Apologetic Frustration

"In order to know truth, you must pray that God will reveal it to you. In order to know truth, you must read God's word. If you do these two things, sincerely, then God will show you that what I am saying is true. Why don't you pray that God will reveal to you that the Book of Mormon is true, he did for me."

Sounds pretty good right up to the last point, doesn't it? I have faithfully kept my appointments with the LDS missionaries each time they come by since I have been here. I'm on the list, and so each new crew comes by for a visit. Tonight's appointment was the most frustrating yet.

The girls were sweet and gracious. They were not argumentative, nor were they easily ruffled. Though they were certainly not Scripturally knowledgeable, they knew their Mormon theology quite well. After a certain number of visits, I know, generally where to steer the conversation, but tonight that didn't help.

Did you know that the authority to baptize was lost from the death of the apostles until the apostles appeared to Joseph Smith? When I argued the point, I was told that this was the fulfillment of the great "falling away" that Paul predicted to Timothy. Amos had foreseen it as well.

So I turned to the essence and being of God Himself. This proved totally fruitless. They simply insisted that we were the same essence as him, that we were eternal like him, that we had chosen to come here from before the foundation of the world so that we might become more like him, and that the Scripture never contradicted this. Nothing I could muster would satisfy.

Besides, they knew that the Book of Mormon was true because God had told them it was true. And that, in the end, is how we know truth. God tells us through our feelings, and when that happens, no amount of persuasion would change our minds.

We touched on the glory of God, I countered with every Scripture I could think of, but each was cleverly warped to fit into their thinking. The fact that I refused to pray about God revealing to me whether or not the Book of Mormon was true was simply evidence of my hard-heart. I said plainly that the Bible was the source of authority and that it contradicted Joseph Smith. That was met with incredulous looks.

I seriously prefer debate with the Jehovah's Witnesses. Seriously.

So where would you go, dear reader, to demonstrate that we are not of the same essence as God? (It's not enough to say, "There's nothing like God!" They simply respond, "Of course there's nothing like God. He's way ahead of us!") And where would you go to prove that the church never ceased to exist outside of Ephesians 3?