Closing: The Measure

Every section of this document has served one purpose: to prepare a disciple to love a specific kind of person well enough to tell them the truth about the Person who is actually there.

The history in Part One is not there to win an argument. It is there so you know what the foundation of the LDS system actually rests on, and so you can ask honest questions about it with genuine knowledge and genuine love.

The books in Part Two are not there to score points against a canon. They are there so you can help an LDS person understand what Scripture actually says and what it does not, and so you can point them toward the closed canon that protects the apostolic gospel from exactly what happened when the Book of Abraham was added to it.

The theology in Part Three is not there to demonstrate doctrinal superiority. It is there so you can name the substitutions the LDS system has made — the different God, the different Jesus, the different gospel — and so you can point toward the real ones with the precision a loving conversation requires.

The structure in Part Four is not there to diminish a community that has real warmth and real human goods in it. It is there so you can see the cost of departure and carry it with the person, rather than asking them to bear it alone.

Part Five is there because knowledge without love is noise. The disciple who has read Parts One through Four and enters the conversation without poverty of spirit has missed the point of all four parts.

The measure of this document is not whether it is accurate. It is whether it drives the disciple back to John 15 to abide — because the person who abides in the Vine is the only person who can carry the truth about the Vine into a conversation with someone who has been given a substitute. Accurate arguments delivered by an unabiding disciple will produce accurate rejections, not transformed lives.

"Remain in me, and I will remain in you."

The conversation starts there.

Soli Deo Gloria.