A Latter-day Saint Wants to Attend my Bible Study! Where Do I Start?
Greg and Amy answer the question, “Is there anything in the Gospel of John that I should be prepared to discuss with a Latter-day Saint who is interested in attending my Bible study?”
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So very thankful that I left Mormonism. I'll celebrate five years from the time I walked away from that church, then later removed my name from church membership.
Love that you said that the goal should be clarity. I have loved studying the Bible with my Christian friends and there are things that we disagree on but we can study together and be clear and ask questions and find out where those differences come from and understand each other even though we don’t agree. That’s pretty hard to do in a comments section so i highly recommend in person interfaith studying together.
I believe you are correct that unless we have put in the time to really study it out, most Christian explanations of the Trinity sound like modalism to us. I think this is because colloquially we use the word God to refer to the Father and so when we hear people say “Jesus is God” it sounds to us as if people are saying Jesus is the Father.
i think John 17 makes it clear that the Trinity can’t be the case. Not because Jesus is praying to the Father but because of what Jesus says in verses 20-22. Jesus prays for the apostles and all who believe them to be one in the exact same way that the Father and Jesus are one. So unless we are going to say that all Christian’s are X number of persons but only one being then John 17 is not a good source for the idea that Jesus and the Father are two distinct persons but yet one being. If we are willing to say that,then there isn’t much of a difference between us because we believe Jesus’ atonement has the potential to make us exactly like Him and the Father.
As for John 1:3 and the example of what came into being and what didn’t come into being, we simply disagree on what came into being. We reject creation out of nothing and don’t see creation out of nothing taught in the bible so we believe that the earth came into being but not that it came into being out of nothing. Jesus is the creator of the Earth. We know our physical bodies came into being so they came into being through Jesus but the Bible doesn’t say when/if the spirit of man is created. We would put the fundamental unit of each person in the uncreated side as we believe that has always existed.
A few things to be prepared with when evangelizing the mormons:
-Bible verses that teach that the bible is the only word of God
-Bible verses that teach the Trinity is one substance
-They will claim the early Christians fell into apostasy in the first few centuries. Be sure to find church fathers from that time that teach protestant soteriology to prove the essential doctrines were always taught.
Good luck my friends
It might be useful to define monotheism and polytheism. Then define henotheism, stressing that it is a type of polytheism. For example, Hindus believe in millions of gods, but they typically pick one god to worship exclusively. So, they are polytheists, and more specifically, henotheists. Possibly, the Mormon will see herself as not a monotheist.
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Here’s an explanation of how one God can be three Persons, for when you need it:
Is God limited by the laws of nature?
Can God change material things, like water into wine?
Can God be present in more than one place at the same time? (Omnipresence)
Can God have a presence to see a future time and speak it in our presence (prophecy and visions)? (Omniscience)
What would stop the Creator of time from entering His creation as three consciousnesses, or Persons?
This does not prove the Triune God, it merely makes it plausible.
If you're studying the book of John, and a Mormon wants to attend, don't change a thing. Don't change your teaching, for accommodation of the lost.