Bridge of Reason

  The young woman was having a crisis of faith. She sounded so confused as she asked, ‘If all this is true why aren’t we having continuous mountaintop experiences?’ The short answer, of course, is because the work is in the valley. I hope I helped her as I unpacked the answer and tried to get her to understand, ‘in the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world.’ (John 16:33) Refusing Reality An awful lot of Christians today are being sold the idea struggles and suffering shouldn’t be the everyday experience of the believer. I heard one Christian leader declare confidently that he was protected from disease because of his faith and status in Christ . He could walk without fear or apprehension through a world struck by pandemic. Another, even while friends and loved ones are suffering around him, refuses to acknowledge sickness and suffering in a world where grace has been poured out. If we can just muster enough faith we can create our own heal...

‘We believe in the more than imperial status of human beings. We believe that our spirits are the offspring of Deity, and we hold that when Christ said to His apostles, ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as you Father which is in heaven is perfect,’ He was not talking of a merely idealistic yet impossible achievement; but that on the contrary He meant that it was possible for men to advance until they shall become like unto the Gods in their powers and in their attainments, through righteousness.’ [1] The Bible nowhere speaks of ‘perfect’ human beings progressing to become Gods, yet Mormonism teaches that for their members to enter the celestial kingdom, and potentially achieve Godhood, they must be perfect in this life. The Mormon needs to hear what the Bible says about how a person can be forgiven and seen as righteous by Heavenly Father. Let us consider some verses that we could share with Mormon who is striving to be perfect. Righteous Righteousness is described as the quality ...

  Mormonism and Perfectionism ‘Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.’ (The Book of Mormon - Moroni 10:32) As a church we are currently going through the Book of Isaiah. After reading Isaiah 25 together, which speaks of God’s judgement against wickedness and the future joy of the believers, we discussed the question: What do we most look forward to God changing in our world? Many answers were concerned with God putting an end to things like war, starvation, child trafficking, and all kinds of evil in our world. Don’t we all long for such things? In engaging people with the gospel, you sometimes hear the objection: ‘If there is a God, why doesn’t ...