And the Testing one, two three, testing one, two one two three this is radio free Mormon on the air

broadcasting behind enemy lines tonight's episode I'm calling Born Again Mormons.

You may recall that I did a couple of podcasts

back in that spate of nine weeks

during the coronavirus lockdown

when I was putting up a new podcast every weekday for nine weeks.

And at one point I came upon an old paper I had written back from 1994 when it was published

and it dealt with the subject of salvation or the plan of salvation as it is taught in the book of Mormon.

Briefly the background on that was that of course I had been a member of the church since 1978 when I was baptized

and there's a very specific plan of salvation that has been taught in the church at least during

the last five centuries or so. Excuse me five centuries., no, I'm not quite that old, five decades or so.

And it's very much a works-based plan of salvation

with a little grace thrown in on the side for good measure just to make up for those

deficiencies that we have even after we've done everything we can do and nevertheless fall short.

There's a little grace there to cover up that bridge, make it good so we can go to heaven, or the Celestial Kingdom even, to be with God and Jesus and our families forever.

So this is the culture that I grow up in in the LDS church, but I'm also studying the book of Mormon which I'm told to do by the leaders of the church and I read it frequently and I'm trying to read it

Attentively and really pay attention to what's being taught in there and sometime around the late 1980s it was that I began to realize that the plan of salvation as it's taught in the Book of Mormon seems to be substantially different than the plan of salvation that was being taught by the leaders of the church. In fact, the Book of Mormon seems to teach a plan of

salvation that is much more grace-oriented than what I was hearing from leaders

of the church. Now, of course, as a Mormon in Texas during the 1980s I had a lot of occasion to come up into contact with and debates with

Bornigan Christians, right? And of course we're talking frequently about salvation by works versus

salvation by grace and there's a lot of argument about that in these circles.

So it was quite a surprise to me to find out that the Book of Mormon seemed to be

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