Asking a Mormon Leader My Hardest Questions

About this sermon

I got a tour inside the San Diego Latter-day Saint temple and now I'm following up with an interview with Neal Walton who is a stake president in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in San Diego. Apparently, I was the first Christian apologist who'd ever shown up with a film crew and asked for an interview. We worked through the differences plainly. The Trinity. Whether God the Father has a physical body. Baptism for the dead. Faith and works. Exaltation versus salvation. Whether Jesus is the uncreated, eternal God. Neither of us pretended those are small, and neither of us tried to win. READ: End the Stalemate, by Sean McDowell (https://amzn.to/4eLrUdM) CHECK OUT: Logos Bible 60 Day Free Trial (https://logos.com/mcdowell) CHECK OUT: Full Mormon Temple Tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfgyW-s5KTE&t=1065s *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org 0:00 — What a stake president actually does 0:47 — "Has an apologist ever shown up before?" 1:20 — No pay, no degree, no formal training 2:05 — The morning I went to seminary at 5 a.m. 2:48 — Losing a four-year-old daughter 3:14 — "If your God is good, why would he allow this?" 4:40 — Did it make you doubt? 5:21 — The verse that settled him 6:26 — Do you have doubts now? 7:51 — What am I missing out on? 9:03 — Temples, service, and interfaith work 10:28 — Pushing back on "one big happy family" 11:01 — "Go straight to the source" 12:04 — Seven questions to gauge whether you love truth 12:21 — I read it. I prayed. I wasn't settled. 12:57 — "So what's my next step?" 14:44 — My dad's story 16:13 — "Son, love truth" 16:44 — Is there evidence behind the Book of Mormon? 17:12 — Questions versus doubts 19:16 — What a Sunday sermon looks like 21:26 — How he defines faith 22:36 — The biggest misconceptions 23:26 — Three distinct beings 25:13 — Where we actually differ 27:20 — The Trinity 28:16 — A physical body, baptism for the dead, faith and works 29:02 — Exaltation, and whether Jesus is uncreated 29:30 — His response 32:36 — Temple recommends and the celestial kingdom 32:54 — "There's order in God's house" 34:38 — He turns the question on me 35:50 — Why I actually came 36:19 — "I don't find it true or compelling — and I think I get it"

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• Leadership