The True Church of Jesus Christ - eBook

My hand writing isn't that easy to read.  That is why I decided to make this into a book.

While serving as an LDS missionary in Mississippi during 2006, I began working on a document dealing with the teachings in the Bible (specifically the King James Version of the Bible).  I originally titled it "29 Points of the True Church."  My main reasoning for writing it was that I wanted to have a reference guide available when dealing with people who accused my church and myself of not believing in or following the teachings of the Bible.  I found it much easier to have a clearly organized document available to turn to rather than having to frantically look through my poorly written (and disorganized) notes.  

This guide is unique in the fact that it uses only the Bible as the supporting work for the doctrines.  Many LDS reference guides utilize all of the Church's Standard Works (The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price) and, while they are useful in many circumstances, the unique situation I was in, of living in the Bible Belt, made me realize I needed something that used only the Bible to back up my claims.  Members of other Christian churches aren't too keen on believing other types of scriptures than the Bible, especially if their pastors or preachers are against them.  

So, with this in mind, I worked on creating a document that would be useful for both myself and for others of my faith who were trying to defend their belief in the Bible.  I gave my early drafts of the work to other missionaries and also to converts to the LDS faith.  Many of those converts have reported that the document has helped them silence critics of their faith by showing them that Mormons really do follow the teachings in the Bible.  

By early 2007 I felt that I had completed the document, having spent around 10 months working on it.  However, as time went by, I felt the need to revise some of the wording and formatting to bring more clarity and readability to it.  I have now released it as an eBook through Amazon and it is now available to read on any Kindle device, including Android devices, iPhones and iPads.  Here is the link.
                                                                    

While it is an eBook, it does not necessarily read like a book or a novel.  It is a study and reference guide and contains several explanations on different passages of scripture.  It is very easy to follow and has an index page so that the reader may quickly jump to a certain section.  

Although I am a Mormon, this book is not endorsed by the Mormon Church.  It is also not an official declaration or document of the church but is simply a compilation of my ideas and findings.  With that being said, I feel that the Latter-day Saint will find great value in using this book.  I also feel that any non-mormon person who is trying to study the Bible will find use of it as there are no references to anything besides the Bible.  I also hope it can be used as a faith building device for any seeker of truth and light.  

Conversation With a Pastor (Part 2)

I concluded the previous post by writing about the time I met the pastor for the church on main street.  I want to reiterate how strange of an experience it was.  A man, full of worldly study and learning and with a college degree allowing him to become a minister, would hardly speak to or make eye contact with two 20 year old Mormon Missionaries.  I'm sure that if he would have wanted he could have probably run us around in circles by using the Bible as his defense.  At that time I wasn't very proficient in my knowledge of the book.  Nevertheless, the pastor seemed to shrink back in fear and acted as though he wanted to fall through the floor so that he didn't have to face us.  It was very bizarre.  

One thing that came from this experience was a realization that I didn't know as much about the Bible as I wanted to and probably needed to.  When someone is raised in a predominate LDS community they don't usually have people forcing different interpretation of the Bible down their throats, and so the study of that book is usually not forefront in one's mind.  Sure, I learned about it in seminary, for a few minutes a day during one of the years I was in high school, but I didn't know it in depth.  Mississippi, and Columbia especially, made me realize that this superficial knowledge of one of the fundamental books of Christendom was not going to cut it in a place that was filled with pastors and preachers.  At this time I decided that I needed to really dive into the Bible, especially the New Testament, and learn what I needed to know.  I focused on the New Testament mainly because the Old Testament is largely looked over in protestant churches.  It is still regarded as important, but not nearly as important as the words of Jesus and the Apostles.  

My original reason for diving into the Bible was that I wanted to be able to hold my own if a good old fashioned Bible Bash were to occur during our proselytizing.  Granted, Bible Bashing has never accomplished much other than bringing anger and contention to a discussion, but I began my study preparing for such an incident.  As I read I began taking notes of what I was reading.  I would write down scriptures that supported the doctrines of Mormonism and, after a time, I realized that this information could be useful for other missionaries that I knew.  I decided to organize this into a paper and titled it The 9 Points of the True Church (or whatever the number was).  As I went on, and as we encountered more opposition to various doctrines of our faith, I realized that I needed to add more "points," and eventually I ended up with 29 points.  

During my reading I realized that many of the words, as they were translated into English, seemed to lose some of their meaning.  A great feature in current versions of the LDS Standard Works is that you will occasionally see HEB or GR in the footnotes of certain verses.  HEB stands for Hebrew and is found in the Old Testament while GR stand for Greek and is found in the New Testament.  I began to see these footnotes showed that there were different meanings that what was written in the English so I decided I needed help in knowing what those words were.  This is when I decided to pick up a Hebrew and Greek concordance at a local Christian book store.  It had the original Hebrew and Greek translations for every word in the King James Bible, and it was an amazing asset.  (There is a link to it at the bottom of my blog)

I worked on this paper for a good 10 months of my mission.  I would use various computers that I came across to work on it.  I wanted to type it so that it could be easily read and printed, and soon the document was 16 full pages of text.  I decided that was too many to print out, as I was rather poor at the time, so I made the font size considerably smaller in order to make it cheaper to print.  Unfortunately my eyes cant see 8 point font that well any longer and I have since changed it back to 12 point font.  I also decided to start each new "point" (now labeled "doctrines" in the document) on a new page and the entire document is now around 40 pages long.  

This document gave me an extreme feeling of confidence in the fact that I knew I could both defend the doctrines of the LDS church (with only the Bible) and, if anyone brought up some superfluous argument, I would have a good rebuttal.  I gave this document to other missionaries as well as some converts to the church, and it proved useful to many of them many times.  One convert even stated that he used it to defend himself when a coworker said that Mormons are crazy because they believe in such and such a thing.  It was nice to know that my work had brought help.  I am also cautious to note that I realize that this work was not entirely my doing.  I am certain that I received a significant amount of help in both finding the information and in organizing it properly.  I look at the document now and know for sure that I could not have done it on my own.  

Unfortunately, I was never able to deliver this document to the pastor.  In fact, I was never able to tell him how wrong he was about us.  I was never able to bear my testimony of Jesus Christ to him, of testify of prophets and apostles being called again after a long night of apostasy.  I wasn't able to bear my witness as an ordained minister of Christ and that has always bothered me.  But, I finally got my chance and I will relate my interaction with the pastor in following posts.  

  

Conversation With a Pastor (Part 1)

During the years 2005, 2006 and 2007 I served as a Missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I was assigned to serve in the Mississippi Jackson mission, which was a great learning experience, especially since (up to that point) I had never had any serious interaction with people from another faith.  Sure, I knew people that weren't of my faith, but Mississippi gave me a great opportunity to be immersed in the very diverse scene of Christian churches.  I even had an occasion to teach and talk to both Muslims and Hare Krishna followers, but those stories can be saved for another time.  

During the summer of 2006 I was assigned to a small town called Columbia.  Despite the population being low (around 7,000 people), there were a multitude of different Christian churches.  A current Yellow-pages search shows 140 churches total.  This town was also unique in the fact that it brought a level of persecution and opposition to my faith like I have never before (and never since) experienced.  It was amazing to me then, and still is, that despite the sheer number of churches, people (and pastors, we'll get to that in a moment) would often go out of their way to fight against the LDS church.  You'd think that in a town with 140 churches that people wouldn't pay any mind to another one, yet they did and it wasn't positive attention by any means.  

Just outside of Columbia, Mississippi.

To be fair I do need to say that not every person or church in Columbia was terrible to us.  In fact, many were very nice.  However, the few that were opposed to us were very outspoken and bold about it.

At one time we were teaching this younger family and had an interesting experience.  They had three kids, both worked and were both decent people.  They were often very kind to us and even attended church with us several times.  We put a lot of effort into serving this family and did everything we could to make them feel loved and welcomed. One day we went to their house for a scheduled appointment we had with them, yet when we got there we received quite a shock.  They told us that they were contacted by the preacher of a church called Woodlawn Church and that he offered to pay their bills and give them money for every month that they would not let the Mormons come and teach them.  Unfortunately this family accepted the offer and were not very kind towards us after that.  

There was a period during my stay in Columbia that was very interesting.  It occurred during the first few weeks that I was there, and this is the basis for writing this post.  The pastor for The Church On Main Street (another rather prominent and wealthy church) had a strong aversion to Mormons (though I'm not sure why).  He had a weekly Sunday morning radio show that he would put on and he would often discuss different topics in the Bible.  However, for a few weeks' time he decided that he would make his radio show about the evils of Mormonism.  Although I never listened to any of them, several members of my church did and they told us the things that were said.  They were pretty awful, but sometimes ridiculous.  I won't repeat all of them but the pastor did say that people shouldn't let us into their homes because we will bring a curse upon it.  He said that if they talked to us to not let us speak about Joseph Smith because we would hypnotize them and put them under a spell so that they would believe our lies.  He also said that we had horns but that we could hide them.

I wish I were joking about the things he said, but sadly I am not.  He said these things, probably believed them himself and caused a lot of other people to believe them, and it really hindered the work.  I had been on my mission nearly a year at this point and having people talk badly about Mormons wasn't anything new to me, but the manner in which he did this and the effectiveness of his attacks seemed both strange and disconcerting.  I think I'm mostly bothered that people actually believed that we had hypnotic abilities.  They are a superstitious lot there, I suppose.  I even had people ask if they could see my horns at times, and they were being totally serious.  

Now, he said these things and hindered the work, but the worst part is what happened next.  We were in a home one day, talking to a family, when there was a knock at the back door.  The spirit told me, "It is the preacher for the Church On Main Street."  This was strange to me as I couldn't see who was at the door, had never met the man in person and didn't know that these people were part of his church.  His visit to them was a coincidence I suppose, although I don't really believe in coincidence.  They let him into the house and as soon as he saw us his demeanor changed from pleasant to an almost angry fear.  It was as though he couldn't believe that we would have the audacity to be there yet he would barely speak to us or make eye contact with us.  We introduced ourselves but he wouldn't say who he was or that he was their pastor.  Finally, the family introduced him as such.  It was a rather awkward moment and we ended up leaving soon thereafter because we didn't have an appointment with the family and didn't want to be a bother (we just stopped by to see how they were doing).  

Although my encounter with the preacher wasn't a long one, it had a big impact on me.  I always thought it was strange that a man who was so bold in denouncing Mormonism, behind the security of his microphone and pulpit, could become such an utter coward when he met Mormon missionaries in person.  He was a man with a degree in religious studies from some university, had spent many years as a pastor and had probably read and studied the Bible more than I could ever have dreamed of doing at that point.  Yet, even with his education and experience, he was afraid to speak to us.  Perhaps, in his defense, he was simply afraid of being hypnotized.   

The First Photo of Joseph Smith Jr. - Mormon (LDS) Prophet

I have found a photo that is purported to be the first (and one of the only)  photographs of the Prophet Joseph Smith.  He was the one through which the Lord, Jesus Christ restored His gospel in our day.  I know he was a prophet of God and I know that the gospel that was restored through him is that of the Lord, Jesus Christ.  

If this is Joseph Smith Jr. then it would be a photo of him in his younger years, because we know that as he aged he gained some weight and had a receding hair line (partially due to poisoning).  Either way, his eyes look as though they could pierce you to the very core.  

This is supposedly one of the last images (though not a direct photo) of the Prophet before his death.

While there has been much good and bad said of this man, it is my testimony that he was an honest man who loved his family and gave his life in the service of God.  Whether you believe that or not doesn't make any difference.  What has happened cannot be changed, and according to his prophetic word, "no unhallowed hand can stop this work from progressing."  The Lord, through revelation told the Prophet Joseph Smith, "Your people will never be turned against you by the testimony of traitors."  God be thanked for sending prophets into the world because we need them now more than we ever have.  

HW