I served a faithful mission – serving as an assistant to the President. On my return I served as Stake Mission President and other callings such as teaching classes etc…and of course spoke from the pulpit too.

I do think one danger ex-Mormons can fall into is seeing everything through certain spectacles ie seeking to find things wrong with the church. However, LDS leaders are guilty of the same bias. They will chose to dwell only on the positives. In fact, Boyd K Packer said ” we are not neutral” and he also said we should promote only those things that are edifying to our faith.

My difficulty is lack of answers, and was the reason I could not stay in the Mormon Church.
I didn’t leave because of the foundational errors that are well documented ie The validity of the Book of Mormon or the claims of Joseph Smith as a true prophet.

I left because what I read in the Bible didn’t stack up with what the Church teaches.
They would say that many plain and precious parts have been taken away from the Bible. However, apart from their “prophetic assertion” this claim cannot be substantiated!
Who took them away? When? If you read the writings of the early church fathers ie those following the apostles eg Iraneus, Justin Martyr, Origen, Tertuallian – you can find 95% of what is currently written in the New Testament as we have it today!

You would expect to find in their writings some of these “pristine” doctrines the Church expounds. For example, Temple worship or Priesthoods or Baptism for the Dead or Eternal Marriage.
In fact you find none of these referenced in the way the Mormon Church teaches.

So – in the New Testament a key happening when Jesus is killed is the veil of the Temple is torn. Why?
It signifies that no longer do we need a High Priest to enter the presence of God on our behalf. Jesus as it states in Hebrews is that High Priest and it further states he is a High Priest whose sacrifice is for once and not an annual event!
Yet the Church via Joseph Smith re-erects the veil. You know as well as I do that when we went to the Temple we would gaze wonderingly at the upper room thinking a prophet was having some special revelation or visitation from the Lord.
Furthermore the New testament teaches the Temple is replaced by our bodies being Living temples – to contain the glory of God and his presence. You might also know that Joseph Smith’s temple ceremony was heavily borrowed from Masonic ceremonies.

The same argument applies to Priesthoods. Jesus the great Melchizedek priest ie Melchizedek origins/birth was unknown so he is called one without beginning of days. Jesus is similar – his birth was shrouded in ” the unknown ” of who was his Father [we know but others questioned it]. And Jesus is the priest after the pattern of Melchezedek. We are not!

Nowhere in the New Testament or the early church fathers are any believers called levitical priests or melchezedek priests or Aaronic priests [the Mormon term for many young men before they are old enough to become melchezedek priests].

The references Mormon apologists use to back up “eternal marriage”, “temple worship” come from gnostic writings. These are also used to back up Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene.
Gnostic gospels were for good reason omitted from the official canon of scripture which by the way every Mormon prophet including Joseph Smith has also accepted. Ie they have never argued for the inclusion of any gnostic gospel -why not?

I had other fundamental issues. So on my mission as I witnessed to a Christian I was talking about the Mormon view of Heaven – Celestial, Terrestrial and Telestial – and of course, Hell for apostates like me!
This Pastor gently asked me to show him from the bible and so I used 1 Cor 15 which is the standard text missionaries would use. Whilst Joseph Smith added in “telestial” to his Joseph Smith Translation it is not there in the text! You can argue its one of those plain and precious truts that has been lost and hereby restored by Joseph. However, when you read 1Cor 15 for what it really says you find it is using the terms celestial and terrestrial in a different way to Joseph. So Celestial refers to heavenly bodies and terrestrial to earthly bodies. Paul is seeking all the way through 1Cor 15 to draw a comparison between the heavenly and the earthly; between the spiritual and the natural ie its a dualistic analysis.
Read it for yourself!

I have other scriptural issues – so Mormons claim the New Jerusalem is Jacksonville. They also claim the garden of eden was in USA!
Yet every Hebraic Scholar – all the documents of the Ancient Near East ie Sumerian, Babylonian, Hebrew refer to and locate the Garden of Eden in that part of the world.

There are other scriptural issues I could mention but enough for now!

I did write to Boyd K Packer and Ezra Taft Benson asking them to explain these inconsistencies – they did not do so.

I cannot account for the motives of D Michael Quinn – he seems an honest historian who struggles with the foundational stories of Mormonism. He still claims the church is true. I don’t know about the Tanners – I do think they are quite biased and at times sloppy in some of their presentation and it seems a quest to find everything that is wrong with the church.

What I do know is my own heart. That I so wanted to remain in the church but couldn’t. I wasn’t in Sin. I was a faithful Mormon who had sincere questions about Mormonism but found the answers either wanting or not forthcoming.

I have friends who had similar doubts and questions but chose to stay with the church.

I think you need to be careful not to put all those who question the church into some kind of demonic/dark camp. People can and do have genuine questions and when they don’t get them answered they vote with their feet.

You will know that the Mormon church has always been approx. 50% active ie of 15m members only 50% will be active and even fewer worthy of the Temple. Why when the Church is true?

I pray the Lord leads you in your search for truth.

With regards to your comments well…..you are free to repeat the same old Mormonism is true and you anti-Mormons are so decieved etcetc line, its a little boring but your right to do so. I prefer to deal with the substance behind claims and thats where I see Mormonism failing on many levels, however as long as members will ignore that and keep shouting the church is true, then there will always be an LDS church I am sure.

As you obviously know this ministry does and will continue to seek to bring Mormons to Jesus and support some of the many people leaving, and you are always welcome to comment.

When one looks at the sources of this propaganda we see that the malicious attacks aimed at Joseph have been said by axe-grinding, excommunicated apostates, who have become bitter after being expelled from the Church. I am referring to such apostates as D Michael Quinn, Todd Compton, Grant Palmer, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, (who I know is one of your heroes) and a whole crowd of others who seem collectively to be leading a campaign to destroy the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I have done extensive research into the writings and motives of these people and I am amazed that good honest people are accepting what these people are saying without looking into their backgrounds.

I cannot for the life of me understand how members of the Church who have professed to have a deep witness from the Spirit are turned away after looking into these sites and then are led to question these manifestations. They have been deceived into letting go of the iron rod and as predicted by Nephi are travelling down strange roads.

I should not be surprised though because the Saviour Himself said the in the last days even the very elect would be deceived.

I suppose that you do realise that John Dehlin who started the staylds.com website and also ran mormonthink is to face a disciplinary council which is not very surprising after listening to his podcasts with another of your featured bloggers Tom Phillips.

I am afraid the tares are being gathered and are being bound in bundles, and are being separated from the wheat. Because of this I would appeal to our friends who have chosen to leave the Church to really ask whether they have been influenced by the prince of darkness of this earth. There is an abundance of scriptural evidence that he will not support them in the end, and will discard them when they have fulfilled his purposes. There is still time to do a U turn and come back into the security of the Lord’s Church. Are you really prepared abandon the covenants which you entered into, and to lose your eternal blessings?.

No unhallowed hand can stop the progress of this Church, the Church itself will go on to its predicted course and will be there to welcome the Saviour when He comes again, please be not among the foolish virgins who were not prepared.

I am so dissapointed. I thought that you would have seen the falsehoods of Mormonism and would have been an Evangelical by now, oh well there is time for you yet

I don’t think you were ever going to be a great lover of this meeting Jeff but I’m glad you went. I think the typical “they leave the church but wont leave it alone” criticism is a bit silly. If you see the falsehoods of an organization full of people you have communed with for years you are at least going to try and tell them about it, which they are very successfully doing.

On the books front they have given me 2 cases of them so they can’t be that money hungry. If you would like one for free let me know and I will happily send it.

Would be great to talk soon

Bobby

The reason for the post though is to let you know that I attended the Wilder “rant” last night. But before I get into that I would just like to thank Mark for his comments. It is refreshing especially on your blog to have someone who by using his agency decided that the Church is not for him, and I respect his right to do so. It is also refreshing for someone who made that decision not to then campaign and attack the Church and fulfil Elder Packers prediction “they leave the Church but cannot leave it alone. Well done Mark, and Bobby it is very unbecoming of you to question his stance.

Well to come to last night charade I do not know who issued the invitations whether it was you or Sharon, but either way there was an impressive turn out. The first thing I noticed before the meeting began was a large table full of their book, “Unveiling Grace” and the words of our Saviour came to mind, “make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise”.That said to me that this was the main reason for the Wilder’s visit. In today’s climate any book that attacks the Lord’s Church has a ready market and they were cashing in on this.

What followed then was just a tirade against the Church which they had been a member of for 29 years. They both claim to have held leadership positions on the ward level, and were active attenders to the Temple, it would seem to me that a family who were so active in the Church to then imply that they had never read the New Testament until their son asked them to. How on earth can someone who claim such activity but yet have not have read the NT!!!!!.

I was looking forward to them explaining their take on unveiling grace, which would seem to be, I would have thought, the main reason that they were there, but at least 90% of the time was spent attacking and trying to put the Church in a poor light before an group of people who mainly were there to hear such a message. It was interesting that small cards were given out and people were encouraged to write any questions they had and at the end of their presentation they would give their answers. The charade then became complete when they looked at the questions and chose only the ones they were willing to answer, but despite numerous attempts be me and others they were not willing to enter into a discussion about their answers, they expected people to accept their answer without question.

Afterwards I went up to Michael and said that the small card was too small as I had 2 pages of questions to ask, and asked him if I sent them would he be willing to answer them. He said yes we can converse over email, he then said go and buy our book and you will find our email address in there. I thought that summed up the whole reason for them being there.

Conclusion. It was not a complete waste of time because it was good to meet up with old friends who had used their free agency and left our ward. Another plus was that my friend Mark who came along was able to have a long conversation with the local vicar who’s church we were attending and Mark said that the Wilder’s were not giving a true picture of the Church. He was gracious enough to accept that he was not the one who had arranged the meeting, but he was responding to some among his congregation who had approached him with the suggestion.

Just in closing one of our friends asked if we had been asked to come to the meeting to represent the Church, I said no, in fact we had been advised not to attend. I also said that I did not hold any office to be able to represent the Church, we were only there to observe what was happening… I hope to speak with you soon. Jeff.

You seem to be playing Mormonism from both sides critical and positive yet not truly embracing either.

Am I to assume your realisation that Mormonism is not biblical is a recent one?

thanks hope to talk soon.

Many who write on ex-Mormon websites have either never been a Mormon – or were never really converted to Mormonism or rationalise their experience away.

Lynn’s own testimony does seem to suggest the second of these ie there didn’t appear to be a spiritual conversion to Mormonism.

I wonder though what she was witnessing or testifying to as a Mormon? or as a BYU professor? Was it just the humanistic good elements of Mormonism?
Did she have a genuine testimony of Mormonism?
If so, what has she and other “ex- Mormons” done with this testimony?

I think it is not telling the whole truth about Mormonism when we give this hyper dualistic view that when you leave Mormonism you find Jesus or Peace or Forgiveness or relationship with God and answers to prayers -these are all facets of Mormonism!

http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid={282B85B3-6BD3-4C79-83A9-ABA106CE0742}

To be honest, as a (religion-friendly) atheist, or non-theist / agnostic if you want, there is too much “overhead” anyway here – I don’t think we can even believe in Christianity, at least not literally, as if the stories in the bible are all literally true. They are, after all, very often Jewish Midrash stories. But I try to understand / empathize with the way things work for people, and clearly Christian faith is still a very powerful thing. It is certainly way more powerful than such a thing like Mormonism, which is an attempt to take from Christianity and turn it into something else and then believe they can get away with it. Of course they cannot. Mormonism will always be just a sect, a cult – not one of the great World Religions.

I like the reasonable way Lynn communicates (at least in the interview I linked above). There is room for faith in this world – as long as it is something from the heart and aiming at making this world a better place for everyone.

Not long till the Wilders come over, please come along and let others know!