Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 725 | Leaving Mormonism for Christianity | Guest: Lynn Wilder

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

Today we’re joined by Lynn Wilder, author of Unveiling Grace: The Story of How We Found Our Way out of the Mormon Church and host of the “Unveiling Grace” podcast, who is sharing her story of finding Christ and leaving the Mormon church. We discuss her introductions to the Mormon church and what led her to not just join, but become deeply involved in Mormon community. We look at some general Mormon doctrine, such as what Mormons believe about the Bible and God’s unchanging nature. Lynn shares the instances that led to the breaking down of her Mormon faith, from teaching at BYU to hearing her son’s salvation story. We discuss Mormon influence over Christian homeschool curricula and media and some questions we should ask about this. Then, Lynn shares the gospel that changed her life. --- Timecodes: (01:05) Interview with Lynn begins (02:30) Upbringing and joining the LDS church (12:45) Mormon doctrine / theology (23:17) Reasons for leaving (33:07) Lynn's son is saved (40:57) John 1 (50:00) Mormons in culture (01:00:34) Deflection / "milk before meat" (01:05:58) The gospel --- Today's Sponsors: Annie's Kit Clubs — all subscriptions are month-to-month, and you can cancel anytime! Go to AnniesKitClubs.com/ALLIE and get your first month 75% off! Naturally It's Clean — visit naturallyitsclean.com/allie and use promo code "ALLIE" to receive 15% off your order. A'Del — go to adelnaturalcosmetics.com and enter promo code "ALLIE" for 25% off your first order! EdenPURE — get 3 Thunderstorm Air Purifiers for under $200 at EdenPureDeals.com, use promo code 'ALLIE'! --- Links: LDS Statement on the United States Congress Respect for Marriage Act: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/respect-for-marriage-act-statement --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 416 | Once Saved, Always Saved? | Q&A https://apple.co/3PKbI0p --- Christmas Merch: Use code ALLIE20 for 20% off the whole shop! Full collection: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey?sort_by=created-descending#MainContent --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be a cursed. Galatians 1-8. There is one gospel. There is one God who is 3 in 1, Father, Son, and Holy Son. spirit. Everything else is a false God. Everything else is a false gospel. Today, we will be hearing from Lynn Wilder, who is going to tell us her incredible story out of the Mormon Church and into Christianity. You are going to be challenged, informed, encouraged more than anything by the power of the gospel

and the courage that God has given her to speak the truth in love. I'm thankful for this conversation, and I know you will be too. This episode is brought to you by our friends at GoToRanchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use promo code Alley at checkout. It's good ranchers.com code Alley. Lynn, thank you so much for joining us. I'm so glad that you're here.

For those who do not know, can you tell us who you are and what you do? My name is Lynn Wilder. I was Mormon for 30 years. In fact, I worked for the Mormon Church at Brigham Young University as a tenured professor. and salvation came to my household a few years ago. I left Mormonism, wrote a book, and that book is sold more every year than it did the year before for the last eight or nine years. Wow.

But God, right? Yes. That's really saying something. As someone who has written a book myself, I know that that is not typical for books. And so you're exactly right, but God. But God. Definitely was almost a download from the book. the spirit, something that I just needed to do, right? And then God took it and did his thing. I honestly

believe that many Mormons are leaving their faith right now, and they're not aware that traditional Christianity actually is a wonderful option for them. And so that's what we offer to hundreds of thousands who are leaving the church. And this God is amazing. And actually this grace message, is for anybody that's in performance-based religion. I have a podcast after the book called The Unveiling Grace Podcast, and we talk about that walk from performance-based faith to grace-based faith. And the book is, as you just mentioned, called Unvailing Grace. I'm sure there are a lot of people listening who have already read the book. My mom was the first person to introduce me to your book, your content and that was several years ago now but there are a lot of people listening who don't

know your story at all there are a lot of Mormons listening right now so could you take us back to how you became a Mormon because you and your husband you were not raised Mormon so is that correct that's no I actually grew up going to a Presbyterian church every week my husband grew up Baptist but I could tell you neither of us opened the word and I couldn't have told you even how someone got saved, it was definitely kind of cultural Christianity for me. I would say I was a nominal Christian. It's not unusual for nominal Christians actually to join Mormonism. That's kind of who the missionaries target, somebody who's heard of the Bible, thinks they believe in Jesus. And then Mormonism offers, oh, perfect family, you know, this wonderful community. And my husband and I were

taken in, we were looking for a church age 24, and we marched into Mormonism. We were in a while before we learned all of the kind of strange doctrines, but by then we were so connected to the culture and the people. They're good folk. So who evangelized to you? How did you first hear about Mormonism? Two Mormon missionaries knocked on our door. One day my husband was home working on his master's thesis and he wanted a diversion. And honestly, I just read Hal Lindsay's book and I was a little interested in Last Days, right? The Mormon Missionaries tag said the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

which is the King James version of Last Days, right? They said they were last days experts and we believe them because we didn't know the Bible. Pew did a study a few years ago about who, joins Mormonism and why and where they come from. This study said that 83% of people that join Mormonism come out of nominal Christianity. So Mormon missionaries come to the door. Oh yeah, we believe the Bible, right? And then they add to it the book of Mormon. And then it goes off in a direction that's not Christian, but if you don't know your Bible, you don't know that. Right. So you got connected in the church.

you guys were 24 years old, Mary, did you have kids at the time? No kids at the time. No kids at the time. And so you started going and then when did you, you said that you weren't at first introduced to what you described as strange doctrines. But then later on you were. So tell us about that. When you first started going to church, did it just kind of seem like, well, this is just another great Christian church? Within a year, we joined the church, the Mormon church in Indiana.

At the time, our closest Mormon temple was in Washington, D.C., so we had to get in our car, go 13 hours away to this temple. I had a horrible first experience in the Mormon temple, came out with a terrible migraine headache. It's very strange to the normal world. You can actually go online and see people who have secretly taped Mormon temple ceremony. But I learned things in the temple that I just hadn't picked up from a normal Mormon ward church service, things like a man can become a god, that man can possibly be polygamous

in the next life, people his own world, you know, become a god of his own world, that there were multiple gods. It's almost like Greek mythology. Yeah. And so a lot of times... And this is in the Book of Mormon? Some of this is in the Pearl of Great Prize. Some of this is in the book Mormon, some of these things I learned in the temple. Okay. Mm-hmm. And so you started to learn these things. Even after your first bad experience, you all stuck around, you started to learn some

of these things, which I'm guessing you did kind of understand this is not the same as traditional Christianity at this point, even though you didn't really know the Bible. And yet it was surrounded by Christians, even in my family, none of whom ever stepped into a conversation with me. So my own mother eventually started Bible study fellowship on the south side of Indianapolis, 800 women came every week. But I had been out of the house and in Mormonism years earlier. My dad was Christian. I had a sister who would have said they were Christian.

My mother and my sister would not attend my Mormon baptism, but no one ever told me why. I always got the sense that they thought we were strange or something wasn't right. But honestly, Ellie, after I read the Bible and discovered what Jesus himself said about all of this, which was 30 years later, I was a little bit angry with my Christian friends because I realized I had been marching off to a place that wasn't good all those years. And people were so afraid of rocking their relationship with me by stepping into an honest conversation. about whether Mormonism was traditional Christianity, that they just ignored the topic. And so I will spend the rest of my life talking to anybody who wants to talk to me about what the doctrinal differences are and why it matters. Yes.

And before we talk about your exit from the Mormon church and some of those doctrinal differences, tell us a little bit more about what the Mormon church is really like and what your experiences were both for better and for worse, because obviously you had some good experiences there. That's why you guys stayed. You were attracted to it. I'm guessing you raised your family and your kids there for several years. So tell us kind of what you saw in the Mormon Church while you were there, good, bad, and ugly. They immediately took us in his family. So my husband had gotten a job as an instructor at the local university. And one of the professors in his department was Mormon.

Immediately they had us for dinner. It opened a whole new cultural world for us, all these important friends. Mormons take care of each other. They give each other jobs. They'll bring you a car if you need a car. I mean, they in many ways are wonderful people. Although I felt I had to do those things in Mormonism, it is performance-based religion. you need to do things in order to please God that he might save you.

Wait a minute. Does that ring a bell with anybody? That's exactly what Islam teaches. If you do X, Y, and Z and do the five pillars and then you've done enough good works by the end of your life, Allah might save you, right? Mormonism is just like that. There's no assurance of salvation. And so you're just working yourself crazy.

And so you have these sweet Mormon moms with six, seven kids, trying to homeschool, trying to visit people in the hospital and do a church calling and be a friend to everybody. And it was so exhausting when I hit age 40. I remember just sitting and bawling one day. I can't do this another day. Because you were so exhausted because in your mind, you weren't doing it. these things, I'm sure, I mean, sure you were a loving person, but you weren't doing these things necessarily because of an outpouring of grace and love and mercy, but because you felt like

you had to because your very salvation was on the line if you didn't. Yes. So in Mormonism, there are three different heavens. And in order to get to the highest heaven, you have to go to the Mormon temple. In order to go to a Mormon temple, you have to get more temple recommended. In order to do that, you have to do this whole host of things like pay tithing and live a health code and have a calling in the church. And the list just goes on and on and on. And yeah, it's quite exhausting. Hey, this is Steve Daste.

If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're

headed, you can watch the Steve Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. So the three heavens, the celestial and the terrestrial. And then what's the other one? T-liscial, good for you. Okay, got it, got it. Got it. Okay, because I recently read an autobiography by someone who was raised in the Mormon church,

and she was kind of talking a little bit about that. Can you tell us, because we like to talk about theology on this podcast, I know my audience is interested in this. Can you tell us just a little bit about Mormon theology and Mormon? doctrine, you've already touched on a lot of it, but how would you kind of summarize some of the teachings? Like, do they rely on the Book of Mormon or the Pearl of Great Price more? I've heard from a lot of Mormons that they say they rely mostly on the Bible and that it is that the book of Mormon and that all of the Mormon books align perfectly with the Bible, that there's no

contradictions at all. I obviously don't believe that. But, but, but, But tell us just kind of what do Mormons believe? Who is Joseph Smith? All of this stuff. There are 13 articles of faith and it's Mormon scripture. And one of them, you just alluded to, says, we believe the Bible to be the Word of God as far as it's translated correctly. But we believe the book Mormon to be the word of God, no qualifier. So as a Mormon, I believe that the book of Mormon had come directly from Jesus to Joseph Smith.

There's also a doctrine and covenants, which is supposedly revelations to the Mormon prophets. Mormons have a prophet at the head. A prophet, he has two counselors, they have 12 apostles. So you have 15 men at the top of the church considered prophets, seers, and revelators. There's a whole priesthood hierarchy, a priesthood system in the Mormon church. Those people determine scripture. They determine doctrine because the God that the Mormons follow is a God that changes. So the God of the Bible says over and over, he's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Hebrews 18, yes. But the God of the Mormons changes, and they like that about him. He updates with the times. So some examples are Mormons lived polygamy, right? Then they weren't, Utah wasn't allowed to be a state unless they stopped living polygamy. The U.S. government, Ulysses S. Grant, when he was president, actually marched the army out to Utah and said, you know, you will stop practicing polygamy. It's against law in the United States or will take your church assets away. So the prophet had a revelation we're not practicing polygamy anymore.

But then you had all these Mormon families in the 1880s. Mitt Romney's family was one of them who were polygamous. And they either had to run then to Canada or Mexico where it wasn't against the law or they had to go underground. So you have maybe as many as 100,000 polygamous living underground in the Intermountain West just in the United States. But those polygamy colonies still exist. Yes. I saw a documentary about them. It was called like Fundamentalist LDS and they were still like as of recently. They live as if they are kind of in the 19th century still and they have lots of young wives. Some of them or some look like you and me are very contemporary. Sister wives or Corey and all his wives. I forget the name of that. Right.

But yeah, it's very real and it exists out west, particularly in Utah. But I'm saying that to give you an example of how the God of Mormonism changes. That was doctrine once. Then it became overnight not doctrine. Same thing with blacks in the priesthood. Blacks were not allowed to hold the priesthood until 1978. They couldn't go to the Mormon temple, which meant they couldn't live with a heavenly father in the next life. So these three heavens in Mormonism, the upper ones for Heavenly Father, the middle one's for Jesus, and the bottom one's the Holy Ghost. But if you want to live with God the Father, you have to do all these works and work your way up to the top one.

Not at all the God of the Bible. So I love your episode 416 because you addressed who God is according to the Bible and who God is according to the Mormon Church. according to the New Testament, you have an issue if you have a different God. You can't. The other thing, so just to stick to the basics when you ask me about differences, is if you've got a different God and he teaches a different gospel, then that is not the same gospel. You can't tell me as a Mormon that what you believe is the same as what I believe as a

Christian. But when I was Mormon, I would have said, oh, yeah, Mormonism lines up with the Bible. Oh, I'm a Christian. Oh, I believe, at least in recent years, Mormons say they're Christians. We didn't for many, many years. This is fairly new the last 15 years or so. And I do want to talk more about that. One thing that I will say, just if people are considering, you're talking about how Mormons changed their doctrine or said that God changed. And they've kind of done the same thing recently with same-sex marriage. Yes, yes. They recently came out in support of the Respect for Marriage Act, which is really interesting.

But I think some people might think, well, the Christian church has done the same thing. The Christian church, a large portion of the Christian church used to be pro-slavery or pro-segregation or whatever it was. But I would say the differences is that Christians did not change biblical doctrine. they did not say that God changed, but they realized that actually in being pro-slavery or being pro-whatever degeneracy and immorality they were, that those who professed to be Christians and aligned with those things were in the wrong. It wasn't that God had changed. It was that there were Christians who were in sin and who were not in alignment with the Bible, which has stayed consistent throughout the ages. So there is a difference there. We believe that Christians should change

in conforming to God in not the culture, whereas Mormonism says, well, actually God has changed as the culture has changed. So that would be the difference, right? So as a Mormon, I would have called the Bible a dead word and the living prophet a living word. So the living word that came to my living prophet that I followed would be more contemporary, more updated than the dead word. Does that make sense? So that's another huge difference between Mormonism and Christianity. As a Christian now, I have a huge God. He's been God from beginning. He'll always be God. He knew me before I was born. He purposed every day of my life before he called me to himself. And he's able to keep his word together. And he knows what the truth is from the beginning. He created it all, right? And it's all in the Bible.

And one of the things I realized when I left Mormonism, because we were taught as Mormons that the Bible was sometimes corrupt, sometimes not translated correctly. So how could I say I believe the Bible, if I don't know when it's telling me the truth and it's not telling me the truth. So I always went to the book Mormon for the truth because I believe that came directly from Jesus, right? So yes, they really don't believe the Bible is 100% the Word of God. But what I realized was God is so big. He can easily keep every word of his word together down through the ages. I heard a pastor say one time the Bible says it's the word of God 3,800 times.

Do you think he's trying to tell us something? Right. What kind of God lets somebody corrupt his word? Right. The God I follow now is well able to keep his word together. In fact, the evidence, both scientific, historical, manuscript evidence, prophecy evidence that just goes on and on. for the Bible is so overwhelming. It's still the biggest seller and always has been.

It draws people to itself. It has a power. It has a truth. The Spirit of God lives in the Word of God. Changing the Word of God is a big problem for me. And before we go into some of the other doctrinal differences and kind of this movement towards saying, oh, we're Christians, I want to go back to your story.

You mentioned how when you were 40 years old, so you had been in the Mormon church a little over 15 years, I guess at this point. You had your children and you kind of had a breakdown because you were so overwhelmed with the performative nature of your religion and just trying to be everything for everyone hoping that one day you will make it to the highest kingdom, right? But you didn't leave the Mormon church then, correct? Was that the beginning, though? I didn't, but, you know, I don't know that I've ever told this story publicly, but I'm going to go there now. Let's go there. About that time, I had an interesting experience. I went to bed one night, and someone called my name. It sounded like at 2 a.m. and I sat bolt up right.

Well, I couldn't go back to sleep the whole rest of the night. I did not know the story of Eli and the old day. testament where God literally calls him, right? I didn't know God could interact with you. In Mormonism, my prayers were very stilted. You have a very formal way, King James, in a pattern that you have to pray. The next night, the same thing happened. And the next night and the next night, now I've got four kids, a part-time job. I'm a relief society president, which is, there's kind of like a male pastor and then there's a woman over, you know, the women in the ward. I'm exhausted. I'm working for the church 20 hours a week volunteer besides everything else that's going on and taking care of

elderly in-laws. God wakes me up over and over. And after two weeks of hearing my name in the middle of night, not being able to go back to sleep, I remember going to my knees and just kind of in anger saying, look, if you had something to tell me, just tell me, because I can't stay up another night, right? And I got the impression that I needed to go back to school. Now, I had gotten a master's degree before I had my kids. And the Mormon prophet had just done a fireside called, come home from your typewriters, which of course, we didn't do typewriters in the early 90s. But the point was women are not supposed to work and they're supposed to stay home and have lots of kids and work for the Mormon church. That was the pattern. Prophet had just said that and I'm

thinking I'm having some strange spiritual experience that's saying the exact opposite. Because if I go back to school, I'm going to have to get a doctorate. Going back to your typewriter. I'm going back to my typewriter, right? I think this is when the Holy Spirit began to work with me. It was kind of time. But after I got my doctor at 99, I went to work for the Mormon Church. I got hired at Brigham Young University. Now, Brigham Young is a wonderful school. It's a Level 2 research university, 36,000 students, but it's owned by the Mormon Church. And you don't work there if you're a Mormon, unless you have a temple recommend, and your Mormon testimony is vetted by someone high up in the Mormon church. But then once you get a coveted position like that, there was lots of money,

lots of support. They sent me worldwide. I ended up as a journal editor, international journal editor, had lots of publications. I love in your book where you talk about self-promotion and all of that, everything revolves around self, that's the way it is in performance-based religion, because you're constantly trying to measure yourself against other people and what they're doing and making sure that you're ticking off all the boxes and that you're doing things for God that he might be pleased with, right, that you might be saved in the end. So I just got more and more exhausted doing those kind of things.

But oddly, Brigham Young was in trouble with their accrediting agency for not teaching diversity. And my background, this was back in the 90s. This was about 2000. Okay. And I was a new professor, and my background was that I'd worked in the inner city. I'd worked with juvenile delinquents, lots of different cultures, et cetera, homeless. And so I get slotted to teach multiculturalism. My boss apologizes to me.

We don't really, you know, like this topic. You're not allowed to say social justice. but we have to do this in order to keep accreditation. So I began teaching multiculturalism at BYU and my very first multicultural class. My students, I'm talking to them about all these wonderful different cultures. And they're like, no, but if you have dark skin, you're less than other cultures. The students in 2000 and bring a young. You were saying that.

Yes. And do you believe that that's what, because the doctrine had said that in the Mormon church for a period of time? It still says it in the book of Mormon. I was unaware that my own LDS scriptures say 26 or 27 times the dark skin is a curse and they still say that. Wow. I was blown away. That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. It's not true, right?

And how am I going to teach multiculturalism to students who are reading the book of Mormon? Right. And believing that. Certainly, it's something God used to begin to open my eyes. Wow, that is really interesting because obviously, I mean, I've got my own problems with social justice and how ineffective it is and how backwards I think that it is. And yet God used kind of the introduction in that subject to show you, okay, what it's true is incongruent with what the scriptures in Mormonism is teaching. That's really interesting.

So that was another, that was another moment for you of kind of, hmm, all right, this isn't maybe what I thought it was. Exactly. But here's a funny thing. My students told me it was in the Bible. And I remember saying out loud in class, that stupid Bible. Wow. I had no idea. It's not in the Bible, friends. It does not say in the Bible that dark is less than white.

So sometimes when Mormons say in the Bible, do they really just mean in Mormon scriptures in general? I'm sure they just don't know scripture much. So here was my conundrum in Mormonism. Because your God changes, even the scriptures in Mormonism changed. So what Joseph Smith wrote in the book of Mormon, which was his earliest writings, right, was then often contradicted in the doctrine and covenants, which are supposedly revelations to the Mormon prophet. So you have Mormon scripture that's on one side, and then it's on the exact opposite side. I can give you probably 11 examples of those. So I never could use my brain in faith, although I had this researcher brain, this logical brain, I was taught to use only emotions in determining truth, right? Because if Mormon scripture is all over the map, think, though, how convenient that is for a false faith.

To have a scripture on this side and a scripture on this side, then you can pull out for the outside world, whichever one you want them to think you think, right? Scriptures aren't really that important to you, though, if you're looking to a living profit anyway for your answers. Right. So tell us a little bit more than about your journey. A few years after, it was just a few years after this in 2000, after you started teaching this, that you realized Mormonism is not true.

Mormonism is not Christianity. So tell us about that. the unveiling grace. I am embarrassed to tell you that although I hated polygmy, and it's in Mormon scripture still, that I hated the racism when I discovered it, that I did not want my husband to become a God and have multiple wives in the next life, that I was so comfortable in this life and with these. people. They're good people.

And it was very moral. It was your job. Yeah. Yeah. And it was right. It was my job. I was making good money. It was traveling around the world. I guess it just didn't matter that much to me, right? Life was good. Our first son went on a Mormon mission to Russia. Our second son on a Mormon mission to Denmark. The third son was headed to Mexico City. God did an odd thing in his life. His lung collapsed in the missionary training center. And so he couldn't go to a place where the medical help wasn't really good. So they sent him to Florida, the happiest place on Earth. They got sent to Orlando, Florida, where as a Mormon missionary who's bumping up against evangelicals decided he's Those darn even delicals.

No, decided he better know his Bible better, right? Because he hadn't really trusted it and didn't read it much like the rest of us. He said, I think he said he'd never read the New Testament from one end to the other. He encounters a Christian pastor. This was about 2005, 2004 or 5, challenges him to read the Bible. Says, you don't have to believe a word, I say. Just open the new testament. I see what Jesus has to say, right?

So for the two years of his Mormon mission, and he was a leader in his Mormon mission, he's reading the New Testament over and over and over thinking he can prove Mormonism to evangelicals and what happens? Three weeks before the end of his Mormon mission, it goes to his knees, gives his life to the Jesus of the Bible realizing this is a very different gospel and a different God. and that crazy God, he gets up, Micah gets up from his knees, and he said, I had asked the Lord, you've so profoundly changed me, how do you want me to come forth about what you've done in my life? And he said the phone rang, and it was his leader of the Mormon mission. Leader over about 100 missionaries says, Micah, you're about to go home from your mission. We'd like you to stand in front of a year. missionary peers and bear testimony of what you've learned over the last two years. Well, what he'd learned

was that Mormonism was not true that Jesus was enough. He had the courage to profess that. He'd got in a bit of trouble with the Mormon church. So, but that rocked my world. That finally rocked my world. Were you disappointed when he called and he told you this? I knew something profound had happened to a kid who'd gone out so zealous for Mormonism to actually stand up against the Mormon church. Something profound happened to this kid and his mom, I wanted to know what it was, right? So they sent him home early. The Mormon church tried excommunicated. Mike and I could not figure out why he was in trouble. They kept saying, he's preaching saved by grace. It's like, don't we believe saved by grace? You keep telling us we believe the same as a Christians. Right.

Why is he in trouble for professing saved by grace? Well, the other part of that was Jesus was enough. He didn't need the Mormon Church for salvation. He didn't need the Mormon temple, right? He didn't need the Mormon prophet and those kind of things. In Mormonism, there are five parts of a Mormon testimony. Jesus is only one of them. So if you jettison Joseph Smith, you jettison the book Mormon, you're in trouble with the Mormon church.

And that's what he had done. But we put him on a plane to get him out of you, so we could figure how what was going on so they wouldn't excommunicate him. And he begged me, he begged me at the airport. Mom and dad, please just read the New Testament. Open it, read it with no preconceived notions, and just see what Jesus has to say.

Ali, the very first verse I read was, in the beginning was the word. I think that's Jesus. And the word was with God. And the word was God. And I went, Jesus wasn't God from the beginning. He was a man. He earned his Godhood right there, right there. These plain truths are all over the Bible.

And the Bible's consistent. doesn't have scriptures that are on one side and on the other side like Mormonism. I laughed. We call that in statistics internal consistency, right? I'm reading the Bible and saying the same thing over and over. It's the same message and it's very clear. It's like the 30,000 archaeological digs for the Old Testament alone. Not one for the book of Mormon. Wait, isn't God trying to show you, right, that this Bible is reliable. It's the word of God and it can be trusted. And I read things like God doesn't live in temples made by human hands. Mormon terms of 180 temples around the world. I was taught that God's spirit lived in that temple and that I needed to go to the celestial room of a

Mormon temple in order to be closer to God there than any place on the earth. I didn't know that salvation could come to your household, the Holy Spirit could enter you, never leave you, and that you were now the temple of the Holy God, that you were living stones. A very different gospel. Now, here's what I've learned over the years. Poor Paul, he'd go a place, he'd preach the gospel of grace. Jesus did it all for you. All you have to do is accept him. him as Lord and Savior, right? Repent and accept him as Lord and Savior. And someone would come right behind him and teach performance-based religion.

No, you have to be circumcised. You have to be circumcised. You have to do X, Y, and Z. Paul's 13 epistles are all about setting up churches and someone coming behind him with a false gospel. And then he has to go back to that area and say, no, remember the gospel I brought. If I come back and I look like an angel and I bring you another gospel, throw it. me out, right? This is the gospel. This is not the gospel. That's what the whole New Testament is about. The gospel does not change. And if it does change, you don't have the same God and you don't have the same

gospel. It's not the same message. And it does matter the way to salvation. Whenever I've had conversations with Mormons who follow me, a lot of Mormons are very conservative. and they vote Republican. And so that is, and I want to talk a little bit more about that in a second. But so a lot of them are part of this audience or maybe we're a part of this audience before I started talking about the differences in Mormonism and Christianity. But just within my inbox, one thing that I bring them to, really the only thing that I bring them to or I have the opportunity to because the conversation typically stops is John 1. That's, I mean, there are a lot of differences between Christianity and Mormonism, but that's what I take them to.

look in the beginning the word was God and the word was among us. We know that that is Jesus Christ all in John 1 and that's not what Mormonism teaches. Mormonism teaches as you said and as you know that Jesus was man, that he earned himself to God because what I hear from Mormons who want so badly to be considered Christians, just another denomination of Christianity, they will say we need to shelve the differences, put on the shelf the differences between what I believe and what Mormons believe. They will say, we're Christians because we love Jesus. We believe he died on the cross for our sins. We believe that he offers salvation. And I've even heard some believe, well, we believe in grace. We believe in love. We believe in faith. You know, all of the other things. Sure,

there are differences, but there are lots of differences in denominations. That's what I hear. And I also hear from them, do not call us Mormons, only call us Latter-day Saints. And then often, if I get into a conversation where the other person gets extremely volatile and defensive, they will then say what I think is believed probably across the board among LDS people. They will say, well, we are the real Christians, not you. We are the latter day saints, not you. And that's when to me, it's like, okay, I got it. That's what you actually believe, that it's actually me who is either the inferior Christian or not a real Christian. And that even though LDS people will say that they're Christians really at the end of the day, they think that they are the real deal, have the real truth and the real stuff, and that you and I are the ones who are lacking. And it goes back to those three heavens. So Mormons can go to the higher heaven and be with God the Father. And of course, they believe they're three separate gods, right? It's not a Trinitarian God. But so the middle one's Jesus. So Christians go there. They'll say Mormons who drink beer and Christians go to the

middle one. Billy Graham, he'd be in the middle one, right? It's basically universal salvation and everyone else goes to the bottom kingdom, even Hitler. They'll tell you even Hitler's in the bottom kingdom. The only people that go to hell in Mormonism would be Satan, his minions and those like me who who are apostates from the Mormon church. Now imagine how that fear, again, performance-based religion. If you have to do, do, do, do, do, you have to stay within a certain box or you're going to be outcast. So this is what I dealt with, right? When salvation came to me the day in October of 2006, I went face down and gave my life to this amazing Jesus of the Bible.

I knew I wouldn't be allowed to stay at BYU. So they can say their Christians too, but if you get saved to grace alone, you can't stay at BYU. They have an honor code. You have to honor the Mormon church. You have to be working, you know, your way to the top. So we joined Mike and I in 1977.

As Mormons, we would never. never have been called Christians. That was, we were greater as Mormons. You were lessers as Christians. And this is how I would have explained it when I was Mormon. Christians only have the Bible and it's not reliable. But I had the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants on top of that that came directly from Jesus. And they were 100% reliable. So yes, you were lessors. We were graders. So no, we never called ourselves Christians. That would have been a type of downgrade, although that is their mission field, right?

It's nominal Christians. In recent years, though, it's only been maybe 15 years, maybe a little more, that Mormons are beginning to say I'm a Christian, too. My suspicion, and this is only personal for me, is that, and I was a Mormon when this began, I think they were trying to promote a Mormon to run for office, and if they're running in the Republican Party, right. So particularly Romney in 2012, they realized that if Christians, thought that Romney was not in the body of Christ, that they might not vote for him. And so why does that matter? When I was Mormon, it mattered that we got a Mormon president. Why? Because Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, had a prophecy that I was well aware of in Mormonism

called the White Horse Prophecy. The White Horse Prophecy says that there will come a day when the U.S. Constitution will hang by a thread and a Mormon elder will ride in as on a white horse and save the United States of America. So this is what I believed as a Mormon. I'm not saying every Mormon believes this, but this was what I believed as a Mormon that there needed to be the most powerful man on the earth needed to be LDS so that he could then set up the world politically for the LDS so that Jesus, the Jesus of the LDS, could return to rule and reign the earth politically. Certainly those are not things that as a Mormon I would have talked about publicly. But there is a huge push right now for Mormons to say they're Christian.

My guess is maybe a Mormon will resurface at some point and try to run for the highest political office of the land. So here's what some of this confusion has done, though, in recent years. And now that I'm in Christian ministry, ex-Morman Christians United for Jesus, I get a lot of phone calls from Christian organizations that'll say things like, I do homeschool, Christian homeschool. All of these Mormon families are all of a sudden. joining our Christian homeschool, believing they're Christian too. But then they want to be leaders. And then they want to tell people their kids have to be baptized at eight because for Mormonism,

the age of eight is the age of accountability, right? Your sins matter, so you have to be baptized. I'm really confused. I don't know if they're Christians too. Are they not Christians too? Should I let them run my organization? So I've had a lot of these kind of phone calls later. So Mormon kids will be going to Christian preschools. I'd be going to Christian even high schools and stuff. The other kind of, I got a phone call a couple of months ago from a Christian publisher who does homeschool materials. He was quite frustrated because of a lot of the people that used to buy his Christian homeschool materials are now buying Mormon Christian homeschool materials. The Mormon Church has stepped into Christian homeschool curriculum. And because there's so much money behind it,

and often you can't trace it directly to the Mormon Church, but they will go to one of their wealthy people and say, would you please donate to this cause so that we can step into this place? So there are now Christian curriculum being taught in Christian schools. that are done by Mormon companies, right? Yeah. And the Christians just don't discern that it's Mormonism couched in Christian language. So that takes us to another place, which is the chosen.

Cool. Go there. So Dallas Jenkins has publicly said, that Mormons follow the same Jesus as the Christians. So you have a Christian filmmaker that Christians look to as a kind of cultural Christian icon. In fact, I noticed recently that both Tim Tebow and Nick Yickovic are also financially, they're in advertisements that are asking Christians to donate to angel.com. Okay, it's a company that's owned by Mormons.

It was originally started by two Mormon brothers, the Harmon brothers, who have a grocery store in, out west. So what you've got is now Mormon stepping into Homecoq School curriculum, stepping into Christian school curriculum, stepping into Christian film, many things on the Hallmark Channel are very LDS. And only someone who's bound on both sides kind of has the discernment, right? On the chosen, because I have seen that controversy, it's not a series that I've watched myself.

I know a lot of people have and a lot of people love it. There was a controversy in one of the episodes where it seemed like Jesus, I believe, was paraphrasing a Mormon prophecy. And I believe it was Dallas Jenkins, who kind of came out with a statement and said, that's not true or that's not what we were trying to do. But I did notice, like, in his defense, he didn't. I didn't see where he said that they worship the same Jesus, but I did notice that he did not clearly distinguish between Christianity and Mormonism. So I just, I thought that that was interesting. It is. So during the 2012 election, John Anchorberg, who's a Christian apologist and has a TV show, had my husband and myself and Sandra Tanner do a six-week series on Mormonism.

Romney was running at the time, and he got so much backlash from his Christian donors that they made him take it off the air. Franklin Graham was a strong promoter of Romney, right? And he took off of his... website during the election that Mormonism was a cult. And then when Romney did not win, he put it back up in January. So in my place in ministry, this is what I deal with, right? You have Christians who are afraid to step into conversations where the lines are definitive because they don't want to offend.

Yeah. So you have people like Joel Osteen saying, they say they follow Jesus. Yeah. But doesn't somebody need to look at whether that's the same Jesus that you're following? Their Jesus is very different. He literally is a brother of Satan. Yeah. Mormons believe that Jesus was the brother of Satan and became God.

Yes. One thing that I've heard before, and this kind of goes maybe back to the white horse prophecy. about Mormon and Mormon needing to be the most powerful man in the world is that America is kind of the center of what they would call biblical prophecy, whereas in Christianity, like we don't see in scripture some special specific place for America in the end ages. But from what I've heard in Mormonism, there is. As you said, the Constitution is a part of that. The presidency is a part of that. And so is that part of why for so long Mormons have been seen as kind of a conservative stronghold? They have typically voted Republican because I also think that is one

reason why it's so difficult for Christian conservatives, for Christians who vote Republican to say anything about the differences. Because, well, not just are they kind and do they have a lot of the same values that we do. They take care of each other. We like that as conservatives. But also, they're a really big voting block. They are, you know, even more so than some people who profess to be Christians very conservative on a lot of issues. I think that is probably why there's some like, ooh, I don't want to upset that. I don't want to rock the boat. So I guess my question is, like, why is America and the Constitution and conservatism so much a part of Mormonism? Their last day's ideas are a little different than what the Bible says.

They would say that the Bible came out of Jerusalem, but that the Book of Mormon came out of the Americas, right? And so the one true church is actually centered here in the United States of America. They also say that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri, near Independence, Missouri. So what I believed as a Mormon. we actually had like a 72-hour backpacks that we kept at our house in case Jesus called and you had to go to Missouri immediately. So Mormons are big preppers and they're big food storage people. And part of the reason is supposedly Jesus will return to Missouri to the Mormon priesthood before he shows himself to the world. And I literally believe that.

Missouri, of all places. Yes. Interesting. Not to Utah. No, not to Utah. Although we called Utah Zion, we would have called Salt Lake Zion. So one thing that we talked about before the camera started rolling that I know a lot of people are going to relate to is that influence our culture. Like you talked about how Mormonism is infiltrating curriculum.

in a lot of different ways, the charity world, Christian media, and I'm sure there are a lot of other avenues where it's happening that we maybe don't even know. Healthcare sharing ministries, Christian health care sharing. Interesting. Wow. So it's also happening on Instagram and TikTok. I don't have TikTok, but there was this whole controversy, I think, a year ago, where it was discovered that a lot of these TikToking, influencing moms, beautiful, put together, conservative, have a time. kind of kids, preppers, which again, conservative Christians like a lot of this stuff too. They never actually revealed that they were Mormons, but come to find out they were Mormon.

Some of them were actually living in polygamous relationships, and it turned into a kind of scandal. But I've also noticed that on Instagram. There are moms that I follow because they're good follows for a lot of practical reasons. You know, they've got motherhood advice or different things. And then I'll notice they'll say something. And I'll say, huh, well, that doesn't sound right. This person is a conservative Christian. And she just said that.

That's not correct or that's not biblical. But sometimes you can say, oh, well, that's because they're progressive or that's because that. But it was always something a little strange or just a little bit off. And then I'll see a post. Oh, they're sending their sons on mission. Or they posted a link to the LDS Church. Or they have a leader from the LDS Church coming to.

their hospital room or whatever, whatever it is. And then it kind of starts clicking. And so what I fear is for a lot of women my age who we're so desperate, understandably so, I think, for like-minded people, for camaraderie, to be, to link arms with people who are like us because we do look at the evil of the world and we're like, we don't have nothing to do with that. So people with family values that say that they love Jesus, it's really easy to just say they're one of us. And so I've just noticed how insidious it is and how careful they are, these Mormon influencers are in curating their image and their feed to look a lot like Christians until they kind of introduce you to, well, we're LDS.

We're also Christian, but we're LDS. And that worries me. And some of those influencers, when they have messaged me, I mean the fire of, of, of, hatred that comes and the anger and the vitriol that comes from these like seemingly happy and joyful and loving moms that is directed at me and my private messages when I say something about the difference between Mormonism and Christianity. Wow. Welcome to my world. Oh, I can't even imagine. I can't even imagine. So I don't know if you just have any like commentary on that, but that is one part of all of this that worries me. So as a Mormon, I did something called milk

before meat, which means I'm not going to admit to you that I believe something that you're going to think is silly or you're going to think isn't biblical. So I'm certainly not going to, let's see, somebody came after, I think it was Huckabee at one point, said something about what Romney believed. And he was so indignant. He said, that's exactly what he believes in Mormonism. But he said to the outside world. I will not even dignify that by answering. Romney said that. Right, a question like that. So definitely he deflected. So that would be a typical Mormon technique. I'm not going to tell you, I believe my husband can become a god. You're going to laugh at that. That's going to sound absolutely silly, right? So I'm going to offer you things that you do like, like the conservatism and the

other advice, so that then you're coming my direction. And then you might be open to listening to some of the stranger things down the road. But that's a very deliberate thing called milk before meat. In the 90s of Mormon. And Christianity has that too, but in a different, in a different way. I mean, Paul also talks about spiritual milk. And then you need to be able to grow up and to chew on solid food. I think the difference is, is that Christianity does not keep those complicated messages hidden from you. They are not secret.

Yes. We're upfront about them that, yes, this is what Christianity is and your understanding will grow through sanctification, but we're not going to hide these complicated things from you to kind of trick you into believing what we believe. So that's a difference with a very important distinction. Yeah, I'm not afraid to say anything that Christ would say in the Bible. Again, I don't have to own it as mine personally. It comes from the living God.

And then each person can make their own decision about what that is. There are many secret things in Mormonism. So all of those, you make six covenants in the Mormon temple. Well, people aren't supposed to know what those are. But the last covenant that I made in the temple over 30 years over and over was that I agreed with all my talents, anything I owned, anything I would own, any money I had, all of that gets dedicated to the building up of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterj, J. Saints, not to Jesus in particular, but to building up at the church.

The Mormon Church is very wealthy. folks must tie in order to go to the highest heaven, and they also own for-profit businesses and non-for-profit businesses, and that money sometimes gets mixed up, right? So the Mormon Church owns 2% of land in Florida. They have cattle ranches everywhere. They own lots of conservative radio. Bonneville Communications is one of the larger owners of conservatives. stations. So a lot of people are not aware, right, of that. My, I love to hold hands with other people that politically are on the same plane that I am. I don't have any problem with that. Me too. As a believer, though, the problem I have is if you elevate someone like Met Romney,

who's following a false Christ, the Mormon missionary 60,000 of them go worldwide and knock on a door, oh, don't you love Romney, these five beautiful sons and such a wonderful family. You know his Mormon, right? And then you have people being led astray, not just to a false faith, but often Christians led. It says in Matthew 24, who are the false Christ after? They're after the elect. they're after those who would seek Christ, right? But then they send him off the wrong direction. So I'm sure Romney would have been a great president, and maybe he still will be someday. I don't think he would make a great president anymore.

I mean, thankfully he's fallen out of favor with the Republican Party because he's grown liberal in a lot of ways. Well, and that's the Mormon church changing, right? That was the whole other LGBTQ kids can't be Bible. and the LGBTQ folks who are huge in Salt Lake, by the way, there's huge population of former Mormons and gay Mormons in Salt Lake really came against the church and then the church changes its mind, you know, and so that's what you get with a wishy-washy cultural Jesus, which you can get with any man. We don't want a man. We want the true and living God. Yeah, who was the same yesterday, today, and forever, and our obligation as Christians is to conform ourselves to him

and to his word and not the other way around. I wish we could talk for two more hours. We'll have to have you back on to talk even further. But to close us out, there are Mormons who are listening to this. There are Mormons who are angry listening to this. There are Mormons who are thinking, hmm, maybe she's onto something. There are Christians listening to this who had no idea before this conversation that there was any different. I want you to speak, just share the gospel, the true gospel that changed your life with everyone who is listening, no matter what stage of confusion or anger they are in, what do you say to them? When I opened up the New Testament, read it with a sincere heart, the first thing that happened to me is I was drawn. I knew I was being drawn. There was this spiritual thing that was happening where I couldn't put it down.

I just had this hunger to know, wait, who is this God? And what does he say? And should I care? Should I jettison God altogether? I found out he was consistent. He was compassionate. He was bold. He was kind.

He was merciful. But he's also full of. justice. It's this wonderful mix of, you know, setting the rules and people needing to meet the rules, but knowing that you can't. And then just being grateful that he took your weapon for you and then giving your life to him, I cannot tell you, Ellie, how my life changed. For one thing, like I said, I love the part of your book where you're talking about the meiology, the me, culture, me, me, me, me, me, me. In Mormonism, it was all about me. I was constantly trying to promote myself professionally and worldwide. And I was promoting myself professionally so that people would be

drawn to the Mormon church. That was the bottom line. That's why these TikTokers do what they do. It's all about promoting Mormonism because they believe it's the one true way. But I realized it is not about me. God actually took me through 18 months of my sins and my pride after I got saved until I was so face down, empty of myself, and just willing to do whatever God does. So here I sit because somebody, Bree, contacted me and said, Ellie, wanted to talk to me, and I went, God is in this. I will pick up and go and talk to Allie, right? I'm not the author of my life anymore. I'm not the master of my soul.

This wonderful God that I can trust, who saved me, thank God. I went face down at 54, and I cried and cried and cried, why didn't anybody tell me I'm 54 years old that I needed a savior, right? The difference with works now, in Mormon as I was constantly doing works to try to please him, now the Holy Spirit lives in me and he brings the works. I don't have to take off boxes. I just pay attention to the girl in line at the grocery store because God probably put them behind me for a reason. It's a very purposeful life to know the Lord, to know that he loves you, that he calls you,

that he called you for a purpose. So obviously the purpose he called me for was to tell my story from performance-based faith to grace-based faith. And I'll do that any opportunity I have. It was funny going from Brigham Young where I could pray with my students to go to a secular university after that Florida that hated Christians. Yes. Right.

And to learn to stand for my faith. and let people laugh at me and I'd laugh with them. It was just, it's just fine. I know who I am in Christ and I'm fine with that. And you have no idea how many people are drawn to that, right? You don't have to be fake in any way. Yes. And you talked about just the repudiation of all different kinds of works-based faith.

It's not just Mormonism. In fact, everything, whether it's mimicking Christianity or whether it's something that has nothing to do, with Christianity, every faith besides Christianity, true Christianity tells you how to climb the hill to get to God. Here's what you have to do. And Christianity is different. And God got down from his throne off the hill and came down to us and said, there is nothing that you can do to climb this mountain. Come on. And he did it for us. Ephesians too lays all of this out perfectly, that we were once dead in our sin apart from Christ. If you are dead, you cannot help yourself. You can't cannot earn your salvation. You cannot revive yourself. You can't resuscitate yourself. Someone has

to make you alive. There's nothing you can do to clean yourself off. You can't make a corpse smell good or look good or make it presentable to God. You are dead in your sin. Only Christ makes you alive. And that's what Ephesians 2 tells us. By grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. Not a result of works. He's so consistent and so repetitive in that, not a result of work so that no one can boast. And Ephesians 210 says that we were created or God saved us for the good works that he created beforehand that we should walk in them. So you're talking about those good works. In Christianity, those good works flow from the grace that God has given us. They're not to earn our faith or to earn his approval, but because

He has already approved of us because of what Christ did for us. We turn around through love and through grace do the good works that God gives to us. It makes all the difference in the world. The gospel makes all the difference in the world. And I'm just thankful to you for how you've used it, how God has used you, to bring the gospel of grace to others. And so thank you so much. We've even had Muslim converts, right?

So we've had Catholic converts. is anybody in a place of performance-based religion who thinks that they have something to offer at the bottom of the cross that makes a difference? Look what I did, God. It doesn't. He's done it all. He's wonderful. He's all loving. And when you give you a life to him, your life will change profoundly. Yes, amen. Well, thank you so much. I really encourage everyone to get her book unveiling grace. It's an amazing testimony, and we really could talk for two more hours about all of this. But thank you, Lynn. Everyone can find you in your podcast, the Unvailing Grace podcast, correct?

And find your book and follow you. You've got lots of resources. So thank you so much. Thank you, Ellie. Thank you for what you do. Thank you. All right. I knew you guys were going to enjoy that conversation.

She's really incredible. She mentioned Dallas Jenkins. We will have them on the show Monday. and we will ask him about this. And so that'll be a really interesting conversation as well. The timing just happened to work out really well. All right. Thanks so much for listening.

And just as a reminder, next week starts kind of like our holiday break, but we are going to have all new episodes. Four new episodes next week. We'll have two new episodes the following week after Christmas. And then after that, the first week of 2023, we will have three new episodes. episodes, maybe four, but probably just three. So all new stuff, really amazing interviews and topics and questions answered and all of that good stuff. You're going to love it. And so, Merry Christmas.

We'll see you guys back here on Monday. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective. objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary

grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.