We Are Not Invited To A Local Christian Church Bible Study

I talked about our Evangelical Friend who watched the Saturday morning session of General Conference with us. We fed him lunch and as he was leaving he mentioned that one of the employees who works at the Mound City Library had invited him to a Bible study class, on the Book of Revelation, put on by one of the local Churches. I told him that sounded kind of interesting; he said to me, if you will go, I will go with you. Well the person teaching the class is a person we know here in town who we had been trying to meet with. He had actually agreed to meet with us and said he would get back to us with a date, but then never followed through. I had also sent him a text message inviting him to watch General Conference.

I told our Evangelical friend that since we are missionaries for our Church, I would not feel comfortable just showing up, but I would email the Bible Study Instructor and if he was okay with us attending we would go with him to the Bible study. I really had no intention of causing any kind of disturbance, I thought I would just listen to how someone outside the Church interpreted the Book of Revelation without the benefit of modern revelation and additional scripture. Well, it turned out the Bible Study Instructor was not comfortable with us attending. Here is the exchange of emails:

Jay Anderson <janderson362@gmail.com>

XXXX his name

A friend of mine who is currently not attending any church, was invited to your Bible Study Class. He had a handout from it that was shared with him and he shared with me. I told him I would love to attend the class. He said he would attend if I attended with him. I told him that as missionaries for our Church, I would not want to in any way be disruptive to what is being taught in the class. He had your email address and shared it with me. I told him that we knew you and have great respect for you. I told him that if you were okay with us attending the class, we would attend with him. So I am writing to see if you would be comfortable with Sister Anderson and I attending your Book of Revelation Bible Study Class?

Elder and Sister Anderson

Response from the Bible Study Instructor  

Elder Jay,

Please forgive the delay in my response, but to be perfectly candid I was baffled by your request. This is a small group interactional/devotional Bible study formulated around Matt Proctor’s study guide “Victorious.” This is not a lecture format, it is much more personal with the students taking ownership not only for study but for sharing (presentation). I do not know which handout(s) you saw but the written material is designed to defuse the common misconceptions of the book and misguided yet, unfortunately, very popular theologies.

Let me begin by stating that I have as much respect for both you and Linda as is possible under the circumstances of our limited acquaintance and I certainly do not mean any offense by anything I offer but I must be perfectly honest even if that seems rather blunt. Frankly, I am at a loss to appreciate exactly what agenda you might have in attending the Revelation Bible study that would be consistent with the goals of this particular study. Our Bible study is designed for the purpose of enhancing the student's knowledge of Scripture, God, Jesus Christ, and appreciation of a Christian Worldview all consistent with the Local Christian Church Statement of Faith which I am absolutely confident is far from consistent with LDS theology. I am relatively certain that we cannot even agree on what constitutes authorized Canon. The class is not a venue for other belief structures to appear and attempt to evangelize. Nor is it a venue designed for apologetic defense of even our own belief structure. The students, to their credit, are spending a great deal of time in possibly one of the more complicated books of our Canon trying to focus on the goals which we prescribed in the outset of the class. It would be a great disservice to them for me to interject anything which would obstruct their efforts in trying to achieve those goals.

As to the person that you describe, I find this situation even more confusing. Let's be honest Jay, it would be disingenuous to suggest (therefore I assume you are not) that it would be your intention to attend any function at my church for the purpose of you considering our theology for the specific purpose of converting to our theology and belief. I find it difficult to believe that you would be purposefully bringing an unaffiliated individual to a function for that purpose. If this person is unaffiliated and if I had been the person he had spoken with I would have done some inquiry as to his knowledge of Scripture before I invited him to attend this particular Bible study as it may or may not be a good decision to invite someone to embark on a study of the Book of Revelation as their first exposure to God's Word.

In deference to your request, I will ask both of my classes tomorrow. I have a morning class in an evening class. I will ask both. Frankly, if between now and then you would like to clarify exactly the reason you wish to attend that might be helpful in me explaining to them why you wish to do so. Further, if you wished to attend the Bible study there would simply have to be ground rules. There would have to be a strict understanding that this is not an opportunity to advance an LDS recruitment agenda. There would even have to be an understanding that “Scripture” is confined to the 66 books we have as Canon and that discussion be limited to a translation which we can agree upon. I will admit to you in advance that I will not agree on using the JST. There are at least 17 others I will agree to. All of this would have to be done and agreed to outside the confines in the class beforehand. All of these restrictions are not meant to be disrespectful, it's simply a matter of fact that I'm not going to allow anyone to appear at this Bible study and derail or disrupt our agenda of attempting to reach our original goals. All is still contingent on my classmate’s approval.

I will let you know of the class’s decisions. I do very much appreciate your respect and discretion in lodging this request as opposed to simply showing up. That demonstrates an attitude I admire and respect. For that you have my sincere gratitude.

Peace and grace,

XXXX

To the Bible Study Instructor,

As you know this work is not about me and it is not about you, it is all about Jesus Christ. When my friend told me about the class, I told him I would love to attend. I have always been very interested in the Book of Revelation and other prophecies relating to the second coming of Jesus Christ our Savior. We, of course, consider ourselves Christian. I viewed this as an opportunity to see how other Christians viewed and or interpreted this important book of scripture. I told my friend that since we are missionaries for our Church, I would not be comfortable just showing up without first making sure we were welcome.

This friend called me this morning and asked if I had heard from you, I told him no, and because I had not, I had decided not to attend the class. He said he was pretty sure the class was open to anyone who wanted to attend. I thought, he's right, we open our doors to anyone who wants to attend a class in our church. 

If someone came with the intent to be disruptive, of course we would ask them to leave. In a discussion type class, we would not tell someone they could not express their opinions. But then, In my Sunday School class I do have someone that tends to talk too much. She in fact tends to dominate the conversation at times. I do find myself trying to moderate that. :) 

If you are looking for some type of test of Christian faith to gain entrance to the class. You are correct, our canon of Scripture includes more than the Bible. We use the King James Version of the Bible. We also refer at times to the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. In addition to the Bible we consider The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price to be scripture.

 I did read the Local Christian Church's Statement of faith posted on the internet. I agree with and believe in all the scriptures from the Bible attached to that statement, but not necessarily all interpretations attached to those scriptures. As you know Christians have had disagreements on bible interpretations for nearly 2000 years now. I recently read on the internet that there are over 44,000 Christian denominations in the world and yet Paul said in Ephesians 4:5 One Lord, one faith, one baptism. We would likely agree that, in itself, is one of the signs of the times.

In our Church we teach that people of other faiths teach many correct principles. Sister Anderson and I both enjoyed your animated approach in the limited discussions we have had. I believe we live in times when many of the prophecies of the last days are being fulfilled, and so the Book of Revelation is of great interest to me. I simply thought you to be someone I respect who has spent a lot on time on the Book of Revelation, "I could probably learn something from him." 

If you are uncomfortable with us attending the class, we are fine with you asking other class members what their comfort level would be with us attending, you might be surprised some might think it would make it more interesting. But even more important, I would suggest you pray about it, and if the Holy Ghost confirms to you that it is God's will that we not attend the class, then we surely should not attend the class. 

As for my friend, I find him to have fairly extensive knowledge of Christian Theology; I believe he just chooses not to attend any specific denomination at this time.

While we are far from perfect, it is our desire to follow Christ's example and obey the will of God the Father in all things.

Elder and Sister Anderson 

From the Bible Study Instructor

Thank you for your interest but the answer is no.

I was really quite surprised at the Bible Study Instructor's reaction because it was completely opposite from all previous interactions we had had with him. When I told our Evangelical friend that we would not be attending the class, he was rather indignant. We had not met with him for most of the summer, partly because he has strong disagreement with much of what we teach. Still all our conversations have been friendly and cordial, even though it was clear that he had been spending a lot of time reading anti-Mormon material. And then he really seems to believe that “he was saved when he was 12 years old and there is nothing more that he could do to become more saved than he already is.”  Those are his words. But yet when we were turned down to attend the Bible Study, he still could have attended, in fact I encouraged him to go ahead and attend, but instead he said, "let’s have our own bible study of the Book of Revelation." 

I got kind of a chuckle out of that. There is still much in terms of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ that our Evangelical friend does not agree with, but the last two weeks he has been proactive in calling and setting up a time to meet with us.

His reaction to the whole episode reminded me of how siblings will often fight among themselves but if anyone from outside the family, threatens a sibling the other siblings will be the first to provide protection to the one being threatened. 

The Last of the Peppy Almonds Delivered to the Judge

I have mentioned in previous posts that we had met a Judge at the fitness center. He is retiring from his judgeship and is in the process of taking Theology courses so he can become a pastor. He already teaches bible study at his church which is a local Christian church and also preaches on occasion. We had several conversations with him prior to Thanksgiving and then over a month went by and we just never saw him at the fitness center. Sister Anderson had made some peppy almonds for him and faithfully took them to the fitness center each time we went there prior to Christmas, but we never saw the judge on those occasions. A day or so after New Years Sister Anderson said, I am tired of hauling these peppy almonds back and forth, what should we do with them? I said, well, we know the Judge lives in town; we could call him and tell him we have a little something we want to drop off.  I had talked to him once before on the phone so I had his phone number and so I called him and said we wanted to drop a little something off. He said he was running some errands that day and if we didn’t catch him home, we could just leave it on the porch. Of course we wanted to go by when he would be home, but were not so fortunate. We went to the door and no one answered. I believe that was on a Friday and he was on my mind some over the weekend. Monday morning I prayed that we would see the Judge at the fitness center. And sure enough after a month and a half of not seeing him he showed up at the fitness center. He thanked us for the peppy almonds and we were able to visit with him some. He had changed his workout schedule to later in the day. He mentioned that years ago he would go to the fitness center at 4:30 in the morning but said that he didn’t like some of the music that others played that early in the morning. We typically go about 7:30 and most of our group are pretty subdued in terms of what is playing on TV. I mentioned to the Judge that some music and the wrong environment can cause the spirit to depart, He said, “I like that, can I use that”? I assume he meant for one of his sermons. So I may have indirectly influenced one line of some future sermon in that church. I believe whenever people are teaching truths the Holy Ghost can witness to us of those truths.

During the course of the conversation he said most of the material that he uses for his sermons is borrowed, or in other words he gets it from someone else. I didn’t think of it at the time, but after the fact, I thought I should have directed him to our free resource that has 43 years of conference talksJ. Hopefully I will be able to share that with him in the future.