JTTurner.Net

This post isn’t so much about me as it is a retelling of an experience my brother had/is having.  Currently he’s been spending between one and two hours a week with some Latter Day Saints (i.e. Mormons) over the past 3 months or so.  It’s been kind of neat to see Rog interact with them (when they come to our church) and to hear his tales about how he’s been able to minister to them and speak the real truth of the real gospel.  It’s honestly really cool…he’s gotten their relationship to such a stage to where they all feel very comfortable being very frank and honest about disagreements they have.  I sort of say all of this to lead up to what happened last night…

Roger had been telling me of two passages in the Book of Mormon which look to contradict each other.  In one passage it claims that God ( this is Heavenly Father in their vernacular) made the earth and in the other it states that Jesus (the Son) created the earth.  And also they refer to Jesus as Lord God omnipotent.  A couple of problems arise here:  1.  They aren’t trinitarian so they see these two beings as being ontologically distinct and completely separate.  They are not one God in three persons in Mormon doctrine, rather they are three separate beings; God is one, Jesus another, and the Spirit another.  Ok, that’s problem (1) with the passage…who in fact created the world, God or Jesus?  Problem (2) is that it refers to Jesus being omnipotent.  If Jesus and God are separate beings, they cannot both be omnipotent.  That violates the laws of logic and really the law of non-contradiction.  God could both be cancelled out and not-be cancelled out by Jesus and vice versa.  That’s completely illogical, ergo, completely wrong.  There were a host of other problems that Roger hit on in his discussion with his friends stemming from this problem but I won’t go into them here, ask him to retell the story if he’s up to it…but suffice it to say, that Roger proved their God as being a complete logical impossibility.

Why do I say all of this?  Well, because of their reaction.  This is what they said: “That is wrong because the Book of Mormon is true, I just don’t understand because it’s out of my ability to comprehend such things.”  So, why were they not convinced of the truth?  The answer is, logic does not convert the affections alone towards God, only the Holy Spirit can do that.  Logic and argument can help, and they are certainly biblical for a presentation of the Gospel (1 Peter 3:15), but they are not sufficient.  It is crazy, in my mind, how thick the fog of satanic deception can be.  To where a normal person with otherwise properly functioning faculties can stare in the face of logical contradiction and cling to its validity just because they believe it to be true.

It truly is one thing to be shown the truth and entirely another to accept it.  In the case of the affections of the human soul, only the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit can provide the “missing premise” as-it-were.

Please pray for the two LDS guys Rog has been discussing with.  Pray for Roger as well to continue to speak out of love and let the Spirit guide his words.

-JT