571. Mormon Lies & Manipulation on Allie Beth Stuckey

Summary

Apologia Radio Ep. 571: Mormon Lies & Manipulation on Allie Beth Stuckey (May 15, 2026)

Host: Jeff Durbin (with Pastor Luke and guest apologist Aaron Shafawala)
Main Theme: A critical analysis of "young Mormon apologists" (especially Jacob Hansen) and their public handling of LDS history and doctrine, focusing on recent misrepresentations during appearances such as on Allie Beth Stuckey’s show and in debates with Christian apologists.

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Episode Overview

In this hard-hitting and theologically driven episode, Jeff Durbin and Pastor Luke (with guest Aaron Shafawala) conduct a detailed critique of rhetorical and doctrinal shifts among a new wave of internet-savvy Mormon apologists (highlighting Jacob Hansen). Using recent examples—including audio from LDS convert David Alexander and discussion of Jacob’s appearance on Allie Beth Stuckey—Durbin and Shafawala argue that these apologists often reinterpret or downplay classic Mormon doctrine, misrepresent both LDS and Christian teachings, and employ misleading apologetic tactics. The episode also explores how this approach harms both young Mormons seeking answers and broader public dialogues about religious truth.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Concerns About New Mormon Apologetics

• Shifting Influence: According to Aaron Shafawala, many young LDS men now take their cues not from apostles or BYU professors but from YouTube apologists influenced by thinkers like Blake Osler (13:08).
  • Quote (Aaron): “Their influences have shifted from LDS apostles and prophets, from even BYU professors, and to the YouTubers… They’re trying to recreate or reconstruct… Mormonism that tries to rescue young Latter Day Saints from having to believe what their own prophets and apostles have taught.” (13:08)
• Pattern of Deception: Durbin alleges a demonstrable pattern in which these apologists misrepresent both the history and teachings of their own church for public consumption (10:24+).

2. Case Study: Jacob Hansen on Allie Beth Stuckey

• David Alexander’s Open Letter: LDS convert David Alexander objects to Jacob Hansen’s soft-pedaling of the LDS doctrine of total apostasy. Alexander argues Hansen misstates what LDS scripture and history actually teach—that all other churches had become "an abomination" prior to Joseph Smith (18:31–25:30).
  • Quote (David Alexander, 23:11): “I’m gobsmacked that you could say this and actually believe this. It’s so contrary to what Jesus Christ specifically told Joseph Smith.”
• False Representation of Apostasy: Hansen claims that “sincere believers” existed continually post-apostasy, which not only contradicts official LDS doctrine and Joseph Smith’s First Vision but is called out as inaccurate by both Alexander and Durbin (20:44-24:06, 25:30).
  • Quote (Jeff, 25:30): “It’s nice to hear from a Mormon himself—‘What are you talking about, Jacob? This is not the faith that I came into.’”

3. What Does Traditional Mormonism Actually Teach?

• Loss of Authority, Not Just Structure: LDS tradition teaches a total loss of priesthood authority, essential ordinances, and valid Christian faith outside its restored church—meaning those in apostasy lack the Holy Spirit, remission of sins, and eternal life (26:58, Aaron).
  • Quote (Aaron): “What do you call somebody who lacks eternal life, remission of sins, [and] the gift of the Holy Ghost? You don’t call them a Christian.” (26:58)

4. Ethical Issues in Apologetics

• Quoting Out of Context / “Chestnut” Tactics: Hansen’s repeated use of references to Michael Heiser (biblical scholar) is cited as an example of proof-texting Christian sources out of context to create an illusory academic backing for LDS doctrines (40:24-44:44).
  • Quote (Aaron): “Is it ethical to say you agree with someone when there’s a fundamental, substantial disagreement? ...It’s straightforwardly dishonest. It’s not good for interfaith dialogue, it’s not good for clarity. It’s the spirit of deception.” (44:44)
  • Quote (Jeff): “You are lying about Michael Heiser. You know you’re lying.” (43:04)

5. Misuse of Theosis / Early Christian Doctrine

• Theosis vs. Exaltation: Hansen analogizes LDS “exaltation” (becoming gods) with Christian theosis. Durbin and James White challenge this as a total theological category error; the historic theosis does not mean becoming a god by nature (79:06-80:34).
  • Quote (Pastor James): “You think theosis is the same as exaltation?... It was a completely different thing.” (79:09)
  • Quote (Jeff): “You know that theosis is not what the fathers were talking about in terms of exaltation. You know it and you use it again.” (81:39)

6. Dodging Core Teachings and Responsibility

• On God’s Nature/Exaltation: Pressed to affirm historic LDS teaching that the Father was once a man and became God, Hansen reframes or evades (58:30), aligning more with fringe LDS philosophies (Oslerian view) than with classic doctrine.
  • Aaron: “He’s kind of putting at the foreground this general idea that the Father has always been God, but he’s keeping in the background…that the Father took a break from the fullness of exaltation…not being forthright about all his cards.” (58:49)
• Disregarding Prophets: Young LDS apologists assert they don’t need to accept all teachings of prophets/apostles, labeling these as "fallible." Durbin and Aaron point out this undermines the foundational claim of LDS “restoration” (73:07–76:57).
  • Aaron: “If Mormon apologists don’t trust their prophets, then why should we?” (76:57)

7. Mormons Calling Out Revisionism

• Discussion of internal LDS forums (audio clips, 64:06–66:26) reveals practicing Mormons themselves acknowledge that the infinite regress of gods (“as man is, God once was…”) has always been mainstream LDS belief. Attempts to hedge or obscure this, especially when talking to outsiders, are noted as deliberate obfuscation.
  • Unknown Mormon Participant: “If you tell our critics ‘infinite regress is some fringe thing,’ they’re going to rightfully say, ‘You’re wrong.’” (65:38)

8. Frustration and the Call for Integrity

• Past vs. Present Dialogue: Durbin laments that honest, forthright dialogue with traditional LDS believers has given way to evasive, revisionist apologetics—making engagement increasingly “like nailing Jello to the wall” (70:03–73:07).
  • Quote (Jeff): “These Mormon apologists are sharp men…They know what their church teaches. But, misdirection…Don’t look at this—look at this other thing I’m showing you.” (70:03)
• Debate Standards: Durbin and Luke remark that unless LDS apologists engage honestly and refrain from repeated misrepresentation, meaningful debate will not occur (36:20–38:04).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “They’re not even utilizing the best intellectual defenses of their own intellectual community. They’re really just going for clicks. This is a YouTube demagogue sort of middle school cafeteria apologetic scene.”
  —Aaron Shafawala (83:09)
• “I want to debate a Mormon who believes Mormonism. I want to debate a Mormon that stands on the foundation of Mormon prophets and apostles…”
  —Jeff Durbin (36:20)
• “You are lying about Michael Heiser. You know you’re lying because you’ve seen the refutation.”
  —Jeff Durbin (43:04)
• “If Mormon apologists don’t trust their prophets, then why should we?”
  —Aaron Shafawala (76:57)
• “I miss those conversations where you could talk to Latter Day Saints and they just said, yes, that’s what I believe…”
  —Jeff Durbin (70:03)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 13:08: Aaron explains the shift from apostolic/professional LDS influence to YouTube personalities in LDS apologetics.
• 18:31–25:30: David Alexander, LDS convert, rebuts Jacob Hansen’s restatement of LDS apostasy.
• 26:58: Aaron describes how LDS doctrine actually views non-Mormon Christians post-apostasy.
• 40:24–44:44: Detailed discussion of Jacob Hansen’s abuse of Michael Heiser’s work.
• 56:53–62:24: Discussion on LDS views of the nature of God, infinite regress, and non-transparency in debate settings.
• 64:06–69:50: LDS insiders themselves confront revisionism and the culture of hedging teachings before outsiders.
• 73:07–76:57: The problem of dismissing prophetic teaching as “fallible” and its undermining of the restoration claim.
• 82:46–85:01: Aaron critiques the intellectual depth and motivations of current YouTube-driven Mormon apologists.
• 87:45: Resources for studying Mormonism (MRM.org and Godlovesmormons.com).

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Resources & Recommendations

• Mormonism Research Ministry: mrm.org
• God Loves Mormons: godlovesmormons.com (credited by Aaron as the best-entry level, accurate video resource)
• Past Apologia content: ApologiaStudios.com (including previous episodes on Mormonism and debates)

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Summary Tone & Style

Throughout the episode, the hosts’ tone is earnest, confrontational, and exasperated by what they view as theological sleight of hand. They repeatedly call for intellectual and ethical honesty—in both interfaith dialogue and within LDS circles. They encourage Mormons and Christians alike to evaluate claims by going to original sources, and emphasize loving but uncompromising engagement in pursuit of truth.

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This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the evolving landscape of Mormon-Christian apologetics, the boundaries of doctrinal honesty, and the difficulties faced in public religious debate in a viral-media age.

Transcript

[Dominion Wealth Representative]

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[Jeff Durbin]

Non Rockabotus must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it. Are you gonna bark all day, little doggy, or are you gonna bite? Delusional. Yeah, delusional is okay in your worldview, I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being so. You calling me delusional Using your worldview is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt. She hung up on me. Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

[Pastor Luke]

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world to make buddies, not to make corrosives.

[Jeff Durbin]

Right.

[Pastor Luke]

Don't go into the world, make homies. Right. Disciples.

[Jeff Durbin]

I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, Pastor.

[Aaron Shafawala]

When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

[Jeff Durbin]

Take an amazing journey to a place that will blow your mind and move your heart so you will never be the same again. To you it was shown that you might know that the Lord is God. There is no other besides Him. Know therefore today and lay it to your heart that the Lord is God. In heaven above and on the earth beneath. There is no other. That's Deuteronomy, chapter 4, 35 and 39. What's up? Everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Gospel heard around the world. This is Apology Radio. I'm. I'm gonna say Luke the Bear. I'm. I'm the ninja. That's Luke the bear right there. Yeah. And his mic is off right there. So we have check.

[Pastor Luke]

There you go.

[Jeff Durbin]

Good, good to go. There's I'm the ninja. And you can get more@apologia studios.com a p o l o g I a studios.com go there. You get all the past episodes of Apologia Radio. Shiologians, cultish, provoked. Everything's there also. You can go there and two things. One, sign up for all access. When you do, you partner with us in this ministry and you get all kinds of additional content. The academies, the full episodes of Collision, the after shows, the ask me anything. So much more is coming as well. We're upgrading everything at the studio. We're doing all new things. We're very excited. I'm going tell you about that in a second here, but go to All Access. Be a part of this ministry with us. All the people all around the world that are hearing the gospel, that are being blessed by the teaching. Coming to Christ is made possible because of believers just like you who are watching the show, benefiting from it and all of the stuff at Apologia Studios and are a part of this ministry with us through All Access and so join with us. Also. Go and sign up for your free Bonson U account. Top tier theological education from one of the greatest in church history, Dr. Greg Bonson. Thank thanks to the Bonson family for delivering to us all of Dr. Bonson's lectures, his seminary classes, college classes, everything. His life's work is right there at Apologia Studios at Bonson U. So top tier theological education, literally college classes, seminary courses if you want to learn how to defend your faith, the history of the church, you want to learn how to read the Bible. If you want to study books of the Bible, the debates of Dr. Greg Bonson, so many great ones all there at Bonson U. If you don't have an account, you need to get one as soon as you can. You are missing, missing out. Before we get into the show today, very important show today, exposing, exposing some of the patterns of lies, misrepresentation and deception from these young Mormon apologists. We're going to be doing that today. I want to point everyone to what we're going to put as a link underneath this show. ApologiaStudios.com give right now we are in the Preliminary stages of giving you something completely new with Apologia Studios. So we started in 2015. Apologia Studios apology Radio is going to go on much longer than that. Apologia Studios 2015 we started at zero, nothing. We didn't have any money really to speak of at all. We started the studio because we wanted to be able to produce content on a regular basis that would communicate the gospel and help people to know Jesus. That was the ultimate goal. And so everything you've been seeing really for the last decade or so has been really, I mean talking about grassroots and starting from nothing and you know, slow getting to where we can get to produce as much content as we can to bless the church and to let people know about Jesus so they can come into a saving relationship with him. We're in, in, in in awe of God truly. I mean so many hundreds of millions of views and engagements over the years across platforms. So many stories of people coming to Christ. Like for example, we just recently had a story of a, of a, a latter day Saint born and raised and came to Christ as a result of watching our content and as, as a result of that led somebody else in their family to Christ and this huge family with like eight children was eight children or something like that or come to Christ. And we get stuff like that all the time. Not just from Mormonism but the watchtower atheists coming to Christ. We've gotten some amazing stories of people who are in persecuted countries, countries where Christianity is persecuted, where it's not really even legal to be a Christian, who got their discipleship through Apologia Studios because they, you know, can't be Christian out in public without being in danger. And so just so many stories, so many tens of millions of children saved from death via Apologia Studios and end abortion now literally from death or alive today because of this ministry. It's just been humbling and amazing and we're thankful to God to be a part of something like this. Well, we're doing something brand new now. We are upgrading everything we're doing new, new programs, new engagements, much more actual conflict driven media in terms of us defending the Christian worldview against others. We the apps are essentially done but we have to release them and fix some bugs that were in them. I know some of you guys have been waiting. Thank you so much for your patience. 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We're so excited, honestly, about the opportunity to have a higher level of engagement, to reach more people with the gospel and to give you some unique programs that I think will really, really, really bless you in your walk with the Lord and give you encouragement. And so. So that's all going on. ApologiaStudios.com give go there, help us to make that goal as quickly as we can so we can get to work and get you some exciting and all new things. And so. All right, we're going to get into it today. This is important. So next week, Pastor James is away right now on a mission. When he comes back, he's going to join us on Apologia Radio and we're going to engage with the debate that Pastor James had with Jacob Hansen, talk about some of the same stuff we're talking about today, but demonstrate that these young Mormon apologists don't seem to understand their own faith. And they don't understand, understand the beliefs that they're criticizing. They don't even read up on it and they're proud of that fact. They don't even read up on the things that they're actually publicly critiqu. And so we're going to engage with that. But today, today we are going to just sort of in broad strokes, demonstrate that these young Mormon apologists will engage in misrepresentation, manipulation of facts, deception in terms of knowing what their church truly teaches and then saying something else for the public consumption. I believe that there's a pattern. You see a pattern, a demonstrable pattern with these young Mormon apologists where they will engage in some high level sophistry, they will misrepresent the teachings of their own church. They will dumb down the understood teachings of the Mormon Church. For, you know, the longest time period, Mormons are listening to Jacob Hansen and they're scratching their heads going, excuse me, what are you saying? We believe. And so I think it's important. Here's why, here's why. And I'm going to bring in one of my very favorite people in the world, honestly, in this area, in a moment, Aaron Shafawala. And it's important for this reason. When I was recently at the Mormon Easter pageant just a couple of not many weeks ago, one of the things that kept happening is these young Mormons, teenagers and young adults, were coming to me and they were saying, hey, I've listened to you. You challenged my faith, you've made me think a lot. And I'm thankful I listen to you all the which was a blessing to hear that God is using it in that way. I'm so thankful for that. But one of the things that was also very, very clear to me is that these young Mormons are going to men like Jacob Hansen to get their apologetics to understand how to defend their own beliefs. And so I want to do this for their benefit. Now, obviously, I want these young Mormons to know Jesus, but I also want these young Mormons to see that Jacob Hansen and others like him are lying about the history of their church, lying about the church's beliefs. They're engaging in public deception. And this, I believe, is abusive to these young Mormons. Do I want them to know Jesus? Yes. Are they on a different side of this issue than me? Of course. But this is a lack of integrity. This is a true lack of integrity. And I'm going to demonstrate that by way of, at the beginning of this, at least one Mormon convert that he had an open letter to Jacob Hanson with regard to Jacob Hanson's recent appearance on Ali Beth Stuckey, a friend of Ours, Ali Beth Stuckey Show. So before we get into that, I want to bring in someone that I have great, great respect for. I learned so much from him on a regular basis. I'm so thankful for him. Aaron, thank you for joining us on Apology Radio, brother.

[Aaron Shafawala]

It's good to be with you.

[Jeff Durbin]

Yeah, Jeff. Yeah. And your scene and your scenery looks so much better than ours right now. And yeah, we, we could, we could not do what you're doing right now in Arizona. No. We would be melting, be covered in sweat, man.

[Pastor Luke]

Be gross.

[Jeff Durbin]

Yeah. So, okay, before we launch into it, Aaron, I said a lot of things there. How do you feel about what I said? Do you agree? How do you, how are you feeling about that? Because that's just my view of the landscape right now.

[Aaron Shafawala]

Well, we do Thursday night evangelism typically either downtown Provo, sometimes with apology of Utah church plan up here in South Jordan, Utah. And we are often by another corner next to the BYU campus where we've done Thursday night evangelism quite some time with BYU students. And increasingly we've been running into young men who are very interested in apologetics but have shifted. Their influences have shifted from LDS apostles and prophets, from even BYU professors and to the BYU, sorry, to the YouTubers. And a lot of these young men were enamored with, with an LDS author named Blake Osler, who has been extremely influential on this new generation of young LDs apologetic men like Jacob Hansen. And Jacob Hansen is very overt about that. And so we've done it at Mormonism Research Ministry, mrm.org We've done essentially an expose on Blake Osler and all the different ways where he's taken issue with the teachings of his own prophets and apostles, showing that LDS apologists like Jacob Hansen really are trying to recreate or reconstruct the synthetic view of Mormonism that tries to essentially rescue young Latter Day Saints from having to believe what their own prophets and apostles have taught.

[Jeff Durbin]

Put much better than I put it there, Aaron. I think that's, that's a, that's a great way to put it. So I want to just leap into it because we have a lot to go through here today. Aaron, you feel free at any moment to stop me and say, I'd like to say something about that. I'll put a stop to it. But let's, let's get into it this way. So after Dr. James White had a debate with Jacob Hansen, on is the God of Calvinism morally reprehensible? Jacob went on program with Ali Beth Stuckey. Now you guys can feel free to watch that whole broadcast. And I think it's about an hour and a half or two hours long now. I listened to it, all right? I listened to it, and the whole way through, I kept thinking, that's not true. That's not true. And I just was. I was. I was so wishing that Ali had. Had they had the opportunity to speak to someone like you, Aaron, or myself or James to say, let me prepare you for what Jacob is going to engage in. Because the. The show opened talking about the apostasy. And the answers that Jacob Hansen gave for the apostasy to me were shocking. They were shocking. I was truly blown away that Jacob was publicly making the comments that he was, as a young Mormon apologist about the apostasy itself. I thought that Ali gave a better description of what Mormonism teaches about the apostasy than Jacob was. I thought Jacob was engaging in some serious manipulation and deception because he knows the truth. And so I thought to myself, I can't be the only one thinking this. And it's not just that I'm the Christian apologist, right? I kept thinking, there's got to be Mormons that I've known for many, many years who would hear this and go, what are you talking about, Jacob? And sure enough, I listened to it. And then I go to get an airplane trip to do some stuff for an abortion now in Georgia, quick turnaround trip. And I pull up my. My YouTube just to download some stuff to listen to and study while I was on the plane for about three or four hours. And then sure enough, I see a video open letter to Jacob Hansen by none other than David Alexander. Now, David Alexander is someone that we've done some shows on before, some programs of on. And David Alexander, not many years ago, was not Latter Day Saint, and he converts to Mormonism. And so he has a pretty popular and prominent channel for Latter Day Saints. And this open letter video from David Alexander to Jacob Hansen was on the exact issue that I was thinking when Ali Beth Stuckey's show starts off on the issue of the apostasy. So here's what I'm going to do. All right? I'm not going to play from here Ali Beth Stuckey's clip and then interact with it with what David says. I'm going to let you hear David himself and his own program interactive with the moment that Jacob Hansen talks about the apostasy on Ali Beth Stuckey's show David Alexander Convert to Mormonism only a couple of years now, popular channel. He was like the darling of the Mormon podcast and everything for some period of time because he was allegedly a pastor and all this stuff and turns out he was actually a cultist and there's a long history there. So yeah, the story about him and converting to Mormonism, it's fiction. And so we've, we've detailed that and, and given the data on that. But, but I want to listen this, this program right here from David Alexander. This first one, he's done a number of them since, is 45 minutes long. And it's essentially David Alexander giving as, as gently as he can, a theological lashing to Jacob Hansen for 45 minutes saying this is not what we believe. You are not being honest with people and all the rest. But I'm going to let you listen to David Alexander go through this clip from Ali Beth Stuckey show. So here we go from the beginning

[David Alexander]

where Jacob Hansen frames his understanding of the restoration and the apostasy and the history of the church. After the apostle, the church and the churches, of course, after the Reformation there was much splintering. The history of the churches, so called after the apostasy. Listen to how, how he frames this. Okay. How he lays the foundation for how he wants non Latter Day Saint Christians to understand the restoration and the apostasy. Listen to this. Maybe I'm the only one that's troubled, but I was very troubled by this. Okay, here we go.

[Interviewer]

And so I want to hear from you because you're still an adherent to LDS beliefs and I thought that you'd be a really good advoc for what you believe. So I just have some questions for you and I want to go all the way back, if that's okay, to like some history. How did the LDS Church originate?

[Jacob Hansen]

So the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints originated in the 1820s and 30s. It was officially was founded in 1830 in New York by Joseph Smith, who through a series of sort of miraculous events that he went through, brought about what we believe is a restoration of the original ecclesiastical sort of structure of Jesus Christ Church on the earth. And so that's kind of.

[David Alexander]

See, this brought about the restoration of the original ecclesiastical structure.

[Dominion Wealth Representative]

What?

[David Alexander]

Okay, let's continue.

[Jacob Hansen]

Where, I mean, it's a very long story. Yeah, but that is essentially where, where the church came from.

[Interviewer]

He was in the woods in upstate New York and he claimed to have been met by God himself and told that the church, all of the churches for 1800 years had been apostate. He. He says that he prayed to God, what church should I join? And that God said, look, all the churches have become apostate. They're not teaching what they need to teach. And revealed to him through golden tablets that he found. And the angel Moroni led him to that. This is the new revelation from God. And is that correct?

[Jacob Hansen]

In.

[Jeff Durbin]

In.

[Jacob Hansen]

In a. In a sense. So. So I would say that to. To kind of give the. Joseph Smith was around the age of 14. He was trying to decide which church he should join. And so he's looking. And like many of us today, you see various denominations and infighting and things like that. And so he was confused about it. And so what he did is he went and read in the Bible the Epistle of James, which says, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally and abradeth not. And so what Joseph did was he went and he prayed in a grove of trees. And what we believe is that he had a theophany, a vision of the Lord the Father and the Son appeared to him. And they essentially told him that the original church of Jesus Christ was not in its fullness on the earth. Okay. Which means

[David Alexander]

that is not what Jesus said to Joseph, that the original church of Jesus Christ is not in its fullness on the earth. That's a real misrepresentation of what Jesus Christ said to Joseph Smith, and that's a big deal. Actually, Ali Stuckey's representation of what Joseph Smith said, of what was said to Joseph Smith is actually way closer to the truth than what Jacob Hansen says here. As far as I can see.

[Jacob Hansen]

And the way that I would understand that, and the way that Latter Day Saints understand that is.

[David Alexander]

See, he doesn't just claim this is his own personal take. This is the way the Latter Day Saint church understands it. Listen to what he says here.

[Jacob Hansen]

The belief that there were no believers between the time of Jesus Christ and 1820. Right.

[David Alexander]

Okay. I'm sure he means not just the time of Jesus Christ, but from the apostasy till 1820.

[Jacob Hansen]

I did an entire debate on this with Joe Heschmeyer recently. And it's the idea that the fullness of the ecclesiastical structure of Christ's church

[David Alexander]

was not on the earth, the fullness of the ecclesiastical structure of Christ Church was not on the earth. That that's what stopped just the fullness of the ecclesiastical structure.

[Jacob Hansen]

But we do believe that there has always been, since the time of Jesus, sincere believers in Jesus Christ. So when we talk about the church, I think it's important that we distinguish between the church as a body of sincere believers, which we believe has had a continual existence.

[David Alexander]

Okay, this is what he's saying. We believe, even after the apostasy, that the church, which is a body of sincere believers, has had a continual existence since. See? Apostasy. And I'm like, what? What? I don't get it, Jacob. I'm really puzzled. I'm gobsmacked that you could say this and actually believe this. It's so contrary to what Jesus Christ specifically told Joseph Smith. And as far as I can see, it's completely contrary to what the church actually teaches. Okay, now again, I might be completely wrong.

[Dominion Wealth Representative]

Wrong.

[David Alexander]

Okay, I might be completely wrong. If so, correct me. But let's listen to the rest of this.

[Jacob Hansen]

And the institution which we believe is necessary to govern those believers, the fullness of the institutional church, and that is what we believe was. Was lost.

[David Alexander]

So what we believe was lost was the fullness of the institutional church, the fullness of the ecclesiastical structure. But the church as a body of sincere believers continued to exist from the time of the apostasy until 1820, when Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith and told Joseph Smith, I'm trying to remember this just from memory. Join none of them. For all of their professors are corrupt. In vain do they worship me teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. All they have are forms of godliness that deny the power thereof. Okay? All of their professors are corrupt. This is what Jesus said to Joseph Smith. Okay? So to me, Ali Beth Stuckey, what she described that then Jacob has basically tried to explain away. It seems what she described is actually way closer to what the church teaches and what I believe than what Jacob Hansen seems to be saying here. I'm just very troubled and puzzled by this. So Jacob Hansen, you know, thoughtful faith. Be thoughtful enough to explain yourself. I'm mystified, I'm puzzled, and I'm troubled. Okay? So let's put this away.

[Jeff Durbin]

And there you go. So obviously, it's one thing to hear it from me, from us, from a Christian apologist, a Christian pastor, that this is troubling. Jacob doesn't seem to know his own own religion, and he's propagating something that is just not in accordance with the facts. And we can go on and on and on from Mormon prophets and apostles much higher ranked than Jacob Hansen that have been very clear on the issue of the apostasy and whether or not there was a body of true believers on the earth. And so it's just nice to hear. So first of all, I know that we've done some stuff. Exposing David Alexander needed to be done, done, but I at least need to respect the man for his integrity as a Latter Day Saint. You're a man of integrity here, David, for doing the programs you've done and explaining as a Mormon the difficulties you're having with accepting the kind of misrepresentation that Jacob Hansen is selling publicly. And so there, there it is from, from a Mormon himself. And he's not the only one who are listening to Jacob Hansen saying, excuse me, this is not the faith that I came into. This is not what. This is not what we teach. And so there you go. There you go, David. And David Alexander's channel has a number of videos on this right now. So, Aaron, I'd love to hear your commentary. Now, listening to that, what would, what would you engage with as you, as you do this?

[Aaron Shafawala]

Well, one of the interesting questions that comes up when evangelicals have discussions with Latter Day Saints is whether Mormonism is Christian or whether Mormons are Christian. And I think what one way to frame this great apostasy issue is why are Latter Day Saints considering us Christians? They don't believe that. Well, they believe that our creeds are an abomination that are, well, Joseph Smith was told by God, supposedly our creeds are an abomination. Professors are corrupt. Our churches are wrong. Mormonism goes on to teach that our churches are downstream from the great apostasy. We lack proper authority. We don't have a valid baptism. We don't have eternal life life. We do not have the gift or the seal or the anointing of the Holy Ghost. We, we don't have full remission of sins. So what do you, what do you call somebody who lacks eternal life, lacks remission of sins, lacks the gift of the Holy Ghost, and is an apostasy? Well, you don't call them a Christian right. Mormonism has essentially, while they will superficially and semantically try to enjoy this superficial category of Christianity substantially, it's describing us in terms that in any other context we would recognize as non Christian in the most theological sense that most matters. One other way to approach this is a maximalist, moderate, minimalist definition. In a, in a maximalist definition of the great apostasy, you have a loss of priesthood authority. You have a loss of moral status and a loss, loss of essentially true doctrine. And a maximalist traditional LDS doctrine of the great apostasy claims that we not only lost the fullness of the ecclesiastical structure. But we also came to have abominable creeds. We lost the proper authority to baptize. And we. The way that LDS history describes the great apostasy, it comes with a severe moral degradation. It's very severe. So Mormons have tried to. To moderate that max. That strong definition of great apostasy to maybe something like, well, maybe the Christians that went into apostasy were just having a logistical problem with trying to maintain proper ordination. Maybe they were moral people, but they. They came to have false doctrine and false priesthood authority. What Jacob's trying to do is he's trying to represent the great apostasy in a minimalist fashion that is less representative of his traditional and more representative of a kind of synthetic reconstruction, so that it's more easily debatable, maybe. But what he's not doing is he's not. Jacob is not. I'll say this and I'll paint it back to you. Note that Jacob Hansen doesn't have a habit of quoting his own prophets and apostles.

[Jeff Durbin]

Yes.

[Aaron Shafawala]

Nor his apostolic or prophetic tradition in order to buttress his point. He's not leaning into the treasure chest of the LDs claims of the prophets and apostles to make his point. He's really circumventing his entire prophetic and apostolic tradition and trying to give you a kind of apologetic reconstruction of things that is not representative of the mainstream tradition.

[Jeff Durbin]

That's right.

[Pastor Luke]

Luke probably should go to break here in a minute, but Jacob looks like Jacob's in the chat, so I don't know if you saw that.

[Jeff Durbin]

Hey, Jacob, if you are, welcome to the chat. So, yeah, we're going to deal with a little bit more here, guys. Stay with us because we're going to go into some more examples of things that Jacob has actually been corrected on that he continues to use and to bring up. And I'm talking about his abuse, and I mean outright, downright abuse of Michael Heiser. Uh, this has been demonstrated to him before. He continues to use it. He, when he spreads this, he is lying. And he knows he's lying because he's seen the refutation. He knows that he is lying about Michael Heiser and Michael Heiser's the parallel. The parallel between Mormon theology about becoming a God in exaltation with Michael Heiser's views. He knows he still continues to spread this and he just recently did it on Ali Balsaki's show. So, guys, stay with us. Do all the things that YouTube likes, the likes, the shares and the subscribes. YouTube is, is. Has really changed things now. So if you want people to see this in their feed so they can also engage with with this if you would participate with us in that. And so quick commercial break. We're going to come right back. More with Aaron and Pastor Luke and engaging with the the lies misrepresentation of Jacob Hansen, another Mormon apologist. We are back. This episode's brought to you by ion [e-mail] Go and check out the health benefits, the wellness benefits and longevity benefits of NAD treatments. NAD is nicknamed the fountain of youth for a reason. Reason you have an abundance of this in your system when you're young. As you get older, it drops off. And now we found a way to get NAD into our systems. They do it through IV treatments, but they're very expensive and it's also extremely painful and difficult. However, Ion Layer found a way to get a high dose of NAD into your system through a medical patch you wear on your arm. You wear it for about 14 hours. You get a high dose of NAD treatment into your system and, and no pain at all. And it is a fraction of the cost of what you would pay for an IV treatment. In the coupon code, type in Apologia in all caps. They're going to hook you up with a great discount for an already amazingly cost effective product. And they bless Apologia studios and help us to stay on the air and do all these programs with you. Don't forget. Also, Ion Layer has added a glutathione patch as well. Well, glutathione, the master antioxidant. Go check out the health benefits of glutathione. I'm doing this stuff anyways. It's blessed my life in tremendous ways. And so if you want to focus on your health, wellness and longevity, nothing better in my mind than ionlayer.com for your NAD and Glutathione treatments. Ionlayer.com don't forget to put Apologia in all caps in the coupon code. Welcome back everybody. A very special episode of Apologia Radio. Again, stay tuned. Next week we're going to have Pastor James on review some of the debate he had with Jacob Hansen and demonstrate that Jacob Hansen needs to do his homework. He does not know the very beliefs of the people that he is attempting to critique. And so stay tuned for that next week. Guys, we have a lot to do here. As Pastor Luke, you wanted to say something?

[Pastor Luke]

Yeah, I'll just, I'm monitoring the chat here and we, you know, we keep getting hit up from the. I call Them, the. The modern day Night Night's Day Night crew of Jacob and Hayden just constantly bombarding, like, literally all of our videos that have nothing to do with Mormonism. And they're like, why won't you debate Hayden? Why won't you debate Jacob? And like, that kind of behavior is just like, that's why. Because it's childish and. And middle schoolish, as Aaron was just saying. And so I'm gonna say this as respectfully as I can. We're going to demonstrate here in a second how Jacob continues to be dishonest. Um, so him and Hayden particularly, they have a pattern in a history of con. Continually repeating the same lies over and over again. And when they've been confronted on them, they've been corrected. They don't care. They just keep saying them. And it's just not respectable behavior. So you want to be treated respectively, then act respectively, you know, correct the things you've been correcting and quit repeating the same lies. And they're really good. Good at continually just throwing out scare quotes. Right. Of Christians, previous Christians. And. And we're like, I don't really care. We're gonna talk about the Michael Heiser thing. Not that we don't care what Michael Heiser said, but, like, Michael Heiser is not our objective source of truth. God's word is our objective source of truth. And that's what we're going to respond to. So continually trying to disprove what we're saying by throwing out, you know, quotes from other guys that have said things through the years, like, it's. It's meeting the this. And it's great for your team, it's great for your little club there that wants to get all worked up and fired up. But it's. It really doesn't prove anything. And I'll just. One more quick thing. I'll say, and we've talked about this a little bit in the past, but I mean, Jeff, you've been doing this almost 30 years. Aaron's got two decades. I'm almost at two decades, which is crazy. You know, 10 years ago you would have. This stuff we're dealing with right now was not even a thing. It was nonsense. You had Mormon apologists that actually, actually stood up for what they believe, and they would debate you on those things. What the church has always taught. And we've seen a shift in the last decade, and Aaron's at BYU a lot. A lot. I think a lot of it's coming from byu. It's a lot of this kind of new Agey subjectivism. That's what we're seeing here. It's just, it's. Well, you know, it's wishy washy and it's, it's very subjective. It's. There's no real objective standard of, of anything. And it, and, and it's, and so it's really hard. It's like the classic nailing jello to the wall because you can't really get a straight answer. You can't get them to actually stand on something. And so anyways, all that to say we're not going to debate. Jeff's not going to debate any of these guys if they, unless they start acting respectably because it's pointless. And we saw in the debate with Pastor James or Dr. White, you know, just continued abuse of stuff, you know, lying about Aaron, for example, when you knew exactly what you were doing, like those sort of things aren't going to get you a debate with anybody, anybody respectively.

[Jeff Durbin]

I want to debate a Mormon.

[Pastor Luke]

That's a great point.

[Jeff Durbin]

I want to debate a Mormon who believes Mormonism believes his prophets and apostles. I want to debate a Mormon that stands on the foundation of Mormon prophets and apostles, that believes what they taught. Of course, I have difficulty debating somebody who professes to be a Mormon and then rejects the authoritative teachings of their own prophets and apostles. I have a real problem with that because if I present to you, hey, Ezra Taft Benson said, Gordon Hinckley said, Joseph Fielding Smith said and taught, and you say something to the effect of, well, they're not infallible. I mean they make mistakes. I don't have to listen to what they say because they weren't in the standard works. You're rejecting the teachings of your own prophets and apostles. They didn't hold to that view of their own teachings that you do. I mean, one of your prophets fairly recently said and that quote, the. The prophet does not have to say thus saith the Lord to give us Scripture. That's Ezra Taft Benson. Ezra task Taft Benson. 14 Fundamentals and Following the Prophet BYU Devotional 2-26-1980 we can go on with this Brigham Young saying, of course, that he's never yet given a sermon or sending out to children of men. They couldn't call Scripture scripture. That his teachings were as good if accurate, of course, but that's what he believed they were as what is couched in the Bible. So put Brigham Young's teachings right behind Revelation according to Brigham Young. And then now these new young Mormon apologists want to, when they're confronted with the actual Teachings of their prophets and apostles say, well, that's not in the standard works. Your prophets didn't hold to that view. Your prophets did not hold to that view. That's that it has to be in the standard works.

[Aaron Shafawala]

Works.

[Jeff Durbin]

They, they rejected that, that when they were speaking it was thus saith the Lord, whether they said it or not, these are the very words of God. And so just, I don't want to go too far field in this, but I, because we have a lot to engage with here, I will say this. I have a very busy life. So I have a family, I have a large family and I have twin daughters, one with a severe disability. And so that's, that's my life. And then it's also end abortion now, apology of church, church Apologia Studios, all those things. And so I would love to debate a real Mormon and if I get time, I absolutely will. But one thing I will say is I just saw this. It just came across my feed and so I saw it and I'm going to address it here publicly. I saw a video of Hayden who has been raising money to have a debate with me saying he'll donate money, I think he said to end abortion now if I do the debate with him and, and if not, the money will go to support the Mormon Church's missionary fund or something like that. I want to say respectfully as I can to you, Hayden, your big mistake there was thinking that I could be motivated by money. That was your big mistake, thinking that somehow you can get me to debate if there's some payoff financially. And that is not why I do what I do, not why I have ever done what I've done. And so I can tell you right now that as Pastor Luke said, what is enticing to me is to debate an actual Mormon. What is enticing to me is to debate a Mormon with integrity that actually believes what they say they believe and believes what their church teaches. That's enticing to me. The money is meaningless to me. So if you thought I could be motivated by money, huge mistake. Go ahead and give that money to your missionary fund because that's not going to cut it for me. What I want to see is a man who has enough integrity to actually say, yeah, that is what I believe and that's what I'm going to defend. And a person who has enough integrity not to misrepresent their opponents, as both you and Jacob have done so many times and it's been documented right here on Apologia Studios and You can't refute it. You cannot refute it. And so we're going to get right back into it. So this is the, this is the moment. Let's see. Make sure I get the right one here. This is another example of Jacob using arguments that he knows or claims he knows that are refuted. So here he is about midway through the broadcast with Ali Vetstucky.

[Jacob Hansen]

Even to call Christianity hard monotheistic metaphysically is a very difficult claim to justify. Muslims, for example, will make that, that, that observation that if you want to say that you have three persons who are all fully divine beings that all have the divine nature, you have three things, not one thing, and hard metaphysical monotheism that must reduce to one single simple entity. And if you can't, and I don't see how you reconcile one single entity that is simple with no parts, no passions with the God of the.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so your argument is that you agree with the Muslims.

[Jeff Durbin]

Christianity just real fast, you would do it with Scripture is exactly what you would do. And so you can make these claims, Jacob, but your problem is engaging with the text of the Bible itself.

[Interviewer]

Entity is not really monotheistic.

[Aaron Shafawala]

It should.

[Jacob Hansen]

I wouldn't say that to your theology with the Muslims as much as I would agree with people like Dr. Sijuade, Dr. Heiser and others who point out.

[Interviewer]

Is Dr. Heiser Paul Polytheist?

[Jacob Hansen]

No, he's a Christian. He's a Christian who actually is a trinitarian. He actually recently passed away. He's a great Christian scholar, widely respected.

[Interviewer]

So that's when you say you agree with him, but they don't, you don't.

[Jacob Hansen]

The term monotheism. Okay, but you don't agree with Michael

[Interviewer]

Heiser on the Trinity.

[Jacob Hansen]

I, I, well, I, the only thing I disagree with Michael Heiser on is that he makes an ontological difference between God and man. But Michael Heiser and I agree that the Old Testament clearly teaches the existence of multiple divine being beings, with Yahweh being the most high amongst those divine beings that are called gods.

[Interviewer]

Did Jesus.

[Jeff Durbin]

Jacob, you have been refuted on this. I did an entire program playing through Michael Heiser demonstrating that you are manipulating his writings that you proof text the man. It is pure deception. Pure deception. And what you just said is a lie in terms of. The only thing I disagree with is the ontological thing of like God and man. That is not true. That is not true. Michael Heiser would take you to school refuting you and your beliefs about exaltation and becoming a God one day and he Would he would probably tear his clothes in sackcloth and ashes if he heard you trying to compare what he was teaching about the unseen realm and heavenly beings and Elohim and all the rest with the Mormon view of exaltation. If he were alive today, without a question, I would fly Michael Heiser out here. He'd be sitting in this chair next to me, and he and I would be defending the very same thing with the very same text and refuting your claims that what Michael Heiser was teaching was in any way close to what the Mormon view of exaltation is. You are lying about Michael Heiser. You know you're lying about Michael Heiser because you've. You've seen the refutation that I gave about you pulling quotes from Michael Heise. Heiser and demonstrating that Michael Heiser did not hold to your view. Michael Heiser was a trinitarian. You just said it with your own mouth. With your own mouth, you said. No, he was a trinitarian. What do trinitarians believe about God and the nature of God? Do they believe, as trinitarians, that there is anything else in all of creation or outside of it, if I can use that terminology, anything else that is the same nature or substance of God, the same being like God? Is there anything. No. Heiser would say he's trinitarian. There's only one of those. What does Heiser say? And I'm gonna play for you right now. What does he say? He says about Yahweh, that Yahweh is species unique, that there's only one of those. And so you've just manipulated the man and his quotes. You've been refuted before. It's been like, what, at least two years? Jacob, you were refuted, demonstrated that you are manipulated in the man's quotations, and then you continue to use it. On Ali Betstucky's show, you draw from Heiser claiming that Heiser has anything to do with what you're saying. You know that it's manipulation. You are being deceitful at this point and you are lying to these young Mormons with these arguments yourself. And so, Aaron, I'd love to hear. I see you over there squirming in your seat.

[Michael Heiser]

I'd love to.

[Jeff Durbin]

I'd love to hear what you have to say.

[Aaron Shafawala]

Yeah, I think we have to ask the question, is it ethical to say that you agree with someone when you merely use the same terms, when there's only a semantic or superficial agreement, and yet there's a fundamental, substantial disagreement? It doesn't mean much to say, oh, I agree with him. We both say those same words, but I fundamentally think that they mean something antithetically different, just absolutely the opposite of what that person means. I'll give you a really clear example of what happens on the street near byu. I'd love to ask the question, do you believe that God had to learn how to become God? And a very reflexive and immediate answer is, no, I don't believe that. Of course God never learned how to become a God. And then sometimes 60, 90 seconds later, just with a little bit of further discussion, the qualification comes, well, maybe he did learn to become who he is, or maybe everything that God knows he learned. But as far as we're concerned, he didn't learn how to become a God as far as it's relevant to us or as far as it's required to believe, be a member of his church. And so there's all these like hidden backdoor qualifications that sneak in and suddenly, suddenly that initial confession you made, I believe there's one God. I believe that God's always been God. I believe that God never learned how to become God. Suddenly not merely get tweaked with nuance, they fundamentally get turned upside down. And this is a pattern in the Latter Day Saint history where there is trying to put this respectfully, there is a, a different threshold for equivocation. I think that the LDS culture with respect to apology and religious terminology is much more comfortable expressing that they agree with outsiders on a given topic, even though seconds later they'll say, well, we actually use the same terms, but we believe something that's a hundred percent fundamentally different, except that we're in the same semantic space. We're in a completely different conceptual or theological space. What Christians are saying is it's not ethical for you to say, say you like. He goes on to say in the video that he agrees with James White, he agrees with Michael Heiser, and it's just, it's, it's straightforwardly dishonest. It's not good for interfaith dialogue, it's not good for clarity. It's the spirit of deception and it's writing on superficiality instead of substance.

[Jeff Durbin]

That's right, that's right. So I would encourage everybody you heard Jacob referred to Michael Heiser. He's done this a number of times. Again, he's been refuted, thoroughly refuted on Heiser. I'd encourage you, just look up Michael Heiser. Type, type in YouTube Search bar after this, type in Michael Heiser and Trinity. Michael Heiser and monotheism. Just put those words in and just listen to the man give entire hours long teachings and discussions on the Trinity and one God and species unique. There's only one of him. And so I'm going to bring everyone in this real, real fast. I did an entire episode on this. Just type in Jake Jacob, Jacob Hansen, Jeff Durbin. You'll see the apology or radio episodes where I did on this specifically, we spent a lot of time on the Heiser issue. Let's bring you into it just for a moment here. So there is a Hebrew word Elohim, Elohim in the Hebrew Bible in the Old Testament. And that word Elohim can be used at times interchangeably depending on the context and the structure, all of that, it can be used for, for God or the word, the English word gods. Okay. And so it's, it's a term that has multi use and the question is, okay, what does that exactly mean? Now when I was in Bible college, when I was in Bible college at very young age, I learned and it wasn't controversial, it wasn't even interesting that the word Elohim is used for God. And also in other uses it'll use the English word gods. And we learned of course that heavenly beings like angels, heavenly beings like angels can be called sons of God and can have the term elohim applied. It wasn't interesting really or controversial in any way. But for some reason, and this is the one thing I always had a beef with, with Heizer, for some reason Heiser thought that was an interesting point, that, that this word Elohim, there's these heavenly beings or spiritual beings, that's angels and things like that. And the word Elohim applies to them as well. But Heiser just made a big thing about that and it's not even interesting. It's something that you always learn in like, you know, first semester master Biblical doctrine in, in Bible college, angiology and demonology and all those things. It wasn't interesting. Heiser made a big deal over it. Couldn't understand why. Go ahead, Aaron.

[Aaron Shafawala]

Yeah. In John 10, Jesus says, is it not written ye are gods? And one of the things I like to ask is, is Jesus complimenting his audience or insulting his audience?

[Jeff Durbin]

Yeah.

[Aaron Shafawala]

Or another thing is Jesus is quoting from Psalm 82 referring to the gods in Psalm 80. So I like to ask Latter Day Saints, do you want your children to grow up to be like the gods of Psalm 82? Are the gods of Psalm 82 models of exaltation or models of Condemnation. Are these gods worth imitating? Are these the kinds of gods that become exalted and are worshiped someday properly by a set of beings? Or is this simply the use of a semantic domain to refer to some beings in the heavenly realms that honestly could be demons and out to get you?

[Jeff Durbin]

Right, yeah, and it's a good point too. You don't want Psalm 82 applied to you because it ends with you shall die like men, you unjust judges. So not very positive. But a lot of this comes down to the English terminology translation of God gods from the Hebrew. And so it's just an English language barrier sort of issue we're dealing with here. But I'm just going to play for you myself something that I am confident that Jacob has seen. Jacob, if you watched the refutation of your use of Heiser, then you already have seen this clip. You know, this is a full on complete, irrefutable, incontrovertible reputation of your use of Heizer. Here's Michael Heiser in his own words and Jacob, there's no way out of this.

[Michael Heiser]

What I say now is, look,

[Aaron Shafawala]

our

[Michael Heiser]

vocabulary is not adequate for this, a term like monotheism, because when we hear it, we think that means only one Elohim exists. Yes, that is inadequate because the scripture says otherwise.

[Aaron Shafawala]

Otherwise.

[Michael Heiser]

I guarantee people watching if you ask them, are you monotheistic? I don't know what the percentage would be, but it would be pretty high. Yeah, because we've been trained there's one God.

[Jeff Durbin]

One God.

[Michael Heiser]

And so. And there is only one of those. Yes, one most high.

[Jeff Durbin]

Right.

[Michael Heiser]

But there are lots of Elohim. So right away, even in this little exchange, we can see that we have a terminology problem because what we've done is we've taken a 17th century term, that's when monotheism enters the lexicon in English and we're using a 17th century term to describe what an ancient person thought. Okay, so we've got a fundamental problem now. You know, I believe, believe that there is one unique deity called Yahweh. Yahweh, the God of the Bible is, I like to use the phrase species unique. There really is none like him.

[Pastor Luke]

Yeah.

[Michael Heiser]

So he's not a first amongst equals. He's not the first amongst equals. He's not just sort of one of many that are sort of interchangeable parts. Okay. That is not what biblical theology teaches. Biblical theology teaches, look, there's lots of elements, Elohim, members of the heavenly host, if that's more comfortable. There's lots of Elohim but only one of them is Yahweh. Only one of them is the Creator, is omnipotent, is omniscient. All these things that we're used to, it's just that our vocabulary for expressing that idea actually gets in the way of the biblical text. When we encounter, like, plural Elohim here, we don't know what to do. So we have people, commentators. I mean, I could take you to commentators. Oh, the gods here are just men. Well, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because if you go down to verse six, I'm going to judge you later. There's sons of the Most High, which are sons of God. There is only one Most High. We know who that is. It's not a brain teaser. So there's sons of God. And then if you go to Psalm 89, you have the sons of God there in a council, just like Psalm 82. But it's in the skies, it's in the heavenlies, okay? You don't have a bunch of Jewish leaders ruling from the skies. It doesn't make any sense.

[Jeff Durbin]

So Heiser's point is we have a terminology challenge here, and much of that comes down to our vocabulary and the usage of the terms that we use in English. But he's referring to the fact that Elohim can refer to God, the only true God, the one who is species unique, the one that there is only one of those, the uncreated creator of all things, by the way, including the other Elohim, the spiritual beings and heavenly host. That's what Heiser's pointing is. And so Heiser would say very clearly, there's only one God. He's species unique, there's none like him, there's none before Him. He's the Creator. Everything else is created. And when he refers to the Elohim, all Heiser is trying to make the point of is this, is that there are these heavenly hosts, heavenly beings, spiritual beings like the angelic host, who are referred to as Elohim. But Heiser does not do what Jacob is pretending that he does. Did and that say that these other Elohim are like Yahweh, like on the same level, like a. Like what. What did he say there? Not like a first among equals. But that's. That's Mormonism. Essentially. You have the. The whole plan of exaltation, of. Of, you know, as God as man, as God once was, as God as man may become that God was once as we are now, and is an exalted man. And that and that you have to learn to become gods yourselves, the same way all gods have done before you. Heiser was would never believe that, right? Never. He refutes that. Aaron.

[Aaron Shafawala]

Yeah. There's a really helpful distinction between ethical monolatry and elective monolatry. I know that Latter Day Saint apologists like to appeal to that term monolatry. In elective monolatry, you might have many kinds of worship worthy beings over different jurisdictions. And so your election, you're electing to worship one of the beings is because maybe a familial proximity, maybe it's jurisdictional, they're over that tribal region that you have. And for Mormonism, it's really this part of the multiverse has a particular deity or this family tree, the genealogy of the gods has a particular deity. In Christian monotheism we have what you might call ethical monolatry. And the idea with ethical monolatry is that there's only one most high, unique, we could say species unique being who is uniquely worthy of worship because of the kind of being that he is in the book of Isaiah. These other pitiful so called gods, they're not like Yahweh. Yahweh is incomparable. He never learned to be what he is. He has no equals. There's none like him. He doesn't give his glory to another. In the larger Latter Day Saint scheme, there's more of something like elective monolatry because you have other jurisdictions and other branches of the family tree of the gods where other spirit children in the traditional model are worshiping properly, other deities that are electively part of that domain.

[Jeff Durbin]

Very good, very good. So we're going to play through some more here. So this is from the debate with Dr. James White and Jacob Hansen is the God of Calvinism morally reprehensible principle. And so I'm going to just play through this clip here because we're going to see some more of the same

[Jacob Hansen]

from Jacob, revelation from God, and there will be so, and it will be so accepted by the Council of the 12 and sustained by the body of the church.

[Pastor James]

Okay?

[Jacob Hansen]

If any man speak a doctrine which contradicts that which is in the standard church works, you may know that by that same token that it is false and you're not bound to accept it as true.

[Pastor James]

Okay? So the church can publish under its own name and its own copyright, a manual to be read by the members of the Mormon Church for decades before they engage in the celestial marriage ceremony and it be filled with lies as long as Jacob Hansen decides He's not going to believe that. Is that what I'm to understand you're saying?

[Jeff Durbin]

And so context here. Pastor James tried to press for a long period of time, Jacob on the issue of exaltation and that, you know, God was once a man who became a God once day. You've got to learn to become Gods yourselves the same way all gods have done before. You and Jacob just wouldn't be honest and forthright and clear with what the church has taught in terms of becoming a God one day. And God wants being a man. I mean the King Follett discourse, the sermon in the Grove, Mormon prophets and apostles for over a hundred years teaching on this subject. And Jacob would just not be forthright and honest with it. And, and so here we go.

[Jacob Hansen]

That is not what I'm saying at all.

[Pastor James]

Okay then, then answer the question. You know exactly what I'm talking about and you know what the answer is, Jacob, you know, you know what the answer is. Did God experience exaltation? Yes or no?

[Jacob Hansen]

I just read to you from this God. I believe that God has always been God.

[Pastor James]

So he, he did not experience exaltation.

[Jacob Hansen]

He's always experienced exaltation. He's an exalted being.

[Jeff Durbin]

But that makes literally no sense. He's always experienced exaltation. Always. Go ahead, Aaron.

[Aaron Shafawala]

This is extremely deceptive and I'll tell you why on two layers. One is it's not representative of traditional Mormonism. Jacob himself says in 2005, quote, I will conceal concede that, that the regressive deities has probably been the commonly been the common held position amongst the majority of Latter Day Saints. So Jacob Hansen concedes that the idea that there's a regress of deities, that God was once a man who became a God, that's standard dominant Latter Day Saint common belief. So he's not being upfront about that being a common belief. Secondly, the second layer of deception here is, is that Jacob is taking an Oslerian model. Blake Osler claims that heavenly father was always God, always had the fullness of deity, never had to become God from a vantage point where he had never yet been God. There's like an asterisk on there if you've ever been to Microsoft Word and you could change the font size. The asterisk is like 164 point font size big. And the asterisk is this in the Oslerian view that Jacob presumably follows because he's taken the Oslerian position on this larger topic. It's not as though the Father has always had the fullness of divinity. And Jacob Hansen himself argues for this on Twitter on X. He argues that in the condescension, when Jesus becomes mortal, he stops having the fullness of divinity. And in the Oslerian paradigm, when the Father became mortal, he, for a temporary time did not have the fullness of divinity, was not experiencing the fullness of exaltation. In fact, in the Blake Ostler model, when the Father became so, he spends in the Blake Osler model, the Father spins in a Turkish eternity, always being of the fullness of divinity. And then he takes a break and he becomes immortal, and he is emptied of the fullness of divinity, of divinity. And Blake Ostler explains that there had to be a reconstituting of the Godhead during that time, and that someone who was a subordinate essentially to the Father, someone who was not the head God, temporarily literally filled in the position for Heavenly Father as the head God. Does that make sense? There's like a deity swap. There's a deity fill in. There's like a substitute deity. So when the Father is experiencing mortality, he's not experiencing the fullness of exaltation, he's not experiencing the fullness of divinity, and he's worshiping a being who is temporarily the superior. And then they swap back when the Father sits sins. Jacob is not being forthright about even his own revisionist position, pursuant to Blake Ostler. He's. He's kind of putting at the foreground this general idea that the Father has always been God, but he's keeping in the background. I like to call it. It's like poker theology, where his. His cards are face down and he has some. He's. Or he's playing Settlers of Craton and he's. You've forgotten how many. How many rocks he has. But he's not being forthright with his audience about all of his cards. Some of his cards are face down. And one of those cards is the idea that the Father took a break from the fullness of exaltation, from the fullness of divinity, and was worshiping temporarily, at least in the Oslerian model, a temporary superior deity.

[Jeff Durbin]

Yeah. And just for the benefit of brothers and sisters in Christ, or say, Latter Day Saints, who are new to this discussion. You're hearing us respond to comments, public comments by Jacob Hansen during a debate, a moment where Pastor James is just wanting Jacob to be honest about the teachings of the Mormon prophets and apostles. Like, you know, just come clean with what you believe so we can engage in a meaningful way. I believe this. You Believe that. Now, let's put it on the table and let's, let's, let's, let's have a little bit of a collision here. And so he can't get Jacob to simply just come and be forthright with the teachings of Mormon prophets and apostles, teachings that Mormons have believed for ages. Like this is what they believe. And so you're hearing us respond to it going, this is deception. This is not being forthright. You're just not being honest. And this is a pattern for Jacob Hansen. He does this, and it might be one thing for you to hear it from us, right? This is just not honest. And you might be thinking, and I understand, well, you're Christian apologists. You're on the other side of this. Of course, you'll be, you know, maybe, you know, have a high level of critique for Jacob Hansen. I expect that from you. But would it help if I let you listen to Mormons engage themselves with Jacob Hansen's comments and say, yeah, this is strange. I thought we did believe that, that. So this is after, after the debate, a program where a lot of these letter to saints got together and they're discussing this issue that Jacob Hansen would not just be forthright about and honest about. And so I want you to hear it for yourselves. Here you go.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 1]

I'm, I'm going to push back a little bit on something that you said because look, I know that ex mor. I know that anti Mormons are absolutely crazy and toxic and, and I don't want to ever be caught defending them. However, one, I, I think their concern is legitimate because the majority of members of the church and all the apostles and all the prophets since the beginning of the restoration, I believe, have manifestly, overtly, publicly taught the infinite regress of gods.

[Aaron Shafawala]

That's false for my survey.

[Jeff Durbin]

Yeah.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 1]

Well, I think you're wrong because, like, I didn't realize there was another author option.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 2]

I mean, I Ial issue. What you're asserting is an empirical issue that's demonstrated by taking a poll that's reliable. And you haven't done that. So you don't know what percentage of church members hold that.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 1]

Touche. Neither have you.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 2]

They neither. I, I haven't. But I'm not making the assertion that the majority of church members believe something, am I? You are. Moreover, and here's the bottom line, the church hasn't in general conference in the past 50 years, really hasn't addressed this issue at all.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 1]

Well, prior to years, did they address the issue?

[Michael Heiser]

They do.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 2]

Some of them. They held different views this is not a cut and dried issue. And they held.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 1]

Look, look, I'm not trying to argue with you. I'm trying to help you. If you, if you tell our critics or historians and say, oh, no, no, no, infinite regress is some fringe thing that has never been official doctrine, they're going to, they're going to rightfully say, you're right, wrong.

[Aaron Shafawala]

This is all official doctrine.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 2]

I'm not wrong. It's not official doctrine.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 1]

No. And I'm not. No, I'm not saying it's. Sorry, I'm not saying it's official doctrine. But, but, but it really sounds like trying to distance oneself from the teachings of our historical leaders.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 2]

Myself, I'm distancing myself from an interpretation and an understanding that I don't think is an accurate best take on what is actually.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 1]

And that's totally fair. That's totally fair to say I interpret these things differently. But you got to be able to understand when the antis say, hold on a minute. All these statements, all these pages and all these sermons from all these leaders all the way up into the 1970s all sound like they're teaching this doctrine. You can't just ignore that. Right. That's what they're going to say.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 2]

Yeah, but it wasn't taught that way. I mean, you haven't really had it fully addressed, dressed in this way since Brigham Young. I mean, there hasn't been an express, explicit take on this to make sense of it from a prophet while being prophet. And I mean, look at what happened in the 1990s when President Hinckley was asked about this doctrine. Okay. He said, I don't think we know much about that. That was his actual answer.

[Jeff Durbin]

Right.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 2]

And so when we're actually dealing with

[Jeff Durbin]

this, Aaron, I'd like you to respond to that. That moment where the prophet says, we just don't need, we just don't know. No, I'd love to hear your commentary on that point because I think that that is not giving the Latter Day Saint the full information itself. Go ahead and speak to that.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 3]

I think you were talking about Gordon B. Hinckley, who said, I don't know that we teach that.

[Jeff Durbin]

Right.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 3]

Is that the reference point?

[Jeff Durbin]

Yes.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 3]

It's shortly after that at General Conference where Gordon B. Hinckley alludes to that moment in that interview where he essentially says something, the effect. To the effect of I know what we teach or, you know, something that. And, and there's like a.

[Jeff Durbin]

It was almost like a wink, wink,

[Unknown Mormon Participant 3]

like there was a wink, wink and a laugh in the AUDIENCE and I think what happened was a lot of Latter Day Saints, it's split different ways. For some Latter Day Saints who are very embarrassed about the regress of deities, heavenly grandfather, as I call it. For some Latter Day Saints who wanted to take Mormonism in a more, you might call it, a neo orthodox direction, this became a kind of rhetorical permission mission to, to withdraw from Lorenzo Snow couplet theology or the sermon in the Grove theology. For other Latter Day Saints, it was in, it was a kind of precedent or instruction or reminder that when we talk to outsiders about such things, we're not supposed to be completely overt about it.

[Jeff Durbin]

Right?

[Unknown Mormon Participant 3]

That's exactly that. That that clip you just played was from a ward radio exchange. And that's like two steps removed from the initial special James White Jacob Hansen debate, because in between there was another stick of Joseph interview where Christopher Blythe, who's an assistant BYU professor, is talking with Jonah Barnes about this infinite regress issue, where most of the people in that discussion are conceding that infinite regress really has been the dominant LDS traditional position. Jonah Barnes, to his credit, is lobbying for sanity on this issue. This is what we taught. This has been the dominant position. He even goes on to say, I didn't even, I wasn't even aware that there was a minority position available on this until recently. So Christopher Blythe, LDS assistant professor, goes on to say, when we if you're going to talk to outsiders, to Protestants, to apostates about this issue, you're going to have to hedge, you're going to have to change the doctrine. And so he goes on to say, so don't talk to them about it. Which again shows you that there's a kind of undercurrent in Latter Day Saint historic culture where it's not apro, it's not appropriate to be completely frank and overt about these great mysteries, as it

[Aaron Shafawala]

were, so to speak.

[Unknown Mormon Participant 3]

This is not, this is something that they're going to be internally overt about when they're amongst each other and in agreement. When they are in agreement. They're not always in agreement agreement, but with outsiders, they're going to be using plausible deniability, evasion, equivocation, ambivalence, misdirection. And ultimately it's going to be very frustrating for evangelicals who are really just

[Aaron Shafawala]

trying to have an open dialogue about ultimate truth.

[Jeff Durbin]

Right, Right. Man, I'm going to say something right now that makes me sound so old. I miss the 90s. I miss, I miss those conversations.

[Pastor Luke]

Shoe fits.

[Jeff Durbin]

I Miss those conversations where you, you could talk to Latter Day Saints and they just said, yes, that's what I believe. I believe that. And, you know, talking with those old, old strong Mormons that used to call me and Christians Gentiles and say things like, there's one church, Church of God and there's a Church of Satan and tell me you're part of the Church of Satan. I love. Those were refreshing conversations because at least they're being honest. Yeah. Because then you could, you, you could, you could start having a meaningful dialogue with one another. Okay, well, thank you for saying that, what you actually believe. Let's see if the word of God bears that out. Let's go to the Scriptures. And I remember standing in 1996 and 97, 98, surrounded by young Mormons that had their Bibles open with me, who were trying to take me to task in the Bible to show me that you could become a God one day, like God and that God, they tried to demonstrate somehow that God was once a man who became a God one day. And this is the whole story of creation itself. They wanted to do that. And now it's just, it's a different world. And that's why I call it lies, misrepresentation and deception. Because these Mormon apologists are sharp men. They're not schlubs. They're not dumb. They know what their church teaches. But this is just as I think what you said, Aaron, is a phenomenal way to put it. Misdirection. Right. Don't look at this. Look at this other thing that I'm showing you over here. But please don't look at this right here. And I think the, the important thing for you to note as you're watching this right now is that you expect criticism from Aaron and Luke and myself to the Mormon Church and Mormon apologists. You expect it, of course, because we're on the other side of this. And so I respect the fact that you're like, well, I'm very suspicious of what you're saying. Be suspicious. Look for the truth, look for the evidence, all those things. Okay, fine. But what you're hearing now, and I want you, I want you to please pay close attention to it, is that it's not just the Christian apologist pointing out the problems here, saying, this isn't Mormonism. Mormonism, this isn't honest and this is revision. And, and, and this is not what my Mormon friends have ever believed. And I've, I've spoken at length with them over dinner at their houses, and they've gone to the text themselves. It. You have Mormons now who are doing public videos on Jacob Hansen, the Mormon apologist, saying, jacob, whatever are you talking about? We don't believe this. That, that is not what Jesus said. That's not what we believe. We have always believed the opposite. What are you on about? What are you talking about? So it's, it's not just the Christian apologist saying there's a problem here. It's the Mormons, those grounded, solid Mormons that are saying, that's not how I was raised. That's not what I read in the prophets and apostles. And here's the, here's the challenge. You're going to get this often with, with him. Aaron, I know you've heard this a bunch, too. Here's the problem. These Mormon apologists today, when you press them on the actual teachings of the Mormon prophets and Mormon apostles, they will all. It's like they're chestnut now. They say, well, you know, we, we believe these men were fallible. They're. They're fallible men.

[Pastor Luke]

Yeah.

[Jeff Durbin]

It's like, okay, wait, I thought that your church was, was built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles, and you've restored prophets and apostles and true authority to the church. I thought that's the thing. You have a, you have a living prophet today who speaks to you. Revelation from God. I thought that was the claim. And now when I give to your prophet or your apostle their very words, you're just dismissive. You say, nah, I don't have to believe that. That's just a fallible man. I thought it was prophets and apostles. I thought we restored that thing. And I thought that they speak for God. I thought they're an oracle on earth that speaks for God. I thought that's what we believed. And I thought that your prophets and apostles, from Joseph Smith Smith to Brigham Young, all the way to Ezra Taft Benson, taught that they don't need to say, thus saith the Lord when they speak. That when they speak, they're giving you the very words of God that are the same as scripture. Joseph Smith, Doctrine of Covenants 684, speaking about the words of apostles and elders, said, and whatsoever they shall speak when moved upon by the Holy Ghost, shall be scripture shall be the will of the Lord. Lord shall be the mind of the Lord, shall be the word of the Lord, shall be the voice of the Lord, and the power of God unto salvation. That's what Joseph Smith believed about their teachings. Brigham Young taught that he's never yet given a Sermon or sent it out to the children of men they couldn't call Scripture. That's what they believed. You have your prophets, modern day prophets, saying that no Mormon prophet needs to say thus saith the Lord. They don't even need to say it. Why? Because they're the prophet. They're speaking for God. And these young Mormon prophets, or sorry, apostles, Sorry, sorry, no, sorry apologists are actually saying I can disregard the teachings and the sermons of the prophets of the Mormon Church even when they say they're speaking as one having authority, even when they're saying that this was given by the Holy Spirit. Jacob Hanson Hayden Others like them can say, wow, that's not part of the standard works. You know, these prophets are fallible men. And they'll even say things like they don't believe, believe that an infallible God can give an infallible revelation because he's delivering it through fallible men. That's not the biblical worldview. Aaron.

[Aaron Shafawala]

Yeah, I think it's important to note that the most philosophically robust Latter Day Saint philosophers don't even believe that God himself is logically infallible. So LE Kossler, Peter Kramer Carmack, they've argued that God himself is practically inerrant. He won't make a mistake. But they've argued that God possibly could sin. So I think that factors into the worldview here. Is that all the way upstream to where God is. There's not a logical guarantee that God will never sin. The other thing too is that Jacob, earlier in this broadcast you quoted Jacob as saying, where you played him as saying that something had to be in scripture for it to be essentially official. And you put, you were quoting, I think from the 14 Fundamentals of Ezra Taft Benson, where he says that it does not need to be. You know, the prophet can speak outside of scripture. He can say he could basically give a prophetic utterance. And you need to take it seriously, you need to believe it. It's the word of God. Jacob has argued publicly that you cannot trust, nor should you believe, parts of the Old Testament. Jacob himself calls into question the Conquest narrative in Joshua, the Passover narrative in Exodus, the Flood narrative in Genesis. So Jacob is giving the impression that he believes that if something's in LDS scripture, then he believes it, but it's not true. Jacob doesn't even believe that his own canon is, is fundamentally reliable. One more thing I'll say is if Mormon apologists don't trust their prophets, then why should we?

[Jeff Durbin]

And there you go, that's perfect. There you go. That is the point. That's the place to land on that. Just one last point here, and I want you guys to hear this. This is a continuation of the same part of the discussion between Pastor James and Jacob Hansen in the debate in the cross examination. I want you to hear it.

[Pastor James]

It's so. So anybody in here who knows Mormonism is sitting here scratching your head. I realize that.

[Jacob Hansen]

I listen to you. I literally am a Latter Day Saint. Have been my whole life and I've studied the.

[Pastor James]

You are. You are a new Mormon. You're a new Mormon. You are redefining things, reading stuff from

[Jacob Hansen]

our canon of Scripture.

[Pastor James]

So listen, listen.

[Jacob Hansen]

Like I'm reading our canon of scripture, which is much older than me and you, James.

[Pastor James]

Okay? So listen to me. Listen to me. Every Mormon that I've ever talked to understood what exaltation was because they differentiated salvation from exaltation. They understood that. Everybody in all the four Mormons. Everybody. Even the Mormons in here.

[Aaron Shafawala]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Pastor James]

We get all that. So you're literally telling us. And I want. I want to make sure this is on. On film, on whatever you call it, video, MP4, whatever it is. Okay, let's. Let's do it. So from your perspective, God the Father never was not exalted by obedience to gospel rules and principles to the status of a God, so that he organized a planet, had heavenly mother, had offspring. All that stuff represented in LDS teachings by apostles and prophets for the past 180 years was all speculation and can be rejected by your reading of your Canon of Scripture? Yes. No, maybe I'm just going to read

[Jacob Hansen]

what the Canon of Scripture says. Mosiah 3. 5. The Lord Omnipotent, who reigneth.

[Aaron Shafawala]

Right.

[Jacob Hansen]

Was and is from all eternity to all eternity.

[Aaron Shafawala]

Right.

[Pastor James]

Joseph Smith did not believe in God.

[Jacob Hansen]

Prayer every day.

[Pastor James]

So you're God. So you. So, so we do believe that there

[Jacob Hansen]

can be be multiple divine persons and that people can reach theosis. Those are all. Those are all part of.

[Pastor James]

Oh, so you think theosis is the same thing as exaltation?

[Jacob Hansen]

And now the S. Thought.

[Pastor James]

Yeah, I. I mean, you're using a church history term. You think that when someone used the term theosis in history that it meant the same thing that you're talking about? No, not the exact same exactly. It was a completely different thing. That's right.

[Jacob Hansen]

I'm glad you admitted it was very similar.

[David Alexander]

Similar.

[Jacob Hansen]

Go listen to the Eastern Orthodox talk about it.

[Pastor James]

Oh, yeah. But believe me. Yeah. They are all. There's. There is a.

[Jacob Hansen]

You're right. We don't bridge the ontological gap. But they basically do everything except for.

[Jeff Durbin]

And that's the point. They don't bridge the ontological gap is the point. So what you're saying is not theosis. Jacob, you are lying. You are lying. Now you have to forgive me, everybody, because. And you can find it yourself. And if I have, if needs be, I will, I will pull it next week and play it for you, you guys. But my head. A computer crash before we started here, so I, I just couldn't find it. The Ali Bath Stuckey episode. In the episode, this was after the debate with James. Okay, so put the timeline together here. In the debate with the cross examination between James and Jacob, he brings up the thing of the question of theosis, or the claim of theosis, and James chastises him for it. He's like, that's a church history term. That didn't mean what you're talking about right now with exaltation, right? And he said, no, not the exact same. Same thing exactly. And you said, they just don't bridge the ontological gap, which is the point of exaltation. So it's not theosis. And you know it and yet you say it publicly.

[Pastor Luke]

Right?

[Jeff Durbin]

Theosis. Now this is so important here. Look, don't, don't believe Jeff Durbin. You shouldn't do that anyway. Test everything I say. Cross examine me. Do it, do it all. But let me just challenge you to do this. Do you have access to chat, GPT or GROK or something similar? Just type into chatgpt or grok. What is the historic Christian doctrine of theosis? Does it mean that men can become gods? Just. I challenge you to do so. Jacob, you should try it. Jacob, you should try it. Any of these AIs will pull together and collate all the data there to show. Nope. Theosis did not mean that you can become a God by nature at all. Not even close to it. How, Please tell me, how could somebody who is trinitarian in their theology have a belief about theosis, that you can become like God by nature? How is that even possible? It is not even possible theologically. When the early church fathers were speaking on the issue of theosis, it had to do with our participation by grace. Grace in God's divine attributes and all the rest had nothing to do with becoming a God one day. So when you bring up exaltation as a Mormon and you say, yeah, it's like theosis. You did it with James, he challenged you on it, you admitted it's not the same thing. And Then literally timeline, right after that you said it again on Alibat Stuckey. And you know, you know, J. Jacob, that theosis in church history, the teachings there of the Fathers and theosis had nothing whatever to do with what you're talking about with exaltation. You were challenged in the debate on it. You admitted in the debate it's not the same thing. And then you brought it up again in Alabeth Stuckey. And so I think you just have sort of these chestnut things that you throw out and you throw them out publicly and you know that they're not true. And yet you sell it. And yet you sell it. And you know that theosis is not what the fathers were talking about in terms of exaltation. You know it and you use it again. I wonder if you'll continue to use it. I wonder. Aaron, anything else?

[Aaron Shafawala]

Yeah, I was, I think one of the key points of the debate between James White and Jacob Hansen is when Jacob was asked by James, did you read my book? Now some people interpreted that as James wanting his book to be promoted. But it's simpler than that.

[Pastor Luke]

Care less.

[Aaron Shafawala]

James wrote a book on the topic they were debating. And if you're going to prepare for a debate on such a topic, you should get to know what your opponent has published about this issue. What I've come to conclude is that apologists like Jacob are kind of like YouTube demagogues. They're, they're really not. I hate to say this, but I don't think they're good faith debate partners. I think in many of these, of these cases they, they really are reaching for a kind of a quote digest. They're really not reading the books. They're not doing the work, they're not doing the homework. They don't understand the positions they're quoting things they don't understand. So I, there's that issue. The other issue is I, I don't think that Jacob is equal even leaning into his own intellectual tradition on these issues. I think one of the best things we could, we as evangelicals can do right now is just to start be a whole lot more bored with these LDS apologists. They're really boring. They're very repetitive. They're really not giving us a robust intellectual defense of their own faith. They're not even utilizing the best intellectual defenses of their own intellectual community. They're really just going for clicks. This is a YouTube demagogue sort of middle school cafeteria apologetic scene. And they're kind of having a moment right now. We really just need to be on the lookout for better interlocutors, better Latter Day Saints who are at like I think the frustration you expressed earlier was that it's really hard to find public debate partners or public dialogue interlocutors who represent traditional Mormonism, who are overt about the Joseph fielding spirit, Smith, McConkey, Ezra Taft, Benson, B.H. roberts Mormonism that a lot of us were experiencing earlier. They're really going for really a kind of reconstructed higher criticism, open theism, reinvented Mormonism of a few fringe philosophers.

[Jeff Durbin]

Yes, yes, very good. Aaron, can you stay with me just for a few more minutes? What I'd like to have everyone do is just go to Apologia Studios if you're all access. Aaron and I are just going to spend few a few minutes. I want to have Aaron help you. If you're interested in engaging with Mormons and in giving the gospel to Latter Day Saints and you want to see him come to know God, I'd love for Aaron for you to give us some instruction on some starting work, some foundations of what people should start sort of working through to have an effective witness with the Latter Day Saint. If we're going to love the Mormons, we want to understand what they believe and why they believe it. We want to really dig into their the foundation of their beliefs, engage with those things and be able to lead them to the truth. And so we're just going to go to the after show in just a moment@ apologiastudios.com if you don't have it, be a part of this ministry with us, do all access and then Aaron's going to help us. Give us some instruction on where we should start and some good resources and things we need to be grounded in so we can be effective witnesses for Christ to the Latter Day Saint. And so I want to thank everybody for watching today. Don't forget to go to apologiastudios.com give help us to get to our goal. First time we're doing a fundraiser for Apologia Studios. Help us to get to our goal. We have so many different new tools. We're adding so much. We're adding to all access so much. We're at so many program changes and things we're doing to have more conflict and engagement to bless you, to help, to equip you to know what you believe, why you believe and be able to articulate those truths. So go to apologyastudios.com give Luke, we're going to wrap up here with all the stuff here, all the stuff yeah,

[Pastor Luke]

Father's Day is coming up next month. So you're looking to get your dad a cool blade. You can go to amtech blades.com.com and put a can't talk apology on the coupon code. Get 5% off and he will match 5% to end abortion. Now we got a couple blades there and some battle axes.

[Jeff Durbin]

The best, the best.

[Pastor Luke]

Very sharp. And then of course you can go to our store and get some tracks and some swag and some coffee at shop. Apologies.

[Jeff Durbin]

We even have the Gospel for Mormons track right here.

[Pastor Luke]

Sure do.

[Jeff Durbin]

This is what we hand out of the temple. Has some basic beliefs and teachings of Latter Day Saints and it compares them with scripture, gives them the gospel and God has truly used that. That tract, as simple as it is, as small as is.

[Pastor Luke]

Yeah. And actually if you haven't, we. Jeff did a video. We don't have time to tell that story right now, but that's one of our most viewed videos on our YouTube page. It's literally that video in transcript form.

[Jeff Durbin]

Yeah.

[Pastor Luke]

And then of course I wanted to always mention Dominion Wealth. So grateful for those guys. Yes, glad to be partnering with them. You go to Reform Money for free consultation and heritage defense.org love those guys. If you homeschool your children, Please go to heritagedefense.org Put apology in the coupon code and get your first month free.

[Jeff Durbin]

Thanks, brother. So Aaron, real quick, where should everyone go to get more content from you and just more help in this area of ministering to Latter Day Saints?

[Aaron Shafawala]

Well, you can [e-mail] which is Mormonism Research Ministry. I would also point people to another resource, Godloves mormons.com that's the work of Bradley Campbell. He works in close partnership with Mormonism Research Ministry. God Loves Mormons is probably, probably the best modern resource for accessible entry level, helpful, contrastive videos. He's really solid with his doctrine. He's not blurring the lines between Mormonism and Christianity and yet he does his homework with respect to history, doctrine, scripture. And he's an excellent videographer. So I would highly recommend godlovesmortons.com thanks brother.

[Jeff Durbin]

Okay, everybody, thank you for being with us today. Do all the things if you would for right now, guys. You can be a part of this ministry right now. You can pray for us, obviously you can give help us to get where we're supposed to get where we're trying to go with, with the studio. But you can also right now just simply like the episode. Subscribe and share. Get this across social media platforms make sure everyone gets to hear this conversation. It's vitally important for young Mormons especially to get this conversation. We're going to go over to Apologia studios right now. ApologiaStudios.com get into the after show just to give you some extra help from Aaron. I truly mean it when I say that I think Aaron is, is one of the, the best tools that we have in, in engaging with Latter Day Saints today. I learned so much from him all the time. Super blessed by his witness, his testimony and his ministry. And so he has a lot to, to, to help you with. And so we're going to go to apologiastudios.com Aaron's going to give us a couple minutes of support on where should we start our studies of this to really get into this. So go to Apologia Studio Studios.

[Aaron Shafawala]

Com.

[Jeff Durbin]

We'll see you over there. Just a couple minutes. I'm the ninja, that's the bear.

[Pastor Luke]

Peace out.

[Jeff Durbin]

We'll catch you next week right here on Apologia Radio.