Welcome back to Shamas Popperi. I'm Joe Heschmire. So should Christians worship Jesus and should we pray to him?

Those questions might seem obvious. Anybody calling themselves Christian or they might not. They might be things you've wondered yourself as you considered how to approach God.

But today I want to respond to the fascinating answers provided to those questions by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the LDS,

or the Mormons. Now, they've got a newsroom, which basically serves as PR for their religion,

putting out little clips to make Mormonism more palatable to mainstream Christians. And in one of

those videos, the question is posed, do you worship Jesus Christ in your services? Very simple question. Now listen to how it's answered.

Anyone that visits the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is welcome and you would be, they would be impressed totally with the devotion and the center of our faith being Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

You would hear the name of Jesus Christ mention time after time after time.

We pray in His name. We teach in His name. We have the communion or the sacrament, we call it,

all in his name in remembrance of His atoning sacrifice. We partake of the bread and the water

in renewing our covenants we've made with him. When the meeting is concluded, we close it

in the name of Jesus Christ. So he's clear that Jesus' name comes up a lot in Mormon services,

but stop and ask yourself, did he actually answer the question? I mean, he gave an answer that

sounded like he was saying, yes, we worship Jesus.

But did he actually say that? Wait, what's that? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought it sounded like you said, yes, I will go to shamelessjo.com and sign up for as little as $5 a month. Access exclusive Q&A livestream in a community of beautiful Christians who want to learn more about the faith. Well, if you did say something like that, I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting the channel.

But go back to the answer we just heard. On this question of whether Mormons worship Jesus,

whether they pray to him, the answers seem to be different depending on the audience.

So, for instance, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a Come Unto Christ campaign right now on their website, which is clearly

targeting non-Mormons by trying to show Mormonism as being centered on Jesus Christ.

This is part of a larger rebranding effort that the current LDS president, Russell Nelson,

is undertaking to try to get people to refer to the Mormons as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

instead and really emphasize the connection to Jesus.

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