Jesus for Mormons #40: Aaron Shafovaloff, The Street Preacher

Aaron Shafawalaf discusses street preaching to Mormons, emphasizing the need for bold yet relational conversations. He stresses understanding the Mormon community, building Christian unity, and addressing Mormon theology thoughtfully, while delivering the message with love, humility, and accuracy. Shafawalaf critiques Mormonism for secretive doctrines like polygamy and exaltation and argues that Mormon apologists avoid addressing inconsistencies. He contrasts Christian unity, based on shared faith in Jesus, with the more fluid doctrines of the Mormon Church. They also touch on Stephen Pinecker, an evangelical involved in Mormon culture, and his attendance at a progressive LGBTQ-affirming church, which the speaker views as apostate. Shafawalaf invites Pinecker to discuss theological differences and emphasizes the importance of maintaining clear boundaries in Christian faith. The conversation concludes with a message of hope for those transitioning from Mormonism, offering peace and restoration in Christ.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome everyone to Jesus for Mormons today. I am joined
by Aaron Shafflewalaf, a street preacher who goes and tries
to evangelize to Mormons. If you grew up like me
in the Mormon Church, maybe you went to the Almira

(00:22):
Paget like I did growing up, or you went to
General Conference, or you went to another church production and
there were people standing outside holding signs and trying to
evangelize to you. If that's you, maybe you remember the

(00:44):
feeling that you had as you walked past them, as
you went on the street and you saw these people.
I have a picture of Aaron when he was out
doing this work. Here's a picture of erin with a
that says God never send dot com. And he's right

(01:06):
next to a person who has a sign that says
Joseph lied dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Wow. Well, welcome to Jesus for Mormons.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Aaron.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, there you go. That brother on the left is
Rob Sevolka, Okay, and he's a dear friend. He's a
dear friend. He's he's kind of a John the Baptist
kind of guy. But I mean, if you know him,
he's he's a great guy. He's kind uh pretty matter

(01:37):
of fact, and he follows in the tradition of this
twentieth century street ministry, and I think in the early
two thousands he took to I remember there was a
time where there was a local TV station that you
could kind of come behind the glass while they were
doing their nightly news podcasts and something someone else did

(02:03):
a sign and and and then Rob was like, I'd
love to do that too, and he started using josephlid
dot com, I think, and it just helped him generate
discussions and it's great. So I I have a soft
spot in my heart for the guys that are out
there preaching and advertising, even if even if not everyone

(02:25):
believes in the same philosophy of ministry, if they're doing
some sort of legitimate ministry with the heart of Christ,
then I want to ben in the direction of trying
to support them and speak well of them.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
So yeah, yeah, this is it's really interesting to me
because as a Mormon missionary, you know, I used to
go and approach people constantly and used to try and
it's very difficult for those of you who haven't done it.
It's very difficult to go up and talk to somebody

(02:55):
about your beliefs, and so I look at I look
at you guys with your with your signs, and I
think there's kind of this maybe kindred spirit in how
difficult it is, but definitely a difference in you know,
theological beliefs. What what would you say, is like the

(03:15):
motivating factor for you guys to do this? What's what's
the motivating factor between behind you doing godneversin dot com
and going out in street preaching.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, you might think of Jesus talking to the woman
at the well in John four as the playing a
very soft flute. Jesus was very masterful with the woman
in Samaria, who was very who's very kind. He confronted
her over her her sin, and yet he was very
gentle about it. He's very conversational about it. It might

(03:48):
have even been just like a five to ten minute conversation,
might not have taken very long, but it was an
encounter with a stranger at a very soft and kind
relational level. And then if you just fast forward to
like John five or on eight, Jesus is having more direct,
confrontational public interactions in a motive you might say, playing

(04:10):
a trumpet at that level, not so much of flute,
and so there's there's a spectrum of gospel communication where
there's a winsome drawing, beseeching and imploring, a kind patient
display of the grace of Christ. And then there's also
a time and a place for an open declaration and
a proclamation. There's a kind of prophetic edge to the

(04:34):
historic Christian faith that calls to repentance. And so there's
there's a there's a time and a place for all
of that, even if it's actually pretty rare. You know,
there's like about three hundred evangelical churches in Utah, and
there's probably maybe like six people you know, who will
do that kind of like bold proclamative, you know, street

(04:58):
preaching that really engages with a view toward penetrating the
conscience with calls to repentance in a public way. But
it's it's such a it's such an esteemed part of
the historic Christian tradition. It's really we have to be
really careful not to throw people under the bus just
because it causes a kind of cultural cringe.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Your word's not mine, I mean, I think it's I
think it's really interesting though, because you like recently my
son and I went to a Mariner's game. I'm from
the Seattle area, went to a Mariner's game. There was
a guy with the megaphone yelling the whole time, you know,
while we were standing there in line trying to get through.
And it made me kind of evaluate this as somebody

(05:45):
who's very new to Christianity, like this is an interesting
way to even evangelize, and I didn't really know what
to think of it, to be honest with you, I'm
looking at it and I'm thinking to myself, this is
obviously not the way that I did it as a
as a as a Mormon missionary. But there is a

(06:08):
picture in preaching My Gospel of oh my gosh, I'm
pull us off the top of my head, Dan Joe
Dan Jones standing on a soapbox or on a box
with a book of Mormon in his hand, raised above
his arm, preaching the Gospel, which isn't really how we
think of Mormon missionaries. I think probably the better example

(06:32):
is probably John the Baptist. Right, Oh, well, I don't
know that's a picture theist.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
John the Baptist is a great.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah, John the Baptist right where right before he baptizes Jesus,
he calls out a bunch of people. He calls him
a wicked and perverse generation of vipers, right if I
got that right off the top of my head. And
you know, he's not speaking to them in this in
these calm and mellow oh well, we should all love Jesus.

(07:09):
He's speaking to them in a very matter of fact
boisterous way. And so I've wrestled as I went to
that Mariners game. I've wrestled with this idea of street preaching.
I'm curious, what brutes have you seen or what results?
I don't want to get too into the Christianese of this,

(07:31):
but what results have you seen as you've been out
and tried to spread the gospel in this way?

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Well, I know that Rob's seen people come to faith
in Jesus through his public ministry of proclamation. I've seen
people as well come come to faith through just the
general public ministry of proclamation. But you know, if it
helps people understand sort of the the emo of these
kinds of interactions, for me, these are actually this sign

(08:01):
holding and preaching is a bit more rare these days,
and I can explain why a little bit more. But
them though, so typically, though when you're at a very
large public event, and you might have a straight preacher
in a soapbox or a sign, which I still think
is valid and I'd be happy to do it if
there's a good opportunity where it makes sense. But them
typically is where you're working with other Christians, and these

(08:22):
other Christians are most entirely involved in conversational evangelism, be
it one on one or two on two or whatever,
and that kind of proclamation with a sign or preaching
typically just draws people into a crowd when it's working well,
and that drawing in people is what generates more conversations.

(08:45):
So when we would do this in Manti, you know,
the Manti Pageant, it was really just a pattern of
like I'd get up and there'd just be you know,
at you know, among the best years, we'd have you know,
anywhere from fifty to one hundred young adults or teenagers
gather and they're throwing questions out. And this is where
I really had to learn how to be more interactive

(09:05):
and diological with a big crowd like that. But the
best of that was just you know, these Christians, you know,
join the crowd and they start starting conversations with all
these people, so it at its best you draw crowds,
say fifty one hundred, and then it all dissipates because
all the Christians start small group conversations with people that

(09:26):
are in the crowd, and then you'll get some people
that approach the preacher when the preaching event's done, and
we have a really good dialogue. And man, I you know,
been doing this for about twenty years in Utah, and
my wife has good stories. I don't come home to
like three am because we're just having great conversations with
people sitting on the grass. You know, same thing with Mantai.

(09:50):
We just talked till the wee hours. And the other
thing too is I think the best street preaching is
done by people whose heart has been softened by talking
personally with the people and who have relationships with that community.
And you know, it's actually more costly when you when
you're traveling from hundreds of miles away and you drop

(10:13):
into this community and you don't really know the culture
and you just preach. So it might be an act
of boldness. I think it often is for a Christian
to do that, but it's more meaningful when you've been
more regularly involved with with with relational and you know,
more conversational rhythmic. Uh, you know, the cadence of you're

(10:37):
there even when the crowds aren't there, You're there even
when the cameras aren't there, and you're there having great conversations.
Doing an act of proclamation in a community like that,
when you belong to the community is even more relationally
costly because it means more. And I think I think
some of the I think some of the heartache over
the guys that come to general conference and there's a

(11:00):
big there's a wide range of people, is that sometimes
they just we just don't know them as members of
our community. The don't seem to understand the culture here. Uh.
You know, sometimes there's a kind of crass joke, not crass,
but just I think I think the worst of it
that I've ever seen would be represented by this one

(11:22):
story I heard where there's a fire truck that passed
by and there was kind of the street preacher was like,
you know, ah, you're gonna burn in hell someday, just
like you know, something connected to the fire truck, and
it was just kind of uh, it's almost it's it

(11:43):
almost comes across as silly, but you know, the warnings
against hell and judgment are very real. This is very
life or death. That's that's where a street preach preaching
can actually shine because it really it forces the issue.
It presses the issue of the earth urgency and the
severity and the seriousness of heaven and hell and of

(12:05):
sin and the need for repentance. And then at worst,
at worst, people can just be very callous to who
they're speaking to and people at worst, people can get
kind of a kick out of or get pleasure out
of offending people. Don't want to offend people for the
sake of offending people. Some people, it's like some people.
Some people feel like they're doing well when people like them,

(12:27):
and some people feel like they're doing well when people
don't like them, And those are both really bad ways
to evaluate your effectiveness. It's not about the praise of man,
or it's not even about the hostility of man. It's
about whether you're being faithful to the message of the Gospel,
whether you love the people, and whether you're acting and

(12:48):
I would say at some level with unity with other Christians,
and whether you're speaking the truth and love.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
I could go on, No, I think it's I think
it's good. And what's in interesting to me is I've
watched some of your content and I know that you're this.
You know, I would say aggressive proponent for Christ. And
then as we've talked on the phone a few times,
like this is a pretty like I wouldn't say soft,

(13:17):
but I would say, you know, soft mannered, caring, compassionate guy.
And I think it's interesting that you say that you
draw in these crowds to have a conversation that's meaningful
one to one. And as i've kind of as I've
kind of gotten to know you just through our limited interactions,

(13:38):
I can see how effective that would be somebody one
on one talking with you and doing that. The other
thing as you were talking is I was thinking about
my own personal journey with Jesus and I just left
the Mormon Church hardcore faith crisis, very very not good
mental state and state of being. I was talking with

(14:02):
a friend of mine, somebody I consider to be a
good friend and a very strong Christian, very very very strong,
and we're talking and he laid out the Gospel for
me as we're talking about this. This isn't somebody who
parachuted into my life. This is somebody that I have

(14:23):
a twenty year relationship with who was like Kai, I
can see that you're an atheist or an agnostic right now,
I acknowledge that this is what the Gospel is, this
is what it can do for you, And so I
think that that's I think he brought up really a
lot of really important you know points in this in

(14:46):
that having those connections, it's really about a personal connection.
And when you look at it, I think anyone who's
trying to evangelize the gospel, it should really be about
the gospel, right. It shouldn't be about the and preaching it.
Whether that's me at Jesus for Mormons, or you at
godneversin dot com, or the person making a joke about

(15:10):
a a fire truck passing right, Like, it shouldn't be
about any of us, right, It should be about the Gospel,
about the Gospel going forward. Well, what do you feel
is one of your strengths when you think about preaching
the Gospel to Mormons members of the Church of Jesus

(15:31):
Christ of Latter day Saints, when you think about preaching
the Gospel to them, what do you feel is one
of your strengths? Like with your ministry m.

Speaker 3 (15:50):
Consistency. Maybe I just keep showing up. I I you know,
I work with people who are far more kind than
I am, far more humble than I am, people who
are better readers than I am, or more scholarly than

(16:10):
I am. I think maybe I can answer it this way.
I can tell you what I have going for me
that's helpful. I love the local church. I love the
sort of the boring I'm just being facetious when I
say boring, but the boring life of you know, the
boring Christian life. And what I mean by that is
just just the non dramatic nature of the cadence of

(16:35):
enjoying the Lord's Day with God's people, enjoying the real
life of the gathered body of Christ, and then seeing
discipleship and raising my kids in the faith. And then
what I have going for me is I have really
good friends that genuinely want to see the olds people
come to Christ. And what's really great about that is

(16:56):
when you're doing evangelism in a community like that, you
rub off on each other. And so if you shoot
off in a direction where you get caustic or you
get stopped, you get too soft at times, and I've
experienced all of that is that there's there's a there's
a natural accountability to working with people who are maturing
together and who are correcting each other and who are
feeding off each other in the best way. So I have.

(17:19):
What I have going for me is I have really
good friends that love the Gospel, love doctrine, They loved
the Bible, they love friendships in Christ, they love the
local church. And what I love about the evangelism groups
of friendships, the evangelistic groups of friendships in Utah that
I see is that it's like, you know, it could

(17:41):
be representing six to a dozen churches on a given
week working together. So the unity unity with other believers,
that would be another thing I have. And that's not
a strength of mine, it's just it's just what It's
just a benefit I have in Christ. I think one
thing I would like to contribute to the larger you know,
they've used to call it the counter cult movement, you

(18:02):
can call it whatever you want, but just the the
effort to reach the LDS people from a born again
Christian perspective. I think one of the things I'd love
to contribute to the next generation is paying attention to
both historical Christian theology and the historical LDS theology. And
the reason is we're not We're not meant to be

(18:24):
solo or lone ranger, cowboy apologist or cowboy evangelists. Uh,
we're not meant to be you know, solo people that
you know. It's all about our personalities and our personal strengths.
It's we're meant to maximize on unity with other believers.
We're meant and that's that's a historic ideal, and it's

(18:44):
also a contemporary ideal. We want to build on the
work of prior Christians, and we want to speak as
much as we can with other Christians and with affection
for other Christians. And at the Latter day Saint religion
is true, they should put a premium on. I like

(19:05):
to say, if you can't speak for your church, you
should still be able to speak with your church. So
I'd love to contribute more to the conversation with the
LDS Evangelical dialogue with respect to paying attention to the
different eras of Mormonism. The Joseph Smith era, the sort
of pioneer Middle Mormonism era, it's called the Integration era,
the Expansion era, and there's like the modern era, and

(19:27):
just paying attention to how the Latteritie Saint movement has
taught its theology in every one of those and then
sort of mapping out how the just drop my ear.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Hey, hey, that happens. I'm glad it's not just you
or not just not just you.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
Gotta stick it in harder. But you know, just a
lot of Latterday Saints are sensitive to misrepresentation, and that
can be very complicated because a lot of what evangelicals
do is we generalize the LDS people based on what
they have generally taught and believed. And there's a kind
of strange there's a strange place where we're at twenty

(20:10):
twenty five right now, where latterday Saints don't want to
be defined by what they've taught, and they don't want
to be defined by what they've historically believed of some
Latter day Saints today really want to kind of retrieve
a pre Brigham retro canonical Mormonism. That is, you're jumping
over one hundred and fifty plus years of LDS teaching.

(20:30):
So I mean, we could just pay attention to mapping
out sort of the theological landscape of what the different
sub movements.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
You would call it a landscape. I would call it
a landmine. I mean, you're you're Aaron. I am surprised
you are being so kind. I'm I'm not that. I
just I don't view it that way. The gospel, the
restored Gospel, as i'll call it, twenty twenty five, they

(21:02):
shouldn't print anything because it does not match eighteen thirty.
It doesn't match eighteen eighty, it doesn't match nineteen twenty,
doesn't match any of that. I mean, you could say
that this it is so disconnected from what it originally was.

(21:26):
I think it's just I mean, it just shows it's
just driven by man and man. This is the thing.
No one wants to be called out on how they've
lied in the past. Everyone wants to say, hey, I've changed,
I've moved forward. I'm not lying to you now, Okay.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
Like a good analogy.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
I mean, you're being way too kind. And it's just
like me personally, as somebody who grew up in the church.
Heavenly Mother existed at one time, blacks and the priest stood.
Polygamy is the new and ever lasting covenant, the new

(22:17):
and what's that last word, ever lasting Covenant. Polygamy is
here to stay. So you can get rid of it
in the early nineteen hundreds, but it's here to stay.
And I think if you want to point it out
and say, okay, like let's point it out to show
how much you've changed, that's okay.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
But I think if you if this is what I've.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
Run into in my ministry Jesus for Mormons, I've put
out videos and I've put out content. I get so
many comments saying to me, I do not know what
I'm talking about.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yeah, I see this happened with brad the Campbell of
God Loves More, where he will do it a tremendous
amount of research, which combines consideration of the canon, consideration
of their authoritative institutional manuals, and a sensitivity to like
the history of their teachings, and then on top of that,

(23:19):
hundreds of conversations with lattertyse saints on the street about
the topic. And they'll take all that together and try
to represent something faithfully in a kind way. And I
know Bradley, he's he's conscientious about this, and then he
gets accused in the comments of being misrepresented. You don't
know you're talking about you're being misrepresented. This is verly,

(23:40):
this is a really hard like So it's this is
why I like to say that there's not a theology
of Mormonism. There's theologies, or you might just pluralize Mormonisms.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
Sure, and that's what I think is so funny. I'm like, listen, people,
you can't hit.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Me on this one.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
I'm Brigham Young is my four time great grandfather.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
I grew up in the church.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
I served a mission, I taught gospel doctrine in the ward,
I taught early morning seminary. I understand Mormon theology, like
please stop. I was in multiple other scorn presidencies, young
men's presidencies. You go down the line, I have served
in that calling. I know Mormon theology, and so to

(24:29):
have it to have it come back, I think it's
I think it's a way to kind of throw It's
a way to throw off the presenter of the information
to be like, oh, well, I didn't grow up in
this culture. Maybe I don't, which I think is I
think is in bad faith. And then it's also a
way for the person who's putting out the information to say,

(24:51):
I need I can disregard what this person's saying because
they don't understand or know my culture. Both of those
I think are bad are in bad faith and they
aren't really introspective and very defensive things to throw out there.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
I would would I would make an argument that Mormonism
has a spirit of deception and it's rooted in the
early history of Smith having an inner circle, inner circle
of esoterica where he was teaching private doctrines that he
was publicly denied, for example, polygamy, sure, And there was
an inner circle for example that was getting sort of

(25:33):
a preview of the King fall At Discourse content. You know,
all of what he taught in that sermon was previously
taught largely more private context. We've now learned.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, So for those of you who are wondering what
the king fault is, it's as Man once was, God
can soon become. That was one of the quotes that
was taken from the King fall At Discourse.

Speaker 3 (25:52):
If I could be pedantic with you, that's that's called
the Lorenzo Snow couplet, And your association is fair, but
it's basically that's a late articulated couplet that Smith sorry
that Snow. I think he attributed it to like an
eighteen forty experience which later LDS authorities used to summarize
the content of the King felt At discourse. So the

(26:14):
phrase isn't from there. I'm so sorry to be a
pedantic about it. But in the actual sermon you'll get
something to the effect of you've got to learn how
to be gods the same as all the gods have
done before you, later summarized by Linds of Snow saying
as man is God once was as God as man.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Maybe okay, but your points.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Sorry, I'm sorry to be like.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
For those of you home, Aaron is a lot smarter
than I am.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
Well, I'm sorry I should have seen glasses to push
him up and say, well, actually people care about these details.
But so I mean that esoterica of the inner polygamy circle,
the inner sort of teachings that we could become that
God that you know eighteen is eighteen forty two. There's
a Wilfred Woodruff account of Joseph Smith teaching that God

(27:03):
the Father became a heavenly father for a world. And
you know, this is stuff later revealed it by degrees,
and then you've got the hard secrecy in the Pioneer
Middle Mormon era Middle Mormon as an era. William V.
Smith calls it that where they're literally trying to, you know,
avoid persecution. And there's what Noah Feldman calls the soft

(27:27):
secrecy after eighteen ninety that developed where Latterite saints they
weren't necessarily fearing for their lives in the same way
in terms of the hard persecution of the Pioneer era,
but they were feeling guarded about items they didn't necessarily
want to publicly talk about. You'll get this in post
Manifesto polygamy into certain matters of theology, Mormon leaders talking

(27:50):
about maybe the outside world really isn't ready for the
king fall at discourse, and then you'll get this theme
where there's certain doctrines that are matters of sacred silence,
and they're true and they're doctrinal, but they're not something
that you're obligated to publicly own or confess or defend.
So there's like different it's like concentric circles, and the

(28:13):
inner circle is like doctrine that we teach that's clear
and that we're public about, and then you have an
outer circle that's like, well, there's certain things that are
true that aren't doctrinal that we believe and that we've taught.
But because they're not doctrine, we don't have to publicly
talk about them. And so I mean, I was watching
one Mormon apologist train younger Mormon apologists. Sorry, misspoke. He

(28:38):
was training LDS missionaries. He was a Mormon apologist training
LDS missionaries to speak, and he was saying of the
regress of gods, of God as a god, as a god.
He was saying he didn't personally think there was a
regress of gods, but whether it was true or not
didn't matter. Even if you believed it was true, you
shouldn't say so because it's not official doctrine. And so

(29:01):
there's a there's a there's a rhetorical device there of
we in uh with the we don't believe or the
we believe formula, whereas in the Christian world that's kind
of like referring to the we believe is a cradle
formula of a shared collective public belief that we celebrate
and and that and that you know, provokes worship and

(29:23):
is a beautiful mystery, and it's sourced in scripture, and
it's not a private secret esoterica and so when when
when when Mormons say we don't believe, we're like, oh,
you know, uh, we make some evangelicals make assumptions about that,
and it's we've talked past each other because in the
latterday SAT community, what that might mean is it might

(29:44):
mean that we sort of collectively generally have believed it
and maybe even do believe it, but it's not a
part of our most authoritative source documents according to certain
standards of officiality, and so we're not obligated to say
we believe it, even though I I might personally believe it,
and I even me and my friends might believe it.
I might say we don't believe it because it's not

(30:06):
official in the strictest standards. A really clear example of
this would be whether heavenly.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
But I disagree with you on this? Can I tell
you why I disagree with? Darn and please smite me
down if I'm wrong. If you look at the whole
me I'll take. I'll go to two examples. If you
look at preach my gospel, God is our loving heavenly
Father is the very first principle that is taught, and

(30:34):
exaltation is also taught there. Then if you look at
the temple ceremony and what being endowed means to become
kings and queens, priests and priestesses to the Most High God,
You're being endowed with power. So if you look at
both of those examples, I'm trying to understand it. Becoming

(30:57):
God is sent to Mormon theology.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Smith mean that is something like it's the first principle
of the Gospel to know that and he kills that out.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, yeah, so I'm I don't think it is Hey,
one guy off the cuff taught this, when it is
literally the first principle that you are taught that the
Mormon missionary should teach when they give the first lessons.
God is our loving heavenly Father, and the temple is
all about exaltation. How personally members of the church can

(31:33):
be exalted. Oh so I don't mind it to be
outside of the now you could say, hey, we're not
supposed to talk about the temple, and you know this
falls outside of Oh I'm just not comfortable talking about
the temp Well, you can talk about that. Exaltation is
part of the endowment.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
Heavenly Mother is such a great particular example here is
you know, Eliza ar Snow, a poem that later helped
popularize this. Brigham Young very clearly taught it sort of
domesticated the heavens in his view of these polygamous family
units that were begetting spirit children and populating planets. Parley Pratt,

(32:15):
Orson Pratt, Wilford Woodruff, John Taylor, Joseph F. Smith, Charles Penrose, b. H. Roberts,
James Talmage, Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruce McConkie, you know, Truman Madson,
you know, you just just sketch out the whole arc
of post Joseph Smith, Mormonism correlated Mormonism, achieving a Celestial marriage,

(32:38):
Gospel fundamentals, Gospel principles, sort of the era of the
sermons that ended up in the Journal of Discourses, the
Earlyn eighteen hundreds, improvement era stuff, the later Priesthood manuals,
I mean, the modern teachings of the President's series. When
I put all of that together, it's insane for me

(33:01):
to say that they don't believe there's a heavenly Mother.
So I one hundred percent agree with you. It's almost
a it's near unanimous amongst Latteritay Saints that there exists
a Heavenly Mother. I guess what I'm getting at is
there's a kind of there's a rhetorical there's a there's
a very difficult rhetorical device going on. There's I would

(33:23):
say it's pharisaical, you know, like they said of Jesus.
He doesn't teach like the scribes. He teaches as one
who has authority. And when I talk with latteritie's saying apologists,
and it's like, well, Heavenly Mother isn't necessarily official doctrine.
And that's there's this kind of legal parsing, like we'll

(33:43):
teach it to our children, but we don't necessarily teach
it to a journalist.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Well, the problem is is that they've painted themselves into
this corner. We have on the one side of it,
we have prophets, seers and revelators. We're the only ones
that can receive this revelation from God where it can
be canonized like scripture, like no one else can on earth,
you know, and that piques your interests and that makes

(34:10):
you say, oh, wow, that's interesting. The problem is when
you start to look at that information how it's over time,
you start to say, well, what have they said? And
you find these problematic doctrines that the church now doesn't
even want to stick to. It's like, uh, well, that

(34:34):
claim has actually now just become very problematic. That's not
a blessing, that's a curse on your theology and on
what you believe. And so I think that it's really
interesting to bring that up as people say, oh, well,
let's look at all the content. That's what I really

(34:54):
dislike about about Mormon apologetics and really apologetics in general.
I don't I'm not a big apologetics guy. Is that
I dislike how they try to take and explain away
every little thing, like just down to the smallest minutia

(35:15):
and oh, this wasn't given in a general general conference,
therefore he was.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
Only speaking as an apostle. He wasn't a prophet yet
when he said.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
That, yeah, he was speaking as apostle, or he was
speaking as a man. Last time I checked, all fifteen
are prophets, seers, and revelators, all fifteen. So you know,
you got to kind of keep that, keep that in perspective.
I wanted to change a little bit kind of the
direction of this and get back to evangelism and talk

(35:46):
about one thing I did not realize when I was
in the Mormon Church that I've come to realize now,
is this different religions I shouldn't say religions, different belief
systems or denominations, however you want to view it within Christianity.

(36:11):
And I think that that is something that Mormonism uses
to try to say, Hey, all these people, they don't
have it figured out anyways. And what I mean by
all these people, I mean, you know, the charismatic assemblies
of God people, come on, can I get a hallelujah?
The Baptists, the Presbyterian, the Methodist. That there is so

(36:34):
much infighting inside of Christianity? Is that something that you
want to be a part of? And I think I
pull this from Joseph Smith's history when Joseph Smith, as
he tells it in his eighteen was a eighteen thirty
eight account where he's kind of going over this. He
says that his object in going to pray and the

(36:57):
Sacred Grove was to know which of the different sects
to join, Which of the different sect which one to join? Hey, guys,
I'm reading here from my quad all marked up and everything.
So he's he's reading from it because he didn't know
which one of these churches to join. I think the

(37:19):
perception inside the Mormon Church is that Christianity is very
divided and that it isn't united at all.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
And you know they.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Have partial truths, as I would have taught on a mission. Aaron,
what do you think about that idea? Like, is Christianity united?
Is it divided? Is one person gonna evangelize Christianity maybe
contrary to another's? What's kind of your thoughts on that?

Speaker 3 (37:50):
Well, we don't have an institutional hierarchy as the basis
of our unity, so we don't have it, you know,
a presbyter uh general conference uh of presbyteries or we
don't have and we don't all have an episcopacy.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
No offense to episcopalian brothers. Uh. You know we we
Our unity isn't in having a hierarchy of human leadership.
Our unity is one lord on faith on baptism. Uh one.
I would say one Holy Spirit, and I mean that
in the most substantial way, not the superficial way. So

(38:31):
we have a we have a substantial unity without necessarily
having a superficial unity. We have a spiritual unity even
when we don't have an institutional unity, and I would
extend that to the issue of inheritance. I love the
Utah Christian history of Presbyterians who came to Utah. They

(38:52):
came shortly after I think the Congregationalists first established here,
but the Presbyterians ended up setting up a bunch of
churches and mission schools where a lot of these single
Christian ladies from the East Coast would come out to
Utah and they would sacrifice and invest a few years
of their life to teach a free school to a

(39:13):
couple dozen you know, largely Latter day State kids out
of love. They just wanted. I mean, Utah was kind
of a foreign missions territory at that point, and they
they the Presbyterians just threw by modern standards, millions of
dollars into Utah and just flooded Utah with all these
loving Christian missionary school teachers and uh church planners. And

(39:40):
so you ended up having this like blanketed Utah with
all these Presbyterian missionary school efforts. And well, there's there's
not a lot of Presbyterians in Utah today. A lot
of it's non non Zanam and Baptistic and Cavri chapel
and you know, there's there's a mix of others, uh,
you know, aog and just just different, you know, the
hodgepodge of Protestants here, not a lot of Presbyterians. And

(40:03):
yet we are the spiritual inheritors or the spiritual descendants
of the Presbyterians. So what do you mean by that? Like, well,
those are my brothers, Like, those are my spiritual ancestors,
Like those I am. I'm building on their work, like
I'm carrying the torch forward even though I'm not a Presbyterian. Uh,
those are my brothers. When I read their story, that's
my story. Uh. And when I read the story of

(40:26):
the Second Great Awakening of the genuine aspects of conversion
and the Protestants that wanted to see genuine conversion and
salvation and preach the Gospel. When I look at the
Reformation and I see the movements of people returning back
to the what scriptures teach, and I see the historic

(40:47):
threads of medieval Christianity, you know, and I go back
to the time of Augustine and I go look at
Cappadocian fathers and the nice scenes. And when you just
trace those are my brothers, Like that's those are my people.
That's my history, and when I when I think about

(41:08):
even when I think about churches in Utah that I
wouldn't personally recommend to people because I might think they
have some wrong positions on some secondary issues. I would
still not want to speak ill of them with acid
in my mouth. I'd want to say, oh, those are
my brothers, like those are those are church. There's churches
in Utah that do things differently than I would, but

(41:28):
they have the same gospel, they have the same Jesus.
It's not about having the one true church. It's about
having the one true Jesus. It's not about having the
one true institution. It's about having the one true Holy Spirit.
It's not it's not about having the one true church, logo, organization,
et cetera. It's about having the one true I'm going
to say Catholic Church with the lowercase see a united

(41:50):
body of the of the universal people of Jesus who
have been in dwelled with the same Holy Spirit. So
is there a unity I here? I'd say this if
I could be punchy. It's I think the historic Christian faith,
even with all of its variations, has greater doctrinal and
spiritual unity than those in the Mormon Church do and

(42:12):
I'll give you some really clear examples. Christians do not
disagree with each other over whether heaven the Father might
have been a sinful mortal. We don't disagree with each
other over whether God has one wife or many wives.
We don't disagree whether he was once not yet God
had to become a god. We don't. We don't disagree
over whether there's a heaven the Grandfather. Just a week

(42:34):
or two ago, a by you professor did an interview.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
I saw that. Yeah, I want to give him a hug, right.

Speaker 3 (42:41):
Yeah, if there's a hem with the grain, Paul, I
just want to it'd be great. I want to give
him a hug, he said, the quiet part out loud.
But you know, Christians don't disagree on these things. We
have We have largely a pretty incredible unity around the
Apostles Creed and the nice seeing Creed on point zero
and two point zero, you know, three twenty five, three

(43:02):
eighty one, the Athenation Creed. We have an incredible unity
around the five Solas. I would say, even if there's
some disagreement on the nuances of those five Solas, we
have a substantial spiritual unity around the content of the
five soulas like by Christ by faith alone, to the
glory of God alone, according to scripture alone. I'm forgetting

(43:23):
the fifth one. But that unity is miraculous, and that's
why the creeds are so. The creeds are kind of
scary to some people, but to me, they represent an
incredible effort on the part of Christians to show that
our unity is around the Gospel. It's around the person
of Jesus, It's around faithful expressions of summaries of the

(43:48):
Gospel that can be passed on to the next generation.
I just I'm just not seeing that in the latter
days saint faith to the same degree on the same
most important fundamental issues. So latter day saints don't disagree
with each other on the mode of baptism, so you
shouldn't sprinkle, you should immerse. So they do have points
of agreement. They do agree with each other on whether
you should drink coffee. They do agree with each other

(44:11):
on you know, is is Nelson a prophet? But there's
not much more than that. You know, a lot of
these saints actually don't have a lot of unity over
how you're forgiven. What is the repentance that leads to
forgiveness at a basic level. I mean, yeah, does God

(44:33):
have a God? I mean I mean can we can
we become worshiped some day? Can we have spirit kids
someday that worship us as as as we being their
one true God? One hundred percent of Christians are like no, yeah,
And then like latter day Latterday Saints say yes, no,
maybe we don't know, we don't care, and they're on
a spectrum.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
So yeah, And I think it has to do with
this idea tertiary issues. Mormons can agree on fundamental issues.
Christians can agree on right, but they have a hard
time because their theology kind of has to change because
they painted themselves in a corner with really bad fundamental theology.

(45:17):
So it has to change with each person that comes,
and they say, this person said Heavenly Mother or Brigham
Young Adam god theory or you know, all of these
problematic things or blood oath atonement pre nineteen ninety that's
kind of problematic. We got to pull that one out.
So there's all of these problematic things that make it

(45:42):
so that their core essential doctrines.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
Can't be nailed down right.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
But they have to say, well, we're so good because
I've never drank alcohol, or I've never I'm so good
because me and my wife waited till we got married,
or I'm so good because of blah blah blah blah blah,
all of these tertiary you know, outward expressions that to
me aren't the Gospel. They are a cultural level that

(46:14):
where you pass an eye test and that's supposed to
mean something. I don't.

Speaker 3 (46:21):
I mean, I think at some level people just have
to experience this for themselves. I can't argue them into
having this experience. At the Utah Christian Research Center, we'll
have these lectures on Saturday mornings. The Lutheran guy on
the right, you know, Baptist guy on the left, aunch
of non denoms in the back, some you know, some
assemblies of God people there, some lowercase be Baptists and

(46:43):
some upper case b Baptists. And we're not it's you know,
it's not on our radar that we're schismatic or you know,
it's like there's a unity there over the basics of
the Gospel that we enjoy and it's pretty special. And
you'll see I call them expressions of Catholicity. The Lord
Casey expressions of unity amongst the broad body of Christ.

(47:06):
You'll see different levels of expressions through conferences and publishers
and just different efforts that Christians join in. That from
very different I have. I'm very different from my assemblies
of God brothers in Christ on number of issues, and
yet many they they soften and stir my heart when

(47:26):
I see them standing faithful on like the nature of
marriage as between a man and a woman, and justification
by grace through faith alone, salvation by forgiveness through Christ,
and the Blood of Christ by faith alone, I just
I can't help but think those are my brothers. That
that is the that's the spirit that if you have

(47:51):
the Holy Spirit, you love other people who have the
Holy Spirit. And so there's a special affection that Christians
have for Christians, and that that affect action penetrates through denominations.
It penetrates, it transcends the regional stuff. It transcends the
denominational stuff. I dare say, like there's I've had some

(48:11):
very broken relationships with other believers, and the way I
pray for them, like they have wounded me, They've hurt me,
they've offended me. Lord, Please bless them. They're my brothers.
Please restore this relationship, Please bring reconciliation. Please bless them
according to the riches of Christ. Please give them gobs
and gobs and gobs of mercy. Please bless their kids.

(48:34):
You know, that's because they're my brothers, and that's there's
a special affection that Christians have for each other. That's
one will give one more example, sorry monologue. When Christians
hear about other Christians suffering across the world, and even
if they're if they belong to Christian groups, that make
us go hmmm, Like there might be certain Christian groups

(48:55):
around the world that have some pretty messed up theology
on certain things and messed up control issues. But if
other fundamentally our brothers in Christ and we hear that
they're under persecution and suffering, everything stops and we just
like we got to pray for these guys, like and
these are our brothers. Please Lord Tervene, relieve their suffering.
You know, Jesus says, you know, they'll know your disciples

(49:18):
by your love. He's not refrained to you know, Christians
are called to a humanitarian general universal love for all humanity.
But he's really in the Gospel of Matthew when he
talks about the least of These and the Gospel of John,
when he talks about loving your love for one another,
he's talking about the mutual love of disciples and the
special affection that Christians have for each other. We're marked

(49:40):
by our love, not by our shared membership in the
same large, worldwide, superficial organization.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Well, I think it's interesting that you talk about this love,
this unity and where a lot of people might view you.
They might view you as this right as somebody who
holds a sign out that is, you know, trying to
reach Mormons in a very you know, loud and voisterous way.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
And I think that I'm not I'm not one for
big words.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
But the juxtaposition, the difference that some people might say,
like you have this love and brotherly kindness within Christianity,
and then you have you know, Mormons want to view
themselves as Christian, They want to you know, project themselves
to be part of this ecumenical I think that's the

(50:38):
right term council right, like, which means broad you you've
kind of said Catholic, which I don't. I don't actually
really know what that means. If I'm being honest, universal
in the generic sense. Yeah, okay, so this universal Christian body,
and and here you are talking with such kindness towards

(50:59):
your Christian brothers, right, those who maybe don't share every
single point of theological don't share.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
Like Robin, Like Robin I in that picture. We're very different.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
Oh you are? Okay, you too, Yeah, from the exact
same cloth.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
He is very much not a Calvinist.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
Okay, Well there you go.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
We have we have really interesting debates and disagreements over
a number of issues. He's my brother, one Lord, one faith,
one Baptism.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Okay, and then you have this this other side. I
wanted to shift the conversation a little bit towards uh,
Stephen Pineker, if you don't mind answering a few questions
about some articles that you've written written about are an
article that you wrote about him through Mr m So

(51:50):
for those of you who don't know Stephen Pineker is
Stephen Pineker says that he is an evangelical Christian who
is deeply entrenched in Mormon culture, who has you know,
who's very it was very involved. He has Mormon Book

(52:11):
Review as the name of his channel. And you wrote
an article he would view it as a hit piece
against him about why you believed that.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
Well, I have the.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Article, but if you want to talk about it a
little bit, and I definitely have some questions for you about.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
It, Yeah, please do. I'm happy to defend it. It's
never fun to write an article like that. But he's
very publicly self representing as an evangelical and you know,
so it kind of escalates the issue over time. But
I I would I have it. There's about three hundred

(52:50):
evangelical churches in Utah that I know of, and none
of them that I know of, publicly affirmed same sex marriage.
None of them that I know of, publicly would would
discredit the basic historicity of the exodus or the conquest narratives.
None of them that I know of are publicly in

(53:10):
sort of friendly cooperation or unity with LGBTQ affirming progressive groups.
None of them would say that the evidence leans toward
their not being a god. None of them would say
creation is not that well designed. None of them would
say that I know of that the evangelical church at

(53:32):
large has to die. That's kind of more of a
progressive idea that I mean, none of them would. Well,
I mean, so the core of evangelicalism as we use
the term as the evangelicals, as I'm because there's different

(53:54):
there's a range of meaning you can assign to terms
like that. But as we use the term, we're really
referring to fellow Christians and fellow churches that uphold the
innerrancy of scripture. That would be one of the criteria
even for belonging to ets the Evangelical Theological Society. We
hold to the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus and me, you know,

(54:19):
as it's just sort of a kind of a given.
We hold to the historic Christian belief that marriage is
between one man and one woman. So there it gets
to a place where I'm sorry to monologue ahead.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yeah, no, I think I think it's uh and I
think some of us, you know, Steve is a homosexual, right,
some of us might see maybe your hit piece, as
he would call it, as a personal attack on Steve.

Speaker 3 (54:47):
Well, the article, just to be clear, is just it's
got an intro paragraph and it's literally nothing more than
quotations with links to the source, to the context of
his quotation, and some concluding remarks.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
Okay, Well, I think it's important for people, and people
can read these this piece that was done by Aaron.
I'll put it in the show notes below, but I
just think it's important for because I've heard both sides
of this debate as an ex Mormon Christian and somebody
who has a podcast, I have definitely heard both sides

(55:24):
of this debate loud and clear. I just want to
ask you this question. In Matthew eighteen, it talks about
if you feel that, well, I'll just read it and
I'll ask you if you feel that from a biblical perspective,
if you are in accordance with this, It says in
Matthew eighteen, verses fifteen through seventeen. Moreover, if thy brother

(55:46):
shall trespass against THEE, oh my gosh, this must be
the King James version, go and tell him his fault
between THEE and him alone. If he shall hear THEE,
thou hast gained thy brother.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
But if you will not hear.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
The take one or two more in the mouth of
two or three witnesses, shall ever word be established. And
if he shall neglect to hear the tell it to
the church. But if you neglect to hear the Church,
let him be the as a heathen man and a publican.
Do you think you took this approach with Stephen Pinaker.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
Yeah, and I'll tell you how. You know, he reached
out a while back asking to do an interview, and
I was picking up indicators from his videos that he
was probably leaning into a more progressive direction, which would
be outside of the boundaries of Orthodoxy. And I didn't

(56:39):
really want to do public drama over this and like that.
And then there were some complaints over me. I really
wasn't responsive it or I should have replied to his
email a lot earlier, but about the unwillingness to do
a public dialogue. So what I ended up telling him
to my memories, Hey, can you just let me know
what church you go to? And I'll tell you The

(57:01):
reason why that's so important to me lately is precisely
because of that paragraph in Matthew eighteen. I've only really
had serious drama conflict in a few cases in the
past two decades here in Utah. And in those handful
of cases, it's, for example, like with Street Ministry, when

(57:25):
we have someone who's belligerent and unteachable and they're not
really representative of the Christian faith in the manner in
which they conduct themselves, and the Christians were not like
when we gather to do evangelism, we can't like we're
not a part of the same church, right, so we're
not a part of the same like accountability structures. So

(57:46):
there has to be some sort of self policing and
natural accountability in this sort of fellowship of French of friends.
And so one of the things that I learned over
the years was it becomes riskier to cooperate in partnership
with other believers in ministry when they're not accountable to
a faithful Orthodox local church. Because if I want to

(58:10):
start that process in Matthew eighteen, and they've already they've
already jet they've already excommunicated themselves, if I could put
it in a manner of speaking, they've already they've already
decided not to be a part of a faithful Orthodox
Christian local church to which they are accountable. That's part
of why the attachment that believers have to a local

(58:31):
church is so important, not just because of the natural
influence of a local body of friends in Christ and
taking the ordinances together and listening to the word preach together,
and it's but it's also accountability because the Matthew eighteen
and then the Appalling Epistles give us a protocol for

(58:53):
escalating issues with regard to discipline. So the other thing
is is, if you look at Matthew eighteen, sort of
the typical use case there, the typical scenario that it
addresses is the offense that one brother has given to another.
So it's more of an interpersonal conflict. And so this

(59:15):
this becomes different when there's a a when someone's a
public figure. And so if I respond to a public
figure that has marketed themselves as a as sort of
an informal representative of a larger group, but they're doing
things that aren't they don't comport with that group, it

(59:37):
becomes completely appropriate to respond publicly in kind without necessarily
acting like we're a part of the same you know,
we have we belong to the same network of accountability structures.
Sott I felt that gives you some shed some light
on it. I what I would what really changed everything

(59:58):
for me with Steven Pinaker. You know, there wasn't really
clarity on where he was going to church or whether
he was going to a born again Christian evangelical church.
Using the standard definitions that like the three hundred evangelical
churches would in Utah. But when he finally went public
with the fact that he goes to a progressive church

(01:00:19):
that's LGBTQ affirming that denies that a marriage is exclusively
between a man and a woman. And when is you know,
I as soon as I learned that, watched an interview
with his pastor, and his pastor was mocking the historicity
of the Exodus and the conquest narrative, mocking the authority
of Paul, mocking the words of Paul. It just became

(01:00:41):
very clear that this isn't This isn't someone who's obviously
in the same family of spiritual churches that I'm in.
This is somebody who's This is somebody who the evangelical
forget me. This is someone the evangelical community sees that
has crossed a red line. There are that progressive church

(01:01:02):
that Stephen goes to Florida. We have mainline progressive churches
in Utah. They're called mainline. That that words kind of
trips people up. A lot of Evan A lot of
Mormons use the word mainline synonymous with mainstream, but in
the Protestant community, mainline actually refers to things like the

(01:01:23):
United Methodists or the pc us A, certain denominations that
have rejected the inerrancy or infallibility of Scripture, and they
they are more LGBTQ affirming in the sense that they
don't think marriage is exclusively between a man or a woman.
They do affirm transgenderism as a praiseworthy thing. So those

(01:01:45):
mainline churches in Utah aren't in friendly, cooperative, mutually affirming
fellowship with evangelical churches. The event, the three hundred evangelical
or so three hundred or so evangelical churches in Utah
don't affirm those progressive LGBTQ for meing churches as legitimate
Orthodox Christian churches. We see them as apostate we we

(01:02:08):
we see them as rebelling against the Bible, rebelling against
the authority of Scripture, rebelling against the created order with
respect to male female marriage. So my personal plea, well,
I'll say this, when I learned that Stephen Pineker is
going to a progressive church and it's you know, he's

(01:02:29):
he's okay with that, it actually became more actually becomes
easier for me now to have a public dialogue with him,
because I'm like Okay, So I'm an evangelical by by
the common vernacular, not in the broader political vernacular or
the broader progressive vernacular. And Steve's over here, he's actually not.

(01:02:52):
If he comes to Utah and he speaks at a
conference and he's the token evangelical representative, he's actually not
representative of the evangelical churches in Utah with respect to
some pretty basic issues. So I would I would invite
him to have a public dialogue on those issues, and

(01:03:14):
I would kindly hopefully hear, in the best of intentions,
call him to repentance, that he needs to submit to
the authority of scripture. And this issue of male female
marriage is not a peripheral issue. I'll just one little
bit on that, and I'll give it back to you,
a sort of monologue. When the conquest happened, and it

(01:03:35):
did historically happen. When the conquest happened, the Old Testament
describes one of the great flagrant, awful sins of the
people in the Promised Land as in part being sodomy
and homosexuality. And you fast forward to the New Testament

(01:03:57):
when Jesus is asked about marriage. In Matthew nineteen Jesus
doubles down on the nature of marriage as being rooted
in the creational pattern of Adam and Eve, male and female.
The two shall become one flesh. When you fast forward
to Paul, Paul doubles down on male female marriage, and

(01:04:20):
when he talks about sort of the crescendo and the
apex and the sort of the big cultural marks of
a rebellious society that has rejected worship of the one
true Creator God, Paul puts the shameful sexual passions between
women or shameful sexual passions between men. Paul places homosexuality

(01:04:43):
as a kind of cultural marker of how bad things
get in a culture that gives up on God. And
then Paul in First Corinthians celebrates that some of the
believers that had come to faith in Jesus and that
had been redeemed by the blood of Christ had once
been practicing homosexuals. And my pleaded Stephen, would be, that

(01:05:06):
can be true of you too, my friend, like that
can be true of you, but you need to embrace
the authority of scripture, which is ultimately the Scripture is
ultimately inspired by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So this
is a Christian issue and what's beautiful about marriage, male
female marriage ultimately is that male female marriage points to

(01:05:30):
the relationship between Christ and the Church. The great wedding
feast that happens in the Book of Revelation is between
Christ and the Church, the groom and the bride. And
God did not design two atoms or two eves to
be a prototypical preview of the beautiful relationship between the
Church and Christ himself. And to ultimate to reject male

(01:05:54):
female marriages, to reject the picture that God has for
Christ's relationship with the Church. It's to reject the community
orthodox faithful Christians, and it's ultimately to reject the authority
of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Wow, you take you take a very hard line on this,
and I think it's I think it's just important to
put put it out there that I have invited Steve
to have a dialogue with you on my channel. Is
that is that something that you would be open to

(01:06:28):
having it, you know, having it moderated and having a discussion.

Speaker 3 (01:06:32):
Yeah, it would be an interfaith dialogue, not an intra
faith dialogue.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
You might have to explain the nuance of what you're
talking about to me.

Speaker 3 (01:06:43):
Part of what Stephen promotes is in principle excellent. It's
just kind, gentle, friendly interfaith dialogue. But we need to
maintain the inter and interfaith inter means you're you're in
different you have different, fundamentally different faiths, And the substantial

(01:07:07):
nature of interfaith dialogue with Christianity is that it's reaching
out to non Christian, fundamentally non Christian by by theological definitions,
non Christian faiths, and then having those those interfaith dialogues.
When we treat Mormonism as one of the other Christian
faiths as it under the umbrella of genuine and authentic Christianity,

(01:07:29):
we're no longer having an interfaith dialogue. We're having an
intra faith dialogue. So I would say that for Steven,
and it's not really about Stephen, it's but just for
the progressive community out there, if you know, if you
might call it progressive Christianity. For the stake of argument,
Progressive Christianity so called, is going to have a much
easier time dialoguing with Mormons in an intra faith They

(01:07:53):
have a lot more in common than with each other
than they have with historic Christianity. And it's going to
be I call hard mode. Christians are called to maintain
the boundaries and pursue Christian virtue and repent for our wrongdoings.
As we maintain our convictions in interfaith dialogue, but we
have to maintain the inter We have to do some

(01:08:15):
boundary maintenance is not an enemy to loving interfaith dialogue.
When we clearly draw the boundaries between genuinely Christian and
genuinely non Christian faiths, it actually clarifies the fact that
we're having a discussion about two catastrophically different communities.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
Yeah, and drawing boundaries is something that me, coming out
of the Mormon Church definitely didn't I didn't really understand
because I viewed myself as Christian. I viewed myself as
somebody who is in the body of Christ, and that
there were just no offense Aaron. There were people like
Aaron who didn't want me or didn't want to accept me,

(01:08:57):
and I really didn't understand the reasons.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
I hope that as we've.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Kind of gone through this, I hope that people understand
those those reasons that have kind of been drawn out
on why maybe Mormons aren't accepted into this into this group.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
I do think that there is this idea.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
When people when people maybe look at you and they
draw that you're drawing this line right of theology makes
this different.

Speaker 3 (01:09:28):
I'm not drawing that line by myself. I'm that's I'm
united with my evangelical brothers in that boundary maintenance. That is,
that's the boundary maintenance of the Evangelical Theological Society. That's
the boundary maintenance of the Sun and Baptist Convention. That's this,
that's the boundary maintenance of the Presbyterian Church in America.
That's the boundary maintenance of the Assemblies of God denomination. Uh,

(01:09:50):
this is you could take me off the table and
just talk about standard evangelical orthodoxy. That's a line that
that the historic Christian Church has drawn.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
Well, I want to ask you if there is a
danger in this. Jesus talking in Matthew twenty three, he's
talking to the spiritual leaders of that day.

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
He says, woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees,
you hipocrites. You shut the door to the Kingdom of
Heaven in people's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor
will you let those who are trying to. Again, Jesus
doubles down on it. He says, woe to you, teachers
of the law and pharisees, you hypocrites. You pay ties

(01:10:33):
on men dale cumin, but you neglect the weightier matters
of the law, justice, mercy, faithfulness, and you should have
practiced these without neglecting others. Jesus triples down on this.
Woe to you, teachers the laws and pharisees, you hypocrites.
You are like whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside, but

(01:10:55):
the inside full of dead bones and everything unclean.

Speaker 3 (01:11:03):
Amen.

Speaker 1 (01:11:03):
So I think it's important to say, Okay, here you are.
You're making these judgments about people. How is it that you, Aaron,
are different than you know these other people aren't? Aren't
you sinful? Aren't you though you have things to work on?
How is it that you can throw stones at people

(01:11:26):
like Stephen or at the Mormon Church? I would I
sincerely I asked you this question.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
Yeah, I would love your response on it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
No, it's a good question. I don't have individually the
authority to make final judgments on anyone, and if I've
ever made that kind of verbal expression, I'm wrong about
making final judgments on any individual. But going back to
the Matthew eighteen paragraph, about take it to the church.
Jesus speaks in the Gospel of Matthew about the there's

(01:11:57):
a binding and loosing. In fact, I'll pull it up here.
In Matthew eighteen, he says, if he refuses to listen
even to the church, let him be to you as
a gentile and a tax collector. And then the next
verse says, truly, I say to you, whatever you bind
on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you

(01:12:19):
loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven. Again, I
say to you, if two of you agree on earth
about anything you ask, it will be done for them
by my Father in Heaven. For where two or three
are gathered in my name, there am I among them.
So when I think about the importance of a local church,
part of it I mean tonight I'll be attending my

(01:12:40):
local church's membership meeting, and the Protestants called a dignified gathering.
And there's something that my church can do that I can't.
My church can excommunicate someone who has escalated, who has
gone through that escalated protocol that we looked at eighteen,

(01:13:01):
where they've resisted confrontation and beseeching, they're being ousted from
the church. You see this also one Corinthians five, where
if someone bears the name of brother but essentially unrepentantly
engages in sexual morality or greed or covetousness, there's a

(01:13:22):
viceless that Paul has there. You're not to even eat
with such a one. But that's not a personal judgment
that Paul is calling these individual Corinthians to make. He
says at the beginning of the chapter that when you gather,
he's essentially calling the gathered Corinthian Church to make. Now
you might call it a provisional judgment. It's not a

(01:13:42):
final divine judgment that God himself makes with infallible, you know, inerrancy.
But the church is called to act in unity in
its boundary maintenance. So on the positive side, this is
this is why being received by a look church is
so spiritually significant. Where a local church says, we've looked

(01:14:06):
at the I love this phrase, the credibility of the
profession of your faith. We've looked at the credibility of
the profession of your faith. We've looked at what you've
described your belief as, and we look we've looked in
a basic way at your life, and we don't we
see evidences of conversion, and we don't see evidences of
unrepentant rebellion, And therefore we receive you into our church fellowship.

(01:14:29):
We count you as someone that is we're mutually accountable with,
and that the leaders have special shepherding responsibilities over So,
when someone rejects fellowship in such a faithful Christian community,
what they're basically saying is they're not subjecting themselves to
the collective evaluation of the Christian community. So this isn't

(01:14:51):
about Aaron's judgment. This is you know, this, This is
why I ask people in the street when so I'm
going to I try to do evangelism and when I
meet you know, some Texas or Tennessee and they're like,
I'm a Christian or I'm a Baptist, and you know,
it's it's not smart for me to just superficially be like, Okay,
he's a Christian, you know, move on. There's like certain
probing questions like, well, tell me about your walk with

(01:15:14):
Christ or what would you say that I love this question,
what would you say the gospel is? How would you
summarize the gospel? Try to draw out their understanding of
the gospel. Tell me about are you attached to a
local church, and if somebody, if somebody is completely alienated
from the Body of Christ, and if somebody perhaps doesn't
seem to really get the basics of the Gospel. It's

(01:15:35):
not about me making a final judgment on them as
an individual. It's about me recognizing, for example, this person
hasn't been received into a faithful Christian church that is
recognizing the credible profession of their faith. And therefore I
am all the more eager to share the Gospel with them,
encourage them with the Word of God, call them to repentance.

(01:15:56):
And that's what I would do, is steve to say
you're not you're the Your profession of faith has not
been received as credible by a faithful Christian church that
upholds the authority of Scripture. This isn't an air and issue.
This is the broad uld say lower case C Catholic
Body of Christ issue. There is no faithful Christian church

(01:16:17):
that publicly affirms what his church affirms about a sodomy
or transgenderism, or or that kind of thing. So I
hope that started the long answers. But it's not about
my personal judgment. It's about the Body of Christ makes
these evaluations collectively with a soft heart. The other thing, too,

(01:16:40):
is we're eager. We're eager for these same people that
have removed themselves from fellowship with a faithful local church.
We're eager to draw them in. We want them, we
want them to be included. So my prayer for Latter
day Saints and Utah, for example, is when I'm when
I'm singing with my brothers in Christ on Sunday morning,

(01:17:06):
and when I'm partaking of the Lord's Supper and I'm
enjoying the Word of God and I'm enjoying Christian fellowship,
sometimes i just stop and I think to myself, Lord,
would you please save someone this summer through the evangelism
so that they would join us in the same singing
and the same orthodoxy, in the same Lord's Supper, and

(01:17:26):
the same celebration of baptism, and the same submission to
the authority of God's Word. I want Steve to be
on my left side, or on my right side, whatever.
I want him to be near me, singing the same songs,
not at the superficial level, but at this deep spiritual level,
one Lord, one faith, one Baptism. I want the credibility

(01:17:48):
of the profession of his faith to be recognized by
my local church. But that's not going to happen for
good reasons until he repents of denying the authority of
Scripture or on such basic matters as sexuality. This isn't
about But to be clear, this isn't about his personal
struggles or his personal sense of attraction. This is about

(01:18:11):
a decided rebellion against the authority of Scripture on such matters.

Speaker 1 (01:18:17):
Well, I think while you were talking about this idea
of being united in faith with Steve in this scenario,
I thought about the idea of and you know me,
I'm an assemblies of God. I am a revival. Now

(01:18:40):
let's go person right, And I've reminded me of these
visions that I've had of seventeen million people knowing the
real Jesus and knowing the real Christ, and there being
a revival in the Mormon Church, and everyone turning over

(01:19:05):
their beliefs that are false and non biblical, leaving all
of that at the cross and following Jesus. And this
is and I wouldn't say this is a prophetic dream,
but it's a hopeful dream that I have as as
somebody who's come out of it, that that would happen,
that there would be this mass revival that would just

(01:19:28):
sweep through the whole church, and how much how beautiful
that would be, and how much healing there would be
for that. And and I've had so many dreams over
the years. I've specifically one that stands out to me,
and like I said, this is not prophetic, this is

(01:19:48):
this is just hopeful. Is of two sister missionaries right
their hands in the air, praising and worshiping God and
then turn turning it all over and following Jesus and
laying taking off the tag, laying it all down and following.
And I just know that that's I would love that

(01:20:11):
that massive revival.

Speaker 2 (01:20:15):
That would be.

Speaker 1 (01:20:15):
It would be beautiful. It would be the most beautiful
thing that I that I could imagine. And then them
joining this body of Christ, right, this beautiful fellowship that
you've talked about, where you talk about like you talk
with such like passion about brothers, like having these brothers

(01:20:35):
in Christ.

Speaker 2 (01:20:36):
Me and you are are men, so it's easy for
us to.

Speaker 1 (01:20:39):
Talk about this brotherly bond that we have and sisters.
I watched my wife today we went to a new
church today and uh, watching my wife bond with these
sisters that she, you know, fellowships with in Christ, and
me bonding with these brothers in Christ, and it's just

(01:20:59):
such a beautiful thing. And and for me, people who
grew up in the Mormon Church active believing, not believing.

Speaker 2 (01:21:08):
We want you in the.

Speaker 1 (01:21:09):
Body of Christ. We want you there. I want you there.
I can't speak I can probably speak for Aaron on this.
He wants you there in the body of Christ. And
for you to know that that one, that one true
God well erin I didn't you know that we have
some time constraints on.

Speaker 2 (01:21:29):
This and.

Speaker 3 (01:21:32):
Two three more?

Speaker 1 (01:21:33):
Yeah, yeah, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast
and doing this with me. I know that we are
we are a small podcast Jesus for Mormons, but it's
been really fun for me to get to know you
through this, through this dialogue that we have. I hope
that Steve will take us up on some some dialogue

(01:21:55):
that we can have together, and that this will be
something that we can we can kind of, you know,
work through some of these issues and and come to
come to some consensus. I hate the idea of people
talking past each other and and I you know that's
something for me that uh, with Christianity being so united,

(01:22:19):
I I don't like for to see any division in
it because I quick story, I've spent so much time
in the I've been to every single church on this island.
There's maybe twelve of them, and there's so much unity
in christ I said, you know, I'm thinking about I'm

(01:22:39):
a little more charismatic. Is there a church for me?
And pastors will point me down the road to another
church and I've said, oh, you know this this is
maybe maybe I want something a little more family oriented.
And I've been pointed down the down the road by
another pastor, and I just I do feel that there's
so much of this unity that the Mormon narrative that

(01:23:01):
there isn't unity is so far from the truth. It
is really a false narrative. And so, Aaron, I appreciate
you being on. Okay, I like my guests to have
the last word. I can talk way too much. Aaron,
is there something that you would like to tell my
audience the Jesus for Mormon's audience, just a word of

(01:23:25):
encouragement for those who may be looking into Christianity after
leaving or those who are currently in the church, just
you're something evangelical to kind of lift them up.

Speaker 3 (01:23:40):
I think the thing for whatever reason that is on
my mind at this very moment. Maybe this is just
a word from the Lord, but it's from the Word
of God. So I'm twenty three. It says, even though
I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death,
I will fear no evil for you or with me.
Exiting or transitioning from Mormonism can be like going through

(01:24:04):
a wilderness wandering. It could be very scary. You don't
know what's next. It's a legitimate time of grief and disorientation.
As David praise, even though I walk through the value
of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evil
for you or with me. And if God is with you,
then you're going to be okay. He will, if he's

(01:24:29):
leading you, He'll lead you to Jesus, and Jesus said
He's the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And if
you have Christ, if you have God with you, dwelling
in you, abiding in you, you're going to be okay.
Even if you have to go through a really hard
season of reconstructing your faith and your life and your

(01:24:49):
family and community Jesus says, if you give up father, mother, wife, children,
I think if you give up lands, if you give
up all these relationships and all these material possessions, Someday,
even in this life, God's going to start multiplying that
back to you. And then maybe that'll come to you
in the form of a multitude of friendships in Christ

(01:25:13):
that you never thought possible, with a greater degree of
spiritual intimacy and friendship that you've never even thought possible.
God is able to restore the lost fortunes that you
have exited a thousandfold. I'll say one last thing. Sorry,
Collajans as one or two concerns a community of believers

(01:25:37):
that were tempted with the esoterica of gnosticism, or not gnosticism,
sort of proto gnosticism, or something that has some sort
of conceptual overlap with gnostissism, but that's reminiscent of it. Well,
Paul says, in Christ are hidden all the riches of
wisdom and knowledge, So the treasure chest you have in

(01:25:59):
Christ goes infinitely deep. Everything you need you have in Christ.
Christ is more than enough. He's not just enough, He's
more than enough. If you have Christ, you will have
everything you need.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
Beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:26:12):
Well with that, thank you guys for listening to us
on Jesus for Mormons and feel free to email us.
If dropping into the comments is not something that you
feel comfortable with and you want, you know, to hear
from us, feel free to email us at Jesus for
Mormons at gmail dot com. And Aaron, thanks for joining

(01:26:33):
us today.

Speaker 3 (01:26:34):
Good to interact with you.

Speaker 2 (01:26:36):
Take care, take care,