Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. So glad you could be with us for this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Marv Cowen, a good friend of mine that I've known for many, many years. Marv has been talking about his conversion to Christianity. His family goes back to the time of Brigham Young, though he was not really raised in Utah, more Idaho, more Colorado, but came to Utah to minister among the Mormon people.
And as I've been mentioning over these past few broadcasts, he has a lot that we can learn listening to his stories and some of his experiences. Marv, we've been talking about your conversion to Christianity. You were a young man.
You were 17. You were challenged by some of your Christian friends that caused you to start looking into Mormonism, which eventually led you out. And I think something needs to be said here, because your experience coming out of Mormonism is very similar to a lot of people who have come out of Mormonism, in that you were not looking for an excuse to get away from what you had understood to be really the high standards of Mormonism, a high standard of morality. But you were basically trying to defend Mormonism and wanting to prove the arguments against it to be wrong so that you could remain in it. And I find that to be a very typical pattern of many Latter-day Saints when they start learning some of these problem areas.
Oh no, that can't be true. That was the way it was with Gerald and Sandra Tanner, an address to all believers in Christ. They were going to refute that and show that it was not true.
And of course, as they kept studying it, they found out, as you found out, that a lot of these historical problems were just as accurate as the critics were saying. And so this is why I think it's almost humorous to us when we get accused of being anti-Mormon, because the reason we get called that pejorative label is really because we're challenging them on their own material. Why would they respond that way if we're merely showing them what their own material has to say?
That just seems like a strange anomaly. What do you think about that? Well, it is true that they don't like it, but that is the reason I use Mormon material a lot, because they're supposed to accept it, and a lot of it poses some real problems. It was President Hinckley, I think, said that the Jesus we believe in is different and so forth, and McConkie said much the same thing. Oh, McConkie was pretty horrible, the way he criticized what Christians believe about Jesus. And yet, you talk to Mormons and they'll tell you, I believe in Jesus Christ, even as my Savior, and so forth.
But what Jesus is it? You know, in Mormonism, the Jesus they talk about was born as a baby spirit by God the Father and his wife, and he became a god, according to McConkie, when he was still in pre-existence, you know, and a pre-mortal life and all of that. And yet, Mormonism teaches that in order to become a god, you've got to go through the temple rites, so did he go through that in the pre-mortal life to become a god? You know, there's all kinds of issues, but one of the things that struck me in reading through the Book of Mormon was the difference in the way Jesus did some things in the Book of Mormon. For example, in 3 Nephi chapter 9, you have Jesus actually supposedly destroying 15 large cities here in America, and he says in his own words in the Book of Mormon, I'm the one that did this.
I destroyed these cities. Some of them burned with fire, some were diluted with water somehow, and there were earthquakes that swallowed them and all kinds of things, and it's the Lord that says he does that. But the Jesus of the Bible, the Son of Man, has not come to destroy man's lives, but to save them. And as I pointed out to a couple of young missionaries I was talking to recently, how many people died in Palestine when Jesus was crucified?
Well, they said, I don't know of any. Why did thousands, maybe millions in America die when he was crucified? Doesn't make sense to me. You would think so, because Jesus spent his entire life in that area, and they were very acquainted with him, and Jesus, according to the Book of Mormon, pops up in the Western Hemisphere for relatively a very short period of time. And it seems like the Jesus that's talked about in the Book of Mormon, as you say, takes a lot of vengeance out on these people who had a very short visit by Jesus, if the Book of Mormon is even true, as compared to over in the Eastern Hemisphere. Why not?
You would think the brunt of the punishment would have been in the Eastern Hemisphere, not in the Western. I think that's a great question. I don't know if it's the deal breaker for a lot of Mormons, but it certainly is one of the pieces to the puzzle that should get them to start seeing the whole picture that something's wrong here. Well, it seems to me it's kind of an extension of what Paul was telling the Corinthians. You know, if somebody comes preaching another Jesus, 2 Corinthians 11, 4, I'm afraid you'll go along with them. And unfortunately, it's not only Mormons, but there are others who are preaching a false Jesus, and some people don't realize the difference. But the Jesus of the Bible is the one who said, I am the way, the truth, and life.
No man will come to the Father but by me. Eternal life is in him, not in just somebody named Jesus. And of course, today we could say there's thousands of fellows named Jesus, but they can't save. When you have someone like Gordon B. Hinckley talking about, and the reference that you were making is when he said he did not believe in the traditional Christ.
Yes, right. It was the Christ revealed through Joseph Smith. And that's what McConkie says, and others that we believe in the Jesus that Joseph Smith saw and revealed to us. Did you see the article in the December issue of 2018 by McConkie, knowing Jesus through Joseph Smith?
Yes. And I thought, well that kind of really spells it out. The Jesus he's describing is not the Jesus of the Bible, and it's the Jesus of the Bible who saves, not the Jesus of Joseph Smith.
Exactly. And when you start looking at comments like that, I think it really shows us how a Latter-day Saint is compelled to look at everything through the lens of what Joseph Smith has given them. It's like when you watch these forums that they have on the BYU channel up here in Utah, and they're talking about the Bible. It's amazing when I watch these programs, when they get to a Bible verse, it's always, well what did Joseph Smith say about this? It's always going back to what Joseph Smith said, as if he was some kind of an expert on it, which I find fascinating because I bought a book, and I think the title of it was Joseph Smith's Commentary on the Bible.
And I was expecting when I first heard about this book, I thought, this is going to be a great research tool. I want to know what Joseph Smith said. By the book, it's not even three-quarters of an inch thick, because it seems like there were so few things he really did say about the Bible, other than to just flippantly quote them as if somehow it supported his view.
But he never really exegetes these passages to give us a good understanding of what the author intended. And I find with many Mormons, they don't care. As long as Joseph Smith said it, because they believe Joseph Smith is a prophet of God, that makes everything all right. So what do you do as a new convert now, and you're starting to re-evaluate a lot of the things that Joseph Smith taught, and you're comparing it with what the Bible is actually saying. This has got to cause a huge conflict with you.
It did. And one of the things I started to wrestle with was the fact that the Book of Mormon, even though it purports to be a sacred history of the ancestors of the Indians and so forth, nobody saw it until Joseph Smith revealed it, published it. And likewise, the Doctrine and Covenants was entirely Joseph Smith up until Audrey died. They put some other stuff in.
And the Pearl of Great Price. So everything outside of the Bible came through Joseph Smith as far as Scripture is concerned. Now they have the Latter-day prophets, of course, that they say their word is Scripture too, with some qualification. So that does make it so that everything that you believe as a Mormon is interpreted by Smith, at least the so-called translation. And that was one of the things, I don't remember what year it was, that I learned that he used that seer stone to translate it. And I asked these missionaries I talked to the other day, I said, how many translators do you know that translate by putting a stone in a hat and pulling that hat up to their face and translate that way?
I don't know any. I said I learned to translate a little bit when I went through college and seminary and so forth, but nobody translates like that. And you know, when the Church admitted that, I can only imagine how many Mormons hearing that were reminded of conversations they may have had with Christians who told them about that and they denied it at the time. And now the Church has really been forced to be much more honest about their history.
There's still a lot of areas where they can improve, that's for sure. But at least they're being much more transparent than they have been in the past. I remember, Marv, talking with missionaries and bringing up the translation process of the Book of Mormon and mentioning the seer stone and things like that. And having Mormons tell me that I was lying, that I was listening to some lie that some anti-Mormon probably printed somewhere. And again, they seem to forget that a lot of this stuff that we know, we get from their own sources. It would do us no good to make this stuff up.
And I've often told people, I don't have the imagination to make this kind of stuff up. It's just so much easier to go right to their own sources. And now because of the internet, thankfully, many are doing that. And now we are seeing a lot of people come out of Mormonism because what they're seeing the Church now admitting to through these Gospel Topics essays that are coming out for several years now. They're recognizing that the Church that the Church is admitting to today is not the Church that they bought into years ago. They're finding out there's a big difference.
Of course, you obviously have seen this pattern being here in Utah. We've been talking to Marv Cowan. If you want to contact Marv personally, he's open to you doing that. His email address is pastormarv80 at gmail.com.
That's pastormarv80, the number 80 at gmail.com. And he'd be glad to talk to you if you have any questions. As I mentioned earlier in the series, Marv has been a missionary to the Mormon people here in the state of Utah for decades. And I guess you could say I was one of those who sat at your feet, whether you saw me or not, but reading your material and listening to tape recordings of you talking about Mormonism. And I learned so much through people like you and Sander Tanner and others. And you just, as I said, have a wealth of information. We want to finish our talk with Marv in tomorrow's show. on Mormonism. Please know that your tax deductible gift to MRM is very much appreciated, and we humbly thank you for your kind support.
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