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beautiful humans and welcome

to another episode of the

midlife revolution i'm your

host vegan connor and today

we're going to talk about

what might happen if you

are visited by a pair of

mormon missionaries you've

seen these lovely ladies

and young men out there on

the streets maybe knocking

on doors maybe they've even

come to your door

the classic white

short-sleeved button-down shirt with tie,

the classic black name tag

declaring elder or sister.

You've seen them on their bikes.

You've seen them talking to

strangers on the street.

And maybe someday they will

come to your door.

Here's a lovely guide on Amazon,

a Catholic survival kit,

what to do when

missionaries come knocking.

Honestly, I love to see these bright,

smiling faces.

My daughter served a Mormon

mission right after she

graduated from high school,

and I always am going to

talk to missionaries when

they come around, invite them in,

and wish them the best,

although I may not be

interested in listening to their message.

I will talk a little bit

later in a subsequent

episode with my daughter

about her mission experience.

And you may be shocked to

know that a lot of these

young men and women are

paying their own way to be

on their mission.

last time that i checked it

cost about 450 a month to

attend a mission and young

men and women are expected

to pay their own way in

addition they receive very

little help from the church

in paying for meals and

other things like that a

lot of them are living in

apartments that have been

leased for a very long time

and the missionaries in the

area have been living in those apartments

for years and years,

just coming and going as

they leave their mission.

And many of them don't get

enough to eat during the day.

They have to be out teaching

for a certain number of hours a day.

They're up very early in the morning.

And it used to be that the

members were allowed to

feed the missionaries once a week.

But now they've sort of

decreased the amount of time

that they want to have

missionaries in the homes of members.

And so the last that I heard,

the missionaries were

allowed to come over and

share a message with you,

but not to share a meal.

They preferred that the

missionaries be out talking

to people who are not

members of the church.

So I'm not sure how much of

that has changed,

but we will have more

discussions about it.

The reason I mention it is

because whenever I see missionaries,

I always want to ask them

if they have enough to eat,

if they're feeling safe,

if they're well cared for,

and if they feel safe.

on their mission and with

their leadership or if

there's anything that they

want to talk about,

I open the door for that.

I always offer them water

when they come through my

neighborhood just because

they're out there in the heat a lot.

And oftentimes I will send

them off with food or with

money to go buy food

because I know a lot of

them don't get enough to

eat on their mission.

So the mission rules have

changed a lot over the years, obviously,

but also the topics that

the missionaries talk about

have changed a lot.

And you may be curious about

what they might say to you

if they come to your door,

but you may also not want

to invite them in and endure that.

So this episode is just for that.

I will tell you some of the

things that they might talk

about at your door,

and then you can make a

choice about whether you

want to have them come in or not.

first of all when a

missionary comes and knocks

on your door if you answer

the door and have a

conversation at all that

conversation gets recorded

in what's called the area

book the missionaries want

to keep a record of who

answers the door and who

doesn't who's friendly to

the missionaries and who is

not and if there's any

little spark of interest at

all opening the door's interest

then they're going to keep

your name and your contact

information in their area

book so that when they get

transferred out of the area

and the next missionaries come in,

the next missionaries know

that you're a safe person.

You can knock on their door.

They're going to notate it.

If you offer them food or drink,

they're going to notate it.

If you come in and offer to

have a conversation, if you say, no,

thanks, I'm an atheist,

they're going to make a

note of that as well.

They may still come to try

and contact you.

even if you declare a

religious affiliation or no

religious affiliation.

So they keep track of all of

these things and keep

records so that the next

missionaries have an idea

of where to start when

they're in your neighborhood.

Now, a long time ago,

there used to be actual

physical pamphlets that the

missionaries would use on

each one of their visits to your house.

And the first pamphlet that they used was

a guidebook for the

missionaries to use that

would sort of guide them

through a number of topics

and lessons for you.

Nowadays, missionaries will say, Hey,

can we share a message with

you about families?

Which means they want to

talk about temples, eternal families,

how your family can be together.

They may say,

can we share a message with

you about Jesus Christ?

And then they want to share

how they believe that Jesus

Christ visited the people

on this continent.

And that is what is part of

the book of Mormon is the

record of that visit.

They may say,

we'd like to share a message

with you about God.

And then they'll probably

talk about what they call

the plan of salvation or

the plan of happiness.

And they'll take you through

what they believe is what

happened before we got here to earth,

why we're here on the earth,

and then what's gonna

happen after we leave the earth.

So today's missionaries are

trained more just to have a

conversation with you.

They may even say,

can we share a Bible verse with you?

in which they might share a

verse with you from joseph

smith's translation of the

bible which might differ

from the version of the

bible that you read it's

all of this is just to open

the door to have a

religious conversation to

find out what religion you

are if you're satisfied

with your religion if

you're questioning religion

or if you have no religion

and you're searching for

meaning and purpose in your

life but back in the 80s

they had discussion pamphlets and

when a missionary goes to

the missionary training

center what they were

learning was how to contact

a person develop a

relationship with them open

the door for teaching

opportunities and then

exactly what to teach they

would go through these

little pamphlets while they

were sitting there at your

kitchen table they had a

very specific outline as to

what they were going to

address with you what

scriptures to read what

questions to ask and all of

that so i want to present

those today because

when missionaries come into

your home to teach you

about mormonism or the

church of jesus christ of

latter-day saints they're

going to paint for you a

very basic picture of some

of the most important

doctrines to them but

there's a lot of things

that they're not going to tell you

as well of course they're

going to leave out

problematic racial history

of course they don't want

to talk about polygamy

they'll say that that's in

the past of course they're

not going to want to talk

about things like the ces

letter or anything that

challenges the official

mormon narrative they're

not going to want to talk

about the recent sec fine

or any of the financial

scandals that have come up.

They're not going to want to

talk about Tim Ballard

being excommunicated.

They're not going to want to

talk about the abuse claims

or the settlements with the

Boy Scouts of America over abuse.

All of those things are off

the table for missionary discussions.

So,

Unfortunately,

it's not really a situation

where they're trying to

convert you with informed consent.

They're trying to convert

you as quickly as possible

by sort of appealing to

your sensibilities about

spirituality and God.

They want to ask you to pray

about things rather than

using your critical

thinking skills to

logically analyze what they're saying.

And their goal is to get you

baptized as quickly as they can.

And then more information will come later.

I know this is true because

I was a member of the

church for 40 years of my life,

arguably 45 years if you

count my childhood as well.

And I was also a ward missionary,

which meant that my job was

to meet with all of the

people who'd been recently

baptized and teach them a

second set of lessons,

the lessons that come after

a person has visited with

the missionaries and gone

through the baptismal process.

The lessons I was teaching

didn't cover any of those

problematic topics either.

They dug a little bit deeper

into what is expected of

you as a member of the LDS church.

And really some of it was cultural,

but there was a little bit

of doctrinal stuff in there.

Things like the word of wisdom,

not drinking, smoking,

all of those kinds of things.

And it was a little bit of a

deeper dive into some of

the doctrinal things as well.

There was a set of 12

lessons when I was a ward missionary.

So every time a person got baptized,

I would visit with them

once a week during those 12 lessons.

Sometimes we would give

those lessons during Sunday

school on Sunday,

but my job was really more

for those people who had gotten baptized,

but weren't attending

Sunday school at church on Sunday.

And so I would go into their homes

and try to invite them back

to church say we miss you

we love you we'd love to

have you and also

Here's a spiritual discussion.

How are you feeling about

your spirituality?

Are you praying?

Are you reading your scriptures every day?

And it was my job to do that

for about two years while I

was an active believing

member of the church.

So I want to go through with

you now what the discussion

manuals looked like back in

the 80s when there was a

manual for every single lesson.

These come...

courtesy of IMGR,

where anybody can post

things and turn it into a

searchable PDF format.

So you can see it says,

The Plan of Our Heavenly Father,

Discussion 1,

Uniform System for Teaching the Gospel.

It was very important to the

church and still is that

all of the missionaries are

teaching the same lessons

and that they're presenting

the same information in the same way.

No going off book here.

and there's a set of

instructions here for the

lesson planning for the

discussion and this would

all happen before they even

come into your home before

they even leave their

apartment for the day so

the lds missionaries will

get up at six o'clock

they're supposed to have

personal scripture study

then they're supposed to

exercise then they're

supposed to have companion

study which means them and

their companion will study

the scriptures together

and they're supposed to say

a prayer about who they're

supposed to teach that day,

get guidance from God or

the Holy Spirit about what

neighborhoods to visit.

And so they'll show up in

your neighborhood

spiritually prepared to

meet somebody who wants to

learn about the gospel.

So when you look at this

planning for the discussion

phase right here, it says,

prepare to teach this

discussion by thinking

about the investigator's needs.

People who were learning

about the church were

called investigators at the time.

And so they were instructed

to think about the needs of

you as an individual.

And also they were

instructed to pray about

what you might need to hear

about and what potential

problems might come up.

says then how plan how you

might present the

discussion to meet these

needs for example consider

which of your own

experiences might be

meaningful to them to hear

what examples might help

them understand clearly or

resolve their concerns

which book of mormon

passages you could share

with them which of their

own experiences might

relate to your message

specifically plan what you

will do to prepare these

investigators to feel the spirit

two,

when to invite them to make

commitments like praying or

getting baptized, and three,

how you will follow up to

help them keep their commitments.

The main focus of the

discussion should be the

Book of Mormon and the

Prophet Joseph Smith.

Do not spend too much time

on the first two principles,

especially if the

investigators basically

agree with what you present.

Leave enough time to discuss

the truths that are unique

to the restored gospel.

After the discussion,

the investigator's

strongest impressions

should be of the Book of

Mormon and the Prophet Joseph Smith.

Through them,

we gained our understanding

of God and His plan.

Now the doctrinal overview,

there are six points to this,

and I can totally

understand why they started

to narrow down.

the discussion format

because there's a lot of

material to go over here.

And you could,

even if you only spent 10

minutes on each one, that's a full hour.

But these topics are pretty

deep for just 10 minutes of discussion.

So here are the main principles.

God the Father has a plan

for our happiness.

It's called the plan of salvation.

If they go into describing

the plan of salvation,

that's probably like

another 20 or 30 minute discussion.

Number two,

Jesus Christ has a central

mission in the plan,

meaning he's very important to the plan.

Number three,

God reveals the truth about

his plan through prophets.

It's very important for prophets.

investigators to understand

what a prophet is and

relate to you that there is

a prophet on the earth today.

Number four,

the prophet Joseph Smith is a

modern witness of Jesus Christ.

Through him,

God has restored knowledge

about the divine plan.

Number five,

the Book of Mormon is another

testament of Jesus Christ

that clearly explains the divine plan.

And six, through the Holy Ghost,

each person can know this

message is true.

and then commitments during

this discussion you need to

help the investigators feel

the presence of the holy

spirit this will prepare

them to make the

commitments that lead to

conversion and baptism

during this discussion the

investigators should commit

themselves to one read from

the book of mormon and pray

to know that it is true the

following reading

assignment is suggested and

then they give the specific

verses and chapters that

they want investigators to

read as homework after the

discussion is over

then they want them to pray

that to know that joseph

smith is a prophet of god

and take part in the next

discussion preferably the

remaining five discussions

at a specific time so

missionaries were taught to

go ahead and get a

commitment from the

investigators to come back

for a second discussion and

get a commitment from them

that they were going to

read the chapters in the

book of mormon and pray

about whether or not they

were true in fact you'll

notice it wasn't presented

that way it said

pray to know that the book

of mormon is true pray to

know that joseph smith was

a prophet so they didn't

want to even introduce the

possibility of doubt there

so once they get to the

investigators home they are

to create a learning atmosphere

they want you to become

acquainted and build a

relationship of trust and

they line out exactly how

this how to do this you

might share information

about yourself including

your hometown family and

schooling your interests

and why you came on a

mission although now

missionaries are counseled

not to talk about their

hometown or their family or

their schooling they're

taught to focus only on the mission

So, for example,

they told us as members

that we were not supposed

to ask missionaries where they were from.

We were supposed to ask them

how long they'd been on their mission.

They wanted to keep the

elders and the sisters

focused on what they were

doing and not thinking

about being at home.

And so that was just another

way that they sort of tried

to keep missionaries on

track and thinking about

the right things while they

were on their mission.

next you might find out

about the investigators

family work interests

religious attitudes

experiences that led them

to investigate the church

acquaintance with members

of the church knowledge of

the church and their their

experiences with people who

are lds if you spent any

time at all in sales you

know that these are sales

tactics this is a way to

build a relationship you're

asking about their

important things they're

asking about your important

things you're sharing some things

And you're asking them to

share really personal

information about their

religious beliefs as well.

So they're trying to really

get you to be vulnerable in

this first discussion right off the bat.

Then it says,

establish a reverent atmosphere.

Set a reverent and relaxed

atmosphere of the discussion.

Remember that you're a guest

in the investigator's home.

You should,

with the investigator's permission,

arrange the seating so all

can participate comfortably.

That's interesting.

I've never had a missionary

do that in my house.

Try to remove distractions.

For instance,

ask whether you may turn off

the television or radio.

I did have them do this when

they were teaching my former spouse,

who was not a member of the

church when we first got married.

They would often ask,

can we turn off the TV?

If he was in the kitchen

doing dishes after dinner, they would say,

would you join us over here?

Rather than doing dishes while we talk,

they really want your full

undivided attention.

They say, recognize the family head,

which of course is going to be the man,

invite all family members to participate.

With the permission of the family head,

offer a prayer.

And then later they would

ask you to be the one to pray.

they're supposed to

introduce the discussion

and they're going to talk

briefly about the points

that they're going to cover

in the discussion they're

going to prepare you for

what to expect for example

they should feel free to

express their feelings ask

questions tell you when

they don't understand

something and sincerely try

to find out whether your

message is true so

there are five actually

there are six principles in

this first discussion and

you can see this is quite a

lengthy pamphlet it's a lot

to go through and i can

imagine a set of

missionaries spending a

couple of hours on all of

this especially if somebody

is either not really

familiar with religion or

with the scriptures with

the bible at all if they

aren't really practicing

any particular religion

it would be a lot to go through.

And you could spend probably

a half an hour on each one

of these points.

And it would probably feel

really overwhelming to try

and get all of this crammed

into one lesson,

which I think is why the

church has gotten away from

this particular format of teaching.

And they've gone to more informal,

shorter discussions where

you spend 15 to 20 minutes

talking about a gospel principle.

I think that the focus is

still to try and get the

person to come to church

right away the following Sunday.

And also the next commitment

is to try and get them to

agree to be baptized as

quickly as possible,

sometimes even with just one discussion.

There used to be a rule that

people had to attend church

two times before they could get baptized.

I don't know if that's still a rule or not,

but the person getting

baptized does have to go to

an interview with the bishop.

basically to confirm what

was taught and then make

sure that they understand

it and make sure that they

are willing to get baptized

as far as i know there is

absolutely no point at

which a bishop interviewing

a potential person to get

baptized or a missionary

presenting the material at

no point are they going to

ask you if you know about

any of the other historical

things of the church or

attempt to teach you those things

They're going to present the

prescribed information and

they're going to get you to

commit to it as quickly as possible.

So the main focus of these

discussions back then was

to get into the first

vision of Joseph Smith,

where he claimed to see God

and Jesus Christ.

And they told him not to

join any of the churches

because none of them were correct,

but that he needed to wait

for further instructions

from God about what to do

regarding religion.

That's really the focus of

this first discussion is to

get people to understand

that we can only find out

about God through a prophet

or through the revelation

of God through a prophet.

And they want to make sure

that you understand that

Joseph Smith was a prophet

because he saw God in Jesus Christ.

and then claimed to speak

for him for the rest of his life.

Getting you to understand

that principle is really important.

And the reason I want to

bring this one up today is

the first one that most

missionaries will go over with you.

But there are some things

even about this first

vision of Joseph Smith that

they won't tell you about

and things that I didn't

even know about as a member

of the church.

And it wasn't until about

2015 that the LDS Church

started posting on their

website these things called

gospel topic essays,

which addressed some of the

history of the church.

That's become problematic in

the last years because the

more people ask questions about it,

the less they believe in

the truth claims that they

were taught since they were a kid.

So we'll get back to that a

little bit later.

I just want to show you what

is in the rest of this

lesson manual and what the

missionaries go over.

So principle one, we believe in God.

Most people believe in a supreme being,

even though they may call

him by different names.

We know that God lives and

we want to share with you

our feelings about him.

God is perfect, all wise and all powerful.

He's also merciful, kind and just.

except when he's not we know

that he can have that we

can have faith in him we

can love him with all our

hearts and then next to it

it says find out what the

investigators believe about

god and how they feel about god

Next, God is our father in heaven.

We're children of our father in heaven.

We're created in his image

because he's the father of all people.

We are brothers and sisters.

And that's why LDS people

call each other brother and

their last name or sister

and their last name.

We don't really use first

names in the church.

God has a plan for us.

As our father, God loves us.

He wants us to progress and be happy.

He wants us to become more like him.

He prepared a plan that will

bring us joy in this life

and eternal life with him.

This plan is called the plan of salvation.

Now,

sometimes they call it the plan of

happiness.

Then they tell the missionaries to testify,

express your feelings about

your belief in God, his wisdom,

and his love for us,

what it means to you to

know that you're a child of God,

and the happiness you've

found through your efforts

to grow and become more like God.

These testify experiences

sort of start to follow a

really familiar pattern.

And when you listen to

people in the LDS church

talk about their beliefs,

sometimes they'll call it a testimony,

and sometimes they'll say,

I would like to bear my testimony,

which basically means they

just want to tell you what they believe.

Once a month in the LDS church,

there is a fast and

testimony meeting where

members are expected to

give up two meals.

They're expected to fast for

two meals and then give up

the cost of those meals to

feed the poor and needy.

This is a concept that I

actually really loved as a

member of the church.

I thought it was wonderful

for me to make a sacrifice

and to give money so that

other people could be fed.

That made a lot of sense to me.

It sounded like something

that Jesus would have taught.

And I really loved that part

of the church.

Then there's some scriptural

resources over here.

And what would happen in

these fast and testimony

meetings is that you're

supposed to come to church

having fasted for two meals.

And then the leader of the congregation,

who's called a bishop,

would open up the meeting

for anybody to come and

share their testimony or

what they believe.

So it was sort of like,

I like to call it open mic

Sunday because anybody

could get up there and talk

about anything.

And as I got a little bit older,

the church leadership in

Salt Lake started to tell people,

you really need to restrict

your testimony to some

basic gospel principles.

We don't want to hear travel logs.

People get up there all the time and say,

I recently took a trip to blah, blah,

blah.

And when I attended

sacrament meeting there,

this is what happened.

um they really don't want

people to share things

about their sins for

example they don't want

people to get up and say i

really struggle with the

word of wisdom and i had a

drink last night and i

promised myself i'm not

going to do it again and

i'm going to repent now

They also don't really want

you to share things about

your personal medical journey.

Although a lot of people do

that because we do believe

Mormons do believe in the

laying on of hands for the

healing of the sick.

And so a lot of people use

testimony meeting as an

opportunity to talk about a

time when they were very sick.

and then were healed after a

priesthood blessing.

And things got out of hand a

lot of the time.

I heard a lot of very

sensitive information in

church meetings that I

didn't feel was appropriate to share.

And it can be really

overwhelming for a new

member to come in during

one of these testimony

meetings and hear people

sharing all of this personal information.

So that would have been an

opportunity for somebody to come up.

And the leadership of the

church did tell us we need

to restrict it to these five things.

We want you to talk about

your belief in the Book of Mormon,

in the restoration of the gospel,

in the prophet Joseph Smith,

in the current prophet.

And I forget there was another one.

the scriptures or something like that.

So they tried to keep people

narrowed down to these little topics,

but it didn't always work.

And a lot of times it ended

up being really

uncomfortable and embarrassing.

More than once I heard

people make political

statements from the stand.

And more than once I heard people,

more than once people were

asked to step down before

they had finished their very,

very long testimony.

All of that to say,

testimonies can start to

sound like a little bit of a prescribed,

a little bit of a script.

And so missionaries coming

into your home will bear their testimony.

They'll say something like,

I want you to know.

that I believe that Joseph

Smith was a prophet of God.

I know that he restored the

gospel of Jesus Christ to the earth.

And I know that the Book of

Mormon is the word of God.

And I know this because I prayed about it.

The Holy Ghost bore witness

to me that it was true.

And I know that if you pray to God,

that the Holy Ghost will

bear witness to you too.

That's kind of what that's

going to sound like and look like.

And at the end of the discussion,

the missionaries are gonna

ask you to pray,

or they're going to give

you an assignment

to promise that you'll pray

about the things they've taught you.

The second principle is the

divine sonship of Jesus Christ.

We need help to overcome sin and death.

Without the help of our Father in heaven,

we could not benefit from

the plan of salvation.

now i'm pretty certain that

the missionaries also

during this lesson were

asked to present the plan

of salvation which was a

formal written plan that

wanted people to understand

and again this could have

been an entire lesson all

by itself it feels super

overwhelming to put all of

this stuff just in one

visit but i want to share

with you what the plan of

salvation looks like and i

just went on pinterest and

was able to find this little graphic

and you can see lots of

different graphics of the

plan of salvation if you

look it up online you'll

see all these different

versions and this

particular one on pinterest

the reason i picked this

one is because they started

to incorporate the idea

that the plan of salvation

is a plan of love and so

they use the word or the

letters in the word love to explain this

Now it starts over on the

very left side with pre-earth life.

We believed that we existed

as spirit children in sort

of a heaven before we came

to earth and that there was

a war in heaven where God

wanted to send his children

to earth to test them and

to see if they would follow

his teachings.

even when they weren't in his presence.

And Mormons believed that

Satan came forward and said,

I have a great idea.

Why don't we compel everyone

to follow you?

And then all of your

children will get to return to heaven.

They won't have any choice,

but they will follow you.

And then everybody gets to go to heaven.

And Jesus came forward and he said,

I have a better plan.

My idea is that you give

everyone free will and they

can choose to follow you or not.

And the legend goes that, of course,

Jesus won.

But God said, well, in that case,

we're going to need a savior.

And Satan said, you know,

send me as a savior.

I'll make sure everybody follows the plan.

And Jesus said,

send me and I'll sacrifice

myself forever.

So that people can repent

and return to you.

And the legend is that Jesus

won out and became our savior.

That's what happened in the

pre-earth life.

And then there was the creation.

And then at the bottom of

the L that's us coming to earth,

receiving our bodies,

our spirits and our bodies come together.

And then we have this earth

experience where we get to

choose whether we're going

to follow God or not.

Then when we die,

we immediately go to either

paradise or spirit prison.

Spirit prison is for those

people who were not

righteous on the earth,

they did not have the

gospel of Jesus Christ,

and they had to be sort of set aside.

Paradise is where you get to

be with your loved ones and

with Jesus Christ before

the judgment comes.

The Mormons believe that if

you died without the opportunity to...

hear the gospel of Jesus

Christ or become converted

to the gospel of Jesus Christ,

that you can still, in spirit prison,

be taught about Jesus.

That's one of the reasons

why Mormons do genealogy,

family history work,

and that's one of the

functions of a temple.

temples are not attended on

sunday you go to the temple

at other times during the

week and there's a

baptismal font in the

temple and what you would

do is you would go to your

family history you would

find somebody who had not

been a member of the church

while they were alive

somebody who had passed

away they had to be at

least 110 years since they

had been alive and you

would put all their

information into the lds

database you would print

out a little card and you

would take that card with

you to the baptistry in the temple

then you would go into the

waters of baptism dressed all in white.

There would be an elder

there who was going to

perform the baptism and a

witness there who would

witness the baptism.

And then somebody who would

actually record the date

and time that you were baptized.

And you would give this

little card with your

ancestor's name on it to the elder.

And the elder would say,

he would call my name and he would say,

Sister Aiden,

I now baptize you for and in behalf of,

and then you would say the person's name,

Aunt Sarah,

and he would repeat it and say,

Aunt Sarah, who is dead,

and then he would dunk you

under the water and bring you up,

and that would be

a recorded ordinance that

that person had officially been baptized.

What Mormons believe is at

that point that Aunt Sarah,

who is already in heaven

and has been dead,

has been waiting for this

day for a long time because

while she was in spirit prison,

she had people teaching her the gospel,

teaching her about Jesus Christ,

and she said, I believe it, I accept it,

and they say, oh, that's great,

but you don't have a body anymore,

so you can't be baptized,

so you can't progress and

go to paradise until

somebody on earth gets baptized for you.

And so we as LDS people

believed that once we were

baptized for that person,

that they could then move

out of spirit prison and into paradise.

So that's a little tangent

about baptism that came

about mainly because I was

trying to talk about the

plan of salvation.

So we'll go back to that now.

So after being in paradise

or spirit prison,

then we believe that

everybody on earth who ever

lived will be resurrected

and their body and their

spirit will come back together.

And then we will all be judged.

And we will go to one of

three kingdoms based on our faithfulness.

Now,

Mormons believe that the telestial

kingdom is basically going

to be heaven on earth.

It's the earth,

but like in a renewed paradisical state.

And that the terrestrial

kingdom is going to be even

cooler than that.

And the celestial kingdom is

going to be the only place

where you can live with God

and Jesus Christ and your family members.

In order to get into the celestial kingdom,

you have to not only be baptized,

but you also have to go

through the temple and

receive other ordinances

and make other promises to God.

Then you have to live those

commandments for your entire life.

and quote unquote endure to

the end before you can move

on to the celestial kingdom

and if i were good to go to

the celestial kingdom but

some of my family members

didn't make it i could go

down and visit them in the

other kingdoms but they

couldn't come up and visit

me in the celestial kingdom

now on this particular

graphic there is one part

that is left out and that

is outer darkness it's

something that they kind of

have stopped talking about

in the plan of salvation

but it's definitely

something that i learned

about as a child it's that

scary version of mormon

hell basically where you're

separated from god and from

your loved ones because at

one point you knew the

truth but then you rejected

it so in this larger

graphic over here to the right

You can see things are a little bit more,

let's see if it'll go, if I visit here,

yeah.

Things are a little bit more analyzed,

a little more clearly.

We have premortal existence over here,

and then there's a veil of

forgetfulness that comes

over us when we're born,

when we come to the earth.

So we don't remember being

in our pre-mortal existence

with our family and the war

in heaven and all of that.

So then when you die,

the spirit goes to either

paradise or spirit prison

and your body goes to the grave.

Then at the resurrection,

your spirit and body are united.

Then there's the final

judgment where you can go

to one of these three kingdoms.

And it does mention outer

darkness over here.

Now, our outer darkness is for people

who knew the truth or had

the fullness of the truth

and then rejected it so

anybody who leaves the

church of jesus christ of

latter-day saints is going

to outer darkness because

it said that we knew the

truth we accepted it we

made these promises and

covenants and then at some

point in our lives we

rejected it so we don't get

to go to any of the kingdoms

But we get to go to our

darkness where we'll be

separated from God and from

our families and where we

basically get to hang out

with Satan for the rest of eternity.

So that's pretty cool.

Not something that's usually

mentioned in the missionary lessons.

unless you just get a

missionary who is

interested in talking about

those kind of things,

or if you have an

investigator who asks about it.

So back to the super long

lesson that you're going through,

the first time the

missionaries are coming over,

at least they did this back in the 80s.

So the plan of salvation

gets wrapped up and then we

go to principle two.

All of that, you guys,

it was just principle one.

So in principle two,

it's important for

missionaries to teach you

that Jesus Christ was the

divine son of God,

that he was sent to earth

to fulfill the plan of salvation,

that he is our savior,

that he overcame sin and death,

and that he showed us how

to fulfill the plan by

repenting of our sins.

now there is a ton of

information here lots of

scriptural references again

you could spend a whole

hour with investigators

talking about this if they

didn't know about jesus

christ or believe that he

was a savior prior to this

Then there's sort of this

little challenge down here.

Find out whether the

investigators have seen

blessings enter their lives

because they followed the

example of Christ or did

Christ-like things.

So again,

you're trying to get the

investigators to engage in

a discussion where they

reveal really personal

experiences and information

about themselves.

And that sort of helps bond

them to the missionaries.

which of the teachings of

christ have meant the most

to them and then have faith

to do what he taught they

want you to know if you

have faith to do what jesus

christ taught you'll find

peace in this life and also

you can become more like

him and like our heavenly

father and return to live

with them after this life

and again there's another

little section for a testimony over here

Then on to principle three,

they talk about God's pattern.

He chooses witnesses,

the prophets testify of Christ,

the Holy Ghost confirms the truth,

and we're invited to obey.

And they're going to come

back to this God's pattern

all the time while they're teaching you.

And they're also going to

remind you that in the Bible,

there's an example of this

where God chose a witness,

the prophet testified of Christ,

the Holy Ghost confirmed the testify,

and then we're invited to obey.

And they send you to this

scripture in Amos 3.7, which is,

God will do nothing save he

reveal his secrets to his servants,

the prophets.

That was one of the

scriptures that we had to memorize.

It's still back there in my

Mormon memory banks.

So then they wanna find out

whether the investigators

understand what a prophet

is and how he can help us know the truth.

And there are some examples

over here of biblical prophets.

No doubt they're gonna talk

about Moses and how the 10

commandments were revealed to him.

And that was an example of a prophet.

Basically anybody in the

Bible that testified of

Jesus Christ was a prophet.

And then you want to know

whether they understand how

the Holy Ghost can help you

recognize the truth of a prophet's words.

often at this point the

missionaries will talk

about prayer and about the

holy ghost and lds people

believe that if you pray to

god and then just sit

quietly that you can have a

spiritual confirmation of

something being true and

basically what that is is

just a good warm feeling so

if you say a prayer and at

the end of the prayer you feel peaceful

you feel a warm feeling then

that's supposed to be the

Holy Ghost confirming to

you that something is true

when really sometimes it's

just the act of praying and

getting quiet with yourself

and having some meditation

that makes you feel

peaceful and then people

learn to relate that

feeling to getting some

kind of a revelation from

God and this can become

really problematic because

at this point you're

basically teaching yourself

to confirm your own bias

about what you do or do not

want to believe so i could

pray for example to know if

i'm supposed to be the next

leader of the church and if

i get a good warm peaceful

feeling and i sort of hear

a still small voice telling

me yes megan you're going

to be the next bishop of

the digital first ward then

i can go out and declare

that to people and say

I received a revelation from

God that I'm supposed to be

the bishop of the digital first ward.

And nobody can argue with me

because it came from God.

I received that revelation.

witness i received that warm

feeling in my heart and so

you can see where it's

really easy for this to

become problematic now the

leaders of the church in

salt lake have always said

nobody can get revelation

for anyone but themselves

the only person that can

get revelation for the

worldwide church is the

prophet the only person

that can get revelation for the word

is the bishop so the bishop

assigns leadership

positions no person is

supposed to be able to go

to the bishop and say hey i

got a revelation that i'm

supposed to be the head of

the women's organization or

any of that so there is

supposed to be a chain of

authority but i hope that

it's easy for you to see as

it is for me to see that

this idea of receiving

personal revelation and

using good feelings or

elevated emotions to

confirm that something that

you're hearing or feeling is from god

can be really problematic

and we have seen it lead to

a lot of really disturbing things,

not the least of which are

the Chad Daybell and Lori

Vallow horrible case that

we've just been through.

So I want you to know where

that comes from.

Now, if we go back to the lesson,

The missionaries are gonna

confirm with you that you

understand God's pattern

and that you understand how

to receive a witness from

the Holy Ghost that something is true.

And then they want the

missionaries to express

their feelings about their

faith in God and how the

Holy Ghost has confirmed

their understanding of the truth.

Finally, in principle four,

we're going to get to the first vision,

which was really the goal

of this whole lesson in the

first place was to tell you

what a prophet is and then

to tell you that we have a

prophet on the earth today

because of what Joseph Smith did.

Now,

they're going to go through these

points methodically.

In our day,

God has followed his pattern

for revealing truth.

chose a prophet who learned

about the plan of salvation

from first-hand experience

this prophet was joseph

smith he was confused about

religion so in 1820 joseph

smith was just a 14 year

old boy he was confused by

the different ideas being

taught about religion

churches all claim to teach

the truth about god but

joseph was confused by the

differences among their

teachings and he described

his feelings in these words

and then they tell you to read

from joseph smith history

which is printed in the

mormon scriptures and so it

comes in a big book of

scripture it makes it look

like it's part of the

scriptures like the

revealed word of god and

then they go on to say one

day joseph read a passage

in the bible that showed