Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I hope your day was blessed walking with the Lord. I had a good day on campus and had some good apologetic discussions and got two seeds pretty well planted. Migul took the student edition of The Case for Christ to read and was genuinely searching and was grateful. I had a philosophy student (Andy) who thought there probably was a God but went only as far as that, so not quite agnostic talk to me for nearly 30 minutes. We talked of God and the Bible and the presumed contradictions in the NT gospels (there are not any you cannot resolve in my view), metaphysics in general and other issues. He rejected Revelation unless it came directly to him existentially. He saw no obligation to believe it otherwise. His name was Andy. Of course God’s book of nature is a direct revelation to all men and so is the Bible if you read it prayerfully and allow the Holy Spirit to speak. I told him many things, the Easter apologetic as follows among them:

Q: Do you believe in God? A: He thought he did. Q:do you believe God can do anything He wants (not any stupid self-contradictory thing you can come up with)? A: Ok Yes that is part of my idea of God. Q; then could God become a man? A: kind of stuck with a yes there. Q: if God became a man would He tell people the truth? A: If you believe in a greatest of all possible beings (Descartes or Anselm via Aristotle, God as an infinite or most perfect being) God would tell the truth. Q; What would happen to a man who knew the truth and spoke it to the corrupt powers of his day. A: They would kill him, they would kill you today in D.C. if you did the same thing. Q: Given all the above, if they killed God what would God do next? Answer I said is: He would rise from the dead. So the Christian story proceeds through logically possibilities if you grant there is a God.

Before this I walked around the corner and saw that two Mormons had cornered a girl Tamara (cute petite black girl) who prayed to receive Jesus this year on some chairs in the hallway on the first floor of the BIC. So I went over and gave her five and said, “What’s up?” I read their name tags “Elder Hollis” and “Elder Anderson” and started in with them. I told them stuff politely for 15 or 20 minutes to steer them away from her and try to shake them loose from the lies they believed. Another Christian campus worker I know (Jim) tagged in after me. I gave each one a Rose Publication hand out. To Hollis I gave “100 Prophecies fulfilled by Jesus” to Anderson I gave scholarly samplings on “Why Trust the Bible”. I said this was the kind of thing they would have to come up with to be convincing in a University setting. If they had anything remotely considered scholarly that would be accepted outside Brigham Young University to please contact me and gave them my phone# and email on a card. In case you never looked into it the Book of Mormon takes place in North and Central America, (somewhere) by 400AD. Most of the locations mentioned in it they cannot today find (conversely all the places mentioned in the NT we can locate), though the Latter Day Saints church owns a Mountain in NY state where a battle took place the book mentions where about a million people died. Unfortunately for them they have never found any human bones on the hill. Which I pointed out to them.  Telling me to just read the book of Mormon and ask God for a feeling was not worth doing in my view as there were absolutely no facts to support it. He said he had not told me to ask for a feeling and I said that was all that was left to me since there was no scholarly fact to support anything in the book of Mormon. I pointed out to the Elders that in its pages we find Horses, Wheels, Chariots, Steel swords, Metallurgy for coins and barley and hops. But we know for certain none of those things existed here until a 1,000 years later brought by the Spanish. So historically speaking the Book of Mormon is demonstrably false. I said that if they were not sure on a historical level of the book and had not investigated its history and it turned out they believed something wrong, but were telling people it was the truth they would be held accountable for it by God, and be responsible for spreading lies. They walked away unconvinced as far as I could see but I know God might have used something I said to plant a seed that He can trigger later.

That plus 2 hours of chatting up the peeps at Bible study made for a long day and I am wiped out and will be glad for a bit of Christmas break. But there are 3 more days so I hope a few more will come in still this year.

Thanks for praying, God gave me words.

Peace,

Bob