Testing 1-2-3. Testing 1-2- three. This is Radio Free Mormon. On the air, broadcasting

behind enemy lines. Tonight's episode, my debate with a Church of Christ, minister. Most of you are aware

that I engaged in a public debate with the Midnight Mormons back in November of 2000 and 21.

But that is not the first debate that I have engaged in. This is a little known incident,

and I don't think I've mentioned it before, about a debate that I was engaged in back in 1990

with a Church of Christ minister. Now, I had met this Church of Christ minister back in 1989,

and as many of you do know, this is at the end of the decade when I was up to my eyeballs in

Mormon apologetics. In fact, in the spring semester of 1989, I taught an institute class

on the subject of defending the faith, and that is an institute class

that I created the curriculum and drew up all 12 lessons. There were no correlated church-produced

materials that I was going from. In fact, back in the 1980s, it was extremely frustrating for me

because I had spent all this time getting myself ready to be able to debate other people

on the subject of Mormonism, and yet at that same time, we were getting multiple directives from Salt Lake City

that members of the church were not, repeat, not supposed to be engaging in debates. This was frustrating

to me not only because I wanted to debate, and I felt like I was ready, willing, and able to debate, but also I was a bit disappointed because I thought,

why is the church acting like it has something to hide, something to be embarrassed of, like it will get its clock cleaned if any of its members ever go out and publicly debate somebody from another religion?

Looking back on it now, I see this as yet another

instance of the church not having enough faith in its members, or at least faith in this member.

Well, this Church of Christ minister had been making a lot of hay at his church in Austin, Texas

about the subject of Mormonism. I even had an audio recording of this Church of Christ

Minister that I played an excerpt from in one of my defending the faith classes.

So I knew he was making noise at least as early as the spring of 1989.

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