LDS Missionaries

I talked to and prayed with a couple LDS sister missionaries who were walking down my street. It would have been nice to give you a picture with them, but that would have been a little creepy. I probably had a good 20 minutes with them before I had to go pick my daughter up. Please pray for Sister Ekete-tai (or something like that... South Pacific, but from Portland, OR) and Sister Traylor from El Paso.

As I did a few days before with the brother missionaries, I asked these sisters if they read the Bible. The sisters both said that they have only read parts of it, but were reading more currently due to their church going through it. So I asked them if there was anything different in what they read from their own faith. They gave me blank looks, so I told them from my reading, I've found a lot of contradictions with their own faith. They asked for an example, so I basically walked through the same presentation I did with the brother missionaries a few days before. I explained how the Bible agrees with the Book of Mormon on there only being one God, but both disagree with the other later LDS scriptures in the Doctrine & Covenants (D&C) and Pearl of Great Price (PGP) as well as Joseph Smith's famous last 2 sermons--King Follett and Sermon in the Grove.

I was also able to share a couple problems in which the Jesus of the Bible differed quite a bit from the LDS Jesus. I shared how Jesus created everything from the beginning whether it be in heaven or on earth, and therefore we can’t be His younger brothers and sisters in a pre-earth life. I also shared how the Jesus of the Bible wouldn’t be condemning those who reject Joseph Smith or his church (PGP, Joseph Smith–History 1:19 condemns all other churches). I shared how I have peace with God now and I’m not in the LDS Church.

The sisters just listened. I tried really hard to be super gentle and it paid off. I could tell they were really listening and interested.

Of course they gave their testimony, and I shared the problems of simply resting on that. I quoted Jeremiah 17:9 and Prov. 14:12 to them. I told them they can have their testimony and still be heading over a cliff. I gave an example of how it may seem to me that God had revealed to me that a helicopter was going to land there in a minute. If you ask me why I believe that, and I tell you that I don't know why, but I just believe it, and it doesn't happen after a minute, then it should be obvious that God never revealed anything to me. I went on to explain how I hold that Smith was leading them over a cliff and I know that because he failed every biblical test for being a prophet of God. Smith taught another god (cf. Deut. 13:1-5), made false prophecies (cf. Deut. 18:20-22), and had horrible fruit (cf. Matt. 7).

I had to go, but I asked if I could pray for them, and they let me. So I prayed to each member of the Trinity and thanked the Lord for the gospel and explained it while I prayed. As I walked back across the street to my car, I picked a couple of my nectarines for them, and invited them to come back and say hi sometime.

MeetTheExMormons.org

We had a great evening with Nancy Perkins sharing her story of coming out of Mormonism and coming to Christ. Please see the link above to watch her story and view the pictures.


Dinner with Impact360 at Southeast Christian 
Impact 360

I and some other friends were able to role play being a Mormon at the BYU cafeteria for Christian college age students out with Impact 360, Georgia (impact360institute.org). The point was to help them get conversations going with LDS people. This team of around 100 was under our board member and CEO of Maven Ministry (MavenTruth.com), Brett Kunkle and his team.

Hand Therapist

God used my jammed finger from a pruning accident back in May to challenge my LDS hand therapist last month. He asked about my weekend, so I told him about the ministry I was involved in training missionaries. He asked what I do, so I told him I’m a Christian, not LDS, mission president. I asked what religious background he has, and he told me he was LDS. I asked if he went on a mission. He did, so we talked about that the rest of my session. The next time I came in he was more curious about what I do, so I told 
Brett Kunkle, Dr. Tim Stratton, and Rob
him to check out my site some time–JosephLied.com. He wondered what the point of it was, so I told him it was about how Joseph Smith failed every biblical test for being a prophet of God. Smith taught a false god (Deut. 13), he made false prophecies (Deut. 18), and he had bad fruit (Matt. 7). My therapist said he would indeed check my site out.


We Need Your Partnership

If you’re looking for ways to store up for yourself treasures in heaven (Matt. 6:19-20), may I suggest investing in our ministry? We not only need your prayers, but we need your financial partnership as well. Keep in mind that your investment is not simply for us, but for the lives of others we reach with the gospel. The standard way to financially invest is by writing a tax-deductible check to Courageous Christians United (CCU). For more information on various ways to invest in this ministry, including online giving, please see our “Invest” page on our sites. If you’re not a partner and are blessed by these monthly updates, please join our team and let us know soon. We’d love to be your missionaries here in Utah. Many thanks to those of you who hold us up in prayer and/or in your financial giving!

Be strong and courageous (Joshua 1:6),

Rob Sivulka
President, Courageous Christians United
P.O. Box 1374
West Jordan, UT 84088
(801) 792-6373 (leave voice message or text)
MormonInfo.org
MeetTheExMormons.org
JWinfo.org
MuhammadLied.Info
AbortionIsMurder.Info

Mailbag

Brother Rob another awesome newsletter! Making Friends with the LDS Missionaries and earning the right to share Jesus!:)
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I love how God's timing made it possible for you to speak to those LDS missionaries!
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There you go again... religion playing tricks with people's minds. 😉

[I replied:] atheism is a cruel trick that either posits an eternal universe going against everything we know from science and philosophy or a universe that simply and magically pops into existence from absolutely nothing thereby denying a fundamental law of reality, viz., the law of causality that every event has a preceeding cause to it.

[He replied:] keeping it real means preaching truth without fairytale infiltration...it means saying goodbye to Santa before 13...it means uniting people in truth without subscribing to obvious falsehoods.
Haven't we learned yet that religion does 3 things very effectively? Divides people; controls people; deludes people.

[I replied:] and atheism doesn't divide? Why think that division is necessarily bad? You're doing it here in a group that is expressly Christian. Again, you are showing yourself to be hypocritical. Finally, none of what you said answers the arguments I just gave for the absurdity of atheism. You're still having a bad hangover of Mormonism, since it's basically a form of atheism that denies a genuinely Supernatural Cause of the universe.

[He replied:] ...The Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever contrived. Have you read it?

[I replied:] Jesus pronounced it the word of God, truth, and cannot be broken. Since He fulfilled prophecy, the best case of history indicates He rose from the dead, and lived an exemplary life admired even by famous atheists, I'll take His word over yours any day... regardless of whether it all makes sense to me or not. It should be obvious if it is God's word, it would go well beyond my finite mind. Our of course finite humans will always disagree with it since humans have a propensity to set themselves on the throne and assume they know best.

[He replied:] his word over mine? Why not study and then you don't have to put your faith in anyone but yourself?
These ruthless political hustlers have no bigger brains than you, is a set up of subjugation and if you want to enslave willfully to it, by all means... 😉

[I replied:] yes, I'm not the Lord. Jesus is, and you know very well that I have and continue to study. The problem is that you and the rest of us make lousy lords. Jesus doesn't. As He taught, you need to repent or you'll perish. Don't miss out on the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He's what it's all about.
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There is no eternal supreme God in Lds
Was a time when was no god in lds just mortals

[I replied:] in Mormonism, there have always been gods, but the main thing to keep in mind is that each of them had to become a god. Of course the philosophical problems are evident and are just as much a problem for Mormonism as they are for atheism or naturalism. Why is there something rather than nothing? What explains the universe or matter? And how in the world did we cross actual infinity one at a time to get to this present moment? There must be an absolute shoving off point to get the whole thing going.

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When considering the problem of evil, I think the idea that God created the universe out of pre-existing matter and that we are co-eternal with God makes the most sense. If God is all knowing, all powerful, and all good, why would he create beings that he knew would inflict so much suffering on each other?


[I replied:] As mentioned in today's service at St. Paul's, grief is the price of love. And thus, it's not determined. We aren't robots. So God's perfect foreknowledge doesn't exhaustively determine every event.

Add to that that Mormonism gives no ultimate explanation for the universe or matter let alone any reason how we could traverse an actual infinite number of events to get to this present moment. This is why I claim that Mormonism is as intellectually absurd just as much as atheism or naturalism, of which Mormonism is a form of. There is truly no genuine "Super"natural in Mormonism.


[He replied:] I agree with that. But if God created all in the way that you are proposing, then He knowingly created beings that would fall and commit atrocious acts. And I think if that were the case he would be at least somewhat responsible for what happens. Maybe he not know, or didn’t care, or maybe he wasn’t powerful enough to create a better world with better natured people.

Our explanation of the matter of this universe and the souls that inhabit it is the exact same explanation for where you believe God came from.

[I replied:] well in that sense God is responsible for everything that happens, including rape and murder, since without Him, nothing would happen. But that isn't what we're talking about here. We're talking about there being a more powerful Being would could allow His creatures free agency without determining them and still getting His ends. So God actualized a possible world based on all the genuinely free choices of His creatures. There have been different theories to explain God's knowing what will happen without determining what will happen. The version I subscribed to is Molinism. Dr. Tim Stratton has written a whole book on it. But we don't need to downgrade the Omnipotent like LDS do in order to uphold genuine agency of creatures.

I don't believe that God came from anywhere. Jews, Christians, and Muslims have always held that God was always God contrary to what Smith taught, and everything else is because of Him.


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