Appendix Definitions Part 1

Answering Mormons Questions by Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson deals with 36 commonly asked questions by your LDS friends and neighbors. It's a great resource for Christians who want to share their faith with friends and loved ones.

Be sure to pick up your copy today at your favorite Christian bookstore. Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism.

So glad you could be with us for this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. In yesterday's show, I brought up an example where Eric was confronted by a Latter-day Saint who said that he was misrepresenting his faith.

And this was all tied into an interview that Eric did with Sean McDowell. Sean McDowell and Eric were co-editors of the book, Sharing the Good News with Mormons, Practical Strategies for Getting the Conversation Started. So they were talking about some of the issues of Mormonism, and this individual, his name is Scott, objected to some of the things that Eric was saying. Eric ended up doing a show with Scott and Sean, and that's available on our website if somebody wants to go see that.

Eric, very quickly, what's the address for that? MRM.org slash Scott, S-C-O-T-T. Well, there was another individual, and it seems to be tied together, having to do with the book, Sharing the Good News with Mormons. And this is an individual Latter-day Saint whom I've met personally, and again, he's a very nice gentleman, but he had some objections to what was written in the book, Sharing the Good News with Mormons, in appendix two, which is titled, 101 Mormon Terms Defined. This LDS man said, I do not know who compiled the article on Mormon terminology, but I will definitely say that the author does not have much comprehension of many Mormon terms, and for that matter, he does not have much comprehension of some terms as used in the Bible.

As written, some of the terms are very deceiving of the actual truth about what Mormons believe. This man goes on to say, I started to make you a list of corrections, but I decided it is not worth the time or effort, and I doubt that the author would make the corrections in the next edition if I did tell him the errors. Then he goes on to say, I found the rest of the book to be very informative. Well, let's look at that statement where he says, I started to make a list of corrections.

In this kind of a case, I really wish they would. It's hard to defend against a blanket accusation without having some specifics. I remember having a back and forth with a Latter-day Saint not too terribly long ago, who had said that one of our authors, Sharon Lindblom, had written some things that he thought were not very nice. They were mean-spirited, and so I asked him for an example.

Well, he couldn't give me one. Why should I take those kind of criticisms seriously if they can't provide an example of an infraction? Over the years, I've learned not to take those kind of accusations seriously, although initially we will, because it means a lot to us to try to be as accurate as possible when explaining to people what we believe Latter-day Saints are supposed to believe.

This kind of a response, though, when you say, I decided it was not worth the time or effort, what does that imply? That implies we're dishonest, that we wouldn't make a correction. Now, you and I, Eric, were talking off-air about the fact that we have had Mormons challenge some of the things that we have said on our website, and we do go back and we look at what they say, and we look at what we've said, and if there was a way that we could have worded it to where the misunderstanding would have never come up, then yes, we're going to make a change. We're not afraid of doing that.

We have made edits over the years. We have been on the web since the mid-1990s, so there's a lot of material up there, and it's been scrutinized by Latter-day Saints for many years now. We're not afraid of doing that. Let's do this. He says, whoever compiled the article on Mormon terminology does not have much comprehension of many Mormon terms, and for that matter, he does not have much comprehension of some terms as used in the Bible.

So here's what we thought we would do. Certainly, this appendix in the book Sharing the Good News with Mormons, it's a pretty long appendix. The title is 101 Mormon Terms Defined. We do not have the time to go through each and every one of the terms that you defined, and since we don't have a specific list from this individual, we're just going to go through some of them and see if what you said does not fit with the definition that the Mormon Church or Mormon leaders have given over the years. I went through these again with you, and I'm not seeing the accusation being made here as being true.

I just don't see it. I think what you did was incredibly amazing, really, because in less than a hundred words, you define what this term means according to Mormonism, and I think you did an excellent job, really, because it's hard to define something so precise and concise, but yet you did it, and I don't see how this accusation being made by this Latter-day Saint is valid. Well, I appreciate that, Bill, and I want to emphasize the first part of his letter where he said that he thought that the rest of the book was fine, and that makes me feel good, at least, because this is not my book. This is a compilation of 24 different chapters written by 26 different people. Bill, you were one of them. Mark Middleburg, Sean McDowell, Matt Slick, Rob Bowman, J. Warner Wallace, Corey Miller, Chip Thompson. I mean, I could go through the names of some very dear people.

Sandra Tanner. These people know their stuff, so he's not criticizing the majority of the book. I appreciate that, and I'm going to say a little plug for this book that came out in 2018. If you don't have a copy and you would like to learn how to share the good news with Mormons, you ought to get this book, and not every chapter is going to maybe hit you the same way another chapter will. Twenty-four different ideas written by all these different people, but I did write Appendix 2. That was my doing, and so again, as we talked about yesterday with Scott's accusation that I'm not accurate in how I'm portraying Mormonism, here again, we have the same kind of accusation, and I take that very seriously. So when I put these together, I did my best not to use any quotations. I tried not to use exact wording from other sources, but let me tell you, I did look at ChurchofJesusChrist.org.

I used that. I used True to the Faith and other resources to make sure that my definition was within bounds. Well, let's look at some of them, and if you are a Latter-day Saint or even a former Latter-day Saint, I would hope that you would pay close attention to what Eric said regarding these various terms. As I mentioned earlier, when I went through them again, I could see nothing wrong, and if you're a former Mormon or even if you're a Latter-day Saint today, ask yourself, is Eric really misleading people with these definitions that are certainly very concise, very short? But I don't think they're off the mark as to how these terms have been defined in LDS sources. The first definition I give is Aaronic priesthood, and this is what I write. The authority to perform certain ecclesiastical tasks allegedly bestowed by John the Baptist onto Joseph Smith and his friend Oliver Cowdery on May 15, 1829. Baptized Mormon males 12 years and older are eligible to receive this priesthood. When you go to the Church manual, True to the Faith, this is an official manual published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It came out in 2004. They have the subject of Aaronic priesthood. It does say on page three that it was on May 15, 1829, that Joseph Smith and his scribe Oliver Cowdery did inquire of the Lord concerning baptism. It goes on to say, in the church today, worthy male members may receive the Aaronic priesthood beginning at age 12.

That definition sounds very similar to what you said. I want to bring out something that has changed in the church because at the time I wrote this, and the time it was published in the middle of 2018, baptized Mormon males 12 years and older were eligible to receive this priesthood. The church changed its policy. It was announced in the middle of December of 2018 that starting January 1, they would allow young boys of 11 to receive the priesthood if their birthday was that year. So if they were, let's say, a September birthday, they would at the age of 11. So it actually has changed from 12 to 11, but it's not something that was not true at the time I wrote that.

And also, True to the Faith says 12. When the book comes out before that change is made, it would be hard to make a case that you're trying to misrepresent. And this is really a minor issue if you ask me. And I don't know if that's the issue that this writer is talking about, again, because he does not give us any specifics. Another definition, agency, the ability to choose right from wrong, referring to both people on the earth today as well as all spirits in the pre-existence.

Again, I don't see any problem with that. According to True to the Faith on page 12, it says, You had the power to choose even before you were born. In the premortal council in heaven, Heavenly Father presented His plan, which included the principle of agency.

Lucifer rebelled and sought to destroy the agency of man. Now, again, you're not trying to go into a lot of detail. You're trying to be very concise here. But it does say under that same heading, your Heavenly Father has given you agency, the ability to choose and to act for yourself.

Now you say to choose from right or wrong. Well, isn't that kind of implied in that sentence? Of course it is. It is implied in that sentence. One other, anti-Mormon, and I said it was usually a pejorative term used to refer to those, typically Christians, who are critical of Mormonism and therefore are considered hateful by many Mormons. It can also refer to any information from any source that places the LDS church in a bad light. I don't know what difficulty this individual would have with that definition. I don't recall all the times that I've been called an anti-Mormon that it was meant to be a flattering title for me. It always comes across as pejorative. We don't like the term anti-Mormon.

We think it's misleading. We are certainly not against the Mormon people, though we do have a disagreement with Mormonism or the teachings of the LDS church. An article in the September 2018 Ensign magazine was written by Sarah Keenan in the article titled When Anti-Mormon Materials Shook My Faith.

Real quick, I just want to read the first paragraph. It says, a few months before I left on my mission, I stumbled upon some anti-Mormon articles. These articles presented misconstrued information about church history and Joseph Smith that left my testimony shaken. So misconstrued information, information that's made or is intended to make the church look bad, is how they're portraying it here, and that's very typical of what we hear on the street.

And usually it's, again, a blanket accusation without any particulars being mentioned. It's not that a person can't get it wrong. They most certainly can get it wrong in some cases, but I don't think that's generally what people like ourselves are going to do. An individual who hasn't studied it very well might make a mistake, at least give them a little bit of grace, though we wouldn't condone whatever they're saying if it's inaccurate. Like she said in that article, she saw things that shook her faith, but were the things that she saw really inaccurate?

She doesn't give a list. And again, it makes it very hard to rebut if we don't know specifically what exactly is being talked about here. Tomorrow we're going to continue looking at some of the things that Eric wrote in Appendix 2 of the book, Sharing the Good News with Mormons, Practical Strategies for Getting the Conversation Started. Thank you for listening. If you would like more information regarding Mormonism Research Ministry, we encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org, where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism.