Engaging with Mormons (Corey Miller) Part 5

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.

Hoping you're having a very pleasant Friday. 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 we also have with us, and we've had him all week, Dr. Corey Miller. Corey is the author of a book, Engaging with Mormons. He comes from a former Mormon background. We've been talking about how he came out of the LDS Church and into Christianity and then involved in a Christian apologetics ministry called Rocio Christi. And if you want more information on that organization, you can go to RocioChristi.org.

It is a campus apologetics ministry, one that is very needed in our culture today. Welcome back to the show, Corey. Glad to have you again. Thanks. Thank you. Good to be back with you guys again. Today we really want to focus again on your book. I know we've gotten a little bit sidetracked, but you have a fascinating story and one that I think Christians should be familiar with. So folks, if you have not heard earlier broadcasts this week, we encourage you to go to our archives, go to MRM.org slash podcast, and you will have a list of all of our past shows there.

And I would strongly encourage you if you did not catch the earlier shows this week to catch up with us on this subject. But Corey, pretend you have only 30 seconds to tell potential readers why they ought to pick up your book, Engaging with Mormons. I can give four reasons. One, it's concise, less than 120 pages. Two, it's readable. The publisher made me write it for 14 and 15 year olds. Third, it's laser focused on the essentials of doctrine, God, man, Christ, salvation, and on the essential of dialogue, the testimony.

And four, it's practical. It helps understand Mormon sociology and psychology, not just theology, and it offers practical ways of individually and communally relating. I think what a lot of Christians are looking for is not a desire to talk with their Mormon friends because I have found that many Christians do want to talk with their LDS acquaintances.

They just don't know what to say. And they don't want to be caught off guard by a question, let's say, from the Mormon that they have never even heard about or don't know how to answer. I think a book like this is very good because it will give the Christian confidence when engaging their LDS friends.

And that's certainly important. And as I say in the beginning of the book, because you gave me the honor of writing a blurb for this book, it doesn't leave you looking down your nose at Latter-day Saints, which we should never do that with anybody really. But sometimes some people can be pretty abrasive with the subject of Mormonism. And as you've discussed earlier in this week, the LDS people are not our enemies.

They're not our enemies and we should not look at them that way. I find living here in Utah, living among the LDS people, I love living among them. For the most part, they're good people that are trying very hard to be as good as they possibly can be because let's face it, their religion requires that if they hope to get the best, which is the celestial exaltation that many of them seek. Corey, a Mormon might be listening to us right now, and they're going to assume that your book about engaging Mormons is anti-Mormon, quote unquote, anti-Mormon, because your ultimate goal is to have Mormons leave their faith. How are you going to counter the accusation that this is an anti-Mormon book?

Well, they would have to read it to see that it's not. I can assert that I'm certainly not anti-Mormon. I am anti-Mormonism. Because I love Mormons, I'm compelled to speak truth and love. Love wills the good of the other. And any belief, any lifestyle, any behavior that is harmful to a loved one, if you think it's harmful, it compels confronting the harm.

You can speak the truth without love, but you cannot love without speaking the truth. And I love Mormons. And now before the Mormon friend gets upset, he or she should consider that my presentation in the book is fundamentally no different than tens of thousands of LDS missionaries presenting in people's homes. Missionary discussion number one begins by creating the need for a living prophet on the assumption that all these other Christian groups are defective. On page 94, Corey, you write something very interesting about the LDS leaders who disagree with each other. And this is what you say, quote, can we really have a testimony that has faith in living prophets who are irrational and dangerous? What is the point of having living prophets if they cannot agree on important and essential matters? Remember, these are not secondary issues equivalent to ones upon which evangelicals might legitimately disagree.

These are the fundamental questions about who God is, end quote. Can you tell us about an important and essential doctrine that cannot be reconciled between Mormonism and biblical Christianity? Yeah, again, these aren't, you know, we're not expecting Mormon leaders to know how to poach an egg or fly a rocket to the moon or even mow a lawn. I just want to know, do they know how to tell me about God and salvation? The terms that I used, irrational and dangerous are actual verbatim words used by some Mormon prophets or apostles that they've used against other former Mormon prophets or apostles with whose views about God were a bit more than disagreeable. Their words against their prophetic lineage, their words, not mine. But since they can't seem to agree, and since their novel revelation is allegedly built upon the Bible, doctrines between the two religions that can't be reconciled are doctrines of God and salvation. These are essentials.

They're not non-essentials. The Mormon God has more in common with the objects directly in front of the eyes of your listeners or the objects of smell or sound or touch. The Mormon God is finite in every conceivable way, except perhaps existence in some kind of opaque way as eternal spirit matter, whatever that is. But the Mormon God is more in common with most finite changing objects than does with the Christian God, as well as the Jewish and Muslim concepts of God. And I can say the same thing about salvation than I do in the book.

The problem I have with the God of Mormonism is Joseph Smith and those who came after him have made their God nothing more than a big one of us. That doesn't really appeal to me as a Christian, naturally. I'm surprised that it doesn't seem to shock more Latter-day Saints when they come to that conclusion. In fact, I find in discussing this with some Latter-day Saints that they actually find that comforting. That, for instance, their God could have been a sinner before he became God, and that makes them feel good because they know their sinners too.

But they seem to miss the boat here. If their God was in fact a sinner before he became God, then who is he to tell us not to be sinners? Do you find that to be problematic?

Yeah, it is a problem. It's why I think a lot of Mormons just tend to incline themselves to the idea, as I repeated as a Mormon child, that God—try, try your best, and God will make up the rest. There was no real urgency to repent and to see the grace of God for what it is, because I never saw myself as that big of a sinner. I mean, everybody sins, including God. Not now, but then.

Right. And if he's like us, then boy, that makes me feel real good. But when a Christian presents an all-holy God, the one that is described in the Bible, you would think that would shock some of them into seeing the reality that there is in fact a huge difference between their God and the God of the Bible. How many times have I had conversations with Mormons, and they want to insist that our God is the same, our Jesus is the same, but yet it's been Mormon leaders themselves that have said, no, that's not true.

They're not the same. I've got to be honest with you, Corey, I get a little bit irritated when I see Christian scholars writing articles or even books trying to say that the Jesus of Mormonism, for instance, is really the Jesus of New Testament Christianity. When I've talked to former Mormons who came to the conclusion just the opposite of that, that it wasn't the same, and that's what drew them to Christianity in the first place, that they saw the Jesus they had in mind was not the Jesus of the New Testament.

What do you say to that? Yeah, the Book of Mormon advertises as another testament of Jesus Christ, but I think it really is a testament of another Jesus Christ. Once you start comparing characteristics or descriptions or attributes of the Mormon version of Jesus versus the Christian or the Mormon view of God versus the Christian, you quickly find out that they are not identical.

One might be true and the other false, maybe both are false because they're contraries rather than contradictory, but they are not the same. And so the Mormon shouldn't be upset simply because Webster's dictionary says that if you believe in Jesus, you're a Christian. We can call our doorknob Jesus, but that doesn't give it any saving power. And really, we need to ask, what do you mean by believe? Believe in Jesus for what? Believe he exists? I mean, that certainly doesn't make you a Christian. I think even that word belief has to be explained even when we're talking with the Latter-day Saint. I find myself doing that quite often when I hear Latter-day Saints tell me, well, I believe in Jesus and you say as a Christian, you just have to have faith in Christ.

Well, I have that. I just have works added on, but I still have that faith. But even then, Corey, would you agree that's not the same faith? If your faith includes your works along with a belief in Jesus that he has the ability to save you, but he's not really saving you right now until after you've accomplished everything you're supposed to do. That is true repentance, keeping all the commandments. That's not the same faith that Christians have been instructed in in the New Testament. So how can we as Christians allow them to make that comparison?

Should we not engage them on that matter too? Again, if it's an essential doctrine, if you're right on every other doctrine, but you're wrong on the essentials, you're wrong enough to lose your soul. The Bible is clear that if you have a testimony that does not correspond to the testimony of God, 1 John chapter 5 verses 9 to 13, you're making God out to be a liar.

If your testimony is such that you don't trust Jesus and him alone 100% for your eternal destiny, then you're trusting to some degree in self. And that's a problem. Corey, the last time we had you on the show, you have a tactic where you ask a question, do you have a mom?

For those listeners today who did not hear that last interview, could you go through that illustration again? Just to help them see that they're not the same concept, I say, do you have a mom? And they say, yeah. And I say, no way. I wonder if we have the same mom.

I have a mom. Can you spell that? M-O-M. That's how I spell it. Can you spell it backwards?

M-O-M. That's how I spell it, brother. Just because we spell a term the same doesn't mean it's the same reference. Because I spelled J-E-S-U-S, Jesus, doesn't mean it's the same Jesus.

G-O-D, God, doesn't mean it's the same God. We've been talking to Dr. Corey Miller. He's a former Mormon, grew up as a seventh generation Latter-day Saint before coming to Christ as a teenager. He is currently the CEO of Rocio Christi. You can find out more about this organization at RocioChristi.org. It is a campus apologetics ministry. And if you are a Christian parent, I would strongly recommend that you check out what Rocio Christi has to say.

Corey, any last words before we finish this week? When it comes to Mormons, we need to remember not the bash or the dash approach, but maybe something like, think about nash, weeping and gnashing your teeth. These are people that, if Christ died for them, we should be willing to go for the map and open our doors, take the time it takes to prepare to get to know them, to get to know some essentials of Mormonism for dialogue, and be able to share the love of Christ with them. The book is titled, Engaging with Mormons. You can find out more about it at TheGoodBook.com. TheGoodBook.com.

It's also available, of course, on Amazon.com. But Corey, thank you so much for being with us this week and explaining your passion for the LDS people, as well as your passion for the secular universities. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for the ministry, you guys do. 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.