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>>Good evening. My name is Jason Wallace. I'm the pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church
here in the Salt Lake Valley,
and we welcome you to another installment of the Ancient Paths.
This week we are privileged to have with us a member of our congregation,
Mr. Perri Winn.
He is a former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Left that, was
nonreligious for two decades, and then
came to a living faith in Jesus Christ.
He has written a book
to help those who
are struggling with some of the same questions that he had.
And, we are
having him here to discuss that journey and the
book that he's written.
Mr. Winn, Perri,
good to have you with us. >>Thank you. It's nice to be here Jason.
>>Now you actually grew up
in the LDS church, multi-generation family, right? >>That's right, yeah, a long,
long line of LDS people.
>>So,
a lot of folks assume that if you're no longer LDS that you must not have
been a faithful LDS. I mean, did you grow up as a Jack Mormon or did you grow up faithful?
>>No, I was,
all in.
You know, I was a faithful Mormon my whole life.
I went to church every Sunday,
went to Seminary,
went on a mission when I was nineteen, served a full-time mission in Peru,
honorably discharged, and had a very successful mission
by the church standards, baptized a lot of people, converted a lot of people to
the Mormon faith.
And believed in the Mormon church fully at that time.
And,
after my mission I went to Institute
of Religion at the university, and,
so I was,
I was,
very active.
>>Now you,
you drifted away from that though.
>>That's right.
What happened after my mission, I
had a couple of buddies that had just returned from their missions
about the same time and we were all going to
Weber State University at the time.
So we decided to get together
at the University Institute building
and study the scriptures. Since we were all pretty gung-ho on
religion and the LDS faith when we had returned from our missions.
And so, we got together to study scriptures. So we'd get the Bible out,
we'd get, you know, the Book of Mormon and all the Mormon scriptures,
and,
at that time they didn't have the internet, so you couldn't do word searches on things.
But what we would do is we would pick a topic each week.
One week we would pick faith, the next week repentance, another week,
you know, grace, or
just different topics, religious topics.
And what we would do is we had concordances at the time. We used Strong's
concordance for the Bible.
And of course, these were in book form,
we didn't have the computer
forms back then.
We also had a concordance of LDS scriptures called the
"Scriptorium," which was probably the earliest concordance of LDS
scriptures.
But, it was basically organized just like Strong's concordance, where it would list
all the words in the scriptures and all the occurrences of those words.
And so, we would pick a topic one week. Say we picked repentance one week.
What we would do is we would go off individually, and we'd look up all the occurrences of
those words in all of the scriptures: the Bible,
the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price.
And then we would study the verses that contained those words,
and we would try to come to some understanding
of what the scriptures were teaching about those topics.
Well, as you can imagine,
we came
upon a lot of topics that the Bible taught completely differently than the LDS
scriptures.
And so, being in the LDS Institute of Religion at that time, we
decided to
take our questions to the nearest people that might be able to answer them,
who were the Institute professors there,
who were all trained, you know,
in religious studies. So,
we took our questions to
these Institute professors.
And we were met with, kind of surprisingly,
you know, they weren't really happy about a lot of the questions that we were asking.
But we were all faithful LDS guys,
gung-ho about religion and just wanted to learn truth.
And so, we would ask them these questions,
and,
they couldn't answer our questions. In fact,
what ended up happening is, we ended up getting kicked out of the Institute building
for asking
questions about things.
So they asked us not to study there anymore, we couldn't study there anymore.
So we had to find another place to study after that.
So we ended up studying at one of my friends' homes, and we continued our
studies.
Eventually, more and more questions came up.
We asked,
you know, all the
LDS people around us to try and help us, you know, answer these questions.
We ended up calling some
prominent scholars. One day we called Hugh Nibley and talked to him on the phone
about some questions that we had
at that time.
And just didn't get any satisfactory answers to any of the questions.
And that kind of slowly over a couple of years lead us
all to see that
the Mormon scriptures did not agree with the Bible
in just about every topic.
>>So, that
didn't lead you immediately to actually then follow the Bible did it?
>>No, it didn't.
It basically just,
you know,
I was so upset about the religion that I had committed my life to,
just committed, you know, a couple years of my life to
preaching and converting people to this religion, that I had
before, you know, wholeheartedly accepted.
I was
just upset about the whole
thing, and I basically gave up religion
totally at that time.
>>So you
basically didn't have any religion for, what, about
twenty years? >>Yeah, about twenty years. I didn't
want anything to do with religion,
didn't have any interest in
knowing anything about religion, or
anything about God, didn't
really cross my mind too much during those twenty years.
>>What changed that?
>>Actually,
it was when I was
watching some Christian programming on TV.
I would just be flipping around the programs
and come across some Christian programs, and if there was nothing else on, I would
stop for a few minutes and listen to the topics that they were talking
about.
I did that for several months and
eventually came to see that
even though they were all,
you know, Christians, they had a lot of different ideas on similar topics.
And so, it just got me to thinking, you know,
"Why is there so much confusion about all these different topics?" You know,
"They're all reading the same book, so what's going on?" So,
I just decided that I was going to find out for myself. I was going to actually
pick up the Bible and read it, for really the first time in my life. I'd
never read
right, straight through the Bible, ever in my whole life.
So, I decided to go down in my basement and grab my Bible, and dust it off. There was
probably a half-inch of dust on it at that time,
and just started to read through the New Testament.
I actually started at the Gospel of John.
I was trying to do,
you know, kind of the short read. So I started in the Gospel of John and
read straight through it from there.
By the time I got through
probably
to about First John, it was clear to me what
the Bible was teaching. It was clear to me what Jesus was asking people to do.
I saw that the Bible was not really that confusing.
It wasn't rocket science to pick up the Bible and understand what the Bible was
teaching.
And so,
that's how it started.
>>Now I'm curious.
One of the things that I hear from people all the time, I talk to them about the Bible,
and,
immediately,
just about anyone, but especially LDS will say, "Oh, I know the Bible, I read
the Bible all the time."
When you were active LDS,
did you think you knew the Bible?
>>Oh yeah, I thought I knew the Bible very well.
But I actually knew nothing about
what the Bible actually taught. I'd never
actually read the Bible through on my own to find out
what the Bible actually taught on its own.
One of the first things that Joseph Smith did in the Book of Mormon was
discredited the Bible.
He taught that so many plain and precious things had been taken out of
the Bible, that it was basically not trustworthy to read on its own.
You couldn't just read through the Bible
and find out what the gospel was.
We were taught, I was taught, that
the Bible did not contain the fullness of the gospel, but it contained bits and pieces
of things that were valuable,
you know, if they were translated correctly.
And, basically just studied the Bible through LDS church manuals
and from what my teachers, my Sunday school teachers
and other people had taught me.
But never really read through the Bible to find out what it actually said
on its own, what Jesus actually taught, and what His disciples actually taught.
>>The experience that you're describing, so much, similar to my own. I
was religious for years. I was in a Baptist church.
My behavior is a condemnation of me, not of them. But,
I
thought I knew the Bible,
because I picked at it all time.
But I was only picking at little parts of it and I had never sat down and
tried to read the whole thing.
I think one time
I sat down and read Genesis,
got through most of Exodus, and then sort of lost my way when it started talking about
the particulars of the tabernacle.
But, so many people think they know the Bible, but you start asking the most
basic questions, they don't know anything. But,
it wasn't just an intellectual discovery that you found when you were
going through the Bible, was it? >>No, not at all.
I was,
I was searching,
you know, not only, you know, for the curiosity of understanding the questions
that
people was asking, but as I read through the Bible I really wanted to know
the truth of
what Jesus actually taught, and what His disciples taught. What was that the
gospel
that Jesus taught?
And,
so, it wasn't just intellectual, and, you know,
by the end of the Bible I understood what Jesus was asking
me to do as an individual.
He was asking me to repent and believe in Him, put my faith in Him.
And so,
that's what I did, and I
experienced a conversion. My whole life changed after that.
Nothing was
the same after that. I cared about things that I'd never cared about before.
I didn't care about things that were
basically my daily life, you know, before that, for the past twenty years.
So everything changed for me at that point.
>>Now, a lot of our viewers are going to say,
"What do you mean, you were
active LDS, you were a returned missionary,
and you're saying that you'd never really believed
in Jesus before?"
The only way they can
understand that is that you were a fraud.
But you were actually very serious about your LDS faith.
How did your faith differ
after reading the Bible versus when you were an LDS missionary? >>Well,
the gospel that Joseph Smith
taught is completely different than the gospel that Jesus taught.
I didn't understand that until I actually read
the words of Jesus and the disciples that sat at Jesus' feet and learned the gospel
from Him,
read through it straight through in context.
You know, as an LDS person,
the Bible is mainly used
to pick scriptures from here, pick one from here, pick one from here, that support
different,
you know, points-of-view. Well, that's taking the scriptures out of context,
and you can basically make the Bible say anything that you want if you
treat the Bible like that. >>Now when you were an LDS missionary, what was your
understanding of the gospel?
>>My understanding of the gospel was
get baptized, it was basically do
certain ordinances, like baptism,
going through the temple,
receiving, you know, your endowment in the temple,
temple sealing,
and things like that. So receiving certain ordinances.
And then obeying the commandments,
that the church had
imposed, like tithing, and
you know, different,
word of wisdom, home teaching, just all the things, you know,
if you're doing all those things,
and obeying the commandments
of Jesus, as, you know, I understood them at the time. That was,
basically like obedience,
living a good life,
and following
the things that the church tells you to do.
>>What kind of gospel did you find in the Bible?
>>The gospel that I found in the Bible
is not just a different gospel than the gospel that Joseph Smith taught,
I found it to be actually a hundred-and-eighty degrees opposite
of the gospel that Jesus taught.
The disciples that sat at Jesus' feet and Jesus taught that
good works do not save somebody.
Good works actually are a result
of faith
that someone places in Jesus, Jesus changes their heart,
and those good works then flow from that person. So it's totally reversed
than the gospel that Joseph Smith
invented.
>>And you also found that
the conception of God was very different in the Bible than what you had been taught.
>>Oh, absolutely.
The God of the Bible is nothing really like
the god that Joseph Smith taught, or that I thought God was like
in Mormonism.
There's a hundred different examples I could give, but,
you know, Joseph Smith taught that
God has a body of flesh and blood.
Jesus taught God is a Spirit.
Jesus taught that,
Jesus said that He was God, and His disciples said that He was God.
The Old Testament prophets taught that Jesus was God.
That's one of the most clear things taught in scripture, that Jesus was God.
But,
but Joseph Smith taught that Jesus was actually a created being,
who was created just like you and I,
and who earned a position by obedience to laws
and principles of the gospel.
And so, very different
conception of God in just about every way.
One scripture that stands out to me in the Doctrine and Covenants, is that,
the Doctrine and Covenants states that,
"When you do what I say, I the Lord am bound."
That's a completely different
concept of God than you read in the Bible. Humans don't bind God in any way
in the Bible.
So, there's lots of differences,
you know, in how God is that we could talk about.
>>And,
we'll come back to some of these. But I'm curious, what led to the writing of the book?
>>The book actually,
I didn't start out to actually write a book.
I started out to do
research for myself
on all these various topics that
were kind of,
I found a lot of different answers for, even within Christianity.
And, I decided to start doing a lot of research on these topics.
And, they eventually kind of coalesced into something that
was in an organized form. And at that point I decided to, you know,
I kind of
decided to bring to you what I had had.
A while ago, that was a few years ago. I've been working on the book for three-and-a-half
years.
And so I took, you know,
what I had to you and you basically encouraged me to
keep going on it.
And that was really what
inspired me a put it in book form.
Was, you know,
just how it kind of came together in an organized format, and
I thought it might help someone else.
>>So you've had to answer questions for other people, how you
made the shift from where you were to where you are.
And,
these are things that would have been helpful to you that you hope will be
helpful to others? >>Oh yeah, absolutely.
I wish that I would have had this
book many years ago.
>>Well, the first chapter deals with, "What is truth?"
or, "Is there truth?"
One of the things that I hear from a lot of
Mormons,
it seems that, and I'm only talking about them because
they're the
largest part of the state in terms of population. But, the same thing could apply
to a whole lot of professing evangelicals and others.
It seems like a lot of, especially the younger people, don't believe in
truth any more.
They,
they make their decisions on religion based simply on pragmatism.
It's like, well,
Mormonism works for me.
Or, this works for me.
But,
there doesn't seem to be an idea that there's actually
truth that can be known that
is unalterable, that's not
personal.
What,
did you have struggles with
the idea of truth?
>>Actually,
that's been one of the
things that's
kind of hit me in the face, like a frying pan, is
ever since I published the book and started talking to people about these things,
giving the book to
people that I know, and then,
you know, talking about these things to people.
The biggest thing I've found is, when it gets right down to it, most people
really don't care about truth.
I'll give you an example of a conversation that I had
with an LDS person,
one of my co-workers actually.
And, I just mentioned something in passing at work one day,
and she wanted to talk to me about it after work one night. So she
invited me over to her home
to talk about this subject.
So we sat and talked,
and she's a lifelong LDS person,
very active in the LDS church.
And,
we eventually got to the subject of why I left
the LDS church.
And I told her that
basically, you know, that
Joseph Smith had been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt to be a fraud.
There were,
you know, the Mormon church had been proven to be a fraud, by,
you know, evidence after evidence.
And, I told her that's why I eventually left. And so, of course
she asked me what were
a few of these,
you know, evidences that
led me out of the church. So, I brought up a few things like
the Book of Abraham,
you know, how that had been shown to be a fraud.
And, I brought up temples, how the temples had come
from
Masonic rituals. And you can look at old Masonic books today and find, you know,
a lot of the same rituals that they practice in Mormon temples today. Yet Joseph Smith
claimed to receive these by
revelation.
I talked about how the Book of Mormon was not actually translated, but
it was, most of it was
dictated when he was looking inside of a hat.
Which is,
>>And that's according to the scribe
who was there. >>Right.
And, a lot of the time
the plates were not even in the same room
when this was going on. So it wasn't actually translated as most people think
from an ancient language.
And this is all historical, scientific, you know,
proven things. It's not like hearsay or
things like that.
>>The testimonies of
people like the three witnesses. And,
the,
I think, was it Whitmer, that was the one who was the transcriptionist for a
large part of the Book of
Mormon?
That,
he recounts that he was looking in his hat.
My recollection sometimes is a little fuzzy on those things.
What was her response?
>>Well, you know I mentioned these and several other things, I mentioned
the Kinderhook plates, which proved Joseph Smith to be a fraud.
I mentioned different places in the Book of Mormon that,
you know, were obviously plagiarized from other sources. I talked about
one of Joseph Smith Sr.'s dreams
that was written about in Lucy Mack Smith's biography of
her son
Joseph Smith, that
is a word-for-word dream as Lehi's dream in the Book of Mormon.
And, different places where plagiarism has occurred.
And things like that.
And finally, how the gospel in the Bible is completely different than the gospel that
Joseph Smith taught.
That to me is the biggest evidence, you know.
And so,
I'll never forget her reaction. In the middle of telling her one of these things
she just kind of stopped me and she said,
I think I said something like,
"If you would just, you know, read this one
book, or this one, you know,
account," or something like that. And she said, "Wait a minute," she said, "you
don't seem to understand.
There's nothing
that I could see,
nothing that I could come across,
nothing that you could show me,
nothing, no piece of information that I could
see that would
make me change my mind about Mormonism."
>>I was struck years ago when I saw "Singles Ward."
Because,
the storyline was, here's someone who sees the
foibles
of
Mormonism,
along with
some of the good things, in terms of
community.
And he's making jokes about
the green jello and
things like this. But,
the essential message of the movie seemed to be, OK.
Yes, there are all these problems.
But if you'll just shut up and do what you are told
you'll be happy.
You know. Basically, he stops all his inquiries.
And, he wasn't really wrestling with any of these
issues of whether it's true, but whether
it was for him.
But basically,
just do what you're told.
And, all of a sudden he's married again, he's happy,
he's serving in the church and everything's going wonderfully.
But if there's truth
it matters, doesn't it? >>Yeah.
And that was what struck me when she said that.
It really had never hit me
that hard before, that,
you know, this is like the definition of somebody who doesn't care about truth.
There's no piece of information, no fact that you could come across
that would make you change your mind? Then you don't care about truth. I don't care
what the subject is.
If there's
nothing,
no evidence that you could come across that would make you change your mind, you
don't care about truth.
>>It's amazing. People
will
deal with truth when they come up to an intersection and they see a Mack truck
barreling through the intersection. They,
they don't assume that
truth is dependent on their opinion.
They wait until the Mack truck gets through before they actually step
out into intersection. They don't,
they don't try to step out in front of the Mack truck, saying,
"Well, that doesn't fit with my desired reality."
There are a host of things where people recognize that truth is truth.
People get very upset if you
weigh their vegetables and try to charge them
something other than what
the scale says.
But then it gets to religion, and people just all of the sudden say,
"Well, truth is what you make it."
They don't like that when you apply it in other areas of their lives though. >>Yeah, I think
most people
want to believe what makes them feel good,
what makes them
feel, you know, comfortable in a social situation,
what conforms to their ideas of, you know,
what God should be like, or something like that.
But, most people when it gets down to it,
they just really don't care about truth.
>>Well, the cost of truth
can be tremendous, can't it? I mean, I don't know all the details, but,
was there fear when you left the LDS church? I mean, your parents were
faithful, right?
>>Yeah.
You know, I'm really the type of person that I'm not going to really be
concerned too much about
what other people's
reaction to what I'm doing is. So, I was going to,
you know, follow
the truth is I knew it at that time. >>So,
after dealing with the subject of
truth you move into
God, and we'll
deal with that in just a moment. But,
I'd like to open up the phone lines and invite others to join our conversation here.
If you'd like to join in this conversation, we have Perri Winn with us.
He is
a returned Mormon missionary, who
left the Mormon church, was basically irreligious for
twenty years and
then picked up a Bible
and has become a Christian.
He has written a book
dealing with the ten most important questions, that
anyone
can ask.
The first one is: "Is their truth?" and the second one: "Is there a God?"
The phone number here is 801-973-TV20. That's 801-9
73-
8820. We invite you to call in. So,
you mentioned a little bit about
the god that you thought you knew
as an LDS missionary, being very different from the God
of the Bible.
What's the God of the Bible like?
>>The God of the Bible is a lot of things.
The God of the Bible is righteous and
just.
The God of the Bible is sovereign. He's in control.
>>But, wait a minute. What about free agency? >>Well,
God is in control
in the final analysis.
>>So, God is not dependent on,
we can't bend God to our will? >>No.
>>We have free choice, but He's he still sovereign over us? >>He's still sovereign. >>OK.
>>We're responsible. There is choice.
But God is sovereign in the final analysis. >>OK.
We're going to go ahead and take our first phone call. We have with us James, from Magna. James, good to have you
with us.
>>Hello.
>>Hi James.
>>This is for Mr. Winn. You and your study group had questions that they could not answer. Could you give us an example of one or two of those?
>>You know, it's been
twenty-five years since
that study took place
and, I can't remember the specific questions. But they all centered around
the topics that we were studying
and the gospel. >>I see. Gospel questions. Thank you.
>>OK, thank you. >>Thank you.
>>The,
it's funny.
There seems to be
sort of an established apologetic line, that,
that people
love for questions in those areas.
Whenever I'm dealing with somebody,
there are certain questions they love to to answer. Because, they can quickly spin
them to an attack
on everyone else. But,
in terms of
answering questions,
"What is your view of God? What is your view of
these things?" You start getting all kinds of hemming and hawing.
I'm curious, now you're,
when you were a missionary, Bruce McConkie was
very well-respected, wasn't he? >>Sure.
>>I mean, every missionary I knew back then, basically, I mean, I was never LDS, but,
all the LDS missionaries I knew back then
would have a copy of "Mormon Doctrine." >>Sure.
>>They've let that go out of print. They don't like to answer
questions anymore about "Who is God? Who is man? What is sin?" in really clear,
unambiguous ways, do they? >>No.
Not so much.
>>We're going to go to Jane, in American Fork.
Jane, good to have you with us. >>Hi Jane.
>>Hello. >>Hi. >>Hi, you're on
the air. >>Yes,
my question is,
while you were on your LDS mission, and you
said that you baptized, and
done your business with the LDS church,
do you have any guilt now, of
how you
misled them?
And I'll get off the line, and I'll let you tell me. >>Thank you.
>>Alright, thanks for the question, Jane.
You know, I really don't,
I really don't have any guilt. Because I was just doing what I thought
was right at the time.
I was going by what I knew, what I believed in,
and,
so, no, I don't have guilt for
the things that I, for baptizing people at that time. I sure wish that I could
go back and talk to them again, you know.
And,
open up the Bible and show them
what the actual gospel is.
And, maybe someday I'll get that opportunity. But,
as far a guilt goes, I'm just,
I'm just going with what God has done
with me now, and trying to,
you know, make a difference as best I can now. >>So,
the second question in your book,
"Is there a God?"
I know the answer that you came up with. [laughing]
But,
what makes you think there's a God?
>>Well, the Apostle Paul teaches that everybody knows that there's a God,
based on the invisible attributes of God that's within everybody. We're all
created in the image of God.
We understand what justice and mercy are innately.
We know that if someone,
for example, if someone gets a traffic violation
and if they were sentenced to life in prison for that we would recognize that
is unjust. We know things like that because of the image of God that is in us.
We can look around us, and look at creation, and we know that there was a
Creator.
The firmament shows that there is a God, as scripture says. >>Yeah,
it's amazing the,
the teenage atheists,
feel liberated
when they think that there's no one to tell them what to do.
But if they continue to hold onto that for very long,
you notice they don't have too much fun with it. Because,
not only is there nothing bad, there's also nothing good.
And,
there's no reason to actually get up out of bed in the morning.
And,
actually, not even
to refrain from putting a bullet in you head. Because,
what's the point?
Robin Williams did the "Dead Poet's Society" years ago, and,
supposedly the good news he had to give them was,
"You and all you do,
are nothing more than food for the worms. So,
carpe diem, seize the day!"
And, for a bunch of teenage boys that sounds cool.
But, we know there's truth, we know that there's beauty, we know that there's
evil, we know there's injustice, we know that there's a humanity.
As you're describing, that we are created in the image of God.
And,
you know, we may like to say that there are no rules on us. But,
it's amazing how
indignant an atheist gets when you steal from them.
[laughing]
They have a sense of justice that's not
just a matter of personal choice anymore.
They want to impose their morality on other people. >>Yeah.
>>But, so,
the,
how does the god of
the LDS
faith that you grew up with,
an exalted man, compared to
the God of the Bible?
>>It's a completely different God. The god that Joseph Smith
taught is an idolatrous god. He's not the God of the Bible.
He's someone who
was like us at one time, who
through obedience became where he is right now.
He taught the same thing about Jesus, that he was a created being.
That he rose up
to
the station that he's in by obedience to laws.
That's not the God of the Bible. The God
of the Bible has always been God. There has never been a time when he wasn't God.
He's eternal, everlasting, the only uncreated and
uncaused being,
is the God of the Bible.
So, very different.
One of the passages that folks who have watched this show very long have heard me quote
several times, because to me it helps
me get a visual picture.
Solomon builds the temple
in Jerusalem,
and,
he says, "The heavens of heavens cannot contain Thee,"
speaking of God.
"How much less this house that I've built."
But exalted men, you could have stacked them up like cordwood inside, couldn't you? >>Sure.
>>So,
we're talking, you can call something a god.
The New Testament talks about people making a god of their belly.
People can take a piece of wood,
and make it into something they bow down and worship. That
doesn't make it God.
Yeah, Romans 1, "They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image
made like unto corruptible man."
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools," was the preface to that.
I'm sorry we have,
we have next with us Herman, from Provo.
If you could
please turn your TVs down beforehand.
We have, Herman?
>>Yes, I heard you. [thick accent]
Anyway.
I read the Book of Mormon many, many times.
And, about a month ago, I decided to open the book again.
But before I started I asked God, instead of asking God to let me
know if the book is true, I asked Him,
"Please let me know if this book is false." Well,
suddenly I opened the first, even the first page I opened on the Book of Nephi.
It just blows my mind, I said, "This cannot be true." And now I'm in Alma.
After I finish Alma, now I'm in Helaman.
That Alma book is such a ridiculous
book I ever read in my life. It's so bloody, they're killing each other in there.
The Ne-,
the Lamanites, the Nephites killing each other.
And God wouldn't allow something like that. Now,
to my concern, Joseph Smith, that was Joseph Smith's fantasy.
Then, like that gentleman says, when he wrote about the dream of his dad,
he had a dream about this olive tree.
These dreams he had, he put it exactly in Book of Nephi,
just like his dad did.
Then you read about in Isaiah,
he copied Isaiah,
just exactly in Mosiah.
He took every word. Almost, he even wrote some of the mistakes they made.
So, we know that Joseph Smith,
that he was not a prophet.
And I just don't think that Book of Mormon is, I know it's not true. It's a
false book.
Because the more I read it, my eyes are really opened, when I read that book. Sometimes I sit there and laugh.
My wife even said, "How come you're laughing so much?" I said, "Well,
that book is such a ridiculous thing I ever seen in my life."
So, and another thing, I was a Mormon missionary.
When I went on my mission I didn't even know anything about the Book of Mormon.
They don't teach you anything even. The only thing they know is teach you a little bit the
scriptures they wish to compare with the Book of Mormon.
And,
It's just, I think that book, if I had a chance to
talk to the prophet Monson,
I'd tell, "The book,
that book is not true."
It's nothing there even.
It's not a new testament for Jesus. Jesus wouldn't taught
anything like that.
So, I know that book is not true.
And I think the Mormons better realize it, and start reading that book. I encourage
anybody to read that book.
But with open eyes like I have recently.
They need to have open eyes. And,
I just want to tell you that, and I appreciate, you're doing a very good job on the
TV, I love it.
And that gentleman, he's right. And,
I agree with him, he was an LDS missionary
and I've talked to a lot of missionaries that, they just say the same
thing when I talk to some of them.
>>Herman, let me encourage you.
I've,
you've called in the show before, let me encourage you.
I'd be happy to come down to Provo and meet with you.
Just give me a call after the show or later in the week.
If you'd like, anyway.
>>Yeah, I still have your phone number. >>OK, I'd love to come and see you. >>But like I said, I just don't
think that,
I know that book is not true.
I know it deep in my heart.
God told me that.
About a month ago, when I started reading that book again.
>>Well, thank you.
I think you've called me before and I lost your phone number. But give me a
call and I'd love to come down and see you.
Thank you for your call. >>OK, thank you.
>>If you'd like to join in the conversation the phone number here is 801-
973-
8820.
That's 801-973-8820. We're talking with Mr.
Perri Winn,
the author of "Answers to Life's
10 Most Important Questions."
And there we have it. >>Can I respond to Herman, real quick.
I'd just like to encourage Herman.
Don't stop now Herman. And don't do what I did, you know, twenty-five years ago, when I stopped.
More important than the fact that Mormonism is a fraud
is that we have the truth
in the Bible. Jesus said, "I am the truth."
Remember He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" in John 14. And then
later when he was talking to the Roman Governor Pilate,
remember the famous conversation that he had where
at the end Pilate said,
"What is truth?"
Remember what Jesus said there, he said, "For this
cause I was born, and
for this cause I have come into the world that I should bear witness to the
truth."
So, one of the main reasons Jesus came to this earth
was to bear witness to the truth. To speak the words of truth to His
creations.
We know from
the first
verse of the Gospel of John, that Jesus was God. John says, "In the beginning
was the Word." And, John often referred to Jesus as "the Word"
because He was the revelation
of the Father. He came to reveal the will and person of the Father.
And so, John says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God." And then he goes on to say that everything was created
through Him, and then later in verse 14 he says,
that, "the Word became flesh
and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of
the Father, full of grace and truth."
So Jesus was truth, and truth is important. And if you want to know
truth, read the Bible. Read the words
of your Creator. Read the words of Jesus. And,
why is that important,
that we know the words of Jesus, and know the truth? Well,
another thing Jesus said, in John 12,
that I have here, is, He said, "He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has
that which judges him;
the word that I have spoken will judge him
in the last day."
So, we know that the words that Jesus spoke when He was on the earth
will be what we will be accountable for when we stand before our
Creator after this lifetime.
So, keep going Herman. And read through the Bible, my friend. And learn
the words of Jesus. Learn the truth, and follow those words.
>>I'm curious.
One of the things that I've heard from a lot of
LDS, is the idea that
if Mormonism isn't true then nothing is true.
Were you basically taught that kind of idea?
>>Basically, you're taught that Mormonism is the only
true religion on the earth. So once, you know,
once I found out that it wasn't true, I kind of just threw it all out.
>>Well, there's so many
attacks
on everyone else
that it seems like
people think the only legitimate option is atheism.
But, we're going to go ahead and take, squeeze in another call here. We've got with us Gail,
from West Haven. Gail, good to have you with us this evening. >>Well
hello. >>Hello. >>Hi Perri.
>>Hi Gail. >>This is Gail. >>Hi Gail.
>>I've been enjoying the show. >>Thank you.
>>And I love to hear you quote the beautiful scripture that you just did about
the,
how the Word became flesh, and
and He's our dear
Savior's birth,
the beloved Son of our Father.
And, I share the,
the wonderful testimony you have of our dear Savior and Redeemer, and our dear
God the Father, that created this beautiful world for us.
I love the awesome plan of salvation, that was
prepared,
and carried out by our dear Savior.
And,
I love the fact that you're seeking for the truth.
And, I've talked to you about the truth. We had some good conversations.
And, I still would like you to
come up and talk to me, face-to-face.
I would like to hear some of your questions. Because I think,
I may not know all the answers, but I would
search and pray.
And,
study with you.
And, I've got some great evidences and great truths, that I'd like to share with you.
So, if you're open to the truth, Perri,
come on up, and study with me. >>Alright. >>And share, really the true evidences. Because,
you know, I have some things I disagree with you on. But I have so many
things that I
agree
with you on. And I want to
celebrate and be joyful
in studying,
and sharing a spiritual experience.
Reading the scriptures. I love the Bible.
Especially the four Gospels.
They're my favorite.
And, I've shared that with you. And, you've shared with me your
love of the Savior, especially the book of John.
So, come up. >>Alright, Gail.
>>And, talk with me, because we disagree on a few things. And,
I want to share my
evidences. And, I want to talk face-to-face with you,
and have you, you know,
share your concerns, and your questions, that you did not get some
correct answers, you didn't get some correct answers.
And so, I'd like a,
a chance to
talk with you, and
see if I could share, maybe more correct answers.
>>Thanks for your call. >>Will you do that? >>OK
>>OK
So,
I take it this is someone who thinks that
you just didn't get the right answers twenty-five years ago? >>Yeah, this is
actually a member of my family,
>>OK >>that I've been having an ongoing conversation with. So,
you know, we've talked about a lot of things already. And I'm sure
we'll continue to talk about a lot more things. >>Good.
Yeah, one of the challenges that I've given to folks is,
no one should have anything to fear from the truth. >>Right.
>>We had a young lady
a number of years ago come up to one of our book tables at
the Salt Lake County Fair.
And, we had probably fifty
different titles.
But, one of the titles we had was, "By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus," which
deals with LDS scripture, the
Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price, and the issues surrounding that.
And, she
was incensed. She said, "We never attack other
religions." I said,
"Well actually, yeah you do, you have
fifty, sixty thousand missionaries
out
telling people the first vision. That,
all the churchs that existed
were corrupt, and all their creeds were an abomination.
And, she said, "We never attack, you know. You never see us going out and
doing."
I said, "Ma'am." I said, "Listen. We could go round and round on all this, but,
the gist of it is this."
I said, "The reason we have this,
is because most people come to the Bible
forcing it through
the grid that they've been taught
by the LDS church." And,
I said, "We're trying to challenge that grid, so they can read the Bible for what it
actually says." I said,
"Now,
I'll make a deal with you." I said,
"Read the book." I said,
"You show me one substantive error."
I said, "There are some
issues in terms of quoting this person or that person, that,
how credible their credentials are
may be an issue to somebody. But,
their translation is not at,
at issue because
it's been backed up by a host of
people with much better credentials.
But, you know,
I'm not looking for some minute kind of things. But,
show me one
substantive issue
with this book.
Show me that they have
substantively
misrepresented
the issues.
Or substantively
misconstrued
the implications."
I said, "Not only will we never offer this book again,
we will publicly apologize
to the LDS church for having ever
distributed it."
I said, "My challenge to you is to show me.
Because,
if the issues on the Book of Abraham
are what are stated here,
it discredits everything that Joseph Smith ever claimed to do as a
prophet.
Because,
he's claiming to translate papyri,
that
we can now read.
And they're nothing like what he said they were.
And,
if that goes out the window, the Book of Mormon has to go out the window, too.
Because, we still have the papyri, we don't have the plates.
But it's the same supposed
spiritual gift as prophet, seer and revelator."
She came back two years later, and she said, "I want to thank you."
She said, "You started a process that ultimately led me and my husband out of the
LDS church and now we are Christians."
Because,
she didn't just leave Mormonism. Honestly, I'd rather see people,
I mean,
Mormon neighbors are a whole lot nicer
than,
a whole bunch of other options.
Honestly, I wouldn't trade them for some professing Christians, professing evangelical neighbors,
the ones I've got.
But the,
she didn't just leave that,
she actually read the Bible.
Let me go to one more call.
We have with us Dan, from Ogden. Dan, good to have you with us.
>>Hi. I just had a comment. And this is for
Pastor Wallace. I was just wondering if you saw links between
maybe the LDS's view on Jesus,
and that of the Arians, during the Nicene Creed.
Where, He was not an eternal being. And, you know, a lot of the
views that they have, have been put to bed, it seems like, long ago in Christianity. And, kind of a link between the
Arianism and the LDS view. And I'll just take the answer off air. >>OK. Thank you, Dan.
There some similarities.
Just about
everything in Mormonism you can see certain aspects
of earlier. You can see Montanism. You can see
a number of
other
issues, heresies that were dealt with in the early church.
Arianism, not so much.
Because,
Arianism
understood the infinite, eternal, holy God.
And they didn't want Jesus being Him.
Mormonism
has this lower view of the Son, but they also have it of the Father.
And so, it's not a close parallel.
But,
what are,
we're running short on time, we've only got a few minutes left. So,
what are, we've dealt with the first two questions, what are the other
questions that you deal with in your book?
>>So, the first question: "What is truth?" The second question: "Does God exist?" The third
question is: "What is God like?"
Talking about the attributes of God as
taught by the Bible.
The fourth question is: "What is the nature and conditional man?"
Which is really a foundational question to understand. Which
is
probably one place that most people,
when they find out what the Bible actually says about man, they probably
don't go much further. Because, they don't want to accept the fact of what the Bible says
about the nature and condition of man. >>Let's touch on that for just a moment. Because,
we've got just a couple of minutes left here. >>OK.
>>I touched on this earlier.
To me it's sad, and yet almost
comical, that
many times, a lot of professing evangelicals
will side with Mormons, in terms of their view of man.
Because,
they think that
God is subject to their wills.
You know, in the story of Joseph, you've got
Joseph's brothers doing what they want to do.
Which is evil. But,
as Joseph later tells them, "What you meant for evil, God meant for good." God
was sovereign even over that.
And, the idea that people are dead in their sins,
they're slaves to their sins,
and
that they really aren't looking for God, they're not doing good.
You know, Romans 3.
That doesn't go down well with anybody, does it?
>>No. Not at all.
But really, if you don't accept
what the Bible says about the nature of man as being sinful,
as being,
someone that doesn't even seek after God unless God intervenes, as being
someone who's most righteous acts are polluted. Like Isaiah described them as
polluted rags.
Throughout the Old Testament, and Paul reiterates it in the New
Testament, there's no good thing that humans do.
>>So, we're almost out of time. So, what are the other questions real quick? >>OK.
So anyway.
In order to even go on from there, you've got to accept what the Bible says
about man.
Or, the rest of it doesn't even make sense. The gospel really doesn't even
make sense.
The fifth chapter
is: "What do we need to be saved from?"
This is a question I could probably go out on the
street of Salt Lake City,
and ask a thousand people this question,
and I'd be shocked if I got one person that would give me the Bible's answer to
this question.
But, a lot of people talk about salvation. But that assumes there's something
to be saved from.
>>Give us the others real quick. We're almost out of time. >>OK. Six, "What is the good news of
salvation?" Seven, "Why does God save anyone?"
Eight, "What must we do to be saved?"
and Nine, "What of the other gospels?"
We've,
earlier talked about what the gospel is, now we'll talk about what isn't.
And then, Chapter Ten, the final chapter, "What is your response
to the good news of salvation?"
And, let me just say, if anyone wants a copy of this book, let me just give
them my email address.
You can get it on Amazon, if you're interested in getting
a Kindle book, it's inexpensive for the Kindle book on there. But if you're
interested in a print copy, just email me your
address to my email address, and I'll mail you out a copy.
And, it's perriwinn@yahoo.com.
So that's perriwinn@yahoo.com, and I'd be happy to send you out a copy
of the book. >>And, is there a cost on that?
>>No cost. I'll just send it out. >>But you're in it for the money, right? [laughing] >>No.
>>It's a free gift.
Well, Perri, thank you so much for being with us.
Well, Perri is a member of Christ Presbyterian Church. And we invite you.
I'm the pastor, Jason Wallace. We invite you to worship with us Sunday
mornings at 11:00 am,
at 8630 West 2700 South. That's main street, Magna.
Simple reverent worship. Biblical preaching. We have a sister congregation,
Berean Presbyterian, that meets at 9:00 am at 3350 Harrison Boulevard in
Ogden.
We also have some work in Utah county, and
some other things going on. If you'd like more information you can give us a
call at 801-969-7948.
Until next week, we wish you the Lord's greatest blessings. Good night.
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