Posted on 08/24/2013 11:24:16 PM PDT by reaganaut
A Christian professor and evangelist said that after 30 years in the Mormon Church, she came to a unique realization – the Bible is more accurate than the Book of Mormon, and God is bigger than the transcendent man worshipped by the "Latter day Saints" (LDS).
"I began to feel like somebody was pulling back the curtain in Oz," Lynn K. Wilder, associate professor of special education at Florida Gulf Coast University, former tenured professor at Brigham Young University, and author of Unveiling Grace: The Story of How We Found Our Way Out of The Mormon Church, told The Christian Post in a Monday interview. She contrasted the Mormon and Christian churches, unmasking LDS secrets – polygamy, racism, and a fundamental distrust in the Word and Power of God.
When Wilder and her husband, Mike, searched for a church home following their marriage, they found most churches "boring and out of touch," she said. She had also been reading the Old Testament thoroughly and became convinced that "these must be latter days," since Israel had returned to its homeland.
Mormon missionaries knocked on her door, spoke about the "latter days," and welcomed the Wilders into a close-knit community. "They take you in, they love on you, they began to supplant my biological family," Wilder explained. Joining the church gave her and her husband a higher status in the college and church communities. In 1999, Brigham Young University offered her a job.
Upon moving to Utah, however, the professor recounted new discoveries – the Mormon scriptures still preach racism and polygamy, despite LDS public denials. "The Bible doesn't teach that the mark of Cain was dark skin," she explained, "but the Book of Mormon does." She noted that the mark of Cain is in other Mormon scriptures, too, besides the Book of Mormon.
It wasn't until her son Micah left the Mormon Church, however, that Wilder considered questioning their doctrines, she said. Refusing to present him to the high council for excommunication, she and her husband sent him away, and he encouraged them to read the New Testament.
"Mormons believe that the Bible is often mistranslated and corrupt," the former BYU professor testified. Their scripture tells of a "great apostasy" following the death of the apostles, such that there was no true church until Joseph Smith founded Mormonism in 1830.
But when Wilder read the New Testament, she was mesmerized. "I became consumed with this God of love, the God of grace," she said, noting that Mormons believe in works-based salvation. According to the LDS church, your deeds get you into heaven, she explained, while "in Christianity, Christ did all the work on the cross."
The LDS church also teaches that Jesus failed to hold His church together, the professor noted. She quoted Joseph Smith's History of the Church, where the Mormon founder wrote, "I have more to boast of than any man had. I am the only man who has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam….Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it."
Wilder said she believed that God is strong enough to keep His church together and to preserve the message in the Bible. In Mormonism, however, God is not omniscient or omnipotent, "he is a man, basically, who is continuing to progress and I can be on that same journey," she said.
The former BYU professor explained that, according to LDS doctrine, the best Mormons will proceed to become gods like the creator. Women can only achieve this if they are married, and only apostates – those who reject the LDS church – will go to hell with Satan and his minions. Even Hitler and murderers, by contrast, will reach the bottom level of heaven, she said.
The ex-Mormon recalled that, when she turned to Jesus, she began to see signs of the personal Biblical God (the Mormon God is not personal, she alleged) touching many aspects of her life. Her book tells the story of a picture of Christ that survived a burning building, and of a Billy Graham sermon lodged deep in her memory.
Wilder testified that a buyer showed up at her house the day after she and her husband had decided to withdraw from the Mormon Church, and a college dean offered her a job for which she had never applied. "Christianity is wonderful because of God," she said. "He's created for all of us a new family, a new life, and the most amazing trust in Him because of what we watched Him do."
In addition to teaching, she and her husband run a ministry dedicated to "helping Mormons understand a bigger God, trust the Bible, and give a different Jesus a chance." She said they aim to reach the thousands of Mormons who left the LDS church – often to revert into Atheism or Agnosticism.
Part of Beck’s problem is he joined for his now wife. The other part gets back to they don’t check facts or care about facts.
A couple of years ago, Beck went on this whole thing about the Dead Sea Scrolls and Constantine and it was pure Mormon church teaching and lies, he didn’t check his facts, just repeated what he was told.
http://schleitheim.com/blog/2010/05/29/in-defense-of-glenn-becks-beliefs-about-the-dead-sea-scrolls/
Well, some of us still care if they go to Hell or not.
BTW, those ‘nice’ Mormon neighbors are laughing at you behind your back and consider you to be a lesser being. That is their theology.
See my post and link above.
You have to understand that Mormons base their view of truth on feelings, not facts.
See post #38
//We should pray that God’s grace may enter their hearts.//
Amen. Mormonism has a scorched earth view.
So you are not a Christian?
Oh don’t confuse him with the facts, SV
She admits she is newly out and when this happened she was JUST coming out of Mormonism. It takes some time to get out of the Mormon mindset. I know Lynn, not well, but we cross paths often in ministry and she is definitely not the prosperity gospel type. In context, this part of her testimony is that when she was fired (for leaving the Mormon church) God provided. What isn’t in the quote is that the college is a few miles away from where her 3 children and their spouses live in Florida and the dean does not know the children either.
Because of the local uproar over them leaving, they were completely shunned and had been looking at a way to leave the area.
Also, selling houses in the exclusive town of Alpine, Utah in this market isn’t easy. I have a friend in Alpine who has had their house on the market for well over a year now.
All of that taken with the timing, it is reasonable for someone with her background, and even those who are not, to see the hand of God in these things.
To me, this is the strangest of all Mormon beliefs (OK, becoming the ruler of your own planet is up there as well), because the pagans, beginning with Aristotle, had a much better understanding of God ("the unknown God"). They even developed proofs for God's existence through unaided Reason.
Not at all unless you are separating ‘religion’ from Christianity.
I am an apologist. I can rationally and logically defend my faith, and my epistemology is based upon facts, not feelings, in large part because I have been down this same road. I am an exmormon as well.
When I was at BYU, I took an entire semester seminar on how “Heavenly Father” was not omniscient, omnipotent, or omnipresent. It affected me greatly, because I started researching and it made me question Mormon theology in light of their own sacred works. I still kept the paper I wrote for that class that started out with “Your god may not be omniscient, omnipotent, or omnipresent but the one in the Bible and the Book of Mormon is”
Mormon theology is all about bringing God down to man’s level, and exalting man to the level of becoming God. It is a very anthropocentric theology.
Yes, I’m a Christian.
You didn’t vote last Nov? Happy with the results?
“...one “can argue a Mormon out of Mormonism but never into Christianity.”
That could explain why most ex-mo’s self-describe as atheists.
If you were a Christian you would be concerned about the salvation of those trapped in Mormonism rather than indifferent.
And I voted last November. What makes you think I didn’t?
It is about 50% sadly that become athiests, however with the creation of a couple of transition ministries, we are making inroads. It is also more likely that those born and raised in Mormonism become atheists rather than those who converted.
Also, the Mormon mindset is they are told their whole lives that “if Mormonism isn’t true, nothing is” and often don’t see that the Mormon God is very different from the Christian God and it take time and patience to get them to see that. Also, by far, most Christians are not at all equipped to deal with exMormons or understand where they are coming from. Some of the most damage I have seen, to the cause of getting people out of the LDS church and into Christianity, are by some newer never mormon run ministries who just will never get it and do more harm than good often.
Isn't that kind of what we read all the time on this humble web site?
It is about 50% sadly that become athiests, however with the creation of a couple of transition ministries, we are making inroads.
So i think it best to make sure the Church we belong to is culled of the doctrine which is not scriptural that has become tradition in many Churches.
Jesus said if you have broken one law you have broken them all, or rather words to that effect.
So in the same sense a little false doctrine would be the same as a whole lot of false doctrine.
It is not what we do in Church that counts so much as what we do in our every day living.
“Yes, I’m a Christian.”
What kind of a Christian isn’t bothered by the blasphemies of the Mormon religion and what happens to LDS members after death?
“Wilder testified that a buyer showed up at her house the day after she and her husband had decided to withdraw from the Mormon Church, and a college dean offered her a job for which she had never applied. “
Santa God. If you are good, Santa God brings you presents.
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