WHAT Church IS True? Part 1

You're entering Outer Brightness. In the first episode, we pose the question, what if Mormonism isn't true? The question was chosen in part because we tend to rarely examine the fundamental aspects of our lives. Society, the meaning of life, the repetitive actions, the reasons why we believe in God or don't, the meaning of life in the universe, etc. We take many of the things we consider to be true for granted as if they are true without question. This is a normal part of human existence because if we were to constantly doubt and question everything with which we perceive or interact in our daily lives, our minds would be filled with so much confusion and doubt that we would hardly have the courage to turn on a light or take a step outside of our homes. But when we are considering the topic of God, life after death, eternal life and all kinds of questions that affect our existence now and in the eternities, we must be willing to examine them. Is there anything worth more of our time, attention, prayer and study than our eternal souls? The topic was addressed from each of our unique perspectives and experiences. We hope and pray that our previous discussion will be used by God to open the minds of those who aren't questioning and bring comfort to those who are already in the process of questioning.

This leads us immediately to the topic at hand of the current discussion. If we, as either current, active Latter-day Saints or post-Latter-day Saints, have accepted that the LDS Church is not what it claims to be, the only true church on the face of the earth, it leads to one of several very fundamental questions. If I leave the LDS Church, where do I go? Which church is true then? This concept of true churches versus false churches is completely ingrained into the mind of those who have grown up in a Latter-day Saint environment. We consider that there must be only one true church and all other churches are wrong. We look at the landscape of Christianity and other religions and see so much dispute, confusion and debate that the thought of leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is terrifying. I experienced this personally in my faith transition from the LDS Church. One of the most common passages of scripture I used while I served as a full-time LDS missionary in Belgium and France to show that there was only one true church was Ephesians 4-5, quote, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, end quote. This also proved that there was only one way to baptize, so I thought. So how come Christians all over the world were divided on their method of baptism? And who should be baptized? Adult believers only?

Adult believers and their children? The quote, great apostasy, end quote, that Joseph Smith spoke of just seemed completely obvious to me. If this great apostasy hadn't happened, we wouldn't have so many denominations, right?

But is this really the case? Does the fact that Christianity doesn't agree on every single topic mean that none of them have the truth? In this episode, your hosts, the Sons of Light, will tackle some of these questions and hopefully shed some light on what questioning Latter-day Saints have asked themselves at least once in their lives. What church is true then?

We welcome you and hope you'll enjoy your time with us. In brightest day and blackest night, no evil shall escape our sight. All right, that was a little Green Lantern reference there for you.

I had to squeeze that in. Before you began doubting the truth claims of the LDS church, what were your impressions of other Christian churches? Are they positive, negative, or neutral? So let's start with Michael on that question. Yes, I had a mostly positive view of other Christian churches. When I looked at other Christian churches, I believed that they were a stepping stone for somebody to become a Latter-day Saint. After all, it was so much easier to preach Mormonism to somebody who already had a concept of Scripture and Jesus Christ. And I believed that I was just adding something to what they already believed. When I was a missionary, you know, I'd say, I'm not trying to take away anything that you believe, I'm just trying to give you more truth. And so I did have a very positive impression of other Christian churches.

I worked at a Christian thrift shop before my mission and had a lot of friends there. So definitely mostly positive, but there were a couple of churches that would speak out against Mormonism, then I would have the opposite view of them and I would consider them to be a negative, hateful church. So yeah, it just really depended on if they were talking about me or if they were just going about their own business. They had a general positive view, unless if they gave you reason to believe otherwise. Yeah, pretty much.

Okay. And Paul, what about you? I think it depends on what time of life I was in. So as a child, as I was growing up, I had a pretty positive view of other churches, I think. My father was born into a Lutheran family.

He's the first generation of a German immigrant family that was born here in America. So he grew up Lutheran and on weekends when my grandfather was working in another town and had to take the car, my grandmother would take them to a Baptist church that was just across the street from where they lived in New York. So he got the experience of both Lutherans and Baptists. And when he would talk to us when I was a child in family home evening or other settings about his conversion to Mormonism, he always spoke of his upbringing in the Lutheran church and attending Baptist services in a very positive way. So I think growing up, I had a positive view of other churches. But as I prepared to go on my mission in 1997, the Southern Baptist Convention held their big meeting in Salt Lake City and went door to door there to evangelize Mormons.

And that was, of course, all the news in Salt Lake City. And as I did splits with missionaries in the months leading up to my mission, of course, it was a big event for them as well and kind of crystallized in my mind something similar to what Michael was talking about where, okay, so there's this other group that doesn't like us and doesn't think we're Christians, so they're horrible and they're hate-filled. And as I went on my mission and read books like James E. Talmadge's The Great Apostasy, like Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine and the way that he approached Roman Catholicism in that book, and other Christian churches as well, I think I imbibed those very negative views of other churches pretty heavily while I was on my mission. When I came home and married a convert to Mormonism who had been raised Baptist and began interacting with her family, my views, again, began to soften. So I think I went from positive to kind of a very staunch Latter-day Saint, where the only true church view for a number of years and then back to a more positive view.

Okay, that's interesting, yeah. It sounds like you both had a lot more interaction with Christians than I have in my life. Before I went on my mission, I really didn't interact with many Christians. I had friends that were Roman Catholics and they were cool. And then on my mission, I met some people who would come up to us and say, oh, you're part of a cult, right? You know, that kind of thing.

So like just really up front and really, really strong at us. So I didn't hate them or have negative feelings for them. I just felt like they were nice people but caught in a system that was incorrect.

So I felt like they were being misled by the leaders. And I also read The Great Apostasy by Talmadge. And so that really paints a really negative picture of Roman Catholicism, especially, and infant baptism. So yeah, I guess I would also say mostly positive but just due to the fact that I really didn't interact with many Christians and I figured most of them were good people. Some of them might be extreme, or, you know, very antagonistic in their evangelism of Mormons. But overall, you know, I felt like I had a positive view of Christians. So, and by the way, please cut in if you have more thoughts or more questions. So following up, when you began your faith transition, did the prospect of leaving the LDS church and joining another church come to your mind? Were there thoughts of excitement, fear, reservation, or something else?

Let's start with Paul this time. The prospect of leaving the LDS church for another church at the outset of my faith transition was not something I really considered. The way I viewed things is that I would probably either remain Mormon in some form or fashion, and that was likely going to be a more liberal approach to Mormonism, much like a Eugene England or perhaps like a John Boleyn attempted to do for a number of years, where the specific truth claims only mattered in the sense that they didn't maybe fully believe them.

But the culture of Mormonism, the values of instilled in families and in children were viewed generally in a positive light. That's kind of where I saw myself going, there or to some form of agnosticism or atheism. When I, at the outset of my faith transition, it took me a number of years before I was willing to consider that really that my faith transition might result in leaving Mormonism to begin with and then after that to seeking to remain a Christian and, or religious in some sense. So initially, no. The idea of not being LDS was kind of anathema in my mind.

Okay. And to follow up on that, how about we talk about how you felt later on in your faith transition. Did the idea of leaving the LDS church for another Christian church become more palatable or more acceptable in your mind?

No, I don't think so. It's kind of interesting. You know, I talked about the experience with Angela and I going and talking at the park and it really, I really didn't feel free to entertain the idea of going outside of the LDS church until that conversation. And I don't know whether that was, I mean, I do know I felt a lot of pressure to be the faithful member of our marriage as it pertains to the LDS church.

I put a lot of weight on not being someone who would harm a convert's testimony. And so in my mind, even up until several months before we made the decision to leave, I was still saying in conversations to her that I couldn't imagine being anything other than Mormon. So it was really kind of a sudden decision, but it was a situation where, you know, when I knew she was willing to leave and okay with it, I felt free to kind of let go of that pressure that I was putting on myself. And so then after that discussion with the pressure off your shoulders, you kind of felt like you could relax or you could consider other options or other avenues.

Yeah. And it did become exciting at that point because like I said, I had gone from a very, so my insistence that I couldn't imagine being anything other than Mormon was kind of like a grasping. And I see it sometimes in Latter-day Saints online as well.

It's kind of like this is my tribe mentality and this is always going to be my tribe mentality. And once that was gone and I had reached a point of having generally positive views of people of other Christian churches, people of other Christian faiths, it was kind of exciting to explore that. And I was doing that somewhat in the background. I started reading books about the history of Christianity in America.

There's a book called Pilgrims in Their Own Land by Martin Marty that I read that I just devoured and found very, very fascinating. And so there was kind of growing in me towards the end of my time in the LDS church, an interest in. But even then, I held back with being open to actually considering it even till the very end. And even then, I kind of tried to dig in my heels and be like, well, let's go to the unity of Christ or some other Mormon congregation that's not the LDS church in Salt Lake. So yeah, I held on to that culture for a long time. Yeah, I think that resonates with me as well.

How about you, Michael? When you began your faith transition and then was it exciting to leave to join another church? And then if now it's beginning, then later on, like how did your perception or the idea of leaving the LDS church and joining another one, how did that affect you? By the time I had my, or by the time my faith transition began, I was already having a lot of discussions with Christians on my forum online, and I'd already made a lot of really good Christian friends. And it was actually a Christian argument, the impossible gospel argument, that was making me have my faith crisis. And so I think logically in my mind, I kind of knew that I was going to have to decide between being a Latter-day Saint or being a Christian.

And there wasn't really another option in my mind. And I was kind of like Paul a little bit there too, because I was starting to kind of think like, well, maybe the Book of Mormon is still true, but maybe it's one of the other sects that's actually true. Like maybe I should go join the RLDS or the FLDS.

Actually, I never thought of joining the FLDS. And just had so many positive experiences on my mission, meeting with Christians, and even when I would debate with them, I always just felt this love from these Christians. And I remember one time on my mission, we were walking, we were in our missionary garb and we passed these two ladies, and they kind of witnessed to us for a second and they just said, hey, just so you know, we pray for you every Sunday at our church.

And I was just blown away by that. I was like, okay, I thought you guys hated us, you know, but you pray for us at church, like that's awesome. And I kind of started getting to this point when my faith crisis happened where I kind of wasn't really liking the people at my church that much anymore. The culture was really starting to get to me just how easy it is to judge others or to be judged if you're not wearing the right clothes or you don't have the right education or you don't have the right number of children.

You know, it's just so hard to fit in an award sometimes. And I was just like, you know, if it wasn't for the doctrine being true in Mormonism, I would almost rather be a member of a Protestant church, because I really like these guys. And I don't know if I was just kind of thinking the grass was greener at that point. But the further along I got in my faith transition, like the people that were really helping me were Christian, and they're just, you know, giving me advice, and they weren't pressuring me. You know, people were saying, you know, I'll love you even if you stay LDS your whole life. But I was getting more of that pressure from Mormonism, you know, where they got up in conference and said, if you leave here, where will you go?

And just put the pressure on me. And so Christianity just started looking more and more appealing the further I got into my faith crisis. Yeah, that's really interesting. I remember that talk, too.

I think it was Ballard. I forget if that was on my mission or if it was after, but I do distinctly remember hearing it and feeling it was kind of a little bit manipulative to be like, well, this is all you've got, so there's not going to be anything better for you than what you've already got, so you might as well stay here. That was kind of the vibe I was getting. And at the time, I was still, I wasn't questioning the church at all, but I felt like that that talk was a little strange. I mean, I think the purpose of what he was trying to say is, he was trying to say, we have so many blessings in this church, you know, that nobody else has, and we're just so blessed that it came off as kind of manipulative. So I kind of understand the pressure that you're talking about. And when you're both saying, it's funny how three different people, three different experiences, different parts of the country, but we all had similar thoughts because I thought the same thing. I thought maybe, well, you know, I find a lot of truth in the Book of Mormon. I think it's a really great text. I found so much strength in it over my lifetime.

So maybe, maybe I can hold on to that. And I'll just forget about the historical things that bother me with polygamy, with the Book of Abraham, things like that. I can just reject that, and I can keep what I like for myself, kind of like a cafeteria Mormonism is what I was trying to do. And I wasn't willing to get rid of my faith or my attachment to the LDS church either. And then as I got further along in my faith transition, and I realized that the community of Christ, they're very similar in a lot of ways. And they had the things that I struggled to get rid of, the Book of Mormon, that kind of thing. They had all that and they rejected most of what I rejected, you know, baptism for the dead, the Book of Abraham. They started to take a more honest look at their history.

So that was a real option that I had considered for a long time as well. So it's just funny to hear both of you say similar, have similar thoughts and experiences. Mormon faith. All of us have left that religion and have been drawn to faith in Jesus Christ based on biblical teachings. The name of our podcast, outer brightness reflects John one nine 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, our brightness. Our purpose is to share our journeys of faith and what God has done in drawing us to his son. We have conversations about all aspects of that transition.

The fears, challenges, joys, and everything in between. We're glad you found us, and we hope you'll stick around. So, through our faith transition, God led us to him in faith in Christ and out of the LDS Church. Continuing from what we just discussed, could you describe how you finally, how God led you to the point where, okay, I need to leave the LDS Church, and then you're considering joining another Christian Church. So, can each of you describe how God led you to worship with a particular group you're with, your churches, your congregations, and if you'd like, you could describe what group it is, and what you believe, or what they teach, whatever you'd like to describe.

So, I left that question kind of open-ended. Maybe I should rephrase it and make it more concise, but in general, I just want to know, when God led you out of Mormonism to your Christian Church, how did he lead you there, and what is it that brought you to where you are now? I'll go ahead and just talk about that a little bit, because for me, it has been a journey that is just, I've had to start the journey over several times, and it's one that I'm still on, unfortunately, and it's a real struggle. Probably the biggest thing that I've struggled with since leaving the church, and what's made it difficult is, I mean, the way that God led me out of Mormonism, and into Protestant Christianity in general, was just, you know, opening my eyes to imputed righteousness, and realizing that it is Christ's obedience by which I am worthy to enter heaven.

It's his worthiness given to me, and so that is the doctrine that I care about, and when I left Mormonism, you know, I told the sister missionaries that I didn't care if the church had a bunch of other true doctrines, but if the other people were right about grace, I had to leave, because it was more important than all the other things that the church had. You know, I'm like, this grace is really what I want, and when I left, you know, I've kind of seen in my journey that I've needed different things as I've grown as a Christian, so right when I left Mormonism, I went to the most rock-out church that I could possibly find. I mean, they baptized me to a drumroll, okay? If you haven't been baptized to a drumroll, you haven't been. You mean like a literal, like they had literal drums they played?

Yes. Literal drums, laser lights, and you know, a really cool pastor, I still think he's really cool, and I loved it because I felt like, okay, there's freedom here. I'm not restricted by the code of Mormonism where I have to wear my white button-down shirt and a tie, and I have to not clap after a song, and it's like I have this freedom, I'm not claustrophobic anymore, and I really liked that for a while. After about a year in that church, I felt like I was really missing some good Christian fellowship, like I had been going to this church and I didn't really know anybody except for the pastor and maybe two other people, and so then I ended up going to another church and I made some of the good friends and I really liked it there, and then the divorce happened and ended up moving, and so I've had to kind of restart that journey several times, but what I found is that I can pretty much be happy going to a wide variety of churches. I've gone to several and I usually find that there's things that I love about every church and there's things that I'm not as excited about sometimes. I'm still stuck a little bit in the Mormon mindset where it's like, okay, you know, the church is gonna be perfect, and one of my pastors told me, you know, if you find the perfect church, don't tell me about it because if I go I'm gonna mess it up, but yeah, I've been going to a Presbyterian Church actually, probably the most often recently, which is interesting because I don't adhere to Calvinism yet, but I really enjoy it and the essentials, the things that I believe in the most heavily are taught there and they preach from the Bible and that's what really matters to me. They're not talking about themselves or the leaders of the church aren't the focus, it is all about Jesus and as long as that's what's going on, but I'm happy.

That's me in a nutshell. That's great. Well, we'll be sure to pray for you for where you're moving to find a good solid church you can attend. Yeah, I think I think I already have found one, it's just been too far away for me to go to, but we're gonna be close to it. The pastor there has a heart for ex-Mormons and they teach real solid, real solid doctrine. I remember I went there once and I was just blown away by the message because he was talking about how when you become a Christian, it's not all sunshine and roses that it literally says in the Bible to take up our cross and follow Christ and they were talking about the discipleship and what it actually means and just throwing the hard truth at us and I was like, oh this is really good, I haven't actually heard much of this in a lot of the churches that I go to, so I'm excited to go over there again. Yeah, that's great. I think that's what we need is biblical preaching.

We have a tendency to want to add different programs and things like that, but really the power is in the Word, so when they stick to the Word, you can't go wrong. I agree and we were going to a church recently here and it was a big mega church and we went the first time and the pastor just he had such a huge personality and taught with a lot of power and I think that first time we went, we really liked it, but the more we went, we started realizing that he was not using the Bible a lot or he was using the message translation a lot and he'd be talking about himself and him and his wife's calling to come and start the church. Do you remember Joel Osteen's church? It wasn't Joel Osteen, I would have recognized him.

That's Houston. This is in Georgetown, just north of Austin, but they must be brothers or something because they came in and they were talking about how God loves everybody. If we think about our worst enemy, God loves them and it just started putting questions in my mind too, like what does God love the people that are not saved and I don't know, just Calvinist thinking starting to jump in there. I've been talking to Matthew too much lately, but I'm just like, it's just it was almost like they were talking about like universalism though, like oh God loves your worst enemy, he's crazy about us and he'd have your picture on his fridge and I'm like this all sounds really good and it's giving me these warm fuzzies, but I'm like is this really the gospel and that's really what I want is the gospel and I don't care about everything else.

How about you Paul? Yeah, so I talked about sitting in the foyer at the LDS church in kind of the final months when I was in a place spiritually and emotionally where I was just reaching the point where I could not bring myself to feel a fidelity to the LDS church or even feel connected to it very well because I had reached a point where I didn't believe that its distinctive truth claims were true, but I was still kind of forcing myself and trying to force my family to go and I would sit in the foyer and look out across the street and there was Lakeside Christian Church and people would be going in and they were happy. I could tell by the way they were walking as a family that they were happy and it just it was appealing to me, but we did try a number of different churches before we landed at Lakeside. We tried a United Methodist Church because we knew the youth pastor there who was a neighbor to us and we enjoyed it, but we decided we might just research out some churches and there was another church in our area that was was fairly popular and growing quite rapidly here in the Cincinnati area had just opened up a second location and you know was kind of building churches in former kind of big-box stores. It had that kind of a feel to it as well kind of like a consumerism type Christianity and we have gone to Christmas presentations at that church and have really enjoyed it, but as far as worshiping there probably not and it kind of didn't appeal to us at the time. So eventually we did land at deciding to try Lakeside Christian Church and for me initially it wasn't the doctrine that drew me there, it was walking in the door and being greeted by people who had the genuine love of Christ for others who were walking in the door.

The worship music was good, they were in a transition when we walked in between the previous lead pastor who had been there for 30 years and the new lead pastor who was going to be replacing him, so they were preaching through a sermon series together and they were also in the transition from hymn books to contemporary music at the time and seeing a church willing to go through change like that was kind of refreshing to me coming from you know the LDS Church that had had the same hymn book for my entire lifetime and so it was kind of refreshing. In terms of you know the Christian tradition that Lakeside belongs to, it's part of what scholars call the American Restoration Movement or sometimes referred to as Campbellism and I know that that kind of can trigger Mormons maybe even more than Calvinism can because you know Alexander Campbell who was kind of an early leader in that movement was one of the first to lead and kind of review the Book of Mormon in his publication, in his periodical that he published and it wasn't a glowing review so from a Mormon history kind of standpoint Campbellites are kind of the enemy in some ways. But as I kind of dug in and learned more about what you know what the American Restoration Movement was all about I learned it was kind of like an early precursor sort of to evangelicalism and some of the same principles of evangelicalism so some of it's kind of some of the main distinctive themes of the movement.

There's kind of some pithy little statements that kind of get or you know I don't know that so much anymore but in the past you've kind of gotten bandied about within the movement such as where the scriptures speak we speak, where the scriptures are silent we are silent. That one was an important one to me because as I kind of lost the ability to trust Mormonism and its views on continuing revelation the idea of a solid foundation in the Word of God was appealing to me. Just what the Word of God was for a number of years I had to work through and figure out but that one was important to me. So another one that was really important to me was we are Christians only but not the only Christians. That was important to me as I came out of out of the Latter-day Saint faith because of the hardline view that the LDS Church took as I was growing up I sensed that maybe it's not as hardline anymore but that the only Christians resided within the LDS faith and it was only the LDS faith that had authority to baptize and authority to quote-unquote make Christians so that one the idea that we're Christians only but we're not the only Christians was important to me.

Another one is in essentials unity and in opinions liberty and all things love that was also important to me because I had this view coming out of the LDS faith that as a Latter-day Saint as an ex-Latter-day Saint there would be those who would not accept me and I had a lot of sorting out of my beliefs to do and I didn't want to be or feel pressured to immediately conform my beliefs to some set of doctrines I wanted to think through things and then and compare what what I believe with the Word of God and so this idea that that there could be unity and essentials and and yet there be maybe some disagreement and non essentials but love overruling everything that was important to me so you know there there are things about the the Restoration movement the American Restoration movement that can not only trigger Mormons but can also trigger other Christians people within within that movement tend to be Arminian and so there can there can be some some squabbles at times between people within the Restoration movement and Calvinists their view on baptism is very similar to the Latter-day Saint view of baptism in terms of you know the baptism should be by immersion and it's for the remission of sins and and some some within the movement take it as far as that it's a requirement for salvation and so that can that can cause some disagreements between Restoration movement folks and and other Christian movements Christian traditions but in in many ways some of those things made it kind of a soft place for me to land and think through things and so I'm I'm thankful for that and and I see that as a grace of God I think that that God knows what each of us needs as he draws us to him and there's a lot of ways in which I needed some of this some of the use of the Restoration movement to to kind of give me the freedom to think through things and work through my beliefs and and work on conforming them to the Word of God so yeah so Paul let me just jump in here real quick because because of our background right when I hear the word restoration you know I'm automatically assuming that that means like Christianity fell into an apostasy like would you say that that holds a lot of the same weight as when Mormon say restoration or is it a different thing in some ways yes so the the term the great apostasy didn't didn't originate with Joseph Smith it's a term that Alexander Campbell used quite extensively in his in his writings I think he wrote a series of treatises that that later became a book called I think he called it the Christian system and and and I believe that that he uses that term quite extensively in that in that series of treatises and that that was published before the founding of the LDS Church in between the early I think the early 1820s timeframe and so yes they're there within the Restoration movement there there has been in the past kind of a view of you know that there was a falling away but I think that was a that was also an outgrowth I don't think it originated either with Alexander Campbell I think that that term came through Protestantism in general with regards to its view of Roman Catholicism but in terms of what restoration meant to Alexander Campbell and his father Thomas Campbell who were kind of two of the key figureheads in the movement and Barton W Stone was another it means something quite different than what it meant to Latter-day Saints the Latter-day Saint view is that priesthood authority was lost and had to be restored by angelic visitation from John the Baptist and Peter James and John and that's how the restoration occurred and so it's very within the latter's Latter-day Saint tradition it's very much a restoration of authority within the American Restoration movement the view is more like the Protestant view of back to the sources you know is it there's the I forget the Latin phrase but within Protestantism there was kind of a call to go back to the sources and that's kind of a view that the Red the Restoration movement took was you know the Bible is our is our foundation and our authority for understanding what Christianity is and should be and so you know going back to kind of the pithy statements where the scriptures speak we speak where the scriptures are silent we are silent kind of you like you know that's that's our guide and you know do Bible things in Bible ways called Bible things by Bible names it is a very much very much a looking back to the Bible as as the source of authority the source of doctrine the source of practice within the church so a restoring of New Testament Christianity in the sense of what does the Bible present to us it sounds it reminds me a little bit of the know what we would call today is fundamentalism because that kind of has a negative connotation these days but what the original fundamentalism movement started out to be where it was kind of like getting back to the roots of what scripture said and kind of stripping away you know other traditions or other things that could that have been kind of built around it sounds kind of a similar kind of idea right which I think which I think is was what the Reformation was all about in the beginning too was was there in this time period where he only you know in the 1500s all you had was Roman Catholicism but if you wanted to be a Christian that's all you had in the in the Western Church and so then the Reformation came about and then gave them kind of an opportunity to have scripture again you know they they had the Latin Vulgate and then now they have they've gone back to the original languages there's all these truths that have been kind of been obscured or built around so like they were able to go back straight to scripture and really get back to what God had actually spoken rather than the interpretations or the writings that people had written about what they thought God had spoken it's going straight you know the Reformed idea of ad fontes which is it sounds like it's similar to the kind of what you're talking about Paul just maybe different terminology but getting back to God's Word we thank you for tuning in to 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 and we would appreciate it if you give the page a like we also have an outer brightness group on Facebook where you can join and interact with us and others as we discuss the podcast past episodes and suggestions for future episodes etc you can also send us an email at outer brightness at gmail.com we hope to hear from you soon you can subscribe to the outer brightness podcast on Apple podcasts cast box Google podcasts pocket cast pod beam Spotify and stitcher also you can check out our new YouTube channel and if you like it be sure to be lay hands on that subscribe button and confirm 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 from water to wine dot 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 Adams road ministry calm stay bright flyer flies Oh Oh Lord you promised that we as your church would remain upon this rock and the gates against us ah you were in purity Heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of the Lord endures for them 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 the earth, bringing it light.

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 the Lord endures forever. All of this world is in decay, but the word of our God through ages remains. The word of God remains.