The Sean McDowell Show - Unraveling 7 Gens of Mormon Faith

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

What lessons can Christians learn from a former Mormon? Can we take lessons from Corey Miller in responding to Mormonism? After 7 generations of being a Mormon Corey Miller converted to Christianity in 1988. He has since served on pastoral staff at four churches and has taught nearly 100 college courses in philosophy, theology, rhetoric, and comparative religions at various places. His story is fascinating! READ: Responding to the Mormon Missionary Message (by Corey Miller): https://amzn.to/48i3yoC READ: Sharing the Good News with Mormons (https://amzn.to/45STroJ) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Why would a seventh generation Mormon leave the LDS Church? My ancestry goes back to 1836, six years after the publishing of the Book of Mormon. Our guest today, Dr. Corey Miller, is the president of Roscio Christi and former classmate of mine, and he's the author of a new book we're going to talk about today called Responding to the Mormon Missionary Message. I never really questioned it. Now I'm reading for the sake of truth and not just tradition. Well, Corey, it's so good to have you on. I have been fascinated when you told me,

I don't know how I missed this when we first became friends, that you're a seventh generation member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. How far back does your family go? I probably didn't know that when you and I first met. That was about 20 years ago. Okay. Okay, good. So I've written two books since then. I just knew that I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah as a Mormon. And I knew that I had some heritage because I didn't know anything back, you know, three, four generations. But finally started looking into it and have the access to the genealogical library of the world. So I had some family help actually do the genealogy. And one of them, very, very

active member in the LDS church said, wow, you actually come from very healthy stock. And what he means by that is that my ancestry goes back to 1836, six years after the publishing of the Book of Mormon. And they were actually involved in the highest level splinter group of Mormonism ever. The second counselor in the Mormon hierarchy, you have a president or prophet and then you have the first and second counselor. Well, the second counselor peeled off and my seventh generation member joined him and the sixth generation followed after joseph smith and to prove his faithfulness took five wives and had 36 children of which i'm a descendant so there's a a big story there that's fascinating uh in itself but that's the background. So it's pretty much been,

as far as you could tell, an unbroken chain going back to six years since the publication. And then you come along and you break this chain. You're quite the rebel, aren't you? Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I did have, my mother was not, you know, fully active in the Mormon church. And so I had kind of a buffer zone there. But my grandfather, very close to being a bishop, five generations back on one side, seven on the other side. And in Mormonism, there's kind of a pecking order. So if you're in the first or second generation, that's kind of important. And I've been to Nauvoo.

I've filmed, I've done footage at Nauvoo and at Carthage, looking at where my ancestor lived. And as a bodyguard of Joseph Smith, he was, his property was virtually adjacent to Smith's and that's how closely connected they were. So when they say healthy stock, that's, that's what they mean. And it's fascinating that the original story is wrapped up in Joseph Smith was beginning to assign other men's wives to himself, not just in the hereafter, but here and now. And when it came to William Law, the second counselor's wife being one of those would-be wives, and William Law said, no no brother smith take the hand we're starting a new splinter group we're writing a publication called the navoo expositor and we're going to

shed the light on everything that you're doing smith went in and had his minions destroy the printing press yeah which eventually led to uh his getting arrested and taken to Carthage, where then he was shot and killed in a shootout. But that was what was involved in the very foundation there. And my sixth gen ancestor, I have a facsimile, a personal handwritten note from Joseph Smith asking him to court-martial because he was a colonel also in the mormon battalion to court-martial wilson law general wilson law who was william law's brother because they'd excommunicated them now they wanted to court-martial the militia members and so forth so it was a big dust up uh and since then a lot of people don't realize this

but there have been over 400 splinter groups since the death of Joseph Smith. Yeah. That is really, really interesting. Now, sometimes in the evangelical church, when people leave the faith, we don't do a good job of engaging them, listening to them, talk with them, asking, hey, did we maybe fall short in some way? What could we have done better? That's something I try to do on this

channel, and I think as evangelicals we can learn to do this better. Are there people within the LDS church, like how are they handling this? Do they ignore you? Are they open to a conversation? Do they want to kind of act like you don't exist? What's your experience been as your story gets more and more profile, given that you go so far back? I mean, in terms of family, all of those issues have already been dealt with decades ago. And so there's no appreciation, certainly, for what I'm doing. Because, you know, if you are someone who leaves the Mormon church and supposedly knew it was true, you're certainly an apostate, but you, under one interpretation, you could be a son of perdition, and that's not even making it to the three degrees of glory. And so looking at, from, you know, their vantage point, I'm not just having a person

having left Mormonism, having apostatized from Mormonism. I'm writing books on it. This is my third book, and this one is going after the jugular vein, the Mormon missionary movement. So yeah, it's not received happily. So this is, and that's understandable. This is like somebody who leaves, in our experience, the evangelical church and then starts writing books critiquing it. You've not only left, now you're arguing for the other side. So that's understandable. Okay. Let's go back to your childhood. You said you grew up in Salt Lake City. Tell us what your family was like, maybe your experience in the LDS

church. Yeah. So I grew up with just a single mom. So it was a broken family from the beginning. So she was the black sheep of her respective family. And I grew up in a yard that was encased with my grandfather as well, who was an active Mormon. And so he really kind of was the spiritual leader of that kind of relationship. And so I was born into it. I was serious about it. In fact, at age eight, you're supposed to be baptized. I resisted because I knew, according to my young understanding of Mormonism, but true understanding, that when you get baptized, it wipes away the slate. You've got a clean slate. There's a baptismal regeneration that happens. And I asked at the time, what happens if I sin after this? Well, you've got marks on your slate, but you can repent.

And I thought, oh my gosh, I know that no unclean thing enters into the kingdom of God. And if I want celestial glory, perfection is the requirement and grace is there, but after you've done all you can do. And so I knew this at age eight and there was this conundrum because there's the idea in popular Mormon ethos, try, try your best and God will make up the rest. And yet that's not what you have in the Mormon scriptures, especially in the Book of Mormon, which is the key piece of scripture. And so I decided to delay my baptism, and I was thinking I was going to beat the system and wait until I was 88 years old. And I thought, well, what if I get hit by a semi before that time, having not been baptized by the proper priestly authority? And so I finally capitulated at age

nine. But that shows how serious I was as a young boy. I was, I was taking this seriously. And, you know, over the years I encountered a lot of hypocrisy like, you know, Christians do in Christian churches and so forth. Sometimes Mormons living outside of Utah don't always appreciate Utah Mormons because they think that they'd often take it for granted. And, you know, I had, again, a broken home. My mom smoked. That was a definite no-no, first one, you know, to kind of defect in that way in the whole seven generations. But I was serious about it. And both grandparents on both sides were trying to help me with, you know, growing in my faith as a young LDS person and

looking forward to going on a mission and so forth. But I finally just got sick of the hypocrisy and I went into adolescence in rebellion like many do, but I never rejected, Sean, my understanding of the Mormon concept of God. Heavenly Father was the father that I never had on earth. And I believed that, and I loved him as far as I understood that. And I wasn't rejecting Mormonism. I did not appreciate the Mormon culture that I was part of, my local ward, for example. And so I thought, okay, I'm living my life. I'm going this trajectory. I still believe it, but I'm not as active in the way that I had been. And I had a friend that invited me to go to California for a summer to

spend the summer at the beach. And all I'd seen is the great salt Lake. So I thought, wow, that'd be great. Santa Cruz beach for the whole summer conditioned on me going to this Christian camp called Hume Lake for one week. And I went there, the speaker spoke on hell and that did it. I tell people that it scared the hell out of me and heaven into me. And I saw Christ's love and grace for the first time in my life. It had been something revolutionary so that I went back to Utah at the end of the summer, packed my bags, got my mom's permission, moved to California, lived with the family for that year, and got discipled. And it was only when I came back my senior year in high school to Utah to graduate that the pressure was on now from the extended family, from my friends, from the culture, that I need to really reconsider

the decision that I just made. Because if I am an apostate, if I'm maybe a son of perdition under maybe a bad interpretation, the challenge was, do you want to reread the Book of Mormon and pray about it again for the sake of truth this time and not tradition? And I thought, yeah, I better do that. And so I did. And that's when all of a sudden I started seeing things that I hadn't seen before and problems in the Book of Mormon. And that opened my eyes up to a new realm in this whole issue of truth. And I started to wonder, you know, this new experience that I had as a convert to historic Christianity. How do I know the Bible is true?

I was always taught that it was corrupt, but it didn't matter because we had a living prophet. But I no longer believe in a living prophet or that kind of modern revelation. So how do I know the Bible is reliable? How do I know God even exists? How do I know I even exist? And that's what sent me on this three decade search for truth where I've landed today. That is fascinating. Now, I always knew you were a thinker because I heard your questions in class and got to know you a little bit. But going back to eight and nine years old, that's amazing how much you were reflecting upon this. Now, between like nine when you were baptized and that high school trip where you went to Hume, were you going to seminary and going to church and really practicing the Mormon faith? Did it maybe taper off a little bit?

Tell us about that season. Yeah, there was definitely a tapering. But, you know, you got the not CRT, but CTR ring, choose the right. You know, you go to Sunday school, you go to the sacrament meetings. If you're part of the Boy Scouts in Utah growing up, it's really a branch of Mormonism there. You know, even the Boy Scout troops were out there collecting fast offerings from people's homes. And so, you know, the Mormon church weighs your tithe if you want to get a temple recommend. So we're out there helping people to kind of get their temple recommend by, you know, being faithful. So yeah, I was definitely into it, definitely faithful,

definitely interested, and it began to taper off, as we alluded to, as I was sick of the sociology, not the theology. So by the time you went to Hume Lake Camp, you were already a little bit disillusioned and maybe ripe and ready to hear something different. Is that fair? Yes. I mean, I was disillusioned, but I wasn't ready to hear something different. I didn't care about changing my religion. I thought that I still probably was part of the true religion, but I wasn't, I wasn't living the the molly mormon or the active mormon lifestyle at the time because I'd started adolescent rebellion. Now you described it as pretty quick, heard about hell, knew you needed to believe. There's a lot at stake for somebody who is, this would be true in evangelical christianity but also true in the lds church maybe

more so this is your identity this is your family you didn't know yet but it was seven generations yet removed did you just make a decision when you're there in hume and then later start to realize oh my goodness this is going to have a lot of consequences or is that in your mind you're like you know what i believe this i'm following truth following truth. You know, come what may. Yeah. I mean, I didn't really consider the family repercussions at the time because again, my situation was a little bit different. I had that kind of a barrier of more safe haven because my mother, while she still believed, and my father, while he still believed, it was not a typical Mormon home that is in any way ideal. My grandparents on both sides, though, loved both of them, and they loved me, and they were very, very active Mormon. And so that was difficult,

trying to find that out at the end. But I wasn't concerned with any of that when i heard the gospel the first time with the background of the consequences of sin and i knew because remember i was in the state of rebellion at the time it was like augustine's or augustine's confessions um you know i was enjoying sin for a season and i knew that i was not a good person and the gospel finally made sense against the background of law. And that's what Paul tells us, you know, that the use of the law in evangelism, that's what did it. But I saw, I saw it incarnate, lived out in people for the first time, too. And grace became utterly graceful at that point. It was only after that that I had to reconcile issues with family.

And about two to three days before my grandfather's death, I led him to Christ and got to then speak in my ward that I grew up in and tell the entire family and all his friends that I led grandpa to Christ in the historical biblical sense. Not a good thing for family relations, but it was a glorious. Now i've got so many more questions about your story but i've got to pause and ask how did this happen with your grandpa tell us that story if you will so i he was dying of cancer at the time and um he knew that i had become a christian and i tried to share with them several times. I would, you know, come back to Utah when I was living in California. And then when I moved back to Utah, because I had a relationship, a close relationship with him, I continue to try to share with him. And eventually

on his deathbed, he prayed with me to receive Christ. And yeah, cause he was nearly a Mormon bishop at one time. And so that was glorious. I believe I'll see him again. And the rest of the family did not, on that side of my family was not happy. And they let me know that. How were you allowed to speak at a ward? Did they not know what you were gonna say?

Like? No, I was one of the grandchildren uh certainly i would have something good to say and it was just assumed that i would say things along the party line well that is that is bold kudos to you for saying that and largely it's true that was his testimony and your grandchild you have a right to share what he believed up until the end. So I think you did the right thing, but it would have been easy to not do so. Kudos for doing that, even though you knew it would come at a cost, and it sounds like it did. Let's go back to your story before. So you come home from this trip.

You made a decision to follow Jesus. And then, obviously, these thoughts of like, wow, I could be an apostate, and what if I miss something? So I better read the Book of Mormon again with a sincere heart, like it says, you know, in Moroni 10.4, this, you know, read the scriptures, and you know, God will basically reveal this to you. When you read it, you said you saw it with different eyes. Tell us what was different that time and some of the things that stood out. Well, because now I'm reading as I was challenged. Read for the sake of truth and not just tradition, because I had grown up with a great pedigree of seven generations, and I never really questioned it,

other than being serious about my move toward eternal progression. But at this time, now I'm open to considering, well, I had become a Christian, a historic Christian. And during that year, some of my friends in California and the youth pastor were sharing things that I had not heard about Mormonism before. And so now I'm able to do comparative contrast and I'm able to do kind of a critical thinking dive as I'm reading the Book of Mormon, but being serious about it, because what if I did make a mistake? What if I just needed to, you know, get off the adolescent rebellion and get back on the wagon and the straight and narrow

and move forward now? So I needed to know that something was true. And that's when the whole world, I moved into skepticism for a little while because of seeing the problems now from a different vantage point in the Book of Mormon and in Mormonism in general. But now I had to start wondering about the Bible, and that threw me into a time of skepticism. But it was good because it was forcing me to ask big questions. If there is life after this life, after death, then I better know that I know that I know what it is. And then, of course, you run into philosophy and you're like, oh, the knowledge issue. And know that you know that you know. And you run into Calvinism and Arminianism and all these different things.

And so that's what really set me ablaze into this pursuit of truth. And once I got really confident at the time with my decision to follow Christ in the biblical historical sense, God just birthed in me this passion and fire for evangelism. Because if this is true, and now I think it is, and I have good reasons for it, I'm going downtown in Salt Lake and I'm doing street evangelizing. I'm going to the temple and I'm getting literally physically carried out by security guards.

And I'm a new Christian, but I'm thinking, hey, John the Baptist got all crazy on people. I thought that's what we were supposed to do. So it wasn't as conventional as my methods today, but going up to the University of Utah and in the early days, having a passion for the university and seeing this as a strategic place to go. And then your dad had an impact on me early on. Taking my first college class, I mean, I had a 0.3 at one point in just before high school. And it was the knowledge of God and knowledge itself that made me start thinking how I can appreciate and should appreciate knowledge.

And I'm taking a class at Salt Lake Community College, and it was led by a skeptic. Gave us an opportunity to talk about anything in the humanities class, to give an oral presentation. Socrates, someone brought their pet tarantula. Someone else talked about snow skiing in Utah. Humanities. And I wanted to do mine on myth became fact, the fulfillment of Bible prophecy, because I had just read your dad's evidence demands verdict. Someone had fed it my way as I was in that skeptical season. And so I did, and I started the process and I got yanked out of the classroom. I ended up having to go legal and won that one and got put back in the classroom. And that was my first encounter also with going legal in college. And now with our present organization, we've had 80 to 90 inquiries for

federal victories and an amicus brief leading to a Supreme Court victory. So some things haven't changed, but they've just gotten a bit deeper. Tell me a little bit more what you mean by going legal. Unpack that so we understand what that entailed. Yeah, I wanted to have the freedom that everyone else had. The professor talked about how Jesus was aligned with many of the other great myths, and there was nothing extra special about him. But of course, now I'm a recent convert to Christ, and I'm an evangelist also now, because I believe it is good news, and it's based in truth. And so I wanted my

opportunity to share, just as everyone else had, and especially as he had, trying to subvert ideas about Christ. And he wouldn't even let me finish the talk. And so that's why I went to the college president and brought a legal paper from the Rutherford Institute with me and put it on his desk. So the professor let me back in the classroom, gave me an A for the semester as long as I'd shut up. That's incredible. I love it. Now tell us, you and I met in the master's program. You had finished college. So when you went into college, you're obviously becoming an evangelist. But did this journey and conversion to historic Christianity affect what you studied and the professional

kind of direction of your life, and if so, how? Yeah, to some degree. I mean, I left Utah, went up to a Bible college, and then did a seminary master's degree, was on staff at a church. But in my heart of hearts, I always needed to be doing evangelism. And so while I was on pastoral staff somewhere, I needed to do evangelism. And God had given me a strategic mind also at the beginning, thinking about the universities. And so in my mind, I just thought, I want to transition from biblical studies to philosophy and prepare myself to go on for a Ph.D. at a secular university where I can enter in sort of like the Trojan horse entering the city of Troy and defend our own and advance the cause of Christ at the highest levels. And so if you can influence the influencers, and that's why I ended up at Talbot and you and I became deskmates. I love it.

That's awesome. Now, in your book, Responding to the Mormon Missionary Message, I'm going to show folks again because it's great. It's a compilation book you and a fellow, Ross Anderson, put together. You start off with a book very respectfully. It's written. It's obvious that you know and care about members of the LDS Church, and you're not looking for a fight, but sharing your convictions of what you see and what you think, you lay out pretty quickly why you don't think Mormonism is Christian, to be frank, and that it teaches a different gospel than the historic Christian church.

Because there's so many common words that are used, grace, faith, Bible, Jesus, heaven. What are some of those big pillars, like essential issues that tell you we're talking about different things here? Right, right. When I talk with Mormons, I bring this up early on too. And I say, look, I don't think we have the same view of God, for example. You have a mom, right? Right. Okay, can you spell that? Yeah, M-O-M. For example, you have a mom, right? Right. Okay,

can you spell that? Yeah, M-O-M. Can you spell it backwards? M-O-M. Hey, I spell it. Maybe we have the same mom. You know, just because we call it the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we spell Jesus Christ the same way, the Book of Mormon in its subtitle is Another Testament of Jesus Christ. But in reality, it's a testament of another Jesus Christ. Mormonism teaches a different concept of God, a different concept of salvation, and both of those find their segue in the personal work of Christ to such an extent that I taught at Indiana University for a dozen years and did comparative religions and philosophy. And when I did comparative religions, sometimes I struggled whether or not to put Mormonism under Eastern religions or under Western religions. Because,

you know, I don't know if someone counted it one day, but, you know, you hear the buzz out there that there are 300 million gods in Hinduism. Well, if the Mormon concept of eternal progression under one interpretation has been going on for all eternity, that number is small by comparison. So, you know, do I put it under Eastern religions in that regard? Because the Mormon concept of God has more in common with this finite screen than it does with the Christian or even Judeo or Islamic concept of God. It is a different religion altogether. It has similar morals. We often can build neighborhoods together and societies live together.

They're good people in terms of civilization, but it is not the same God, not even close, from finite to infinitely different. I got a really thoughtful email recently from a fellow who's a part of the church, the LDS church, and he was listening to a message of mine or discussion that I had, and we went back and forth a few times, and he said, do you think that people in the LDS church are saved? And I wrote back and I said, well, I'm not the one who's going to make this call. God is the one who judges hearts. I said, but if a member of the Mormon church is saved, it will not be because of their theology. It will be in spite of it. So there's certainly

possibly some people in there who believe and embrace the gospel amidst some of this theology. I can't discount that. But the message that is taught, a works-based salvation, as you see in 2 Nephi 25-23, the eternal procession of gods, the different layers of heaven, you go on and on. I said, we're talking about a different religion, even though we use the same words. I'm curious. Feel free to correct me or tell me if you would have answered differently. But what do you think about that response? Agree? Disagree? No, I 100% agree with that. I've met Mormons that have believed in the Trinity, Mormons that may have been converts from the outside and had an understanding of grace that isn't taught by Mormonism. And so what that says is they came into Mormonism probably for the same reason most people do. If

you're not born into it, you convert into it. And it's usually for pragmatic, sociological, psychological reasons. I don't know a single person who's ever become a Mormon for intellectual reasons. I know a ton who have left it for intellectual reasons. But it's, you know, families are forever. It works. These are nice people. They mow your lawns. They run for president of the United States. Clearly, this cannot be a cult. It's not a weird off-brand religion. So yeah, think that some people can despite mormonism despite its teachings uh they can be christian if they have the rudiments correct on who is god and christ and on god's terms of of salvation but see that's where it's just you know their concept of god sean they don't even really have a distinct theology or anthropology.

I call it anthropotheism. It's really a spectrum of divinized humanity to humanized divinity. You know, where are you at in the process? But everybody has a spark of divinity. And as Spencer W. Kimball said, we are gods in embryo. It's a process. The whole thing is a process. And in some accounts, maybe you become an angel.

Moroni was a man, then an angel, through the process. So they conflate these things. We have a distinct theology and anthropology. Men are not God, and God is not a man, even though he took on humanity. You know, I've been reading 1 Timothy, and there's a couple passages in there that say, you know, the king of kings, the invisible, kind of one eternal God. And as I read that, I thought the idea that there is one God—now, of course, we would argue that God exists as three persons, but there is one God who's invisible and eternal. Right there, I thought this seems to raise some challenges

for Orthodox Mormon teaching that God has a body and that kind of God used to be a man and hasn't always been God. Those are some of the tensions that we see, aren't we? Yeah. And that's where you get in and start going deeper on the questions. Because if you say, do you believe in Jesus? Yes. Is he the son of God? Yes. Is he God the son? Yes. Has he always been God? In a sense, it's a spectrum, right? Most Mormons just don't go that deep. They don't think about those things. Mormonism is more social, psychological in terms of its core interest for people than it is theological, logical. They are very rational and logical people when it comes to engineering and math and politics and mowing lawns just like the rest of us but when it comes to religion they have they almost have

the kantian headache the fact value dichotomy but faith faith is faith for them is emotional. It is a leap of faith. They take Kierkegaard's statement, but they attach it to their understanding of what they're doing when it comes to having their Mormon testimony. It's a leap of faith, and they're very much feeling people when it comes to religion and based on personal revelation. That's everything. Authority is everything to them, and that's one aspect of their understanding of authority. That really stood out to me. I can't remember. It was maybe 15, 20 years ago. I decided to read the Book of Mormon all the way through carefully. It took me, it felt like, I don't know, a week or two. And I was like, I'm going to do this. And I prayed about it. And I've since had some

evangelicals tell me, you shouldn't even pray that prayer. I was like, well'm going to do this. And I prayed about it. And I've since had some evangelicals tell me, you shouldn't even pray that prayer. I was like, well, I did. So I could tell my Mormon friends with a genuine, sincere heart, if this is true, God show me. And one of the things that jumped out to me is just the dynamic between faith and knowledge, is that if you have knowledge, you don't have faith. Faith is expressed as something you feel that's opposed have knowledge, you don't have faith. Faith is expressed as something you feel that's opposed to knowledge. Now, if there's no good historical evidence for the people and places that you describe actually happening, it makes sense to describe faith in that way. But that's

so different than a biblical understanding that Jesus does miracles to give people confidence that he speaks for God. Moses does miracles to give people confidence that he speaks for God. Moses does miracles to give people confidence that he speaks for God. That dynamic really stood out to me as one of the key differences. Now, let's jump to your book. Now, before we get to, what I love about this is you're trying to give us just real practical ways to just have meaningful conversations. What are some of the things going back that you would tell yourself when you're 19, 20, 21 years old evangelizing? Maybe some failures you look back on because of your youthful vigor of ways that don't work,

and then we'll get to some positive ways that you think do work. Well, you know, I would go door knocking. And as soon as they open the door, unless you repent, you're going to perish Luke 13, three, and then they'd slam the door on me. And I'm thinking, yes, they're probably in there just in tears with conviction. Are you serious? You didn't even say, you didn't even say hi. You just said that verse and dropped it on them. I probably gave them a hello in one previous sentence but yeah it was it was really radical back then so i'm not kidding when i say i physically got carried out of the lds temple because i'm open air preaching inside and you know the the methods uh they may have worked for john

and they may work for other people today so i'm not going to condemn other people's methods i have one who who a friend who does some things like this and he sees fruit from it but yeah i my methods and tactics are different today i want more dialogue uh i don't want to create a wall that builds pride and deflection i want um to ask socratic questions that open up dialogue and reflection and if you ask the right questions that helps them to better own their answers and to think about these things and when you're talking with a mormon missionary especially they think that they're in the driver's seat they are elder so-and-so uh if they're male sister so-and-so if they're female, and that's becoming a much higher number of missionaries. But they think they're in the driver's seat,

and so it's like one of the martial arts where you take your opponent's strength and use it against them, allow them to think they're in the driver's seat, and ask them thought-provoking questions. And that's one of the virtues of this book, written almost by all former Mormon missionaries, other than, you know, Ross and myself, who both were pastors, professors, and former Mormons, but not missionaries. It gives people a sense of knowing exactly what's going to be said on Monday night, how many times you're supposed to inhale, how many times you're supposed to exhale. You can go into it totally comfortable, totally calm. The early mistakes I made and that I see a lot of people make is that they react, they get emotional, and things flare up rather quickly. And what that does to a Mormon is it says, uh-huh, uh-huh,

this is what I was taught. We are a persecuted people. They're yelling at me now. Their voice is raised. They're persecuting me. It validates their own testimony. And so Christians need to be aware not just of the deviant doctrines or theological beliefs, but also of the culture of Mormonism.

And that's not just the external culture that we practice. That's the internal culture of the soul. There is a psychology of Mormonism, and people need to understand that in the same way that if you're going overseas to Japan or to Malaysia or to Africa, you've got to understand it's a different culture outside and in. That's one of the things I love about you and your approach is like, let's dialogue, let's listen, let's show respect to each other. That's one of the things I really try to do in my life and try to do in this channel. I'd taken a group of high school students to Salt Lake City, and we were touring underneath one of the museums kind of in the Temple Square area.

And at least at this time, I don't know if they still do it, the people that would give tours are older ladies who are widows. And she really loved what she was doing, really kind with us. And I just started asking her some questions. And, you know, I said, oh, you're a widow. Are you able to remarry? And she said, yes, I'm able to remarry, but I wouldn't be allowed to be. I can't get remarried in the temple.

I could get remarried for this life, but I'm sealed to my first husband. I said, okay, if you had passed away and your husband outlived you, could he remarry? And she said, yes, he could not only remarry, he could remarry in the temple and then be sired to two wives for eternity in the kingdom. Now, I can't verify if the LDS church still teaches this or not, but that's what she told me. And that was interesting. And I said, wow, does that strike you as fair? What if you get seared to somebody who you don't even like for eternity? And it wasn't meant

to be a gotcha question. I just listened, tried to understand, and was genuinely curious. And she kind of looked at me a little bit like, I don't know what to do with this. And then later on, I said, what's your experience with Christians? And she said, a lot of Christians will come in and they're just trying to prove me wrong. And they tell me I'm a heretic. Like immediately, that was her experience. And she says to me, she just goes, and especially, and mentions a certain denomination. Well, when the tour was done, I mean, she was going into way more detail than we needed.

But when the tour was done, I said, I want to thank you so much for your time. By the way, I'm actually a member of that denomination. So I'm really sorry that other Christians have treated you this way. And one of our mutual friends, who I won't mention, stayed a little while after, and he's like, she didn't even know what to do with that. But there's something about asking questions and just being kind, and as Greg Kokel says, putting a stone in somebody's shoe. If more Christians would approach it this way, rather than your old self, which I wish you, I appreciate you sharing, you know, we could make some real headway. And you write in your book, you said, again, it's responding to the Mormon missionary message that a lot of

Mormons, when they're knocking on doors, they have Christians say, oh, you're a cult, slam the door on them. And that leaves a taste where it doesn't matter what arguments you give for Christianity. Christians are mean. Christians aren't kind. Christians are not gracious. I don't want to be a part of that tribe, especially for a faith that so emphasizes relationships and so emphasizes emotions. So it seems like in your book, you're really moving that direction of asking questions and dialogue, aren't you? Right. And I think the book has a great blend of the affective and the cognitive. And because it's written by people who are all insiders, and especially the Mormon missionary discussions written by the former missionaries

who all fulfilled their two years from coast to coast, missions in Europe and so forth. Some have gone on for PhDs, some have done seminary. One of them even wrote a book before converting to Christ called A Biblical Defense of Mormonism. And then he debated one of my former co-authors, Lynn Wilder, a BYU professor. And he got off of Briarley's program from that debate. And his dad said, wow, son, she really whopped you, didn't she?

Sometime after that, he came to Christ and he's rewritten the book. So these guys are sympathetic, empathetic. They know what the buzzwords are and they understand too. And you can see this when you read the book, every one of them evinces a vulnerability. They talk about the stress, the pressure points they're under. If people, if Christians could really understand that, even though you may not see them break in front of you, and they're trained not to, because they go in pairs, and if one seems to be weak in front of the other one, if they get reported to the mission president, they're going home early. You go home early, that seals your doom in the Mormon community. You're a second-rate Mormon. You know, spouses, potential spouses and so forth. So you are trained to look like a Teflon plate,

anything thrown against you, never mind the facts, I've got a feeling, or thank you for sharing that. That encourages me and builds my confidence in my faith. But underneath the veneer, as you can see in all the writers of this book They're all going through difficult times and I think If you understand the psychology And the sociology and Mormonism you understand that it's an extreme

performance mentality and a lot of people are pressure cooked for performance. And so the rebellion bleeds out orifices in different areas. Some of them, I had a friend whose dad ended up in an insane asylum. He was trying so hard to be perfect. He just couldn't do it. Or like Stephen Robinson of Our Mormons Christians who debated Craig Blomberg, his wife in his book, Believing Christ, said, I just can't do it anymore. I can't sustain the authorities of the church and keep up with my letters, be with the Relief Society. Do you still have a testimony? Yes, and that's what's so hard. I still have my testimony, but I just can't be perfect anymore. That's the drive. And that's what Mormon missionaries are feeling. I still have my testimony, but I just can't be perfect anymore. Wow.

That's the drive. And that's what Mormon missionaries are feeling. Yeah. That's a real weight. Now, I want to get to the testimony dynamic. This is really important. But since you became a historic Christian and evangelical, did you ever have doubts? And I don't mean that initial moment where you're like, I better go back and read the book of Mormon with sincerity.

Say five, 10 years after that, as you kind of settled in, did you ever have doubts that maybe you should go back to the LDS church? Or did you ever think, gosh, maybe I should be an atheist. Maybe I should consider Islam or some other faith. Yes, for sure. Finally, two reasons why I finally, by my own volition, got my name removed from the LDS roster is because they say there's 17 million Mormons. Not if they all went like I did and took their names off. But Mormon missionaries use that. Look how fast we're growing. Yeah, right.

But the second reason was I thought there were spiritual connections that were still there trying to pull me back, and I wanted to sever that. But nonetheless, being an inquiring mind, being a genuine pursuer of truth, you run into different worldviews and different religions and science and atheism. And as you know, you start to ask questions. And when I was classmates with you, we were studying under some of the brightest there. And I remember, you know, being under William Lane Craig and then getting an opportunity then to test the metal and go study under William Rowe at Purdue. And even there, you know, I have to ask genuine questions. Is he right? You know, is Paul Draper right on this? Are these other people that we're reading right on this? If I'm gonna be honest about it, I have to be willing to be critical about my own

faith. And I think what I've done, Sean, is I've come to, I don't know if you've ever heard this before, but sometimes I tell my skeptical friends, and I would tell myself this too, that Christianity, the church is like Noah's Ark. If it weren't for the great peril on the outside of the Ark, people would want to be jumping ship because of the stench on the inside. There's a lot of animal crap in there. It stinks. And Noah was probably not just opening the window to look for dry land, but to get a breath of air. And there's hypocrisy in the church. There's betrayal in the church. There are hard intellectual questions. And there are still questions. And now you and I, having studied philosophy, we know what a lot of those areas are.

And sometimes you're not very satisfied with the answers we've been given or where we're at in the process. But compared to what? Compared to what? Out there? You know, you're going to trade in three questions for 30 or three bad experiences for 300 out there? Jesus' disciples said, where are we going to, I mean, he said, well, you leave me too. Where else will we go for you have the words of life? And so doubt is not inconsistent with faith. Critical thinking, that ought to be the mark. I mean, Jesus is the logos. God is the

ground for logic. We ought to love God with our minds, our heads, not just our hands and our hearts. I'm so tempted to just have a whole conversation with you about doubt, but we better stay on track here because it's important. Let's go back in many of the conversations that I've had with Mormons. And I took a group of high school students to the local ward near where I live, and there's probably 12 or 15 of us. And the moment we walked in, one of the leaders stopped us and kind of said, who are you? Why are you here? And I think rightly skeptical because there's probably been a lot of groups and Christians that have shown up and not been respectful at the meetings. And the moment I assured them, we're just here to watch, we're here to listen, you know, they were great. But it was the day of the month where they all

got up front after a few songs and just did their testimonies. And these are people that are in front. And this is different. As I understand, it's once a month they'll do this, which can be very different than, you know, the three other Sundays, is they're pouring out their hearts and they're encouraged to just talk about how God has changed them and their personal testimony from either that week or their life. And it didn't have much impact on my students in the way that they thought it would. I'm curious, in your chapter, you talk about a testimony. Maybe tell us, what is Mormon testimony? How are they trained to do it? And how do you engage members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when they share their testimony with you?

Yeah, so the testimony is one authority among many for Mormons. You have the prophets, especially the founding prophet and the living prophet that you need to heed and sustain their authority. You have the scriptures, the quad, you know, the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, Doctrine and Covenants, and the King James Bible, as far as it's translated correctly. And then the buckstopper, the epistemic buckstopper for probably most Mormons, is really the personal testimony, its personal revelation, this ecstatic utterance that you know that the church is true, that the Book of Mormon is the Word of God, that Heavenly Father loves you, and Jesus is your Savior, and that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the one true church. And as you say that, you might begin

tearing up. You've said it a thousand times. You've heard others say it a thousand times. You're taught to seek a testimony, find a testimony by saying it. You are said to, if you miss testimony meetings, you will fail to accrue merit points in heaven, according to one Mormon prophet. You are taught to go on the defense with the testimony. You're taught to use it on the offense. And when I was a youth pastor up in Oregon, just before making the shift from theology to philosophy and hanging out with you down in Southern California, I remember having a guy come into my youth group, brought six kids homeschool. He was a recent THM four-year master's grad from Princeton Theological Seminary. And we started talking and he was in doubt. And I said, what are you in doubt about? He said, well, what really started it was I had these two young men come by, really nice.

And they explained to me their beliefs. And with such tenacity, with such confidence, they talked about how they knew their church was true. And I just thought, how come I don't know like they know? And one thing led to another. He ended up leaving his family, going after someone else. But that began for him the unraveling point. And so Mormons are taught to use it on the offensive because they think that for a lot of people, it makes people think, wow, wow, they're really sincere. That's really tenacious. And somehow tenacity is confused with veracity, but that's what they do. And sometimes

it is effective. Other times it's not. But for me, Sean, I think that this is something that a lot of Christian writers in this field don't address. Sometimes they simply poo-poo it because they get frustrated every time you think you've got them with a great logical argument. It's like Teflon, the socks just don't stick. And they go back to their testimony. And so for me, I want people to focus on the essentials. Who is God? How to get to heaven? Both of which find their segue in the personal work of Christ. This is not an essential doctrine, but it is an essential of dialogue.

You cannot get very far with most Mormons, especially Mormon missionaries, if you're not going to arrest and address the testimony early on, because this is everything. And putting the pebble in the shoe, you know, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't force him to drink, but you can give them salt lick and make them thirsty. You can create room for truth by creating doubt in their overconfidence of the subjective experience, that testimony, so that even after they leave your encounter after three or four or five meetings, they will never bear testimony again without thinking about this. And so what I try to do, Sean, is I try to give them an experience akin to the founding story. Joseph Smith was accosted by multi-denominations, by the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Methodists, of which he was part. And they were all saying, join my church. And he went into the forest, very sincere as the story goes, to pray and ask God, which one

should I follow? Which one is true? None of them are true, and I'm going to restore the gospel through you. Well, I want the Mormon today to feel the burn on that same issue. I want him to think that I'm in Joseph Smith's position right now. I'm an investigator, a prospective convert. You're here representing the Salt Lake Church, the Brighamites. But down the road is some member of the FLDS Church following the polygamy laws and Brigham Young. And further down the road is the Community of Christ Church that Joseph Smith's wife and Joseph Smith's firstborn son went to. And again, 400 splinter groups. Most Mormons have no idea, but they all know that there's at least went to. And again, 400 splinter groups. Most Mormons have

no idea, but they all know that there's at least a handful. And so I say, I feel very much like I'm in Joseph Smith's position. Can you believe that? You've borne your testimony to me so many times. But I wonder, you know, I call it the police lineup. I wonder what would it be like if I'm hearing of an FLDS member, a Salt Lake member, a Community of Christ member, and they all bear the same testimony with the same emotional tenacity. Are you going to judge their heart and say that they're lying? No, no, don't judge lest you be. Okay. But you do think they're wrong.

Yeah. So they're deceived. Right. So you're saying that someone who prays that prayer and receives a subjective personal testimony can be deceived. Yes. Question, how do you know you're not the one deceived? Wow. that uses the word testimony at least a half a dozen times. And it talks about what the proper testimony is, what it includes. And when you read that and you challenge the Mormon, the Mormon does not have that same testimony.

He cannot have that same testimony. He cannot have that assurance. He's always focused on worthiness and he's never made it. And then the very last verse, verse 13, it says, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God in order that you may know that you have eternal life. And I say, I testify to you that I know that if I die today I would be with Heavenly Father forever. And it's because I have the Son. My subjective testimony, and I believe in subjective testimonies, lines up with the objective testimony of Scripture, and archaeology, and science, and nature. But you're on a different path than me.

And that's where the challenge then goes. And so I want to use the testimony that's abused. I want to validate testimony as a form of knowledge, but I want to help them to come to doubt it by showing that they can't have overconfidence in their subjective experience when there are other competitors, even within the Mormon ranks. It's very much like the Grove experience. They know that story well, and it will stay with them long term. They won't ever have the same confidence again. And then it brings up an opportunity for me to share other things because now they're more open to truth. That's a really interesting approach is to just kind of go at the idea that a subjective experience can be the basis of truth because there's other

subjective experiences that might conflict. Well, therefore, then how do you know if your subjective experience is the one that is true? That's where we have to go look at the evidence, and Christians invite that kind of evidence. One of the things that I've done on occasion is because I've taken the time to read the entire Book of Mormon through, is people will say, you know, read the Book of Mormon, pray about it, and I'll say, I have. I read all of it. And I can tell you with a sincere heart, I had a lot of caution and concern and more questions after reading it than I did at the beginning. And there's just, they're not quite sure what to do with that. So I encourage Christians, if you

know Mormons, if you care about Mormons, read their scriptures, not looking for things to prove that it's false, right? Well, sometimes there'll be skeptics who will read the Bible not charitably looking for things that are false. Well, there's this contradiction, there's that one. I think we need to read as a whole and say, what's the message here? And then amidst that, read it accurately, but also read it critically. Do you recommend that Christians actually read the Book of Mormon? I do. I do. I don't recommend that they pray in the same way that, you know, I don't need to pray what I already know is wrong. If the Bible says don't murder, should I pray and see if I should murder? I don't need to pray over a book that's going to self-authenticate it like that.

I want to come to it with a different approach. And they can appreciate that. That's fair. Yeah. But definitely, definitely read, invite the Mormon missionaries in. They're out there leading people away from, you know, Christian churches and so forth. And this year they have announced that they are going to have their largest arsenal of missionaries ever. If you include service missionaries and teaching missionaries, by the end of the year they'll have a hundred thousand mormon missionaries and so

it's not going away active a hundred thousand active more missionaries and the vast majority between that 18 and you know 23 24 kind of age range a hundred thousand around the world that's incredible yeah and you know seventy percent of those are teaching missionaries the others might be um you know, 70% of those are teaching missionaries. The others might be, um, you know, service missionaries, 10% of the service missionaries are ones who for one reason or another came off of their mission early, maybe health reasons or whatever that are still in good standing, but want to fulfill their, their two years. Others are elderly people like you'd pointed out before work for some agency, but a hundred thousand in total by the end of the

year. That's amazing. That's quite the effort that they're putting forth. Well, you heard it from Dr. Corey Miller. Read the Book of Mormon after you read his book, Responding to the Mormon Missionary Message, which is great. I really commend you on a book well done with your team. Before I let you go, tell us a little about what you're doing with Ratio Christi. So yeah, Ratio Christy means the reason of christ and we're on over 100 college campuses we have an undergrad uh ministry primarily but we have high school rc college prep we have a professor's division we now have a phd chapter only division that we fund um people who get into our one research one level schools

140 of those schools and we're now launching chapters at places like Rutgers and Baylor and A&M and so forth but what we do is focus on the campus and that's the university where all crazy ideas can stem from so I'm writing a book right now from From Campus to Culture, an alternative vision of the future while we still have a chance. And thinking about, you know, stop, we need to stop as Christians pouring chlorine downstream. Politics is downstream from culture, culture from education, and the university is the apex of education. There's a story to be told on how we lost the universities, how we're losing it again.

We need to reclaim a seat at the table and more than just a seat at the table. We need to have a high level influence at the universities. And so we focus at the universities doing apologetics, evangelism, or evangelistic apologetics, and try to equip people for that end. We say that, you know, we have two ears and one mouth for a reason so that we listen more. If someone needs a hug, we give them a hug. But if they need an argument, we're the ministry on campus to give them an argument. And so we want to dialogue with people. We want to see people come to Christ. We want to get in debates on the highest levels for the sake of truth. And that was the original ethos of the universities. And one final thing, Sean, we are just launching this week, RC Press. And so for the first time in over a decade, we will now have a product line that includes over 35 booklets from people like Steve Myers,

Bill Craig, JP Moreland, on classical apologetic issues to everything in race, class, sex, gender, ethnicity, and so forth. Written at the 11th grade reading level, free for download or for sale beginning next week, printable versions, but they are written at the 11th grade reading level. Can you imagine getting Stephen Meyer to write at the 11th grade reading level. Amazing. We did, we did. And so there are a ton of these, they're available, they're for equipping so that people can take small chunks in their Sunday schools

with their youth groups, equip the students before they go off to the universities where the ratio of professors is sometimes 12 to one, sometimes 23 to one. And you're going to pay for the apostasy of your own child

if you do not equip them to not just survive, but to thrive when they get to the university. I look forward to that book coming out. Let's have a conversation about that. I use the short booklet that RC has put together on critical theory by Pat Sawyer and Neil Shenvey. I use it. I teach an undergrad class called Gospel, Kingdom, and Culture,

and we spend a whole day talking about critical theory. That booklet is perfect. So I've been using it and assigning it for years. So I look forward to seeing these other ones coming out. That's a great resource. Corey, you're a stud, man. This is really fun to catch up. Appreciate you coming on.

I got to make sure folks, before they sign away, make sure you hit subscribe because we've got some other conversations come out upon all sorts of issues on faith and culture and other religions, reliability of the scripture, near death experiences, a critical theory. Don't miss it. And if you've thought about studying in apologetics, Corey and I studied together in the MA Phil program, which we have, which is wonderful. They have a distance program. I teach full-time in the apologetics program, a class on the problem of evil, class in defense of the resurrection, class this fall on biblical sexuality. And if you've thought

about studying apologetics from a distance, we're the top rated schools. You know, Corey, we would love to have you join us. Information is below. Or if you're not quite ready for master's, we actually have a certificate program where we'll kind of guide you through basic courses, help grade it for you. And there's a very significant discount below. Check it out. Corey, really appreciate you coming on.

Hope folks will pick up your book, Responding to the Mormon Missionary Message. Let's do it again, my friend. Thanks, brother.