Welcome to the Eric McTaxis show with your host, Eric Mettaxas.

Hey there, folks.

Kind of an exciting guest right now, or at least the story is exciting.

His name is Michael Wilder.

The book just came out, Harvest House, Passport to Heaven, the true story of a zealous Mormon missionary who discovers the Jesus he never knew. Passport to heaven. Michael Wilder, welcome.

Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. This is an important story. You've lived it. You put it in

your book, Passport to Heaven. But I think a lot of people, there are many people that are not

theological and they kind of, you know,

they're kind of sloppy and they don't really, they don't care about the theology.

And maybe they're not just sloppy.

Maybe they're just not focused on it.

But then there are other people that are hyper theological and all they care about is theology.

And so you started life as a Mormon and something happened, and this is that story.

A lot of people, let me begin here, would say, look, I'm a Mormon and I pray to Jesus,

and I don't understand why you're making a weird issue of this.

What do you say to somebody like that?

Yeah. So for me growing up in Mormonism, I had this understanding of God that was rooted in

who he was according to my religion, right? So I was trying to establish a righteousness with

God according to the laws and the ordinances of Mormonism. So the

awakening that I had was in and through the reading of the Word of God that revealed to me that

the gospel, which I had avowed as a Mormon, was not in line with the gospel as revealed in the Bible.

And so for me, it was coming to that recognition that I was not following the Jesus and the gospel that were the true Jesus and gospel as revealed in the Word of God.

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