Falling Into Grace (Michael's New Book)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. You are listening to Outer Brightness, a podcast for post Mormons who are drawn by God to walk with Jesus rather than turn away. Outer Brightness.

There's no weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth here, except when Michael's hangry that is. Welcome to this episode of the Outer Brightness Podcast. We were all born and raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. More commonly referred to as the Mormon faith.

We may use nicknames or abbreviations of the Church, such as LDS, Mormon, etc., but not in an attempt to be pejorative or insulting, but as a reflection of our personal experiences as Latter-day Saints, where these terms were used interchangeably in reference to ourselves and or the Church. All of us have left that religion and have been drawn to faith in Jesus Christ based on Biblical teachings. Some might consider us sons of perdition, the inheritors of outer darkness who supposedly knew the truth and rejected it. The name of our podcast, Outer Brightness, reflects the Gospel of John, chapter 1 in the Bible, specifically verse 9 which calls Jesus the true light which gives light to everyone. We have found life beyond Mormonism to be brighter than we were told it would be, and the light we have is not our own. It comes to us from without.

Thus, Outer Brightness. Making the transition from Mormonism to broader Christianity can be exciting, scary, confusing, challenging, and ultimately life-giving. Our aim here is to share our journeys of faith and what God has done in our lives in drawing us to His Son. We'll have conversations about all aspects of that transition—the fears, challenges, new beliefs, surprises, and joys.

We're glad you've found us, and we hope you'll stick around. I'm Matthew, the Nuclear Cowanist. I'm Michael, the Ex-Mormon Apologist. I'm Paul Bunyan. Let's get into it. All right.

Hey, Fireflies. This episode, we have a really special guest with us, Michael Flournoy. He's here to talk to us about his new book, Falling into Grace—How an LDS Apologist Stumbled into Christianity.

How a Mormon apologist. Oh, my God. I messed up. All right. Let me get the book so I can read it.

Wow, what a novel idea, reading a book. All right. Hey, Fireflies.

Get a novel idea. Sorry. Oh. All right. Three, two, one.

Hey, Fireflies. This week, we have a really special guest on our program. We've got Michael Flournoy.

He's here to talk to us about his new book, Falling into Grace—How a Mormon apologist stumbled into Christianity. And one thing I wanted to note about this episode, guys, is that this is our 25th episode. Can you believe that? Whoo.

25 episodes. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah.

Yeah. Getting up there. So, what I'd like to do is ask our listeners, if you're enjoying what we're doing here, if it's meaningful to you, give us a call. We'd love to hear from you. Ask our listeners, if you're enjoying what we're doing here, if it's meaningful to you, give us a rating on iTunes or whatever podcast platform you listen to us on.

A written review would also help. And tell your friends. Help us get the word out about what's going on here at the Out of Brightness podcast. Thanks, Fireflies. Awesome. You're like a celebrity now. You've got two podcasts already dedicated to you, going into a third. Yeah. He's like the Justin Bieber of podcasts, you know.

I know. I feel bad, though, because I looked at the downloads and you guys got way more downloads for your stories. So, I'm like, oh, I don't think people want to hear me blab on and on about my stuff.

I'm like the middle child of the podcast. I don't think that has anything to do with it, actually. I think it probably has more to do with the fact of when we picked up some new listeners and they just came in in the middle. Oh, yeah.

That might be the case, too. So, this isn't the first book you've written. So, that book is no longer on the market.

If you have a copy, like Paul does, you're well positioned for blackmail. But for our listeners who aren't so lucky, tell us about your first book. Why did you write it?

Why did you take it off of the market? No, this isn't the first book that I've written. In 2012, I published a book called A Biblical Defense of Mormonism. I wrote that because I wanted to defend the faith from smooth-talking evangelical Christians. I wanted Mormons who didn't know a lot about their faith to have something, a resource that they could look at and be able to stand strong against opposition. And I ended up taking that book off of the market because obviously, I no longer believe in the positions that I took in that book.

Okay. Did you have any comments about that, Paul, or anything you wanted to add to that? So, Michael, I do a fair bit of writing myself, and it's on my bucket list to publish a book. In fact, the series of blog articles that I'm writing now, dialogues with my former self, was initially conceived of as a book idea. I wanted it to be a collection of essays on the LDS articles of faith. And at the time, I planned to write them from a believing, even if unorthodox, LDS perspective because I was still a member of the LDS church at that time. So, we talked in one of our first episodes about the fear of being wrong. And that fear kept me from publishing even blog pieces for a long time. And I have to say that I have a huge amount of respect for you for having actually published a pro-Mormon book, and then not only changing your worldview, but publishing a book about your transition. Can you tell us specifically what it's been like for you to put yourself out there to the extent of publishing and then recanting your views?

Yeah. I mean, I remember the first evening when I went live with a biblical defense of Mormonism, I wanted to go throw up because I was like, oh my goodness, my views are out there. Like anybody can see what I wrote and they can criticize it now. And I'm sure there's a lot of criticism coming. I had no idea that future me was going to put a really negative review on my Amazon account for that book. So, I guess I'm one of the critics of that book now. That's better than putting a positive review of your own book out there. Yeah, that's true.

I mean, who does that, right? So, over time, I've written a lot of, I've published a lot of articles and things on fromwatertowine.org. And so, I've gotten a lot more used to putting myself out there. So, it doesn't feel as scary as it used to.

I think you just get used to it after a while. Recanting those views was really tough. I mean, those were views that I held very dear to my heart. But at the end of the day, I traded those views for something better. So, I felt like it was a worthy trade and I didn't mind taking the book off the market. I mean, what really hurt about it was just that it was my dream my whole life to write a book and I finally did it and then I had to take it off the market. So, I was back to square one. I think that was what was hard about it.

Yeah, that would be hard. Matthew, any thoughts there? Yeah. No, I agree with you, Paul, where you said that it takes a great deal of humility to admit that what you said was wrong or that you no longer agree with it and to take it off the market. Because I know that there are, I've seen debates in the past where someone in the debate will say, well, I don't agree with that viewpoint anymore or there's new data and stuff like that to disprove that. But they'll continue selling the book even though they don't update it or they don't correct it.

They'll continue to sell it. So, I always think that's kind of strange. But yeah, I think it's great that you decided to take it off and to be so candid about your faith experience and be willing to take the criticisms from others who disagree with your faith transition now or even to deal with the criticisms probably from evangelicals like us in the past who really disagreed with the book. So, it seems like you probably had criticism on all sides.

So, it's really commendable that you decided to take it off and that you are forthright in your views and beliefs now. Yeah, it was actually interesting because I remember one Latter-day Saint that I was talking to about it was trying to encourage me to put the book back on the market at one point, saying that, you know, it's still true to some people, which I was kind of like, well, I mean, how can, you know, even as a believing Latter-day Saint, I couldn't understand how you could accept a book like that knowing that the author does not hold that position. It just seemed a little, a little hard to grasp for me. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, it's interesting.

When I, when I downloaded the Kindle version of your book and started reading it, I was going through a master's degree program in biblical studies at the time. And I remember just thinking on the, on the title of it, that I was going to have, you know, major disagreements. And I did have disagreements, but your writing style was engaging. And it's one of the things that, that kind of drew me to you as a person and, and made me want to get to know you better. So.

Right on. So, another question for you. If you could tell that younger author of a biblical defense of Mormonism, anything, what would it be?

That is a, that is a tough question, Paul. I'd be a little hesitant to tell him anything because I wouldn't want to mess up what was going to happen. So I kind of addressed that at the, in the prologue of my new book. It kind of addresses the question, what would you tell yourself if you could go back in time? And the answer that I gave in the prologue is that I would just tell myself to buckle up. I would just tell myself to buckle up because it's going to be a bumpy ride.

If you remember that. But I think if I was going to try to, to just tell him anything, I would say, Hey, you should really start to study imputed righteousness. I know it's important to you to understand the evangelical position and you cannot truly understand it without understanding forensic righteousness. So I would encourage you to really start digging in and, and learning what that would be his downfall in the future. So you would, you would, you would, you would seek to accelerate the downfall?

I think so. I mean, I know that, that he would find the truth at some point, especially by the time he wrote that book, he only had four years left. So he was, it was coming pretty quickly. But I mean, I do, I do trust God's timing at that, at the same point. And, and looking back, I'm like, everything that happened was absolutely perfect and, and God knew what he was doing. And, and so if I went back to talk to myself, I mean, I don't even know if I would really talk theology.

I'd probably just be like, Hey, start taking steps now so that you don't lose all your hair and, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. I do like that I can go back and reference it now that we're doing a podcast together. I can look at, you know, like when we did the episodes on the Trinity and you put forth your, your questions, I could go reference the book and see how you developed your arguments. So I like that.

Yeah. I need to get myself a copy of, I gave my last copy to a, to an elder out here and I've been kicking myself ever since. Cause I'm like, Oh, I need that just as a, I don't know, proof, I guess you could get yourself an autographed copy too. Yeah, I could, I could actually like my closest friend out here has a copy and it's signed. He's like, I'm not giving you my copy.

That'll be $400. Yeah. He's like, this is a rare book, dude. I'm like, fine. Be that way. Geez. The autograph says to my future self with love.

I should have, I really should have. It wouldn't be funny if you set up like another, you know, another printing edition with the publisher, but you only want one copy printed. They're like, you know, it's going to cost like 500 bucks for that one book.

Right. Why did you write falling into grace? I mean, part of it is I just love to write. I'd also written that other book, a biblical defense of Mormonism and I'd put it out there publicly. And so I felt like I should write something that was sort of a sequel to that book, something that showed my position now and that explained everything so that people would understand the the transition. But more than anything, I just really felt like it could help some, somebody else out there, maybe somebody else who's following where I've been. And I just, I wanted to be there and I really, the biggest thing is I wanted to build a bridge because I know that Latter-day Saints have a really low view of ex-Mormons.

And I wanted to put some understanding in place. I wanted them to be able to see it from an ex-Mormon's point of view and see exactly what the thought process was and what happened. But I also wanted a Christian to be able to read this and understand what's going on in a Latter-day Saints mind and what the culture's like and hopefully to build some relationships through this book that can actually go somewhere.

Matthew, any follow-ups on that? So do you feel like if listeners wanted to know more about kind of your mindset, do you think that book in conjunction with your personal story that you shared, do you think those would kind of basically give them everything they need to know? Or is there anything else that you thought that maybe you should have included in the book or in the podcast that you wish you had?

I feel like between the two of them, you do get everything. The only thing that I do know is that I feel like the only thing that I didn't put in the book that I had in there originally was that I put in a couple of chapters in the end, basically talking about how I came to believe and imputed righteousness. And then I also had a couple of, I think a couple of chapters about how to witness to Latter-day Saints. And I ended up taking them out because I felt like it wasn't, it didn't flow as well with a narrative to put those at the end. So I didn't do a whole lot of, there's not a whole lot of doctrine and theology in the book. It's a lot more story and just what was happening around me at the time and a lot more of my thoughts.

So that's part of what I just had to leave out. How is falling into grace similar to and different from a biblical defense of Mormonism? So it's actually very similar to a biblical defense of Mormonism. In fact, if you read my four of falling into grace, it is almost, I mean, probably 80% of it comes from the original prologue of a biblical defense of Mormonism.

So I don't know if that's plagiarism since I'm the author of both books. But yeah, there's a lot of the story that comes out of a biblical defense of Mormonism. One of the big differences obviously is that I'm no longer promoting the church. I'm promoting Christianity with my new book.

And a biblical defense of Mormonism was extremely doctrinal heavy and falling into grace is a lot more of a narrative. So they're different in that way. But with both books, I tried to be as respectful as possible. I wanted anybody to be able to pick up both books and not get offended and throw it away.

So I think that's one of the biggest similarities between the two of them. Good. I'm going to hold you to plagiarism because you have mentioned in another episode that the author who wrote that book is dead.

So I'm going to claim plagiarism here or chapter four. Yeah. And I'm not really that afraid of him coming back and suing me. He knows I have no money, so he has nothing to gain from that.

Are there other things he could take like your cats? Yeah, you're right. In fact, I plead no contest. Don't tell my wife I said that. She'll be in the show.

If she's listening, she'll know. Great. So why did you decide to go less doctrinally heavy with this and more story heavy with this book? And do you do you intend later to write a more doctrinal response or refutation to your prior book? Yeah, I've definitely played with the idea a number of times, and it's just been a really hard decision for me to decide not to put the doctrinal ideas into the book. But I think what ultimately decided it for me was that I felt like a narrative just really gave me the position to speak my mind and really just get into the heart and the mind of a Latter-day Saint and what it's like leaving and just really show the chaos that ensues from that. And I felt like that was stronger without the theology in this particular book. But I also have my blog and my website, and I write a lot of my pieces on there. And so I felt like I already had a place online that people could find my apologetics. And so I didn't necessarily need to put it in the book. That said, I have recently been really toying with the idea of writing a second book geared towards Latter-day Saints called The Vicarious Atonement. So that may be in the works, but I haven't totally decided yet. That sounds interesting. What do you hope will be the reception of falling into grace among Latter-day Saints?

Right. So my reading partner is actually a Latter-day Saint. And so lucky him, he's been reading this as I've been writing it, and he's been really enjoying it, actually.

In fact, he's been kind of my conscience the whole time I've been putting it together. It was actually really his idea in the first place for me to write the first half of the book, kind of from an LDS perspective as much as I could, and kind of take out a lot of the little negative jabs and things that I had towards the church originally in the book. He said that he felt like it would be stronger if I really showed my audience that I loved the church at the time. And I think he was absolutely right. So I've been really trying to make it a positive read for Latter-day Saints, something that they could read without really having any problems through it. And I think that's the case up until about chapter eight. And so I think it's really good. I want it to be something that Latter-day Saints can read and that they can enjoy and just kind of look at themselves and then just rethink the way that they look at ex-Mormons.

And I think it'll be a good reception, you know, if they actually pick it up and read it, which is the challenge of course. Okay. Yeah. So you stole my thunder from the next question by addressing what you edited out. So good, good, good.

Matthew, any follow-ups on that? No, it's pretty good. Yeah, there were still some other things that I ended up editing out, but it was a lot of just the, I guess, the garbage from the divorce, you know, because I was really trying to be as authentic as possible and give as much detail and as much truth as I could. And I had it in there originally and I decided to take it out because I felt like it was just too negative that it was trying to, you know, it almost seemed like I was just trying to prove something. And I just thought that it kind of distracted a little bit.

So I took some of that stuff out and then, yeah, some of the other stuff I mentioned to you. All right. Good. Matthew, you got some questions? Okay. So this might be a long question, but hopefully we'll get a good discussion going. What was the hardest part of your story to write and why?

Okay. I'm not sure which chapter this was exactly, but the chapter is where I wrote about falling in love with my first wife and then revisiting the divorce. I think those were the hardest chapters for me to write. And it was actually Paul earlier on who suggested that I convince my readers that I really loved Lorena.

That was my first wife. And I kind of didn't want to, but I was like, yeah, I guess I do need to do that. So I went through and just really tried to tell that story and then go back into the divorce. And I really just felt myself going back in time and just feeling all those emotions all over again while I was writing that part of the book. So that was definitely the hardest part of the story to write. So were there, I don't know if I want to be careful, but I was going to say, are there maybe specific experiences or things as you're writing it that were difficult to open that part of your life back up and write more about that?

Yeah. I mean, specifically falling in love the first time. And for a couple of reasons, one being that I am now in a committed relationship again, and it's like, okay, I have to be careful that I don't go too far in this writing where I'm crossing a line in my marriage. And then secondly, also trying to keep that balance of showing that there really were experiences. And I do go into some detail and actually show myself falling in love for the first time and that it was a legitimate feeling and that it was important to me and that this girl was important to me. So, I mean, it had a lot of elements of a fictional story too, even though it was true, because it's like, I'm building up this, I'm building up this event just to tear it down later, you know, but still, I mean, I don't know if that answers your question or not. Yeah, it does. I was kind of, yeah, I'm not really sure.

I wasn't really expecting anything. I was just kind of wondering if maybe, yeah, maybe, you know, sometimes when you think back in your past, you know, specific experiences come to mind and it's difficult to write about, especially when you're going, you know, that's, I think from what you described from your past, that was the hardest part of your life. You know, one of the hardest parts of your life was dealing with your marriage and leaving the church and all that. So it's difficult. It's kind of like when you move on, you know, you want to put it in a box and kind of lock it and, you know, you have those memories, but you don't really want to open them up again. So to have to kind of force yourself to remember the past is not easy.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, it's almost easier for me just to remember, to think of things the way they are now where it's like, oh, it's not, you know, it's a very, very formal, you know, professional relationship because of our son. And I don't like to open up those, those parts of my memory, but I kind of had to just for writing this, but I'm glad it's over. Let me just put it that way.

Yeah. I think, I think you did a really good job of finding balance. You know, you mentioned your, your reading partner and some of the encouragement he gave you to write from a, from a positively LDS perspective, almost to try to put yourself back into, you know, what it was like for you during the time that you were serving a mission and whatnot. And so as you described, you know, your meeting of Eddie Knox and, and that kind of thing, everything you went through there, it comes off very authentically to me as I was, as I was reading.

And I thought, you know, that you really, really found balance there. You mentioned that chapter eight is a place where Latter-day Saints might get a little bit uncomfortable. And that that's the chapter where you kind of start going into where, where your belief in Mormonism started to kind of crumble and, and, and what, what the things were that, that caused that. Was that hard to write about in a, in a positive way? I know I've had difficulty conveying to Latter-day Saints that kind of process of deconstruction that I went through in a way that resonates with them.

It was extremely difficult. One of the things that I was, I'm really trying to do with falling into grace is to, like, and I mentioned this in the prologue too. I said, this isn't a story about leaving Mormonism. It's a story about grace.

It's a story about trading something good for something better. And so, I've really been trying to keep a positive tone throughout the entire book. That said, there are two chapters that I'm expecting to get some pushback on.

One from fellow evangelicals and one from Latter-day Saints. So, I felt like chapter five was almost going over the line with being pro-Mormon. This is back in my, you know, writing it from my perspective at the time, but I was just writing about all the spiritual experiences that were happening.

And I think it's enough to probably make some evangelicals question things or scratch their heads a little, like, well, how do you explain this? And then chapter eight, I think if you look at it in the context of all the other chapters before, it softens the blow of that chapter. And again, I was trying to be authentic, so I couldn't really leave that chapter out. It is a part of the story. And so, I had to talk about some of the things that caused me to deconstruct my faith and some of the things that I saw and some of the events in history that I learned about. If I had left them out, I would have been inauthentic. So, I felt like I didn't really have a choice, but I was able to really tie it down to mostly just one chapter and then regain the tone of the book afterwards.

Yeah. Looking back at chapter five, I can see what you're talking about there. And thinking back to reading through that chapter last week, I can definitely see where you think you might get some pushback from evangelicals there. But again, there are real experiences that you have as a Latter-day Saint, and you feel compelled to associate those experiences of God drawing you, of God working in your life, to equating to the Latter-day Saint or the LDS Church being true. And you don't necessarily have to do that because a lot of times there are experiences that are not in that context, but because you are culturally in that context. You take that step of associating them. But there's some experiences that in and of themselves don't have anything to do with the LDS Church, but they're real valid spiritual experiences.

Absolutely. And I really thought it was important for an evangelical reader to be able to look at chapter five and realize what they're fighting against, you know, that the spiritual warfare is real too, and that there's so many experiences that Latter-day Saints have that, you know, they might not see these things on the surface when you're discussing with a Latter-day Saint, but they're there. And we're going to talk about that, you know, in a future episode here pretty soon.

But, you know, there are all these things under the surface, and I think it's better to know that they're there than to not realize what is going on in a Latter-day Saint's heart. Yeah, good. So I do like the way that you've written with both audiences in mind.

And, you know, you and I talked about as you went through the planning stages for the book, how difficult that would be. But I think, again, I think you really kind of came in on a balance there. So, excellent job.

Excellent job. So I had a question that came to my mind, and I don't know, maybe it's kind of jumping the gun a little bit, but I was just thinking about the next episode that we'll be recording about the three converts or conversions to Mormonism. So you talk in that article that you wrote about three different types of Mormons or three different types of conversions, one that is, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's doctrinal, social, and spiritual.

Correct. So do you feel like the book you've written would appeal to Mormons of all these three different, or, and we've also discussed too, like a fourth one that we'll discuss in the next episode about identity. So do you feel like this book could speak to all four types of Latter-day Saints, or do you feel like it's focused, you know, based on your experiences, is it focused on one specific aspect, or do you think it could appeal to basically all kinds? Actually, I typically have a really hard time talking to any Mormon who's not a doctrinal Mormon because that's what I was when I was in the church.

So that's what I'm used to speaking. But in this book, I really did try to hit all of the bases so that no matter what position or what mindset they're coming from, there's something in there for them. I talked a lot about the culture and just the experiences, you know, of family and the turmoil of what it felt like to leave. And that was definitely geared towards a social or cultural Mormon. And then, you know, my whole chapter five, talking about all the experiences that I had, that was really there to relate to a spiritual Mormon. And then all the, my chapter about the possible gospel where I talk about imputation and how I discovered it in the Book of Mormon and in the temple, all of that was to appeal to a doctrinal Mormon. So yeah, I did try to hit all of those audiences in this book. Okay.

And so if they're, let's see. Well, you kind of already discussed about who you might get some, not negative feedback, what's the word I want to say, maybe some resistance. So maybe you've already talked about this.

If it is, just, you know, just say you can pass. But I was thinking about, so, you know, trying to interact with those people who might have resistance to reading it or who might read it and be off-put, you know, do you have a message for someone who wants to read this book, who wants to know about your experience and who wants to know about your experience in trusting in Christ and imputed righteousness, et cetera, but maybe who might be off-put by the content of the book or the way it's written? Do you have any kind of message for them?

Yeah. I would say that it's worth giving it a look into because you're not going to find a more positively written book about the church from somebody who has left than this one. And if nothing else, even if your mind isn't changed, it's going to do two things. One, it's going to help you understand the evangelical mindset and you're going to gain some understanding, but also you're going to have an idea of why somebody might leave the church, aside from what the typical answers or assumptions might be to that. So I do think that it's still something that's a valuable read regardless. I think the most offensive part of the book is probably the subtitle, but if a Latter-day Saint can get through that, then they can make it through the entire thing.

I think the whole thing is pretty LDS friendly, actually. Okay. Awesome. Did you have anything related to that, Paul, before we go on?

No. Okay. Those are just some thoughts that I had while we were discussing it that might be useful because some people, you know, a lot of Latter-day Saints are hesitant to read anything that's not pro Latter-day Saint. So sometimes it's hard just to get them to want to read something outside of their comfort zone. So I thought that that would be helpful to encourage them to want to read it or to at least check it out. Sometimes I'll read a book and I get a chapter two in, I'm like, all right, this isn't for me, and then I'll stop.

But I at least try to give it a chance. Sure. In your opinion, what does success for this book look like? Oh, I think that success for this would really just be people being able to look at this book, both Latter-day Saints and evangelicals, and take some of the blinders off and be able to open their minds and kind of accept each other a little bit or understand where they're coming from, at least. Like, I'd like to see, I don't know if acceptance is the right word, but I'd like to see a lot more understanding. And I'd like to see more friendships come out of those two groups, because a lot of times there's a lot of tension there, and I'd like to relieve the tension. But ultimately, I think what success looks like is maybe a questioning Latter-day Saint picking this book up someday and just using that and coming to the Lord.

I think that's what I think of as success. All right. Awesome.

All right, Michael. So this is where you can plug it now officially. So where can listeners pick up a copy of Falling into Grace?

I guess on Amazon.com. Well, how are you publishing? Are you doing like you did before, where you're publishing hard copy and electronic?

Or are you just doing electronic? Yeah, I think I am going to do it the same way that I did last time, where I just put it on Amazon and I had a hard copy and also on Kindle. So you can do either way. So how does that work? Does Amazon do the publishing for that? Or you go through a publisher first and then they put it on Amazon?

Yeah. So there used to be a site that I use for my other book called Create Space. And I guess it got bought by Amazon or something, but I think there's an Amazon publishing that I'm going to use. And basically, it's just connected to Amazon already. So what happens is they sell the books for me and they just get a cut of it and then I get a cut. But it's still better than traditional publishing for me. The difference is that it's not being publicized. So it's really just up to me to get myself out there and talk about the book so that people know it exists, basically. Okay. Gotcha. Great. Well, I haven't read any of it.

It's mostly just been Paul. It's been reading some of the chapters. So I'm actually pretty excited to check it out myself. Hopefully, Chapter 4 will be there, right?

Yeah. I'm going to try really hard to put Chapter 4 in the finished product. But if not, it'll definitely be in the second edition. Like, oh, find out what happened on my mission.

No, I'm not going to do that. I'm just kidding. It's going to be like a... Well, you guys aren't really gamers, are you? I was going to say that the book is the main game. And then if you want to read about your mission, that's like a DLC. Oh my gosh.

Coming out next month. I'm going to laugh and pretend like I know what you're talking about. I think even better would just be to cut it off right before I come to Christ. And just be like, if you enjoyed this book, get part two.

Oh, you know what you could do? You could set up like a Patreon account and be like, the rest of the book is on Patreon. Okay. I don't know what Patreon is. That's where people can sign up and basically just donate money to people. And they can do it like a one-time thing or like a monthly thing. Okay. The idea is you can give money to your favorite content creator so that they can make new content. And then usually you have like different tiers, you know, like bronze, gold, platinum kind of thing.

Except I could call it like telestial and then terrestrial and celestial. Oh yeah. Yeah. No, people do Patreon accounts for podcasts. I have a friend who does it for his writing. He, he has a Patreon account and, you know, he publishes a story every month. And if you're a subscriber or if you're a patron, then you get to listen to the story or read the story, I guess. Huh. That's cool. I was thinking we should do like something like that for the podcast.

Like people can become members and if they're like premium gold and they can like mute me so they can just hear like you guys. They get filters for each one of the podcasts. I was going to say Matthew, but I didn't want to be rude. So you're like halfway between Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb at this point. Yeah. I'm leaning towards Dr. Pepper though. Cause I had that Dr. Pepper today to try to quell Mr. Pibb. I didn't want them coming out too much today.

What if they advertise it though as Dr. Pepper and it actually was Mr. Pibb. Oh my gosh. We're all doomed. All right.

Well, this is the point. This is the point at which I say thanks fireflies for listening to this episode of the outer brightness podcast, where we grilled Michael about his new book run out and get it from amazon.com and thanks Michael for coming on next week. We're going to, oh, I talked right over there. Sorry about that. Wow.

This is how you treat all your guests. It is. It is.

I'm like that. All right. Well, thanks for nothing.

No, I'm just kidding. No, thanks for letting me come on my own podcast. And next week, we're going to be talking to Michael again about an article that he wrote called the three LDS conversions, a primer for the befuddled.

So look forward to that. We thank you for tuning into this episode of the outer brightness podcast. We'd like to hear from you. You're invited to visit the outer brightness podcast page on Facebook. Feel free to send a message there with comments or suggestions by clicking send a message at the top of the page. And we would appreciate it if you give the page a like, we also have an outer brightness podcast group on Facebook, where you can join and interact with us and others as we discuss the podcast, past episodes, suggestions for future episodes, et cetera.

We would love to hear from you and hope to speak with you soon. Stay bright fireflies. You can subscribe to the outer brightness podcast on Apple podcast, Google podcasts, Google play cast box pod beam, Spotify and stitcher. If you like what you hear, give us a rating or review wherever you listen. Thank you fireflies. You can also connect with Michael, the ex Mormon apologist at from water to wine.org, where he blogs and sometimes Paul and Matthew do as well music for the outer brightness podcast is graciously provided by the talented Brianna Flournoy and by Adam's road.

Learn more about Adam's road at www.adamsroadministry.com. In the past I believed in my own righteousness and hope that Jesus shed. But now I know that all the works I did were meaningless compared with Jesus lonely death on the cross where he bore sin. And now I have the righteousness that is by faith in Jesus' name.

I consider everything a loss compared to knowing Jesus for the sake I have lost all things. Oh, because of the cross on the cross. Jesus took away the red and gold that stood and nailed it there for me. Through the cross, he put to death hostility and in his body reconciled us to God and brought us peace. And I am crucified with Christ.

I no longer live but he lives in me. I consider everything a loss compared to knowing Jesus for the sake I have lost all things. Oh, when I gained Jesus it was worth the cost. All my righteousness I count as loss because of the cross.

Some demand a sign and some seek to be wise, but we preach Christ crucified. A stumbling blood for Son, the foolishness of God, but wiser than the wisest man the power of the cross. May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord through which the world has been crucified to me. An eye to the world so I take up my cross and follow where Jesus leads. Oh, I consider everything a loss compared to knowing Jesus for the sake I have lost all things. Oh, when I gained Jesus it was worth the cost. All my righteousness I count as loss because of the cross. Because of the cross.