From Treadmill to Truth: A True Story of a Transformed Mormon Missionary

By Bruce Levi

Have you ever gone to the gym and gotten on a treadmill? Maybe you even have one in your home. You’ve probably noticed that a treadmill takes you nowhere, right? After all that walking or running, you’re still right where you started, aren’t you? If you want to actually go somewhere, you will have to get off that treadmill. Well, I spent over a quarter of a century on a religious treadmill. I kept finding myself right where I had begun.

But, just a few weeks before my 27^th birthday, I clearly saw that I needed to get of that treadmill. I prayed to Jesus Christ and asked Him to forgive me of sin and be my Savior. He did just that. And I felt an immediate sense of forgiveness and relief from guilt that I had never before known. I will never forget that day - the day I got off the treadmill.

This act that was born of faith, when I called on Jesus Christ for salvation, was a huge departure from everything I had been taught. In fact, it was heresy in my Church. I had been taught that calling upon Jesus for salvation was a false doctrine, because each person must earn salvation through participation in religious rituals such as water baptism and other special ceremonies, and by then keeping all the commandments of my Church.

You see, I was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known as the Mormon Church or the LDS Church. In my family, our whole lives centered on the Church. We attended virtually all the weekly Church meetings starting when I was a young child. At age twelve I was ordained a Mormon Deacon in the “Aaronic” priesthood. I was even the president of my seminary class, a formal religious instruction program for Mormon youth. In the Mormon Boy Scout program, I attained the rank of Eagle Scout by age 14 and then earned the Duty to God Award, of which I was very proud.

My quest for self-perfection continued after graduation from high school when I began attending the Mormon Church’s Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. At BYU, I was very active in the Church programs, in which held leadership positions. I was ordained an Elder in the higher-level “Melchizedek” Priesthood. I was asked by the President of the Mormon Church, whom I considered to be a true prophet of God, to go on a two-year mission to Germany. In preparation, I attended the secretive Mormon temple ceremony and began to seriously study Mormon teachings. This study led to some interesting, and disturbing, discoveries.

I learned that in its early days, the Mormon Church’s doctrine of God was more similar to Christianity’s Trinitarian doctrine than the more recent and perhaps current Mormon teaching that God was once a man, that man can become God, and that there are many Gods. I came upon these early doctrines of God in a book titled, Lectures On Faith, which I purchased at either the BYU bookstore, or a local Mormon bookstore in Provo. Lectures On Faith was published as part of the official 1835 edition of Mormon scripture titled Doctrine and Covenants, of which I have a photostatic copy. In case any reader doubt the important position and status that Lectures On Faith played in early Mormonism, one only need to know that it occupied pages 1 to 74 of the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants and was specifically referred to in that volume’s preface, which was signed by Joseph Smith, Jr. himself, the founder of Mormonism. Lectures On Faith is no longer part of the LDS Church’s scripture, and no wonder.

Then, I found out that that Brigham Young, who led the Mormons to Utah in 1847, taught openly and plainly that Adam was actually God the Father who brought one of his wives, Eve, with him to the Garden of Eden to start the human race. I read Brigham’s own words in a copy of the then recently-published work titled, Journal of Discourses, which a fellow student who lived in my same dormitory had just purchased. This student, who had recently returned from his mission to Scandinavia, came to my room to show Brigham’s quote to my roommate, who had just returned from his mission to Germany.

Since I had been taught that Mormonism was a restoration of the one true church that Jesus Christ organized some 2000 years ago, it seemed strange to me that God would give such contradictory teachings about Himself. After all, the whole reason for the Mormon Church was to clear up such doctrinal discrepancies that had come to characterize Christianity. When I asked fellow Mormons to explain these changing doctrines of God, I was told to just ignore them since recent Church leaders had finally cleared this up. This made me search even more.

Perhaps the most significant thing I learned as a college freshman at BYU was about the Mormon doctrine of salvation. Like Christianity, Mormonism teaches that Jesus Christ paid for the sins of the world with an atoning sacrifice. However, the similarity ends there. Mormonism taught me that I must earn Christ’s atonement for salvation through religious ceremonies and keeping all the commandments of Mormonism. It was years later that I learned that the Bible, in sharp contrast, teaches that man cannot keep all the commandments, which were not given to bring salvation, and that Christ grants eternal salvation as a gift to those who place their trust in Him.

But even in Mormonism it is obvious that no one can keep all the commandments. So, one is to overcome this inability through repentance. However, in Mormonism, repentance (like almost every theological term) does not mean what it does in Christianity. In Mormonism the word repentance loses its meaning as “a change of mind,” wherein the sinner is to turn to God. It is, instead, a process in which the sixth, and final, step is: “Keep All The Commandments.” This definition and the steps of repentance can be seen in the official LDS publication, Gospel Principles, which is published by the LDS Church. In the 1997 edition, the section on repentance begins on page 122. Or, do a search on the LDS website: www.mormon.org.

As a student at the official LDS University I wanted very much to learn the doctrines of the Church. At that time, a book, The Miracle of Forgiveness, by LDS apostle Spencer W. Kimball, was very popular. This book still has much influence in the LDS Church as seen by the numerous times it is quoted in Gospel Principles. This book, was almost required reading, at least among serious students of LDS doctrine in 1973-74. Spencer Kimball, who eventually became the President of the LDS Church Kimball uses 368 pages (My edition is a third paperback printing from 1981.) to elucidate the LDS doctrine of repentance.

It is ironic that the book’s title describes forgiveness as a miracle. For after reading it, one can see that the only miracle involved in LDS forgiveness would be that anyone could even hope to qualify for forgiveness, let alone come close to it. Here are some examples from the book that demonstrate why I say this, and why I said above that Mormon salvation is a kind of spiritual treadmill. Kimball says that one must “leave nothing undone toward arriving at personal perfection” (page 124). And, “To try is weak. To “do the best I can” is not strong. We must always do better than we can. This is true in every walk of life” (page 165). And, “there must be no turning back. Any reversal, even in a small degree, is greatly to his detriment” (page 170). And, “It depends upon you whether or not you are forgiven, and when. It could be weeks, it could be years, it could be centuries before…you have the positive assurance that the Lord has forgiven you” (page 325). And, “forgiveness was possible eventually, when the heavy price had been paid” (page 343). And, “that by keeping the commandments they might be washed and cleansed from all their sins” (page 346).

But, doubts and questions about such serious topics as salvation are not particularly welcome in the Mormon Church. Mormon leaders taught that “when they had spoken the thinking had been done.” Questioning is regarded as a sign of weakness. Besides, I had been taught that all the Churches of Christianity had fallen into total apostasy and had no priesthood authority to act in God’s name. Wasn’t the fact there are so many competing protestant denominations proof enough of this? So it did not matter that I wondered how I, or any Mormon for that matter, could ever do enough to please Christ and earn salvation, I was simply to obey. All around me were people who appeared to believe they could do all the requirements for salvation. This was the environment in which I was raised. It was all I knew. I had no other point of reference.

There is much pressure in Mormonism to conform and do what you are told. And, since I thought I needed to do many good works, obey Church leaders, and keep all the commandments to earn eternal life, I dutifully became a Mormon Missionary to Germany. It was in Germany, the land of Martin Luther, who asked questions, searched the Bible, and stood firm, that God planted the seed of the Gospel in me. In Germany I read the Bible from cover-to-cover and noticed many things that Mormonism could not explain.

One sunny afternoon while waiting for a bus in Darmstadt, I was approached by a soldier who was stationed at a nearby U.S. Army post. He asked me if I had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. When I replied that I had been baptized, he explained that he meant a personal relationship like two friends have, and like he had with Jesus. Right then and there I knew in my heart that I did not have such a relationship with Jesus. It bothered me greatly that I, a missionary from the “only true church,” did not have a personal relationship with the One who was named as the very head of my Church. This realization troubled me for the remainder of my mission and for years after it.

After my mission, I returned to BYU to major in Business and minor in German language. While continuing to also study Mormonism, I saw that Mormonism had no reasonable explanation to substantiate its claims that many truths were removed from the Bible.

Since I had read this quote from Brigham Young (There is much additional evidence that proves Brigham taught this doctrine for over 20 years.) with my own eyes, I was shocked what I heard on my car radio in 1978. While driving on University Avenue in Provo, Utah, the newscaster reported that the President of the LDS Church officially condemned the Adam-is-God doctrine. I remember having to pull off the road because this news was extremely contradictory to what I knew Brigham had taught. This meant the unthinkable: either Brigham was not a faithful prophet of God, or that the prophet in 1978, Spencer Kimball, was not a faithful prophet. Which prophet was I to believe?

More importantly, I saw that the happiest Mormons where those who lived their lives as they saw fit and had their own opinions, despite what the Church leaders taught. Maybe they had noticed some of the same things I had. Twice at BYU I encountered Christians who were handing out information on the differences between Mormonism and Christianity. After much contemplation and study, I came to the inescapable conclusion that Mormonism’s way to eternal life by keeping all the many commandments was just impossible. I knew that there must be another way.

After graduation, I moved back to Boise, Idaho where I was employed in the sales force of a large international company. The next spring, I simply walked away from the Mormon religion. It had become clear to me that Mormonism was powerless and lifeless. Its emphasis on human effort and its lack of focus on the love of Christ were emptiness to me. Like many Mormons who come to this same realization, I concluded that organized religion was not the answer, so I did not attend church anywhere.

But God had other plans. That summer I met a Christian who invited me to attended a Sunday morning church service at a local protestant church. Out of curiosity I went. There I saw for the first time, a large group of people who were in church because they wanted to be, not because they had to be in order to get on God’s good side. I was amazed at their gratefulness to Christ for what He had done for them in purchasing and then giving them eternal life. The hymns they sang were all about Christ. They were just like the army man I had spoken with in Germany six years previous. They had a relationship with Jesus.

I liked what I saw there and kept attending. A few weeks later a former Mormon came to present his story of conversion to Christ and tell how Mormonism differed from Christianity. I attended his daylong seminar and learned of the many changes and cover-ups in Mormon doctrine and history. Some of these I had heard of before, but now I saw evidence carefully laid out with a respectful and caring attitude. I studied this information in detail along with the Christian doctrine of salvation by grace alone.

It became clear to me that the Bible plainly teaches that all people are sinners by nature. This confirmed my own observation about myself. I knew that I did unrighteous things without even trying. They seemed to just happen naturally, no matter how hard I tried to be perfect. It became clear that I, too, was really just a sinner by nature who lacked the capability to save myself in any way and in any part. Now, I was ready to receive the Bible’s teaching that Christ purchased my salvation and wanted me to acknowledge Him as my personal Savior. So it was in October of 1981 that I prayed to Christ and He became my Savior. I got off that religious treadmill and received the gift of eternal life.

Bruce Levi, his wife Sandi, and their six children have a ministry that educates Christians on the differences between Christianity and Mormonism and equips Christians to reach Mormons in a non-offensive, non-argumentative manner that allows for the Gospel to be given in a way the Mormon can understand. For 18 years they lived in Utah and are now members of Montana Avenue Baptist Church in Caldwell, Idaho. In western Idaho, as well as in the bordering State of Oregon, Mormonism has grown by 50% during the past decade! The vast majority of people who convert to Mormonism have a Christian background. Over 225,000 people per year (600 people per day) are leaving Christianity for Mormonism. The Levis are available to speak in your Church, Sunday School, Camp, or other meetings.

Reading Between the Clean Cut Lines, Part 2

In his “Witnessing to Mormons” post of September 27, 2008, Clean Cut, the Mormon apologist, stated, “…there is only one eternal God…there are many gods, but they are gods by grace, made so by God himself.” In my previous post, I showed that the Bible plainly teaches that there is only one God, period. There is not a central, original, eternal God who then made other “gods” as per Mormon thinking. Several passages from Isaiah were listed. See that posting for the list.

The Bible does use the words god and gods, with a small g. However, such usage is almost always in reference to false gods, or idols. The nations surrounding Israel all had false gods and idols against which God repeatedly warned. It is no wonder the word gods is in the Bible so often. Of course, those “gods” are not real gods; they are mere fabrications, first in the mind of a human and then often fashioned from wood or stone. An analogy is a false passport. It is not really a passport at all; it only attempts to pass itself off as one. It may appear to be real. However, upon closer examination it will be found phony. Some false gods exist only in the imagination of men’s minds. For example, some people believe in and worship the non-material, ethereal gods of Hinduism. The first of the Ten Commandments tells us to have no other “gods” before God. This is in reference to false gods, who merely pose as God. There is only one real God and any other “gods” are false pretenders. Neither are these false gods some kind of junior level gods that were made into gods by the one eternal God of Mormonism. Again, this is clear from Isaiah, as well as many other passages in both the Old and New Testaments.

What about the interesting statement in the New Testament, John 10:34-36, where Jesus Christ says, “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of the God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, who the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?” Mormons often quote this passage to “prove” that men can become, and even have already become, gods.

In order to properly understand any Bible passage, one must first understand its context. This rule applies to all written works, not just the Bible. To take a passage in the Bible, or any book, and use it in disregard to its contextual meaning, is nonsense. The context of John 10:34-36 is Jesus answering His attackers who want to stone Him to death (vss. 31-33). They believe He has blasphemed by claiming to be God. (vss. 29-30). Go back to at least verse 24 and start there to see the context of this passage.

And for further context of John 10:34-36, go the Old Testament passage Jesus is quoting, Psalm 82:6 “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.” Note in verse 1 of Psalm 82 that God (the only one God) is judging the “gods.” In verse 5, He says that these “gods” are devoid of knowledge and even the ability to know. In verse 7, He pronounces a judgment of death on these “gods.” In verse 8, we see the psalmist’s plea that God Himself, the One and Only God, judge the earth. For, only God, the real God, can and will judge creation in perfect justice. It is therefore obvious that these “gods” of Psalm 82:6 and John 10:34 are in no way the “gods” of classical Mormonism, who must become very knowledgeable, good, and righteous before they can become gods. This is clear from the official LDS instruction manual, The Gospel Through the Ages, as well as Mormon scripture, the Pearl of Great Price, which I quoted from in my previous posting, which is Part 1 of this topic.

In His use of Psalm 82:6, Jesus is making a simple argument to the people who want to kill him for blasphemy. He is proving with Psalm 82:6 that the word gods can be legitimately used to refer to others than God Himself and that its use does not mean that other beings are actually Gods, or even junior “gods” that under the direct authority of the one eternal God. In other words, Jesus is asking His attackers, If God, in Psalm 82:6 refers to people as “gods” and “children of the most High,” then why are you so upset if I, Jesus, call myself God? Jesus is using a play on words by stating that if humans can be called gods, then it is OK for Jesus, the Messiah, to call Himself God. For, of course Jesus is God the Eternal Son, the second person (not former human) of the Holy Trinity. As proof that He really is God, Jesus asks His attackers to consider the works He had done (vss. 37-38).

Now, what about Clean Cut’s assertion regarding God’s grace? Did the one eternal God of Mormonism make many gods by his grace? Is Clean Cut being clear about Mormon doctrine with his statement? Is he obfuscating or misleading, or is he correct according to Mormon scripture?

In LDS scripture, the Pearl of Great Price, Abraham 5:22 it states, “And God saw these souls [called “intelligences’ in verse 22] were good…and he said: These will I make my rulers.” In chapter four, verse one, these rulers organize the world [note that Mormonism’s “gods” do not create, but merely organize]. In verse 2, these rulers are called “Gods. If we ignore the use here of the capital G, and replace it with a small g, we can see in Mormon scripture that the original LDS God, who is the “only eternal God,” chose other “rulers” or “intelligences” to become "gods." There is no description in this passage of LDS scripture that these “gods” did anything to become gods. However, the one eternal God makes them his adjunct “gods” “for [means because] they were good.” In this way it appears on the surface that the original “only one eternal God” of Mormonism made “many…gods by his grace.” Thus, on the surface, Clean Cut appears to be in line with LDS scripture.

However, upon deeper examination, there is a serious problem with Clean Cut’s statement that the one eternal God made gods by his grace. The use of the word for in Abraham 5:22 shows us that the one eternal God of Mormonism chose beings called “intelligences” to be his “rulers” or “gods” on the basis of their inherent goodness. This is simply the standard heresy of Pelagianism and Arminianism, whereby God chooses those He sees have some inherent goodness, or worth, or ability. In other words, that God chooses based not on His own will and purposes, but because of some inherent value in other beings. Such a way destroys the sovereignty of God and puts mankind in charge of God. But this voids the voice of Scripture.

Yes, it is true that in Abraham 5 that the” intelligences” had apparently performed no overt actions to earn godhood. However, they were chosen because they were “good.” What had made these “intelligences” good? If they followed the standard Mormon "plan of salvation" they had made themselves good. They worked for it. This state of being “good” implies that they deserved to be the “rulers” under God, or his “gods.” Everywhere in Mormon doctrine, one finds the requirement that beings make themselves “good” to earn godhood. So, why would it be different with the “intelligences”? All this focus on the goodness of other beings, and God having to chose them because of their, not His, character is not grace!

At this point, the discerning Christian will recognize that Clean Cut and Mormonism have redefined grace to be something that is outside the orthodox, biblical, Christian meaning of grace. In this manner, Clean Cut is misleading and false in his use of the word grace. Just what is the Mormon definition of grace? In the official, LDS-printed book of doctrine, Gospel Principles, grace does not appear in either the Glossary or the Index! Grace, if it had any significance or importance in Mormon theology, would be listed. But it is not! In his book, The Miracle of Forgiveness and cited in Gospel Principles, former Mormon prophet and President Spencer W. Kimball, did not list grace in his index. However, he did say this about grace: “One of the most fallacious doctrines originated by Satan and propounded by man is that man is saved alone by the grace of God; that belief in Jesus Christ alone is all that is needed for salvation.” Wow! No ambiguity there, huh?

Because an LDS apostle speaks with more authority than Clean Cut, we can conclude that Clean Cut is wrong with his statement that God made many gods by his grace.