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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Cody Francis Weekend

Cody Francis

My Journey Out Of Mormonism

A Counterfeit Movement

Reaching Mormons

It's good to be here with you this Sabbath and I'm looking forward to our time together.

So as was mentioned, I'm going to be sharing with you what I'm going to be entitled, My Journey Out of Mormonism.

And I want to make just a few or from Mormonism to Adventism and then tonight we're looking at my journey out of Mormonism.

And I want to just give a few clarifying aspects here.

When I refer to Mormonism, I am referring to what would technically be called the Latter-day Saint movement.

And so the Latter-day Saint movement includes more than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that most are familiar with yet that's based out of Utah.

We'll talk about some of the history of that tonight, some, because it ties into my story.

But there are a number of smaller groups as well.

And so I'm using it broadly, although the technical term would be the latter, it would be Latter-day Saint movement.

Also, a disclaimer, this is my experience, my journey.

I'm not crossing every scholarly T and I, and things like that, And so I'm sharing my journey, my recollections, my memories.

I've also done reading outside of that as well.

And then tomorrow we'll look at what I believe is very fascinating, a counterfeit movement.

And then in the afternoon I plan to look at how do we share with Mormons, those that are in Mormonism, and what are some of the, how do some of the tests when we share, what are some of the ways that Mormonism falls short in some of those areas?

And so I wanna begin, there's 2 main groups.

1 is the Latter Day Saint, in the Latter Day Saint movement.

I mentioned it, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

This is the 1 that everybody is familiar with because they have young missionaries that will come to your door.

And I imagine that most of us have had some type of interaction with some of these missionaries.

They're very good people and I do not want to, although I'll share my journey, I don't want to disparage anybody.

I still have family members that are in the Mormon movement, in Mormonism.

And so I'm not casting reproach or speaking against anyone.

Now, the other group is called the Community of Christ.

Now, I imagine that this is the much smaller group to begin with, but it's also very localized to the Midwest.

So there may be a group or 2 out in this area.

But these are the 2 main groups in the Latter-day Saint movement.

And then there's other smaller groups as well.

The main group, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Utah, has about 17 million members, and they have the temples and the very distinctive churches as well.

Other 1 that I mentioned, the Community of Christ, which used to be referred to as the Latter-day Saints, Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has about a quarter of a million members, mainly in Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

But I want to look at a little bit of history because as we're going to be sharing, there's a lot of history that comes into this as well.

And so I want to begin by thinking about what I believe is a very pivotal year in religious history.

It was a pivotal year in the work of God.

We know what was going on during that time and the build-up to that time, right?

We have that was when Advent, the Advent movement was climaxing into the Midnight Cry, and of course they believed that Jesus was going to come in October 22 of 1844.

We believe from Bible prophecy that prophecies were fulfilled, just not in the way that they were expecting.

But something very fascinating to me is when we look at the year of 1844, there's a number of things that are converging all around that same time period, particularly in 1844.

If we had more time, we could talk about more of these things.

But the advent of modern technology took place essentially in 1844.

The Morse code was sent over the telegraph in 1844.

There's other things that took place as well.

But we also have a counterfeit message that began to develop during this time.

We're all familiar with this individual and in 1830s Darwin travels to the Galapagos Islands on the HMS Beagle and As he's there he begins to develop his theory and there's a lot of reasons behind that.

But it was actually in 1844 that he wrote out his ideas as his essay.

Now I believe that God, that we know, I don't believe this, we know that God predicted in Revelation 14, verse 7, that there would be a message, 6 and 7, that would go to all the world, that the hour of his judgment has come and worship him who made heaven and earth and sea and the waters." And so that's Revelation 14, 6 and 7.

Well, there's a message that began right around that time that was denying the idea of a creator God.

And of course it's grown Exponentially from that time, of course, it was in 1859 that Darwin then published origin of species Interesting when he first wrote out his ideas in 1844 his original essay He said he felt like he was confessing a murder and It took him 15 more years before that was actually published Other interesting things taking place right around that time I would say that there was a new counterfeit power that was developing during that time.

Anybody know what that's a picture of or who that's a picture of?

And so they're credited with the birth of modern spiritualism.

It was March of 1848, Hydesville, New York, that mysterious wrappings were heard.

Now, you can go back a little bit further and in Swedensburg, I think is his name, in 1844 was writing out some of the things that became modern spiritualism.

But the Fox sisters then began to communicate with a series of knocks and things like that with these wrappings and it grew into the modern spiritualist movement.

Just like God had said there was going to be a message that was going to go to the world proclaiming to worship the Creator, we also know from the Bible that there's a message or not just a message but God is going to pour out His Spirit in the last days as well.

And as God is going to pour out His Spirit, I think you have a counterfeit power that was developing right around this time also.

But it was also a pivotal year with a new counterfeit movement and that's where we come into Mormonism.

Joseph Smith, born in 1805 in Vermont, they moved to, in 1816, they moved to Palmyra, New York.

It was there as a young man, as Joseph Smith, the story goes, this is what I believe most Mormon missionaries, as they come to your door, would tell you.

This is a story that I grew up learning, was that there were lots of revivals going on and that's true.

History says there were lots of revivals going on during this time and the Smith family would go to these different revivals but nothing seemed to fit.

And The story goes that Joseph Smith was praying about which church he should join and it was communicated to him that he should not join any church but that God was going to restore the true gospel.

And so Mormonism is a restoration movement.

So as he was praying in 1820, Joseph Smith's first vision.

And he has his first vision and it's interesting.

They'll tell you this when they come to your door that the Father and Jesus appeared to him in that first vision.

Now That's a very interesting thing to say because what does the Bible say about seeing the Father in particular?

And so you have a contradiction right here at the beginning.

But this is a story the father and the son appeared to him said don't join any church we're going to restore the true gospel to you.

He would have been a teenager at this time with about mid-teenager something like that.

And this is what is on the top of every Mormon temple.

And notice you have, if you look at it, it's an angel, golden angel with a trumpet.

Of course, they believe it was actually a prophet that died.

But 1827, the angel Moroni appears to Joseph Smith and he gives him lets him see for the first time these golden plates and then he lets him take these golden plates.

So he receives the golden plates at the Hill Cumorah outside of Palmyra, New York.

And so then the story is that he would have this seeing glass and he would be able to interpret these golden plates which were in some type of Egyptian hieroglyphics and he would interpret it and then it would be written down.

Nobody saw them, they would just, that he would be speaking this and so then this was the method that he says that the interpretation took place and then the Book of Mormon was published in 1830.

Now the Book of Mormon, this is a, you can't read it, I can hardly read it, well maybe you can read it some, the very beginning of it, it talks about the record of the people of Nephi and the Lamanites, which was the remnant of the house of Israel.

The Nephites and the Lamanites were a part where lived in, they were a family with 4 brothers.

They lived in Jerusalem near the fall of Jerusalem, contemporary with Jeremiah.

And they were warned to flee to a different location.

This is the story that I grew up hearing.

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Series

Cody Francis Weekend

My Journey Out Of Mormonism

Transcript

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