Mormons

A couple weeks back I was on the side of the street waiting for a couple of friends and two Mormons came to talk with me. As I saw them approaching, I prayed for guidance and started talking. They went through their normal lines and I asked some questions. As the conversation moved along, there were more and more questions they didn’t have answers for and they got to the point of admitting they didn’t have answers. Part of the conversation went a bit like this:

“My Bible says it’s complete, why are you adding to it with the book of Mormon?” “We’re not adding to it, the book of Mormon only clarifies some things that are not clear in the Bible. Many things have been lost from the original Bible so there are some things that are unclear.”
“Have any of those things been found?”
”No”
“So how can you know that they are missing?”
Blank stare
“So you’re assuming that something is missing and your filling in the blanks.”
“The book of Mormon gives further clarification of these things”
“So the book of Mormon adds to the Bible?”
“In no way does the book of Mormon add or take anything away from the Bible.”
“So what’s the point of the book of Mormon if the Bible is complete?”
“The book of Mormon clarifies things in the Bible that have been lost over time.”
“I’m not sure this makes sense. The book of Mormon adds clarification to the Bible but doesn’t add anything to it. It fills in things that have gone lost over time but these things have never been found and there’s no evidence they are actually missing.”
“There are many different denominations in the world and that is proof that the Bible has changed over time.”
“Really? Isn’t it just proof that people are not perfect and we make mistakes and misinterpret things and some things and have different preferences? The different denominations tell us something about us as people; they don’t say anything about the completeness of the Bible”

They realized my friends were now waiting for me and asked if there was a better time to come back. We arranged a meeting for two weeks later. I promised to look at the book they gave me and asked them to find answers to the questions I had asked.

Last week Saturday, we had the next meeting and they had done little homework in finding the answers. Through my reading, I was able to come up with some more questions and they were once again stumped a few times and caught contradicting what they had told me previously. The best case of this was probably on the idea of worshiping Jesus. They had told me they highly revere and respect him and he is the way to God but they worship Father God only. I made sure to clarify this in the second meeting before bringing them to a passage in their own book that said they do worship Jesus. I felt the meeting had gone fairly well. I had not pushed them or told them they were wrong but had simply asked questions to which they did not have satisfactory answers. At one point they asked me why I believe what I do. This opened up the opportunity to tell them about various things including a short lecture on why the Bible is trustworthy and accurate; going through historical and archaeological evidence as well as evidence within Scripture and personal experience.

As I was praying about the third meeting we had arranged for this past Wednesday, I felt I needed to be more aggressive in my approach. When we met, the two of them basically asked me why I was meeting with them and tried to cut off our contact (I can only guess it was because they had asked their church leaders some of the questions and the leaders had told them to not see me anymore). I asked them if it was because they had a true message, I was going to hell, but they didn’t care; or if it was because they were concerned that maybe they were wrong and I might point them to that and they didn’t want to face that possibility. I thought this question was about as aggressive as I could get. At one point they commented that we were just going back to the same questions all the time so I just told them “That’s because you haven’t answered them!” We talked for another half hour and when it looked like the end had come, I asked them to do me a favour. I have an assignment for one of my classes where I have to talk with someone outside the Christian church explaining one of our beliefs and get feedback on whether I explained it in terms they could understand. After only a little convincing, they agreed and I had a few minutes completely uninterrupted to share with them the doctrine of salvation. They have not yet decided to believe but they did tell me the understood completely what I said. When I got that assignment, I wasn’t sure how I would get it done because of my very limited contact with non-church people but in the end it created an open door to share the message of Jesus Christ with some people who needed to here the truth! Thank you God, for that doctrine assignment!!!