Last week, several people commented to me that a Mormon would probably not be comfortable in our upcoming series. I greatly appreciated the comment and it got me to thinking and praying. I realized after time with the Lord and discussion with others that I needed to clarify the audience our class is for. After additional time in discussion and prayer, my conclusion is that the class, though open to everyone (Mormon or from any religion) that the primary audience I will focus the material to will be to two groups:
1) Unchurched people who don’t know much about either the Mormon Church or Biblical Christianity. Because the Mormon Church is in the public forum currently this is a fantastic opportunity for members of Coastline to invite their Oikos. It will provide great opportunities for discussion and interaction about the Christian faith. The Christian faith and the truth claims it is based on will be presented very clearly.
2) Church people who do not know much about the Mormon Church.
Thought-provoking quote from Mormonism under the Searchlight, by Wm.Edw. Biederwolf, D.D. in answer to the question: where do Mormons come from?
They come, those who have not been born into it, . . . .out from the ranks of our evangelical churches. Call on the roll of any Christian Science Church in this land, or any of the other of our present-day religious vagaries, and you will find that practically everyone of them was one time a member of some one or the other of our evangelical denominations.
The first 2,000 [Mormon] converts came nearly every one of them, out of the Baptist churches. . . . .When Brigham Young went on his tour of discipleship through England, he brought back with him to this country more than 2,000 converts to Mormonism and practically every one of them came out from the Methodist or Baptist churches.
Even now, it boasts that it makes more converts each year from evangelical churches than all these churches have made from Mormonism in forty years.
In answer to the question, would a Mormon be comfortable in the class? Probably not. But my prayer and goal is that any discomfort not come from any offense in the style of presentation, but in the natural offense of the Gospel.
Invite your friends, pray that they come and together learn about the differences between the Mormon Church and Biblical Christianity that ultimately make the difference between eternal salvation and eternal damnation–that was a hard statement, an offensive statement wasn’t it? But it was a true one and one that illustrates the bottom line of why we are doing the class. We are so incredibly blessed to be at a church that preaches and teaches BIBLICAL truth–please come as we share it in our Sunday morning class.