Micah Wilder Passport to Heaven Part 4

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 Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. But we've also been very pleased to have with us this week a good friend of ours, Micah Wilder. Micah Wilder is with Adams Road Ministries.

We play Adams Road music at the beginning and ending of this show. In fact, that is Micah's brother, Matt Wilder, who was playing the piano in that opening and closing. Micah has written a book titled Passport to Heaven, the true story of a zealous Mormon missionary who discovers the Jesus he never knew. And Micah, we were discussing yesterday your encounter with Christians, and you had some negative experiences, as we can expect, I guess, because not everybody, even professing Christians, are willing to be challenged by a missionary, thinking that maybe they are theological giants, which you have admitted that many of them are not. But you had mentioned something to us where you don't recall a lot of Christians engaging you on theological subjects.

Some were very nice, some were not very pleasant. But there were two individuals that stand out in your book that played a very important role in your eventual conversion. God really used these two men.

And the first one is a black pastor in Florida by the name of Pastor Shaw. And it's interesting how you come to run across his path. Your companion needs to go to the bathroom, of all things, and you guys find this church so he can run in there and use the facilities, and you end up having a conversation with this pastor.

Briefly tell us what happened. Yes, so talk about the divine providence of God, right? When you think of all the places in that moment, my companion has to use the restroom.

It's the only place available. We walk into this church. Unbeknownst to us, at the time that it was a church, he goes in to use the restroom, and I'm standing there, and as I'm waiting for him, I'm approached upon by this pastor who's a very charismatic man, very intimidating man, and God used him in a very short exchange to plant the gospel in my heart. And I think the most amazing thing that he said was that he looked at me, and he said, do you know the story of Saul of Tarsus?

And I thought, well, that's kind of a strange thing to just address out of the blue. And he goes on and shares the conversion story of Saul of Tarsus. And then he said something to me that I'd never forgotten, and I wrote it down in my journal that day, and he said, though you are now as Saul, you will one day be as Paul, a minister of the word of God. And I wasn't sure whether to be offended by that or to be complimented by that, but it was something that really stuck with me, and it was amazing how God providentially put that man in my path and began to plant the gospel in my heart. When you left your conversation with Pastor Shaw and some of the things that he said, were you intrigued? Were you upset? What kind of an emotion did you have?

A little bit of both. Pastor Shaw was such an amazingly kind and just generous guy, and he was hugging us, loving on us. But at the same time, he even challenged. I remember he told me point blank that the Jesus that I believed in and represented as a Mormon missionary was not Jesus that he knew and served as was revealed in the word of God. And so he challenged me, and so I was upset, I was offended, but at the same time I was kind of enamored by this man, and it was definitely a life-changing experience in so many ways looking back now. Later on in your mission, you'll come across another Christian pastor, a man by the name of Pastor Benson. And you had a discussion with him at his church.

This is what you write on page 75 after this conversation. You sat at your desk and poured over the teachings of the church. You sensed an inexplicable feeling I couldn't eradicate. Something was different about this Pastor Benson fellow, yet familiar all the same. I couldn't tell whether I loved him or hated him, but something drew me to him like a moth to the flame. You did a great job with adjectives, but what was it about Pastor Benson that was different from others that you had met? Well, we talked about earlier how I had encountered a lot of Christians who did not engage us with love.

Well, Pastor Benson was the antithesis of all of those Christians. I mean, he exemplified what it means to be loving, to be kind, to be gracious, to be generous, to be respectful. And so that was something that was very unique about him, and it set him apart with the way that he engaged with us and the loving attitude that he had towards us. And so when we sat down with him and we had a dialogue with him, I was very open initially to kind of, you know, speaking with him. And because I respected him, I felt that mutual respect from him.

But ultimately, after we shared our message of Mormonism with him, he responded with the gospel message. And I very quickly kind of lost my respect for him because he was challenging the very core belief system that I had put my entire life into serving and believing. And that challenged me with the gospel message, challenged me with the word of God. And I had to deal with that in my heart.

And it was a very, very painful experience, honestly. And I think about what the writer of Hebrews says in chapter four, that the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. And I feel like God really pierced me with the power of the word of God through Pastor Benson.

On page 86, you describe what you're talking about right now. Benson says this, Elder Wilder, I want you to know that I care about you. I can see something different in you. You are a genuine young man with an admirable zeal for God. Both of you are, he said diplomatically while nodding at Garcia.

That's Elder Garcia. But there is a big difference between you and me and what we believe. My mouth started twitching slightly as I delivered a smirk, straightening my position in defiance of Benson's advantage over me, determined not to let on that I was wounded in any way. He continued, quote, I put my faith in the word of God, the Bible, and in the Jesus of Nazareth, as revealed in the Bible, not in man, he declared while holding the Bible in his right hand. I believe the gospel is delivered once for all to the saints, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. From what you have shared with me, I fear that we are not proclaiming the same gospel, and we do not know and serve the same Jesus, end quote. Now, that was a pretty straightforward presentation of the gospel, wasn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. And it was incredible talking to Benson years later about this experience, and he had just recently studied Mormonism. It was amazing that God had prepared him for this experience, and not only that, but he'd been preparing his heart as well, and actually softening his heart, where he said, if I would have come even a month earlier, he would have engaged me in a more combative and less compassionate way. But there were some experiences that he had had personally and with his church that had caused him to realize that he did not have a heart of love and compassion as he was called to have through the Scriptures. And just the timing was right that he was prepared, and that God was beginning to prepare my heart to receive this message as well.

And this is what you write on page 90, talking about Benson. It's interesting, because what you write about before this, Micah, you came to this pastor, and your goal was to convert him so that you might actually win the entire congregation, and then you're the one who ends up getting challenged. Piercing your soul, as you mentioned, and this really does set the tone for the rest of the book. Would you agree that this was a turning point in your life?

Oh, absolutely. That set my life on new trajectory and led me to the Word of God, which led me face to face to Christ and to truth. And I praise God for Pastor Benson for being a loving steward over the gospel and for fulfilling the Great Commission and his call as a Christian to share the gospel to the world. And I'm so grateful he did it in such a loving but very direct way.

All glory to God. You mentioned a loving but direct way. I know there's a tendency for not only a lot of Latter-day Saints, but even some professing Christians that when they talk to members of the LDS church or talk to evangelicals, to dwell more on what they perceive are similarities. Benson didn't really do that, although some of the things that he mentioned, you would probably say that as a Latter-day Saint, well, I believe that too. But still, there was a portion of that message that went beyond these alleged similarities to really show you there's something very distinct in what Christians have historically believed, something that you as a Latter-day Saint don't share. And I think that's an important lesson to learn from your testimony, and that is we should not be afraid to be firm in our convictions and to even say something that may run the risk of upsetting the person we're talking to, but it's a risk worth taking. And I look at some of the things that Benson said to you, and I'm sure you didn't take it very well at the time.

But again, as I often tell people, we're in sales, not production. We're just supposed to present the message, let the Holy Spirit do the work. And I think God honored Benson's firmness with you by working in your life the way he did.

I just think that that's a great story that you tell. That is such an important point, Bill, and I'm glad you brought that up, because just like Paul told the Galatians, have I become your enemy because I tell you the truth? Love is pointing people to the gospel, to the Word of God, to Jesus, and that is going to come with offense to a non-believer. And so Pastor Benson knew that, and he calculated that risk, but he knew that this may be the only opportunity that I had to hear the gospel of Jesus, even though it was going to be offensive to me, because the Word of God is offensive to the non-believer. And so I think that we too often worry about how somebody is going to respond to the message that we don't actually get the message across, right?

And so we kind of hold back or we don't deliberately say things because we're worried that it may be offensive to people. Now, when our heart is full of love and we're doing it in gentleness, then let the Word of God be the things that cuts and offends, right? Not us personally, we don't need to deliberately do anything that's going to be offensive, but the Word of God is and can be offensive. And I think that it was offensive to me at that time of my life, but you know what, as you said, it's our responsibility to plant and water seeds, but God is the one who gives the growth.

Yeah, that's very well said, and it's so true. The gospel itself is offensive enough, we don't have to add to it by doing stupid things or saying stupid things. The gospel is going to offend them enough, we can't do anything about that. That's the message we proclaim, we need to proclaim it as it is written and allow God to do a great work with it.

And sometimes we just have to get out of the way, as you mentioned. We're talking to Micah Wilder, he's the author of Passport to Heaven, the true story of a zealous Mormon missionary who discovers the Jesus he never knew. It is published by Harvest House Publisher, and it certainly gets our recommendation here at Mormonism Research Ministry, but tomorrow we want to continue with Micah's story, because after this conversation that he has with Pastor Benson, he's going to do a lot of soul searching, and God's going to do a mighty work in his heart, and it comes out very, very good. 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.