Out of curiosity, how much “brow beating” did it take before you started doing your own investigating?
Out of curiosity, how much “brow beating” did it take before you started doing your own investigating?
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Quite a bit. There was a Christian bookstore in Provo at the time (I was going to BYU) and would go in there to get books I couldn’t get (and they wouldn’t order) at LDS bookstores like a KJV Apocrypha or the Chronicles of Narnia books.
Every time I would go in, the guy was pleasant enough, but he would always ask me questions about LDS history, doctrine, why the didn’t believe things, how many wives Smith had, questions about LDS doctrine vs. the Bible. It got to the point that I was going to ‘show him’ and PROVE that he didn’t know what he was talking about and that Mormonism was true and I could prove it.
So I started doing research and found out what the ‘antis’ were saying (like Smith taking wives while denying polygamy, or that he died in a gun battle and not a martyr, or that Blood Atonement was practiced) was true. Then I started reading the Bible to prove Mormon doctrine correct and found out that it was contrary to the Bible.
But he worked with me for several months and he kept beating me over the head and kept demanding I answered his questions. Finally he got me mad enough to try to prove him wrong and I thought myself out of Mormonism.