Matt Slick Live

The following program is recorded content created by Matt Slick Live.

And for the podcasters, it is June 4th, 2021. Now, I wasn't on live yesterday. And the reason was because we had internet trouble. And the day before that had internet trouble and my phone died. I got a new phone. It was just one of those, those kind of things that happens. And because of it, I forgot to mention something.

And I didn't have the opportunity yesterday. But today, we're gonna have a special guest on the air. And his name is Micah Wilder.

And I've met Micah a few times. He's with Adams Road. He's an ex-Mormon.

And who's a Christian now. He's written a book. And we've got him on the air. What we're gonna do is talk to him for a while.

And so, if you have questions about Mormonism, maybe, and what it was like when he was in on his mission and things like that, then, you know, get in line to give us a call. We have open lines 877-207-2276. And again, I apologize for the short notice. But hey, that's just what happens.

When tech goes bad. All right. Hey, Micah. Are you there? Yeah, man. I'm here. All right, Micah.

You're awesome, buddy. So, okay. I've got this book in my hand right now, Passport to Heaven. And you wrote this. When did you write this thing? Well, that brings us to this whole bit of, well, who are you? I mean, if you're gonna write a book on Mormonism, you did a mission. So, why don't you tell us about yourself so we know why this book is here and why we're doing this interview. So, fill us all in.

Yes. My name is Micah Wilder, and I am one of the founders of Adams Road. We are a music and testimony ministry dedicated to sharing the gospel of Jesus. I, myself, am a former Mormon, was raised in a very devout Mormon home, spent my high school years in the state of Utah. My mother was a tenured professor at Brigham Young University.

And at 19 years old, I served a Mormon mission and encountered the life-changing gospel of Jesus and was saved while on my Mormon mission. Yeah. Good stuff. You know, my wife, I gotta confess now, my wife has read the book, and I haven't had time because I've been so busy. We've got so many things going on. And you forgave me for that.

I remember that was nice. And you interviewed Bill, with Bill McKeever today. He's a friend of mine. I'll be seeing him tomorrow, and he's a great guy. So, you're making the rounds, and I'm so grateful for you and your family.

Your mom and your dad. And we've all had dinner together, and we've all eaten together and stuff. And you guys have such a great testimony of what you do, and we'll get to that later in the show. But I wanted to thank you for your dedication to Christ and your desire to put him first in your life and to speak of him. And you're a blessing to the body of Christ, so I just wanted to say that. And I want to follow up with this.

Now, I got questions here. Was your whole family Mormons, or were you a convert to Mormonism? So my parents were converts to Mormonism when they were in their early 20s. They were college students at Ball State University, and two Latter-day Saint missionaries knocked on their door, and six months later they were baptized in the church. So my siblings and I were raised in a very active and faithful Mormon home.

Sorry, I hit my cough button there. And your mom, she was a tenured professor at BYU. What did she teach? She taught special education and multiculturalism for her areas of expertise.

That's right. That's why I enjoyed talking to her, because I have autism and special needs. We talked a little bit about that stuff. So you were raised a Mormon. Your mom and dad were converts. And how many brothers and sisters do you have? Were they Mormons also? Yes, I've got two older brothers and one younger sister, and both of my older brothers served LDS missions. My oldest brother went to Moscow, Russia, and my other brother went to Copenhagen, Denmark.

So we were kind of the quintessential Mormon family, and every aspect of our lives was rooted in our faith to the church. So where did you do your mission then? So I went on my mission to Orlando, Florida. Pretty exotic place.

Denmark or Russia. And you went to Florida. So you're a Mormon and you're out there trying to convert people. I've got a question here.

I'm just curious. Were you very busy? Were there a lot of appointments you had?

Was that the case there in Florida? It was, yeah. There were times that were more fruitful than others, but I was a very hardworking missionary, and I really worked hard to engage people, to try to love people and convert them.

So we were pretty active and pretty busy and quite successful. Now obviously you're not a Mormon anymore, and praise God for that. And I know there's a lot of Mormons who are listening to this in Salt Lake City, and you can understand that neither Micah or I hate Mormons, and we're not here to ridicule you or your sincerity, but there is an issue of the truth of who God is and who Christ is. We might get into that a little bit later. So you're on your mission, and it was on your mission that you were converted to Christianity, right?

Yeah. So I had an encounter with a Baptist preacher about four months into my two-year commitment, and I actually went to this Baptist pastor's church with the intent of trying to convert him to the church, believing fullheartedly that it was everything that it claimed to be, the only true and living church on the face of the earth. And I believe that only through the laws and ordinances and authority of Mormonism could this man and anybody have right standing with God and live forever in the presence of God. So we went there with the intent of reasoning with him, of opening up the Bible and the Mormon scriptures and proving to him that the church was true. And as a result of this encounter, I heard the gospel of Christ for the first time in my life, and I know Mormons are going to hear that and go, well, that's ridiculous. You heard the gospel all the time, but the gospel that I heard as a Latter-day Saint growing up, I now know is not the gospel that is revealed in scripture. And so the gospel that was presented to me that day by this Baptist pastor was this simple but profound message of the sufficient offering of Jesus on the cross of Calvary, that he paid in full measure the penalty that I owed to God because of my sin, and that by grace through faith I could be given the free gift of righteousness imputed to me by Christ, and that my good standing with God was not based on my worthiness or my righteousness or my goodness or my marriage, but it was based on the merits of Christ, and only by trusting him alone could I have that right standing with God. And of course that gospel message was hypothetical to the message that I had grown up believing, and I believed that Jesus was essential for my salvation.

I believed that he died for my sins, but I also believed that there was more that needed to be done, and that that onus fell upon my shoulders in order to add to what Christ did on the cross in order to ultimately find myself worthy before God. So this is the first time you heard this when this pastor talked to you about this? It's the first time, right?

First time, yep. So when you were listening to him, I mean, was this like shocking, or were you repulsed, or were you like, wait a minute, what is going on here? What was your reaction?

What did you think? So I was simultaneously experiencing multiple emotions. One, I was angry, I was frustrated because he was contradicting the fundamental principles of my faith as a Mormon, but I was also enamored by this message of God's love demonstrated in Christ that was honestly something that I had been pining for my entire life. And so when he's telling me that forgiveness and eternal life and salvation and right standing with God can all be obtained through what Jesus did on my behalf as my substitute, I was enamored by that idea, but I think ultimately I was convicted by the word of God, and it really actually made me lash out at this pastor. And I remember opening up the Book of Mormon, and I think it's in 2 Nephi, and it basically says that if you don't believe that the words of the Book of Mormon are the words of Christ, then you will stand in condemnation for the judgment bar of God at the last day. And I actually read that to him and basically told him that if he rejected this message, that he was going to stand in condemnation.

And that's kind of where I left things. And so this pastor, after he could see that I was frustrated and that I was convicted, he very lovingly gave me a challenge. And this challenge really set my life on a new trajectory, and that's that he invited me to go straight to the word of God, to go to the source, the Bible, and to read it like a child or through the eyes of a child. And I think what he meant by that was to remove my religious lenses, to remove my preconceived notions, and allow God through his word to reveal the truth to me of the gospel. And so that was the invitation that I was given as this very devout, zealous Mormon missionary, and ultimately that invitation changed my life.

Wow, that's awesome to hear. Well, I've got a question for you here because I'm visualizing myself, I mean visualizing you sitting in the office with the pastor talking, and he's giving you this information about the freedom of forgiveness in Jesus. So as a Mormon, when you hear this, you know, you said it conflicted, but as a Mormon, did you feel that you were righteous with God already?

Because it's a works-righteousness-based system. So how did you feel? And then when he was telling you this, that must have been quite a contrast, right?

It really must have, well I guess, upset you. Yeah, so as a Mormon, I think I really vacillated between times of my life when I felt very confident and secure about my relationship with God, and other times when I felt fearful of not knowing if I was good enough or if I had done enough. So I think that depending on what I was experiencing and my personal level of righteousness, my adherence to the commandments would kind of depend on how I felt. But I don't think I ultimately ever had a sense of lasting forgiveness, because in Mormon theology, repentance is a perpetual process in which an individual must undergo throughout their entire life, and there are certain sins and transgressions that are beyond your ability to make right with God outside of the authority of the Mormon leadership. And so it's this constant process of trying to keep yourself in good standing with God, and so I never really had an eternal assurance of knowing that I stood right with God. And so when the pastor shared this with me, it did pique my interest, because it was something that I was searching for my entire life, was this forgiveness. But at the same time, I simultaneously mocked it, because the idea of grace to me as a Mormon, it was foolishness, right? It was folly, because it seemed like the easy way out, and I'm sure that in all your many engagements with Mormons or Mormon missionaries, you've heard them say that, that, well, grace is the easy way out, and they kind of mocked that idea that we can simply receive by faith what Christ has done, and that that is what justifies us before God.

And I think that I was feeling that way as well, because it didn't make any sense that I could receive something as great as eternal forgiveness simply by faith. Wow, this is awesome stuff, man. Hey, hold on, okay? Hey folks, we're going to be right back after these messages. We are talking with Micah Wilder, and we'll be talking more about his book, his conversion from Mormonism to Christianity, right after these messages. Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. We're on the line with Micah Wilder.

He's an ex-Mormon missionary who tried to convert a Baptist pastor to Mormonism, and the pastor encouraged him to read the New Testament, and that led him to salvation. Micah, welcome back after the break. Thank you. All right, now I'm holding in my hand your book, Passport to Heaven. Now, people can see it online if they're watching the show.

We have ways of doing that, and of course this goes over the radio as well. So, Passport to Heaven, and it's by you, and as I said before, I haven't read it because I just haven't had the time. My wife has read it. She really enjoyed it.

She really did. And Bill McKeever, a friend of mine who's an expert in Mormonism in the Salt Lake City area, he read it, and he said it was really good, so I'm going to take their word for it, and I do apologize for not having read it. I went through and looked at some of the stuff in there, but boy, I'll tell you.

I'm working hard. So, we're going to talk about how they can get that book, and folks, if you want to call in, if you have any questions for Micah regarding Mormonism, his mission, you can call 877-207-2276. So, I'm intrigued by the request from the pastor to you to read, what was it, the New Testament? Through the Eyes of a Child? Could you talk more about that and what happened?

Yeah. So, I've thought a lot about this pastor's invitation to me, and I think that it was profound, and it was mature in his wisdom to point me to the Word of God. And I think that a lot of times, when we're witnessing, when we're ministering, we leave it in our own hands too often, and we forget the power of God's Word to transform hearts and lives, that God works through his Word, that faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ. And so, I think he realized that in this engagement with me, especially based on my reaction of anger and frustration, he knew that he wasn't going to change me in that moment, he was never going to be the vessel of my transformation, but the Word of God could be. And so he pointed me right to the source, and challenged me to read it, to approach it through the eyes of a child, to just remove my lenses of religiosity and allow God through his Word to teach me.

And so, when I heard this challenge, I was uncertain as to what to do about it, and I eventually accepted it, but not with the caveat of reading it like a child. I began reading the Bible as a Mormon missionary because I believed that reading the Bible was going to prove Mormon isn't true. And so, up to that point in my life, I had read the Book of Mormon several times, I'd read the Doctrine and Covenants several times, I'd never read even the New Testament all the way through, I'd certainly read parts of both the Old and New Testaments. And so I made a commitment to read the New Testament in its entirety for the first time in my life, believing that reading it was only going to show me what I already knew, and to further solidify my testimony of the Mormon Church. And approaching it this way, looking back, it's so evident the sovereignty of God in my life, that I wasn't going through this process, I wasn't reading the Bible looking for anything outside of what I already had, I wasn't wanting to change, I wasn't seeking to lose my faith in the religion to which I had dedicated my life, but yet God was there, and He was loving me, and pursuing me, and drawing me unto Himself. And so I started reading the Bible with my heart in the wrong place, but the more that I read the Word of God, the more my heart began to change, and the water of the Word of God began to pour over me and wash me, and open my eyes to something that I had never before seen, and that was, of course, the New Testament.