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The other day, I was walking in our neighborhood and two Mormon missionaries stepped out of a neighbor’s driveway and came up to me with big smiles and outstretched hands. They asked me if I knew anything about the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” I smiled back. “Do you mean the Mormons?”  “We are not called that anymore”.  “Oh, Ok”, I responded, “It’s just that you have been called Mormons for 170 years and it’s a bit hard to get that long name into normal conversation.” They smiled broadly, “Yes, that’s true, but it doesn’t have the name, Jesus Christ in it, and we want to be known by his name.

Tell us, what do you do for a living?” I told them that I was a Christian pastor and I knew a great deal about Mormonism, enough not to be one. When asked my denomination, I said that the simple label, Christian, was good enough for me.

It was my intent to just say as little as possible and let them wander on their way, but they seemed happy to have a minister, a hireling of Satan, at their hands and after a few bits of chatter, one asked. “Could you tell us why there are thousands [I think they gave the figure of 3,000] of denominations if Christianity is as simple as you make it out… Every one of your denominations thinks that they have all the truth and all the rest are apostate.”

I replied that that while there are many denominations, many were there because of historical, and national ties, or came out of one of many revivals. For the great majority, we had unity in the essentials of the Christian faith and grace for some of the non-essentials. While I admitted that there were some apostate groups, such as Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who claim they are the real Christians, they needed to see it in the light of their own faith.

Mormonism has only been around for a tenth of the time that orthodoxy has been here, yet they have over 300 splinter groups, each of whom claims they have the only true Mormonism and all other Mormon groups were truly apostate.

I told them that we were having a Seattle area revival this month with the great Christian evangelist, Louis Palau. Over 700 churches were gathering together to worship, praise the Lord and pray for revival…practically every church group represented in the Body of Christ.

Things did not go well after that. Our visit came to an abrupt end and they took off at a healthy pace. I continued my walk and when I walked up to my house, there they were, at the door, talking to Carol. They were not faring too well with her, either. She had told them that LDS statistics say that 50% of all LDS Missionaries become inactive or leave the Church within two years of coming home from the mission field. She had just asked them which one of them was it going to be – when I stepped back into their lives.

I had picked up 2 copies of the new To Moroni, With Love booklet from the garage and offered one to each of them. I asked them to read it and pray about it, asking God if the words of that little book were true. I told them that God would reveal the truth to them.

They refused to even touch the booklets. With as much love and gentleness as I could display, I said, “Young men, how can you be such hypocrites that you would distribute your material and ask the same thing of the people you talk to and yet are not honest or free enough to do the same for them?” 

I told them that they should be ashamed of themselves. That God would show them the dishonesty of their missionary work and when they needed to talk, we would be there for them. They left quickly. Pray for them and all the LDS young people sent out like ravening wolves among the lambs of the Lord.