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EPISODE 50: Engaging with Mormons
Knowing how to engage in good conversations with Mormon friends and acquaintances is crucial in our pluralistic world today. Former Mormon and apologist, Corey Miller shares his very helpful insights from his experiences and study.
Recommended Resources:
- Engaging with Mormons: Understanding Their World; Sharing Good News by Corey Miller.
- Ratio Christi is a global movement that equips university students and faculty to give historical, philosophical, and scientific reasons for following Jesus Christ.
Transcript
Welcome to Questions That Matter, a podcast of the C.S. Lewis Institute. I'm your host, Randy Newman, and I'm delighted today to have as my conversation partner Corey Miller. Corey, welcome to Questions That Matter.
Fantastic to be here with you, Randy.
Mormon Anatomy
Cory Miller is the president of Ratio Christi Ministries, an apologetics ministry on college campuses. I'm going to let him tell a little bit about that. He comes to faith in Jesus as the Messiah out of a Mormon background. And Corey and I both got to be participating in a book series on “engaging with.” He wrote the one on engaging with Mormons. I wrote the one on engaging with Jewish people. We'll have a link in the show notes about that series. There’s Engaging with Muslims, Engaging with Atheists. It's a growing series.
And Corey Miller and I actually served together for a while on Campus Crusade staff, now called CRU, with a faculty ministry. We explored the world of ideas through this sub team that we called The Academic Initiative. That was really fun, while it lasted, that is. And so, Corey, tell us a little bit about Ratio Christi. I really want our listeners to know about this ministry. That’s not the focus of our conversation today, but it would be horrible to just skip over that because it's a great work you're involved in.
Sure. Yeah, it's my privilege to be part of it. I've been president now for over seven years in it, and it's growing. It is an apologetics campus ministry that focuses on evangelism, but asking the tough questions and trying to address answers to those questions. So what separates us from every other apologetics ministry, Randy, is that we're on the campus. What separates us from every other campus ministry is that we do apologetics evangelism. And our heart really is thoughtful Christianity, transforming lives on campus today, changing culture tomorrow. We've been around for just over a decade, and we're on about 150 campuses. We have a professor's ministry, a high school ministry, and ordinary university sized ministry, but focused like a laser beam on apologetics evangelism.
I love it! I love it! And I know that, when I was doing campus ministry, Ratio Christi, they would come alongside our staff and our students. When we got hit with the really tough questions, we brought in the Marines, you guys with Ratio Christi. So I should tell our listeners also you have a PhD in philosophical theology. You have masters level degrees in theology or religion and philosophy. You taught philosophy for a number of years on a secular university, but you have the heart of an evangelist. I know that about you. It's not just, “Let’s kick around these ideas and come up with, ‘Aha! We got the better answer.’” You really want to see people come to faith in Jesus. So I love your resources. Anything else you want our listeners to know about this resource? How can they find out more about you?
Yeah, no. My heart is evangelism. That's what pushed me into philosophy initially as well. I wanted to be able to engage at the highest levels and reclaim the intellectual voice of Christ at the universities. They can go to ratiochristi.org, check out some of our ebooks publications that are very concise, written mostly by scholars, and at a 9,000-word level. So concise, accessible, 11th grade reading level, on a plethora of topics, from the problem of evil, reliability of the Bible, the issues of science, all the way to race, class, sex, gender, ethnicity, and so forth on the other end.
Man, that's great. I'm sorry to say that I think you're going to be needed for a very long time.
I think so.
Yeah. In fact, I'm sure it's growing in the need, so I'm really thankful for you.
We're in constant litigation. I've got at least three to six cases at any one time going on, because of that. We won a Supreme Court victory last year, have three Federal court victories behind us, working on a fourth right now, and are engaged with the Biden Administration's Department of Education as well. So that's not our modus operandi, but ADF, Alliance Defending Freedom, helps keep the lights on for us so that we can continue to present the truth of Christ on the campuses and appeal to our American citizenship and our rights to be able to do so.
I don't think I knew this about it. So, in other words, you're in need of legal fighting in order to have a right to even be on the campus. Is that right?
Yeah. It's not just free speech anymore. It's cognitive liberty. If you even believe the wrong things, in certain campuses, then you’ve violated certain blasphemy laws and pay the penalty. So, yes, that either comes down to the all-comers policy, for a lack of better words. They insist that you will allow atheist or Buddhist or acting homosexuals to be student officers of your club or you cannot be an approved club on campus. We say no to that. We have fair, open ended for anyone to be a member, and many times half of our clubs are atheists, skeptics, leaders of other movements on campus, Muslim leaders, and so forth. But our officers need to be Christians because we're a Christian organization.
What a radical idea.
Yeah. And so they often push back on that. We're very patient. We don't sue happy, but on occasion, universities need to have continuing education, and we're happy to provide that for them.
Oh, my! All right, well, I want to turn things to this recent endeavor of yours, of writing this book, Engaging with Mormons. But let's hear your story first, because it's an important story that paves the way for the writing of this book. Tell us how you became a believer. You don't need to give us the two-minute version. Take your time, because I want people to hear about your background and how the Lord worked.
Okay. So I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, as a seventh-generation Mormon. My ancestor was converted in 1836, six years after the publishing of the Book of Mormon. And I didn't really know all that history until after I came to know the biblical Christ and started doing research and investigation into it. I was told I had come from a family of healthy stock, and what they mean by that is one of my ancestors, following in the footsteps of Joseph Smith, took five wives and had 36 children, of which I'm a descendant.
So I grew up in that background in Salt Lake and had a friend, when I was about 16, invite me to go spend the summer with him and his father in California and spend the whole summer at the beaches. But it was conditioned on me going to this Christian camp for one week, and he would pay for it. And I thought, “Okay, that's not a bad deal. One week, I can handle that. I've got my religion still, but the beach all summer long. It’s much better than the Great Salt Lake, especially today with the drought.”
But I got there, and the speaker spoke on hell, and I tell people that scared the hell out of me and heaven right into me. It rocked my world. In Mormonism, you don't really talk about hell, other than it being a cuss word. But grace isn't really gracious if you don't know the background for why grace is important. And when I saw my sin for what it was for the first time ever, now the gospel of Jesus Christ, whose Name was supposed to be the Name on our church, made sense for the first time. And it was so impactful that I packed my bags at the end of the summer, moved to California for my junior year of high school, and I lived with a Christian family, was discipled there, came back my senior year of high school to graduate in Utah, and that's when things really got rough, because now my extended family and friends and so forth began to challenge me. That, “Look, you left what you knew to be true. You're an apostate, and you may well be a son of perdition,” and that's worse in the eternal scheme of things than Hitler. “And so do you really want to read the Book of Mormon again and pray over it one more time?”
And so I thought, “Yeah, I better do that.” And I did so. And that's when my eyes were just opened in new ways, and I could not believe what I had been raised with and believed and found it utterly fraudulent. And what that did to me, Randy, was made me wonder, “Okay, I'm glad I've left Mormonism, but have I made the right move now?” Because I grew up believing that the Bible… The eighth article of faith says, “We believe the Bible is true as far as it's translated correctly,” which implies it's got problems. “But don't worry, about it. We've got living prophets and apostles, and we've got the priesthood. So not a big deal. We've got other scriptures.”
Now, I don't believe in those other scriptures or those apostles or prophets or that priesthood anymore. So what about this book full of holes? Can I really stand on this? Maybe my experience was just some encounter that I had in California that summer. How do I know God exists? And if so, which God? And that's what sent me into this trajectory of philosophy and comparative religions, which has been an insatiable pursuit of truth. And that's where I'm at today, in part because of my leaving Mormonism and coming to know the biblical Jesus.
Man, this is so exciting and encouraging. And I want to just underline something. You said you left and went out to California and did your junior year living with a Christian family and them taking you in. All right, let's just pause there for a second. They took in this high school kid who went to a camp and heard the gospel and responded, and they poured their lives into you, and they loved you, and they discipled you, and now you're the president of an apologetics ministry.
Lots and lots of our listeners open their home for someone coming and doing an internship or a summer something, and I'll bet a whole lot of them, the young people coming, are young to the faith. You just never know where that investment will pay off. So that's just kind of fun. And again, not that we’ll explore that a whole lot, but…
All right, so we do need to pause at this point, because I do think you and I may be assuming something that maybe our listeners may not be. And I know that it's very, very popular and common for a lot of people to think, “Oh, Mormonism, it's just another denomination. You got Baptist, you got Presbyterians, you got Methodists, and you got Mormons. They're another denomination.” But you don't believe that, and your book makes that clear. What do people need to know? Why isn't Mormonism just another denomination within Protestantism, for example?
Yeah. We may say that, according to Webster's Dictionary, a person is a Christian if they believe in Jesus. And the Mormons say, “Look, Jesus is on the name of our church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Yeah, but I can call the microphone in front of me or the computer in front of me, I can call it Jesus, but that doesn't give it any saving power. It spells the same way. God spells the same way, G-O-D. But once you start to define or characterize what that God or that Jesus is like, it's completely someone that is not the Jesus of the Bible, not the Jesus of history, not the God of Western theism. It doesn't have anything in common with Judaism, Islam, or Christianity's concept of a God that is utterly transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal. The Mormon God has more in common with the device that your listeners are listening to right now than it does with the Western theistic concept of God, because it's utterly finite, it's limited. It’s a being that evolved to be whatever it is today. Same species, different continuum.
So you're saying that it's actually the very core doctrine of God that we disagree with them about. Is that right?
Yeah, Randy. When I taught comparative religions at Indiana University, I was teaching philosophy and comparative religions there for a dozen years. When I would teach comparative religions, I have the great Western religions, the great Eastern religions, and then I'm thinking, “Well, Mormonism is about the same size as Judaism. Certainly I should at least mention it.” And I'm thinking, “Where should I put it? Should I teach it in the Western religion section because it talks about Jesus? Or should I put it in the Eastern religion section because it has more in common in its theological understanding with Hinduism than it does with Judaism, Christianity, or Islam?” At least in Hinduism, they like to say there are 330 million gods. I don't know whoever counted them all, but at least they've got a limitation. If the universe is eternal, and this concept in Mormonism of becoming gods has been going on for all eternity, then 330,000,000 is just getting started.
What is spiritual warfare? And does it really matter or does it really affect my everyday life? C.S. Lewis, in his introduction to The Screwtape Letters, said this: “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.” Isn't that brilliant? Well, we're doing an event about spiritual warfare with our good friend and C.S. Lewis scholar Jerry Root. Dr. Jerry Root was professor for many years at Wheaton. Now he's Professor Emeritus at Wheaton College. And if you were fortunate enough to be at Wheaton and study under Jerry Root, you know that he is brilliant and a delight to listen to, one story after another and brilliant insight. And he's doing a special event for us about spiritual warfare.
This one is an in-person event. So if you're in the Washington DC area and you're interested in learning more about spiritual warfare, this event is for you. It's going to be at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Annandale. There is a cost for this event, it's $10 per person, and there will be a question and answer period following Dr. Root's presentation. Please click Here to register for the event.
I'm learning something in this podcast, which I'm a little embarrassed to admit, but there I go, because I always thought it was the doctrine of Christ where we disagreed. And I'm pretty sure that we do, in that the Mormons deny the deity of Christ, and that's not some minor technicality, that's core belief. So we do disagree about the deity of Christ, right? But it's like we also disagree about the nature of God.
Mormonism
Yeah. What might be striking to many of the listeners is that Mormonism doesn't have a distinct theology, the study of God, and anthropology, the study of man. It's really a study of anthropotheism. There isn't a separate distinction of God and man in two different classes. There is a spectrum of evolution from man to God. Mormons believe that God is eternal. They'll go ahead and agree with Psalm 90. God is eternal. But so are you, and so am I. God was once as we are now, and we will be as God is, potentially. But both of us together, even before that, came from the pre-existence, and Jesus and Lucifer as well came from the pre-existence and were spirit-matter for all eternity. And so there's a question of whether it's humanized divinity or divinized humanity. That depends on where you're at in the spectrum, on the evolutionary chart.
Isn't this ironic, then? So they have too low a view of Jesus and too high a view of everybody else. Am I close to accurate on that?
Yeah. I mean, Jesus is just like you and I and everybody that's gone before Him and will go after Him. We all have this opportunity: As man is, God once was, and as God is, man may become. It's called the law of eternal progression. And every one of us, including Heavenly Father, has had an opportunity for that goal.
So I'm really hoping our listeners are catching these aren't like minor little technicalities. I mean, if you really wanted to talk about, let's just say, what are some of the biggest differences between Baptists and Presbyterians? Well, it's some disagreements about who you baptize and when you baptize people. That’s relatively minor compared to the deity of Christ and the nature of God and the nature of what it means to be human.
So let's talk about how we interact with them, because your book, this series, is Engaging with Mormons, and I love the subtitle of every one of the books in that series is “Understanding Their World, Bearing Good News.” So I know I was challenged when I was putting together my volume in this of, “Oh, I need to spend the first half of the book, or close to half, of ‘Let’s just try to understand the culture and who these people are, not only their beliefs, but their flavor, and how they view life.’”
So tell us just a little bit from that first part. By the way, I'm always in danger of asking an author to share too much about their book, so that people don't buy it. We don't want to do that. No, no, no! Please buy Corey’s book. This is just a flavor. Just a little taste. So what is it you'd want people to know about understanding their world?
That Mormonism is not merely a cult. By that, I mean a deviant understanding of key doctrines about God and salvation. It is a culture. And sometimes not only do we fail to acknowledge that about Mormonism, but Mormonism internally may be characterized more by sociology and psychology than it even is by its theology. Most Mormons aren't particularly interested in logic and theology when it comes to religion. Logic when it comes to the rest of life, yes. But they divide religion and the rest of life by the… what I call Mormon-ese, by experience, by the testimony. It’s very, very subjective. And they see themselves as the one true church. They have their own exodus story, so to speak, of how they've arrived with solidarity as a people group from early persecution in the Midwest, in the Northeast, all the way to taking the pilgrimage, the trek westward to Utah, where they see themselves as the chosen people of God. That's their exodus.
And so they define themselves sociologically. “Families are forever.” That's a phrase that everyone must know about Mormons. It's very pragmatic. In fact, out of all philosophies in the world, the one philosophy that's indigenous to America is pragmatism. If it's not broken, don't fix it. It works. Families are forever. I may not be interested in this thing for truth. I'm in it for families. It's very practical. It works.
Well, I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but I just have this feeling that some of our listeners are at least curious. I mean, all that you just said about how important the family is and families are. But I think a whole lot of Mormons believe in men having more than one wife. Is that just a rumor or is that really the truth? And how does that square with their emphasis on the importance of the family?
Yes. I mean, there are 60,000 Mormons who still embrace fundamentalist Mormonism, polygamy and the blood atonement laws and blacks not having the priesthood and so forth. But since 1890, there has been The Ban, as they called it. They never said polygamy is wrong. It was banned simultaneous with the state of Utah trying to acquire statehood in the nation. And I mean, this goes back to my origins story too, where Joseph Smith… the highest defecting Mormon ever was a family friend of my family. He was the second counselor, his name was William Law, of Joseph Smith.
In Mormon hierarchy, you have the prophet or the president and his two counselors. The second counselor, Joseph Smith at the time, in Nauvoo, Illinois, was busy assigning other men's wives to himself, for the next life, but also for this life. And he looked at Brother Law and said, “Brother Law, your wife Jane and I—well, I've had a revelation,” and Brother Law said, “Take the hand. No, thank you.” And that became the first splinter group.
Since then, there have been about 400 splinter groups of Mormons, and part of my family went with the Laws, part of them went with Joseph Smith, and this whole issue of polygamy that started lasted, with Brigham Young taking them to Utah and other splinter groups along the way. The biggest one people think of is the Utah group, though, the Brighamites. And that lasted until 1890. It'll happen again in heaven, but right now it's a temporary ban. So, no, the Salt Lake church does not practice polygamy. Mitt Romney and other presidential elected hopefuls think of it as kind of an embarrassment, I think, on the Salt Lake church.
Yeah. Well, so very pragmatically. That wouldn't be the place for Christians to start the conversation. So let's talk about that. Let's say some of our listeners are listening and they say, “You know, I just found out my next door neighbor is a Mormon,” or, “The guy at the cubicle next to me at work is a Mormon.” So where do they start? Where can they begin a dialogue that can move toward the grace and the wonder of the gospel in productive ways? What would be some practical tips you would offer?
Ministering to Mormons
First, they need to begin the dialogue, because these are people for whom Christ died, and they are wrong, eternally wrong, on the essential doctrines of God, Christ, and how to get to heaven, how to get your sins forgiven. And so the dash approach is not going to work, where we just close our blinds, shut the door, say, “I've got a religion.” No, we want to engage these people. Second, the bash approach doesn't work. That's where you take the biggest Bible and try to knock them over the head with as many verses as you can. You need to try to get to know the person. Anytime you have five different Mormons, you may have six different opinions. And so you figure out, “What is making this Mormon tick? Is he a Mormon for theological reasons? For reasons of the family? Is he a lukewarm Mormon? Otherwise a Jack Mormon?” You need to get to know the person first. You have two ears and one mouth for a reason, so that you listen more, and then make your approach next.
And I say, stay focused, this would be number three, on the essentials. Who is God? Who is Christ? How does man get to heaven? There's a lot of nonessential interesting things about the religion, but ultimately you want to be able to focus on that. Fourth, ask a lot of questions. Socratic evangelism. Your book on questioning evangelism. I remember talking with you about possibly writing one, questioning Mormonism.
And Mormon missionaries are out there, with 70,000 of them thinking that they are the teachers, they are the elders, and you are the student. So the way to go about conversation with them is a little jujitsu, I suppose, and allow them to take what they think is their strength and use it against them, asking good questions, because they enjoy that. They come across thinking they are the teachers. And we're leading them down this track about God, about Christ, about how to get to heaven. And then eventually, once we've asked a lot of questions, they'll turn that around, and start asking you questions. And now it's time to share. You've given them plenty of time to share, and now it's time for your testimony, that they've given testimony plenty of times to before, but you're adding objective testimony, not just your subjective testimony. You're adding the word of God to this and not just your personal experience, which is really all they've got.
Is it possible to be a scientist and a person of faith at the same time? Are Christianity and science at odds with one another? I think there are a whole lot of people in our world who think that. Well, these apologetic questions and others are going to be explored in a prerecorded interview that we did with scientist and philosopher and mathematician and brilliant mind Dr. John Lennox. He is going to examine some of the latest scientific research and theories surrounding questions of the origins of life and concepts of the mind. He will demonstrate why a Christian approach to an understanding of the universe makes the most sense. So if you're a believer who's looking for a way to explain the validity of the Christian worldview to some of your friends who are more scientifically minded or scientifically oriented, this is a really, really important event, and it's free of charge, but you do need to register for it because we'd like to be able to have all those kind of connections in place. So to register for this, please go to Cosmic Chemistry. We sure hope you can make it for this event.
This is really helpful. This is good. Again, I want to underline: You said you talk to five Mormons, you'll get six different opinions. I think that's so really important. Get to know the individual person and find out what they personally believe, because they may not be as Mormon as we think they are. Or they may not hold to crucial doctrines of the Mormon faith the way we think they do. And so it is important for us to know, “Well, here's, generally speaking, what they believe, and then here's what they teach,” but then it's so important to hear, “What do they believe?” And I think that that's—well, it's certainly true in Jewish evangelism. It's true in any time. Yeah, we want to get to know the religion they hold to, but then we want to find out just how consistently they do hold to it.
And, by the way, I don't imagine it's all that helpful to point out inconsistencies, in the sense of, “Hey, wait a minute, you're a Mormon. You’re not supposed to believe that.” I don't know how fruitful that is. You mentioned about the word of God. I'm assuming that getting them into reading the Bible, reading the Bible together, doing a Bible study together is a good idea. Where do you think it would be good to start?
I mean, sure, if you're going the salvation path, I would say take them through Galatians or the book of Romans. Agree to read along through the Book of Mormon with them if they'll take you up on reading through the biblical passages, because the Book of Mormon quotes the Bible quite a bit. Mormons like to boast that it mentions Jesus every 1.7 verses, Him or His ministry somehow, but it actually plagiarizes a substantial amount of the Bible as well. But you're engaging them with the biblical text, and they're going to start to see some serious differences there. One of my favorite approaches is the salvation approach because you've got to get to that anyway, and using the law for the sake of evangelism. And I outline how to do this a little bit in this book, Engaging with Mormons. That’s one way. Another way might be pointing out the differences on our understanding of God. Using the same G-O-D letterhead doesn't necessarily describe the same entity.
Once we start to… “You’ve got a mom? I've got a mom.” “Can you spell that backwards?” “I can spell it.” “Maybe we're brothers,” or maybe you start to describe your mom, and she's quite a bit different from my mom, and we start to see that's not the same mom, and they both cannot exist. And so at the beginning, one of them might be right, the other wrong, or maybe they're both wrong, but they cannot both be correct because they're not even talking about the same being. And I think addressing the testimony, which is something that I do in this book, and not a lot of books on Mormonism do this, but it's something that I focused in on with my dissertation as well, just thinking about testimonial knowledge and knowing God. What does that look like? And what do we do when the Mormons go-to is to bear the testimony? “I know the church is true. I know Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I know Joseph Smith is a prophet of God, and the Book of Mormon is the word of God,” and they begin crying.
And yet the fundamentalist Mormon says the same thing and contradicts the Salt Lake Mormon. And the Community of Christ Mormon says the exact same testimony and contradicts the previous two. It's like a police line-up. You try to get them each to see which one is the culprit here, which one is the real McCoy. And they all say the exact same testimony, but they contradict each other at fundamental points, and they all say they're the one true church. And what that does is show that, at best, only one of them can be right. The rest can't be. And then I say, “So do you think that those other Mormons out there are lying?” “Oh, no, no, no. I would not judge. You shouldn't judge, lest you be judged.” “So you think they're deceived, those other sects of Mormonism?” And there are numerous other sects. “Oh, yes, they're deceived.” “So what you're telling me is that a subjective personal testimony is capable of being deceived. How do you know you're not the one being deceived?” So I create room for doubt in their own armor. The testimony. The testimony. The testimony. Which is the buck stopper for the average Mormon. And that then gives me the right to bear testimony and share what Scripture says about the nature of testimony, and the one who has the true testimony is going to have something significant to say about salvation. And that's where I take them to 1 John 9:5-13. But it's all in the book. They've got to get the book, Randy. And today it’s on sale for 40% off.
I'm thinking that the book of Colossians would be particularly helpful in this endeavor, not necessarily for having them read it and you discuss it. I'm thinking more for the Christian to prepare themselves. Am I right? Well, would Colossians be a good book to read together with a Mormon?
Sure. I mean, Colossians 1 deals with the deity of Christ. Colossians 2 deals with salvation. It depends on, again, which approach you want to do. I encourage people, if you're going to meet with missionaries, and by the way, I'm finishing a book right now with six former Mormon missionaries, all now Christians, and we're taking on the Mormon missionary discussions. So each one of those ex-missionaries is going to be writing their chapter on that particular missionary discussion, and it will be a resource for people. Hopefully, it will be out later this year, if not early next year, on unmasking the Mormon missionary mirage. So I encourage people. If you're capable… Maybe bring a friend, especially if you're a new Christian don’t do it alone, but meet with the Mormon missionaries, two ears, one mouth for a reason. Get to know them a little bit, know what they believe by their own articulation of it, and then that earns you the right to be heard. And now you have a better understanding of Mormonism. You've shown respect. It's brought up the opportunity for reflection, not deflection, because you are now, by their count, an investigator, a prospective convert. And now you're going to have that much more power in the words you use, because now you've read some of their stuff, you've engaged with them, and they sort of owe it to you to listen.
I'm listening to you and I'm thinking about the flow of the logic of the book of Colossians, and again, for both our own strengthening, yes, as you say, it starts with the deity of Christ. And because Jesus is God, therefore He could atone for sins, and therefore we can have a salvation based on grace, not based on works. And therefore, as the second half of Colossians unfolds, we can live a life of freedom, we can live a life of grace, and we endeavor to be involved in spiritual formation and spiritual growth, but it's all motivated out of grace and gratitude, not, “Oh, I have to earn it,” so this topic of the deity of Christ, it's not just some theoretical minor point. Because Jesus was God, His atonement is complete, our salvation is complete, and we live a life out of grace and gratitude. So your resources are helpful for talking to the person who may be Mormon in name only and not really believing much of it, someone who's pretty observant or strict, and even the Mormon missionary.
So you've done a great service for the body of Christ, and I'm really grateful for it. Let me give you the last word. Any last things you want to tell our listeners about Mormonism or apologetics? I want to wrap things up, but I want to let you share what you'd like.
Yeah. Mormons are generally not only an affluent organization, but an influential people. 2% of the US are Mormon, but 6% of the US Senate is Mormon. These people make their moves in culture, and it's a strategic group to reach, not only for that purpose, but mostly because God sent Christ into the world to die for people, that if we present the gospel, they receive it, they can spend eternity with God, and we should love these people as well.
And second is just perish the thought again that it's just doctrinal ping pong. There's not just a theology here. It's not just a religious deviant cult. It's a culture. And if you don't get to know their sociology, their psychology, their person, you may be barking up the wrong tree in your witness encounter.
Okay. Great. I'm so grateful for the way the Lord has opened up this opportunity for you, both with Ratio Christi and out of your background and the writing about Mormonism. I remember conversations we had quite a while ago about, “Where is the Lord leading us?” And so I'm really thankful for how He’s worked in and through you. To our listeners, I want to show you the show notes below of some different resources that Corey Miller and his team at Ratio Christi have put together. And of course, please do visit our website, cslewisinstitute.org. Lots and lots of resources. Our website just recently won an award. Some of you may know we revamped our website, and it's won some awards. So check out the resources that are there. We pray that God uses all of these resources to help you all love the Lord your God, with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. Thanks.
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GLOBAL EVENT: Success Just For Women with Lynne Marie Kohm, J.D. 8:00 PM ET
https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/?event=global-event-success-just-for-women-with-lynne-marie-kohm-j-d-800-pm-et&event_date=2024-10-24®=1
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2024-10-24
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GLOBAL EVENT: Success Just For Women with Lynne Marie Kohm, J.D. 8:00 PM ET
On October 24, 2024 at 8:00 pmSpeakers
Randy Newman
Senior Fellow for Apologetics and Evangelism, CSLICorey Miller
Author
Team Members
Randy Newman
Senior Fellow for Apologetics and Evangelism, CSLIRandy Newman (1956-2024) was the Senior Fellow for Apologetics and Evangelism at the C.S. Lewis Institute. He taught at several evangelical seminaries. After serving for over 30 years with Campus Crusade for Christ, he established Connection Points, a ministry to help Christians engage people’s hearts the way Jesus did. He has written seven books, Questioning Evangelism, Corner Conversations, Bringing the Gospel Home, Engaging with Jewish People, Unlikely Converts: Improbable Stories of Faith and What They Teach Us About Evangelism, Mere Evangelism. and his most recent, Questioning Faith: Indirect Journeys of Belief through Terrains of Doubt. Randy has also written numerous articles about evangelism and other ways our lives intertwine with God’s creation. He earned his MDiv and PhD in Intercultural Studies from Trinity International University. Randy went home to be with the Lord in May 2024.
Team Members
Corey Miller
AuthorCorey Miller, Author, is the President/CEO of Ratio Christi. He has served on pastoral staff at four churches and has taught numerous colllege courses in philosophy, theology, rhetoric, and comparative religions at Purdue, Indiana University, Multnomah University and Ecola Bible College. He is also the author or co-author of Leaving Mormonism: Why Four Scholars Changed their Minds, Is Faith in God Reasonable? Debates in Philosophy, Science, and Rhetoric, In Search of the Good Life: Through the Eyes of Aristotle, Maimonides, and Aquinas and Engaging with Mormons: Understanding their World, Sharing Good News. Dr. Miller holds masters degrees in philosophy, biblical studies, and in philosophy of religion and ethics and received his PhD in philosophical theology from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.