New Video From Living Hope Ministries

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When Brigham Young led his Mormon followers westward, polygamy was taught as doctrine... not as an option, but as a requirement for exaltation. Joseph Smith had proclaimed it to be an everlasting covenant, a commandment from God Himself.

In spite of the modern LDS Church’s prohibition of the practice, tens of thousands of Joseph Smith’s followers across North America continue the practice of plural marriage to this day... out of obedience to the revelations and commandments of a self-proclaimed prophet of God.

Today, the mainstream LDS Church seeks to distance itself from its peculiar “fundamentalist” cousins who adhere to the original teachings of Mormonism, including polygamy. Nevertheless, many mainstream Latter-day Saints who seek to follow Joseph Smith more faithfully, find themselves moving into Mormon fundamentalism... and plural marriage.

So what draws them in? And what keeps them? And what hope is there for those men, women and children--fundamentalist and mainstream alike--who strive to please God while living under the bondage of an impossible Mormon “gospel”?

By their fruits ye shall know them. This documentary examines the roots of Joseph Smith’s legacy, and its modern-day fruit. We follow the compelling testimonies of nine former fundamentalists, who shed light on this practice and lifestyle which has been shrouded in secrecy since the earliest days of Mormonism; but more importantly, they share the true freedom they have found in the Jesus Christ of the Bible.

To order this video on DVD click here

Those Interesting LDS Apologists

The last evening of the Manti Pageant this year, I was having a conversation with an LDS apologist. This was on the street directly across from the Manti, Utah --LDS Temple. This apologist is an experienced man who is middle-aged, who claims to understand ancient Greek.

The apologist brought along with a bound and indexed notes for his arguments. He was doing fine for a long time talking to various people on the street-- and had a lot to say. The main ideas that the LDS apologist was pushing had to do with the LDS doctrine of a three god-being Godhead. Participating and listening in the discussion were several visitors was a young Muslin man, a couple of Christians and three or four LDS persons.

I injected my self into discussion and turned the course of the conversation to God’s eternal nature and the oneness nature of the eternal Godhead. I proposed a number of Old Testament and New Testament passages to the LDS Apologist showing that there is only one God-being. I had a goal in doing this because discussions about the Trinity verses the LDS Godhead are long- going on and on and on. And I am attempting new kinds of scriptural demonstatations that have much faster relevant and meaningful conclusions. In just a couple of steps ( instead of 30 or so) I was about to make my point that the oneness between Jesus, the Father and the Believer strongly suggest a God with a Trinitarian Nature. This of course is not in favor of the three god-beings as seen in LDS Theology.

I revealed to the LDS apologists and listeners one key verse that speaks to the nature of the Oneness of Believers to the Godhead through the Believer's indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of God. It is found in Romans 8:

9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.10 And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.


I proposed that this passage indicates the kind of oneness enjoyed between Jesus, the Father and the Christian believer. Also I asserted that this passage showed that the LDS view of the Holy Ghost being a separate god-being was called into question and why. This passage when coupled with other New Testament Teachings about who raised Jesus from the Dead, and the One Spirit that binds all believers together in unity is very supportive of the Trinity. This is of course damaging to the LDS idea of a three god-being Godhead.

When hearing this Romans 8 teaching, the LDS apologist immediately indicated that the passage could not be trusted because the Bible had been changed. This was followed by a bunch of vague mumblings about how the Greek verbs are so easily mistranslated into English in the New Testament in general.

This LDS apologist could not provide any specific evidence for asserting that Romans 8 was changed or mistranslated. Instead the LDS Apologist held to the general assertion that the New Testament had “over 8 million variations in the Greek texts”.

This ‘Bible Changed” tactic was done right in the presence of several persons including one of the Islamic faith who were interested in studying the New Testament. This claim of the New Testament was severely corrupted was incredible to me since the New Testament only has about 180 thousand words and the LDS Apologist stuck to the 8 million changes to Greek manuscripts figure.

This would mean on average that each New Testament word has 44 variations. This adds up to saying that the Bible is 100% corrupt 22 times over. I voiced a similar figure attached to the LDS apologist’s claim. The LDS apologist affirmed that the Bible was just that mixed-up. I reflected back to the LDS apologist that he was claiming something like putting a Bible in a blender and chopping it up to the size so that each letter for each word in the text is chopped into three to ten pieces—then spilt out in a pile to read. “ Yes” affirmed the LDS apologist. I said, so you are saying in affect is that the New Testament is essentially completely corrupt in your view. “Yes” the LDS apologist affirmed.

I followed this with my disagreement of the LDS apologists idea that the New Testament was Corrupt. I started to explain the ideas behind New Testament reliability, but could no longer keep the attention of my audience. The crowd broke-up and diffused- there was no longer any reason to continue the conversation. It was clear that the LDS apologist and I had a foundational disagreement about the Bible as a source of truth. I watched in amazement as the LDS apologist walked off proudly with a smug look on his face as if he won the day. The only thing my assertions did was to break-up the long lecturing that this LDS apologist had started roughly an hour before. He left the scene and for the moment, stopped lecturing to Christians on the streets of Manti for the evening.

The bottom line was that certain LDS apologists, when in a jam was going to claim that the Bible is NOT trustworthy and the Christian’s argument is thus not valid. . In the final analysis the LDS person (that at least this LDS person) cannot determine any meaningful or specific truths from the Bible.

It this situation is universal with LDS persons it is useless to even discuss what the Bible says with an LDS person.

But this is not the case in reality, and is not how LDS generally believe about the Bible.

However, it is alarming how LDS often I have seen “the Bible was changed” as an excuse to ignore certain explicit Biblical teachings about God and Salvation. This of course is second to the claim “That is not official LDS Doctrine”. What a handy trick when in a jam, just claim the source of authority is not valid and flee the scene! Then when the coast is clear go out and lecture to a different person who is unaware.

Does anyone else see a pattern here?

My discussion down in Manti with this LDS Apologist reminded be of getting into a good game of chess, and just before you call ‘check mate’ your opponent reacts. The reaction of course is that your opponent suddenly throws the table over. On top of all of this your opponent declares “I win!—you loose!”, as he sends all the chess pieces flying off in a many directions.

Are'nt LDS Apologists Interesting People!