Michael's Story Part 2

Your right and really big turn on my mission on my second companionship we were both really knew out without about three months and this other guy been out for so we were both just past the greetings. She had this experience where he went by somebody on the street and he didn't talk to them. His name is Elder Mitchell and he told me it would be like all man like God told me to talk to them and I didn't do it well.

You should've.

And then he went a couple weeks any site.

Oh my gosh. Think about hearing from God anymore like he's punishing me because I didn't I didn't listen to him when he told me to talk to these people on the street and that's really how it was being a missionary just constantly were feeling like you are getting these impressions and God was telling you to do best serve that and she finally your biking down the street.

He told me later that he got one of these impressions.

For the first time in weeks. And so it was to go down the street so he turned down the street like a madman on his bike and saw him following them trying to keep up and nobody's there.

It's like a ghost town on the street and his tires slips into a crack in the sidewalk.

This is Yorba Linda, California, and its thorn city, so his tires was flat instantly. There was like 100 thorns in that tire and so is just like why would send me down here for this to happen don't know for sure walking our bikes up to the bike shop where they knew us pretty well at this point because we did not know how to maintain our bikes very well and on the way there. This guy, this evangelical Christian comes out from across the street and he waves his ovaries like guys like coming to talk to me in and we look at each other like oh my gosh like this is why God sent us down the street so that we could talk to this guy and baptize him and so we go over there and we stopped at the door and Elder Mitchell looks at me like I'm a bad feeling about this and I'm like what are you talking about let's go and we go in and it's not normal house it's like to study there's the walls are filled with these religious books book of Mormon is among them, and there's computer desks and will equate what is this place and the guy sits us down gives us some water. He introduces himself as Eddie Knox and he says he's the head of the evangelical debate society and he's like before you start telling me how Joseph was a prophet in the church was restored.

I three questions for you.

Who is God, where you get your authority and how are you saved by grace or by works, and we end up having a three hour discussion where she just stampeded us into the ground.

Number one of the biggest arguments he was using was you know there can't be an infinite recession of God's because who is God's God, and whose his God and is a killer Mitchell go find go find the verse it says that we can become God in the Bible. I swear he was looking through the Bible for the whole three strike confinement versus an and I was just stunned because I was like I'd never actually talked to a born-again Christian. Up to this point. I mean there was this one guy at the thrift shop that I worked at who said that Mormonism was wrong but he didn't actually use the Bible. She just had opinions as far as I could tell, but this guy is was using the Bible to show me his arguments and it was really unnerving.

And so after three hours of this he says you know I'm an exchange phone numbers with you guys. You I work with some college-age students and we should be to get together and have a little dialogue with ghetto 5 to 10 of them and you can share your message with them and then then I'll talk to them afterwards. Why just wanted to get out of there so I might find like here's our number and we we hightailed it out of there and meet other children talk on the way home because it was just such a devastating experience. I felt like somebody had just ripped the veil from my eyes and in the sunny sky was actually he was actually radiating and I was aware of it for the first time in mouse like oh my goodness, the LDS church. I don't think it's true. I thought about my family members and my bishop and in the elders that I knew before I laughed housing how can all these good people have been roped in by this, like, how can they been tricked so badly. How could my my parents are so intelligent you know have been tricked by this and I was really depressed and I was about ready to pack up my things and go home because I was also convinced of the church was false at that but can ask if you started you feel like you had a testimony before that experience and he felt like he lost it or you always not your reader never really quite super sure and that experience kinda just really rattled you. I was never sure the only thing that I was certain of was that Jesus was my Savior and that he loved me and I was from my experience at the FY a lot of the other elders had had prayed over the book of Mormon and the gotten an answer and I desperately wanted that answer and so I was reading and I was praying and I never got anything and the leadership of the church is said, you know that the best way to obtain a testimony is in the bearing of it and so I was bearing a testimony to people that I did not have in the hopes that I would gain ones, and I was trying to show God my faith to prove to him that I deserved an answer to know that the book of Mormon was true and so I went and taught my investigators. I told him that I knew the book of Mormon was true countless times when I knew no such things and so when this experience happened. It really rattled me because I had not gained a testimony of anything except for Jesus at that point now. I decided that I was going to not take this guys word for because She convinced me that and I talked a little bit earlier about the seeds the God planted in my life for this was another one of those seeds, the guy that we debated convinced me that the Bible was the inerrant word of God and so I was like man like what an amazing tool I'm going to read the Bible and I'm going to find out once and for all. If Mormonism is true or not like like I can't trust some guy that I just ran into on the street so I went home I started just going through the Bible like crazy and somehow I just happened across all the passages that look like they support Mormonism and my testimony was born at that at that time I came to believe that the church was absolutely true because of a cursory reading of the Bible and is kinda crazy but yeah that's how I came to my my testimony. The Mormon church was true in all that was spoil your soul and your mission you all that was why was on my mission and then and then you know I kinda hope that that this guy would call me back but he had my number and he was serious about this.

So my friend Ed called us. He's like yeah like you. Let's do this thing, let's meet up at Starbucks and I'm working on. We can't go to Starbucks, you know, because coffee is evil, and I was just like man would've one of the members like drove by and saw us in the window. We probably get excommunicated from the church just for being at Starbucks so we told we could do Starbucks so we agreed to do it at our Ward building figure you know were led to bring investigators to the ward building is just gonna be a couple of people. No big deal, so he he made an agreement with us that one week he would come to our church in the next week we should go visit his so I okay that sounds good when he shows up at our Ward with a couple of his friends and we go to gospel principles with them and the ward mission leader was teaching as it was brother light and Kari Lightman and in the middle of the lesson they start kinda asking them these tough questions and I'm just like, oh great, you know, I'm the one that brought these guys here to disrupt church. This is my fault, anything that happens I think they asked him severe asking about the Sabbath like will how do you know that it was always Sunday and he can answer them back talking about like some kind a calendar and stones in liquid what what is he talking about and he was actually able to answer them back intelligently and I was really surprised kind of at that point I was still thinking that the church was false and I didn't think anybody in the church really was intelligent enough to answer some of the questions that could be thrown at it but but he wasn't at the end of the lesson. They kinda came up to me and said hey we want him to come to this discussion that were going to have and he agreed to come but I was really glad because I'm like okay. We got firepower on our side.

Now, not just to you Odell missionaries and so so the next week will actually this is funny too because we were actually asked to speak in sacrament meeting the week that they came to our Ward and United speaking about James to and how faith without works is dead and I thought that I really you know taught those guys a lesson but my funny companion you know I feel it the whole week, he just kinda like rolled around in his rolling chair.

Like, what should I talk about on Sunday. Mike, I don't know dude like figure something out because you know I'm doing my talking. I need to make sure it's epic because these guys are coming and she ended up finding like this little missionary book go you know heartwarming stories. I don't know what it's really called music I could use this and like you go for it.

So he finds the most awkward story in that book, which is about warm fuzzy edits about this village of people who gave warm fuzzies to each other and it made them all happy and he's like do you think I should use this story elder for I'm like yeah sounds great and so sorry. I like people in the story that he was sharing was fictional but unfortunately what happened next is true. So I gave my you know my account on James to you know I'm I kidding the podium like you know take that you crazy evangelicals and then my companion gets up after me and starts talking about the warm fuzzies and I can still remember the look on our guests faces. It was I wish I'd been able to take a picture because they're sitting there all of them have their Bibles open to the passages that I just been talking about so their Bibles are still open and there looking at my companion and their jaws of just rocks like what is this so that was those really interesting, but we are going to their church of the Calvary Chapel the next Sunday and were sitting there. I really I thought it was cool until they started passing out these flyers and they were flyers to this Mormon Evangelical dialogue, which is the one that we set up and the pastor invited everybody to go all the sudden just like will wait a sec like this is a five or six college students. This this could be a lot more people and we circuiting phone calls from other missionaries in different cities saying that they came across somebody with one of these flyers and what is this thing all about of the site. Great, just what I need. So lead it up bring it up to the ward council and they were all really excited about it. Special ward mission leader is Ken interesting is half the members that we would talk to were excited about it and half of them were worried that we were going to be persecuted publicly when we only want to do this but in fact I guess we were so worried about it that we didn't invite a single Latter Day Saints to go to the dialogue because we didn't want anybody to start questioning and in case things got ugly because when you're LES you you just think you just think that's can happen and I didn't trust these evangelicals at all reflected the fires have some kind of like anti-Mormon message on it or something. Or they were. They kind of innocuous or benign. It was overtly yes the words and everything were completely fine but had a picture of these two guys are podiums and one of them was pointing at the other like he was accusing him and when I saw that. I'm just like Elder Mitchell, what have we done yet. I don't know yet because it's it seems like with Christians, you know they're willing to challenge this. This is been my experience is like, you know coming out of Mormonism and Christianity that much more willing to challenge their beliefs you know and accept an early steer out other ideas. Where is like when you when you're in Mormonism. It's like any kind of affront to the status quo was kind like a threat and it's like oh we just got either avoided or able deal with in different ways but yeah like you know there's like a gut instinct rages your stomach turns when you hear or read something as anti-Mormon you're like oh I Scott get away from the so as I cut out your experience and like saying all we gotta run. Bring anyone to this is to be a disaster at the time my my viewpoint was starting to shift a little bit at this point, especially after kinda reading the Bible, coming up with some arguments for myself but a big part of it is that this is not the culture in Mormonism to debate anything even amongst each other, you know, I'd be in Sunday school, and I'd say something and somebody else would kind of have their own opinion, that's a little bit different than something I said and you just let it go because I go I don't want to cause waves, you know were all unified contention is of the double feeling yet Christian culture is a lot more open to debating things in such iron Sharp sharpens iron and debating and hashing things out as a positive thing, but in my past life was not so positive that I started to go out actually challenge evangelicals to debates and I not the public ones but just one on one if I if I find them at start to argue with them. I'd start you know the Bible – in a friendly way because I wasn't I don't like contentions or conflicts that much but I look like.

Here's what versus the Bible says it's I was using the Bible a lot to try to persuade them that Mormonism is true, but the the day of this dialogue. Finally comes up in edit called us the night before and easily do, like I think were going to have you know 100 people with the and and were just like he's he's pulling our chain that there can't be that many people coming to our building. It will just tell you to be 75 yet yeah yeah 75 will we go there the next day we set up 110 shares just in case and Ed and his friends showed up and the like, you know you get any more than this, and they all start setting up chairs in the gym like crazy and we go have a little prayer meeting with them and I come back to us on stage in the whole gym is full. It looks like stake conference and they've got cameras set up in the aisles and I'm like oh my God's this is my worst nightmare come true. I don't want to speak with cameras pointing at me. Just curious, did you let your mission president about this beforehand or did you just figuratively small that you needed to know.

Funny story on that and I'll come back to to this dialogue here.

We actually had to be assistance to the mission president also speaking with us, and I assumed that they had passed the information up to the mission president and they had not. So know he had no idea that we had done this until I brag about it in our numbers report because I said that I taught 301st vision accounts and that made them a little suspicious, so they ended up calling my companion.

I'm glad he's the one that answers the phone and not me because it was like 30 minutes of him just looking pale and saying yes sir yes sir.

So I think I think he got told that he was not supposed to be doing things like that but the other ended up being 300 people seated in the gym and then there were several more lining. The hallways are along the walls and alcohol is a pretty pretty good size audience. There and I was the first speaker so I got up and I told them about the first vision and I told him that I had a testimony to the book of Mormon was true and I challenge them to read it and sat down and and it was weird because they all plodded in the microwave is not allowed. I didn't know you can clap at church but okay cool. Basically, the way we had it set up was it wasn't a debate it was just a dialogue so our side got up and we got to share in their side got up and got to share with a didn't realize that they were just preaching to the wrong people because the only Mormons present were us and we thought that we were so clever doing that. In retrospect, I don't think that was very nice but you know it is what it what it is, but they got up and they pretty much talked about how the Bible was an errant and that's what they spent most of the time talking about and then we got to do a little bit of a question answer which Cory Layton took care of.

I didn't deal with that at all and it was over and I was really relieved and and people just want to talk to us members.

This one lady came out of the crowd and she said you know God was talking to me the whole time you were talking he kept telling me I love him and I was like that's cool and and after the dialogue. You know Ed was a Calvinist.

All his friends were Calvinist and he said that at the during the dialogue that a lot of the Christians present were convinced that I was a lack and I'm like well of course I have my LBS. I'm just surprised that you guys would To That.

Not That I Even Knew What Selectmen Know I'm like I'm a Member.

So Yes, That Sounds about Right to Me, but They Ended up Being so Big That They Decide They Want to Do Another Dialogue so They Had a Second One, Which Had 6800 People Present and Then Later during the Third Ones in Anaheim, California, and Robert Millet and Pastor Greg Johnson Flew down and There Was Somewhere between 2 to 3000 People Present. I Always Said There Were 2000, but Ed Says That That's Very Modest and It Was More like 3000 I Wasn't Actually There Because It Was outside My Mission Boundaries and so I Felt like Being the Rule Guy That I Was I Could Not Go Out Of My Boundaries and Go Turned out Tons of Missionaries Went Out Of Their Boundaries to Go in the Mission President Was There and I Was the Only One That Didn't Go so I Kind of Feel like I Missed out on That. Also How Coupling Was Us in Your Mission Via the First Dialogue I Was Probably Five Months out and Then There Were a Couple Months in between All of These so the Third One Happened When I Was Probably Year More Than a Year out Is Probably Three Fourths of the Way through My Mission.

So Just a Will a Long Series of Events That Kept Happening and and during That Time I Just I Ran into Lots of Pastors and A Lot Of Christians and I Had A Lot Of Good Discussions an Opportunity to Talk to Christians on My Mission and Kinda Get a Feel for What They Believed. But by the Time I Did Come Home.

I Had a Strong Testimony That the Church Was True and I Decided That I Was Going to Be an Amateur Apologist and I Was Going to Make Sure That Nobody Ever Fell into the Trap That I Did Where I Almost Was Lured out of Out Of the Church by Some, You Know Evangelical with an Oversized Brain. I'm like I'm Going to Protect the People in the Church and That's What My Life Calling Is Going to Be so That You Had a Pretty Pretty Eventful Mission Even Though You Went Stateside What Was It like to Come Home from from the Mission. What Did You Do after You Go to School to Start Working Both How How Was That Transition. The Transition Was Incredibly Difficult. I Came Home and I Was so on Fire and I Was so Used To Having a Schedule and Doing One Thing That I Really Enjoy Doing in the Stake President Told Me That Roughly Half of Returned Missionaries Go Inactive after Coming Home. Emily, Can I Let That Happen to Me No Matter What. I Can Be Really Stubborn When I Put My Mind to It and I Started Going to the Singles Ward and I Really Didn't Feel like I Fit in. So I Either Getting Really Depressed and Just Didn't Have Any Friends Didn't Click with Anybody and I Held on and Stayed Active by Sheer Willpower. I Hated Going to Church during like Right after Coming off My Mission, I Would Just Feel Depressed like I Wasn't As Cool As Everybody Else and I Never Was Going to Be and Working at This at This Bakery for A While and after A While I Started Actually Going on Dates and Things Because You Elect to Your Mission, Your Next Step Is That You Need to Get Married. Everybody Knows That and I Got up I Got a Good Number of First Dates but I Didn't Ever Get a Second. I Member Just Kinda Having These Thoughts like Talking to God and Being like Okay Godlike. I Know That You Have the Power to Make Me Not so Awkward, so Let's Do This, You Know, Go Ahead and Work Your Magic Because You're the One That You Note It in Mormonism. It's a Commandment to Get Married.

It's Not Just Something That You Can Do It Something That You Must Do in Order to Obtain Your Exaltation and in the Book of Mormon. It Says That God Will Give No Commandments except He Shall Prepare a Way That They May Be Fulfilled, so, so, like, Okay, like This Is Your Commandment and You Said That You Would Prepare Away so so Prepare Away and There Was No Way Prepared Things Were Very Bleak and I Actually Got into Sort of an Attitude of Wanting to Shake My Fist at God Because I Knew Better Than He Did, and and How Dare He Not Blessedly after after My Two Years of Service but Yeah Initially It Was It Was Really Rough Going for Me, Coming Home from My Mission.

It Is Just Such an Emotional and a Spiritual High You Come Back in and Suddenly up to Live a Normal Life Again and There Is No Training for Going Back to That Normal Life and There Were Some Awkwardness Because like a Member Kinda Going after Some of the Ladies and Using Some of the Same Stock or Tactics That You Use Your LBS Missionary and That Doesn't Go over Very Well. So You Are Losing the Commitment Pattern with Them Pretty Much Yeah I Mean You Just Don't Come off like a Normal Person Right after Your Mission, If You Catch My Trip. It's like You Know When You're Missionary Everything That You Do Has an Ulterior Motive like I Am Trying to Leave This Person to Baptism, and Then You Try to Take That to the Dating Realm and It's like People See through. I Am Trying to Leave This Person to Marriage. This Seems Really Serious for a First Interview Questions Are Iconic Children.

Are You Willing to Help Org or the Big 1 Right Way from your missionaries, like if you come to find that this is true will you get baptized like if you come to find that you are in love with me, will you marry me. I never actually did that one, but I could do myself. Having done that if I just thought of so you're working at the bakery and you go on some dates. What connects what I ended up meeting a couple guys that needed a roommate and so I thought I got out of my parents house is a very big deal and really helpful for the dating scene. I recommend it highly. So yeah, I finally had like these two guys there were my roommates and they were really good friends of mine and in so they helped me get connected to the other people on the singles ward and all percentages changed everything once. Once I had friends and a social network of people to see in and talk to it. It was night and day. Also, I wanted to go to church again and they may be the thing that we do. I was able to do it missionary work and things like that again on the side. I got my first girlfriend at 23 just as this girl and the wardens and we started dating seriously and next thing I knew we were engaged. How how long how long was it between starting to date and engaged the typical Mormon progress, though not quite.

It was like three months from dating to engaged and that another three months to married. After that, while seated, you are flirting with disaster repulsion like you towards being a menace to society.

I was very close to but actually I was a menace to society for like a week or two and I kind of planned it that way on purpose because I'm like oh I'm in a be the bad guy for the first time in my life because I would be a menace to society wanted to test the chaotic evil waters you like.

I'm done looking lawful good for now yeah yeah because I would have been chaotic. You know you will for two weeks and is is is riveting.

It was some interesting but I was. It was really proud of my track record because I married 100% of the women that I dated. By the way, I still have that track record that's pretty good I'm very successful when it comes to dating. It turns out to get if I can get to the second date which never have the same intense stare. Like polar opposites on on at 0% O man over my Mike's acting, getting tangled in my hair just to have a better got married within 23 years of being home will know it did take me a couple years before I met her, so I was 25 when I got and for being a returned missionary that is a long time. I was kinda losing hope like I would go my whole life and not have a girlfriend and then that I met her and I know I watched all my friends get married, you know on Clyde and and everybody and just just that thing you know, just like man you know God must really love them and not be I can laugh about it now, but I wasn't laughing at the time I was crying so when you when you got married it seem like things were going up words you know you feel like God had been blessing you for your missionary service in like an unwanted that lead because we all know or you are now, but were trying to connect the dots between you and Mr. Mission. I got to where you are here, so I left you got married. How to where where you headed. After that, so I absolutely believe that God was blessing me.

In fact, I got to the point where I was like, even the awkwardness that God didn't hear me from was actually God blessing me because he was trying to protect my relationship with my future wife and making sure that I got with the right person and good job God like your amazing and so as I was definitely more committed than ever.

At that point I was happier than I'd ever been and had just completed list for the first two or three years of that marriage, and in the meantime, I was really gearing up the. The apologists stopped. I was getting online and I was debating Christians and this is something that I really felt called to do during my spare time and end up. I guess it was my junior year, either going to Texas State University and I was studying for an English literature degree and about that time.

Mitt Romney was running for president and I just kept reading these articles from evangelicals or about evangelicals who they would not support met Romney and I was was a big Mitt Romney fan because I was LDS think thousand big part of it and I was like men it is not fair that people would not vote for him just because of his religious affiliation and I just felt this this strong pole to write a book and I kind of on my mission. I'd kinda gathered all my arguments together and I'd kinda toyed with the idea of putting it together in a book, but at this point, I was like man I need to I need help Mitt Romney when the selection because we need a Mormons in the Oval Office and and Matt how much would that help the church.

You'll look good in and I just saw so many positives for the church.

If you been elected and so I actually dropped out of school to write this book. That is how committed I was and I wasn't doing great in Spanish. Anyway is see if if only they'd sent me to the Spanish-speaking country. Everything would've been different so II dropped out of school and I published this book a biblical defense of Mormonism that was in 2012 and actually finished it after the election, so I didn't really make any sort of impact that that it would've anyways but I put it online and and people started to purchase it and it got me a lot of tensions that I didn't really want from evangelicals wanting to debates and have conversations with me because I'd written this book and write about that time I also started my Facebook group evangelicals in Latter Day Saints except it wasn't called that at first you tell us about what it was at first so interesting stuff about that. I started a group called the was it called the Mormon grace project because I decided I was going to start studying grace to become a more effective weapons and as like I need to really study this out and learn more about it because these guys are constantly pushing grace and I need to figure out what the weaknesses in their argument so I can take them down and show them that that Mormonism is the true gospel not there water down Protestantism and and I invited evangelicals to the group. Even though some of my LDS friends told me not to do it. That was a big mistake and I'm like no I'm doing it because they will force us to ask questions that we would not ask otherwise. And so I got a group together and we started going through one book of the Scriptures at a time and looking for from Genesis on just looking for instances of grace how it worked to God. It's in that kind of thing. It is turning into a big group of people wanted to argue so I turned it into a debate group evangelicals in Latter Day Saints and my main goal initially was to use the group to bring X Mormons back to the church and to convince any evangelicals that I could have that the church was true. It ended up kinda backfiring on me. Like so many things do to ended up meeting a lot of a lot of these ex-Mormon Christians and when you're LDS.

The stigma is these guys are sons and daughters of perdition. They are as evil as evil debts, you know, anything that they say about the church is going to be false.

It's gonna be a lie. You know they're going to try to charm me out as I was. I was really cautious about it but I had a couple of them that were my admins in the group and they shared with me their stories and and I kept hearing the stories about people leaving and I came to the conclusion why was like man like some of these leaders are you haven't have a tough on judgment day for things that they've done, but the church is still true in these guys are still accountable for leaving the church make sense. I can add to somewhere sentiment toward people like Sandra Tanner you know I wasn't that I hated her our people left the church. I just felt really kinda sad for them to think that you had so much knowledge that they had received the temple ordinances or you however are however far they went in the church and then for them to reject that. You know it like where to be compared to evangelicals have never known the church. Usually Mormons of kind of a higher view of the like other good people you know there really seeking after truth.

They just haven't found the truth yet, whereas like people who left the church are like all those people like have the light, and they willingly went against it. That's, that's, that's not good. Absolutely.

I had a much higher view going in of the Christians who never been part of the church you know Mike Mike taken throw accusations out because didn't really know what they're talking about. But the X Mormons were straight applying is how I saw it at the times but I started to befriend a lot of them in and I sympathize with a lot of the stories I could quite understand why anybody would leave the church though and I was I was so stubborn I was like I'm never going to leave the church no matter what happens I was like, even if you have the whole church crumbles around me and there's just one Ward laughed and there's like six people in it to be one of the six people because nothing on this planet can convince me to leave the church like I'm among the most faithful that there is this I got to say it was kind of fun watching you go through all of the guy was one of the ex-Mormon Majorca Christians were you invited to the Mormon grace project and and then later I became an admin in our group and you and I talked a lot online and you know some of the executed duplicate April Fools' Day joke were you Chris pretended that you have blood in the post you were to leave the LDS church and then go Calderwood who was who was praising the gauze of April fools joke. You know this is kind of fun to watch a good degenerative eye, I did.

I am a horrible person on April Fools' Day actually pretty much every year I change my religion but I do it to protect everybody. The rest of the year because as long as I can be horrible. One day then you know that I will be honest with you the rest you yeah I like I was saying stuff like, you know it's not grace if you have to earn it and stuff like that in will ever one you want to who got on the thread and she was like you know what's funny is everything you just said is absolutely true and it was actually a member of the church of the ward who got on. She's kinda less active, but I knew I knew her and she said you know this really struck a chord with me, and I think you're right, Michael, and I was like you does of April fool joke on Mike. Oh no the Carmines me of when one Thomas talking to Christians in a chat room and I said well I put all my trust to save me and I don't trust any of my works or anything else to save me and I when I was transitioning out of the Mormon church and asked me so are you still Mormon then because everything you just said was biblical organized and I think that kind of challenge many thousands and for you but for me it was like a real wake-up calls to like wow you're right like what I just said was not Mormon theology yeah it was. It was exactly like that for me and and and really is when I decided this to start studying. Grace is when everything started to turn upside down for me because I'm a studying grace and I was getting really frustrated because there's so many different definitions of grace in the church and salvation.

You know Mike okay yeah when the Scripture here talks about salvation is a just talking about terrestrial salvation enters that celestial is this exaltation are suggesting, save for my sin and it was is really tough because I had to keep connecting these Dodson is so complicated it's I started to get jealous because like Mama Christian friends. You know, if you ask them how grace works they'll have unified answer and it's this really simple, elegant gospel, but I would ask my Mormon friends vary depending on who I was asking was always a different store and nobody really seemed to know it was this thing that was talked about a lot in in our holy book in and in conference but it's it was still a mystery. And so I was really trying to figure out what grace was, hence the Mormon grace project and during my search you dozens in a secret LDS Facebook group for apologetics and and they started talking about this argument called the impossible gospel argument, and there like hey does anybody have any advice for dealing with this argument a couple people were having a hard time with it. And so Mike you know what you given a gift because this is kind of along the lines of what I'm studying anyway and so maybe it will help me come up with the right question while doing my studies I started looking into it in and it was a really tough argument.

I felt like I could pretty much deal with any argument that anyone's uncle brought up. In fact, I feel like I hardly ever lost any arguments, but this you know that's just my Mormon mind like thinking probably. I probably lost lots of them, but easy just talking about some of the verses of the book of Mormon like second Nephi 2523 where we are saved by grace. After all we can do in Verona 1032 no we we we receive grace if we deny ourselves of all ungodliness and I'm like wow like a hen really look at those verses.

That way, but that is definitely what they said and the more I thought about it the more I realized I had not denied myself of all ungodliness are done all that I could do and this I really was trying at that point to repent and to be a pure person. And the harder I tried the more I realize that I wasn't achieving that end in the Mormon mindset. It's like a staircase you know they always say like while not perfect yet but I'm on the path you know I'm I'm getting there. I'm I'm heading in that direction, but I I could even say that I was heading in that direction my life was like as spiritual roller coaster is what it kind of looks like you know some weeks I would start with just problem may in itself probably a in that it have like a bunch more problems and sins that I committed some dislike great I come not getting anywhere and the whole impossible gospel argument. It was like a giant leech that was just attached to me all the time sucking away at my life force, and no matter how much fun I was having somewhere in the back of my mind, there was always this nagging voice that was saying you're not doing all you can do. You haven't denied yourself of all ungodliness.

If you were to die right now, you would not be going to heaven because you do not deserve grace and in a just put me in a state of anguish and I was praying to God to give me something, anything to defeat this argument and to my surprise, God gave me something somewhere in the groups only know how I came across this concept. It was an alien concept. Pun intended. But that was alien righteousness and and I learned about that. It's like, okay, like Christ's righteousness is imputed to me and he is perfect he has done all he could do and he has no ungodliness and if I'm going based on that I'm okay. I don't need to worry about these things.

I'm secure and and so I wasn't great, the impossible gospel is it's nothing. Now it is defeated on the floor like that was awesome and so I went back to my Mormon apologist, life, and I stayed that way for a couple of months so proud of my intellect because I came up with imputed righteousness of all things to be back this argument and then one day God just open my eyes to the fact that that's not a Mormon doctrine and I am or even going through to my head and I was like, wait a second, if Christ's righteousness is imputed to me. Wouldn't that include his baptism and any ordinances that he went through and if it does I don't need those things and I realize like oh my goodness I'm not Mormon anymore I'm I'm a Christian. Thank you for tuning into this sort of the outer podcast we love to hear from please visit the Facebook free to send us a message that comments or questions, send a message of appreciated page life. We also have and how to write his and others.

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