Around 70,000 Mormon missionaries are trying to convert people to the LDS Church. Their main target is people from a Christian background. Church-going people need to be aware of what the missionaries are saying, because their claims are framed in biblical-sounding language. More than that, Christians don’t have to avoid Mormon missionaries. We can share good news with them that can change their lives one day. That’s the point of the book Responding to the Mormon Missionary Message, co-authored by Pursue God contributor Ross Anderson, written by former Mormons, including several former Mormon missionaries who now follow Jesus.
As a response to the Mormon missionary curriculum called Preach My Gospel, this book gives an insider’s view of what the missionaries teach. Each chapter also includes practical tips about interacting with missionaries, as well as the former missionaries’ personal stories of how they became missionaries, what the missionary experience was like, and how they later came to faith in Jesus. This creates great empathy for the missionaries who come to our door, and hope for our conversations with them.
Chapters 1 and 2 of the book talk about important issues that frame our discussions with Latter-day Saints. For example, the culture of Mormonism influences how they hear our message. We all have a culture. Most of us are unaware of our own. Culture gives answers to questions like: how do I know what is true or not true? What voices do I consider credible? How do I make spiritual decisions? If we understand the culture of people we’re sharing the gospel with, we can avoid stepping in a lot of land mines.
Part of this is how, in Mormon culture, personal experience is the final authority for spiritual matters. Mormons elevate three sources of authority: their prophets, their scriptures, and their experiences. A spiritual experience is seen as confirmation from God directly to my own spirit, leading to the Mormon “testimony”. A testimony is an assurance, expressed publicly, that the LDS Church is true, the Book of Mormon is true, Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and more. In practice, the testimony is a refuge for Mormons when they can’t answer or refute what Christians might say. Keep in mind that testimony is a valid form of knowledge, and experience has an important role to play in the historic Christian faith. The difference is that for Christians, our experiences are secondary to the Bible. If they go against what the Bible says, they are not valid. For Mormons, experience trumps every other source of truth.
Because Christians have our own testimony of God’s reality and work in our lives, we can bear our testimony to Mormons.
We can use these verses before sharing our own testimony of faith. They point out that our testimony lines up with God’s testimony, which is the ultimate testimony of truth. This testimony states that God has given us life. Whoever has the Son, has that life. We can share how we have come to know and experience that ourselves.
Then we can ask the missionaries, as we bear our testimony, “Do you have this life? Do you have the life that God says he promises here?” They won’t have this confidence, because their eternal life is based on measuring up to God's commandments. So this helps to differentiate the nature of the gospel that they represent versus the biblical gospel that we represent.
Chapter 3 talks about the life of a Mormon missionary. It’s a demanding life! We want readers who are talking to missionaries to understand what their life is like. This will create empathy to encourage us to not be intimidated by these young people and to treat them with kindness.
The final five chapters of the book interact directly with the five lessons of Preach My Gospel. The first lesson begins with the LDS claims that Jesus’ church was lost and has now been restored, and how those claims are questionable. The missionaries assert that the true church Jesus’ founded died with the apostles. Divine authority was lost from the earth. The Bible was corrupted. But Jesus’ original church was restored through Joseph Smith in the 1800s.
The chapter points out that this claim of apostasy is not based on Scripture and is not sound historically. The science of textual criticism establishes the reliability of the Bible. Mormonism “restored” many things that were never part of the New Testament church. It encourages readers to be careful about a selective narration of “facts” which might sound plausible, but is not verifiable. The claim of apostasy presumes a low view of God’s power, since he was not able to sustain the church he created.
The Mormon plan of salvation maps out the eternal journey of human beings through premortal life, mortal life, death, resurrection, and our life in the eternities. It tells the LDS story of human origin and destiny, including how we can return to God’s presence and be like him, focusing on the Atonement of Jesus to make it all possible. This chapter covers many topics, and uses language that Christians will understand differently than Mormons - terms like atonement, salvation, heaven, and more.
This author points out that the Bible does not support most of the LDS claims. For example, the Mormon view of Adam and Eve’s role in the fall of humanity is radically different from the Bible. Their fall was not a step forward, but a great spiritual tragedy. The LDS story makes no place for any kind of hell, while the Bible is very clear about the consequences of rejecting God’s plan.
The next chapter outlines all the laws and ordinances people must achieve in order to live with Heavenly Father one day. This translates into many commandments and rituals required for ultimate salvation. The first principles and ordinances of the LDS gospel are faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. We must then endure to the end.
The book’s chapter highlights the hopeless weight on a Mormon of trying to be worthy of these commandments and ordinances. It’s only possible through repentance, but Mormon repentance is an impossible ladder to climb.
The final two chapters respond to Preach My Gospel’s last two lessons, on keeping commandments and fulfilling laws and ordinances. They explain how Mormons can live lives worthy of God’s blessings, by obedience, temple work, eternal marriage, serving, and ultimately, enduring to the end. This, of course, is a misrepresentation of the role of obedience to God in the Christian life. It is not the requirement for salvation, but the result and outward fruit of salvation.
The book closes with an emphasis on the supremacy of Jesus, who fulfills every aspect of what Mormonism is trying to achieve.
God can use Christians to share the hope of Jesus with any committed Mormons, including missionaries. If a Mormon missionary comes knocking, open the door, and be ready to share the reason for the hope that you have. Be ready to point them to Jesus. Don't expect them to come to Jesus with you in your living room. But your goal should be to love them, to show the love of Jesus to them, to begin to plant some seeds, so that when they return home, they might start investigating something new. The book Responding to the Mormon Missionary Message can help. So can the wealth of resources at the podcast Unveiling Mormonism.