FBC Boerne Youth
Messages from First Baptist Church Boerne's Youth Ministry. Visit us at https://www.fbcboerne.org/youth/
FBC Boerne Youth
DNow 2025 // Breakout: Who Is Your Jesus? - Cherie Kassinger
Teresa Moen and Staci Thompson lead this breakout session at DNow 2025: Changed called "Who is Your Jesus?"
In this bonus episode, Cherie Kassinger explores the varying beliefs about Jesus Christ across different faiths, emphasizing the stark differences in understanding Him as the figure of salvation and deity. By examining the views of Christians, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormons, we encourage listeners to consider the implications of these beliefs in the narratives of salvation and spiritual identity.
• Discussing the nature of Jesus from a Christian perspective
• Examining beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses on Jesus' identity
• Understanding the Mormon interpretation of Jesus as a spirit child
• Contrasting views on salvation across different faiths
• The significance of resurrection narratives in Christian doctrine
• Highlighting the importance of knowledge in interfaith discussions
• Encouraging relationship-building across belief systems
So let's start with. When somebody says to you because you meet people all the time in high school, I guarantee you in middle school, high school, that look like you, talk like you talk about going to worship, talk about praying, that you might even pray in your presence in the name of Jesus Christ. Right, they look and sound like us, but how do you know that that's the same person when they start inviting you to your church, well, you need to come to our church. How do you know that that's the church you want to go to? And the fundamental question we need to always ask is who is your Jesus?
Speaker 2:So now you have to do some work and tell me what you know about Jesus. Bless you, go for it. Thank you. Jesus is our Lord savior, okay, down to save us. It's in the christianity belief okay, also my belief that, um, uh, that he died on the cross to save us from our sins and you cannot go to heaven without him and he was from Nazareth Right and I can't spell all the white words.
Speaker 3:Something else he is perfect and has never sinned and lived a perfect life.
Speaker 1:We'll talk a little bit more about that one.
Speaker 3:He loves us everlasting. That's not the word.
Speaker 1:Eternally. Yes, eternally or unconditionally. Eternalality, that's the word. He was raised from the dead. He was raised from the dead, he was raised from the dead.
Speaker 3:And he's the son of God.
Speaker 1:What else? What was the last one?
Speaker 2:He's the son of God.
Speaker 1:Son of God. Which son of God, the only, the only son of God right.
Speaker 2:Yes, sort of. So he sits right next to God, but I do believe that God also calls us.
Speaker 1:He adopted us into the family. We are adopted sons and daughters into the family, but we are. He is the only begotten son of God. Right Go to John 3.16. He's the only begotten son of God. Right Go to John 3, 16. He's the only begotten son of God. So, yes, so in this case he's that. But you're right, we are adopted as sons and daughters into Christ's family when we believe in Jesus Christ. Anything else in there. Who was his mother Mary? Right, and she was a virgin. So she was born of a virgin and we're not going to get into all of the other stuff around that. But he was in what?
Speaker 2:He's fully son, I mean, he's fully God and fully human.
Speaker 1:Thank you. He's fully God and fully human. Okay, that's quite a list to get started with, isn't it? So let's start looking at what the others believe, because they don't believe all this. They believe differently. So we're going to start with the Jehovah's Witness and I'm going to pick. Well, let's start with the eternality. We're going to go to this one.
Speaker 1:Okay, according to the Jehovah Witnesses, he did not always exist. He was not always eternal. He was created as an angel, and I have a ton of notes for you guys, so I'm not going to give them to you until we're finished with the whiteboard, okay? So once I give you the notes, you'll get a lot of this. He was known as Michael. Do you all know Michael, the archangel, right Until he came to do his work on earth? That's what they believe about that.
Speaker 1:But what do the Mormons believe? The Mormons believe he was born Spell it right as a child, a spirit, child of the, who is eternal and heavenly mother, and I'm just going to read me her name. How far from the truth is that? Does that give you an idea of how different their Jesus is already? So let's go to fully God and fully human, because, in this case, the Jehovah's Witness believe and I'm going to combine that with born of the Virgin. Okay, so the Jehovah Witnesses believe that when it was time for Jesus to come to the earth, for the prophecies to be fulfilled, that God, jehovah, who's the name of their God, the only name of God transferred to Mary's womb the spirit of Jesus Christ that's how they define it and that he was not divine. He was perfectly human, and that is how they explain the Immaculate Conception that he was transferred to her womb.
Speaker 1:When we get over here, jesus Christ is not divine. Again, you start to see how far from the truth people can get right. One of the things let's see resurrected. He was recreated and he was not crucified on a cross. He was crucified on what they called a torture pole. Here he was crucified. Let me see if I can get this right. He was crucified on a stake. What do we believe about the work of Jesus Christ on the cross?
Speaker 2:We believe that he rose from the dead.
Speaker 1:Okay, what work did he do while he was on the cross? He took our sins. What work did he do while he was on the cross?
Speaker 3:Go ahead.
Speaker 2:He took our sins he atoned for every sin we were all going to commit.
Speaker 1:He raised people from the dead and he also healed those who were sick and those who weren't able to walk Right. But we believe that Jesus Christ on the cross, when the darkness came over the earth, it was the separation from God and he was paying for the sins of all people. The Mormons believe that his atoning work happened in the garden. They don't believe it happened here, but the atonement was actually in the garden. They don't believe it happened here, but the atonement was actually in the garden. And remember your scripture. That's when he started to sweat the. Remember he sweat the blood, the drops of blood. That's what the Jehovah's Witness interpret as the atoning work. That was when he did the atonement for us.
Speaker 1:We say that he was resurrected, we have resurrected here. We also say that he was resurrected bodily because people could what Touch him, feel him right. They saw him eat. So we believe in a bodily resurrection. Here he was recreated and here it is a spirit. It was not a bodily resurrection. What do you mean? He was recreated, hm Like renewed, like reborn like, were healed.
Speaker 2:What's the question? The question was what is?
Speaker 1:recreated. Recreated was that that he, they, he was recreated as a spirit. They took the dead body. It's in essence, it is a resurrection, but that it was recreated, that is the word that they use. They do not use resurrection. They don't celebrate Easter Sunday. They, they celebrate the crucifixion. They don't celebrate Easter Sunday. They celebrate the crucifixion. They don't celebrate Easter Sunday. So we all believe that he was buried, we all believe that, we believe that he is our Redeemer. Right, and we don't have that up here. But, savior, redeemer, did they celebrate Christmas? I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Did they celebrate Christmas?
Speaker 1:No, jehovah's Witnesses do not. What about Mormons? They do, they do, they do. So we believe that he was our Redeemer. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jehovah, jehovah, who is the only God, is the only God. He has the eternal. That's spelled wrong.
Speaker 2:Okay, jesus will rule for the thousand years of paradise. That is actually true, but not true. So Jesus is God. There is the Son of God. I've been taught that he is God, so he will. It does say in Scripture, in the Bible, somewhere in Revelation, but it says that the devil will be sent to like a burning pit for a thousand years, and those thousand years will be peaceful. So that is true, true.
Speaker 1:And then what comes next?
Speaker 2:Then it comes back out.
Speaker 1:I don't really know, okay, so what happens then is that Satan is defeated, he's released and defeated, okay. And then the second coming is the New Jerusalem and people live in peace in heaven. What they believe is after the thousand years on earth, everybody is annihilated. That's cute what they believe, that at the end of the thousand years everybody goes away.
Speaker 3:On earth? Is earth not a thousand years old?
Speaker 1:No, this is the thousand year reign of Jesus at the end of time, the paradise on earth for a thousand years old. No, this is the thousand year reign of Jesus at the end of time, the paradise on earth for a thousand years. And then, at the end, everybody just goes away.
Speaker 2:I know semi kind of what Judaism is. Judaism, yeah, judaism, it's basically the belief, not of the New Testament, basically the whole Old Testament and a lot more ceremony.
Speaker 1:Okay, let me take a question up here. Okay, I was just wondering.
Speaker 3:So they believe that after the 1,000 years of paradise, like everybody, they don't go to heaven or hell.
Speaker 1:There's no heaven or hell in Jehovah's Witnesses.
Speaker 3:It's not purgatory or nothing. Hmm, like not purgatory, it's nothing. There's no heaven or hell in Jehovah's Witnesses.
Speaker 1:Nothing, Nothing right the Mormons.
Speaker 3:It is, it is.
Speaker 1:It is a faith of no hope. It is a faith of works, and we'll talk a little bit more about that when I give you your handouts. We'll go through some of the the differences in the faiths, but that's what it really is now. In the Mormon religion, which is really kind of interesting, they have three levels of heaven, okay, and Jesus has the second level. The top level of heaven requires approval from God and Joseph Smith to enter it, but at the second level you only need the approval of Jesus. It's kind of an interesting philosophy, um.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:So there are three levels and we'll look at a chart of that so that you can understand it in just a second. Okay, and we'll look at a chart of that so that you can understand it in just a second, okay. So we talked about the crucifixion. We talked about must believe. We believe that if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, you will not go to heaven, will you? Right, and that is where they stand. But on Jehovah's Witnesses, it's not that you have to believe, you must also do this. How many of you have ever had Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door? Right? So they will go home and they will fill out a timesheet that has your address on it and say I visited with these people today. And they turn in timesheets every week. Their work is recorded for them and if they're not doing enough work, they get chided for it. They get punished for it. By who? By the elders of their congregation.
Speaker 3:How would they be punished?
Speaker 1:I don't know, my sister never. My sister always did her work.
Speaker 3:But it's like it's illegal.
Speaker 2:It's America. You can't, it's not like.
Speaker 1:No, no, no. This is the work is. They have to go out and they have to make disciples. They have to go to your house, they have to visit you, they have to invite you to take their lessons and understand what they're trying to teach you. They're trying to get you into their faith. That's their work, that's their good, according to them, that is their good works Perfect. We say he is perfect. He was perfect on earth, but according to Jehovah's he was not. There's a really interesting thing about the second coming, and we'll go over that the only son of God. Let's talk about that one in.
Speaker 2:Mormons. He is the brother of.
Speaker 1:Lucifer. I'm sorry, I heard another name for him. What is this other name? Satan? That's what they believe, that he is the brother of Lucifer. And the way they came up, the way God came up with the plan of salvation for the earth, was that Lucifer and Jesus both presented a plan to him and they took Jesus' plan, not Lucifer's plan, and then Lucifer started to work against him. It's just that is part of their philosophy. What was Jesus' plan? It's just that's that is part of their philosophy. He was born of the heavenly mother and the heavenly father. He was the brother of Jesus, they just say. They just tell us that they took Jesus's plan. But what do we know about? What do we know about Satan? Okay, I'll come back to you. What did we know about Satan?
Speaker 3:Okay, I'll come back to you. What do we know about Satan?
Speaker 1:He comes to destroy, comes to destroy. But what was he to begin with? He was an angel. He was created by God as an angel, who then exercised his free will and tried to become God himself. Did somebody want to? What was your question?
Speaker 2:So if they believe that they're like brothers and they came with a plan for salvation of the earth, that's them saying that the earth was messed up. But what's their reasoning for thinking that the earth was messed up to then present those plans.
Speaker 3:Well, maybe it was when the earth was created, and they do believe in original sin.
Speaker 1:We believe in original sin.
Speaker 2:We believe in original sin right and we believe what we believe that Adam and Eve sinned and later I think a long time later, like thousands of years later Jesus came and died on the cross for us. So now we are saved.
Speaker 1:Okay. So when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, god said man needs a redemption plan. Right, because sin had entered the world. They also believe, and we look at it as humanity's downfall. They look at it as humanity's downfall. They look at it as progressing upward, because if we didn't sin then we wouldn't need to do all this other stuff. And so it's a little different take on it. So I'm going to ask you all to take a handout.
Speaker 2:I have a question Do the witnesses, the JW? Do they believe in Adam and Eve? Do Mormon believe?
Speaker 1:in Adam and Eve. They believe in the Bible. But we'll talk about the differences. When you get this handout okay. I also think all the listeners of Grace are differences. When you get this handout okay, I usually punch holes in them.
Speaker 3:I didn't today, Sorry. So I'm just curious and I might be jumping ahead a little bit.
Speaker 1:but like where does the bible come into play with, like jehovah witnesses? Okay, well, that's actually the second thing on our list, okay, so let's talk about the, the chart I gave you. So, starting with the first page, who is the founder of christianity? Christ, right, the church consolidated after the death of Jesus Christ in about AD 33. It started to consolidate and we have carried forward from that time forward.
Speaker 1:The Mormons believe that Joseph Smith, in 1820, received a revelation from an angel named Moroni that there were golden plates buried in the ground near Palmyra, new York, and those golden plates contained God's actual word. And so Joseph Smith translated those golden plates, which nobody has seen to this day, because they were carried back to heaven by the angel Moroni by looking into something like a hat with some stones in it. That's how they get their scripture, and Galatians 8 and 9 warn us that if an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than the one we preach to you, you will be cursed. Think about that for a minute. But that is the basis of their religion and that is from that came the Book of Mormon. So the Book of Mormon is I'm going to combine those two top things the Book of Mormon is their guiding scripture. They have the Doctrine and Covenants which lay out all their rules. They have the Pearl of Great Price, which is kind of like our Proverbs and Psalms, and they have the King James Version of the Bible as corrected by the Mormon Church. That's important to remember because if you pick up a Bible and you go to a verse and you look at it in the Mormon Bible it might not read the same because it may have been adjusted to fit their theology. And we see the same thing with the Jehovah's witnesses. We had Charles Russell, who then was followed by Joseph Rutherford, and they claim to be the only truly divine interpreters of the Word of God. And they also use the King James Version, but they use what's called the New World Translation, which has been corrected by people who are Jehovah's Witnesses. And then they have a book called Reasoning from the Scriptures and you may have seen and if they visited with you they probably left you a Watchtower magazine or an Awake magazine.
Speaker 1:One of the incredible things about Jehovah's Witnesses is that they are told what to believe and they are told how to believe it. Every Sunday around the world, every Jehovah's Witness congregation is getting the same message, singing the same songs, and it's all done without professional preachers. They don't have educated pastors, they don't have people that have gone to seminary and studied God's word under other people. They do it with lay people. So my brother-in-law would sometimes get up and be the teacher, but he had in front of him what he was told to teach and how to teach it.
Speaker 1:Now they also believe that women can't teach men, but everybody in the congregation has to take the opportunity to teach. So when it is a woman's turn to teach, can I borrow you for a second? Come, stand right here. We would be having a conversation about this scripture like this and you all get to listen to it, but we're not teaching you, thank you. Scripture like this and you all get to listen to it, but we're not teaching you, thank you. So women, that's, how women get into teaching in the Jehovah Witness Church is not by teaching the congregation, but by having a conversation with each other. The conversation, conversation is scripted.
Speaker 1:So then it's not a conversation, it's just, it's a recitation. Yeah, it's reciting what they have been told to recite.
Speaker 2:And who decided that that's what they're gonna do.
Speaker 1:The Watchtower Society. Now, the reason my sister and brother-in-law got into this is because they didn't like organized religion. They didn't like the idea that there was a preacher up there that was telling you what to do, what to believe and all of these kinds of things. But I want you to flip to either the last or the next to last page. And this is how organized the Watchtower Society is. Does that look like a church with no structure to you? Right? And what they believe comes down from the governing body and that's who produces the magazines and the reasoning from scriptures.
Speaker 1:My sister would read the scriptures, but she would always read it with a book that told her what it said. They're never allowed to have the Holy Spirit interpret for them In the Mormons. The one thing about the Book of Mormon the Book of Mormon they believe Jesus was resurrected as a spirit body and he was sent to the Americas to spread the word of God, and so the whole Book of Mormon takes place in Latin and Central America. The one thing I want you to know is that if you go to Bible archaeology, there's a ton of stuff about the stories in the Bible and the archaeology. To support those. There's not a single evidence, archaeological evidence, of anything in the Book of Mormon and that should tell you about the veracity of that word.
Speaker 1:We believe the scripture is inspired and inerrant. They believe that it has been corrupted by man and they needed to correct it. They believe that they're, and so we're going to talk a little bit about the church. We believe in the church that Jesus Christ is the head of the church and that we answer to him that, and we are organized differently depending on what congregation we belong to. But Protestants and Catholics believe that Jesus Christ is the head of the church In the letter. In the church of the Mormon church, which is the church of the Latter-day Saints, it is controlled by the first presidency, that is, the current prophet, and the prophet can change the law. When I worked for the Mormon church, I had to have three interviews. To go to work for the Mormon church, I had to have what was called a state. There were three levels that I had to get approvals from and I had to sign an agreement that I would not drink Coke, coffee, tea and I would not try to convert somebody to being Protestant.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you weren't allowed to drink Coca-Cola.
Speaker 1:Coca-Cola coffee or tea on the campus because they have health laws against caffeine? Oh, all right. At that time also this was in 1976, 77, there were no African Americans or blacks in the priesthood of the Mormon church because their philosophy had been that they were from Cain, that the blacks had descended from Cain and they were inferior to white leadership. The prophet, while I was there, had two revelations. One was that they bought the controlling interest of the Coca-Cola company. The Mormon church did. You still couldn't drink it it. But they bought controlling interest of the Coca-Cola company because it was a moneymaker, just because they could. And they started to allow blacks into the priesthood. And if think about what was happening in the United States in the 1970s, what were we going through? Draw on your history, come on, you've all had this history. Not the Great Depression, no, that's much further back.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about civil unrest, right, civil rights movement and civil unrest, and what was happening at that time movement and civil unrest. And what was what was happening at that time? Right, there was a. There was a. There was a whole thing about positive affirmation and raising up people who had felt they, they had had equal opportunity, right, and so they went right along with that. And so you start to see that their, their philosophies and their scriptures and their theology can be changed by the times, by the influences of money and culture.
Speaker 3:So for Mormonism it's the prophet right.
Speaker 2:So, whoever they are, they have absolute say.
Speaker 1:Absolute say. They do have the group of 12 that sits beneath them and they seek their counsel, but their word is it. Their word is law.
Speaker 3:So they can say, oh, you're not allowed to eat there.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll tell you a quick story. And it was, and they took a camera and some other stuff and ice cream and things like that, and we lived in a duplex and there was an alley behind us. So the next morning we walked out and the camera was in the garden because they had to go over the back fence. We apparently interrupted them and so they went over the back fence and they dropped the camera as they went. But my neighbor had seen them and they knew who they were and they were more afraid of the church than they were of the police.
Speaker 1:So the guys, you know, that's the, that's the control that the church has. And so let's go to the governing principles. We believe in what the Bible, the inerrant word of God, that is what guides us. We do have doctrinal faith statements that are a little different and we have the creeds, which brought together all the disparate conversations that were going on, and we have the Nicene Creed, and it is you hear it all the time. We believe that God, the Father, reaffirms the Trinity, the virgin birth, the death, the resurrection, the crucifixion, the resurrection, all of those In the Mormon, the top one is the law of tithing.
Speaker 1:You must give 10% to the church. You must give your tax return to prove that you've given 10% to the church. It is verified. They believe in the welfare program and I will tell you their welfare program is one of the best in the world and that church raises mothers like no other church does, because they train them to be mothers from the time they're little girls. Because they believe the Mormon church is going to grow by procreation, by having big families. My babysitter had 10 kids. My baby's got three others under the age of two. There's a special place for her somewhere or something, but I'm telling you they do. But their welfare program is they fasted for two meals on the first Sunday of every month and all that money went into their welfare program to support people who didn't have what others had.
Speaker 3:So by giving 10%. You're talking about money, Money 10% of income. I know this isn't exactly what you're talking about, but whenever you served in the Mormon church, you weren't Mormon right, I did not serve in the Mormon church, I worked for the Mormon University.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, okay, so you were still. I was, yes, I was a Baptist, okay.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, so you were still. I was. Yes, okay, I was a Baptist. Okay, yes.
Speaker 2:I was a Baptist working for the Mormons.
Speaker 3:Yes, what were you doing? You were a Baptist.
Speaker 1:They knew I was Baptist. Did you hear that? Yeah, I just was not allowed to talk about my faith to any of the students, right?
Speaker 2:What were you doing for the university?
Speaker 1:I was a secretary in one of the departments at the University. I supported 11 professors. I typed up all the tests and all those kinds of things and stuff like that. Yeah, okay, all right, so let's go on to. They also have the word of wisdom, which is their health code, and we talked about that being you're not allowed to use alcohol, drugs, tobacco, any hot beverages or anything containing caffeine, and it is an absolute requirement for temple entrance. And temple entrance is what they aspire to. They want to be temple pure. They want to get married in the temple, not just in the church, and for them, that gives them a picture of eternity.
Speaker 1:I don't know if any of you've ever been through a Mormon temple when the temple was built here. They generally have it open for a period of time for people to see and when they come through it, they have it all. You can go through and you can see the entire temple, and I did this one in the Washington DC and I did it when they redid the one in Hawaii at the time when I was there and you walk into it and there's a picture of Jesus sitting up on the wall with the goats and the sheep. Remember, he's going to separate the goats and the sheep at the time of judgment. And then you walk through it and everything is white. The carpet is white, the walls are white, it's just bright. It's like you can imagine heaven being.
Speaker 1:And they show you the basin that they do the baptisms in and it's like the basin that's described in the Old Testament, where all of the oxen are there and the basin is on the backs of the oxen and you go on in and in where they get married. It's an amazing place because there's a pedestal and all of this is covered with white rug. It's all white carpeted, but there's a pedestal and the bride kneels on one side of it and the groom kneels on the other side of it, and behind them are mirrors. Now think about that for a minute. If you're looking into a mirror that's behind you and in front of you, what do you see? You see eternity, and that gives them the sense of the infinite and the eternity, because they believe they're married for eternity.
Speaker 2:So does that mean the divorce does?
Speaker 3:not exist in the Mormon church.
Speaker 1:It exists in the Mormon church, but it's not accepted in the Mormon church.
Speaker 3:So they'll kick you out of their congregation if you get divorced.
Speaker 1:That's okay. That's the questions. Go ahead oh okay.
Speaker 3:So I was going to ask do they have different requirements for baptisms?
Speaker 1:You're baptized as a believer. Right, Every person has to be baptized as a believer. It's full immersion baptism. But they also baptize for the dead, Because think about this in 1820 is when we first had the first revelation in the Mormon church. Well, how many people had died before 1820? A lot that had never heard the truth. In their opinion right According to their church they'd never heard the truth, because the truth didn't really exist until 1820, when Joseph Smith came and got the revelation. So they do genealogy and their genealogy records are some of the best in the world and you go back and they trace back and they get baptized on behalf of those people who never had the opportunity to hear the truth, so that those people can then go into heaven.
Speaker 3:So even if, like you, don't.
Speaker 1:Hold on just a second please. I have a question here.
Speaker 3:Sorry, so like, even if, like those people like never knew Right, they were Right. They were Right Like they just proclaimed that they're.
Speaker 1:They just Right, they get baptized for them, okay, they baptize everybody. So I have this question up here.
Speaker 2:Don't the Mormons have like multiple wives.
Speaker 1:There is a branch. There was a time in the Mormon church where polygamy was accepted. Polygamy is no longer accepted in the Mormon church. It is accepted in some factions of the Mormon church that have broken off from the mainstream Mormon church. There is still polygamy and you may have seen the reality show, sister Wives. There is a branch of polygamy in Utah, but it is the revised church of the Latter-day Saints. Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 2:So what would happen if you just went in preaching the truth about Jesus Christ and all that stuff in one of their churches you just went in preaching.
Speaker 1:Well, if you went into their church and tried to witness to them, they would certainly be very polite. They're an extremely polite religion and they would just say thank you and show you the door. What's the least polite? I don't know, probably one of those funky Indian things. Let me get some other people, okay.
Speaker 2:Two questions. One what's polygamy?
Speaker 1:Polygamy is where you can have multiple wives.
Speaker 2:So you're having so in their eyes, right in their bullies. He says you're getting baptized for in their eyes. In their belief, it says you're getting baptized for all the people before that, all the people.
Speaker 1:Not all the people. You're being baptized for people by name. So like you can't say I want to be baptized for my whole family, no, they do. The genealogy records they name you as you're being baptized.
Speaker 2:If that person's dead right that person's dead already right, which they probably are right.
Speaker 1:Yes, this is baptism for the dead.
Speaker 2:If they're already dead and in their eyes you can't go to heaven until you're baptized, then in their eyes are they just like chilling in their body.
Speaker 1:Hold on to that thought. Okay, hold on to that question. Sorry, I have something to build on the ancestral lines. I have a just like chillin in the body. Hold on to that thought. Okay, hold on to that question.
Speaker 3:Sorry, I have um something to build on the ancestral lines. I have a question um like do you mean that is mormon? Like a more like a family, or like inherited religion, or like who decides who gets like okay, which people get baptized?
Speaker 1:um, they have to prove certain things in the genealogy records in order to be baptized for that person, but you have to meet certain conditions of the religion in order to do that. So, just like many of us, I grew up in a Christian household, but it wasn't until I made my decision for Christ that I became a Christian right. So their children are raised in a Mormon household, but it's not until they make their decision to be baptized into the Mormon church that they're a member of the Mormon church. Okay, I'm going to hold your question because we need to move along. All right, so I'll come back to you in a second. So let's go on.
Speaker 1:Jehovah's Witnesses are baptized by total immersion. One of the things that's interesting about the Jehovah's Witnesses are baptized by total immersion. One of the things that's interesting about the Jehovah's Witnesses we spend a lot of time on Mormons is that they believe the 144,000 that is mentioned in Revelation is the actual number of people that will be in heaven. No more can be added to that, and that number has already been sealed. So when they are offered communion in their worship services, they do not take it. It's passed to them and they just, like you know, we do the little cups now, but when we used to pass the place, they just pass it, nobody takes it. They fill it up and they pass it and nobody takes it because they're not one of the 144,000. It's an empty sacrament, right.
Speaker 3:What happens if someone takes it? They?
Speaker 1:wouldn't. They wouldn't, no, they'd be shunned if they did.
Speaker 3:So it's just like a tradition?
Speaker 1:Yes, it's a requirement of the church that you don't do that. Who do they think is the one? Who? Just? So let's go back to one. Yes, it's a requirement of the church that you don't do that. So let's go back to one of the fundamental beliefs we believe in who God, the Father, god the Son and the Holy Spirit right, we believe in the Trinity.
Speaker 1:In the Mormon church, god, who is Elohim, is called the Heavenly Father. He's not always been God. Jesus, who is called Jehovah, is the oldest son and his brother is Lucifer. We've talked about that In the Jehovah Witnesses. Jehovah is the only God. Jesus Christ is a special person because he was created by God before all things and he's identified as Michael, as the archangel, in the Bible. The Holy Spirit is not a person, he's a force and it is his active force that is used to accomplish Jehovah's purposes. And Satan is the author of the lie, of the doctrine of the Trinity, because the word Trinity is not in the Bible. That's a lot right To take in, but we know what we know. We have God, the Father, god the Son and the Holy Spirit. And what does the Holy Spirit do for you? Protect you, convict you of the truth, right? How many of you have ever gone to do something and you get this little voice going nope, you don't want to do that, right? Oh no, I didn't want you to raise your hand. So we believe that God has been, is and always will be. We have an eternal God in three persons.
Speaker 1:Right, elihim, who is the Father God, the Heavenly Father of the Mormons, is one of innumerable self-progressing deities. Now, there is no indication at all in their literature of when this first started, but it is self-progressing and he's married to a multitude of wives. The Jehovah's Witnesses say there is one God. His name is Jehovah. He is all-powerful and all-knowing, but he's not all-present and he's not triune. So what I wanted you to do real quick is flip to either the last or the next, to the last page that looks like this and this is were there not enough handouts for everybody? Did you not get one? Okay, I'm sorry, this is how it works in the Mormon church, according to heaven. Okay, all right. So they have an eternal plan of salvation, or what's called eternal progression. It starts with prem-mortal life. There are spirit children of the heavenly father. They come to earth. That's the first test for them. They are born into a family, into a Mormon family, and that is their test to see if they can pass that. And then they go to spirit paradise or spirit prison and they're waiting for the resurrection and judgment of the savior and different apostles. They view the tapes.
Speaker 1:I don't know if any of you ever um, there was a great movie about that, about watching the tapes of your life to determine where you were going to go. It was, it was a comedy, it was really good. Um, I think Meryl Streep was in it, actually. But it just reminds you of this kind of thing where they well explain to us what you were thinking when you went into the house to rescue the cat, you know, and she goes. Well, it's a living being and I needed to.
Speaker 1:You know all this kind of stuff, but that's that's the sort of sense you get that this is what they're going to do, question you on your decisions, about what you did and what you think. But you can go to one three levels, one of three levels the telestial kingdom is administered by the Holy Spirit, the terrestrial kingdom is under Jesus and the celestial kingdom is unlimited access to God, christ and the Holy Spirit with all of your families and you get to progress from that one. The other two, you just stay there, you don't progress. And are those other two?
Speaker 3:like that. Hmm, are those other two like that?
Speaker 1:I can't tell you. I can't tell you. But they believe in three levels of heaven. What do you mean by progress? Progress, then you would become a god. It's a self-progressing deity. You get your own planet. If you're a deity, right, exactly, if you're coming out of the celestial kingdom, you and your wife or wives go and populate another planet and it's just the self-progressing kind of thing. It's a little hard to get your head around and this is why, when they are talking to you about the Mormon religion, you never hear about these kinds of things. I took the Mormon lessons because I wanted to know what the students believed. And I would come back and I would sit down with Dr Hammond and I'd say, well, show it to me in the Bible. And he couldn't. We'd spend hours and he'd try to find something that sounded kind of like it, but he couldn't.
Speaker 3:So they just so some person just figured all this stuff out and then told it in one person.
Speaker 1:Joseph Smith was the first prophet of the Mormon church.
Speaker 3:But there's no scripture.
Speaker 1:The Book of Mormon is what he translated. That is their scripture.
Speaker 2:So I'm saying this specific part, is it in scripture?
Speaker 1:It is not in scripture. It has all come through the revelations of the prophets.
Speaker 2:Okay, so what's their purpose for atonement, then if eventually, is it just so they can eventually be judged to good or evil?
Speaker 1:So they can go, so they would pass the judgment to get into the celestial kingdom. And so you also have to remember that if you are not temple worthy on earth, you will not be in the celestial kingdom. So they all strive to be temple worthy.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry I didn't catch this, but who makes that judgment for?
Speaker 1:them, joseph Smith and God. And Joseph Smith is like the founder, he was the founder of the Mormon church. That's quite an elevation for a human being to be put up there with God, right? So do they believe Joseph Smith is like the above Jesus? They do. They do believe he's the final authority. So when founding this, I guess, religion Joseph Smith? It was said he found stone tablets or gold plates Gold plates and he couldn't show them to anyone, correct?
Speaker 2:only he could see them.
Speaker 1:Only he could see them. There is something in the history about there may have been another man and woman who actually saw the plates, but they were his scribes and literally he would go into a room and look at them through this device and translate and they would write down what he saw.
Speaker 1:But no one could confirm the existence of these stones? No, because when he was finished translating them, moroni took them back to heaven, but as they did. Yeah, it's an interesting thing, and if you go and read a biography of Joseph Smith, there's some really interesting things about him and his character.
Speaker 2:So if you reach the top, then, do you start?
Speaker 1:over again. You get to produce those spirit bodies. Okay, yep, on your planet, on your planet. Okay, got it Alright, okay, so you go, you basically become another god, no wait.
Speaker 2:Then how come there's no existence of life, this planets?
Speaker 1:if this is even true, what a great question. Say it loud enough for everybody to hear, because you've got to get it on this tape thing that I'm recording, that we're recording.
Speaker 3:If this is true, how come there's no existence of life on other planets?
Speaker 1:How come we don't see life on other planets? If this is true, how come there's no existence of life on other planets? How come we don't see life on other planets? If this is true, it may be a different solar system. I don't know.
Speaker 2:The planets are invisible.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's go to atonement, because we've talked a little bit about this. How do we get atonement? How are we atoned for? The substitutionary death of Christ on the cross gave us atonement before God right. So by believing in Jesus Christ's work on the cross, we are atoned for and we have the right to stand in front of God fully righteous. Under the Mormons, the provision was supplied by God for people to earn their salvation by obedience to the laws and the ordinance of the church and in the Jehovah's Witnesses, the bodily resurrection is denied. The only atonement for sin is obeying the laws of the church and doing the work as they define it. So what do they get out of this? Hmm, so what do they get?
Speaker 3:out of this? What do they get out of this?
Speaker 1:They get a thousand years on earth. Right now I have a nephew and a niece who have come out of Jehovah's Witnesses and we've been witnessing to them and walking them through what the truth is. And my sister was down for a visit and she has this conversation with her son all the time. He's like Mom, why can't you accept what we have right now? And she said because I want what's coming, I want to be with you in what's coming, and so she can't enjoy him here and now. All she can think of is that he's walking away from being with her for the thousand years on earth. But think of is that he's walking away from being with her for the thousand years on earth. But really she's the one walking away. Right, she's the one that's walked away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so angels we've um, I don't know if we talked about that. They're created beings. We had some that were disobedient to god. They became satan and his minions. Um, we believe the church of jesus christ of latter-day Saints believes in angels, but they believe they're wingless, they have no wings, and that the angel of God has never had any wings. They have the same form as human beings, and no angels minister to the earth except those who belong to it. That's their statement of faith, but no definition.
Speaker 1:And Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in angels, they don't believe they can communicate anything. We believe in the actual person of Satan, don't we? And that he has dominion. He has minions that are called demons. We believe in that. We've seen Jesus cast those demons out in different stories and stuff. Satan is also an adversary in the Mormon church. He was the spirit son of God, who was once an angel, but in the person um Lucifer rebelled against God and then he has sought to destroy the children of God on earth and make their life miserable. And we have to agree that when he gets to work sometimes we are pretty miserable, right? The Jehovah's Witness believe that Satan is God's chief adversary and the invisible ruler of the world. So we see Satan's universality over all three religions. We see that that common thread is there and, I'm sorry, I don't know how long this session is.
Speaker 3:I think it's like three. I think we leave it to three.
Speaker 1:Yeah, is there a second session? I don't know if there's. I texted Garrett, let me see if he gets it, I'll go ask.
Speaker 1:You're good, okay, thank you, because I want to keep going. You're good, okay, thank you, because I want to keep going. We want to talk about eternal security because this is important, because once you're saved, you're always saved. Once you have been made righteous with God because of your belief in Jesus Christ, you're still saved. Right, if you walk away from the religion, and thank God that happens because it doesn't say in the Bible.
Speaker 1:If you walk away from the religion and thank God, that happens because it doesn't say in the Bible if you walk away, it says when you walk away, you will be, you can be redeemed again. So it's eternal salvation and we believe in the eternal security of that. We never fall away from the state of grace. Part of the work of salvation in the Mormon church has been the atonement of Jesus Christ. But in order to do that, in order to get the full atonement of Jesus Christ, you have to do the work of the church. And what is the work of the Mormon church? The same thing as the work of the Jehovah Witnesses church to go out and make more disciples.
Speaker 3:So for Christianity, like, once you're or I, go to a baptist church, so, once you're saved and um, like you're fully immersed baptism. And then, um, like you truly believe, and then you walk away from, like jesus in the church, maybe, like, you start doubting your religion and um, like, is it possible then? Like, so you'd always be saved, like you'd still go to heaven.
Speaker 1:You will not lose your salvation. Yes, one hour. So we're just coming up on that. Okay, so there's a lot more information I want to get you to the page. There's some interesting things on the thing called unique beliefs. Jehovah's Witnesses do not observe birthdays or Christmas, easter or Thanksgiving, they are forbidden to vote or run for public office, they do not salute the flag, they do not serve in the military and they do not accept blood transfusions.
Speaker 3:I have a question what if they get drafted?
Speaker 1:They will be a conscientious objector. What does that mean? They file for conscientious objection. They do not serve in the military.
Speaker 3:Oh, so they just like get excused.
Speaker 1:Well, sort of yes, okay, we did talk about them. There's a page on here, though, that I really want you to look at, and it's called A Quick Summary of False Beliefs. Let's go over them real quick. Mormons believe that Jesus was the spirit child of the Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. That he became the Redeemer because he had a better strategy than Lucifer. That his greatest atoning work was in Gethsemane, not on the cross. Mormons believe that, as man is, god once was, as God is man may be. Think about that. Right. God was a man who became a God, and now that he's become a God, he set the example for you to become a God as man was. As man is God once was. As God is now, man may be.
Speaker 3:Why would you?
Speaker 1:Apparently, yeah, yes. Well, the men will the men, will Women go with them?
Speaker 3:Okay, so that means, if you're just so in their eyes, in their eyes.
Speaker 2:If your husband's successful in life, you go.
Speaker 1:With him.
Speaker 2:With him to repopulate the planet.
Speaker 1:Yes, you got it. Everyone is a self-progressing deity who will populate their own worlds.
Speaker 3:So, because they believe that Earth is God's planet, when they go and have their own planet, do the Mormons of that planet only respond to them, or do they also respond to the God of Earth?
Speaker 1:I believe that they have to take their own religion with them. Okay, yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:All right, I want to just wrap this up. I just I want you to see how different their beliefs are than ours, right? And how many rules they have and how many. And how this did not come out of the mouth of Jesus Christ, right? Our belief system came, and how this did not come out of the mouth of Jesus Christ, right. Our belief system came out of the mouth of Jesus Christ, and that's who we follow, because he is the son of God. What happens if you're a woman and you're not married, but you're a woman? You don't ever make it to celestial Because you've never born children, right?
Speaker 2:Wait. So if you get married and then you don't have children, it to celestial because you've never born children.
Speaker 1:Right, so to populate. Yeah, I saw that face. Yep, the main purpose of a woman in the Mormon religion is to have children yes, as many as you can have. And I worked with a lady who was having her first child and she was this tiny, tiny little thing. She felt like you, amy Tiny, tiny little thing, and when she had her first baby, she had a miserable time and she had such bad depression because she never wanted to go through it again. And she was a Mormon wife and she knew she was going to be expected to have baby after baby, after baby.
Speaker 1:I want you to understand that these are people that God has commanded us to love and to share the truth with, and so, as you develop relationships with them, as you try to make friendships with them, ask them questions to understand what they believe and tell them what you believe and why you believe it. And because you believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, because Jesus Christ is the one that you said it. And so we just ask you, we want you to have this information it's a lot of information, but it's good information so that when you're somebody says to you I believe in Jesus Christ. You don't automatically assume that it's the same Jesus that you believe in, because you can see the differences. Right, that's okay. Yes, they encourage it. They do encourage adoption because it's growing the faith. Yeah, that's a really hard thing. If you have fertility issues in the Mormonren, that's a really hard thing. If you have fertility issues in the Mormon church, that's a really hard thing.
Speaker 3:Do they just think you're cursed or something?
Speaker 1:I'm not quite sure how they deal with that, but it is not. They do adopt a lot, then probably. Yeah, let's pray. It's 2 o'clock.