ANNOUNCER: Do Mormons and Lordship Evangelicals have different gospels? How do they compare and contrast? And what can we learn from this comparison? This is Grace in Focus, so glad you’ve tuned in today, friend. It is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website, faithalone.org, where you can learn about and get registered for our national annual conference coming up May 18th through the 21st. Not a lot of time left to get pre-registered, of course, we’ll have registration in person at the event. We’ll be celebrating our 40th anniversary, so we’d love to have you with us. Get registered at faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and Sam Marr. 

SAM: All right everybody, no question for today, but we’re going to be talking about a video that by now should be out on YouTube. It’s one of Ken’s videos. I believe the title is something like Do Mormons and Evangelicals Have the Same Gospel. And so it’s from a really interesting podcast that Ken was watching, hosted by what he’s calling an evangelical. I don’t know what that guy’s background is specifically, but he has on a Mormon guest and they’re both apologists.

BOB: Apologist means they both defend their faith. So the Mormon is defending the Latter-day Saint position on what I must do to have eternal life. And the Evangelical, whatever his denomination, he’s defending his view. So I’d encourage y’all to go to YouTube, Grace Evangelical Society, look at Ken’s video that’ll help you inform our discussion today or maybe our discussion today will be a nice addition to what he did.

SAM: So first off, most people and Ken is using the term evangelical here is kind of a general term for basically Protestant Christians to distinguish from Catholics, but then also these other sub-sects like Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, other, not really denominations. They’re basically different religions, yeah.

BOB: They’re cults.

SAM: But it’s very interesting because what Ken points out in this video and he’s completely right is this evangelical cannot explain why what he believes is different than what a Mormon believes. Now I’m sure somewhere in that podcast they get into more of a discussion about how the Mormons believe in a different Jesus. They don’t believe He is the unique son of God. But basically what happens is that evangelical guy is trying to explain, okay, we believe this, but you don’t. And every point he brings up, the Mormon guy says, no, we do believe that. 

BOB: Okay, so give me one example. 

SAM: So one example is he says, we believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. And the Mormon guy says, yes, we believe that. 

BOB: Okay, all right, let’s hang on there. Let’s do that one first. And by the way, I think what Ken’s talking about with this guy, this generic Protestant or he calls him evangelical, is a lordship salvation guy. To get into the kingdom, you’ve got to be committed to the Lord, turn from your sins. You’ve got to follow the Lord. You’ve got to persevere and faith in good works until death. What he’s running up against in the examples you’re going to give is that the Mormon is going to to go check, check, check, I agree, I agree, I agree, I agree, I agree. And the first one is, okay, we believe you’ve got to believe in Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. And the Mormon goes, check,

SAM: Right. The hard part about it is the evangelical guy keeps it sort of vague. And that’s the problem with a lot of those preachers or he calls himself an apologist, but they don’t really define what they’re talking about. But yeah, so he mentions that. And then they get to the point where he says, okay, I think the Mormon guy asks him, what do you believe you have to do to go to heaven? And the evangelical guy says, repent and believe, that’s it. And then the Mormon says, yes, that’s what we believe, repent and believe. But then they get into, it’s really more than repent and believe because the Mormon guy brings up James 2 and Matthew 7:21 and says, James 2 proves that if you say you have faith, but you don’t have good works, that means you don’t really have faith. So it’s repent and believe, but if you aren’t doing good works, then you don’t believe. 

BOB: Now, the Mormon is bringing this up, not the Evangelical. 

SAM: That’s what the Mormon believes. 

BOb: And let me guess. Let me guess when he does that, the Evangelical says, I agree with you. 

SAM: Yep, he pretty much nods along because that’s exactly what he believes. And then they go to Matthew 7:21, “Not all who say to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom, but he who does the will of My Father,” and they both agree, ironically, that the will of the Father is something to do with doing good works, even though, as we talked about recently on the podcast, the next verse says, Didn’t we cast out demons in your name, do good works in your name, you know, do things in your name. And that’s the reason they’re there and they’re not entering the kingdom is because they thought that’s what they needed to do. So anyway, they both have kind of a back-loaded, sure, it’s just believe, but if you really believe, that means you’re going to do these things. 

BOB: Now, let me explain what back-loaded means. When I was at Dallas Seminary, Howard Hendricks gave a message in chapel in which you talked about back-loading the gospel. And he said, there’s lots of evangelicals who say, in order to be born again, you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, Acts 16:31. But then they say, if you truly believe, then we’re going to see it in your works. You’re going to be a changed person. Your behavior will be different. You will persevere to the end of your life, and they will say that your basis of assurance is not the promise of eternal life in John 3:16. Your basis of assurance is your changed life and your perseverance in good works till the end. And Hendricks called that back-loading the gospel. And there are lots of people who do that, although what you’re saying is both of these guys, both back-load and front-load, and front-loading is saying, it’s not enough to simply believe. You’ve got to have the right kind of faith, which in their definition includes turning from sins, commitment of life, following Christ, and perseverance, right? 

SAM: Basically, yeah. 

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SAM: The most interesting part in the video I saw was a part where the evangelical guy says, the reason Mormons and Evangelicals are different is because you guys have one thing, and then even though we disagree on some of the different elements of saving faith, we generally agree on all of it. And he gives the example, he says, some people will say, it’s by grace through faith, and then you have to have works to back it up, or some people say by grace through faith, but then you have to do good works to maintain it. And he basically accepts those, here’s the sphere of Protestantism, or here’s the sphere of evangelicals, puts those two in the same category when those are vastly different, and both of them are very different from what’s actually true. And he says this in the video, but I know he doesn’t mean it. We believe it’s by grace through faith to good works, coming from Ephesians 2:8-9, and then verse 10, which is to say that you’re His workmanship. And that’s a good thing to tell people, but that’s not what he means. When he says, you’re saved by grace through faith to good works, he means the works are now what proves that you were saved by grace through faith. 

BOB: Or, as you said, he also accepts the view that that’s what allows you to keep it.

SAM: Exactly. By grace through faith, but then if you don’t continue in those good works, then either you lose it or you’d prove you’d never had it. 

BOB: And we just went through this in our Greek class, translating and then exegeting Ephesians 2:1-10, and it’s interesting, in verses 8 and 9, pulses for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that is the by grace through faith salvation is not of yourselves, but is the gift of God not of works lest anyone should boast. So what you’re evangelical on the video must be saying, is I’m going to add another expression, we’re saved by grace through faith apart from works, so that we might produce good works or to good works, right? He’d have to say apart from works, but then he has to say, but the result needs to be that. And he can’t say that we should produce good works, which is what Ephesians 2:10 says.

And by the way, there’s a shift between “you” in Ephesians 2:8-9, and “we” in verse 10. Check out John Niemela’s article on, We are God’s masterpiece, the Church, that’s a singular there, poiema, the church is God’s masterpiece, and the church is designed to produce good works. It doesn’t mean every local church is just overflowing with good works. Read 1 and 2 Corinthians, read Revelation 2 and 3. It also doesn’t mean every believer is overflowing with good works. What it means is the Church itself is designed to be a good works organization. 

SAM: And that’s the, you can see that guy’s frustration in the video, because he gets through all that, and then the Mormon guy basically says, yep, that’s what we believe too, by grace through faith to good works. But the important thing for us to highlight here, and a lot of people that listen to Grace in Focus, a lot of people are very familiar with this, but I think it’s very important to highlight that if you don’t have the actual promise of everlasting life, the actual gospel good news that Christ brought, and we can read about in the gospel of John, if you don’t have that as your firm foundation, then you’re building on the sand. 

BOB: That’s right. Let me give you a quick story here. You mentioned how Calvinism and Arminianism are, the ones who say, well, you can lose your salvation versus you can prove you never had it. You said they’re radically different. But in a sense, they’re not that different, because they both say you’ve got to persevere to get in. I would say the same thing is true with Mormonism. They’re all saying, whether you can lose it or can’t lose it, they’re all saying you’ve got to have some special kind of faith plus works, and you’ve got to persevere to the end. 

John MacArthur, I heard him say this himself. Some representatives from Brigham Young University went to Southern California to meet with him. They told him when they were talking with him that his book, The Gospel According to Jesus, was required reading at BYU. And they said, we just love that book. And when he was talking about it, he laughed to his audience, Man, they didn’t understand my book. My thought was, you know, they did understand your book, and they do agree with Lordship Salvation. That’s their basic position. 

Cults have extra-biblical sources. Like, for example, the Latter-day Saints have the Pearl of Great Price. They have The Book of Mormon. They have Doctrine and Covenants. They have various other books besides the Bible. The Bible is one of their books. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have the Watchtower Society and their publications, right? Whatever it is, they have some extra-biblical sources. This evangelical doesn’t. So that would make him different. 

But the bottom line is they’re both coming up with the same saving message. And it’s a distorted message. I would encourage all our people to watch Ken’s videos because this sounds like fascinating stuff. 

SAM: Yeah, it’s interesting. It should be a little bit frustrating to see and hear things like this because it’s just very sad, I think, to see an evangelical just struggle, treading water, barely gasping for air in what should be a layup. Anyway, hopefully this and those videos will help you all keep grace in focus. 

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