Desmond ("Dezi") Ferguson used to work for Irish Church Missions (ICM), an Evangelical Protestant/Church of Ireland organisiation, until his retirement in 2009. I first engaged Ferguson in 2006 over an article he wrote on the topic of “Mormonism” ("Witnessing to the Mormons") and during that email exchange, he never once interacted with any of the evidence I cited against his claims (e.g., the Bible teaches Sola Scriptura, ergo, the Book of Mormon is to be rejected a priori; Isa 44:6 contradicts LDS theology of the plurality of the gods, etc). Instead, he prided himself on the (alleged) “fact” that he has been studying the LDS Church since the 1950s, and that was really it. In reality, his engagement with the Church is, to put things nicely, utterly facile and superficial at best. I have engaged many critics of the LDS Church, but he is one of, if not the, most ignorant and deceptive critic of the Church I have encountered; I once labeleld him the "Jack Chick of Irish anti-Mormonism" to an Anglican friend who encountered Ferguson in person on the topic of the LDS Church and has concluded like I do--that his knowledge of the Restored Gospel is weak, at best.
I have interacted with, and refuted, a lot of Ferguson’s arguments against the LDS Church, such as this (failed) attempt to get him to engage me for once on the issues, such as his claim that 2 Tim 3 and Matt 4 “proves” Sola Scriptura and Isaiah’s theology and LDS conceptions of the “number of God.” See here for a blog post where I deal with some of his comments about the phrase, “fullness of the gospel" vis-a-vis the Bible and the Book of Mormon, based, in part, on his "Witnessing to the Mormons" article and our subsequent email exchange.
The aforementioned Anglican friend forwarded a .pdf of some of his articles from ICM's magazine, The Banner of Truth against the Church that Ferguson sent him. Here is one of the (many) false claims Ferguson made about the Church, which shows (1) his lack of understanding of Latter-day Saint theology, (2) biblical exegesis, and (3) his own utter ignorance (or deception or perhaps both) of his own theology Let us examine just a few:
Mormons do not believe that Jesus Christ the Son of God always existed; they believe that he was created (a creature) (p. 2)
Ah, the old chestnut that “Mormonism” teaches Arian Christology. One immediately knows the lack of intellectual integrity if/when an opponent uses this against Latter-day Saint theology.
Arianism is the theology that states that while Christ pre-existed, he did not pre-exist eternally; instead, he came into existence ex nihilo prior to the Genesis creation. There are a number of groups that have an Arian Christology, most notably the Jehovah’s Witnesses though they add an extra “twist” on this theology by identifying the pre-mortal Jesus as the archangel Michael (discussed and critiqued here, here, and here).
With respect to Latter-day Saint belief, it is a distinct teaching of LDS Christology that Jesus has eternally existed, His nature being that of an intelligence, with all the attributes inherent within intelligence (cf. Abraham 3; D&C 93). There is no “creation” (ex nihilo) of Jesus, as Arianism teaches. While probably a post-Joseph Smith concept, “spirit birth” is wherein an intelligence is clothed upon with a spirit body, analogous to our spirit being clothed upon with a mortal physical body; if Ferguson believes that “spirit birth” is supportive of Arianism, and this is where he is getting the mistaken idea Latter-day Saints holds to such a Christology (being very charitable to him here), he would have to conclude that the Incarnation is also “Arian,” both of which are far-fetched and ignorant of the theology of Arius as well as LDS Christology.
Furthermore, Ferguson, as a creedal/Latin Trinitarian, does believe that “Jesus” was created. In Trinitarian Christology, “Jesus” is a single person with two natures and two wills, a la the Hypostatic Union, as defined at Chalcedon in AD 451. The human nature and will of Jesus did not actually pre-exist the Incarnation. Indeed, many Trinitarian scholars are forced to admit that one cannot speak of “Jesus pre-existing unless pre-existence is normative of what it means to be “human.” Much work has been done in recent years in what is called, “Spirit Christology,” focusing on what precedes “Jesus”—the Word in John 1—as God. What follows are two quotes from leading studies on this issue, and how only holding that all humans, not just Jesus, pre-existing can one speak of the “pre-existence of Jesus.”
The first comes from Bernard Byrne, "Christ's Pre-existence in Pauline Soteriology," Theological Studies, June 1997, 58/2:
By the same token, it is important to stress that in speaking of pre-existence, one is not speaking of a pre-existence of Jesus' humanity. Jesus Christ did not personally pre-exist as Jesus. Hence one ought not to speak of a pre-existence of Jesus. Even to use the customary expression of the pre-existence of Christ can be misleading since the word "Christ" in its original meaning simply designates the Jewish Messiah, a figure never thought of as pre-existent in any personal sense. But in view of the Christian application of "Christ" to Jesus, virtually as a proper name and in a way going beyond his historical earthly existence, it is appropriate to discuss the issue in terms of the pre-existence of Christ, provided one intended thereby to designate simply the subject who came to historical human existence as Jesus, without any connotation that he pre-existed as a human being.
The second comes from Roger Haight, "The Case for Spirit Christology," Theological Studies, June 1992, 53/2 (emphasis added)
And with the clarity that historical consciousness has conferred relative to Jesus' being a human being in all things substantially like us, many things about the meaning of Incarnation too can be clarified. One is that one cannot really think of a pre-existence of Jesus . . . But one cannot think in terms of the pre-existence of Jesus; what is pre-existent to Jesus is God, and the God who became incarnate in Jesus. Doctrine underscores the obvious here that Jesus is really a creature like us, and a creature cannot pre-exist creation. One may speculate on how Jesus might have been present to God's eternal intentions and so on, but a strict pre-existence of Jesus to his earthly existence is contradictory to his consubstantiality with us, unless we too were pre-existent.
Of course, “Mormonism” answers this “problem” as we believe everyone had personal pre-existence, not just Jesus (see here for a discussion). Furthermore, there is no doctrine creatio ex nihilo in LDS theology to begin with, so an important core of Arianism is already precluded by LDS theology.
On pages 4-5, in an attempt to support the unbiblical doctrine of sola scriptura, Ferguson writes:
I put forward the scriptural approach [to prove sola scriptura]:
Acts 17.11, Examine the Scriptures all the time to see if what is taught is true.
1 Thessalonians 5:19-22, Test everything.
Galatians 1:6-9, If anyone, no matter how exalted, is preaching a different message from what is in Scripture, let him be condemned (pp.4-5)
On Gal 1:6-9, Paul is warning against those that preach another (read: false) gospel; nowhere in the pericope is there a mention of Scripture (which, for Ferguson, corresponds one-to-one to the Protestant Bible—a classic example of begging the question as well as being a text-book example of eisegesis):
Here is how the NRSV renders Gal 1:6-9:
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel--not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!
In reality, the fact that Paul had to proclaim a gospel indicates that the oral preaching of a gospel is in view here, not the contents of the Bible; further, the term "received" is a technical term, παραλαμβανω, one that is used for the passing on of oral tradition, not inscripturated revelation (cf. 1 Cor 11:23; 15:1, 3; 1 Thess 2:13).
Furthermore, as with any "proof-text" for this man-made tradition, it is precluded by the text of Scripture itself.
Catholic apologist, Robert A. Sungenis, in his essay, “Does Scripture teach Sola Scriptura?" writes:
Evangelical James White admits: “Protestants do not assert that Sola Scriptura is a valid concept during times of revelation. How could it be, since the rule of faith to which it points was at the very time coming into being?” (“A Review and Rebuttal of Steve Ray's Article Why the Bereans Rejected Sola Scriptura,” 1997, on web site of Alpha and Omega Ministries). By this admission, White has unwittingly proven that Scripture does not teach Sola Scriptura, for if it cannot be a “valid concept during times of revelation,” how can Scripture teach such a doctrine since Scripture was written precisely when divine oral revelation was being produced? Scripture cannot contradict itself. Since both the 1st century Christian and the 21st century Christian cannot extract differing interpretations from the same verse, thus, whatever was true about Scripture then also be true today. If the first Christians did not, and could not extract sola scriptura from Scripture because oral revelation was still existent, then obviously those verses could not, in principle, be teaching Sola Scriptura, and thus we cannot interpret them as teaching it either. (“Does Scripture teach Sola Scriptura?" in Robert A. Sungenis ed. Not by Scripture Alone: A Catholic Critique of the Protestant Doctrine of Sola Scriptura [San Goleta, Calif.: Queenship Publishing, 1997] pp.106-67, here p. 128 n. 24).
Furthermore, there are many biblical texts that show that the biblical authors did not hold to Sola Scriptura. Consider, for instance, in 2 Chronicles 29:25:
And [Hezekiah] set the Levites in the house of the Lord with cymbals, with psalteries, and with harps, according to the commandment of David, and of Gad the king’s seer, and Nathan the prophet: for so was the commandment of the Lord by his prophets.
Note the following things that disprove sola scriptura:
(1) First, David, Gad, and Nathan were dead about 250 years at this point;
(2) Yet, they passed on a “commandment of the Lord” which was prescribed by God's prophets on how worship was to be conducted in the temple;
(3) That prescription and commandment of the Lord is nowhere found in the Old Testament Scriptures.
On the topic of 1 Thess 5:19-21, let us quote the text:
Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good. (NIV)
What Ferguson desperately wants this verse to mean is the Protestant doctrine of Sola Sciptura. Of course, he never spells out which formulation of the doctrine he holds to which more responsible Protestant apologists do (e.g., Keith Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura [Mosco, Idaho: Reformation Press, 2001). The irony is that these verses cannot possibly mean such, even if Sola Scriptura is true. After all, contemporary with Paul, Timothy, and John, the books of the biblical canon were still being inscripturated. Furthermore, the apostle John twice acknowledges that his written record of Jesus does not deny other extra-biblical records or traditions (John 20:30; 21:35), so long as these traditions do not oppose his teaching and that of the other apostles (cf. 1 John 2:18-19; 4:1-3; 2 John 7-9). For Paul, John, and the biblical authors, the test for authentic Christian teaching is not “Is this written?” (or “Is it part of the Biblical canon?”) Paul echoes this in 1 Tim 4:1, yet it was the same Paul who told Timothy to “. . . stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or by our epistle” (2 Thess 2:15 [a verse intentionally mistranslated by the NIV]) and “hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 1:13).
Finally, on the issue of Acts 17:11--for those predisposed to believe in the concept of Sola Scriptura, Acts 17:11 is touted as a definitive proof text. It is reasoned that because of the Berean’s appeal to Scripture and the Thessalonians’ apparent lack thereof, Luke, the writer of Acts, judges that the former “were noble” in comparison than the latter and should serve as a model for each Christian to emulate. Obviously, the Bereans’ appeal to Scripture suggests a people very familiar with the word of God who did not bend with every new wind of doctrine that came breezing their way, even from an apostle like Paul. Their “daily” examination of Scripture evokes a picture of studious and intelligent people who did not give God lip-service on the Sabbath but from sun-up to sun-down had, as the Psalmist of old, the word of God on their heart. They did this daily because Paul, as Acts 17:17 specifies, reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews on a daily basis. Luke tells us that not only did the Bereans examine the Scriptures, but they did this purposely to see what Paul said was true or not. Hence, the actions of the Bereans, if we are to take them as our model, seem to set Scripture up on the sole judge of what a teacher is proclaiming. For Sola Scriptura advocates, Scripture is portrayed as the given, but Paul was the new-comer who had to be authenticated. The passage seems to assert, or at least strongly suggest, that in judging anything claiming to be from God, Scripture must be the sole and final authority.
But is Scripture as the final authority a la Protestantism, the message Luke is trying to impart here? Let us examine the context of this passage to find out. Acts 17:2 records:
And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures.
Here we see that it was not only the Bereans who were steeped in Scripture, but rather Paul himself, who in this regard had led the way in all the synagogues in which he taught. At this early time in Christian history, the synagogue was still the main meeting place, for Jews as well as Greeks. It was Paul’s “custom” or “manner” to visit the synagogues in each city of his missionary journey. For example, on his trip to Antioch recorded in Acts 13:14, Luke tells us that on the Sabbath Paul and his companions entered the synagogue and read from the Law and the Prophets. As he would later do in Thessalonica and Berea in Acts 17, Paul made it a continual practice to read and teach from the Scriptures--in this case, the Old Testament. Hence we see that Paul’s teaching sessions in the synagogue were to a people who knew their Scripture, used it often, and were willing to exchange ideas about it. If Paul appealed to Scripture, then it was to Scripture the people would go back to check if what Paul said “were so.”
But there was a special reason that Paul may have stimulated (or agitated) his hears. In Thessalonica, Acts 17:2 records that Paul not only read in the Scripture but that he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that Christ had to suffer. Apparently, Paul was deducing from already known Scripture new understandings about what the Scripture meant in light of the events that had just taken place a decade or so earlier.
In Luke’s wording we notice a slight difference between what Scripture said and what Paul taught. In the beginning of verse 3 he says that Paul was “alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead” but in the latter part he records Paul saying, “This Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ.” The difference between the two is that Paul is interpreting “The Christ” of the Old Testament to be the “Jesus” of the New Testament. Since the Old Testament did not use the name of “Jesus” to identity the Messiah (Christ), Paul’s message was a new application of Scripture. Further, the Jews did not believe that their coming Messiah had to “suffer,” let alone “rise from the dead.” Most of the Jews expected their Messiah to be a powerful king who would relieve them of Gentile rule. In their view, he would not have to rise from the dead because he would establish himself as an eternal king who would rule forever over the Jews’ enemies. They simply did not understand, in the same manner as New Testament authors, Old Testament “proof-texts” used to support the Messiah as a suffering servant who had to die--a suffering underwent precisely for their sin of disbelief in him.
In Thessalonica, it was Paul’s statement that “the Christ” of the Old Testament was the “Jesus” of the New which caused such contention and jealously among the Jews. In Acts 17:5-9, Luke records their response:
But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people. And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also; Whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus. And they troubled the people and the rulers of the city, when they heard these things, And when they had taken security of Jason, and of the other, they let them go.
It is apparent by their last words, “one [called] Jesus,” that the Jews simply not ready to accept the Christ of the Old Testament as the Jesus of the New Testament. Hence, Paul and the Jews of Thessalonica were not contending about the veracity or usefulness of Scripture; rather, it was Paul’s interpretation of Scripture that they could not accept. Everyone believed Scripture’s prophecy about the coming Messiah. But the information that the Christ was “Jesus” who had recently suffered and died at the hands of the Jews was something Paul was getting from another source outside of Scripture. This new information, would, of course, correlate with Scripture but it would nonetheless be in addition to Scripture. Such was the case, in fact, in Paul’s own conversion. He had to be convinced through additional divine revelation that the people who followed “Jesus,” and whom he was persecuting were in actuality the followers of “the Christ.” In Acts 9:5, after being knocked off his horse by a flash of light, the Lord said to Paul, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.” At that instant, Paul recognised that his long-awaited Messiah was the “Jesus” who had suffered and died a decade or so ago. It was not Scripture that brought him to this point but a revelation from Jesus himself showing Paul how the Old Testament Scriptures were to be interpreted.
When Paul arrived in Berea, he acted just as he did in Thessalonica--he went to the synagogue to teach. We may assume that he engaged in similar “reasoning,” “explaining and proving” from Scripture with the Bereans that he had done with the Thessalonians. We may also assume that Paul, as in Thessalonica, made it a point to teach the Bereans that Christ of the Old Testament was the Jesus of the New Testament. The Bereans received Paul’s interpretation of scripture without hesitation. Luke records in Acts 17:11:
These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
Here we see that these Berean Jews “received the word with all readiness.” We can surmise from his previous encounter with the Thessalonians that the main message the Bereans were receiving with eagerness was Paul’s news that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ. Because they believed Paul’s message about the identity of the Messiah, Luke concludes that they were “more noble than those in Thessalonica.” Moreover, their being more noble was also demonstrated when they “searched the scriptures daily” to see if Paul’s message was true. It showed that they cared greatly for God’s revelation, in whatever form it came. We can imagine that their counterparts in Thessalonica perhaps did not investigate the testimony of Scripture after Paul told them that Jesus was the Messiah. They had a blinded or one-sided view of Scripture and did not care for Paul’s interpretation. They were not willing to “reason” from Scripture’s circumstantial evidence that the Messiah was indeed Jesus, thus, they were not noble, open-minded people.
But why, we ask, did Luke consider the Jews of Berea more “noble” than the Jews in Thessalonica, when, according to Luke’s description of the Thessalonians in Acts 17:4, some of the Jews from Thessalonica joined Paul and Silas, as did God-fearing Greeks. It is obvious that not all the Jews in Thessalonica had rejected Paul’s interpretation of Scripture. Wouldn’t Luke consider these Jews “noble” for accepting Paul’s message? The answer is yes, but these noble Jews were so badly outnumbered by the jealous and riotous Jews who rejected Paul’s message that Luke was forced to sum up the situation in Thessalonica as one of general unbelief. We also see this in the way he describes how many people were positively influenced by Paul’s message. Regarding the Thessalonians in Acts 17:4, he points out that only some of the Jews were persuaded while in regard to the Bereans in Acts 17:12 many of them were persuaded. Apparently, the number of believing Jews in Berea were of a sufficient quantity that Luke could designate them, at large, as “noble” in contrast to the overall negative disposition of the people in Thessalonica. Moreover, the unbelieving Jews of Thessalonica further justified Luke’s negative assessment since they caused riots among the people both in Thessalonica and later in Berea (cf. Acts 17:5-9; 17:13-15).
In view of the above facts, is it reasonable to conclude that the Bereans, because they examined, on a daily basis, the Scriptures to ascertain the answer to the question of the truthfulness or lack thereof, of Paul’s message, are models of the modern theory of Sola Scriptura? Is Luke trying here to teach us that being “more noble” or “nobility” consists in using Scripture as the final authority in determining the veracity of oral teaching? When we look at the evidence fairly and accurately, the answer is a resounding “no.” Any attempt to extract from this short pericope a teaching of Sola Scriptura is simply reading into the texts one’s doctrinal bias (eisegesis, in other words). First, the text is simply a narrative of events that occurred in two respective cities, not a treatise on the nature and extent of Scripture and its authority. Granted, the passage suggests how Paul and his hearers used and understood Scripture but neither Paul or his commentator Luke say anything definitive about the doctrine of Scripture. Second, we have seen from our comparison of the Jews in Berea with the Jews in Thessalonica that Luke considered the former more noble not because they merely examined Scripture, but mainly because they believed Paul’s oral revelation that the Christ of the Old Testament was the Jesus of the New Testament. Luke attributes nobility to them because they received his oral message with eagerness. The Bereans believed that the apostle’s oral message had just as much divine authority as the Scripture. In Acts 17:13, Luke specifies that Paul’s oral message to be the very word of God. Paul was not merely speaking about the word of God, he was speaking the actual word of God. Elsewhere, Paul’s own assessment of his oral teaching to the Thessalonians confirms its superlative distinction, for in 1 Thessalonians 2:13, he states:
For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.
This is a pivotal passage because it shows that Paul considered his oral message to the Thessalonians in Acts 17:1-4 (which revealed that Jesus was the Christ), and by necessary extension his oral message to the Bereans in Acts 17:11-13, as divine revelations on par with Scripture. In fact, no one could know the real meaning of Scripture, as obscure as it was at times, unless accompanied by an equally authoritative divine interpretation. This is the essential teaching of the Berean encounter.
Since the Old Testament did not explicitly identify “the Christ” as “Jesus,” it was impossible for the Jews of Berea, using the Old Testament alone, to have proven from Scripture that Jesus was the Messiah. One could certainly “reason,” “explain” and “prove” that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead, but there was no explicit evidence, other than Paul’s authoritative testimony, that the one who was prophesied in the Old Testament to suffer and rise was the Jesus who walked the earth only a decade or so earlier. The Bereans were noble because they accepted Paul’s apostolic authority on the identity of the Messiah, not because they could extract such for themselves from the Old Testament that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. Thus, their “examination” of Scriptures was limited to re-evaluating those passages which spoke of the Messiah as the one who had to suffer, die, and rise again; not to prove or disprove that Jesus was the Messiah. Before Paul’s teachings to the Bereans, like most Jews, thought that the Messiah would be recognised by a majestic appearance and a subsequent conquering of the Gentiles. It was not until Paul pointed out that the Old Testament passages which spoke of God’s servant as one who had to suffer must be interpreted to apply to the Messiah, and, more importantly, that his name was Jesus. The typical Jew, although he knew his Scripture, invariably skipped over the numerous passages in the Old Testament that suggested his Messiah had to first come as one to suffer and die. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:14-16:
But their minds were blinded; for until this day remained the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart. Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
After Paul was done teaching, the now enlightened Jew could read a passage like Isaiah 53 and see it in a whole different light (cf. Luke 24:26; Acts 8:26-35). It was in connecting Paul’s divine revelation of the person of Jesus with the suffering passages of the Old Testament that the Bereans examined scripture to see if Paul’s message was true. The Berean did not first believe that Jesus was the Messiah and then examine Scripture to see if Paul’s identifying of Jesus was the Messiah was true. No, he examined the Scriptures that spoke of the suffering servant and then accepted by faith that the “Jesus” about whom Paul spoke was indeed the Messiah. His faith was based on accepting Paul’s authority to interpret Scripture, while Scripture served mainly as a witness to what Paul preached. Scripture could not serve as the sole determinant of what Paul taught for the simple reading that Scripture never identified “the Christ” specifically as “Jesus.” Using the New Testament approach to Scripture, He was designated with names like “the prophet” (Deuteronomy 18:15) or “Immanuel” in Isaiah, but never “Jesus” (Matthew 1:21). The Bereans, as their Old Testament prescribed, needed at least two or three witnesses to prove the veracity of a certain person or event (cf. Deuteronomy 19:15; 2 Corinthians 13:1). Paul was one witness and Scripture another, and both were necessary for truth to be know and understood. Hence, Acts 17:11 cannot support the concept of Sola Scriptura. If anything, it implicitly denies such a teaching.
Much more could be said about the handout Ferguson forwarded my friend, but it should be obvious that, in spite of his claims to "research many belief systems" (p. 12 of this text) and has even presented "Mormonism" to Church of Ireland groups (talk about the blind leading the blind!), and in spite of his claim to me that he has been studying the LDS Church since the 1950s, Desmond Ferguson is utterly clueless about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its theology, history, and Scriptures (including the Bible), as well as LDS apologetics and LDS and biblical scholarship on a host of issues. Furthermore, Ferguson, as with many critics of the LDS Church, lacks intellectual integrity and honesty. It should be noted that I have been trying to get him to debate me for a number of years, and he has constantly avoided such, and for good reason--he knows that he could never survive any critical examination of his claims (1) against Mormonism and (2) in support of his flavour of Protestantism against a knowledgeable opponent.
I do hope this “exposé” of an Irish anti-Mormon has provided some food for thought for those who, unlike Ferguson and his ilk, are open minded and truly researching the LDS Church.
I do hope this “exposé” of an Irish anti-Mormon has provided some food for thought for those who, unlike Ferguson and his ilk, are open minded and truly researching the LDS Church.