions about the school. Then, something cool happened. A door opened up…Miranda Garrison said something, which brought the men to say, “If you have any theology type questions, we’d be happy to answer”. I instantly had a total change in attitude. I suddenly felt as though I had a million things to say, and where I should start first. I really felt God’s presence behind me, because I ended up talking to those men for the next two hours, giving them my own testimony, and sharing the Gospel with them. Every point they made, I had the perfect thing to say back. Verses that I had memorized when I was younger, all of the sudden popping back into my head. It was amazing! There was really no way I could’ve said the things I said if it had not been for God being behind me, giving me the wisdom of what to say. The rest of the week was fun too, we helped out at a Christian School Vacation Bible School, a Christian camp (we planted some trees, as you can see in the pictures), and then we also went white water rafting through the mountains. A lot of people have asked me why we bother with the mormons….they’re so set in their ways, there’s no way they could change. Well, I would like to totally disagree with you. On the plane ride back, I listened to an awesome sermon called “Being What you Are: Having too Low a View of Regeneration”. It really reminded me of our part in Evangelism. There is absolutely NOTHING we can do to manipulate someone or convince them to repent and believe the Gospel. Men are totally depraved, they love their sin, and do not want to come to God. It is only by the grace of God that men can be regenerated by the Holy Spirit to become dead to sin, and to become slaves of righteousness, as described in Romans 6. We are like the prophet Ezekiel, standing before a valley of dead, dry bones. God tells us to speak to the bones, and to tell them to stand up and become a man. No matter how hard we try, there’s no way we can do that ourselves. We could be standing there yelling until we completely lose our voice, and they would still be dry, dead bones. It is only by the POWER OF ALMIGHTY GOD that he commands those bones to stand up, and become men. We only need to be obedient in fulfilling the great commission….not because we are able to manipulate people to believe, but so that God himself can extend His kingdom, by the power of His own grace, and His own grace alone. I’m telling you this my friends, if it’s God’s will, he can break even the most stone-hearted Mormon into believing the truth. Just look at the Apostle Paul….he was killing Christians! It wasn’t until one day, when he was knocked off his horse by Jesus himself!! That’s the Sovereign power of our God folks! He is MIGHTY TO SAVE! -Brad
Fair is a non-profit organization dedicated to provide well-documented answers to criticisms of LDS doctrine, belief and practice.(1) Although their claims seem well balanced and flawless to the untrained reader, Fair has done a fantastic job of dodging the bullet. Philosophical fallacies being made in many of their arguments, but one stood much higher above the rest.