Thanksgiving Thanks — Part 4

One member is examining the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from a biblical perspective viewpoint when 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 join us for this additional viewpoint on Mormonism.

I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director Mormonism research ministry with me today is Eric Johnson my colleague MRM will Thursday was Thanksgiving a national holiday that was officially commemorated in 1864 by Pres. Abraham Lincoln and we've been thanking God for all that he has done this past year, not just this past year. But as we mentioned earlier, this is our 40th year of ministry and we certainly are thankful for that. But we are also thankful for many of you who have prayed for this ministry and supported us as well and what we are doing, which goes along with. I think what Paul wrote in first Corinthians 1. For what is he say there. I always think my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. And certainly we are very thankful for many people who have written us and told us that they need prayer or they just were praying for sin and we are very appreciative for all that you mean to us as our listeners and our subscribers. And today we wanted to finish out this week with some more of those emails that we have received some of them you might recognize from our newsletter because we do include as many as we possibly can in our newsletter and we do appreciate those comments that you do send to us so you might think well is it really worth it. Hey if you want to encourage us. This is a good way to do it. Let me tell you because I am blessed when I read comments such as the ones we been reading this week and so we want to finish out this week with a few more of the emails that we have received from some of our readers and some of our listeners. This person wrote I emailed you months ago about suggestions of materials to use in teaching a class on Mormonism in my local church. You did recommend Mormonism 101. I just wanted to report that six weeks into the class using this book alongside answering Mormons questions the response in reception has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic and positive. There are even older folks, who missed the class and contacted me about sending them the handouts of material used for that particular class because of others in the class talking about it. We even have people attending the church now because they originally were very curious about the class advertised online. I think these are helpful important volumes for personal classroom and witnessing endeavors when he says that I recommended Mormonism 101. It sounds a little self-serving doesn't it because Eric you and I Mormonism 101, but it does seem to fit a need that many Christians are looking for. I know when you and I volunteer at the Utah lighthouse bookstore downtown owned by Sandra Tanner. We a lot of people asking us will what kind of book. If I was to read a book what would help me on this.

And of course the next question that we liked. As it was what you looking for something on Dr. something on history because that will really matter which book we like to recommend and if it deals with the doctrinal aspects of Mormonism, how it compares with Christianity.

We do recommend 101 because we wrote it specifically for that reason answering Mormons questions that he also mentions here.

I wrote that book many years ago in the 1980s. You and I revised it, but it's kind of like the SQL get a little knowledge of what the differences are and now you can handle the questions that you will probably receive when talking to Latter Day Saints so I think these two books really go hand-in-hand.

We purposely had in mind, making them practical for use in a group setting such as what this individual is describing here. I'm excited when I hear comments like this, we certainly can't be everywhere. To do this, though we certainly are available to teach in churches and such. But when we see people taken upon themselves to want to educate within their own church body. Certainly that encourages us as well. We have leader guides on our website that you might want to use if you wanted to use this in a group setting. I know our book, answering Mormons questions also has questions at the end of each of the chapters to help you as well as Mormonism 101, but the leader's guides will help you to have some ideas of how you could take an hour on a Sunday morning, Sunday school class and maybe do that. So if you go to for the Mormonism 101 study guide.

You can go to MRM.org/Mormonism 101 study guide with hyphens between each of the words. Another one that we received has to do with the temple guide newspaper. This person writes just got the new Temple guide newspaper with your newsletter. It's sensational the very model of how such a project should be done now. I should explain a little bit of the background, we revised the newspaper that we had been handing out at Temple open houses for many years. If this goes back to 1993 when you and I produced an eight page newspaper specifically for the opening of the San Diego Temple after the San Diego Temple open. We continue that idea with a modified newspaper you Eric work primarily on this new Temple guide newspaper that would be used purposely for Temple open houses where you like to go and be there for visitors going to these Temple open house because in many of these areas. A lot of the visitors are not all LDS some of them are not LDS who might be curious about these buildings. These very unique buildings. It might be in their neighborhoods, and so we wanted to include a lot of information that has to do, not only with this unique understanding of the Mormon Temple, but also other doctrines as well. So in early 2019 you produce that and we been using it ever since. And we included it with one of our dealings of our newsletter.

I want to mention that this is a project we have been doing since 1993 as you said, with a eight page newspaper that was little and practical eight pages more expensive but we have been producing. I don't know for five different varieties of this Temple newspaper. I have been to 24 different open house events all over the United States, even one in England that you and I got a chance to go to a couple of decades ago, but I want to say that this one is probably the best one we have ever done. Thanks to Rich Stanford who is the pastor over at the mission church in South Jordan. He was a graphic designer and he worked with me on this. There are articles from a variety of people, not just us and we have on the very back. We have a list of the different ministries to help pay for this Temple guide newspaper, but it's four-color. It is very sharp. If you want to see it, you can go on to sacred or secret.com sacred or secret.

One word.com that is the website we will hold website signs when we go to different events because we don't always get to see very many people and so we we do the holding of the signs to be able to let people know that this newspaper is there, but we have a PDF you can go and see what that paper is this year, Bill. I had a chance to go to three different open house events in Tennessee and North Carolina and in Louisiana and we handed out in those three events handed out over 6000 newspapers, most of them being handed out on doorsteps of all of the homes in the surrounding area because I feel it's important for people who live right there.

Many of them could be Latter Day Saints but also people who may not know very much this newspaper. I think can be very helpful in getting the information across to them that this is not the same as just another Christian denomination and what happens in the temple is nothing that the Bible talks about timing everything from baptisms for the dead to the tokens the handshakes that are being made inside there. The covenants that they make marriages that take place not only for this life, but also for eternity is according to Mormonism, it's just not found in the Bible so that paper is been very valuable in the different events that I have participated and we had a chance to talk to people at their doorsteps when they ask what were handing out and I've had a chance to get into this past year over a dozen solid conversations at a doorstep and explaining to them why this is not a Christian organization using the information found in that paper.

Another writer says this I just wanted to say that your work was a big inspiration for me to witness to the LDS watching your discussions at the man tie Temple on YouTube are really influential your work on the gold plates was especially helpful course is talking about my replicable plates that I would take to the Mormon miracle pageant every year but you know this encourages me Eric because that our work was an inspiration for this individual to want to witness to the LDS people and we have found that a lot of Christians want to talk to their LDS counterparts, but many of them feel intimidated because they don't know what to say so to hear that we had this kind of an influence on this individual for them to take that step of boldness to start talking about this to people that they are concerned about is certainly a huge personal encouragement to me because that's what we want to do.

That's always been a part of our mission at Mormonism research ministry.

Not only do we want to challenge Latter Day Saints on a one-on-one basis, but we also want to encourage the body of Christ to be able to challenge their LDS friends on a one on one basis. As I mentioned before, those of us at Mormonism research ministry just cannot be everywhere so we need to multiply what we know and how we do certain things with individuals such as yourself and hopefully we are doing it in a way that you will be affected like this individual.

It will feel confident to share the Christian faith with those who were members of the LDS church.

Another person says this I just wanted to thank you so much for all that you guys do all your articles at Mormonism research ministry are so helpful. I also wanted to let you know that I have a great Bible study going on with one of my Mormon friends and others are slowly joining in, which is very neat and it's interesting with this common Eric is I I know that I have talked with many Christians over this past year that say pretty much the same thing.

They have been involving a lot of their Mormon friends, and perhaps even neighbors might be even those from work to Bible studies.

I don't recall hearing a lot of that in the early years of MRM that is certainly something that seems to be changing, and I'm encouraged by that because let's be serious.

A lot of the people that we talked to who have left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have done so because they have seen things in the New Testament that God has shown them to clearly contradict Dick a message that they have been hearing from their church, especially their leaders were even there manuals so to hear that more Christians are inviting their Mormon friends to these meetings is especially encouraging, especially when I hear that they're not afraid to talk about the controversial issues they are not there just to say well it's nice that you believe this about that they are actually challenging them to look carefully at what the Bible says that you know conflicts with what they believe.

So this kind of an email certainly does encourage me. I hope that you have been encouraged by these past four shows that we have done this reading some of the emails that we have received over the past year.

There certainly many more phone calls that we receive that we could talk about, but it's good to go back and this is see how MRM has had an effect on a lot of individuals and again we want to think you are listeners you are subscribers to our newsletter for your encouraging comment that we hope that you will feel encouraged to encourage us in such a manner because it certainly does do that.

We hope again that you remember all that God has done for you as individuals what God is been doing with his church and also what the Lord has been doing through Mormonism research ministry. Thank you for listening you would like more information regarding this research ministry. We encourage you to visit our website www.mrm.org you can request our free newsletter Mormonism research.

We hope you join us again as we look at another viewpoint is sharing your faith with the Latter Day Saints helps to know what their church is taught in several basic topics. For this reason, this research ministry has provided its crash course is a crash course, Mormonism includes concise articles highlighting what LDS leaders and church manuals have taught one issues that will probably come up in a typical conversation. You can find these informative articles and crash course Mormonism.com that's crash course Mormonism.com