By Eric Johnson, Author: Introducing Christianity to Mormons (Harvest House, 2022).

Note: This rebuttal was given at the Sunstone Conference on 8/3/2024 in response to a paper presented by former Mormon Ryan Wimmer.

Introduction

On April 2, 2024, Ryan Wimmer said he planned to critically review my book Introducing Christianity to Mormons and show “why evangelical ministries to Mormons fail to win ex-Mormons.” He then graciously offered to allow me to respond in public to his presentation. I apologized to Ryan because I already had plans to visit my wife’s family at a reunion in Washington state that happens every five years—this is where I am today. However, my friend Aaron Shafovaloff has graciously agreed to read my response paper. This paper can be accessed at mrm.org/response-wimmer.

In his communication to me last April, Ryan explained how he had written several papers about how Evangelical Christians fail in their efforts to bring ex-Mormons to Jesus. He explained, “Like in my 2018 presentation (I) will touch on that… the non-religious win at least 70% of ex-Mormons despite not putting in nearly the same effort as Christian ministries.” In his paper, he explained, “Despite their poor success, Evangelical ministries to Mormons remain undeterred.” He claims that “ministries to Mormons continue to be largely ineffective.” In Ryan’s mind apparently, Christian apologists such as myself are losing the conversion battle after people leave The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Why? His point is that most who end up leaving the so-called “only true church” become skeptics or end up believing nothing at all.

Do Evangelical Ministries Fail?

In his paper, Ryan mentioned a recent survey that claimed how 70% of those who leave Mormonism “do not find another Christian type of religion despite the mass efforts of Christian ministries put towards saving Mormons.” Based on my experience, I know that most ex-Mormons do not come rushing to biblical Christianity or, for that matter, any other religion.

If Ryan’s main purpose was to show how most people who leave Mormonism don’t become Evangelical Christians, then I agree. It would be natural for a person who discovers Mormonism is not true to gravitate toward atheism, agnosticism, or even nothing at all. There is no outside influence required to create a skeptical non-Mormon! As many in the LDS Church tell each other when hard facts are encountered, “If the church is not true, then nothing else is.”

Ingrained Skepticism

Ex-Mormons who have been burned by religion usually have no natural desire to join another church. Skepticism, then, is ingrained into the worldview of former Mormons, many of whom will never seriously entertain biblical Christianity. The “Great Apostasy,” a belief that plays a fundamental role in the foundation of Mormonism, is something many former members hold onto, whether they realize it or not. And how many continue to maintain LDS assumptions about the corruption of the Bible?

Jesus Without Joseph

Unless the former Latter-day Saint has contact with a Bible-believing Christian, I believe it’s highly unlikely that such people will ever seriously entertain biblical Christianity on their own. Still, there are many ex-Mormons who end up turning to the biblical Jesus and decide not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I have met many who come to a Christian worldview. They decide to discard Joseph Smith without giving up on Jesus.

How The Book Has Helped

I have had about a dozen different ex-Mormons tell me that my book helped them leave Mormonism and seriously consider biblical Christianity. For example, I had a local Utah pastor call me last March (2024) to tell me how he gave a copy of the book to a returned female missionary in her early 20s. Within a few days, she had read the whole book. This book, she told him, was the proverbial final nail in the coffin for her to leave Mormonism. In June I had the chance to visit her Christian church and watch her get baptized! A second woman who had been given a copy of the book was also baptized.

The Value of Apologetics

Many others over the years have considered Christianity based on apologetics. One is Ryan’s older brother who was dramatically affected about a decade ago. You may have heard of Carl Wimmer, who was a police officer and a Utah state legislator. I got permission from him to share his encounter with Jesus after he lost his faith in Mormonism. Carl told me:

“Without question, apologetics is the single biggest reason I regained faith that God even existed. If it were not for Christian apologetics, I would be an atheist like my little brother. This is why I got my master’s degree in apologetics, and why I am in the doctorate program. Additionally, I have baptized 67 people since moving to Duchesne, more than 50 of them have a Mormon background.”

Carl—who is a Christian pastor now—explained how last spring he baptized his cousin’s family, all of whom came out of Mormonism, in part because of apologetics. In addition, he told me how all but one of his wife’s siblings left Mormonism and are now attending Christian churches. Even his wife’s mother has lost her faith in Mormonism and watches Carl’s sermons online.

When Skeptics Reconsider

Of course, Ryan could respond by quoting P. T. Barnum who famously said that a sucker is born every minute. After all, there will always be someone like Carl who ends up becoming delusional the second time around by holding on to yet another irrational faith. He could be right. Or is it possible he could be wrong?

I think about former atheist Athony Flew who argued against the existence of God for his entire life until he became convinced that there was a God—a more Deistic viewpoint—through the power of the Cosmological Argument. He wrote a book in 2007 titled There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind and claimed that “my discovery of the Divine has been a pilgrimage of reason and not of faith.”

Other skeptics have learned to embrace the ethics of Christianity. For instance, the famous atheist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said earlier this year that he considers himself a “cultural Christian.” The 83-year-old claims that Christianity is a “fundamentally decent religion,” especially compared to Islam. Of course, Dawkins has no personal relationship with Jesus and is not a true believer, but it’s interesting that he now wants to be known as a “cultural Christian.”

Brevity

Before I deal with several of Ryan’s points in the time I have remaining, let me say that my book Introducing Christianity to Mormons was never meant to be comprehensive. It is limited in pages to attract a general lay audience. It could never hope to cover every nuance for the deep topics I cover. This is why a short bibliography of recommended resources was given at the end of each chapter to allow the interested reader to do further research.

Isaiah 53 and Jesus

One criticism Ryan makes is a section he titled “proof texts,” saying that “most scholars no longer push that Isaiah 53 is about Jesus.” All but three of the sixty-six chapters of Isaiah are referenced in the New Testament, none more than Isaiah 52:13-53:12. Each of the New Testament writers who refer to Isaiah 53 explain how the prophecy is about Jesus. Consider verse 7: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”

I encourage you to read Isaiah chapter 53. It is clear that this passage is talking about Jesus. This is how the apostle Philip took it in Acts 8:32 as well as Peter in 1 Peter 1:19. Ryan cites scholars whom he says contradict this view. For instance, he quotes John D. W. Watts as one who did not believe Isaiah 53 was about Jesus. Yet Watts writes an excursus on Isaiah 53 showing how it summarizes the gospel message. He explains how the language “evokes Jesus’ arrest, trial, and arraignment before Pilate”; his death, his “resurrection, exaltation into the heavens, and finally his place on the right hand of God in heaven.” Watts writes that the passage is a “lens through which to view the message about Jesus,” as it “provides the words to confess that Jesus died for us, for our sins.”

To say that the figure in Isaiah 53 provides a model or template for Christ is not mutually exclusive with the larger concept of prophecy. Whether an exclusive messianic prophecy, or a prophecy of double fulfillment, or typology with prophetic foreshadowing, Isaiah 53 ultimately describes the person of Christ.

Watts quotes Isaiah 53:12, “He himself bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels”, and concludes that this

“would seem to sum up not just the Suffering Servant song of Isaiah but the gospel message as well. It evokes Luke’s account of Jesus’ words from the cross: ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing’ ([Matthew] 23:34, NRSV).”

Others agree with Watts. In the NIV Application Commentary, John Oswalt concluded,

“Despite myriad attempts to find a figure in the sixth century B.C. who might be the referent in this passage, it has not been successful. By contrast, the congruence with Jesus’ life is remarkable.” (pp. 587-588)

My late seminary professor Dr. Ronald Youngblood was a translator of the New International Version of the Old Testament in 1973. Concerning Isaiah 53, he explained in his book Themes of Isaiah,

“It was Jesus who ‘took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows,’ as Matthew 8:16-17 points out. It was Jesus who was ‘pierced for our transgressions,’ a fact understood by evangelist (John 19:34) and apostle (Rom 4:25) alike. And ‘by his wounds’—the wounds of Jesus—we have been healed (1 Pet. 2:24), we have been forgiven. . . .

Prodigal sons and daughters of every age can return to the Father because of what Jesus has done. The Lord has laid on Jesus ‘the iniquity of us all’ (Isa. 53:6), just as the Israelite priest laid his hands on the scapegoat and symbolically put his people’s sins on it (Lev. 16:21). Christ ‘bore our sins to his body on the tree’ (1 Pet. 2:24).”

The Dead Sea Scrolls

It is amazing that the Great Isaiah Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Qumran, dates back to approximately 125 BC, some thirteen decades before Jesus was ever born. It could not have been composed after the fact.

Wimmer concedes that, “The small textual variants between Isaiah of the Dead Sea scrolls and the medieval Masoretic Texts is impressive.” He quotes Ferguson who says that, “Christians should not take the preservation of Isaiah and extend that to the entire Old Testament.” Yet not everyone holds to this view. Christian scholar Randall Price writes that we can say, “Those who expected the Scrolls to produce a radical revision of the Bible have been disappointed, for these texts have only verified the reliability and stability of the Old Testament as it appears in our modern translations.” (Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls, pp. 145-146)

Biblical Archaeology

Another point that Ryan makes comes under a section titled “Archaeology and the Evangelical State of Denial.” In an earlier version of his paper, Ryan wrote,

“Not only is it fundamentally untrue that the Bible has been well attested to by archaeology and the historical record, but it also is meaningless. The Doctrine and Covenants is about real places and real people. The attestation of the Doctrine and Covenants is far beyond anything in the Bible. But what difference does the fact that the people and places are real make? [This] does not mean angels really appeared to Joseph Smith and others.”

One problem with his argument is that the Doctrine and Covenants is not ancient scripture. Perhaps Ryan would have done better to compare the Book of Mormon, a scripture that cannot support the idea of real people, real places and real events. Even LDS apologists and scholars cannot agree if the Book of Mormon events took place in North or Central America.

It is important to note, however, that I never said I could empirically prove miraculous events. At the same time, I can point to the archaeological evidence to support the case that the Bible is talking about real people, real places, and real events. As archaeologist Titus Kennedy writes,

“When people look into what archaeologists have unearthed, a different story comes to light, showing that instead of fiction and fairy tales, archaeology indicates that the Bible preserves an accurate recounting of the history addressed in its pages. Specifically, hundreds of artifacts from the distant past have demonstrated the events, people, and places in the Bible to be historical.” (Unearthing the Bible, pp. 9-10)

Sennacherib and Jerusalem

Let me give you an example by introducing you to the Assyrian king Sennacherib. At the end of the 8th century BC, he destroyed several dozen Judean cities, with Lachish being the last. Despite this, Assyria never conquered Jerusalem. We can prove through history and archaeology that King Hezekiah built a broad wall in anticipation of Sennacherib’s offensive while constructing a water passageway (known today as Hezekiah’s Tunnel) for 1750 feet to provide a secret water passage to supply the city with the necessary water.

The archaeological evidence supports the conclusion that Sennacherib never conquered Jerusalem. His wall reliefs and the Taylor Prism discovered in the 19th century describe the Assyrian king’s conquest of Lachish and other Judean towns, yet no mention is made of taking Jerusalem, the obvious kingpin in his siege.

Faith is required to believe the Angel of the Lord decimated the Assyrian army overnight, as the Bible records. But believing in the miracle described in the Bible is also an inference to the best explanation. What kept Sennacherib from destroying Jerusalem? The destruction of God makes more sense than any other theory.

Tel Dan Inscription

Ryan also mentions King David and says his existence is “hotly contested.” I encourage the listener to look up the Tel Dan inscription stone, which is housed at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. This 9th century stone written in Aramaic was discovered in 1993 and includes the phrase “House of David,” the first archaeological mention of David.

Summit of the City of David

For many scholars who previously doubted David’s existence, this was enough. Still, even though they agreed that David was a real person, some claimed he was never a king. Using a Bible verse from 2 Samuel 5, Jewish archaeologist Eilat Mazar became intrigued how “David went down into the fortress from his dwelling place.” His palace had to be situated at the summit of the City of David. Though her theory from 30 years ago was met with resistance, Mazar began to excavate the summit in 2005; the evidence— including ornate ivory utensils, remains of exotic foods, and seals of royal individuals—helped date the giant edifice to the same era as David and pointed to whoever lived here as a king. She proved that this certainly is the palace where David ruled. (See here.)

Expedition Bible

I encourage you to visit Christian archaeologist Joel Kramer’s “Expedition Bible” channel on YouTube, which has more than 600,000 subscribers in just two years. Watch how Joel uncovers a number of biblical sites beyond a shadow of a doubt. 

Invitation to UCRC

I wish I had time to respond to Ryan’s other critiques, but I need to end here since my time has run out. I should point out that responses to his paper—regarding prophecies, the Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament variants, canonicity, authorship, and archaeology—are available at the Utah Christian Research Center in Draper, Utah, where I work every Thursday and Saturday.

Conclusion

My original goal in writing Introducing Christianity to Mormons was to help Christians provide a reasonable layout of the essentials of Christianity and show what Christians really do believe. Meant to be a primer on the basics of the Christian faith, the book has hopefully helped people consider the truth claims of the Bible and understand accurately just what Bible-believing Christians believe.  

Yet many former Mormons will never consider discarding their newly acquired secular humanism to entertain the possibility that Christianity is true. Too many—perhaps even Ryan Wimmer—sympathize with Thomas Nagel, professor at New York University, who explained that he personally does not want God to exist. This presupposition is described in 1 Corinthians 2:14: “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”

Ryan, I realize that you believe Christians are foolish to believe what they do, yet I pray with your brother Carl that, some day, the Holy Spirit will allow you to see God for who He is by realizing that you are in desperate need of knowing the One who created you.