Former Mormon High Priest Speaks Out! 🤯

And somebody knocks on my door. It was the Mormon missionaries, so I let them in. We had a discussion, and they said, "Well, can we come back when your wife is here?" And I said, "Yeah, yeah, no problem."

Fast forward. We go through his whole routine, and we decided to be baptized into the LDS church. We taught Seminary. I was in High Council. I was in a bishopric at the age of, uh, 36. In 1988, I was made a high priest. But out west, you started hearing things about, you know, polygamy. I said, "Yeah, you know." So it was always one of those things on the shelf that I was never comfortable with. Everybody was gone, and I just prayed, "God, is polygamy an eternal principle?" And I was getting ready to leave, and it's almost like I felt a presence behind me. I actually heard these words in my right ear. I'll never forget it: "No, it is not of me; it is of man."

I was born in a family that was, um, believers. My mom was just a wonderful woman. Could not have had a better mother. And my dad was, we, we were not wealthy. We were, you know, blue-collar workers. My dad owned a garage, um, but he worked hard and he loved his family. When I was a young boy, they, they taught me the gospel to the best of their ability. I remember many times my mom teaching me scriptures out of the, the King James version. They went to an independent Baptist church, and many nights I can remember her reading the Bible to me. And one of the very first verses I ever learned as a young boy, maybe seven or eight years old, was John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son: that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." So that was stuck in my mind, and I, I loved it. She also read verses from Psalms. "We all know the Lord is my shepherd." And she would just hear that. I remember being lying in bed, and she'd just be talking to me about that. And my dad was heavily in the Bible. Um, you know, he never taught a lot to me directly, but just by his actions and about, you know, I, I knew he loved the Lord. And he used to tell me that my grandfather down in Kentucky was a, um, a businessman, but eventually became a reverend and rode the circuit in Kentucky, would travel from small town to small town preaching the gospel. And so it was embedded in them. So I had a desire for God. I had a desire to understand Jesus.

But as I grew older, we attended a kind of a hellfire and damnation, uh, independent Baptist church, and it got lost. The love of Jesus kind of got lost in trying to put so much fear into you that you wanted to go to Jesus. And I remember the pastor many times said, "If, if, if you're not baptized and you leave this church and you get run over by a bus or a truck and you die, you're going to hell." I never wanted to be forced into something. I wanted to be drawn into something. And, and I used to ask my dad, that, Dad, you might be nine or ten years old, "If I died today, I believe in Jesus, would, would I be saved?" And he says, "I don't pay attention to the pastor. You're okay, and you'll be baptized when you know it's ready." And so he never put any pressure on me.

Went on through high school, went to Ball State University, um, studying math, computer science. And so I was always a pretty logical person. I kind of liked to line things up and being analytical to a point. So really, religion kind of just was, I didn't go to church on a regular basis. I did go to church with my parents when I went home, but at college, nah, I was out of it. But I used to have discussions with my roommates about religion, and we would get in and out. And it was kind of like I was looking for Jesus, but I kept thinking I had to find Jesus in a church and in an organization. And, so I'd read some through the Bible. I did have a Bible with me, uh, in college, but the, you know, nothing really clicked.

And then I met Lynn, and we were married in 1974. And so we started looking for a church, and really never found anything. We were just looking around. And finally, I went back to start my Master's Degree, and Lynn was working on her Master's Degree, but also teaching. We decided I'd go back to school full-time. So we moved back to Muncie, Indiana, to Ball State University, and I started my master's program in accounting and was working through that. And during this process, I was getting to the end of the point of, uh, where I was just about finished. We were thinking about, you know, maybe we should find a church. And so we started going out looking for churches, and they just didn't register. I still remember going to this one again, another independent Baptist church. We were there the first day, and they had a person dressed up as a devil running up and down the hallway. Oh, man. And, and the pastor got up and said, "Okay, let's get rid of the devil. Everybody stand up and say, 'Boo! Devil, leave this place! Devil!'" And so he left. And I looked at my wife, says, "Huh, this, this doesn't feel right." Because I kept coming back to that hellfire and damnation thing.

So I was working, uh, finishing up my, uh, graduate degree. And, uh, I taught, was a graduate assistant. I taught accounting one class, you know, each semester to help pay through school. Did pretty well. And, uh, they actually offered me a job if I wanted to go back in case I wanted to go back and get my doctorate. But, um, when I would finish my graduate coursework and graduate, they offered me a job to teach accounting full-time for at least a minimum of, you know, three years if I wanted to, until I decided what direction I wanted to go with. So I'm working on a course paper. It's very, very detailed, has a lot of math, uh, involved, equations and so forth. And somebody knocks on my door. And we actually bought a little house near Ball State University. It was the Mormon missionaries. And I didn't know anything about Mormons. And I was working on a course paper. I'd let anybody in the house, okay? It could have been a burglar. And I said, "Come on in. Break my, give me some company here," because my wife was teaching, we had no children. And so I let the Mormon missionaries in. And they were nice. And, and the first thing I want to say is that I loved the Mormon people. I was LDS for over 30 years of my life, and I enjoyed it. I was very happy as a Mormon. I was very happy to live in Utah. So this has nothing to do with the Mormon people. So anyway, I land in the Mormon missionaries. I loved them. You know, these young men, they were really excited. They about the gospel. They taught us so, so I let them in. They, we had a discussion, and they said, "Well, can we come back when your wife is here?" And I said, "Yeah, yeah, no problem."

So my wife comes home that evening. I said, "Hey, I had some Mormon missionaries here." She says, "Well, that's okay." Uh, and I'm, "They're coming back this Thursday night." She says, "What?" Yeah, yeah, let's listen to him. You know, we've been looking. That's nothing because I didn't know anything about all. When I heard of Mormons back then, I thought of Donnie and Marie. Oh, they seem like nice people. And they were. They are nice people. So they came back, and we started this very detailed study. August, okay, September, October, usually meeting anywhere from two to three nights a week with the missionaries. And the missionaries would bring in all the heavyweights, you know, the bishop, you know, the ward mission leader, everybody else that to teach us. But it was, while it was interesting, when I was finishing up my degree so I could teach at Ball State University in the accounting department, the assistant department head was a very active LDS person. And once they found out that we were investigating, their family just took us under their wing. And they were so kind to us. And here I'm, I'm a nobody, okay? I'm just trying to become a, uh, an instructor at the university. But I felt like I was somebody because they were very kind to me. Their family to Lynn and I. Went from being nobody to actually being somebody because now when we're teaching at the university, the assistant department head knows me by name. So we just went through this procedure, you know, it all seemed so well. And one of the things that I had a very misunderstanding of, and maybe my dad didn't explain, was the concept of the Trinity. When the Mormons talked about three separate Gods, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, and Mormonism, that's what I believed. I never understood what the Trinity was. And when they mentioned that, says, "Do you have a problem with that?" Says, "No, that seems logical to me because you have the Father talking to the Son, and the Son sending the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost in Mormonism." So it all looked good. And that was a major hurdle. But again, a lot of the doctrine in Mormonism, you don't get when you're being studying as a, as a, as a investigator. That's what they call it. You're an investigator. So when the missionaries were teaching us, when we would go to an LDS church, we would go to a special class called an investigator's class where we would, you know, be taught Mormon concepts, Mormon doctrines. And the people there in the LDS community, just loving. I mean, very kind, very sincere. And, and, and the LDS people are sincere. They do love Jesus. The problem is, we'll find out later on, is it the right Jesus? Is it the biblical Jesus, or is it another Jesus, as spoken up in the scriptures?

Fast forward. We go through his whole routine, and we decided at the end there to be baptized into the LDS church. And we were baptized October 28th, 1977. Even though we had some reservations, my wife had some reservations, we didn't understand everything. And like in Mormonism, as we would get bits and pieces of information, we didn't have the internet back there. You couldn't just type in Joseph Smith. You couldn't just type in Mormonism. You, you know, you'd get, you'll see a pamphlet here and a pamphlet there, not enough information to draw, you know, a conclusion. Because I felt so good, and I felt like, you know, they kept saying, "Well, we're the only true church upon the face of the Earth." And I would say, "Yeah, okay, well, if you're going to be a church, you might as well be the true church, right?" They always use this concept that says, "Did God love his people in the Old Testament?" And you would say, "Of course, he loved them." So God loved his people in the Old Testament. They would send us prophets, right? We had all the prophets in the Old Testament, and then when Jesus came, we had Jesus, and then we had 12 Apostles. Says, "Yeah, that's logical." Well, do you think God loves us today? And you would say, "Well, yeah." Do you think if God loves us today, that he would not send us a prophet to help explain the doctrine to us? And you would say, "Well, I guess so." Don't you think he would also send Apostles? If Jesus had Apostles, will we not have Apostles today? You would say, "Well, yeah, that seems logical." So they, they drag this in, and you get in the doctrine in the Bible, but not heavy doctrine in the LDS church. If you know your Bible, you would see there's a problem. I was a nominal Christian. I did not know. I knew prophets, I knew Jesus, I knew Old Testament, New Testament. I knew the basic terminology. And so you get drawn in. I mean, if I would just have known like in Luke 16:16, "For the law and the prophets were until John, and then the gospel came." That was talking about Jesus. Well, the law and the prophets were until John. John knew John the Baptist. They were reintroducing the law to me. They reintroduced the law and the prophets and the apostles current day. Because in Mormonism, their prophet is equivalent to the prophets of the old. He's the only one that on this Earth that can communicate directly with God. He's the only one who can speak for God for people. Not individually, like, "Should I go to Brigham Young University?" "I feel good about it." Yes, I go. But he speaks to as a group, okay? And so he will introduce new rules and regulations down, uh, through the prophet. And, and Michael, when you're talking about the prophets too, you're, this is not even just pointing, just to clarify, this is not just pointing to even Joseph Smith, but just even new prophets that have been assigned, right? Right. So when Joseph Smith started the church in 1830, they've had a line of prophets all the way to what we have today. In the LDS church, they have a current prophet today, President, uh, Nelson. Okay, he speaks as though he can speak for God. So it's, it's equivalent, okay? And the apostles that the church has today, the 12 of them, they have the same authority they say that the original 12 had, okay? So we're talking about this is supposed to be God's church upon the Earth today. So we, you know, we didn't understand some of the heavier doctrine. They never got into it, okay? Uh, and we ended up saying, "Okay, we're going to join the LDS church." Okay, so we joined, um, on that date. And once we joined, we became very, very active, okay? It wasn't like we went a month or two, and we, we, we were full blown in. I was active in a lot of things. And they give you callings or responsibilities in the LDS church. It keeps you busy. But I do remember this. This was a key thing. I remember one thing when I was sitting with the missionaries, because I still believed in the Bible, I just didn't have an understanding. I should have read it. But I held up a Bible, okay? And I held up the Book of Mormon, uh, in LDS scriptures. This is the book of, uh, this is the Bible. And I said, "Is the Book of Mormon more important than the Bible?" "Oh, no, they're equal. They're of equal importance, okay? They reconcile with each other. There are two sticks that's talked about in the Old Testament," which is an improper interpretation, which we don't have time to get involved with. But I, I said, "So, so the Bible is the word of God?" "Yes." "And the Book of Mormon is the word of God?" "Okay." So that was a thing that I started with. And I said, "Okay, um, yes, we can go from there." And we went on. Actually, I became very involved in the leadership position when, when we joined the LDS church, just a short time thereafter. So we joined in October. And in the LDS church, you have what you call a tithing settlement at the end of the year. So once you join the LDS church, he says, "Okay, well, we found salvation. You know, I was looking for Jesus, and it's in this church." Even the name of the church sounds good, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." And we believe that these are the latter days. And the Mormons, you know, said, "Well, we can tell you about the latter days because we believe the end times are near." And that was another thing that caught her attention, especially my wife, because I think we just got done, or she got the book that came out, "The Late, Great Planet Earth," about that time, if I recall. And my wife had sent some things off and received some documents about, "Are these the latter days?" So here we're thinking about, are these the latter days? And a church comes along, Latter-day Saints, or Latter-day Christians, okay? So that kind of, you know, pulled together, plus having the department head, a Mormon, and everything else worked in it. So we kind of jumped full, full speed ahead. Then I remember this, during that period of time, we did not have any children, and we were not wealthy. I'm going to school, my wife's a school teacher. We supported a child. We used to be called the Christian Children's Fund. Okay? We spent, back then it was about $35 a month. Back then in 1977, $35 was a lot of money, okay? Uh, and because I wasn't making that much money, and my wife wasn't making that much money, we had a small house. So we supported this child, never met her, is this through, you know, to help educate them and so forth. And I remember when I got to tithing settlement, and in the LDS church, you have to remember tithing. If you're going to actually be able to live in the presence of God, you've got to pay your full tithing. And you commit to that when you join the LDS church, okay? You have to go through a series of interviews when you join the LDS church that you're going to pay a full tithe. The only way I could pay a full tithe at that point was that I had to really believe it. And they said, "Now, remember, all the money that you go into the LDS church is not to pay ministry. We don't have a paid ministry." I said, "Wow, that's neat." And I was thinking, "All the way to the top, nobody gets paid?" "No, nobody gets paid." Well, that was lie number one. The people at the very top get paid, and they get paid quite well. People who do other callings, if they're called out, they're paid. That was a misrepresentation. The fact of the Bible and the Book of Mormon being the same, that was a misrepresentation also. And we'll talk about that maybe later. But the fact is, I get to tithing settlement. So once we join the LDS church, okay, well, are you saved? Will you live with Heavenly Father? Well, not quite. Now you've got to go to the temple. Well, what's the temple? Well, the temple is where you can dwell in the presence of God and be married to your wife for all time and eternity. Said, "Whoa, I love my wife." And one of the things in Mormonism is that you can be married to your wife, and you can also be sealed for all time and eternity, and then you get to be with her in the hereafter. But to do that, you have to make sure you pay a full tithe, you do your callings, you do your responsibilities, which I was doing, okay? I was a ward clerk in the bishopric. Our bishop, a great person, great people, and great people I've worked with. I've worked with wonderful bishops and high counselors and stake presidents. And I've also worked with ones that I kind of wondered about. But most of them are very kind people. Now I'm taking my interview with the bishop, and he says, "Okay, Brother Wilder, do you pay a full tithe?" Because we're prepping you to go to the temple in a year, and you had to be a full tithe payer. Said, "Well, yeah, I am. But I do deduct out of my tithe this $35 a month for the Christian Children's Fund." And he says, "That doesn't count. You have to pay a full tithe." And I said, "So I can't count that as part of doing good works?" "No," he said, "you, you know, you either, you can pay it out on your own, but then you have to make up the difference here." And we just didn't have the money at that point. And I still remember the picture of that girl we used to keep on a refrigerator. We felt like, well, we can't afford to do both. And after that tithing settlement in December of 1977, uh, my wife and I quit giving support for that child. And that still haunts me even to today, that I would give money to the LDS church and still keep helping the poor and the needy. But that's what the LDS church does, and that's why they have a lot of money, because your salvation is based upon you paying tithing so you can get to the temple. It does state in Doctrine and Covenants, and this is doctrine, this is revelation and instructions given from God to Joseph Smith directly, okay, plus a few other prophets later on, but most of it's to Joseph Smith. But Joseph Smith writes in Doctrine and Covenants, he says, "The Lord states this, that if you do not pay a full tithe, you will be burned at His Second Coming." I mean, and that's serious. If you're not a full tithe payer, even if you're in the LDS church, you're not, you could be burned at a second coming. You'll be cast out. So right now, actively, that is a belief. Like that's still believed? Yes. Yeah. Everything I will talk about doctrinally in the LDS church is currently active. They may not talk about it, or you may go to a bishop, and the bishop, "Oh, no, you don't need to pay attention." It's still there. Scriptures. So why don't they change it? Because remember, they have 12 Apostles and three men in the bishopric in the presidency, which is, you have the prophet, first assistant, and second, first counselor and second counselor. And these men are all prophet, seer, and revelator, that they can receive instruction. So if a doctrine's not correct, fix it. Well, it doesn't. It's still there. Therefore, it's still part of beliefs. Therefore, you have to be a full tithe payer to get a temple recommend. Because without a temple recommend in the LDS church, you cannot officially live in the presence of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. You will go to a lower kingdom, and the top kingdom is the Celestial Kingdom. So you see that pressure it's put on us. So we dropped that. We stopped paying that child support.

Now, now, Michael, at this time, I, I, you mentioned that there was no internet, and it's true. The research was definitely harder. Um, but I'm wondering, did you ever have like conversations with other people or talk to other, you know, people that were outside of the LDS church where you were like, "Hey, is this normal?" Like, did you ever have any of those type of conversations during that period of time? Um, nobody directly, um, because we didn't tell a lot of people we were investigating. I did receive a pamphlet from a professor in the department that I worked in, a very religious man, a very kind man. He just put a pamphlet. Never spoke to me directly about about this, but he knew through the department head that I was going to join the church. And so, you know, I was there in September and October teaching before I ever joined. And I remember he put a little pamphlet in there about some things. I did not go to him directly, but I went to my department head or assistant department head, uh, and asking. He says, "Oh, that's this, that's just made-up information." So the pamphlet was speaking against it. It was speaking against, and I just threw it away, okay? Because I said, "Well, I was thinking, if you had anything to say, you'd come to me directly, not just put a piece of paper out there." And so, uh, it was interesting that though, when we were being baptized. So when we join the LDS church, we have to be baptized, okay? Physically baptized. So that's where I got my baptism, the first one anyway. My wife's mother, a wonderful Christian lady, she did not come through a baptism. Lynn's father did, but the mother did not. And we always kind of wondered, and that's again, a different story. But anyway, so we're marching on. So now we're prepping, prepping, prepping to get ready to go to the temple, okay? The temple. In fact, in just the last conference talk, it says the greatest blessings that you, a conference is when the LDS church has their annual and semiannual conference where all the prophet, the prophets and the apostles and other church leaders will speak, uh, at General Conference in front of like 23,000 people, and then it's broadcast all over the world on satellite, broadcast systems network. It's owned by the LDS church, so they have good communications going out. So in that talk, one of the last talks, they talked about the blessings of the temple. And they always come back to that, that God will give you, you can only receive the full blessings of God once you go through the temple. So they're putting a restriction. If you're Mormon or you're not a Mormon, you know, you can't get the full blessings of God. And that's true, according to Mormon doctrine, okay? You cannot live in the presence of Heavenly Father, as Mormons would say, without being temple endowed, without going to the temple and keeping a recommend currently. So we prepped, we went through the classes, and we go to the temple. That's when we found out about the Mormon garments. We would have to wear. A lot of people say it's the, you know, the magical underwear. Well, they called the garments of the Holy Priesthood. That's where we received that. And we wore that our full time until we left the LDS church. So we were very active, and so we, and we had temple recommends that whole period of time through the LDS church. So we went through there, but it was not a real pleasant experience. I think God was telling us, "Okay, this is not my word." When we went through the temple, and there are things that were done in the temple at that time that they do not currently do. During the time when we went to the LDS temple, I was talking to other people and says, "Now, this procedure we're going to go through, that's exactly what was given to Joseph Smith by God, yeah, word for word." Not realizing at that point it was changed multiple times. You always listen to your leaders and say, "Hey, these are men of God. They're not to lie to you." So we went to the temple, and we went through the endowment. You go through a washing and anointing. And when I say a washing, you remember how you go to a hospital and they kind of put a shield over you? Mhm. Well, I was naked underneath the shield, and men would anoint me with water and oil, blessing me with water and blessing me with oil, touching all parts of my body, okay? They don't do that these days, but that's what they did back then. Then you received a new name, okay? And you had to present this name in the endowment. The endowment is the instruction process of how to live in the presence of God, or get to live in the presence of God. So that new name would be used later. You should never, ever forget it. So washing, new name, then you start the endowment procedure. And the endowment procedures where, I mean, the washing and anointing was weird enough for me, okay? Um, because you, you strip down, you put your clothes in a locker, which is interesting. In that locker, you have a lock and a key, which I find it interesting. Why would you have a locker with a locking key in the temple of God, where only the people that's been vetted can go? It was one of those things in my mind, and many things will build on your mind, or put it, what Mormons call, put it on a shelf. Well, I'm not going to talk about it. I'll just put it up here, maybe look at it later on. So this washing and the endowment procedure is where you learn, and you go through basically the creation process in the garden with Adam and Eve and so forth. But during the time, you have to receive names and tokens and signs, which are actually, I did not know at this time, were Masonic. My dad was a 32nd degree Mason, and I had no idea that these handshakes. I knew about special signs and my dad talked about handshakes and things, but he never revealed them to me. And then I finally found out after we've been in the church for years that all these signs and tokens that we went through were the same things that Masonic signs and tokens and handshakes. So we had to use these procedures to get through the veil, and we receive the the the authority of the priesthood and everything else as we were being instructed. But every time we were given a sign or a token or a handshake, there would be a penalty associated with that, except for one at the end. There was no penalty given. But these penalties would say that if I reveal this name or token outside of the temple to anybody else, we would take our hand with our thumb extended and put under our neck as a knife that we would say, and we would suffer our lives to be taken. So in other words, you would lay down your life. You will allow somebody to kill you. Or during the time of Brigham Young, if you came out, you would be killed to save you. It's called blood atonement in Mormonism. So we did that there also, on our oath, that we would suffer our lives to be taken. So what that is saying now that I'm through this and realized many, many years, that if I decided to become an apostate and leave, that to save my soul, I will allow somebody to kill me before I could totally leave. So it was, it was taught during the time of Brigham Young that that thing, the penalties, all the way until I think it was 1990, they removed it. And so people today, they know anything about it. Okay. And Michael, were you, um, at this time, as you mentioned that you were feeling a little bit uneasy now, very, as these things are now happening, what is your conversation, if any, with your wife now? Because she's also involved, and she's the one that you're coming home to, and you know, you're experiencing this. What was that like? So when we went through the temple, soon as we finished the endowment, so in other words, you, you do the signs, and then you use these signs and tokens to go through the veil. So in other words, to actually enter the veil in Mormonism, and it's strange how this works. You go with an assistant up to the curtains, and they knock three times, knock, knock, knock. And then a person behind the veil, plain as God would open the veil slightly, you never see the person, and say, "What is wanted?" And then it says, "Here, you're representing Adam." And you say, "You know, come to the veil, desires further light and knowledge from God." And then you give all these instructions and all these signs and tokens you have to repeat back to the person on the sign so you can enter the veil. We used to do what they call the Five Points of Fellowship, which somebody can look up on and find that out. They don't do that anymore. But anyway, you have to prove God actually puts his hand out through the veil, and you have to give certain handshakes and tokens and signs. And they'll ask, "What is that?" "The first token of the Aaronic Priesthood." "Has it a name?" "It does." And so forth. You know, the second token of the Melchizedek Priesthood. "Has it a name?" "Yes." You would go through all this. Then finally, you receive final instruction, and you're allowed to go through the veil. And that's when you get into this, the Celestial Kingdom, and you're now in the presence of God. And they really believe, "Oh, you ought to." So give the new name. It is given to you. If you forget that name, you can't go through. So it's very, very a lot like Masonic. And so again, the penalties have been removed. They've changed other, the, the endowment procedure has been changed some. And it's amazing how so many things in the LDS church, they change. But they said, "Well, that's due to continued revelation." And I always kind of tease and I said, "Well, God changed his mind again." Because God does not change. So this way was okay to do the endowment, but today it's incorrect. Okay? It was okay to not have blacks receive the priesthood, but today it's okay. And so forth. You see, God changes his mind where we know the scriptures, they're complete. So, so soon as we get through the veil, the people that went with us, again, you're always supported by people. And our dear friends there say, "Well, you ready to go through another session?" I mean, some people will go through three or four or five different. They'll go from 8:00 in the morning to 9:00 at night doing the thing, repeat it over and over. So what it is in Mormonism is that you do this whole endowment, the washing, anointing, and everything else to save yourself, to make you clean and pure so you have the knowledge to live with Heavenly Father. And then once it's done, you go for somebody else. You save yourself the first time, and then you save your ancestors the next time. And every time you go back to the temple, it's to save somebody else or to endow another person so they can accept this in spirit prison and get to be living with Heavenly Father. You're, you're basically trying to save the dead. And we know that's not biblical, okay? Definitely not biblical. So when my wife and I get down, we're sitting in the, in the Celestial Room, and yes, we're, we're not really together. And they said, "We want to go, we want to take you back through another session." And I said, "I can't. I had a headache." My wife had a headache. And she went through the same process. Yeah, yeah. You're, you're done at different places. The men sit in one section, women sit, you're in the same room, and you go separate, but you join up together in the Celestial Kingdom, okay? On the Celestial Room. We just said, "We have to go back to our hotel." Because remember, when we left, we drove all the way from Muncie, Indiana, to Washington D.C. The temple that you see when you go around the circle on the Beltway, that's the temple that we went to our first time. Wow. Okay, the Washington D.C. So, so we went to our hotel room, and we were physically ill. They always say, "Well, you learn more, you'll always learn more every time you go through it." And so you repeat it, repeat it, and repeat it, and away you go. So that there were many signs given to us even at the time of the situation when we had to stop paying, given the money for the child, um, the Christian Children's Fund, and then you get to the temple, and then it just goes on and on. And I always like to refer to people, they say, "Well, how, how did you, as even a nominal Christian, join?" And I always say, "Well, I knew enough about the Bible to be dangerous." And this is true with many different religious groups. They'll take verses and they take them out of context. And if you don't read the whole chapter, you know, I always say, "Read a chapter before and a chapter after that, they get the context of what the heck they're talking about in the Bible before you can make any major decisions." But that's what the LDS church, they will do that. Then they bring in other scriptures. So the reason you don't understand this, this is what it really means. This was given to us by Doctrine and Covenants through revelation given to Joseph Smith, or this is what it says in the Book of Mormon, or this is what it says in Pearl of Great Price. So you have all these scriptures. And what happens is that as a Christian, I slowly started taking the Bible equal with with the Book of Mormon, and the Bible gets kind of pushed down, and the Book of Mormon becomes more important. Because even in one of their articles of faith, it says, "We believe that the Bible is the word of God, comma, as far as it's translated correctly. We also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God, no qualifier, period." So that's, that's lie number one. The Bible is not considered on the same level as the Book of Mormon. And I remember one of the prophets, the second prophet that we had when we joined the LDS church, President Benson, he said, "You would get closer to God by reading the Book of Mormon than any other book in the world, and that the Book of Mormon would bring in more converts to the LDS church than any other book in the world." So you can see where they're putting the pressure. Many, many years in the LDS church, we were taught to read the Book of Mormon, read the Book of Mormon with your family. This whole year, never in the 30 years that I was in the LDS church, that I was in the LDS church, they never had a call to read the Old Testament or to read the New Testament with your family. It was always the Book of Mormon, always read the Book of Mormon. So anyway, it's just like the old saying, the frog in warm water. So we didn't understand it. And the people were very kind and nice, and you get cooked. You start getting to a point where you don't trust the Bible as much. You know, you start looking more to church leaders, to the current prophets, to Apostles, and so forth. And so we start this whole journey, and very active. Okay? Uh, I moved up in leadership. I served, uh, uh, the first calling, major calling I had was as a ward clerk. And so I kept records. Uh, I used to take notes during sacrament period time. Sacrament is the church service time in the LDS Church. In 1988, about 11 years later, we have gone to the temple on a regular basis. We did all the things, you know, you get used to going through that. People say, you know, you're learning. So you say, "Okay, these things I don't understand on the shelf," and you just go and enjoy. You keep chugging along. At the age of, uh, 36, in 1988, I was made a high priest, which I know is an abomination to even say that. But in the LDS church, when you start receiving major LDS callings, you are, you become a high priest. I still remember when, uh, a member of the stake presidency. So in the LDS church, you have a stake presidency, a president and two counselors, and then you have 12 high counselors. Then they oversee like 12 congregations, wards, or local chapels, okay? So in the LDS church, everything's top-down from the prophet all the way down to the regional people, all the way down to the stake presidents, to the high counselors, to the bishops, and down to the congregation. So we always used to say in leadership positions in the LDS church that when the prophet speaks, the discussion is over. No need to talk about it anymore. It's done, okay? So 1988, I was called to the High Council, which was interesting. That was really a big jump. I decided, "Yeah, yeah, I'll do this." My wife's, "Yeah." And my wife was also being called. She was called, um, to many callings. Relief Society president, which is like the assistant, was a leader of women in a local congregation. She was also called to a stake primary presidency, a president, which she oversaw the children's activities and like 12 congregations throughout this whole region, you know, Muncie, part of Indianapolis, and north and everything else. So when I was called to the High Council, I would travel to different congregations, and my wife would travel to different congregations as a primary. So I was called to the High Council, and sometime later, she was also called as a Primary State President. We were busy. Sundays, I would get up at 6 o'clock, and I wouldn't get home a lot of time till after 6:00 or 7:00. I had meetings on Wednesdays. I had meetings on, uh, Thursdays that I went to, uh, would drive 60 miles to meet where we had our, our High Council meeting. The High Council, I was on that for, oh, probably eight years at least. Wow, that's a long time. And my wife, we were so busy on Sundays, we would even get a babysitter to watch our kids because of our callings, and they would take our kids to church because we were in other, uh, churches. So you can't say we weren't devoted. We became a full-time part of our life, okay? If I didn't spend 20 hours a week working for the LDS church, that was a, that was a slow week. Week plus I was self-employed. Very active. Everything's going, going well, you know. I, I then I get called from the High Council. I get put back in the ward as a bishopric, so like an assistant pastor. So you had the bishop, first counselor, second counselor, and then I was second counselor in the Muncie Ward, um, or Muncie Second Ward, I guess, officially. And again, uh, very busy. I was over scouting, I was over primary, the youth groups, I worked with young men, you know, I enjoyed working with the people, but there's only so much time in a week that you can do. And my wife starts her PhD program at Ball State University. So she's working on her PhD, doing all these other things in the LDS Church, plus that last year before we moved to Utah in 1999, we taught early morning Seminary. We'd get to bed at 12:00, we'd get up at 5:00, make breakfast. We would have early morning Seminary, means we would have all the high school kids who were LDS who were going to Seminary in our house, and we would teach them lessons Monday through Friday. But I, we loved it. You know, my wife was called as a Seminary teacher. I would help. Part of the time I was in the bishopric. She finished her degree, and lo and behold, God called us to Utah because she got a position as a BYU president, I mean, BYU professor, okay? So life changed, okay? So I'm self-employed, I'm flexible. I did have to travel a lot back to the Midwest, but I had clients in California, all the way through, uh, uh, Ohio and Indiana and Michigan and so forth. This is God's calling, wow. We're supposed to go to Zion, okay? Um, our kids were, Josh had just graduated from high school. We moved. He went to IU for a couple years. Micah was, you know, Matt was going into his junior year. And we're moving out to Alpine, Utah. And Alpine, Utah, is probably one of the most active LDS cities in the United States. So I just want people to know when a lot of people say, "We did not have a testimony. We left the LDS church because we didn't understand it." We understood it very well. And yes, we understood the doctrine. Everything I didn't always understand, but what's actually interesting is that when we were very active on Sundays, and we, you know, did not watch TV, we did not eat out, we did not drink coffee or tea, we lived the health code the best we could. We held those temple recommends for all the period of times from, you know, 1978 through currently now, we're moving 1999. We're going out to Utah. At that period of time in my life, I would have given my life to protect the LDS church. I really believed that it was God's church on the earth, that it was the only way man could get closer to God, okay? And it actually says that in their own scriptures that God told Joseph Smith, he wrote this in revelation, that this was the only church upon the face of the Earth in whom he is well pleased. All the other churches were an abomination. It actually says that in their scriptures, all the other Christian churches were an abomination before him, but this church is his church. So again, I'm, I was looking for Jesus. I thought I found Jesus, okay? I thought I found Jesus, and I was living the life as though I understood Jesus. But I'd never fully understood all the doctrine in the church. Not till we got to Utah did some things start ringing a bell, you know? We were happy. Oh my goodness, I, I love living in Utah. Um, it's interesting when I get to Utah, I get called back into another bishopric, which is interesting. So I'm pretty fortunate that as a back to Indiana, we also were endowed temple workers. That as much as we could, we would drive from Muncie, Indiana, not to Washington D.C., but we had a temple in Chicago. So we would drive five hours to go to the Chicago Temple, and there we worked in the temple, okay? I worked behind the veil. Now I was the person bringing people through the veil and acting as though I'm God talking through the veil.

Very, very, very active. I just want to stress that point. When people are watching this, when Mormons might see this, they'll say, "Oh, they really didn't know." Yes, I work behind the veil. We, Seminary, I was in High Council, I was in a Bishopric. I was a, a Sunday School, um, a Young Men's president. I was involved in, uh, uh, you know, teaching investigators' class and Moroni. So was Len. So we get out to Utah and we're enjoying life there in beautiful Utah. My wife is doing very well at BYU and progressing, uh, in her rank advancements. And I was called to the, uh, uh, Bishopric, which was the same position, one of the positions I held in Muncie, Indiana before we left. And so again, I was like an assistant pastor. Wonderful Bishop, uh, that I work with there, um, and a wonderful Stake President. Again, I wanted to say, there are good people, okay? They're just not guided. And it kind of reminds me of that verse in Romans 10, you know, where Paul is speaking to the Jews. He says, um, "And they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, for they seek to establish your own righteousness through your own acts, not accept the righteousness of God." And so, very, very active, doing all the right things. And, you know, our first son goes off on a mission. So he was at IU. Remember, he comes back to, uh, uh, two years there. He comes back to the University of Utah, graduates from Utah, goes on Mormon mission to Russia. Very hard mission. And then my second son, um, is progressing, does very well in sports activities in both Indiana and Utah. Goes to like a year BYU. He's a piano performance major. He goes off to Denmark for two years. So when you're sending your kids off across the world, that means you really believe this. And then Micah, uh, our third son, was getting ready. Again, very active. You know, by all my children, he was the most spiritual one at that, that point. I mean, he was so excited to go on an LDS mission. I've never seen anybody like that. And what's interesting, I remember he came home one day after, you know, after he graduated from high school, and he's, uh, attending, uh, school at Brigham Young for his first Master's before he goes off on his mission. He says, "Dad, I got a job." I said, "Great, we can always use the extra money." "I've been ordained as a full-time temple worker in the Mount Timpanogos Temple." He's like, 19, 18. Yeah, I'm not 19 yet, I don't think so. It's like, there's no record that I know of anybody being ordained a worker in the temple at that age. When I was an adult doing the work I was doing, he was doing at a kid, young, 18 years old, working behind the veil. And, and we actually have a document where he was set apart as a full-time temple worker. So this kid had a zeal for God, not according to knowledge, but he did have a zeal for God. And that's a whole different story. We're very active. And then I have a business in Utah and I start interacting with people. And this one thing that kept flaring up was, you know, the concept of polygamy. I never noticed it in Utah, but out west, you started hearing things about, you know, polygamy. I said, "Yeah, you know, I remember talking about it a little bit in Indiana." But, but they told me the only reason polygamy was practiced because there were more women than men, because all the Christians killed off the men, uh, when they were trying to go out west. I said, "Okay, it sounds logical. Uh, it was just for survival purposes, okay?" And then I never thought anything about it, but I started learning more and more about that. So it was always one of those things on the shelf that I was never comfortable with. And during the procedure, I ran across different men, uh, who were married in the temple. You remember how I mentioned earlier that you can be married for this time and be sealed in the temple for forever? And I was talking to this one guy, "Oh, I'm so, so sorry about, you know, um, your two previous wives, you know, died." You know, and now he's married a third one. Says, "Wife?" Yes. "I'm not worried about it." I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Well, I'm sealed to all three." "So your first wife, you were sealed in the temple?" Yes. "She died, and I got married again, and she died, and I was sealed to her. Now I'm married to a third person, and I'm sealed to her." I, I never heard that concept. I just thought you were married to one person. So I started studying LDS scripture a little bit more, you know. So it's in the back of my mind. Well, during this process, Micah goes off on his mission. Matt comes home from Denmark. You know, my son comes home from, uh, Russia. Micah starts changing in his writings. He, I remember, I talked to the mission president when he came, that first introduced Micah when he went off on his mission. So when you go off on a mission, you're under, you don't talk to your kids for two years, twice a year on Mother's Day and Christmas, at least back then. Two full years. And you, and you can send an email once a week. And Michael, just, just to clarify here, this is what we see when we see the missionaries on the streets, right? This is what they're doing. They're doing this two-year mission, two-year mission. So these young guys are riding around on bicycles, you'll see them with their helmets and their name tags and white shirts. Um, very, very wonderful men. They really, again, they were sincere. And one of the things before I forget, if you see those missionaries and they knock on your door, be kind to them. Don't be mean. Don't say they're going to go to hell. That's not going to help anything, okay? Invite them in, feed them, they're hungry, they're tired. It's a very, very rough life. Especially when my sons went out, if I knew what my son went through in Russia and how many times he actually was threatened with death, I would never have allowed him to go. So these men that go out, these young boys, I say, should say, you know, love on them. And I'd rather have them teach you a strong Christian than to teach a nominal Christian like me. And they end up joining the LDS Church. And who knows, whatever you might say to them, may have an impact on their life. That you may just look at them and teach them gently. Don't Bible bash, but just teach them the word of God according to your knowledge. And what I always ask people to do, ask questions. Like, if you feel like there's some conflict between the Bible and what the Mormon teaches, just say, "How do you reconcile this? How do you explain this to me?" So anyway, he goes out on his mission, uh, he's one of those guys riding the bikes, and very sincere. And I remember getting emails from him. It sounded like he was changing. I, I told one, one person in my High Priest group quorum, uh, I said, "You know, when I get my emails from Micah, it almost sounds like I'm listening to the Apostle Paul." And you don't, Mormons don't talk about a lot about Paul. But I had started reading the Bible some, and, you know, from my early days and so on. But it just, his character, it's just like I could tell he was different. Instead of talking about all the work he's doing, the people he's baptizing, and all the effect he's doing, he starts talking about the word of God, you know, from the New Testament. And he was going through a change. God was working with him. What eventually happens is that three weeks before he's to be sent home on his mission, this would be January of 2006. Okay? So, you know, we've been in the church for a long time. We've lived in Utah since 1999, doing well there. My business is doing well, my wife is doing well there. You know, everything is perfect. I always like to say, everything to me in Mormonism was perfect. I was a religious, righteous, holy man until this Jesus comes along from the Bible, and everything changes. Well, that was going to happen to me. That was going to happen to me at a later date, once everything starts opening up. So Micah ends up getting, you have to go and look at his testimony, getting removed from his mission because he believed he didn't need a prophet to speak for him. He didn't need a church to save him. He didn't need to be under the authority of men. "There is one God and one mediator for mankind, and that is the man Christ Jesus, who became a ransom for us." Once he invoked that, he was not worthy. Even though he had had leadership positions, he was well-known, was a zone leader, you know, just letting him ride out three more weeks and bringing him home quietly. They removed him from his mission. Now, that was something. You know, we're very active in the LDS Church. You do not have your son come home from his mission early because there's going to be some kind of gossip. Why did he come home early? Is there health problems? Did he do something wrong? And all these things. Well, they, they honorably released the, the mission president. Remember, in Mormonism, you have a mission president. It's assigned there by the LDS Church to take care of like 60 missionaries in a given area. And I remember when the Stake Missionary called the Stake President. Remember we talked about Stake President over an area? So I had a Stake President. I'm a High Priest. My authority, my allegiance is actually to my Stake President, not even to my Bishop. And so I remember when Micah was being sent home, I got a call from my Stake President. And I remember the Stake President said, "Brother Wilder, you speaking on an old handheld phone like we had back then." He says, "We have a problem with your son." And I thought, "My gosh, was he in an accident or something?" He says, "We're sending your son home today from his mission. You need to go to the airport on Saturday and bring him directly to me. Your son has a spirit of the devil in him." Now, when you have somebody who's a religious leader over you, who is a Stake President, who represents, you know, thousands of Latter-day Saints in that area, when that person picks up a phone and tells you and calls you and tells you your son has a spirit of the devil in him, I'm sad to say that I did not question it. I didn't say, "Uh, sir, I think you're nuts." Still under that authority in the LDS Church, top-down authority. I said, "Well, I, I don't understand what's going on. Um, I will, yes, go get my son. I'll talk with him and I'll bring him to see you, uh, first thing when he gets back." That's what we did. You know, our lives are being turned upside down. You know, I mean, you're not an active LDS family and then have your home, your son sent home because he's an antichrist. His mission president even said he's an antichrist and that he had the spirit of the devil in him. Also, he would have to be removed. You know, I just said, "I just want to get my son home." Because here is my most zealous son. Here's a son who was a temple recommend, I mean, uh, uh, uh, worked in the temple as a young man before he even went out on his mission. This is a son who was, you know, Primary President for the Stake, representing the youth. This is a son that did all the right things. But this is the way God works. So here it is, January 2006. You know, we drive to the airport. We pick him up. We were going to bring Katie and Lynn and myself to go see the Stake President. And he said, "Do not bring your, your daughter." This was supposed to be a joyful occasion when your son comes home from a mission. He gets there, we talk, and we go through this whole thing. And this is a very restful meeting for all of us. And I just remember trying to be calm. And he starts talking to my son, degrading him, said he was like Korah in the Book of Mormon, which is an antichrist. And he just, he was just trashing my son about how he did not believe in the current prophet and in the church as the only true church upon the face of the earth. I mean, he was doing it with some respect, but he was, he was stacking it on. And I remember as a father sitting there, that's very hard to hear somebody speak to your son that way. I think I was about ready to lose it, which would not have been a good thing. As the president stopped speaking for a second, my son very calmly, but with authority in his mouth, I don't know, maybe speaking by the spirit, I don't know, it just sounded different. And he spoke to the president. He says, "I was promised by my mission president that if I would come back to Alpine to meet with you, that I would be released from my mission call. And at this time, that's all I'm asking. If you want to debate about other doctrinal issues, I'll be happy to come back and talk to you now, at that point. But as now, I'm asking to be released." And I remember there was no word from the president at that point. His face just kind of looked blank. And I even saw his lip kind of quiver, which I don't know why. I don't think he could imagine that a young man, here he is, like, 65, Stake President, very successful business person, that a young man who's coming off his mission would have the ability to speak to him that way. And he stopped, and his lip kind of quivered, and he just says, "Micah, you're released." Then he said, "Well, we're having a High Council meeting tomorrow morning. Uh, we would like for you to come back and give your, so you can tell your story to the High Council about your, your, your return from your mission." I don't even know if we had a closing prayer. My mind was spinning. And we just got up and we left. Lynn and I went out. I said, "We're not bringing him back." Because I have been on a High Council enough now. Legally, he could not just excommunicate. Well, you just never know. But I was not bringing him back to the High Council at that point. I'm not ready. And I, I didn't know. Did not know what was going to happen. So we just took him to fast and testimony meeting that Sunday, I think it was. Or maybe just to regular church meeting. Yeah, it's just a regular church meeting. I do believe he got up and bore his testimony to Christ. Usually, he had kind of like a homecoming thing. But he just got up there and said, "Hey, I'm home." A lot of people thought he had health problems, which he did have some health problems on his mission. But he gave a testimony of Christ. And then we had a little open house. And we decided to send him back to Florida as soon as we could. I did not want him to meet with any leadership of the LDS Church. I wasn't sure what was going on. Uh, my mind was kind of in a buzz. So we had a little open house Sunday afternoon, and I think he was on an airplane going back to Florida. We had a friend in Florida that said they would take care of him or he could work for. I mean, it's bad enough to talk to your mission president, say you have the spirit of the devil in you, that you're an antichrist. That's bad enough, okay? So I wasn't going to have him go in front of a court and go through that procedure and have them, you know, excommunicating or, you know, not do it at that point, but at a later date, because there's this legal procedure supposed to go through. Since I was on the High Council, I knew all that stuff. But I just want to get him out of town. I didn't want the neighbors to come by to say, "Well, what's wrong? Are you having health problems?" This and this and this and this. Just didn't want the shaming in there because Alpine, Utah was very active. It's like 98% active Mormon. It was the most active Mormon town in the world at that point. So we had a little open house, people came by, said hi, goodbye, put on an airplane the next day. But this is, this is the major thing that started changing my life. When we were at the airport, Micah was saying, you know, "I, you don't understand everything that I've, I've, I've gone through this whole procedure." He says, "Mom and Dad, as I was challenged many years ago by a pastor, just to read the Bible as a child or through the eye of a child, get rid of any preconceived notions that you might have, just go back and do that." Lynn, his mother, said she would do that. And I, as a High Priest, having taught Sunday school, have taught through the Book of Mormon, have taught through the New Testament, I agreed to do it. I have nothing to learn, but I would do it for my son because of his, my love for him. You know, we hugged, we said goodbye, and he left. Here all this commotion is going on, and a lot of people, you know, asking questions. You know, we have a son that's attending Brigham Young University, uh, studying piano. My wife is still teaching there. I had been released just before he got home from as a bishop member, and so I didn't have any calling, major calling, except I got called in the Primary, which I loved. I actually loved working with the kids. It was a different, and I needed that, especially the thing. Uh, I had been called before my son was released, but especially now, I did not want to see anybody in the leadership. I did not want to have to talk with the bishop or High, you know, High Councilors, anybody else. I wanted to kind of get my mind together working with these 10-year-old kids. They were a rowdy bunch, and I got called because I was the only person that could probably take care of them. The last teacher, she drove, she quit. So, but it was God's way of giving me comfort in another, another way. So here it is, January 2006. And I start reading the Bible. I start having questions, more questions about polygamy. We go through this event. Things were going, you know, well. My wife is doing extremely well at Brigham University. But with the events that happened to my son, that was always in the back of my mind. People started asking, well, when we eventually came out of the LDS Church, I want to get this point clear that they said, "Well, the reason you left the LDS Church is because you were offended by what happened to your son." No, no. If I was offended, I'd have left a long time ago. They always say, "You're offended, you couldn't live the teachings, or you've committed a great sin." Okay? Those are the only three reasons why people leave the LDS Church. Well, I was offended, but I didn't leave. I was still active. You know, I could live the standards. That was no problem, okay? The health code, paying the tithing, and all that stuff. If I was offended, I should have been offended when they asked me to stop paying the $35 a month for the Christian Children's Fund. Basically, I was a, a good person as defined. Yes, I sin, but in Mormonism, you have different levels of sin. Did I commit a major sin? No. Did I cuss once in a while? Yes, okay? Um, but I didn't drink coffee, I didn't even drink diet coke, and I didn't watch TV. I didn't watch football on Sundays or all that stuff. We were really focused. And this happened earlier, even before Micah was released, you know, my son, my oldest son, went to Russia, very hard mission, came back, kind of got away from the LDS Church and from standards of today's kids. He did really nothing bad. He was, he was always very sincere. He started dating this one girl, and they, they were thinking about getting married in the temple. Well, his temple recommend expired. See, in Mormonism, you have to renew your salvation or exaltation every couple of years. Used to be yearly. At the end of the year, to get a temple recommend, you'd have to go in and have an interview with the bishop or bishopric member. I used to give these questions, okay? And then you'd have an interview with the Stake Presidency, somebody in the Stake Presidency, one of three men. And you would state that you, you know, there's about 10 questions you go through. I'm not going to go through those. But one thing, "Are you a full tithe payer?" Okay? And "Do you do this?" And "Do you support the General Authorities and the President of the Church, Jesus, the Prophet, as a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Do you support the Apostles as prophets, seers, and revelators?" You go through all these questions. So I had no problem with that. But, uh, my one son went back to get a temple recommend. And so he was interviewing the bishop that I had worked under, worked with, not under, but worked with. He was a Young Men's president. He was called as the new bishop. My bishop, I was working under, got released. So I was working in Primary. And my son, uh, goes back to a wonderful man, also, just loved him dearly. And he said, "You know, Josh had interviewed and said, yeah, you know, I did this and I did a couple things here." And the bishop said, "No problem. We'll get this cleared up. There may, you may have to wait a little bit longer, but no problem." So he says, "But since I'm under the authority, and you're a Melchizedek Priesthood holder, because going on a mission, you have to hold the Melchizedek Priesthood to be a leader in the LDS Church. You have to have the Melchizedek Priesthood, then up, you have to be a High Priest." So he says, "I need to talk with the, the president." This is the same president that later on challenged my son. So I got to mention a couple of these things to the Stake President, but then I'll, I'll handle it from here out. He goes to the Stake President, says, "Hey, just had a year with Josh Wilder. He's at the University of Utah. Uh, did this and this, no big deal. I'll take care of it." And the president says, "No, I won't take care of it." And I had no knowledge this was going on. I just knew that Josh was trying to get his life in order, that he wanted to marry this girl in the temple. Remember, for you to be married in the temple for all time and eternity, you have to go through these series of questions. Well, one Sunday morning, this is before Micah was sent home, there was a knock on my doorbell. I was getting ready, I actually, yeah, I was getting ready to go to go to church, uh, that morning, bright and early. And my son knocks on the door, and he's in his suit and tie. I said, "Why are you here at 8:00 in the morning, Sunday morning?" Because, you know, church didn't start till later on. And I said, "Why did you come? Why didn't you call us?" He looked at me, he said, "Dad, I've just been excommunicated." Now, Mormonism has a big thing, and I had no idea this was going on. He says, "Uh, they told me to remove the garments that I have, and I don't have any money to buy new underwear, just regular men's underwear." And I held him, and he cried like a baby. So, you know, if you're going to be offended, that's a good reason to be offended. I said, "Okay, son, we'll work this out." Well, God is good, and so we did. We worked it out. I worked with him, even got him rebaptized. I'm re-baptizing before even Micah came home from his mission. You know, everything was on the up and up, and he was going to get, you know, he was working for his temple recommend. That was really hard because he was just trying to do the right thing. And I'd been in so many LDS courts where I've seen things like that go. Long as you repent, long as you repent, you truly repent. And that's, that's what the Bible says. You come to him, and if you're sincere, and I know he was sincere, and say, "Yeah, I'm sorry I did this." They should have said, "We see your sin no more," and said, "But the LDS Church is not that way." They have certain rules that go by, and these men supposed to be speaking for God. And, yeah, it happened. So he came back, he was re-baptized. And again, that's another different story. But again, these are things that are in the back of my mind. Then I see the way they handled Micah. Did I believe? No. I was still active. And then, maybe, maybe July of 2006. You know, we're studying the scriptures, we're wondering things. And the Lord sends the High Priest group leader. Back then, we used to meet the group of High Priests, and you had the regular Melchizedek Priesthood holders, which we held that, but we were High Priests. These were the Elders, per se, say. And then there were High Priests. I said, "Oh my gosh, you're going to want to talk about M..." No, they want to call me to a position of Redeem the Dead Chairperson. Now, that sounds like a good Christian calling, doesn't it? So, to redeem the dead, there are three missions in the LDS Church: one is perfect the Saints, missionary work, and redeem the dead, where I would be involved in temple work. You know, I had worked in the temple earlier. And again, you just don't call anybody this. You're going to be taking people to the temple, you're going to be teaching temple classes, you're going to be speaking in LDS Sacrament meetings about encouraging people to go to the temple. I was saying, you know, I was beginning to have questions. And I said, "My goodness, yeah, I'll take this call." Talk to my wife. She was actually the co-chair, supposed to be working with me. I did all of her work, uh, because she, she was basically done with the LDS Church at that point. But I was thinking, if there is a God, I would know everything if I go to the temple weekly or twice a week, take groups to the temple, go to different temples, go to the celestial room, more and more and more. I get that calling, then I start reading the scriptures. And I get back to Luke 16. One night, I came home from a temple excursion, and I just picked up my Bible. Happened to open up, and I decided, you know what, Micah said, "You normally I'd read the Book of Mormon. Micah, I need to read the Bible more." So, happened to open up to Luke 16. In Luke, there's many things there that you can read in there, but I'm going to jump ahead to where, uh, I'm reading about chapter 18 about the, uh, proverb where Jesus talks about he gave his proverb to those who are considered themselves righteous. He starts talking about in, uh, Luke 18, and he states, "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, one a Publican or tax collector." The Pharisee started praying to himself, "God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector over here. I fast twice a week, and I give all that I possess in tithes." Well, you have to understand, as being a member of the Redeem the Dead Committee, I had to have a temple recommend. I was encouraging people, "You have to get a temple recommend if you want to live in the presence of God." I considered myself a religious, religious, righteous, holy man at that point. I fast at least once a month, and I gave my tithe to God, and I went to a temple on a regular basis. But what's interesting, this Pharisee, when he was praying, he's praying thus with himself. He's not really praying to God, but he's just saying, "God, I thank thee, I'm not like these other men are." It was probably a few weeks earlier in High Priest group form, which they don't have anymore, but I remember during a lesson, a guy was saying, "I'm so thankful we are not as other men are." And that really hit me at that point. Years later, once I analyzed this lesson, here I found out the Jews only had to fast once a year. And here's a man boasting to God, "I'd do it twice a week." And the Jews did not pay tithes on everything they had, only on part of their wealth. And here's a man who's saying to God, "I do much higher than what you put there as a standard." So I'm thinking, "Yeah, yeah, there's nothing wrong with that." Then this Publican, tax collector, you know, you don't go in the temple, you just go in front of the temple. And I've been on the Temple Mount three times in my life. And yes, when you go to the Temple Mount, you go up a hill. It is higher than Jerusalem. And so when he says, "Two men went up to the temple," that's how you would go up there. And the Pharisee or the Publican tax collector would not even lift his eyes up, and he would beat his breast and he said, "God, be merciful unto me, a sinner." Well, when he states that, he's stating that he hasn't repented, he's stating that he's a sinner in his current state, but have mercy upon me. And Jesus says, "I tell you that this man, the sinner, went down to his house justified rather than the other. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." I had read that verse many, many times, but it was that time that it hit me like a rock, like, "Whoa, who am I? Am I a Pharisee or am I the tax collector?" I'm supposed to be doing all the right things, things, but things just don't seem right. And so God is bringing all these other events into my house, and he brings up this stupid thing on polygamy. And I just said, "Oh, I despise the concept of polygamy. I think it degrades men and women. It's not biblical. It's never taught in the Bible." But after hearing people talk about, "Yeah, I'm sealed to this and sealed to that," and that, and I found out, you know, you can be sealed to more than one woman. Even the current president of the LDS Church, President Nelson, is sealed to two women. His first wife, God forbid, died, but now he's married to another wife and sealed. And according to Mormon law, he will have two women, two wives in the hereafter. So LDS people, when you say, "We don't practice polygamy," right? You do not practice polygamy on the earth today, but you still believe in it. You still believe in it because you can believe it can be practiced in the hereafter. And that was taught to me, and I did not like that. So I said, "Oh, well, this polygamy thing. Well, it's practiced in the Old Testament. You have Abraham, you have David, you have, you know, Solomon. They all practiced." I'll just go back and find proof because I'm sure it was an angel told Abraham to practice polygamy. Yeah, that's what. So if an angel tells you to do it, you should do it. It's okay. So this is why I encourage a lot of my Mormon friends or anybody who's investigating or anybody who's locked in the legalistic system, to go back to the Bible and read it. So I went back to the Old Testament, started reading about Abraham, or Abram at that point, and found out that polygamy was not commanded. You know, in, uh, LDS scriptures, uh, if I can find it here real quickly, yep. And no, the scriptures, it states this. This is in Doctrine and Covenants 132. This is still active. This hasn't been removed. This is the doctrine about polygamy. It says, "Abraham received concubines and they bore him children, and it was counted unto him for righteousness because he had concubines or wives and concubines." And we know what the scriptures say, "Because Abraham had faith," this is in Genesis, "it was accounted to him for righteousness." That's a big difference. And then this goes on, "And because they were given unto him, and he abode in my law, the priesthood law, as Isaac also and Jacob did, they have now entered into their exaltation according to their promise, and sit upon thrones, and are not angels, but are gods." Current scriptures. And it goes on. As I was reading through Abraham, about Abraham, real quickly, that Abraham, you know, God said, "I'm going to bless you with nations of people." And Sarah, you know, you know, they didn't have any children, and she was getting old, and was actually beyond her years. And so many times that men try to correct God with their timing instead of waiting for God. I always thought reading Mormon scriptures that an angel told Abraham to take Hagar. And here it is in Doctrine and Covenants, it's called the Law of Sarah. It says that the Lord commanded Abraham to take Hagar to wife in their scriptures. But as we know, when I read through Genesis, I found out very quickly, Sarah, who was given the handmaiden, when they went through Egypt, Sarah said, "Abram, take Hagar as a wife or concubine and have children and have seed, and you'll have your seed. I can't bring you any seed. We have to fulfill God's commandment." So being impatient, they did that. And yes, Hagar had her first son, Ishmael. And he goes on. And then we see where Sarah gets upset, and she drives Hagar off and her son. And remember, an angel appeared. And in Mormonism, it teaches that she went and went back to Abraham, submitted herself to Abraham. But the scriptures I was surprised to find out said, "Go back to Samaria to Sarah and submit yourself to her." Wow. Not Abraham. Reduces, removes the whole concept of the priesthood authority at that point. So she did that. Lo and behold, we see that Sarah conceives Isaac. And then we move on. This is a very important fact of understanding the law. We see Hagar having Ishmael as Abraham's first son. But God said this, remember when he told Abraham to take Isaac and go into Mount Moriah? He says, "Take your son, your only son." For in God's eyes, God only saw one son. Yes, he blessed Hagar and Ishmael, but the promise was given because man broke the law at that point of having more than one wife. God still recognized that. We learned all the way back in Genesis, there is one man and one woman. And it's taught throughout the New Testament of that. God saw Sarah as his wife, and God saw Isaac as his only son through the promise. When I started reading that, I'm saying, "Wait a second. This whole concept of polygamy, given by David, I mean, given, you know, it talks about David, but it talks about how David, because, you know, he practiced polygamy, and Solomon practiced polygamy, it says Moses practiced polygamy, and that was okay in the sight of God. But when, uh, David had Uriah killed, you know, that was something. David lost his exaltation. David was removed. David is not part of the Celestial Kingdom, according to this. David's been totally removed. His blessings." And I remember I had a dear friend in the LDS Church at that time in Alpine who was Jewish, converted to Mormonism. I asked him about this. I said, "What do you think about David?" He said, "Look at this. I think that's wrong." Which is interesting. He's an active member, but he thinks that scripture is wrong. But we move on here, and we see Joseph was married to Emma. And this is a revelation God gave Joseph because everything I'm speaking here in Doctrine and Covenants is direct word from Jesus Christ to Joseph Smith. And this is, pretend this is Jesus speaking, and you tell me this, if this is correct. "And I commanded my handmaiden Emma Smith to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to come unto none else." Okay, that's correct. "If she will not abide this commandment, which is another law, the priesthood, she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord, and I thy God. I will destroy her if she abide not in my law." And what he's talking about is the law of polygamy. He says again, "And pertaining to the law of the priesthood, if any man espouse a virgin, or another virgin, and they marry her, and then do another one, if you do it under my law, it's okay. But if a woman who's married to a man in the priesthood and will deny that man from taking a wife, she will be destroyed." Even though they say in their scripture, you have to have permission. He says again, "Very, very, I say unto you, if any man have a wife and holds the keys of this power, and he teaches her the law of my priesthood as pertaining to these things, then she shall believe and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed." So I'm reading all this. Basically, it comes down to this, okay? That I'm attending the temple on a regular basis, and I'm supposed to get all my knowledge in the temple from God. So I go into the temple with an excursion, and all the other people are gone. I'm the last one there that night. I'm praying about this thing of polygamy. It's just bugging the heck out of me, you know? Uh, I find out that polygamy was supposed to be stopped in 1890, but it continued to be practiced later on. You can read that in the chapter. Uh, I was just stunned by what I was finding out, that they practiced, the leadership of the LDS Church practiced polygamy in 1900 and 1905 and 1910, when it was supposed to be stopped in 1890. Everybody was gone. Did not expect an answer. And I just prayed, "God, is polygamy an eternal principle?" And was getting ready to leave. It's almost like I felt a presence behind me, and I heard, I actually heard these words in my right ear. I'll never forget it. It was a soft voice. No thunder, no lightning. Soft voice. "No, it is not of me. It is of man." And what you say, when you hear that in the celestial room, where God only talks to those who are righteous, in the celestial room, where Satan can't interfere and pretend to be God, what is Satan going to say to me? "No, God doesn't want you to practice polygamy. It's a no-win." It was the word of God. And it matches His scriptures. It does not match the Mormon scriptures. So you can, in the LDS Church, you can say all the things about Jesus, but until you denounce these and change your doctrine, until you denounce the Book of Mormon, till you denounce the temple, because there's nothing you learn in the temple that even comes close to the teachings of the Bible. That was the hammer coming down. The next day, the next Sunday, Lynn had quit going to church. I went there with Katie. We're supposed to sing this song. And the opening song in the LDS meeting was called "Praise to the Man." And when you listen to this, you think it's about Jesus, but it starts out praising to Joseph Smith. It says, "This is a song written for Joseph Smith." It says, "Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah, Jesus anointed a prophet and seer, blessed to open this last dispensation, kings will exhort him and nations revered." Now, this next verse, you think it's all about Jesus. "Great is his glory and endless his priesthood, and ever and ever the keys he will hold, faithful and true, he will enter his kingdom, crowned in the midst of the prophets of old." Those are the words about Joseph Smith. So we're singing there, we're standing, everybody singing. And I used to sing this with all gusto, you can imagine. And I realized I couldn't sing those songs. After hearing from God, after putting everything together, after understanding the Bible, who Christ is, who the real God is. But I was so embarrassed. I was going to mouth those words. And it was like, as soon as I started mouthing those words, it's like God put an imprint, a text message in my mouth. And he said to me, "Do not even mouth those words, for this song is an abomination before me. You shall sing praises to only one man, and that is the man Christ Jesus." Done. And at that point, I knew I was done. That's not in Lynn's book. It just said that I couldn't sing the song. But I did not want everybody to know that your life changes. You become a new creation in Christ. And now I tell people, I have a new song that I sing because I can't sing this song anymore. I will sing, "This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long." That's my new song. I will sing praises of Him, but never to a man. Thank you. Michael, you mentioned to us, and you mentioned a little bit, very briefly, I don't know if people even caught it, but, you know, your wife was already, uh, getting to meet the Lord. And then you mentioned to us that you were the last one, essentially. This revival started to break out, essentially, in your family. Can you take us through what that looked like for you after you had this moment? Because now you also have to come back home and you have to face these leaders in this whole situation after being known as the priest and all of these different things. What happened after now you come to this conclusion, "Whoa, something is really, really, really wrong?"

Well, I have to admit, I was weak. I was, I was, uh, not ready to go up to my bishop or Stake President and say, "Hey, I'm done. I'm out of here." After that experience that I had with God speaking to me and singing "Praise to the Man," which I couldn't sing, I went back to the temple. I'm sitting there in the temple. I said, "God, why am I here?" And the peace came over me like, "You will be removed soon. Glean everything you can from the temple." In other words, learn what is not really what I'm teaching, so you can explain this to other people later on. I basically pretended to be active in the church. People said, "Well, why don't you continue to be in church?" We had Christian friends we were picking up at that point because we started attending two churches. I would go to the LDS meeting, then I'd go to another church later in the afternoon. They said, "Well, just just stay in the LDS Church and have influence on the people there." I said, "I can't live a lie." And Lynn's going through the same experience. She's teaching at Brigham Young University. She would hear students that just loved her compassion and her teaching ability and her love of her students. She got to a point where she would hear students say, "Wow, I'm so glad I had your class. I'm so glad I came to BYU and met you. I just know the church is true." And that hit her like a brick when she realized her students didn't see Lynn, they were seeing the church because she worked for the LDS Church. Didn't see her as a great professor, Lynn, but as the LDS Professor Lynn. And I remember as we're progressing through the spring, she was saying, you know, she's not going to return. And there's a whole story behind that, you'll get later on how that happened. But I stayed active in the LDS Church. I still did that. I went to the temple, and I would start looking around. And I had to go to the Salt Lake Temple, and I would just look at information, say, "Now I know why I'm here. Wow, that's not Christian. Oh, that's not Christian. Oh, that's not Christian." I was gleaning the information God told me to get to realize that make sure anything you might try to convince somebody to go to the temple, you stand there as a gatekeeper and say, "No, you shouldn't go in there. It's, it's not of God. It's of man. It's man-made beliefs." And so basically, I did not approach anybody, and I was, I was not prepared yet to confront people. I was still processing a lot of information. When we decided to move from Utah, uh, that summer, we just packed up and moved. Nobody even knew what had happened.

To me, no, none of my leaders. They, we just moved. My son Matt had figured it out. His wife had figured it out. My daughter Katie had figured it out, who was still living with us at that time. Len figured it out in October of 2006, and I was figuring it out. Well, I figured it, I, I was done in January of 2007.

But, and when you say, "just to clarify," when you're saying "figured it out," is that they came to the knowledge of Jesus? Yeah, they, they became born again. They knew the L.D.S. church was not the true church. They knew Christ was in them, and they were living as a new creation in Christ.

What's interesting, all these years I looked for Jesus, and he was there all the time. And we went through this whole journey. It's like, like the people wandering in the wilderness, the Jewish nation wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. I was wandering in the wilderness for 30 years, and he was there all along, and I just didn't realize it. But he had his timing, and he had his purpose for this. Because, you know, so many times you can take evil to make good.

I remember I was still doing business in Utah. Actually, we wrote our church resignation letters on March 16th. I think of it now as John 3:16, uh, on the 16th of that year of 2007. I was not going to just send it to a local bishop or somebody I'd never met. I was doing business. I took these letters directly to Utah. It was, it was a thing I physically had to do. I'm getting stronger and stronger.

Okay, when, when we moved from Utah to Florida, God knew we were fragile because you've been through a lot over 30 years. And we, we had a great pastor that helped us and walked us through for like 5 years, and he was just a wonderful person. He was just teaching us, preparing us. Okay, now, when I took those letters back, I, I did not want to have the L.D.S. church to have any control. I didn't want to use my name. When they say, "We have 15 million people in the L.D.S. church," we wrote a letter of resignation. And I, it was something to me of physically taking it to the L.D.S. church office building. It was just a mindset that, you know, I, I want a break. I want to physically do this.

We were away from the L.D.S. church, and they tried to find this, tried to send home teachers to his people, you know, "We get to come to church." And he said, "No, we're done." I said, "I'm gonna get these letters in. I'm not going to take them to a local, local person. I'm going to take them in." So I physically went there. And again, when I left Utah, I immediately, soon as the day, the first day we were out of, I took my Mormon garments I had been wearing for 30 years off, put on, who knows what, and I put on a cross at that point. Okay? And I wear this cross daily. This is my new reminder. This is my new understanding who Christ is. Because in 30 years in the L.D.S. church, I never heard one sermon about the blood and the cross. But now I know the importance of the cross. "For the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who believe, it is the power of God." It is, it's a totally different thing.

So even when I went back to deliver those, I was still afraid. I wore my cross only on the inside of my shirt. And I remember I took these papers in there. I'm a new believer. I'm weak, but I'm a new believer. And I remember I said, "Here's my..." to the receptionist in this, you know, 30-story building or whatever, the L.D.S. headquarters of the world. And the lady said, "Well, we don't take those here." She said, "You have to give those to your local bishop." I said, "I don't know who he even is. I said, I moved from Utah to Florida. I want my name's removed." And she says, "Well, we won't take them." I said, "Well, now I was being a little bit strong. I said, I'm not leaving until somebody takes these letters from me." So I said, "Well, I'm either going to be arrested or what." But she said, "Go down the hallway, turn to the right, open up that door, and they'll know what to do." And there was, when I did that, opened up the door, the guy said, "Oh, some letters." There's a whole production line of people with letters. They, they were moving through. I said, "Can I have these stamped?" "Oh yeah, boom." "Here's a, here's a copy." "Boom, stamped." It was just like, wow. It's, it's, it's there. It's like they took them.

And then a few weeks later, I get a call from the bishop. And they said, "Well, you have to meet with me before we can do anything." I said, "Bishop, you got a few minutes on the phone?" Most people do not know as much as Lynn and I do because we lived it. And we lived it in the days when they taught a lot of things. After he said, "Well, you got to meet with me, then you have to meet with the state president to have him sign." I basically told him things he never knew. I explained things he never knew or understood. And after about 30 to 45 minutes on the phone, I said, "Do I still need to come in and talk to you?" He says, "No." "You think, you think the State president wants to talk to me?" He says, "No, we'll push this on through." So they had to approve the letters to send them back to Salt Lake to get our names removed. And our names were eventually removed. But, um, it's, it's a lot harder than, than it used to be.

Anyway, once I did that, then, you know, the scriptures became alive. When, when I promised my son that I would read the Bible, I also during that period of time, still active in the L.D.S. church, asked God to open up my mind. And what he did was like when Paul spoke of the leaders in Corinthians that could not see Jesus. He said, "Even when they read the law of Moses, they had a veil over their eyes, their mind, and their heart. They could not see who Christ was." And when I prayed to have that, you know, open up my eyes, God was implying to me, "You really want to know what my scriptures say?" Yeah. Everything that I read earlier, no effect. I would say Mormonism and Bible agrees 100% now after that prayer. When I was sincere in reading the scriptures, like when I was reading Luke 18, everything, chapters after chapters after chapters, just opened up like crazy. I mean, the Bible became alive.

You know, when in Corinth or in the Galatians, Chapter 2, when Paul is speaking to the Galatians, and he gives a warning, you know, "If I or even an angel, you know, brings back a different story, a different gospel, it's not, it's not correct." And I love in Galatians Chapter 2 where, where the law was a schoolmaster, as it says in King James version. And it says the schoolmaster was to bring us to Christ, to bring us to faith, because we cannot be saved under the law. We have to be saved under faith or under Christ. And once faith has come, there is no longer a need for a schoolmaster. For now we're under grace. For there is neither bond nor free, Jew nor Greek, nor male nor female, for we are all now one in Christ. And that this opens up everything. And then later on, it says at the end of Galatians Chapter 2, says, "I do not frustrate the grace of God. For if righteousness comes by the law, or the works of the law, then Christ died in vain." You can't have it both ways. You can't say I'm going to be saved by the law, going to the temple, or going to be saved by His grace. I mean, it's everything that He has done, nothing that I have done. My only works that I have to do is believe in Him whom He has sent.

And the scriptures just became alive with me. The Old Testament, the New Testament. That you can't deny who you are now. When I travel, I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I will speak His word. I will speak His, His love. I would never be angry with people. I want them to understand what it really is. I did not have the good news for 30 years. I did not have the cross or the blood. And I want some of the people, especially my L.D.S. friends, to know there's a better way than to being locked under the law. Yeah, there is two ways you can go to heaven. You can follow the law 100%, which we can't do. It's impossible. For the law was to bring us to Christ. Or two, you can believe in Jesus and let Him do the work for us. It's not a friend of sin, you know. We, we, we don't have a pass to sin, Paul states that. But we try, we do what we can. And when we make mistakes, He's there. And yeah, we make mistakes every day. But His grace is bestowed upon me through my faith in Him.

I remember one time when I spoke at a church, a high priest in, in, uh, Arizona. And a, a man with a white shirt and a suit came walking up to me after I, we spoke at another church. And I said, I looked at him. Says, "I bet you're a high priest in the L.D.S. church." I didn't have to say that. I said, "High priest? Wow, how did you know that?" "Oh, just, just a guess." And he says, "I don't agree a lot of things you said and all this." And I said, "That's fine. I said, this is the United States of America. You know, when Mormons have a right to believe whatever they want to believe, that's okay. This is the United States of America. But when you say you're Christians too, then, as it's stated in Jude, we must contend for the faith." What does that mean to be a Christian? What does the name of Jesus Christ mean to you? Is He a created being, or has He always been?

And I remember this priesthood leader, when he left, he says, "Well, I'll see you at the Great White Throne Judgment." And I just smiled back to him. Says, "I'm sorry, I won't be there if you're there. That's not a good sign." And then I went my direction. I said, "You need to go back and reread that again in the Romans or in, in the Revelation." But, but Jesus is everything. There's nothing we can add to it. When you go to the foot of the cross and you surrender, there's nothing you can add to what Jesus did. He took it all. He who was without sin became sin for us. He became the wrath of God on that cross.

In Mormonism, they teach the atonement happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the cross is this, a form of death. And if you read in John 18, when Peter gets excited and cuts off a soldier's ear, he states that. Peter, stop, stop. You know, he had prayed earlier in that verse about the cup, "May this cup pass from me." Mormons think the atonement happened there when he would bleed like drops of blood. But Jesus says to Peter, "Shall I not partake of the cup? Shall I not partake of the cup?" And when you partake of the cup, that means going to the cross. And we cannot even begin to understand what happened during that process. Jesus was not worried about dying, being sin-free, and becoming sin for us. What agony He had to go through, we cannot even begin to comprehend. And when He said, "It is finished," it was finished. All we needed was the resurrected, the resurrection. And as we all know, three days later, He was raised from the dead. He's as alive today as you and me.

And what's unique is that, you know, Mormons don't understand the concept of the Trinity. But the Trinity is love. It's always been. Jesus Christ is not a created being. The Trinity is co-equal, co-eternal, different responsibilities. For the scriptures tell us who raised Jesus from the dead. One place it says God raised Him from the dead. Another place says He was quickened by His Spirit. Then it also says Jesus said, "No man can take my life, life from me. I have the power to lay it down. I have the power to raise it up again." And only in the concept of the Eternal God do we have that. That when we speak of Jesus, we never degrade His name. He is the God of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And once you get that understanding, and once you go to the foot of the cross, there is nothing you can do but ask for His love and His grace, and He will give it to you. In two seconds, your life becomes changed. You become a new person, a new creation, or as King James, a new creature in Christ. Wow, I'm happy I did it. I'd do it all over again.

Michael, if you could, in a nutshell, compare your life as a Mormon and your life today as a born-again Christian, if you could put those very quickly side by side, what would that look like?

It's day and night. Um, you know, Jesus says, "Come, put your head on my shoulder, I will carry you." In Mormonism, you do the work. You are not guaranteed exaltation or even, well, exaltation. Everybody's guaranteed through the atonement and resurrection of Christ. We are saved to some level. But to be able to live in the presence of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it's something you have to work for, and you're always working. You're always after it. I remember being with a gentleman one time who was dying, who had a temple recommend all of his life, who was very active in the L.D.S. church. And I remember talking to him at the end, at the end, and he said, "I hope I've done enough." That is not the good news. The good news, knowing that it is finished. I think is what John 5:24, where Jesus says, "For whoever comes to me and believes in Him who sent me, has not past tense, has current sense or future, has eternal life, and will not die, but has risen from death to life, has been judged already." So you have it. You've been judged, and you've been given eternal life. In Mormonism, that's not guaranteed. You're just guaranteed of some, some kingdom, but not heaven as defined by Christianity. Big difference. And you're always working for it. You never have peace. You never have peace. In Christ, you always have peace of something I have to do for Him.

Michael, who is Jesus to you?

Ah, okay. He's everything. Okay. You, you can't understand Jesus until your mind is open to the scriptures. Um, and He can affect people many different ways. Some, some ways He, He can save people very, very quickly. My way, maybe it's because I'm an analytical person, that took a period of time. But He slowly walked me through, um, the process. I remember after I came out of the L.D.S. church, I was just watching TV, happened to run across an old video of, uh, Billy Graham speaking. And he was talking about the blood and the cross again. In 30 years, I had never heard anything like that. And I'm still learning. I'm still gathering information. And I was so touched by that. And that's when I realized, you know, as I mentioned earlier, you submit, and you can't add on. You cannot add on to what He did at the cross. He gave it all. And a lot of people, you know, just not His life, but, but becoming sin for us who did not deserve it, because we failed, you know, man sinned against God, and there's no way we could fix it. I mean, we were hopeless. Therefore, the only way God could fix it was the God to do it Himself. And that's where Jesus comes into play. So He was 100% man, but He's also 100% God. And He had feelings, and He could, He could be the final sacrifice. Adam and Eve sinned, you know, they tried to fix it themselves with fig leaves. That was temporarily. But it says, and God made coats of skin from them from animals. You go back and realize that these were innocent animals that was used to cover our sin, the sin that man made. And from that point on, we get into the point of, of understanding the sacrifice. And why did Jews do it? And how Jesus, you know, when He came to John to be baptized, it wasn't because He needed to forgive for His sins. I think He was, you know, fulfill all righteousness. I think at that point, He was becoming our high priest once and for all. He was becoming the perfect lamb to be slaughtered once and for all. For now, we have one high priest, period. And no other sacrifices, because all the sacrifices have been done. That's something, you know, having been lived about as a high priest, which I'm ashamed to even admit that. But as a high priest, I, I felt pride in that. I was a high priest, but I was never worthy to be a high priest. And you, when you come before Jesus, Jesus, and you surrender, it's going to change your life. It just has to, if you're sincere. But He is the way. He's pure love. He came to Earth to teach us the way we should live. And we're trying to do the best we can. But when we say it's because of what we do, no, it's what He has done and will continue to do for us. I mean, just by being there as hope, His Spirit to give us guidance, knowledge. Again, when I came out of the L.D.S. church, you know, I wore my cross, but I wore it under my shirt. Now I wear this so that anybody who sees me. And this is basically the way I dress anymore. That's, I always wear a black shirt, so it identifies as a cross. So I didn't dress this way on purpose. This is the way I've been living quite a few years now. I want people to see that I'm not ashamed of the Gospel. Jesus was not ashamed of me, so how can I be ashamed of Him? He came down from His perfect state and to do what He needed to do. And so, as, as a Christian now, when I go out, you know, I, I don't just boast, "Hey, I'm a Christian." I try to do it as my action. Because if they see my cross, they either saying, "Well, I'm either a rapper or I," and I don't rap. Uh, so I'm either a rapper or maybe be Christian. Okay. And again, Mormons do not like the cross. They, I mean, they're almost offended by the cross because we were always taught that the cross represented a dying Christ. That we represent a living cross. Well, my cross doesn't have, it's not a crucifix. It doesn't have Jesus on it, but it reminds me of what He did. Okay? And it reminds me constantly that He gave it all. He gave it all. And I don't have to be, you know, joined the church. I mean, it's okay to join the church. But anybody out there, if you have had bad experiences in a church, okay, get, get with us, Bible study group, start studying on your own. If you can find a church you feel comfortable with, great. But you do not find God in a church. God will find you and can bring you to a church. You may go to a church and hear words and be saved. That's fine too. But it's not where you have to be saved. You could be on top of a mountain hiking, hiking, and God can touch you. In fact, when I was in Utah, that's, was actually my favorite places to go was on the mountain. I felt closer to God there even than when I went to an L.D.S. temple, way before I even started to think about coming out. So, uh, it's just a presence that He has with, with me, in His glory, around me. So, but, uh, it's nothing you can do. It's everything He has done. Amen.

Michael, can you pray for those who are watching and, uh, are ready or saying, "I don't know what to do next. And there's something that's happening, but I don't know." Could you just pray for those who are watching?

Yeah, Father in Heaven, I'm so thankful for this opportunity. I pray that these words that I might speak will touch somebody. But always remember, you don't have to be perfect to come before God. All those years that I was in the L.D.S. church, we had to make ourselves as perfect as we could before we could enter into Your presence in a Mormon temple. You can never prepare yourself. You know, we, we are simple and flawed. And regardless of what sins you've committed, or speeding, or whatever you think is a sin in the eyes of God, and through the atonement of Christ, they can be removed from you. That, that thought process, they can be no more. For when you come into Christ, and God looks on you, He doesn't see you as a sinner. He sees His Son who atoned for your sins and have removed them, washed them away by His blood. So don't ever use an excuse that, "I've got to prep my life. I've got to do this right, do that right." Fall on your knees, privately, with a friend, whatever is directed, and call out His name and say, "Hey, I can't do it myself. I need help." And He, He will come. He will help you. It doesn't mean life will be easy. It can still be hard. You can still have trials and tribulations in this Earth because we live in a fallen world. But always know that Jesus is there, and He will help you. I know my own life, I felt like giving up at times when things were hard. And now that I've come into understanding who Jesus is, I just put that weight upon Jesus. I may not understand things, and things may not go as I plan, but I know in the last day, I will be raised and I will be glorified in His name, through His work, not mine. You've never done too many bad things that you can't be saved. You don't have to go through a list of picking this off, picking this up to say, "Hey, I believe." And if you slip back, pray again and try to improve your life, and it will be day and night. And His holy name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen. Michael, any last words for those who are watching your testimony right now?

I would like to say that anybody who's locked into a performance-based system or a legalistic system, terminology is the same, that it's okay to do good works. There's nothing wrong with it, but good works cannot save you. When you're asked to do this and this and this to be saved, and you got to give this money or that money, or you got to pay to get some kind of special cloth that's been blessed, and that your life, just, just get back to the word. And when you have any doubt, believe it. And get a version that you can read and understand. In the L.D.S. church, they just use the King James version, which is kind of hard to understand. Uh, we don't speak that same language that they did back in the 1600s. Get NIV, English, English Standard Version, or whatever you might have out there, New King James. Just, just read it. And if you have questions, find somebody you can talk with it about. But to my Mormon friends, to the people I've been with and love, just find the true Jesus. Go back to the Bible and start reading again and find out who He is. As it states in, I think it's Matthew 12:6. Remember in the Mormon conference, just ended, the greatest blessings that you can receive are through, through the temple, temple work, temple endowments, and all that stuff. But Jesus says, "One greater than the temple was here." There's no comparison. Okay? So if you're looking, looking for a building or an organization to save you, no, it's Jesus that will save you. And He is far greater than the temple. And His word is the power of God. And when you read it and study it, it becomes alive. As it states, it's sharper than a two-edged sword. It might cut me. I, I got beat up by the Bible, taking one concept, destroying that concept, giving me a new one. Then say, "Wow, this is who you really are." And He is a great God. He's a big God. He's a loving God. He's not a mean God. He wants what's best for us. Just turn to His word and turn to His Son, and everything will work out.

[Music]