The Eric Metaxas Show - Micah Wilder

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

Micah Wilder was a good and faithful Mormon until he tried to convert a Christian pastor -- and the challenge from that pastor opened Micah's eyes to what the Bible says about the way of salvation.

to the Eric Mattaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey there, folks. Kind of an exciting guest right now, or at least the story is exciting. His name is Michael Wilder. The book just came out, Harvest House, Passport to Heaven, the true story of a zealous Mormon missionary who discovers the Jesus he never knew. Passport to Heaven. Michael Wilder, welcome.

Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. This is an important story. You've lived it. You put it in your book passport to heaven. But I think a lot of people, there are many people that are not theological and they kind of, you know, they're kind of sloppy and they don't really, they don't care about the theology. And maybe they're not just sloppy. Maybe they're just not focused on it. But then there are other people that are hyper theological and all they care about is theology. And so you started life as a Mormon and something happened and this is that story. A lot of people, let me begin here, would say, look, I'm a Mormon and I pray to Jesus and I don't understand why you're making a weird issue of this. What do you say to somebody like that?

Yeah, so for me growing up in Mormonism, I had this understanding of God that was rooted in who he, he was according to my religion, right? So I was trying to establish a righteousness with God according to the laws and the ordinances of Mormonism. So the awakening that I had was in and through the reading of the Word of God that revealed to me that the gospel, which I had avowed as a Mormon, was not in line with the gospel as revealed in the Bible. And so for me, it was coming to that recognition that I was not following the Jesus and the gospel that were the true Jesus and gospel as revealed in the Word of God. Now, I just think that this is hard for a lot of people after listening to this program,

and they are LDS folks, whatever they, it's mystifying or confusing, or maybe they just think you're wrong or you're bitter or something. And I want to be sensitive to them because this is a tough thing. So let me just ask you, before we get to what happened in the story of the book, give us your background. Where did you grow up and what was your, you know, religious upbringing? that kind of thing. Yeah, so I grew up in a devout Mormon home in the state of Indiana. My parents were actually converts to the Mormon church before any of us children were ever born. And then

going into my high school years, my family and I replanted in Utah. And so my mother got a job to be a professor at BYU. We moved to a very prominent, prestigious Mormon community called Alpine. And we just became as entrenched and rooted in this Mormon culture and religion as anyone could be and our family was very much dedicated to living out the tenets of our faith. And I want to say, and this is a kind of a thing where people, again, people who I would consider maybe overly theological don't understand that there are many people living out faiths with which I or they would disagree, we would say that they're theologically off. But we want to be really clear.

Many of these people are profoundly good people doing the best they can. Ken. They're honorable. They're living moral lives. They don't believe in cheap grace. They believe in living out your faith and working hard to make it the center of your life. There are many Muslims in America who fall in that category. And so I just want to be clear, you know, we're not talking about some kind of cult where there's sexual stuff going on in the background. We're talking about good people, family people. So, you know, you're growing up in that community. and you're just trying to be a good son. So at what point do you hit kind of a speed bump and slow down and wonder if you're on the right path?

How did that happen for you? Yeah. So I would agree with you very much. I had a very sincere zeal for God. You know, Paul talks about that to the Romans, about the Jews. He says they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. And so the Muslims and the Jehovah Witnesses, the Mormons, a lot of these people fall into that category. And so my zeal was that I wanted to live out my faith. I believed in God. I believed in Jesus. And I wanted to demonstrate that faith by the way that I lived my life. And so that ultimately led me to serving a two-year mission for the Mormon church when I turned 19 years old. And so it was actually on my two-year Mormon mission in Orlando, Florida, that God began to open my eyes to a gospel that was in contradiction to the gospel that I was living and preaching as a Mormon missionary.

And it's just so funny because I often see this, you see this with Muslims in prisons around America, and you see this with Mormons serving two years. There's a zeal, and there are people that are hungry for truth, and they want to be in the battle for truth over falsehood and for good over evil. And that's very appealing to people, because people say, you know, I'm living this meaningless life, and then you see somebody leading a clean life, they've turned their life around, and they're a Mormon or they're a Muslim or something, and you just go, look, all I know is I was living up this messed up life, and I see these people have purpose, that's clean living, they're good people, and I just want to say that because I think there are a lot of people in the Christian community who don't have anything like that dedication. They're kind of mostly in the world, so to speak, but they believe, they say they believe, you know, in the Bible and in Jesus and stuff.

but it doesn't make much difference practically in their lives. And so I think there's a lot that we can all learn from dedicated Mormons and Muslims and see that even though I disagree with them theologically, their dedication is at least fascinating. And so you're one of these people. You're giving two years of your life to spread what you consider the truth about God. So at what point in that journey do you, as I said before, hit a speed bump? Yeah, so talking about zeal. So I actually tried to convert a Baptist pastor while I was a Mormon missionary. And that shows how convinced I was of the truthfulness of our message and of my desire to want other people to have what I believed to be truth. And so it was actually in this meeting with a Baptist pastor that I sat down and had a theological discussion with him where we presented our belief system and the tenets of Mormonism. And he responded by proclaiming. the saving gospel as revealed in the Word of God.

And so that was really the moment of my life when everything changed. And it wasn't that hearing the gospel changed me instantaneously. It was that that seed was planted that ultimately God led and brought to fruition. And so he's telling me the gospel message in a way that I had never before heard it. And that was the simple good news of the sufficient blood offering of Christ on the cross of Calvary to cleanse me of sin and make me right with God. that eternal life was not contingent upon my worthiness or my goodness or my righteousness, but it was contingent upon my faith in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

And that was a message that was really in complete contradiction to what I believed is a Mormon. And the ultimate challenge that he gave me at the end of this meeting was simply to go to the word of God myself and to go to the Bible and read the New Testament like a child. And I think what he meant by that invitation was just to remove my religious preconceived notions about what I believe truth was and allow God through his word to show me the truth and to open my eyes. And so that was the catalyst that caused me as a Mormon missionary to begin reading the New Testament on a daily basis. I always love teasing out these misunderstandings and trying to figure out how do we get there, right? And I think part of it, at least what I've noticed, is that people often confirm. inflate living a good life with good works with the idea of living a life with good works

in order to get to heaven. And so I think many people sort of seem to imply that because it's by faith alone that we're saved and that it's what Jesus did on the cross that enables us to go to heaven, some people falsely imply or even say that because of that, I don't have to do anything. And there's a conundrum. Bonhofer writes about this, of course, in his famous book, Cost of Discipleship, that when we talk about earning salvation through good works, that's wrong. You can never earn salvation through good works. However, if you really do believe that it's what he did on the cross that earns you salvation, out of gratitude in that belief, you're going to live differently. You're going to live a life. You're going to live a life. of good works. You're going to zealously desire to honor God with how you behave. And so where people often get confused is the idea that they think that, well, if I don't behave well, I won't get to heaven. And so it's this kind of thing that you have to really understand it. Otherwise, it's easily

confusing. We're going to go to a break. But I just want to say that folks, this is very important that you understand this and you understand where Michael Wilde is coming from. The book is passport to heaven. We'll be right back. Hey folks, are you concerned about memory loss for you or a loved one? Vivalour's founder prayed that God would show her the solution to memory loss because her mother had dementia. After many divine encounters combining faith and her background as a pharmacist, Susan Gibson created Vivalor memory support. Vivalor is a premium quality, all-natural supplement with five to 20 times more nutrients than any other memory supplement.

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Relieffactor.com or call 800, 500, 800, 8384. Relieffactor.com, 800, 500, 8384. I use it. It works. Check it out. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Micah Wilder. The book is Passport to Heaven, the true story of a zealous missionary,

zealous Mormon missionary, who discovers the Jesus he never knew. So, Micah, take us back now. You're 19 years old. You kind of stumble on to this Baptist minister in Florida, and you're trying to convert him to the Mormon faith. and you kind of bumped into the wrong Baptist minister because this is a guy, because there are many Baptist ministers you could have run into who wouldn't have pushed back in the way that he did probably.

So what happens at this point? Do you continue meeting with him or do you just go read the Bible on your own? Yeah, so after his challenge to approach the New Testament like a child, I accepted this invitation, but it wasn't in a humble or a child like faith. it's because I believed in my own arrogance that I could prove the Mormon Church true through reading the Bible exclusively. And so in the Mormon Church, we had extra biblical scripture that we were adhering to for truth. So I'd never really put the same amount of trust into the Bible as a Christian should. And so I then began this process of reading the New Testament daily for the remainder of my Mormon mission, which was about 20 months.

And I actually ended up reading the New Testament in total 12 times from beginning to end. end. And it was through the power of the Word of God that my eyes were opened and I was washed by the water of the Word of God. And I started to see the difference in the gospel that I was teaching as a Mormon and the gospel that was revealed in the New Testament. And I loved what you said before the break. You know, Paul said, should we sin deliberately so that grace may abound? Well, God forbid, right? So as a Mormon, I had the cart before the horse. I was trying to earn a right standing with God and trying to prove my worthiness to God believing that it was through my works that I could somehow make myself righteous, not recognizing that we love God because he first loved us. And so our faithfulness and the works

and fruit that are produced through us is that which comes as a result of love, of gratitude, of faithfulness to the God who loved and saved us. And so we then walk in the good works that God is prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And so I came to recognize that there was this beautiful gospel, this good news that Jesus's love for me was so grand and vast that he paid in full measure the debt that I owed to God. And all God was asking of me for justification was to trust in him and to believe that Jesus alone was the only way to salvation. I never really understood this clearly, I don't think, until I heard it from Tim Keller here in New York City. He just clarified it for me that we've already said it. But I just remember really getting the

idea that when you really believe that Jesus did this for you while we were still enemies, while I hadn't given him any reason to do anything for me, that he loved me and he does this for me. When you get that, then in gratitude, you want to live a good life. But it's in response to what he does once you get what he did, you respond. You don't initiate it. He initiates it with his love, loving us when we don't deserve to be loved, obviously. So it's just like one of these important things.

And you can go wrong on either side, as we said earlier. And that's why this is so important because there are people. Bonhofer talks about it in his book, Disciple, like, cost of discipleship, cheap grace where you can just go like, it's what Jesus did. It's what Jesus did. And you forget that if you really believe that he did what he did, you're just going to straight up live differently. If you don't live differently, maybe it means that you don't really understand what he did. so you can claim it intellectually, but it's obvious that you don't really believe it. You're not trusting in it. You're just claiming it intellectually.

Now, when you're reading the Bible, you hear a lot of people, they go read the Bible to disprove it, and then, whoops, they find out it's disproving where they're coming from. That takes a kind of honesty. So what was the process for you? As you're reading it, did you stumble on an initial scripture? How did that unfold for you, that you saw that what the Bible says is different than what you believed? Yeah. So it was very gradual for me.

So as I began to read passages, like Ephesians 2 and Titus 3 and John 6 and 1st John 4 and Colossians 2, and I'm just God is slowly and gradually opening my eyes to this vast love in Christ. For people that aren't familiar with all those scriptures off the top of their head, and I am three of those people. Give us one or two of those to see what it was that you tripped over and you said, hey, wait a minute. Yeah, so Ephesians 2, 4, and 5 was something that was very influential. And it says, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved. Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But we are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ, Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. this whole idea, right, of God's grace in Christ, that although the wages of sin is death, the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And I began to see, wow, this is vastly different from this works-based righteousness that I have been taught growing up in the Mormon Church and that I'll never be good enough that I can't

be justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ alone. So what was this process like for you? Because everybody's different. But I mean, you know, you're a good son. You love your parents. I just imagine at some point this gets difficult because you know you're going to hurt the people that you love or you're going to let them down or it's going to be. What was that like for you? How did that unfold?

Because that's very tough. It takes some courage. Yeah. So ultimately reading the Bible led me to recognizing the truthfulness of the gospel. And I was actually born again and came to a saving faith in Jesus Christ while it was still on my moronial. and mission. And so it was. It was an incredible but simultaneously terrifying experience of recognizing that this newfound faith in Jesus was going to come at a cost of the cultural life to which I had been ingrained since the time that I was a child. And so that was a hard thing to face that

cost of discipleship. And actually one of the most powerful passages that God used in my life was Matthew 16. Jesus says, if you want to come after me, then take up your cross and follow me and lose your life so that you can find it because what will it profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his soul? So we're talking about that cost of discipleship to recognize that following Jesus means losing the world. It means that we gain something greater in Christ than anything that we will ever lose according to the flesh. And so I recognize that I was going to have to come forward at some point about this transformation that the gospel had wrought in my heart. And so I ended up coming forward to my missionary peers, to my Mormon leaders, to my family and my friends.

And of course, each reaction was different. But God used what he did in my life to begin to plant seeds in the hearts and lives of my loved ones as well. Did you, I guess, how did that unfold? In other words, did you share with anybody what your questions were and others before you figure the whole thing out yourself, while you're in the process of trying to figure this out, were you able to share this journey or these questions with people in the LDS community? The only person that I would say I was really open with was actually my high school Mormon girlfriend. So when I was on my mission of Florida, she was a student at BYU.

And I was sharing with her through handwritten letters once a week the things that I was learning through the reading of the Word of God. And ultimately, I gave her the same challenge that that pastor had given me. and that was just to read the Bible like a child. So she was the person I was most comfortable sharing these things with. And she actually, too, was born again while she was a student at BYU. She's now my wife, Alicia. We've been married for 15 and a half years. And so she was the first person.

But I didn't really understand what was happening as it was happening until I got to the very end. And so as I was going through this process, I never foresaw that it was eventually leading me outside of my religious roots. probably very similar to Martin Luther as he began this process of investigating truth through the Word of God. I don't think he ever intended to go through that process and end up leaving, you know, the faith to which he had dedicated his life. And I think it was very much similar to me. And so when I finally came to that point of full awakening of my eyes being opened to the gospel, the grace of God, then I had no choice to, but to come forward to, you know, my friends and family and tell them what God. had done in my life. Was there a point as you're coming to these understandings that you thought

you would be able to stay in the LDS Mormon community? In other words, was there a point where you thought you can bring this truth to them and they'll be grateful for the clarification? Absolutely. That's actually a great question. I think there was a long period of time where although I was seeing these discrepancies between the Mormon Church and biblical Christianity, I thought, well, maybe I can help reform it, you know, from the inside and stay in the church. And at that point, I didn't even recognize that the core foundation of the church itself was built on a false gospel. I thought it just needed correction. And actually, the full awakening for me came when I was reading the book of Hebrews, when I only had about three weeks left of my two-year mission commitment.

And I remember reading Hebrews 7 through 10. And it was just like, God just removed the veil from my eyes. and I recognize that Jesus is the fulfillment of all of the elements of the old law that I was putting as the hope of my salvation, right? Prophets and temples and priesthood and ordinances and all these things that the Mormon Church teaches are essential for salvation. I recognize that they were all a type and a shadow pointing toward the fulfillment of that reality who is Christ.

Folks, I'm talking to Michael Wilder. The book is Passport to Heaven. We'll be right back. Hey folks, I'm talking to Michael Wilder. The book is Passport to Heaven, the true story of a zealous Mormon missionary who discovers the Jesus he never knew. So, Micah, you were saying earlier that as you're going through this process, you, I think, like anybody, are thinking, well, okay, maybe I can help reform Mormonism from within. What I'm discovering is true. And the Mormons that you know, they revere the Word of God.

so they should be good with this. At the same time, it doesn't work out that way. When did you get the phone call? You have a call, Elder Wilder. When did that message come to you? Give us the background there. Yeah, so what led up to that is after I'd come to this saving faith and revelation through the book of Hebrews at the Mormon church was not what it claimed to be,

I had actually publicly professed in front of about 40 or 50 Mormon missionaries, my newfound faith in Jesus Christ. So as a missionary who is concluding my two-year mission trip, I was supposed to stand up and share my testimony, and my testimony had radically changed from the beginning of my mission to the end. And so I actually publicly profess that I believe that Jesus was all that I needed, that I was saved by His grace and not by my works. And I now knew for the first time in my life that I had right standing with God and the forgiveness of my sins through the shed blood of Christ. And so as a result of that public testimony, my Mormon leader ended up calling me and said, we need to chat. And so that was when the two of us went into a meeting. And we talked for about

three hours. And I very candidly shared with him the things that I had been reading in the Bible that I'd come to know that salvation was independent of the Mormon church of any religious institution, but totally dependent on Christ alone, told him that I no longer needed the Mormon prophet or any earthly man to mediate between me and God, that there was one God and one mediator, and that is Christ. And so all of these things came forward to him, and he responded by telling me that I was filled with the spirit of the devil, and I was being deceived by Satan. And then he threatened to excommunicate me, and my mission was terminated three weeks early. And at that point, I then, as a 21-year-old Mormon missionary, was put on a plane and sent back

to Utah and had to face my family and my friends. Okay, what was that like facing your family and your friends when this is over? So it was terrifying because I didn't know how they were going to respond, but praise God, they had very soft hearts toward me. My parents, I think, were very confused, but they never ostracized me. And I think that they were curious as to why, as their Mormon son who had been so dedicated to the faith, like why I was willing to walk away from that. And, what was more valuable about this message that I had found in the Bible. And so I gave them the challenge, read the Bible.

I gave that to my siblings, to my parents, and just encourage them to go to the source. I actually ended up leaving Utah immediately, and I moved back to Florida, which is where I had served my Mormon mission, and my girlfriend and I ended up getting married, and we just kind of started our whole new walk as disciples of Christ, hand in hand, recognizing that, you know, we had everything that we needed in Jesus. And then back in Utah, God was working in the hearts and lives of my family members through his word. So did your parents and other family members come to the same conclusion that you did eventually? How long did that process take?

So my older brother, who at the time was a senior at Brighamian University and my younger sister, who was a senior in high school, they were the first in my family to come to saving faith in Jesus Christ beside myself. And that happened very quickly. I would say within a few months. My parents, you know, they were so much more entrenched in this, and they also had a lot more to lose. My mom was a tenured professor at BYU. So professing a newfound faith in Christ and not the Mormon church anymore would mean losing her job, her tenureship, I mean, everything.

And so, but God worked uniquely and individually in each one of their lives. My mother actually went to the gospel of John. And right from the beginning, John 1-1, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. and the word was God, that verse in and of itself contradicts the very nature of Christ as taught through the Mormon Church. And so God began to work in her heart, my father's heart as well, and they've both come to saving faith in Jesus now, all to the praise and glory of God. Wow. Gosh, this stuff, it can be so hard for people, whether you're coming out of a Mormon faith or a Muslim faith. or, I mean, for me, I was raised in the Greek Orthodox faith.

And for me, it's different because I don't think that they teach anything that is wrong, but they also often don't teach what is right or even understand what is right. And then if you say, well, I'm born again, they would say, well, then you're not with us anymore. Why have you rejected, you know, being Greek and being Greek Orthodox? And you think, well, I haven't, right? We're all, this is all, there's only one faith. We believe in the Nicene Creed. believe in the same thing. So this, it's always difficult when you go through this process, or it can

be difficult, and God tells us in scripture, you've got to count the cost, and are you willing to do that? Are you willing to lose all for my sake? And then if you're willing, often, you don't have to lose very much. In other words, you know, your parents come around. And so it's a beautiful thing to see that that happened for you. But I guess I want to ask, so what are the sticking points. And when your mother reads John 1-1, what is it that's so clear in Mormon teaching that bumps up against what the scripture teaches? In other words, what are they really, really clear about that you say is antithetical to what it is to believe that the Bible is the word of God? Yeah. So there's a few things. The first one is the very nature of God himself, right? So in Isaiah 43,

44, we know that there's only one God and there's no other God beside him and God has been from eternity to eternity, and he is not a created being. But in Mormonism, God is actually a man who has progressed to become God. And so they believe that we as humankind can also become gods ourselves. And so there is a different view on the very nature and eternal existence of God and Jesus as well. So in Mormon theology, Jesus is actually a created being by this Father God who was once a man. I think we're at a time in this segment, but we're going to be right back talking to Micah Wilder. Hey folks, I'm talking to Micah Wilder. Passport to Heaven, the true story of a zealous Mormon missionary who discovers the Jesus he never knew. So Micah, you're saying

that there are real sticking points, unavoidable problems between what the Mormon faith teaches unequivocally and what the Bible says unequivocally. So this is not just, you know, point of view or something like that. You know, because I think that many people could make the case that what the Roman Catholic Church teaches is right, that people can twist things. In other words, you can have a conversation there about do they believe this exactly or this exactly. But you're saying that the lines are really bright and bold that separate Mormon doctrine

from biblical doctrine in this case. So I guess my question is, do you, you know, when you're talking about, that you say that the LDS Church teaches that we can become like God. How is that different from somebody saying that, look, the scripture says that we're made in his image and we will be made to be like him through the process of sanctification and that kind of thing? I think that the Eastern Orthodox call it theosis. In other words, that's kind of the point, right, is that we're supposed to be more and

more like him. So that's not really a problem. Where does it become a problem? Yeah. So as you mentioned, biblically, you know, we are through the process of sanctification and the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. We are conformed to the image of Christ. We even have an airship with Christ, right, in the kingdom of heaven. But that's not what Mormonism teaches. They actually teach, not that we become like God, but that we ourselves become gods. And so eventually, once you've progressed to this point of Godhood, you then have the power and authority to create your own worlds to populate those worlds with your own spirit children and go through the same process that we are then in on this earth.

And so it is a complete perversion of the idea that we somehow can attain that which God now has. And just the exclusivity of the claim that the church is the only institutional organization that has the correct power and authority from God, right? There's several organizations in the world that claim that authority in the Mormon Church claims that they are the actual church that Jesus instituted during his earthly ministry, and only with the authority and the proper ordinances contained within that organization, can an individual live eternally in the presence of God?

So, and this is, of course, what the Roman Catholic Church was teaching, particularly during the time of Luther, that apart from them, there can be no salvation. And so what is some of the other beliefs that are really entrenched? in Mormonism that are non-negotiables? In other words, what do they say, for example, about who is the devil? Because the Bible says that the devil is a fallen angel opposed to God. What do they say? Who is Satan, according to Mormon doctrine? Yeah, so God, right? This God who was once a man who progressed to become God, before he created the earth, he had spirit children. And so Jesus was the first born of these created

Spirit children and Lucifer was the second born. Okay, so that's what Mormon doctrine teaches, that Jesus, and I remember Mike Huckabee kind of throwing this out, I guess he was trying to throw shade at Mitt Romney, and he said something about that, you know, he believes that the devil and Jesus are brothers, which almost sounds funny to somebody like me, like what? But you're saying that actually that is the doctrine. Correct. And so subsequently, all of these.

other spirit children that were created like you and I, right? We were actually in that same lineage. We would actually be brothers to both Jesus and to Satan. And so, of course, Satan then fell in this pre-earth life and he was cast down to the earth and became the devil and everything else. The other kind of like main non-negotiable doctrine within Mormonism is the idea that there is continued revelation. So they believe that they have the president of the Mormon church is an actual prophet with the same prophetic authority as the prophets of the Old Testament. In addition, they have 12 apostles that they believe hold the exclusive apostolic authority as the apostles in the New Testament did. So not only do they claim that authority, but they claim the right to

give mankind the word of God and to mediate between God and man and to deliver new scripture and new revelation. And so the problem is, is you can't just go to the Bible or the Book of Mormon, you have continued revelation, and that revelation will very often contradict revelation that has been previously given, but we are asked to trust in the continued revelation above anything else. That to me is the key, right? Because I think most Christians believe in continued revelation. In other words, I could hear from God today. God could say to me, cross the street and talk to that person. That's possible. Yeah. But it can never, ever contradict the scripture. If in any way it contradicts the scripture, I know it's not revelation from heaven, but revelation from hell or some other bad place.

And I think that that's the key, right? There are many people that say God speaks today. He's alive and he can speak to me and he can speak to others in a prophetic way. But if it ever contradicts what the Bible says, then you know it's not God. And you're saying that specifically and clearly Mormon teaching, is different. Correct. Correct. So like John says, right, in 1 John 4, verse 1, Beloved test the spirits to see whether they are from God for many false prophets have gone out into the world. And so we have to test anything that anybody says as truth against the written

word of God, right? But in Mormonism, you don't do that. You actually test truth against what the modern day prophets and apostles are preaching and teaching. And so, and not only is it a revelation like we're talking about like god like the holy spirit is active in our lives right and it directs us to do things but we're talking about they believe that god commands scripture and commandments through these men that they have that prophetic authority like isaiah had to write and record scripture and that is the infallible word of god that is what they claim and that's the authority that they claim to have we are we're out of time what a joy michael wilder to get to know you a little bit the folks the book is passport to heaven check it out

Fancy free. Nobody you meet. A couple of quick announcements. Number one, you already know about Nutrametics. Nutrimetics.com, use the code, Eric, whopping savings. Mypillow.com. If you want my books, go to MyStore.com. You can get great savings on most of them.

Use the code, Eric. But we need to tell you a couple of things quickly before we're done today. Number one, even though we're doing this. fun thing with food for the poor where we give back and you go to Metaxisttalk.com and you click on the banner and you give this and you give that. I want to say we on this program always want to give something to you. So we are going to be doing three grand prize winners. So whatever you give, we don't care what you give. Whatever you give, your name goes into a hat, not literally. And we will pick a winner. And the grand prize winners get so much stuff, it's going to be

embarrassing. You will be embarrassed if you win. Because you're going to get signed books. My new book is atheism dead. You'll get a signed copy of that. You'll get a copy of Bonhoeffie. I mean, just get a ton of stuff. So give anything to food for the poor and you're put in throwing anybody who can give $10,000 to this spectacular cause. Ladies and gentlemen, it is a spectacular cause feeding the hungry in the poorest parts of the world. They need our help. It is what we need to do. God enjoins us. to help the poor out of our own largesse, he will bless us.

So anybody who can give $10,000 is tax deductible, but we can have dinner together. And if you want, we can include Chris or Auburn or whatever. But we'd love to do that as a way of thanking you. Anybody who can give $10,000, we need you to step up because this is a great organization. We always partner with them.

We always want to say also anybody gives $1,000. You get a visit to the studio in New York, You can bring your friends. You can bring your class from school. Whatever it is, we don't care. And if you can't come to New York, you don't want to because you're afraid of the hobo epidemic. You can tell friends in New York, hey, we got this visit to the studio. We gave $1,000 of this great thing.

You can tell them you gave $200 so they don't think too highly of you. And you can say, Eric said that you can come visit the studio and meet everybody and you can get free books and all kinds of stuff. And then finally, and this, Chris, this was your idea. Anybody who gives $500, and this is included in the thousand, obviously, but anybody gives $500, you'll get a personalized video greeting from Eric Mataxis himself. He's very ornery, hard to pin down on this kind of stuff. He's even sleeping a lot of the time. But we will wake him and we will get him to do a personalized video greeting to you

or anyone you like to surprise them for a mother's day, birthday, like whatever it is, it's going to blow their minds. and it's $500 that you're giving to a great organization tax deductible. So we want to say that the phone number is 844-8663 Hope, 844-8663 Hope, 844-8-6-3 hope. And do we want to play the clip of what the situation is there? Maybe you guys can fill that in. One month old, Pierre Weizny is painfully thin, with ribs showing he weighs just 11 pounds. No surprise, Pierre is severely malnourished.

In most of these cases, the children got this way due to poverty and a lack of access to good food. It suddenly becomes very painfully real. Folks, we can do something about this. We need to do something about this. Go to our website, mettaxistalkysot.com. Anybody who gives $111 that feeds three of these kids for six months. So you can do the math. $111.1.

Food for the poor can leverage. You're giving so dramatically. And this is not just food. I should say. food and medicine. Haiti is one of the main countries. They've got a network of warehouses, distribution centers. We do need your help. That's why they come to us on this program, because they know that we have an audience that understands this stuff. And just real quick, if you want to get entered into the grand prize drawing, it's just any amount. You want to give $5, $10, $100, whatever amount,

you get an entry into the grand prize to win all these books and all these great pieces. We need your help. So go to Metaxus talk. Click on the banner. Give whatever you can. Get your kids involved, folks. Let them know that there are people in this world who don't have anything that we do. And we need to help them. It's an obligation.

Thanks for listening.