Matthew's Story Part 3

You're entering outer brightness.

Let me ask you this. A lot of times when we, you know, missionaries go home, they go through a pretty tough period, it's hard going from an experience like that back to normal life after two years. So I do want to know a little bit about how your exit from the mission was, especially now that you knew French and you had so many missionary points. I'm guessing things were looking up for you.

Yeah, yeah. I was kind of excited to go home because I really liked college and I was excited to go back. And yeah, you know, just going home, being with my family and knowing a language and it was exciting but also terrifying because I didn't know who I was. My whole identity had been wrapped up in this idea that I'm a missionary. So it was a really rough transition. Going home and trying to figure out how you fit in the world. Also feeling like, I felt like my calling was to be a missionary. But, you know, you go home and they're like, well, you're done with that now and they kind of give lip service to this idea of being a member missionary. They're like, oh, well, you're still a missionary when you go home but it's not at all the same.

Every RM can attest to that. It's not the same thing at all. No, it is not.

It is. So yeah, it was really rough. I didn't like being home, especially since I was thrown right into college.

I got home first week of August and then two weeks later, I was back in college and I was taking Calculus 2 and like Physics 2 and I couldn't remember Physics 1 or Calc 1. So it was really rough. So I had to go back and review everything while I was learning new stuff and not only that but I had met a girl in my last area on a mission and we had kind of like started talking after I got home.

And so we started talking online and, you know, talked about, you know, a relationship. She was really nice in my mission. Like she was actually a convert, like a recent convert and that didn't – but it turns out that it was just a very – I'm not sure if I really want to go into that. It was not a very good relationship. It was just – she just wasn't the person I thought she was. But anyways, so that didn't work out and so that added to the stress and the pain of, you know, I felt like, you know, I was probably just naïve. You know, I was hoping like maybe if we were – well, first of all, it seemed like we clicked at first but it didn't work out. But part of me also kind of wish like maybe if we dated, you know, I could keep part of my mission, you know, like maybe if we got married then I could keep part of my mission with me. So maybe it was kind of a naïve, you know, idea on my part but, you know, because I was going back and thinking about all these positive experiences on my mission and was trying to – was trying to relive that experience but – but yeah, that didn't work out and so it kind of fell apart.

It was really bad. Yeah, but yeah, it was just really depressing to think about, you know, that you're home and I was – I remember asking my bishop multiple times. I was going to my singles ward not with the attention of, you know, getting married or something but just because our ward, you know, had a lot of people my age and so I felt like I connected with them better. I just remember asking my bishop multiple times. I'm like, can I have a calling? Like I just feel like useless.

Can I just do something, you know? I don't – it doesn't matter what it is and it was like months and months before I actually got a calling and by that time, I kind of just didn't care anymore. So, I felt kind of rejected by God, you know, like I wondered maybe I didn't do as good of my mission as I should have or maybe, you know, especially with the breakup and then the stress of being home and just everything all piling up, I was like – I just felt like I was just alone again, you know, like I felt like I just didn't have God in my life.

So yeah, it was an incredibly difficult experience at that time. I think it's interesting you were talking about asking your bishop for a calling and not really getting one for several months and then you transitioned to saying that you felt rejected by God. Did you in some ways equate the LDS Church with God, do you think?

Yeah, I think so. I think it's natural to feel like because the church is always telling you there's two paths to revelation. There's the path through personal revelation and prayer and there's the path through the priesthood authority in the church. So, it seems like it's within this authoritarian structure that you can't have the complete – you can't be completely united to God by yourself. You have to access God through the church. And so, I felt like when I wasn't getting this calling and I felt like I was being ignored and I know the bishop wasn't trying to do that, you know, I didn't put the blame on it.

I know that they get busy and I think maybe it had something to do with my paperwork not transferring over from my home ward. I don't exactly remember all the details but it just felt like, yeah, like being rejected and not getting this calling felt like it was God himself that was kind of pushing me away. And it was difficult to get through that. I'm not entirely sure how I got over it to be honest. But I mean, time heals all wounds is kind of a correct statement but I think in a lot of cases, it's true. So, I think just getting over the breakup, having space and time after that and getting through this kind of rejection and kind of just getting back to normal and feeling like, okay, you're not a missionary anymore, you know, just you're a returned missionary, you just got to deal with it, you just got to get over it.

You're not going to be able to go back and do that again. But what's funny is, like still to this day, I'll have dreams of getting off of a train and I'm in France again, you know, being a missionary. Like it's so strange to think about that because I've been out of the church for a couple years now. But it's just something that is just part of my psyche, you know, like when you're for two years, you're doing the same thing day in and day out and that's all you ever want to be. It's like it's a part of you, you know, you can't get rid of that.

It's like in your soul. So, I really, I'm grateful for my mission experience and the transition coming home was difficult but I don't regret it at all. It's just kind of a shame that looking back now, I wish I could have had a similar experience but, you know, anyways, I'll go more into that.

So, you know, we joke that, we joke about you being the nuclear Calvinist. I'm just kind of curious because you came home from your mission, you went back to school. Where were you going to school at the time? What were you studying? I'm assuming it was something leading into the field that you're in today.

Yeah. When I went to college my first year, my intention was to become a programmer. So, I was a computer science major and I was attending Weaver State University which is in Ogden, Utah. And it's a really good school. It's kind of a smaller school but it's a teaching university. They don't really have dedicated research faculty there. Maybe some programs but, you know, they have a few master's programs but they're typically professional. So, the focus is really on teaching. So, the professors there are there because they want to teach and that's what I really liked about it. Interesting enough, a neighbor of mine, I grew up with, Brandon Burnett is actually a chemistry professor in there now.

So, it's kind of crazy. He's my age and he graduated with a PhD in chemistry. So, yeah, shout out to Brandon.

Dr. Brandon, sorry. But, yeah, so I was going to Weaver State University. And when I came home from my mission, you know, when I left my mission, I think I was using Java version 5, something like that. And then when I came back from my mission, they're using like Java version 9 or something. So, I mean, it's basically the same but quite a bit different.

So, that was kind of the first thing that bugged me. I was like, all right, you know, I'm tired of like software constantly evolving. I don't want to be, you know, in my 60s or 70s and realize I have to learn some crazy brand new software or technology. So, I was like, maybe there's something technical but still a little bit more, you know, a little bit more constant, you know, not as, you know, not as fluctuating as like computer sciences. And computer science is a great field, you know. I end up actually having to do a lot of programming for my field anyway so I didn't completely escape it. But, yeah, so that's when I was interested in doing engineering because my grandfather on my mom's side, he was a mechanical engineer at Thiokol ATK now, I think, unless if they're not around anymore.

But they designed the solid rocket motors for the space program. So, he would tell me stories about all the cool projects he would work on, you know, back in the 60s and 70s and stuff. And some of it was, you know, classified or declassified. So, some of it he probably couldn't tell me but some stuff he could. It was just cool to hear all the cool projects he worked on. And I had an aptitude and interest in science and physics, chemistry, mathematics, that kind of thing.

So, it all kind of just fit. So, but the problem with that is Weaver doesn't have a mechanical engineering program. So, I took a year or two of courses there at Weaver State and then I had to transfer. So, I transferred to University of Utah. And I finished my mechanical engineering degree there. What year was that? So, I graduated with my bachelor's in science in 2013.

And, yeah, so, and in that time, I was still kind of trying to figure out like what kind of job do I want to get into. And that's when I'd been taking this, you know, physics courses. And, you know, they got into quantum mechanics and nuclear physics and just a taste of it, not really anything deep.

But I thought it was really cool. I really liked it. I really liked studying radiation. And I found out there's a graduate program in nuclear engineering at University of Utah.

And I got, like, ever since then, I got super psyched about it. So, I'd read all about it and all the different things you could do with nuclear. And I wrote reports for my English courses, my general ed courses related to nuclear engineering.

So, I was just really pumped up about it. And so, ever since then, I'd been planning to do nuclear. And so, yeah, I finished my bachelor's and I applied for the graduate program in nuclear. So, that's what I did at University of Utah.

I did my master's there and defended my thesis and all that stuff. So, I did that, finished that in 2015. And then when I finished that, then I wanted to go on to more schooling. So, I applied to out of state because it's never good to do, you know, a bachelor's, master's, PhD, all from the same school. You can do it, but they kind of suggest you branch out a little bit. So, I applied to a few programs and I originally was going to do something strictly fluids related. So, I applied to RPI because they have a really renowned professor in fluids here. But I ended up doing something else, multi-physics.

So, that's how I ended up at, now I'm in Troy, New York, working on that, going to RPI, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is the name of the school. So, when I left at that, before I left to come here to RPI in Troy, I had already started to kind of encounter some doubts. Before that, I was totally into the church, you know, 2015, you know, I was still in. But I started to question when I was a teacher for my Sunday school course and I was giving a lesson in Sunday school in my singles ward and I was talking about the temple. And so, I was talking to everybody like, you know, hey, we're going to talk about temples. I mean, most of you have been to the temple because you're a returned missionary, so you should be able to tell me all about it. So, I asked, what are the ordinances that we do in the temple?

And everybody got really silent, they got really quiet. And I was like, what's the big deal? You know, like, we can talk about the temple, you know, there's nothing wrong with that.

I think it's just inherent in the LDS psyche that it's like, you know, be careful, you know, you don't want to say too much because that's too bad because you made covenants not to reveal anything. So, you know, they talked about somebody mentioned baptism for the dead and endowments and then somebody raised his hand and then he mentioned the second endowment. And I was like, second endowment?

That sounds familiar. So, I told him, I don't know what that is, but I'll get back to you on that. And so, then I continued the lesson and I went back to study that and I'm sure you guys have heard of that, of the second endowment or the second anointing.

Yeah. So, that was the first I'd heard about it or read about it before my mission and I kind of just like brushed it aside like, you know, that's not really important, don't worry about it. But when I heard about it again, you know, at this point, I had been to college, I was nearly done with my master's degree, so I had a little bit more confidence in my ability to reason, to look at evidence and rationalize the evidence, you know, to absorb the evidence, to analyze it and to come to a conclusion about what kind of, you know, what kind of hypothesis you could base around the data. So, I didn't have to just rely on what others thought about the data, you know, like apologetics or apologists.

I could actually read it myself and kind of trust that my mind would be able to deduce the, you know, the logical conclusion. So, I read into it, you know, I read from the dialogue, the Journal of Mormon Thought where they talked about the second anointing and it just seemed very strange to me and it really bothered me. It got under my skin, this idea that I was working so hard on my mission, I was working so hard to try to be better, to prove to God that I loved him, that, you know, to become something that I wanted to become and trying to rely on Jesus, you know, I felt like I was really praying to Jesus, you know, praying to Heavenly Father that Jesus' atonement could make me into something better and I just really wanted to become like Christ. I just really wanted to be a Christ-like person and I just felt like I just could never get there. It just felt like this goal, like, you know, like a crazy dream where you're trying to get to the doorway and you feel like you're almost within an arm's length and as soon as you get there, then the door shoots past you and you've got to run another mile to get to it.

You know, you feel like you're almost there and there's moments where you feel like you're there but then you lose it, you know. So, this idea that there's this ordinance that's only given to a select few people that guarantees that you will enter heaven no matter what you do, as long as you don't commit murder or commit the sin against the Holy Ghost, you're guaranteed to go to reach exaltation, to become a god, etc, etc. And that just bothered me because I just thought about all the good people in my life that worked so hard and me too, just working so hard to try to have some comfort, some peace, some assurance and never really getting it. But then these people, they got it. You know, these people that received the second anointing, they did receive this peace that I wanted and I thought, why can't we have access to that? Why is it only for this select VIP group?

Why can't I have it? And that really dug under my skin and that kind of forced me to re-examine my own views of the church and the history of the church and it didn't stop there. I started to examine the foundations of the restoration of the priesthood, the whole idea of the Book of Mormon, the validity of the three innate witnesses and their testimonies, Joseph Smith's treasure digging, it's just everything.

It started with the second anointing but it's just re-examining everything and polygamy too. Just the thought not only that he married young women but the fact that he married women that were already married to other men, just all these things just really were disconcerting to me. I was just, it was gradual, it was a very gradual process but like I just felt more and more uneasy over time. And at this time, I had been dating someone for about two years now and I felt like this was just a test of my faith, that this was God testing me and that I would read and I would seek out the answers and I would find an answer to my problems, to these things that had been bothering me. And as time went on, it just kind of got worse and worse and I found more and more problems and less and less answers and I struggled a little bit that summer before leaving for Troy to attend church.

I was doing an internship in Idaho so I think I attended church there but not constantly because I was just digging into books and trying to solve this problem. I was looking at it like an engineer would, you just have a problem, you got to solve it. So there's got to be an answer so that I can keep my faith. But like I said, I held on to this hope that I was going to get through to the end of it and I was going to be a stronger Latter-day Saint and I was going to be a representative of the church and I could help other people who went through the same thing I did. And by that time, I'd been engaged to be married to the girl I'd been dating at that time. And so I had this incentive to want to find answers and I worked really hard at it.

So even when I moved to Troy, started my doctoral studies here, I was spending most of my free time just reading, just digging into any books I could find, anything I could find. And it just kept getting worse and worse and it was more and more difficult and I just was not finding that resolution I was hoping for. And I got to a point where I realized like this may not get any better, you know, that hope that I held on to that I could keep my testimony. I thought like I might lose it, like I might, you know, I might lose my testimony. But I couldn't let anybody know because there's this idea in the LDS Church where it's like if you have doubts, you can't really share them. You kind of just have to go along with the flow.

You have to go with the program. You kind of have to put on a face and pretend like everything's okay even though inside I was just like a complete mess. I was just so messed up in my head and my heart.

I just felt sick to my stomach. It was just a really bad time. So this was about, so it had been after about a year and a half, I've kind of started digging into this stuff where spring of 2016, I was preparing for the marriage and she said, you know, are we still getting married? And I'm like, you know, like I want to, like I just got to hold out, you know, God's going to give me the answer I want.

And I don't remember exactly what spurned it off but, you know, just reading quotes from Brigham Young and, you know, changes to LDS doctrines and just all of this stuff just builds up, you know, that shelf just gets heavier and heavier. And just one day, the stress of that plus the stress of school and exams and things like that, I just completely cracked, you know, I just completely had a mental breakdown. I just told my fiancé, I told her, I can't do this. I'm done.

I can't handle this anymore. Like, that's pretty much all I said. And I told my mom, you know, I told her, I'm like, you know, I can't remember exactly what I said. It was something like, you know, whatever happens, mom, just know that I love you. Kind of a really cryptic message. And I shut off my phone and I was just like in just complete despair and I just, I think it was almost like a movie, you know, like I think it was raining that day.

I'm pretty sure it was raining that day. And so, you know, I was walking home in the rain, I was just like, why God? Like, I just can't believe that I've been lied to, you know, I felt like my shelf had cracked. I'm like, the church can't possibly be true. It's like there's too many logical contradictions. There's too many changes to the doctrines. How could God change the doctrine of salvation one day?

You know, previous LDS prophets said that you have to be married, you know, in a polygamous marriage to get to heaven. And then they changed their mind years later. Just all these contradictory messages. I just couldn't take it and I just lost it. And so for like the next few days, I was just inconsolable. I was just in my apartment just by myself.

I had no one to talk to, no one to vent with, so I just tried to deal with it on my own. And then probably two or three days later, I turned my phone back on. And I just needed time to figure things out.

So I just took those few days off and just tried to figure out my life. And when I turned my phone back on, you know, I had about like 20 messages, you know, 30 messages in my phone pop up all at once. And then I got a phone call right when I turned my phone back on, like right at that instant. I don't know if it was Providence or what, but my friend called me and he said, bro, are you okay? And I said, yeah, I'm all right.

You know, I didn't know that he knew about my mental breakdown. So I was like, yeah, I mean, I'm not really good right now, but I'll be okay. And he said, yeah, man, it's really hard to, really sad to hear about what happened. And so I was confused.

I was like, well, like, what are you talking about? And he says, yeah, you know, so, you know, I'm really sorry. So when did you find out that your fiance broke off the engagement?

And so like in my mind, I was like, oh, I guess it's often, you know, it was probably a month and a half away. And so she broke it off because based on my message, you know, saying I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't be in the church anymore, that kind of thing. So she broke off the engagement and I was kind of left there to pick up the pieces by myself in New York. It was a really rough time. I didn't have any real friends or family here. So I just tried to figure things out and figure out who I am, figure out what I want to believe, figure out where I want to go.

And it's kind of that way for a few weeks. Did you talk with her at all prior to that about what you were going through? I tried to hint at some things I had been struggling with. I had mentioned things like she was a returned missionary, so she really wanted to be in the church for the rest of her life, but she was kind of like a lot of LDSR, I think, where you go and you tell everybody how much you love the church and you believe the church is true, but it's a very fine line with that testimony, kind of an anxiousness or a fear that there may be just one thing that sets you off or proves that the church isn't true. So I had known in the past, based on other conversations, where I was more intellectually open to reading stuff that may not be pro-LDS material, but anything like that, if I told her I was reading a book that was not written by an LDS author or something, it kind of freaked her out a little bit. She'd be like, well, are you reading the Book of Mormon? Are you praying?

Are you staying strong in the church? And I'd be like, yeah, I don't worry. It's just something interesting to read and that would kind of appease her. So I knew that if I were to bring any of this up with her, it would really scare her away.

But I tried to share some things in a non-confrontational way. I'd be like, so I was reading about, what is her name? It's a woman that has like five names and she was married like three or four times.

I think her name starts with like a Z, like Ziantha or something like that. She was one of the women that was married to, she was married previously and then she was married polygamously to Joseph Smith. And then after Joseph Smith died, she went to live, she was kind of always staying with her first husband, even though she was married to Joseph Smith, she stayed with her first husband.

But then when Joseph died, Brigham Young came in and kind of like took over and kind of took all of Joseph Smith's previous wives, took care of them. So he kind of tore her from her first husband's house and said, well, she's my wife. So that story was one of the real breaking points in my testimony. I was like, that's just despicable. Like literally forcing a woman from her husband's home.

I just couldn't stand that. So I kind of tried to bring that story up with her. Like, what do you think about that? What if that were us today? Like what if we're like after we're married, if the stake president came up to us and said, you know what, I know she's your wife, but God told me that she needs to be my wife and she can't live with you anymore.

And I was like, wouldn't that be really crazy? And she said, well, you know, I don't know. She didn't really want to talk about it. She was trying to avoid it and didn't really want to think about it and kind of just said, well, that's a part of history. You know, you won't have to worry about it now.

It's done with, you know, we don't practice polygamy. So I tried to bring stuff up with her, but I knew after that conversation that she just was not, you know, like her shields were up. She was just not willing to talk about anything. So that was part of why I kind of exploded emotionally and mentally is I just had no outlet.

I had no one to talk to about this stuff. And no one here in New York knows anything about Mormonism, you know. So they're like, I don't know. Yeah, it sounds kind of weird to me too, you know, if I brought anything up.

So yeah. So after that point, like I briefly felt like I was like considering all options, like am I going to become an agnostic or an atheist? But at that point I was like, no, like, you know, thinking back to my mission and other times I'm like, no, there's too many times where God, I felt like God was there in my life, you know, either emotionally or just felt like I'd been protected or felt like God had interceded in my life.

There's no way there can't be a God. Like that's just preposterous and kind of try to figure out what to do. And so I was trying to deal with all this information, you know, after the emotional explosion, I was like, okay, I think I can make this work. Maybe I can stay a Latter-day Saint, but we'll see.

I'm open to options. So I think I'm an intellectual guy, you know, like I feel like God's blessed me with a certain level of logic, you know, by his grace. So I started listening to debates on YouTube. So I was like, well, you know, maybe I'll consider, you know, other Christian religions. So I just googled like Christian debate or something like that. And I came across one of James White's, Dr. James White's debates with Father Mitch Pacwa. It was either on the papacy or the Roman Catholic priesthood was the first one I listened to. And so that introduced me to kind of like Christian theology versus Catholic theology.

And I just love debates. So like I just watched a ton of them on YouTube and started reading books and things like that. And I just found it very intellectually stimulating. And I was like, you know, like maybe I can make something out of this, you know, like maybe I can stay LDS and like make it work, you know, like, sure, I won't believe this other stuff. Yeah, but you know, like it's a personal experience, you know, you can do what you want with it. I kind of tried to go the subjective route, you know, kind of tried to ignore the parts that I didn't like and just keep what I liked.

But it's still difficult because that didn't really fix the problem. You know, I still felt like I was a sinner that needed to be saved. I still felt like I didn't know what to do. And I've been introduced to the Trinity, you know, I started reading stuff from James White and watching his program, The Dividing Line. And so like I started to learn a little bit about Christian theology and even Reformed theology. And it kind of just grew and grew like this need, this hunger to just be saved or just to know God. Because I was like, I don't know if God is the Mormon God. I don't know if it's the Christian God.

I don't know what he is, but whatever he is, I just want to, I just need to be saved. And so I just felt this hickey, this gross, this just heavy feeling for days around the summer of 2016. Just kept growing again, you know, like that same kind of just gross feeling I had when I was studying LDS church history. Just felt like just gross, just like I just need the Lord. And so I remember kneeling down to pray in my apartment and going to God in prayer and saying, God, I know I don't know what you are exactly.

I don't know who you are. If you're the LDS God, you know, if you're an exalted man, I'll believe that. If you're the Triune God, I'll believe that.

I don't care what it is. You know, I just just cried out to God, said, just please just just save me from this despair, from these sins. Just just like I want you to save me. Just cried out to him, you know, and I just felt so disgusting and just felt like I just needed him, just needed him to pull me out of this, this mire that I was caught in. And yeah, I felt like I'd had a spiritual experiences in my life. But but at that moment, I had an experience I'd never had before. It was just like it's just like walking through a waterfall where you're just, you know, you're covered in mud.

You're just disgusting, stinky, and you're just completely weighed down. And like I felt like I was just walking through a waterfall and like all that mud and all that filth and that muck was just washed from like head to toe. Just all that fear, that anger, that guilt, the unsurety, the uncertainty, all of that was just washed away instantly. And I just felt just pure joy. And I'd never felt anything like that before. I went from like being completely tired and just run down and just like almost spiritually dead to just feeling like I was a completely new person. Like I just had energy. I could just I was just running around my apartment just feeling so completely ecstatic. It was just it was probably like two or three in the morning, but I felt like it was one in the afternoon. You know, I just had so much energy and I just remember lying on my bed and just thanking and praising God and just felt like this is the answer.

You know, when I was studying LDS church history, I wanted this answer. And and like I was I was wanting this answer to just assure me and I and I wasn't sure where to go after that. But I just I just felt like God had had connected with me again, you know, like, but really connected with me in a way that I'd never had before.

And so I just went to bed praising and thanking God. And the best way I can describe it is like the next two or three days is like I was just floating on a cloud. Like everywhere I went, I just felt like I was up in the I was up in the air, like I was just floating around wherever I went.

I just had this gift to my to my step. I just had this energy that I'd never had before. And I just felt like it was a completely new person.

And even though nothing changed, you know, I still went to the same lab, I sat at the same seat, I had lived in the same apartment, I just felt like I was just completely different. I just had a desire to just want to know more, just want to learn more. And, and I didn't know where I didn't know if I was going to be LDS, you know, I kind of felt like, you know, maybe this is the answer I wanted.

Maybe I'll, I'll be able to serve a mission. I can get it, you know, like, as a senior missionary, I can get right in the temple now, you know, I didn't know, I was just excited for whatever was coming. So I waffled, you know, I was trying to figure out where to go from there, seek God's guidance. So I kept reading, started getting really into Bible commentaries, excuse me, started getting really into Bible commentaries, and study Bibles, and watching debates, and I watched James White's program. So he's reformed. And he would, he would read passages like John six, and he would say, you know, no one can come to the Father, no one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father.

And if he's drawn, if he comes to me, then I will, he will be lifted up at the last day. And so then James White would describe that from the reform perspective, and I'd be like, there's no way that's true, you know, I tried to, I tried to prove it from like a Mormon perspective that he was wrong, and I couldn't disprove him, but I wasn't willing to accept what he said either, you know, I'm like, well, that's what the text says, you know, so, so I would read it, and that's, that's, I was like, well, you know, I'm not really quite to accept that, then maybe there's a different interpretation I can go with, but, so I kind of put that on the back burner. And I considered, after watching the Mormon stories a lot, I watched the Hamer, what's his name? John Hamer.

John Hamer, yeah, thank you. I watched his, his Mormon stories where he talked about how the community of Christ could be a place for doubting Mormons to go, you know, if they, they feel like the LDS church isn't right for them, and it's kind of a transition place to go, and they were, I was still kind of unsure about the Trinity, but it's, you know, it seemed to make sense, you know, over time it started to make more sense. And then so I considered for a time going to the community of Christ, but after that I was like, I was trying to rekindle that relationship with my former fiancé, and there was a possibility that, you know, that we could, we could still get married, so that was kind of a temptation too, I think. Maybe not temptation, but just my thought process is like, well maybe this is true, you know, so I'll at least give it a shot. So I tried to, I tried to pick up the pieces and stay LDS again, but just the more I studied, the more I read over the months and months, the less, you know, I was like, I can't, I can't do this subjective thing, I can't, I can't be part of a church and pick and choose what I want to believe.

It's either true or it's not. There's no, there's no cafeteria Mormonism in my mind, you know, it's like you're either a pure Mormon or you're not in, so it wasn't over that time period where I was just continuing to study Christian theology, study, try to figure out what I, what I wanted to believe, what I thought the Bible taught, that was the only real anchor I had was God in the Bible. So I was like, wherever, wherever God leads me, that's where I'm going to go. I don't care where it leads me, but I'm just going to believe truth, no matter where it takes me. So a lot of, a lot of transitions in 2016. And so, yeah, so then I studied, I looked around for a while for a church and wasn't quite sure which church to join or which church to go to because as a Mormon, leaving the church, your first thought is like, okay, well, if I'm going to be Christian, which one of the thousands of denominations should I join, right?

That's usually the first question they ask. So, well, with Reformed theology, that limits it significantly. So at my beginning of my journey, when I kind of had my conversion experiences, I was like, well, what if I leave and become Christian?

Where do I go? I could become a community of Christ, that's familiar to me, you know, it's very similar, or I could do this or that. But then when, you know, Reformed theology, I think God, God kind of used as a means to help make it easier for me because I'm a very, I have a very hard time making decisions, especially decisions as important as eternal heaven or hell, you know, like which church to join. So I think God kind of used that as a means to make it easier for me. And like I said, it just made sense to me.

So that's why I was drawn towards it. So eventually I was drawn to, in my area, I found two churches I could attend. I could attend an OPC church, so Orthodox Presbyterian Church, or Reformed Baptist Church. So I started attending those two churches kind of simultaneously. While I was trying to figure out the theology and figure out which one I would want to join.

That's very cool. Well, Matthew, let me ask you one last question from me. Is there anything that you would like to say to any Latter-day Saints that are listening in right now? I would just urge them to go back to the Word.

Don't take what I say as authoritative. You know, I'm not an authority, I'm just a guy who's, I believe, has been saved by God's grace alone. Just go to the Bible. As Paul said, there may be some passages that you don't understand or are having trouble grappling with, but just go to the Bible and just read it and just pray for God to teach you what it says.

There's either one or two options. If you're right, if Latter-day Saints are right and it turns out that I'm wrong, when you read the Bible, you know, let's just think of this hypothetical situation. If I'm right and they're wrong, they have nothing to lose by studying the Bible in depth. But hypothetically, you know, I truly believe that God saved me and that this is the correct position, but I'm just saying hypothetically, if we're right, then you have everything to gain by reading the Word and trusting what it says.

So I just urge them just to go to the Word. One of the books that's least studied by Mormons is Romans. Just read Romans straight through.

Start with chapter 1 and just pray for God to give you understanding. Because in it, it says that God justifies the ungodly, not by our works, but by our faith. And that's one thing that Joseph Smith changed in his inspired translation, is he changed it from God justifies the ungodly to God justifies not the ungodly. And I would just ask any LDS listeners just to think about why he would add that not in there. Why do we have to become godly first before God can justify us? Is it even possible, based on Romans chapters 1 through 3, can we become godly by our own works and then God justifies us?

How is that even possible? Just go back to the Word. Just read it, pray on it, have God bring you understanding. And if there are Latter-day Saints that are already doubting, that are already, you know, kind of heading out of the church, just don't feel like every church is now a lie. That's a lie that the church told you.

It's not one is true and the rest are false. The point is not which church is true, the point is how are you saved? How do you come to know God? I don't believe that my church is the only true church. I believe that Christ is the way to salvation.

It's a relationship with Him. Go to Him in faith. It's not about finding the right building or the right theological construct. I could be wrong. I could be wrong in my belief of Calvinism or as a Reformed Baptist.

I could be wrong. But what matters is Christ. That's the thing that I'll hold to. And that's what matters the most in our salvation. So like I said, you have really nothing to lose. So I just challenge every LDS person just to go to the Word and just read it and not be afraid.

Just trust in God. Amen. We thank you for tuning into this episode of the Outer Brightness Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Please visit the Outer Brightness Podcast page on Facebook. Feel free to send us a message there with comments or questions by clicking send a message at the top of the page.

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We hope to hear from you soon. You can subscribe to the Outer Brightness Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Cast Box, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, PodBeam, Spotify and Stitcher. Also, you can check out our new YouTube channel, and if you like it, be sure to lay hands on that subscribe button and confirm it. If you like what you hear, please give us a rating and review wherever you listen and help spread the word. You can also connect with Michael the Ex-Mormon Apologist at fromwater2wine.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 Adams Road. Learn more about Adams Road by visiting their ministry page at adamsroadministry.com.

Stay Bright, Flyer Flies! The word made French, the risen Son. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of our God through ages remains. Lord, you promised that we, as your church, would remain upon this rock, and the gates are bound to keep.

Your word unspoiled in purity. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of our God endures forever. All of this world is in decay, but the word of our God through ages remains. As the rain falls down from heaven and waters he hurts, bringing it life.

So the word that goes out from your mouth will not return empty, but does what you desire. Lord, we hear your word and believe in you. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of our God endures forever. All of this world is in decay, but the word of our God through ages remains. The word of God remains.