BUT I LOVE MORMONS!!! PART 2

Let's get back to the story of my encounter with this Mormon friend of mine. I had made the decision that i wasn't going to sit down and dissect every belief and doctrine of scripture taught by the LDS church. Partly for the reason that most of the time, the Mormons that i have had the privilege of conversing with, don't actually know what their church teaches on alot of matters. I don't say this to offend any Mormon reading this, it has just been my experience. Sadly i could say the same for protestants, and catholics, and so on and so an. The point is, I rarely feel the need to "go there" unless its with a bishop or stake president who is well educated in LDS teachings. Ill say it again, i truly believe in starting from the beginning. Not going straight to the conclusion, but analyzing what got someone to that conclusion. So this is what i told her.........

I pulled out my copy of the Book of Mormon and handed it to her. Have you ever seen one of these? I bet you think its an obvious yes, right??? WRONG....I had handed her my copy of the 1830 publication which from the outside looks nothing like the current editions. She was sort of excited to see one. Its not original, that would be worth alot of money. But it is an exact replication, photo copied from the original, published by the LDS church, that I purchased in their own Deseret book store. Anyways, i told her to turn to 1 Nephi chapter 31 and verse 32. She looked confused after trying when she noticed that there were no chapter and verse numbers in the original. It was more like a novel in its writing and the chapter and numbers were put there later for easy reference. It was the same with the original writing of the Bible. But there was one difference that separates how we got the bible and how we got the Book of Mormon. The Bible claims that its scriptures were written by men "as they were led along by the Holy Spirit" in 1 Peter chapter 1. But Joseph Smith wasn't writing original scripture. He was "translating" scripture that had been previously written by another on golden plates in a language known as "reformed Egyptian". The plates were found by Smith after he was told where to find them by the angel Moroni. He was also given two "seer stones known as the urim and thummim that helped him translate the plates. David Whitmer, an associate of Smith describes the translation process:

Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light: and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling a parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principle scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man. " An Address to All Believers in Christ (Concord 1976) pg. 12

Following the translation, Smith said he heard a voice come from a bright light above him that said "These plates have been revealed by the power of God, and they have been translated by the power of God. The translation of them which you have seen is correct, and i command you to bear record of what you now see and hear." History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints(Deseret) 1:54-55.

This is where i wanted to confront her and her belief. Not about what her book teaches, but about how she came to the conclusion the the book is true. So i asked her. "Why do you believe that this book is true?". The answer was exactly what you would get from any Mormon since they all come to the same conclusion by the same process. "I prayed and asked God to testify to my spirit whether or not the Book of Mormon was true."she told me. That testimony is called "the burning of the bosom and is shared by all Latter Day Saints. So I turned to her and asked "which Book of Mormon did you pray about when you asked for your testimony?" She looked confused and asked me "what do you mean? There is only one." I then proceeded to show her that there were in fact "different Books of Mormon". I say that I "showed her" and not "told her" because I didn't want to be accused of any dishonesty. I handed her the 1830's edition and opened up to Mosiah and asked her to follow along as i read from the current edition. She quickly noticed what i meant by different books. There were alot of small differences such as my copy using "king Benjamin" when hers said "King Mosiah".. I then told her that it would take way to long for me to sit down and show her all the differences, but that she could check on her own time. So i asked "How would it make you feel if I said that these were only a few of the differences, and that there are actually 3,913 changes that have been made from the 1830's edition to the editions printed during the 1980's. and that there have been around one to two hundred further changes made to the current editions. Some are small such as punctuation and spelling, but others are as impactful as adding phrases, changing words, deleting words." She looked stunned and either could not or would not reply. So i looked at her really closely and asked in a soft quiet voice "If the Holy Spirit is the one who gave the words of this book to Joseph during the translation process, character by character, and then also divinely confirmed the accuracy of the book to Smith, why did the church make changes thousands upon thousands of times? Smith even said to a crowd he spoke to that "the Book of Mormon was the most correct book on earth". So again i ask you about your praying for a testimony of the book. Which book did you pray about? and if the Holy Spirit can make close to 4,000 mistakes in one book, why do you trust him to give you an accurate testimony???

You could see her eyes get big as if a light bulb had gone off in her brain. And her first word in over a half an hour came out. "WOW". That's all she said. "WOW".

I did not feel the need to rant on for hours about all the more problems the book itself holds, such as the 27,000 word plagiarised directly from the King James Version of the Bible which hadn't even been written till about 1,000 years after the gold plates were allegedly carved, or the geographical and archaeological problems. No, I wanted to focus on the process that led HER and every other Mormon to the CONCLUSION that the book is true. Because no Mormon comes to their conclusion based on objective, logical reasoning and evidence. It is always a subjective "feeling" they get that the writers of the Bible warned about.
Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
The type of testimony that Joseph Smith gave about the Book of Mormon would not hold up in any court of Law in this world. And i do not believe that any Mormon would allow this type of logic in any other situation. But we all have biases and traditions that can blind us from the truth. But Jesus said in John 3:21 "He that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, that they have been wrought in God"

Well, shortly after that, I told her the REAL gospel, and explained that truth has no contradictions and can be tested for all to see. I told her that there were alot of things she needed to learn about the truth and it would take time to undo all that she had been taught. But she still sat there quite.

She left that night quiet and confused. I didn't bug her for some answer or decision. That is Gods issue and non of my business.

I didn't hear from her for a couple of days and assumed that the usual had happened. Normally a Mormon who has to face this type of situation will go to there bishop or someone knowledgeable about theses things and ask for answers. I have personally seen missionaries that i have talked to reassigned to Mormon "Siberia" after confronting there leaders with the information i gave. But i was wrong.

A couple days later i was walking to my car and saw her standing there waiting for me. As i approached she looked me in the eye and said "I am no longer a Mormon." so i appropriately replied with "WHAT???" I wasn't used to that, in fact no Mormon apologist is. So i asked" I thought you said there was nothing on the planet that would change your mind???", and she replied "I was wrong".

We are now in the process of fixing the lies she had been taught since childhood. In fact almost every doctrine of Mormonism is completely contrary to orthodox christian doctrine. If anyone disagrees with me about that, then send me a message with your e-mail, i would love to show you. But anyways, the point of this whole story is that God has a time when he decides to reveal his truth to people. And i could have easily argued with her the first time we ever talked about it, and driven her away. But trusting that God has his people and that they will all hear the truth and believe, in Gods timing, not ours, means having patience and doing things with love and peace. That is what Mormons need. Not someone yelling at them telling them they are "In a cult" and screaming "REPENT" as they walk into their temple. Share the truth in a loving way and trust in Gods timing, and He will be glorified.

BUT I LOVE MORMONS!!! Part 1

Nothing bothers me more than being accused of something that I'm not doing. Yes, maybe I don't always handle things in the most mature way and i need to grow up and sticks and stones may break my bones. But give me a little bit of a break. God himself even thinks that "bearing false witness against your neighbor" is bad enough that he put it in the ten commandments. But sometimes the things that bother us are exactly what we need. Let me share with you what i mean.

I moved to Savannah, Georgia over 2 and a half years ago. When i first got to work i met this soldier who was to work with me. She asked about my tattoos and what they meant. I told her that 80 percent of the art told the story of the gospel of Jesus Christ and other major biblical concepts. The other 20 percent were of things i loved like my wife, my son, favorite childhood t.v. show (thundercats hooooooooo) ect. She told me that she was Mormon and asked what made me get tattoos like that. I told her i got them "so that people would ask me what my tattoos were about. And then while i explain the tats, it gives me the chance to tell them about Jesus." She nodded with an odd look on her face, so i asked her if i could tell her about the Gospel. She reminded me that she was Mormon, and that she already knew about Jesus and needed no such information. So i politely asked if she would be willing to hear why i believe that her Jesus is not the same as my Jesus, and if i could show her some evidence that she has believed in a false gospel, and that her church was not "The True Church" that it claims to be. As much as people love to hear me say that to them, she declined. I wasn't surprised to hear that considering I have spent the last decade of my life conversing with Mormon elders, bishops, missionaries, temple workers, and even ran into President Gordon Hinckley in Phoenix at Babies R US before his death!!!So I am used to rejection. What did surprise me was her next statement. She said to me " I don't care if you can prove every prophecy of Joseph Smith wrong, or prove that he made it all up. It is what makes me happy and nothing could ever make me not believe in the church." I was extremely thrown off by it. Normally i just get the usual "why are you anti- Mormon?" questions. But this was different. While impressed with her extreme dedication to the church, i was at a loss about how to deal with it. What would make someone say something like that??? I decided to show her respect and withdrew my request.


Not much later that afternoon she confronted me and said " I thought Christians were supposed to be loving." I agreed that we are supposed to be. Then she said " its not loving for you to try to convert me to your religion." I did not feel the need to debate about it for the sake of keeping the peace. I was in uniform and still needed to be respectful. But I wonder however, if she was a stranger to me, and i rode to her house on a bicycle with another member of my church, and then knocked on her door and attempted to share my beliefs with her, was that the "loving" way to do it. I don't mean to be offensive, but lets be fair.......anyways, i never brought it up again.



About a year passed and the girl and i actually became pretty good friends. We ended up deploying to Iraq together in 2008. We first went to Kuwait and every Sunday she wanted to go to church so she could participate in sacrament, and she asked me if i would go with her. Odd, but I agreed and went as often as she needed me to. I never once challenged anything or attempted a conversation about her church. I just sat and listened. We ended up having rooms next to each other in Iraq and talked quite often. She had some things in common with my wife, so we got along very well.


Fortunately for me I was sent home early from Iraq due to an injury, and came home to my family. Nine and a half months later, my company came home from Iraq. She came to my house a few times and got to know my wife during a couple "get togethers" we had, and things were going well. Then out of the blue one day she calls me and says " I want to have a religious discussion with you." WOW. I couldn't believe it. I felt like Ed McMahon just knocked on my door.


There was so much i was ready to share. But where to begin??? Where else, but the Word of God, and the law of non contradiction...


2 Timothy 3:16All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;


I believe the Bible is scripture and the Book of Mormon is not. But Its one thing to make accusations and its another thing to prove it!!!


To be continued..............................................

The Law of Non-Contradiction

The purpose my blogs is not to confuse people, so i will do everything i can (Lord help me) to avoid using huge theological and psychological terms that will lose the interest of the reader not familiar with those fields of study. Furthermore, if i do have to use "big words" and confusing terms i will briefly define them for clarity.

Which brings me to the most important of terms necessary to determining whether or not something is "truth". Namely the law of non-contradiction.

Definition: The Law of non contradiction judges as false any proposition P asserting that both proposition Q and its denial, proposition not-Q are blah blah blah blah BLAH BLAH BLAH..

This is exactly the crap that turns some people away from enjoying the study of deep and meaningful things like Soteriology and Presuppositional apologetics. Are you LOST YET. ok good. Now dont get me wrong, i personally love these types of studies , but not everybody does. So i want to make sure that i dont limit myself to scholars and seminary students. Those feilds are extremely important and i think they can be learned in an easy to understand way.

So lets do this the Mayhugh Way( i should copyright that).

Example 1. : I told my wife that on January 3rd 2010 at 8:00 pm i was at the bowling alley. Later on that night I told her that on January 3rd 2010 at 8:00 pm i was not at the bowling alley. Conclusion= both statements cannot be true. It is a logical contradiction. Yes i know it is a completely simplistic explanation that does not cover every variable. But since i believe even small children know the difference between Truth and Non-Truth in simple forms, the example will suffice for the purpose of this blog. If all of you educated people and seminary students out there are bothered by the elementary way in which i will be explaining concepts that took men of great minds centuries to formulate, than either deal with it or don't read my blogs. They aren't necessarily meant for you.

"So whats your point"??? My point is that every single time someone comes to a wrong conclusion of truth, it is because they fail to see their own contradicting views. This is especially the case in choosing a false religion since most people who belong to a religion dont make up their own positions. They accept what their religion says is truth and rarely ever question it. And to blindly accept everything you hear is neither logical or safe. The apostle Paul commended the Bereans for searching the scriptures daily to see if the things he was saying were true. So why do so many so-called "True Religions" discourage the very thing that Paul was encouraging. Analysis, investigation, proving, whatever you want to call it, it is extremely important because it is very clear that millions of people are decieved. I do find it funny that everyone thinks that everone else is decieved but "im not one of them". Well am I??? How can i know. I believe it is through confronting our beliefs to see if they are contadictory. Beware of any religion that discourages inquiry into their own validity. You wouldnt trust anyone else who had that kind of attitude towards their authority. I.E. politicians, police investigators, your spouse (hehehe).

Anyways. My Final point today. This concept of non-contradiction will be the foundational tool in analysing whatever topic i am going to write about. I do understand that apparent contradictions in beliefs, scriptures, liturgy, ect. arent always objective and concrete. We all have biases and traditions that inhibit us from seeing things clearly at some point, and sometimes a simple lack of education or understanding of a specific topic can lead you to the wrong conclusion. We are EASILY brainwashed, and most of the world has not been properly trained on how to logically think through a problem, engage in a meaningful discourse and debate, in order to find out whether or not they are being decieved.

"Wait a minute. Did he just say we are easily brainwashed. NOOOO not me, i cant be brainwashed. Im to smart for that". If you find yourself saying this, let me prove it to you....I know brainwashing isnt the topic of this blog, but i do think being brainwashed is one of the main reasons we dont see our own contradictions. And if you dont think you can be brainwashed then how will you ever be unbrainwashed. Lets try this experiment.

Im gonna tell you a short story, and while im telling it i will attempt to brainwash you. After you have read the story(and only after you have read it) i will ask you some questions and educate you a little, and then you should feel yourself being un-brainwash....ready???? OK here we go.

A man left home one day jogging. He ran a little ways and turned left. He ran a little more and turned left, ran a little more and than ran back home. when he arrived home he saw two masked men waiting for him.

Question 1: Who were the masked men???

Question 2: Why did he leave home jogging???

This time i will tell the story to you, but i want you to picture in your mind a man swinging a bat at a ball and then knocking it out of the park.

A man left home one day jogging. He ran a little ways and turned left. He ran a little more and turned left, ran a little more and than ran back home. When he arrived home he saw two masked men waiting for him.

You see, i was telling you a story about baseball. But i wanted you to picture a man leaving a home in a suburban neighborhood for some exercise, only to return home and see a couple criminals waiting for him. Its easy to trick the mind. So, I hope this serves as an example of how easy it is to get a false idea in your head. It happens to all of us. I wanted to make you think something, and for most of you i was probably succesfull. If i can make you think what i want you to, how do we know others arent doing it every day. I for one want to know that what i believe is true, and will spend the rest of my life sanctifying my mind along with my heart for that purpose. It isnt easy to face the fact that we may have been lied to or decieved.But with the grace of God we can learn to see things clearly and find truth in this world.......thanks for reading

Why I am doing This (blogging that is)

Have you ever thought to yourself, "How in the world did the neurons firing off in that persons brain lead them down some insanely complicated thought process that ended them in that crazy place of existence they deemed as a logical conclusion"......Well, whether or not your phrase was even close to that or not, we all wonder why people think the way they do, and why people come to the conclusions that they do. I believe it is usually in response to someone coming to a different conclusion then our own since i don't usually see people sitting around contemplating how someone reached a conclusion that agreed with their own.
That is what this blog is about. Whether its religion, relationships, politics, or controversial TV shows like LOST, we all think differently. So what makes our conclusions different. I believe its the process and path that we take in getting TO the conclusion. Some are logical and some are not. I find it extremely interesting and usefull to dissect the process that led to the conclusion, and not just focus on the conclusions themselves. And yes i am including my own fallible conclusions and thought process.
So that is what this blog is about. Searching for the truth. I believe in absolute truth. It IS out there. All we have to do is find it.

"For they exchanged the Truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. AMEN" Romans 1:25