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Hello Kelly,
Thanks for visiting our website, and thanks so much for writing. As a current member of the RLDS/Community of Christ church, I can certainly understand your outrage at our ministry. Years ago, I would have felt much the same way. Believe it or not, I’m actually encouraged by your outrage. For many people, outrage has been the first step in discovering truth, and then responding to it. So I hope you won’t stop with just one outburst, but that you will follow it up by diligent study to prove me wrong. My greatest fear for you is that you will stop your quest after this initial foray. You may feel you’ve given me ‘a piece of your mind,’ and that may make you feel better for the time being. That would be the greatest tragedy of all.
So I encourage you to really ‘let me have it,’ with ‘both barrels.’ That will require you to carefully study and reflect on what I have written. And then give a reasoned response as to why you believe I am wrong. I have three chapters in my book Part Way to Utah on the Book of Mormon. I suggest you start your study there. When you’re done with that, I would recommend you work through my six chapters on Joseph Smith’s priesthood system. Remember, don’t hold anything back. Let me have all your scientific and Biblical evidence for your beliefs. We’ll then have something we can discuss in depth.
You are understandably sensitive that I have found fault with your church. I truly understand that; faith is a very intimate, personal thing. And so you feel that I am personally attacking you and all other members of the RLDS/Community of Christ church. But that would be like characterizing a doctor with a scalpel as a vampire for removing a life-threatening cancer from your body. Or mistaking rescuers in life boats as hostilely attacking a sinking ship. If I didn’t love you, I would callously let you go your own way. What difference would it make to me? It is because I do love you that I want to do my best to help save you from your heresy. Because your church does, in fact, preach ‘another Jesus’ and ‘another gospel,’ which the apostle Paul warns us about in 2 Cor. 11:4. And this other Jesus and other gospel cannot save you. You do not have the Biblical Jesus and His Biblical gospel; yours are the product of Joseph Smith’s fertile imagination manifested in his Book of Mormon and Doctrine & Covenants. Here is an important truth for you to understand—being nice doesn’t make you a Christian. You become a Christian only by coming into right relationship with the Father through the Jesus of the Bible, in Spirit and in Truth. The Jesus of Joseph Smith’s creating is a figment of his own imagination, and can therefore do nothing for you at all.
Dispelling the grievous errors of Joseph Smith is hard work for people. But those who have stayed with that struggle have been rewarded by a rich relationship with Jesus Christ, which they simply could not have conceived of while they were still RLDS. They have a genuinely new life in Christ, which will last throughout all eternity. I would encourage you to read some of their testimonies on the website. Better yet, you can experience this new life for yourself—but you will need to let go of Joseph Smith first. And if you’ll engage in that struggle, I know God will reward you, too, with victory in Christ.
Kelly, may you hunger and thirst for truth, and may God richly bless your desires,
Paul Trask
PS — By the way, you are wrong. I do plan to post your letter on my website, as well as this response.
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