"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end;if you look for comfort you will not get either."
— C.S. Lewis
The emcee this evening was Jason Pool, and after about twenty minutes of praise songs, he introduced Jared Smith. Jason said "Jared Smith went on a Mormon mission after his freshman year at BYU. His temple recommend expired and he did not renew it as he started his sophomore year at BYU."
Jason explained how Jared was in an automobile rollover accident while coming down from a night ski time at Sundance. He wore his seat belt, but had a head injury. He was in a coma for five weeks, and he endured three months of intense rehab to recover. After the accident, he ran across the story of Lorenzo Snow in 1917 and the temple appearance of Jesus. He connected the temple appearance to the words of Jesus in Matthew 24:26. "Jared is now a Sabbath keeping Christian based in Montana. I will let Jared present his story in his own words." said Jason as he sat down and Jared stood and approached the podium.
"Good evening Brothers and Sisters. I will try to stay as close to the talk I have listed on the Campmeeting WiFi talk folder. If you know any Mormons, and would like to reference to my talk, please do. Download the talk to use." said Jared.
“Over a decade ago, I left The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints (LDS), the Mormons. I have shared the proscons and whys with my wife and a few friends, but the information was never published. However, after hearing the general misunderstanding about the LDS group, I am prompted to present my experience with the Mormons.”
Sometimes, I am very serious about my past as a Mormon, but one of my friends, who is still a Mormon, told me a humorous joke:
When my friend died, he ended up at the gate for heaven and Peter the Gatekeeper welcomed him. "Come with me and I will give you a tour of our facility." Peter motioned my friend to come down a nearby hallway. At one room, my friend saw the room of a Cathedral lined with quiet solemn people kneeling. My friend questioned Peter, "who are those people in there?" Peter replied, "they are saved Catholics worshiping God."
They continued walking down the hallway. At the next room, my friend noticed a chapel of dozens of families, some singing with hands raised, men with children in their arms. It sounded beautiful! "Peter, who are they?" my friend asked. "It is a group of saved Pentecostal fundamentalists praising the LORD."
At the next room, was a group of people in a fairly plain chapel, no cross in the room, with three men sitting to the side of the podium and one gentleman speaking. Peter quietly whispered to my friend, "Shhhh, these are Mormons and they think they are the only ones up here."
WHAT I LEARNED
My experience began when I was 14 years of age. Our family took a vacation into Salt Lake City and we visited the Mormon Temple Square visitor center. When we returned home, missionaries came, I took the lessons, and I met a Mormon family with children in my grade in school. I made good friends with them, which may have been a divine situation, because I was associating with the wrong kids at school before I met my new Mormon friends.
I was baptized, and months afterward, I knew my baptism as a Mormon was divinely guided. Without that conversion, I would probably be a lost soul that got wired on drugs every weekend. That conversion dealt with four main points: Faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Repentance for sin, Baptism by complete immersion, and Gift of the Holy Ghost by anointing with oil.
One of the first things I learned in the Mormon church as a Mormon was that there is nothing that I can do, besides accepting Jesus as my Savior, to "earn" salvation. I can believe in Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and Lorenzo Snow, but if I do not believe that Jesus atoned for my sins, I am a lost soul.
While on my mission to South Korea, during Easter springtime and one of my daily Bible study times, I was reading Matthew 12:40. Jesus says he will be three days AND three nights in the heart of the earth. I tried to get three days and three nights out of a 36 hour time span from Good Friday afternoon to Easter Sunday morning. How could I stretch 36 hours into a 72 hour time frame? What about the mainstream Christian explanation that just part of a day counted as a full day? Then where is the third night? Was Jesus a liar? How did Joseph Smith resolve that problem? What about Martin Luther who rejected the Pope, why didn't he fix that problem? I kept that problem in the back of my mind as I finished my mission and returned to Brigham Young University.
As a Mormon, I also learned that some of the best leaders in any business, nonprofit organization or church is very good at delegating duties.
The Mormon church is excellent at delegation; a majority of the staff is unpaid. The only leaders in their group are some in Salt Lake in high positions of authority. All state positions are unpaid laymembers.
WHY I LEFT
As with any human organization, whether it be Catholic, Methodist, Calvinist, or 7th Day Adventists, the LDS group has a lot of extra baggage. 'Extra baggage' is my terminology to indicate any nonsalvation related ideas. It was some of that baggage, when compared to the words of Jesus in the Bible, that prompted me to request excommunication from the Mormon church.
I can briefly describe it as dealing with scripture in Matthew 24:26 KJV where Jesus says: "Some say "He is in the desert," or "he is in the secret chambers." Believe it not, for I told you so.”
At the time, I was performing a duty as a Deacon (12 to 14 years old boys) class teacher. One lesson was on Lorenzo Snow and the appearance of Jesus to him in the Salt Lake Temple. It was a time after my mission to South Korea, and my Temple recommend had expired. Therefore, the Celestial Room (the holiest part of the Temple to a Mormon) was very secret to me. I took the words of Jesus to heart.
After a slight experience with fundamentalist Christians, I also noticed a problem with LDS members. They do not seem to have "grace" in their vocabulary! They do believe that there is nothing that people can do to gain salvation and eternal life, but they sometimes skim over the fact that salvation and eternal life for people is a pure gift from God to us; such a gift is by God's grace. The Apostles is Salt Lake seem to know this intellectually, but some of the members loose the basic idea of grace from God. It was in the Church of God, 7th Day where I learned the saying: I'm not good to GAIN salvation, but I am good BECAUSE I am saved!
Another Mormon teaching that made me suspicious of truth always being taught by Mormonism were words of Brigham Young: As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become. In the present time, that is much like New Age (Gnosticism) teaching. It is also similar to the words of the Devil given to Eve in the Garden of Eden: "your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
MORMONISM AND OUIJA BOARDS
Besides some 'theological technical problems,' I had some other interesting experiences. For a long time my Mom conversed with spirits through an Ouija Board. In the pictures with the board there are two people with both hands on the board 'reader,' the small piece that moves to the letters on the board to spell words from the spirit talking through the Ouija Board.
But my Mom used one hand and the 'reader' cruised as fast as it could! My Mom told me all kinds of stuff: who I would marry, where I would work, all kinds of information. The Board was right some times. And wrong others. Mom let me know that the Board was a liar sometimes! It sometimes joked with Mom. The spirit or spirits were friends with my Mother.
But sometimes, as Mom conversed with the spirit, I would sit next to Mom on the sofa as I studied the Bible. Mom would inform me that I was too close to her, her Ouija Board couldn't work if a Bible was too close to it! “But then other times I would be close to Mom with the Ouija Board studying the Book of Mormon. Can you guess what happened?”
Most of the audience' body language, the shaking of heads, indicated that they thought that nothing happened.
“You're right! The Book of Mormon did nothing to the spirit talking through the Ouija Board! But the Bible did! That meant something to me, but I had excuses to stay a Mormon.”
A STRANGE STORY WITH A GOOD END: MY FINAL CONCLUSIONS
Let me use a comparative Salvation story to better illustrate my final conclusions about a past as a Mormon. In the United States of America, elementary and secondary education is free. That is, every child can get on the school bus and go to school for free. Similarly, God offers eternal life to anyone who accepts His gift through His Son, Jesus; anyone can accept the gift and ride Jesus' "bus to eternal life."
However, in school, the final grade you receive depends on your choice, skills, intelligence and your determination. Likewise, I firmly believe in rewards of interests and abilities. Similarly, in Matthew 16:27, Jesus says: ' the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.' “In God's Kingdom, our rewards, beyond eternal life, are according to our works.”
“The gift is free, there is nothing you can do, besides accepting the gift, to gain it yourself, but the rewards are determined by how well you become the person God wants you to be: how well you can simulate the life of God's Field Representative, Jesus Christ.”
THE GODHEAD, THE SON OF GOD
As a nonMormon now, there is still a bit of Mormon 'extrabaggage' I believe. In many other denominations, be it Catholic, 7th Day Adventist, Church of God 7th Day Conference, you name it, they have erroneous ideas of the Son of God, Jesus.
While Jesus fasted for forty days, the one big triumph by Jesus was succeeding through the temptations made by the Devil. Jesus always replied with an answer from the Word of God, from scripture that had become part of his heart.
From people in positions of 'emergency response,' be it in the police force, hospital ER, or the fire fighting service, you don't have time to sit down and read the EMERGENCY RESPONSE MANUAL! You have no seconds to spare until you start performing your duty to fellow human beings. In the same manner, Jesus knew and lived the Word of God! He lived it in such an 'immediateresponse' way that he could never be tricked by the Devil.
But about the Godhead, if Jesus was, as mainstream Christians call it: God incarnate, he COULD NOT HAVE FAILED THE TEMPTATIONS! And living a sinless life was like a slamdunk, he COULD NOT HAVE SINNED, because God is PERFECT and cannot sin.
But, Jesus is as the New Testament titles him, the Son of God. In Matthew chapter one, verse twenty, "But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost."
"The key word there is 'conceived.' From biology, that is when the sperm and egg are joined, when a new DNA is created. And as the Gospel of Matthew said, from the power of the Holy Ghost, Mary conceived and bore Jesus, the Son of God. He was human from Mary and Divine from God."
"And when Jesus endured the temptations of the Devil, " Jared gasped for breath and showed extreme emotion, "Jesus COULD HAVE FAILED! Preachers are always saying 'Jesus was just like you!' But if he COULD NOT HAVE FAILED, the preachers are lying to us! But because Jesus lived the Word of God, he did not fail! Jesus is my hero. From Adam, we too are children of God. So we can think of Jesus as our brother, our mentor, our hero. He paid for our sins and we need to try to be as much like Jesus as we can. Grace is not cheap." Jared wiped sweat from his forehead with his handkerchief. He took another deep breath.
“Does Jesus have two identities? In Mark 13:32 Jesus says: 'But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father'. If he is 'God incarnate,' why does he say he doesn't know? I believe that Jesus and his Father are of ONE MIND. They are 'equal' but not the SAME!”
"One thing I want to do as a Sabbath keeping Christian now, is to dissect a Bible verse. John 3:16: 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' I went over the 'only begotten Son' phrase earlier, so the one phrase I want to analyze and break down in a logical fashion is 'whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' The logical opposite is 'whosoever does not believe in him WILL perish!' And when the verse says 'PERISH,' IT MEANS THE END, that is: stop, kaput, die an eternal death; it's 'pulltheplug.' Mainstream Christians call it 'ANNIHILATION.'
"I think I was a Mormon for a purpose. But I also think I am a Sabbath keeping Christian for a purpose too. And thank you very much for listening to me today. May God be with you all. Amen" said Jared as he stepped back to a chair behind the podium.