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. It's Monday, and welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry. With me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM.
But also with us today is a good friend of ours, Joel Kramer. He has been living in Israel for how many years, Joel? About 10 years.
About 10 years. Well, welcome to the show. And we have a lot of things that we want to talk about, and it's going to be a little bit different than what we normally cover, but I think it's important. One thing that really impresses me about you is you are like a perpetual student. Everything to you is something to learn, and I admire that intensely. But you have been over in Israel for the past many years studying biblical archaeology, and certainly we want to get into that a little bit. But you have studied under Shimon Gibson, who we all had, Eric and myself, had the pleasure of meeting when we took a group over to Israel. And we need to talk about this, too, the fact that you have led groups in Israel to various sites in the Bible. And one of the things I like when we have you with groups that we have taken over there is we go into areas that tourists normally never go, and I think would probably would really substantiate a Christian's faith to see some of the things that are not on the regular list of tourist attractions. But I know when listening to you, when we go to some of these places like Bethel and Ai, Lachish and places like that, I walked away with a very strengthened faith in the Bible, and that's one of the reasons why you went over to Israel in the first place. Because I think we have to tell our listeners, your background is really pastoral. In fact, when did we first meet? It had to be when I moved to Utah in 2004.
We've known each other a long time. I don't remember specifically when we met, but yeah, I pastored a church for eight years in Brigham City, Utah, and I think we got connected through the videos that we were producing up there. And we want to talk about the videos as well. Let's talk about why did you want to go to Israel? Why did you want to live in Israel and start studying archaeology?
Okay, well, first of all, I was raised in the Middle East. My father worked for the oil company in Saudi Arabia, so I grew up there and grew up in the Middle Eastern culture there, and found myself here in Utah after I graduated from college in Arizona, and I got into ministering to Mormons and developed a heart for Mormons. I found that, you know, just purely talking theology with them, sometimes we'd go round and round because ultimately they believed that the Bible had been corrupted and restored through Joseph Smith and through Mormonism, and so I got interested in trying to deal with evidence in those discussions, and that led to doing video work that was intended to try to help reason with them, and that seemed to be effective, and so it became important to me in reaching Mormons to teach them primarily that the Bible is trustworthy and to use evidence to do that, and to grow in my own understanding of that led me to move to Israel and to formally study in the university there.
You know, I thought maybe I'd do that for six months or a year or two years, and next thing I knew ten years went by, so... You mentioned how you're having to respond to a lot of Latter-day Saints regarding their... I'm assuming what you're meaning here is their doubt in the authenticity of the Scripture. Would you say that that is probably why when a Mormon loses faith in Mormonism that they tend to go off into atheism? Yes, definitely it is, because I think that there isn't really legitimacy for the Mormon belief system if there's not a corrupt Bible. That's a good point, because that was one of the accusations that Joseph Smith certainly made was that the Bible, according to Article 8, is to be believed only as far as it's translated correctly, but I think we both know that that's not really what the Mormons are saying. They believe that the Bible is not transmitted accurately down through the years, and so even if it may be a good translation, it's a good translation of a corrupt text.
Yeah, and if all these plain and precious portions are missing from the Bible and restored in Mormonism, then a way to battle that is to show that the whole claim that the Bible has been corrupted is not true, and so to focus on the ways that we know the Bible is reliable and the evidence that supports the Bible was something that became important to me in my quest to reason with Mormons, and that really was a major motivation for me to move to Israel and study it personally. When you went over to Israel to study archaeology, were you immediately impressed by the way you were being taught over there? Because from what I understand, most archaeologists are secularists.
They're not Christians. It's not like in, let's say, the early 19th century when this archaeology movement was really going big guns. The purpose back then was more to validate a lot of the biblical stories, and even though a lot of modern archaeologists might validate some of the biblical stories, there seems to be a lot of politics and presuppositions in there to where if you think you're going to Israel to take a class in archaeology to have it strengthen your faith, well, do you think that is probably going to happen in most cases? The answer to that is absolutely not, and the reason is because biblical archaeology, just the title of it, is very confusing and often gives the wrong impression when you hear the title biblical archaeology and you come from a biblical worldview.
It sounds very positive. If I could give a title myself to the field that would help people understand the field better, I would call it anti-biblical archaeology, because that's much more the agenda. I think it's important to understand two things about the field of biblical archaeology. Number one, it's a secular field. And number two, it has always been a secular field. And so back in the early days when explorers came and started digging in the land and so forth, there was a much higher degree of respect for the Bible as a historical text, and therefore it was considered the tool to use to understand the land and the archaeology and the evidence. That is not the case anymore and that has become less and less over the years, to where now it's really driven and it has been for a long time by an agenda, a dominant agenda, that is really aimed at criticizing the Bible.
There's a few exceptions to that, as there always is, but not very many. Well let me say this, when you have taught groups that we have brought over to Israel, I've always been impressed when we go to a lot of these sites, you will pull out your Bible and you will read what the text says. And I remember especially when we were at Ai, you mentioned something about a tower somewhere and lining it up with Bethel and how the Bible talks about Bethel being west of Ai. And so you would show in the geographical location that what the Bible is saying is absolutely accurate. And I was impressed by the fact that even though I'm very aware, as you said, that archaeology is very secular and it isn't really the goal of many archaeologists to bring you to a faith in Christ, that's certainly not their goal, but yet you bring it out in a way that was just incredibly amazing because it seemed to line up exactly with what the text says.
Because it does. Because it does line up and that's the thing that my experience here in Utah was that here is Mormonism who believes that the Book of Mormon is historical. And it could be frustrating because it's not historical, it doesn't have the evidence. And so you find yourself trying to reason with people that something that is not historical that they believe is historical and all the arguments that...
In Israel it's the opposite. The Bible is historical and has all the evidence and is, as you say, obvious. And yet, most believe that it's not historical and are teaching that it's built on legends. And so where you find the illogical arguments in Mormonism is from the scholars that are trying to defend something as historical that isn't historical. And where you find the illogical arguments in biblical archaeology is from the scholars that are trying to say something that is historical isn't historical.
One of the highlights of all of our trips that we've done, Bill, we've gone five different times, Joel's been involved in all of them in one way or the other, is doing exactly what you say, is going and looking at these sites for yourself. And I remember the last trip we did in 2015, we went to the Valley of Elah, and overlooking that valley you showed us the river where the stones were picked up, and you showed us where the Philistines were and where the Jews were, and it was just amazing to be able to see that. And you do that so well because you're a good storyteller, but really, you just are reading out of the Bible and just restating it in your own words.
That's right. It's easy, it's really easy because you're showing what the Bible says, and then you can show them, you know, in real life the geography and the ruins from the city that the Bible is talking about. It's awesome.
I mean, it's so profound because it's so simple. The three days that you'll be spending with us in February, you'll be doing that again and going to these different places. We actually have a full trip, for the most part, going in February of 2017, but if anybody's interested, we still have two spots open, so if you would like to see Joel Kramer in action out in Israel to be able to see the sites that you normally wouldn't see, you can go to our website mrm.org slash Israel hyphen 2017. And I should mention that on our website we have a lot of video clips of you teaching at some of these sites, but you're going to be bringing a lot of that expertise here in the state of Utah in the next several weeks, and so why don't you explain where Joel's going to be talking.
Yeah, you want to come out and hear what Joel has to say. He's going to speak three or four different times in Utah, including October 25th at Alta Canyon Baptist Church, that's in Sandy, and that will be at 7 p.m. November 6th, you'll be at Ephraim Church of the Bible in Sanpete County at the Sunday morning service. You'll also be on November 13th at Canyons Church in Salt Lake City at the 930 Sunday School and 11 o'clock at the church service.
And then on November 8th, you'll be at Alta Canyon in the morning for a special morning 7 a.m. if you want to get up early for that. All of that is on our website mrm.org. You can find out the names of the churches, you can find out the times and the addresses, but I would highly recommend in these next few weeks find one of those times to go and hear Joel himself speak. Absolutely, we've been talking with Joel Kramer, a good friend of ours, he has a master's in archaeology studied over in Israel, and I guess you could say you're an archaeologist, an apologist, a teacher, a pastor, a filmmaker, you have a lot of things to include in your resume and if you get a chance to hear Joel, I'm sure you're going to be encouraged by the many things that he's going to say. I know I have always been impressed when I listen to you when you're leading groups over in Israel. I just sit there and just hang on every word that you have to say and I just love the way you verify everything that you're talking about from what the Bible has to say.
And guaranteed, he's the number one favorite activity that we do on any of these trips because they all come back talking about Joel Kramer. So Joel, thanks for being on with us today. Hey, my pleasure.
Thank you for listening. If you would like more information regarding Mormonism Research Ministry, we encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism. Looking for a resource written for young people that explains the Mormon religion from a biblical world view? Mormonism 101 for Teens by Mormonism Research Ministry's Eric Johnson addresses basic LDS doctrine while answering important questions such as, Is it okay to date my Mormon friend? Can we help you better understand what can otherwise be a complicated religion? Mormonism 101 for Teens, available at the Utah Lighthouse Bookstore in Salt Lake City or purchase online at mrm.org.
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