Study Tonight, Truth You Can Count On: The Word on the Word

6 Responses to Study Tonight, Truth You Can Count On: The Word on the Word

1. Grayson B says:

   February 10, 2026 at 3:25 pm

   Hello Mr. RC Sproul Jr!

   I recently read an article you posted and wanted to comment on it and ask some questions in case you reply to this. I hope we can find middle ground for the both of us. I will say the following in a respectful manner.
   From what I got out of what you said is that if someone states that they are Christian but don’t believe in the Trinity then therefore they are not Christian.
   My church does not believe in the Trinity you are right in that regard we believe in the Godhead instead. The Godhead is when God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are one in purpose but not one in being. They are perfectly unified but not one organism if you will.
   I strongly believe in Christ as our Savior and that He died on the cross for our sins so that we can be up in heaven in God’s presence again. I absolutely believe that God is our father in heaven and that He created all things. My church believes in this too. The Trinity is a beautiful concept but it is from man. Save only a few verses in the Bible give the message of the trinity compared to many, many others that disprove it. One of these being Jesus crying out to heaven saying “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” when he is being crucified. If Jesus Christ was God then why would he need to say that to heaven? There was no example needing to be set there.

   The Trinity was formalized at the Council of Nicaea (325 AD) and Council of Constantinople (381 AD). It took 300-400 years to have this idea passed. During Christ’s ministry, why didn’t He tell his disciples about it? Why did it take so absurdly long to not only have the idea passed my man’s understanding? If this was something so important and pure to be revealed to us, it wouldn’t have taken so long when Christ was there teaching centuries before. It just doesn’t make sense.

   In your article, you mentioned that we believe in an supposed ancient text that quotes from the Bible. You are right in the latter but, it is not supposed. This book (as I’m sure you know the title already) is the Book of Mormon. It is an ancient text that is an inspired work and is a companion to the Bible. Many like to think that we only believe in the Book of Mormon but that is wrong. The Bible is amazing and it is God’s word but so is the Book of Mormon. We use both and believe in both. I’ve read it multiple times and always find peace, hope, and clarification on what to do after reading it.
   There are only two authors for the book of Mormon. Either it was written by God or by the Devil. There can’t be both in it. Throughout the text, it teaches on how and why we need to draw closer to God and even states certain things that go against the devil and his teachings. There is a lot of proof to the Book of Mormon to be real and legit. By doing a little research you would know too. But more more importantly than proof, go to God to know. If this book is good and good in it’s teaching God will definitely let you know that. The Book of Mormon is a COMPANION to the Bible. Not replacing it or a new version it is a companion another testament of Jesus Christ.
   A great source for knowledge of the Book of Mormon is “A Case For The Book of Mormon” by Tad R. Callister. That and our church website churchof jesuschrist.org.
   I firmly believe in it and it’s divinity. I hope that you will talk to God about what I’ve said. This book has only brought me joy and a closeness to God. If it was evil or false, why would it still do that for millions?

   We also firmly believe that God is our Father in heaven. You stated that we don’t.
   We are absolutely a Christian faith. Trust me, you are not the only one who has said otherwise. Many myths have circulated about our church and that is definitely one of them. # 1, We believe in Christ. # 2, We have Jesus Christ in our name, and finally # 3, John 13: 34-35 and John 8:31-32.
   These reasons are another reason why we in fact are a Christian faith. Of course the second reason is a little superficial but the last one is most important. Christ’s followers and known by their works and if they love one another. I have never gone to church and not heard God or Christ mentioned. My church loves and keep the commandments and teaches what Christ taught. We love our neighbor and always try to serve one another, we have large charities set up and something called Just Serve that helps others in need or natural disaster situations. We are Christian and while I appreciate your respectfulness in your article, you are not right in this regard.

   We do things that other Christians do and believe. And yet, we’re somehow not welcome when our actions speak volumes on what Christ said his followers are. Maybe we’re not the ones who need to have an open mind. Maybe it is you.
   Also we don’t believe anyone who doesn’t believe what we believe go straight to Hell it’s much more complex than that and that is not what we believe.

   My questions are have you ever visited our church once? Have you ever read the Book of Mormon? Have you done any research on what we believe and teach from trust worthy sites? Have you prayed on this? Or only believed what you want to believe, leaving out God’s input.

   Again, thank you for the mission you’ve carried on. I am a member.
   I firmly believe in the Bible. I firmly believe in the Book of Mormon. I believe that God is our Father and Christ is my Savior and the world’s.

   Facts:
   Our church is over 18 million members worldwide. Over 7 million in the states. We’re not small.
   We’ve existed for 200+ years. If a church is corrupt or false it does not last this long. Same with how big our church is. Lies and evil always is found out about when tested by time. We have tested time and we have no lies. I think 200 years would prove that.
   Further evidence for the church and Book of Mormon come out all the time and have since it was published. An example is the use of cement. Way back when, it was thought that cement wasn’t used in the Americas, but it is now proved otherwise.

   In conclusion, there may be many facts that prove our church and Book of Mormon but really, none of that matters. What matters is that our church is good and does good things. If you pray and feel that it is right then it is. If our church was of the Devil than you would be seeing much different works and messages. I implore you to pray about these things because the Spirit always speaks the truth.

   The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is true and I know that without a doubt. You may not agree on a lot of what I’ve said and that’s ok. Again, I hope we can find middle ground.
   Have a great rest of your day! Have a blessed week

   Reply
   • RC says:

     February 10, 2026 at 4:34 pm

     Friend,

     I appreciate the grace by which you raised your questions. Rather than make a line by line response I’m going to ask you to look back over what you have written. I’m hoping you can see the supreme irony of suggesting an idea is an error because it took a few hundred years to formalize its definition, done by a council of hundreds of scholars while at the same time holding to doctrines that were “found” almost two thousand years after Christ’s ascension, and that by one man wearing special glasses. If Mormonism is true, how did the church live in such deep error for 1500 years?

     Which brings me to the second point. Can you help me understand how it can be that I, in saying Mormonism and my church are not both Christian, am wrong, when the founder of Mormonism agrees with me? Surely you are aware that Joseph Smith said this in The Elder’s Journal- “the sectarian religions of the day… receive their portion with the devil and his angels.”

     This ecumenical approach of the LDS is a radical shift away from its historical beliefs, just as the LDS has felt the need to change its views on dark skinned people. Just some things for you to think about. I will be praying to the tri-une God for you.

     Reply
     • Grayson B says:

       February 11, 2026 at 12:47 pm

       Fellow brother in Christ,

       I can see that we won’t be able to see eye to eye or find middle ground when it comes to the Trinity and I realize that neither of us will back down when it comes to it, so I’ll leave it at what I said.
       The only thing i can think of when it comes to your first question is why the church disappeared for so long and then came back out of nowhere.
       My answer to this is rather simple. It’s called the Apostasy. Jesus Christ, during his earthly ministry, established a new and beautiful way of living. He established his church.
       After Christ was crucified, the Apostles sadly, were all executed over time and the church was lost and God took back the priesthood. But, we have many things left over that have lasted up to this point like the belief in God and Christ and the Bible.
       But, the church was no longer on the earth. Many things had to happen during those years and in 1830, the church was put back onto the earth under the direction of God. In other words it was restored. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is not above all other churches. We are not better and members of my church are not holier or more special than you or any other church.

       I appreciate you putting the ball back in my court with asking me questions in return. But, you still have not answered one of my main ones. Christ explicitly told us how we can know who his followers are. Now I could be wrong but, it feels like and looks you chose not to say anything on this and instead, tried to throw shade or nitpicked certain things of my church’s history. Please answer why you still don’t believe us to be Christian when Christ gave us clear guidance on this.

       Now I can see that you focus more on the beginnings of the church and specifically Joseph Smith. I have personally studied not only him, but also the history of the church. I can side with you that it can be a lot at fist glance. Even seem ridiculous all together. There are many things in this world that makes sense. Same thing with God and the gospel. But there’s something that you learn over time. And that is faith. It can take faith.
       Sure, you can not believe in what Joseph Smith saw or did. That is your right. Or, you can believe in what he did and have faith that God knows what he’s doing. That and, there’s a little more to it than one man wearing special glasses.

       When it comes to the end of what you were saying, you’re just combing through history to try and disprove my points. My church, and churches all over the world are imperfect. They are driven by man and handled by man. So of course, things won’t be done perfectly. God has to do his work through imperfect people. I won’t say or go deep into specifics but many churches through time and even recently have done very un-Christian like actions and decisions and yet we’re still deemed unworthy of the Christian title.
       Yes, our church did not handle situations of people of color perfectly in the past. Any excuses won’t make anything better. So I’ll only give a small explanation. Again, our church too involves man. Therefore there will be things that are done by our minds and not God’s will. We changed and have not done anything even close to that since, because every single person in this world is a child of God and deserves anything that God wants them to have no matter what they look like.
       “All are alike unto God…” 2 Nephi 26:33

       With the Elder’s Journal, I have done some research and have thought about what you have said. With your statement on that the “founder of Mormonism” agrees with you is a tad bit ridiculous. Your statement still doesn’t justify us not being Christians and that was only said in the Elder’s Journal because of the intense persecution. Not solely the way you’re trying to use it.

       To wrap up my points, you still haven’t answered or replied to the verses I gave on why we are in fact, a Christian faith and using a small quote from the elder journal is a bit of a stretch.

       Again, thank you for what you do even if we both may not agree with each others opinions.
       Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. It’s odd to see how you believe so firmly(as do I) that there were so many great and good prophets in the old testament times bit somehow we as children of God can no longer have any more direction from Him. I absolutely believe in prophets of old but I also believe that there have been and still are ones in our day.
       We are Christians and it is true until proven otherwise.

       I still hope we can find middle ground and at the very least, realize that we just want to follow God above. Have a great day!

       Reply
       • RC says:

         February 11, 2026 at 1:30 pm

         Once again friend, go back and read not my words, but yours. You continue to affirm that it’s silly to believe the Nicene creed because it happened 300 years after Jesus. Yet your entire religion was utterly unknown for 1800 years after Jesus. Second, you claim to have faith in the event that changed everything though it has none of the safeguards that Nicea did. Third, you want to write off the words of your prophet. Find me a prophet in the Bible about whom we can say, “Well, he was having a bad day, so we can disregard what he said.” It would be a stretch if I were quoting one single LDS man. It’s not a stretch when I quote the published writings of the prophet/founder of your religion. He, the founder of your religion, clearly and unambiguously denounced my religion as apostate, of the devil and his angels. Now you, a follower of his religion, want to say we’re brothers in Christ. Which is it? Is your prophet wrong, or you? As to your question, true Christians profess the Christian faith. The LDS deny the trinity, the self-existence of God the Son, the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ. Speaking well of your Jesus, calling him your savior, calling yourself Christian, trying to live a good life is not now nor has it ever been what defines a Christian. LDS isn’t a recovery but a make believe hoax, birthed out of an utterly unbelievable account of magic glasses, gold plates and a peeping stone. I continue to pray for you and again appreciate the gracious manner in which you’ve communicated. I pray I’ve managed to approximate the same.

         Reply
2. Grayson B says:

   February 12, 2026 at 2:16 pm

   I have looked back on my words and I truly have read everything multiple times over. And yet, I find really no fault in them other than a few grammatical errors.
   You mentioned that my entire religion wasn’t known for 1800 years after Jesus, that is true in a way and wrong in another. It is right in the sense that the church was gone for a very long time that is right. But what is wrong is that our religion isn’t new. My church is the one that Jesus set up in his earthly ministry. Our beliefs and practices mirror those of Old Testament times like prophets.
   I will ask you this, if God suddenly one day asked if you want more, wanted more knowledge or guidance or things that brought you even closer to Him than you already are, wouldn’t you want that? I for one do.

   My church gives you a prophet to help guide you through times that the world has never seen. We have the holy Bible but now we have the bible, and inspired doctrine including the Book of Mormon that helps you become a better person and closer to God.
   It seems to me that you have hardened you heart to the churches history and can’t or won’t look past it. You hold the church back from it’s past and can’t see what it is now and the good it not only does, but wants to do.
   You also have to factor in the way words were said or the way people spoke back then. When you look at writings from back when Joseph Smith was alive, people talked more dramatically. I fear you are reading too much between the lines and that is all I will say in regards to the journal. I’ve read some and the part that you have been using but I don’t want to debate over something that I do not have all the knowledge about.

   I will not debate over the trinity but I will say this, it saddens me that you keep replacing the words of Christ. You place man’s thoughts and say that they are true instead of what Christ wants and tells you.
   What I’ve gotten mainly from you, is that if you do not believe in the trinity you are not Christian. If you do not believe that the trinity exists than you are something else and will never be accepted into the tent. This saddens me.
   I do not look down on you, I can already tell that you know what you’re talking about just from these few replies. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see that a man so close to God who has studied the scriptures probably more than I have and is known has a theologian and involved in a large ministry, you still can’t see what you are saying. What you say isn’t welcoming, it isn’t Christian.
   You choose to ignore the very scriptures that you read. Christ gave us a way of knowing who his followers are. You are actively choosing to ignore that and say that the only basis to know who is Christian and who is not is the Trinity. That is not what Christ said. Those were not His words, those are man’s. Those are you words, not from the Bible. Christ never said that the only way for you to know who my followers are is by the Trinity. He never stated that the only way for you to know who is Christian is that I and the Father are one. That is not what happened.

   We love all other churches and so did Joseph Smith. When he was a boy he visited many churches locally back in the 19th century and checked them out for himself. You also choose to ignore other things that he has said about other churches. He didn’t believe in the other churches, that doesn’t mean he hated them. He was told by God and His Son Jesus Christ that the other churches were not the one. They were not the one that was established but taken away so many years before.
   “Despite theological disagreements, Smith later claimed he was willing to die for the rights of “a Presbyterian, a Baptist, or a good man of any denomination,” advocating for religious freedom.” (cited from Google)
   We are not better than your church. Not better than others. I personally love and appreciate friends that I have that do not believe in my church but are associated with other churches. I like to use this analogy, when Jesus was crucified and the apostles killed, the church left the earth. People since then found fragments and created their own churches and used the bible. This is amazing and I love how many Christians there are in the world. Our church is the one that was brought back and it has all the fragments. I like to call them puzzle pieces. Other churches have a few or more but through God and His direction, His church was restored. It is the one that Christ established. We have all the puzzle pieces but that doesn’t make us more special than everyone else. That simply means that we have what God had from the beginning. What Christ put on the earth when He was here. That is why members of the church always want to share or focus so much on missionary work, so that everyone could have the puzzle pieces. We don’t keep this knowledge only for ourselves. We want every single person to have a chance at having the gospel in their lives. If they choose it. If they want it.

   We believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world. We believe that God is our Father in heaven. We also believe in Christ’s sacrifice. He died for our sins and He now knows everything that we go through because He bled through every pore at Gethsemane.
   I think it is funny but also a little sad when you mentioned “Speaking well of your Jesus…” we believe in the same Jesus. In fact, we believe in the same God too if you think about it. The only difference is that we have differing views of them. Same being but we look or feel about them differently. He’s our Jesus. Mine and yours. The world’s.

   You are right. Just being a good person is not what makes you Christian. It is one of the traits or rather one of the things that are included with living a Christian life but it does not mean you are Christian. Absolutely right. Just read the scriptures my friend, in there you will find out what makes someone a Christian. Also, a person who follows Jesus Christ, believes in his life, death, and resurrection, and often strives to live according to his teachings is also what many deem Christian. I believe in all of that and strive to do my best to live the way Jesus did.
   I believe in Jesus Christ. I have a Father in heaven. What more do you want me to say haha? I’ve given you specific scriptures, told you that I believe in Him, and told you that I believe in the resurrection. At this point, after everything I’ve listed and I’m still somehow not a Christian, you certainly are not. In fact, no one is if these things don’t define what a Christian is. If Christ’s words in the bible, living a life in the way of Christ, believing in them, and knowing that I am forgiven of my sins because of Christ isn’t enough for you, then how can anyone be Christian in your eyes? With this logic, your logic, this isn’t simply a problem for my church, it’s a problem for all who say that they are Christian. You have denied every point or truth I’ve told you and yet these have been the words of our Savior.

   I hope that I have not been harsh in my words because I know that contention and anger solves nothing. I will try to continue in anything I say to be said in a respectful manner and not a rude one.
   I believe that we are both brothers in Christ. I try my best to follow Him and I can only hope you do as well. I view you as a Christian with a very strong faith. Of course I see us as brothers in Christ.
   Thank you for talking with me, I like to stand up for my faith but I always want to see and hear others opinions. In all honesty I find debating fun. Have a blessed day, I’ll be praying for you.

   Reply
   • RC says:

     February 13, 2026 at 2:33 pm

     You questioned how it is possible for the church to go 300 years without a codified expression of the trinity. Then claim that there were 1800 years with no true church. And you see only grammatical problems? You try to undo your prophet’s pronouncement that Christians are of the devil and his angels by affirming he believed in freedom of religion? You utterly avoid the profoundly awkward reality that the LDS have no creator God, just an infinite regress of creatures. Friend, LDS may give you all sorts of things you’re looking for. Truth, however, is not one of them. Coherency is not one of them. And membership in the community of true churches is not one of them. I sincerely pray you will take these truths to heart and that the self-existent God of heaven and earth will give you a new heart that repents and rests on the finished work of Christ, the self-existent son of the living God, alone.

     Reply