I live and pastor in Logan, Utah, tucked into the Northeastern corner of the state. We are only about an hour and twenty minutes from Salt Lake City. Here in Cache Valley the LDS population hovers around 86%. Needless to say that Christians are in the minority here (at about 2%).
Due to the fact that many of my friends from across the world know that I live in the Mormon Mecca, it’s not uncommon to get questions about how to minister to the LDS in their area. Just this week I had a friend from Mississippi reach out to me and ask if I would be willing to put something into writing so that he and his co-workers will be better equipped to witness to their Mormon customers. While I have only lived and ministered here for about 3 ½ years and in no way claim to be an expert on the subject, I will be glad to share some helpful things that I have learned along the way.
 |
| The Logan Temple |
Just remember that we aren’t trying to win an argument, we are trying to win people. Although I haven’t been accepted into this culture as a whole I can say that I have built some great friendships within the LDS community over the last few years (some of them brought us cookies to the house just last week). I am glad to call them my friends. Above all else, love them with the love of Christ.
Cookie Cutter Evangelism. If your background is anything like mine, you were probably given a few verses from Romans and told to go out and win the world. However, Christ and the early church were much more detailed than that. Christ dealt differently with Nicodemus then He did with the woman at the well. When the Apostles preached to the Jews they went straight to the Old Testament Scriptures. However, when they dealt with the polytheistic pagans at Lystra they began by teaching them about the monotheistic God of Scripture.
I bring this up in order to point out that although the gospel never changes, everyone has a different starting point for how to get there. Although I will do my best to give the starting point for the LDS as a whole, it will still be important to try and discern the starting point for each individual. This is true no matter who we are sharing the gospel with.
Objective vs. Subjective Truth. Subjective truth is “your truth”. It’s really nothing more than an opinion based on personal experience. Objective truth is a standard beyond us. Objective truth is something that would be true even if we had never been born in order to have an opinion about it. As Christians, our objective standard of truth is the Word of God (Genesis-Revelation). The LDS really struggle with this concept. It may not always be the best thing to just start quoting Scripture because the LDS really don’t see the Bible as objectively authoritative.
Authority in the LDS system is very fluid and confusing. If you ask them what their authority is they will likely cite some combination of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, their feelings, experiences, and the writings of their prophets. They also believe in what is known as continuous or progressive revelation. This simply means that their living apostles and prophets continue to speak for God on the earth. This can be very confusing because many times the current prophets and apostles say things that completely contradict the dead ones. In this case the LDS church always goes with the living prophets and apostles. However, I have found that due to all of this frustrating confusion, most LDS tend to just go with their feelings.
One of the things that surprised me about the LDS is how mystical they are as a whole. They are taught to seek out God through their feelings, emotions and what they sometimes call a “burning in the bosom”. All of these things are based on subjective experience that cannot be vetted objectively. I’ve had quite a few LDS missionaries in my living room tell me something along the lines of, “I testify that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God and that the Book of Mormon is true.” This is usually when I kindly point out to them that what they have just said is 100% subjective and that I could just as easily say, “I testify that Joseph Smith was a false prophet and the Book of Mormon isn’t true and now what?”
The most important thing to remember when sharing the gospel with the LDS is to convince them that our authority is better than theirs. The Bible can be objectively examined. In doing so it has withstood the most intense scrutiny in the areas of history, unity, prophecy and manuscript evidence. This isn’t true of the LDS writings. In fact, I have asked many LDS people if they can give one objective reason that proves their beliefs to be true and so far nobody has been able to provide one.
A great way to try and establish the difference between their subjective authority and our objective authority is to give an example of a prosecuting attorney who is trying to convict a criminal. If he stands before the judge and jury and says, “your honor, members of the jury, I know this man is guilty because I testify that he is guilty. I felt a burning in my soul last night while I was praying.”, That “evidence” would never hold up. However, if he could provide DNA, the murder weapon in the defendant’s possession, fingerprints, video, witnesses, etc. Now we have something. This is the difference between LDS authority and the Bible. This is ground zero when dealing with the LDS as a whole.
Are the LDS Christians? The early LDS leaders were very vocal about their belief that the Christian church had become corrupt, even “abominable” (I Nephi 13:6). Joseph Smith stated that in his vision the Lord told him not to join any other churches because they were so corrupt and taught false doctrine. According to Smith, God commissioned him to restore the true and pure church.
This is important because within the last few decades (I think this was started by President Hinckly), the LDS began trying to convince others that they are Christians. I usually try to establish early on in the conversation that it’s logically impossible that we believe the same things because I believe in the things that Joseph Smith said were lost and needed to be restored and purified. This really helps to cut out the smoke and mirrors and enables us to get down to the nuts and bolts. Once it is established that we clearly don’t believe the same things, then we can get to which one is right.
Grace AND Works? When talking to the LDS it’s very important to define your terms. They will claim that they believe in things like salvation by grace, but grace to them is nothing more than an opportunity for them to carry the baton the rest of the way. I’ve had many LDS tell me that they believe in salvation by a “combination of works and grace”. I like to point out to them that this very statement is a misnomer. By definition, “grace” means undeserved, unmerited favor with God. Therefore grace cannot be earned. There is no such thing as deserved grace.
As Christians, we do believe that if there is a root of salvation, that there will be the fruit of salvation. However, we don’t work in order to be saved, we work because we are saved. And from that forgiven heart full of grace and gratefulness we can serve the Lord with the right motives.
A great point of contrast for these differing views of grace are found in Ephesians 2:8-9 and II Nephi 25:23. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9). “For we know that it is by grace that we are saved after all we can do.” (II Nephi 25:23). Although in recent years the LDS church has gone to great lengths to water down the obvious, there is no other way that that verse can be taken, especially in light of everything else that they teach about the gospel. In LDS theology, grace isn’t the free and undeserved gift of God, but a reward for your good works. It’s really important to get them thinking in terms of biblical grace.
Good News? While the LDS give lip service to things like grace, faith, justification etc., at the end of the day it’s really all about the church. The LDS church is very reminiscent of the Judaizers that Paul was writing about in the book of Galatians. The Judaizers would have given lip service to Jesus, but they would have claimed to be the way to Jesus. Become a Jew, get circumcised, and keep the law, then you can get to Jesus.
The LDS church basically does the same thing. Jesus is the way, but keeping the ordinances of the church, the priesthood, sacraments, baptism, sealing in the temple, the temple recommend etc. This is the way to Jesus. Ask an LDS if they can make it to the top level of Heaven through Jesus without the ordinances of the church and you will find what they are really putting their faith in.
At the end of the day the LDS gospel is a works based gospel. I have found it beneficial to ask them if they have done enough to get to the top level of Heaven. 99% of the time their answer is “no”. Then I ask, “could you ever get to a place where you could know for sure if you have done enough.” Again, their answer is almost always “no”. Then I ask, “well how is that good news?”, to which blank stares are sure to ensue. This is a great opportunity to shift them to the know-so gospel of grace. There is no more good news than salvation by grace through faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.
Balancing the Scales. The LDS really do believe that in a real sense, God has a scale that He is going to use to weigh out their good works and their bad works. If their good works outweigh their bad works then they will be exalted to the top tier of Heaven. We have to put salvation into legal terms.
One of my favorite outreaches is to set up our church table at public places like the fair and USU campus. We have a sign that says “there is no such thing as a good person, change my mind.” I was able to speak to almost 400 people at the fair over the course of three days with this challenge last year. So many people are willing to defend themselves as good people. The conversations usually go something like this;
LDS- So you don’t think that there are any good people in the world?
Me- (smiling) no I don’t. Do you?
LDS- Of course.
Me- Ok, what standard would you use in order to determine whether someone is a good person or not?
LDS- Loyalty, honesty, a hard worker, giving to charity, etc.
Me- I think that we can all agree that these are good things. But let me ask you this, do you think that everyone has done bad things in their life?
LDS- Oh yes, of course.
Me- So the million dollar question is, can the good things that we do erase the bad things? Think about this in a legal setting. Can our good deeds erase the laws that we have broken.
LDS- No they can’t.
Me- So how can we have our sins erased if our good works can’t erase them?
At this point I take them to the 10 commandments so that they can see that they have personally broken God’s law. Then I take them to the cross. We must put salvation into a legal context because our sin is a legal offense against God.
Conclusion. I realize that this hasn’t been an in depth discourse on Mormon theology. There is SO much that could be discussed. I am trying to keep things simple with how to share the gospel with the LDS. Sometimes we get bogged down with religious red tape and we miss the heart of the gospel, the sinner’s need for a savior. Just remember to saturate everything in prayer because our efforts are in vain without the power of God. It is the Lord that changes hearts and saves sinners. I hope this has been helpful. If you have any more questions you can email me at preacherofgrace@yahoo.com.
For another great resource, check out our Mormon Hope Podcast
In Christ, Brandon Vaughan, SDG, John 17:3
