Christian, Programmer, TTRPG Game Master, Love Star Wars, Star Trek, Star Gate, LotR, HP, DW Jesus is Lord! (Eph. 2:8-10; 1 Corinth. 6:9-11; Romans 5:8, 6:23)
Joined May 2015
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For this is how God loved the world, He sent His only Son to live the perfect life we could not, be crucified, buried, and raised to life: that anyone who turns from their sin and trusts in Him alone will not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
In Christ alone by grace alone through faith alone can we be saved from the wrath of God that we deserve because of our rebellion against God (Romans 5:9-10).
3/4
Austin Graham retweeted
Mediating on Ephesians 5 today. Christ “gave himself up for” the church (Eph 5:25), and he is “himself its Savior” (Eph 5:23), language suggesting a defined body for whom the sacrifice was specifically made. In a same way, Jesus tells us that the good shepherd “lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11, 15), and these sheep “hear my voice,” are known by Christ, and “will never perish” (John 10:26–28). The shepherd metaphor distinguishes between those who are Christ’s sheep and those who are not, those who “do not believe” are “not among my sheep” (John 10:26–28).
The language of substitution reinforces this particularity. Jesus “will save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21), he won’t try to save, make people saveable, or attempt to save, but will accomplish the act for his people specifically. Jesus does not desire to save people and fail. He accomplishes the act of salvation and restoration. The church was “obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28), suggesting an actual acquisition of a defined people. Christ “gave himself” to “redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession” (Titus 2:14); language indicating the accomplishment of redemption for those redeemed, not a mere offer extended to all.
Christ’s intercessory work further illuminates this pattern. In prayer, Christ states: “I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me” (John 17:9), and he “consecrate[s]” himself “for their sake” so “they also may be sanctified” (John 17:19). His self-consecration corresponds to those for whom he prays, a specific group, not humanity universally.
The sacrificial terminology employed throughout Scripture, redemption, propitiation, and reconciliation, implies actual accomplishment rather than mere potential.
The servant “bore the sin of many” (Isa 53:11–12), and the Son of Man gave “his life as a ransom for many” (Matt 20:28). When Scripture speaks of Christ’s death achieving these effects, it describes completed realities for those included, not conditional possibilities for all.
I can’t imagine what the members of this congregation must be feeling after all of this. Keeping a heart willing to trust again and not become consumed with doubts or pain can be a very difficult task.
Thanks be to God that our faith is not anchored upon fallible man but upon the one and only unchanging God who in the person of the Son took on flesh as the only infallible man and who willingly bore the punishment of our sins unto death in our place.
Pray for the members of PMBC as they process and move forward in this difficult time. Pray for the former elders who must now bear the consequences of their actions and that this would not lead to worldly sorrow but a godly sorrow leading to true repentance.
The law and order parody theme got me 🤣
Austin Graham retweeted
Brian Simmons told @JonmarkBaker that he and his "team" are working on "scrubbing" the "Aramaic" from the Passion Translation.
This is after 15 years of claiming that Jesus Himself supernaturally revealed the "missing piece of Aramaic" to him.
This is after claiming in front of hundreds of people that the Greek of Eph. 5:22 is "abusive."
15 years of claiming that Greek only "speaks to the mind" while Aramaic "speaks to the heart."
15 years of huge leaders throughout the body of Christ telling their people that TPT contains "deeper revelation" because it comes "from the Aramaic."
The entire foundation of TPT, its entire reason for existence, is quietly being "scrubbed."
Anything to keep the deception going.
Austin Graham retweeted
If you are a Christian your confidence today rests on foundations that cannot be shaken. If God is for you, and He has not spared His own Son but delivered Him up for all of you, then He will graciously give you all things with Him. (Rom 8:28–39) And please don’t hear this as a platitudinal X post: it flows from the reality of your election. God chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless, predestining you for adoption as His children according to His pleasure and will.
The Puritan theologians are helpful here, and understood something vital about this assurance: election and covenant work together, offering troubled believers a double source of assurance; you can plead the covenant with God, asking Him to fulfill His promises, while simultaneously finding comfort in the sufficiency of His prevenient grace and the immutability of His will in election. Your election is not fragile or conditional on your performance, as I’ve said before, your salvation is received not achieved. God’s immutable decree of election proceeds from His perfect counsel, the basis for maintaining His people in sanctification and imparting to them an inward principle of holiness.
Yet this absolute promise does not leave you passive. God’s love, made known to you, draws you out of yourself toward Him in orderly, faithful obedience. The conditional promises of the covenant are inseparable from your daily renewal of it through prayer, meditation, and worship. Your obedience becomes the very means by which you experience and confirm what God has already secured.
Anchor yourself in the permanence of God’s word. Heaven and earth will pass away, but His words will not pass away. (Matt 24:35) All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. (2 Tim 3:16–17) In this word, your election is declared, your redemption is promised, and your perseverance is guaranteed — not by your strength, but by His.
Austin Graham retweeted
As everyone debates Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey and Elon Musk's offer to pay Mel Gibson $100M to do his own adaptation, I notice no one has the courage to do Homer's poem the way WISHBONE did on PBS. We used to be a country.
Austin Graham retweeted
Most common bad Bible study habit I see…
Jumping right past understanding the passage well and going straight to application. People often conclude, after coming up with some “application” which may not even be valid, that they’ve finished the one and only step in Bible study.
Austin Graham retweeted
Once again, a perk of following me on Twitter is that you get early access to the latest @LutheranSatire videos:
Here's Donall and Conall and Dawkins 3: One God Further
Austin Graham retweeted
I spoke to an inside source at Bethel and learned the following info which I believe confirms Bethel is not following through with their promise to reform.
1) Bethel is laying off about 50 people. This is relevant because of the nature of the layoffs not merely because they are happening. I’ve known for some time that Bethel is struggling financially but didn’t mention it publicly as I don’t see how that’s worth sharing. But, it is relevant given what else I am sharing.
2) They are planning more layoffs in August.
3) This inside source told me that the people being let go are believed by them to be the very ones who ask too many questions and are trying to advocate for change. That’s a deeply concerning culling which suggests what I’ve believed for some time now. That Bethel’s initial apology ended up being more strategy than reform. This explains a lot of their behavior in recent months.
4) That strict non-disparagement agreements are being signed by those who are being laid off, in order to get severance. In other words, “we will give you this money but you have to promise not to say anything that can hurt our reputation.” Bethel previously stated adamantly that they don’t do NDAs (implying they don’t limit what people can say) but I can attest that they do bind people to silence in contracts because, completely separate from the new source I have, I have seen one of these severance agreements with my own eyes. It was extremely strict and far more limiting of speech than a typical NDA. It said the person wasn’t allowed to say anything that could harm Bethel’s reputation, not just that they couldn’t tell lies or reveal private info.
5) According to the source they seem to be planning to ignore the issues with TPT. This is consistent with multiple reports I’ve seen that Bethel is censoring discussions about The Passion Translation on their alumni Facebook group, a group which used to allow open discussion of many issues, until recently. The fact that they are going to ignore the TPT issues is a true affront to the Holy Scripture.
Also, according to a recent post from Candace Simmons to supporters of Brian Simmons and The Passion Translation, an elder from Bethel apologized profusely for a supposed “glitch” that happened to remove the book from the Bethel store before they put it back up. It looks like Bethel is tripling down in their support of a liar and his thoroughly debunked “translation” of the Bible.
None of this is good. None of it makes me happy. But I think it helps confirm that Bethel is past the point of no return.
Some may doubt me quoting a source they don’t know but keep in mind I have been right over and over for months and not a single significant claim I’ve brought from sources (many anonymous to you) has been proven false. On the contrary, evidence has regularly surfaced to confirm my reports to you.
The hilarious part is even in the replies of this post and on the original: you can literally quote their sources and they will keep calling you a liar and say they will not read anything you cite.
I only had 1 person try to reconcile the quotes of their “prophets”: but even then I was still called a liar for quoting the sources.
Mormonism is not an intellectually honest religion. Its own teachers teach the people NOT to test things by prior revelation and in so doing bake in the idea that they can contradict themselves while calling it “more accurate revelation”. They literally tell people to violate the command of scripture (1 Thess. 5:21 & 1 John 4:1).
“Brothers and sisters, unlike vintage comic books and classic cars, prophetic teachings do not become more valuable with age. That is why we should not seek to use the words of past prophets to dismiss the teachings of living prophets.” - Elder Allen D. Haynie (2023 General Council Talk)
Well, you asked for it. You got it.
According to Mormon theology, God committed adultery and incest with his own daughter to beget Jesus Christ. And here it is from Mormon sources.
youtu.be/FFMUVx9Li3w
I find it interesting across multiple dialogues with LDS that the claim that the first command was “to be fruitful and multiply”: but it wasn’t.
The first command given to man by God was not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
“And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.””
Genesis 2:16-17
Why I find this interesting is that, while family is absolutely important, when what the Bible actually says is bypassed to treat having children as the “first” command actually betrays the underlying theology of the LDS church: they don’t think it was bad (some don’t even believe it was sin) for Adam and Eve to break the very first and only command given to them. They do not believe what the Bible says that by this sin death both physically and spiritually entered the world and utterly separated mankind from God.
Why do they not think it is wrong? Because in LDS theology Adam and Eve would have never had children unless they broke this command. Essentially (and crudely): breaking God’s command taught them about sex in the LDS view, and only now would they understand how to “be fruitful and multiply”. Innocence in the LDS view is not about legal status but naivety.
And reproduction is critical in LDS thought in order to bring down the waiting spirit children to give them bodies so that they might be exalted to godhood like their Heavenly Father was before them.
None of this, by the way, was included in the Book of Mormon but was a result of Joseph Smiths rapidly evolving theology especially as justification for polygamy which he had been keeping a secret from his own wife and growing followers. So anyone saying to just read the Book of Mormon as if it actually represents the majority of LDS beliefs is being dishonest, even if only because they have been deceived themselves and not out of maliciousness.
Children are indeed a blessing from God, and the family unit is a foundational pillar of community by God’s design. But when we elevate it beyond what God has said, even making it a requirement for salvation (many LDS prophets made such claims as unless one affirms and partakes in polygamy he cannot be exalted which is eternal life in the LDS faith) so that we can give others a chance at exaltation…. That’s not just losing the plot, but staring from a completely broken and failing place to start from.
The LDS faith has continually minimized the severity of sin, even going to far as to say God commands sin. (See the Book of Abraham where it justifies Abrahams sin of Genesis 12:10-20 and actually places God as the one who commands it. Many LDS of the new “progressive” group that have no problem picking and choosing whatever they want to believe and rejecting whatever they don’t want to believe even blasphemous say God can lie and even has lied (pointing to the very command I have brought up) as well as his prophets giving false prophecies (Ezekiel and the fall of Tyre is just one they attempt to claim).
But God is clear: sin deserves death. Eternal death. To be utterly cut off from the source of Life and completely under His wrath forever and ever. And this is entirely just, and it is what we all deserve for our sin.
Repent and trust in Christ alone for salvation: not to be exalted to divinity to be like God as Satan tempted in the garden: but to be a sinner who is washed and cleaned and reconciled to God in order to have a right relationship with Him and dwell in His presence forever alongside everyone who believes.
This is my last post on X, and I wanted the last word to be one that matters.
The very first commandment God gave in Eden was to multiply and replenish the earth, and the Restoration placed the family at the burning center of the whole plan: the unit of the celestial kingdom, the reason for the temple, the very shape of God's own life.
So when a covenant people quietly stop bearing the next generation, they have not merely made the reasonable lifestyle choice the world applauds. They have begun to set down the first and oldest commandment ever given, and a people who set down the foundation should not wonder why the house begins to sink beneath them.
The Book of Mormon shows you how it happens, and it shows you in slow motion, over and over, until no honest reader can miss it. A people are delivered and made prosperous.
Prosperity breeds comfort. Comfort breeds forgetting. And the forgetting always wears the same face: they come to love the world and its ease more than the covenant and its cost.
They set their hearts on riches and on the praise of men, they grow quietly ashamed of the strict and demanding ways of their fathers, and they trade the weight of the covenant for the lightness of the age.
The empty cradle belongs to that same trade.
Children are heavy, and faith is heavy, and sacrifice is heavy, and everything the covenant has ever asked is heavy, and a people who have fallen in love with their own comfort will not carry what is heavy for long.
So do not mistake what the numbers are telling you. The collapsing birthrate of the Saints is not a sociological curiosity to be smoothed over with better messaging. It is the scriptural pattern arriving on schedule, the visible fever of a covenant people grown too comfortable to bear the weight of their own future.
A people who will not have numerous children have, at the deepest level, stopped believing the future is worth filling with their faith, and a people who no longer believe in their own future are already in the early stages of not having one.
This is the warning the scriptures have been shouting across the centuries, and we have been too soothed to hear it.
And yet the warning has always carried its mercy folded inside it. Every cycle in the Book of Mormon that ended in destruction could have ended in repentance instead, and some did, and the difference was never circumstance. It was never the size of the threat or the strength of the enemy or the hardness of the times.
The difference was always one thing only: whether a people, warned, would humble themselves before the comfort finished its work.
We have been warned.
Your prophets at general conference warned you time and time again. Do not forget their words.
The cradle is the warning made visible. The only question left is the one the scriptures have put to every people who ever stood where we now stand. Will we turn, and take up the weight again, and build a future worth being born into.
Or will we stay comfortable, and go the way of every comfortable people the record has ever buried.
That is my last word.
Is this supposed to be the “good fruit” I hear so much about that proves the LDS church is true?
The amount of pride and arrogance from people who can’t even make any logical case or even attempt to engage with the Bible honestly should be a huge warning sign.
Is this really how yall want to be known, members of the LDS church? You want to be known as the fools who cannot make coherent arguments or have any justification apart from your emotions for why anyone should believe you?
Is all you have really ad hominem attacks?
Being called out for literally ignoring the text and twisting it to fit their own system instead of making an actual defense….
Par for the course sadly. They cannot actually engage with the Bible because they neither read it nor understand it.
This is what happens when mankind elevates himself to be like God and seeks to make ourselves divine and sovereign.
Pray for those who are deceiving and being deceived through the LDS church. They know they cannot rightly defend the positions and beliefs that are neither found in the Bible or even their own “scriptures” and must resort to ad hominem and emotional arguments to even defend why they believe what they believe.
Christians, pray for those you engage with on X and all social media and in person interactions. Don’t lose sight of the fact we have nothing to boast in but Christ. The world needs the gospel.
The pride and spiritual blindness is deep, and you and I are never going to persuade someone into true fear if the Lord by our own power. Only God can change hearts and minds: we simply must be faithful and willing to be His messengers of the only thing that can restore and renew a sinner to act righteously.
Pray for the lost: your family, your friends, even those on social media you cannot stand who may even mock you, insult you, and block you.
Be grounded in the word and do not let yourself be overcome to act in anger or pride. Bring your petition to the Lord who turns the heart where He wishes and brings the dead to life.
It’s very telling that all of the “testimonies” from LDS members in here have nothing to do with sin, humbling themselves before God, or a recognition of their need for a savior because they heard the good news and read the Bible.
It’s almost 100% of the time some experience they claim was God in a time that gave them warm fuzzies and they believe the Book of Mormon and Jospeh Smith for that reason alone.
And if you finally get them to budge, they cannot actually defend their beliefs but instead switch to: “would Satan really inspire someone to write a book proving the Bible?” To which you quote a verse of the Bible and they react like a vampire to garlic saying how stupid “creedal Christians” are.
Or they appeal to “look at the fruit of our church?! Would Satan really want people doing all of these good works and praying to Jesus?”
“Many will say to me in that day ‘Lord Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you: depart from me you workers of lawlessness.’ - Matthew 7: 22-23 in speaking of the false teachers right after saying you will know them by their fruit.
Clearly outward appearance, like a white washed tomb, means absolutely nothing to an infinitely holy God. Appeals to works mean nothing when the gospel and doctrine are false and leading people astray.
And to genuine Christians: if how you “share the gospel” is just talk about a time you felt God helped you or comforted you or gave you warm fuzzies and you cannot defend what you believe: then you have no right to challenge the Mormon, the Muslim, or others on their use of that tactic while you rely on it yourself.
Your feelings and experiences are not the gospel. You must actually proclaim the message of Christ and what He has done.
Read God’s word. Preach the gospel and what Christ has done, not how you feel. Be ready to give a defense for the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3:15) and back it up from God’s word and exegete the text.
When they reject the Bible, which they claim to believe by the way, believe them. They have no love for God or His word and have put themselves in His throne to adjudicate what is and is not “good”.
The irony is: if they actually read the Bible instead of only saying they did they’d actually find all of their arguments are in the text from “the bad guys” they label us as.
- The Pharisees trusting in their own works and out of pride rejecting God and bind the consciences of others with heavy burdens: check.
- The ones who challenge God’s goodness and sovereignty: check
- The ones who are bewitched by enticing words that tell them what they want to hear? Check.
- The ones who are tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine as their church lies to them and rewrites the narratives…. Check
- Lord Lord did we not do many good works in your name? Check.
This level of pride and deception is honestly really sad.
The absolute saddest part: this comes from their own apostles and prophets and yet modern day Mormons will call you a liar and flee to “where is that in our scriptures?!” when literally the majority of their doctrines and practices cannot be found in their scriptures. It’s the epitome of making one’s self the sole and ultimate authority on what is true.
Where are the temple ceremonies outlined in their scriptures? Where is the first vision account in their scriptures: heck which version of the first vision account is even the real first vision account?
Why is it that they will so quickly flee the very words of their prophets and apostles, even the modern church to change the narrative? Why would anyone trust an institution that has openly admitted it lied to its members and covered up the truth about its entire history (the treasure digging, polygamy, the seer stone, not real translations).
Austin Graham retweeted
Mormons are often very personally offended when Christians say that Mormonism isn’t Christian. This is dumb.
Joseph Smith’s first “encounter” with God involves God telling Smith that every creed Christians profess is an abomination to God.
Every creed.
That includes the Nicene Creed. They reject who God is, who Jesus is, the nature of salvation, the nature of exaltation, the clear teaching of Scripture, etc..
Mormonism rejects the very core of the Christian faith in all its essentials. Joseph Smith knew this but nowadays they are playing mind games with their own people and with real Christians.
Either THEY are Christians or WE are. It’s one or the other. Not both.
When asked “Will all be damned but Mormons?” Smith replied, “Yes, and a great portion of them unless they repent and work righteousness” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pg. 119)
The Doctrine and Covenants (1:30) leaves no doubt to the Mormon teaching of exclusivity when it says the LDS Church is “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased ….”
Brigham Young, second only to Joseph Smith in Mormonism said…
“Should you ask why we differ from other Christians, as they are called, it is simply because they are not Christians as the New Testament defines Christianity” (Journal of Discourses 10:230).
“The Christian world, so-called, are heathens as to the knowledge of the salvation of God” (Journal of Discourses 8:171).
I could easily give you pages of them saying they are the only true Christians and how we are all ignorant beasts and our doctrines are wrong. They knew at the time they had a different God, gospel, Scripture, and system of belief. But now it has become expedient to pretend otherwise while still preaching all those false and unchristian things.
Mormons, your leaders are gaslighting you and you are gaslighting us. You aren’t Christian but we want you to be. Flee from Mormonism. Flee from Joseph Smith.