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.
I don't recall Romney once trying to witness to me or anyone else. I don't recall him talking about his beliefs.
Romney had faults as a candidate.
His religion wasn't one of them.
I'm sure millions evangelicals stayed home or passed over the presidential portion of the ballot.
And the Country is worse off for it.
You can throw out examples of slimy Mormons. Reid being the one that comes to mind. There are slime-balls in all religions.
Remember Jim Bakker, Swagert, Copeland? Fine Christians? I don't think so.!
My concern is the state of the Country, and Romney was the right man to handle the economy.
I have also experienced such timely coincidences, and have always regarded them as the gift of God. I don’t think acknowledging the providence of God in our lives, in both the blessings and the tumults, makes us Prosperity pimps.
Do you attribute the hardships of life to God?
The Prosperity Gospel does not. The Prosperity Gospel teaches that the rewards of life are a blessing which means that God blesses rich atheists.
“Do you attribute the hardships of life to God?”
Certainly! “The LORD giveth, the Lord taketh away.” Though I am indeed aware of the Prosperity pimps. We should becareful not to think though that God giving, means we think He only gives. Or that material prosperity is even important in the grand scheme of things, as we are never promised to have an abundance of wealth or perfect health, as the Health and Wealth pimps teach.
Millions did not vote for Romney because he was a flipping liberal.
He is a liberal because he is a practicing mormon.
mormonISM is liberal.
Everything Romney does and says is couched in mormonISM, if you do not know mormonISM you do not know that.
Just like Beck, everything he says and does is couched in mormonISM.
It rains on both the just and unjust
What does the Lord take away?
“What does the Lord take away?”
In Job’s case, He permitted Satan to afflict his family, wealth and health, 3 things God had originally given him. Though he restored these things even greater later on, for “all things work unto good for them who love God, who are the called according to His purpose.” Nevertheless, God “scourges” every Son He receives.
Job 1:21 (KJV)
21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
That saying which really is not in the Bible, is in reference to this verse, it mean we have only what God gives us, nothing more. We come into this world naked and we leave the same way.
This “alleged Biblical” saying is quoted as much as “God helps those who help themselves”
“This “alleged Biblical” saying is quoted as much as “God helps those who help themselves””
I was actually quoting Job when I first said it, and that’s why I mentioned him in my reply.
Perhaps you misunderstood me, but I perfectly meant that we have nothing but what God has given us, and the LORD with sovereign right can take it away, according to His purpose, and often does with the afflictions He allows to fall upon us in the world.
I agree there are issues with false teaching in some groups. Transition ministries are not about a particular church, but teaching exmormons to think for themselves and how to read the Bible and basic generic Christian theology.
Almost all exmormons who become Christians shun denominations and strict dogma - been there done that.
What kind of a Christian isn’t bothered by the blasphemies of the Mormon religion and what happens to LDS members after death?
- - - - - - -
One who truly hates Mormons.
Read my response above about that. Not Santa God if you know the context.
You dodged the question. Furthermore Christ said this about your ‘concern’ of this country
Matthew 10:28 - Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Some people stayed home because Romney wasn’t likeable, and a liberal, not because he was Mormon.
Why are you making this about the loser Romney?
Almost all exmormons who become Christians shun denominations and strict dogma - been there done that.
He denounced the Church before he was thirty years old, that was 40 years ago.
If you talk Bible with him today you better talk chapter and verse, that is to say if you want to prove a point it had better be there in plain words.
I have only talked to him half a dozen times in the last 45 years but i see it a lot the same way.
(And Jim Jones' Temple Church was extremely helpful to others, especially to the down-and-outers, PRE-koolaid, that is...)
The "Mormon koolaid" is spiritual...the 2nd death.
Anybody expressing that they are "gods in embryo" (like the Mormons)...
...On their way to becoming full-blown gods (like the temple Mormons)...
...who will inhabit & run their own planets (like the temple Mormons)...
...and engage in theft of God's glory, God's worship, prayers to God, etc...
...strikes me as engaging in ultimate arrogance, ultimate pride, and ultimate hubris...
...Or do you just let anybody who strides by you proclaiming "I'm a god" as bother-free?
(If so, then stop being provoked at Obama's overreach...hey, he's just acting consistent with somebody who's a god)
That is a very common response. Like the Who song “Won’t get fooled again”.
One of the things my ministry to exmormons does is teach them how to properly exegete.
Oh but they DO!
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