Web Newsletter - APRIL 2005
DEAR FRIENDS OF SAINTS ALIVE,
I have been scanning through a series of recent reports that tell a tale of decreasing numbers of active members of the LDS church, converts leaving in droves and ballooning numbers of names of people who have been long gone with no forwarding address, yet still reported as active members on the rolls. Many of the ‘still active’ missing have been dead for over 20 years.
Church membership department employees confirm that
individuals in the "Address Unknown File" are counted as full members and
included on statistical reports until the age of 110 or until proof of death can be
located. With an average life expectancy of 72
in the
The Mormon Church is losing the battle for its converts. According to another LDS based web site, the annual average LDS church growth rate is presently about 1.7%, and that is with all those babies being born [also dropping in numbers since most LDS families need that second income] into the Mormon families.
Converts per missionary year have dropped from an average of 7 per missionary year to under 4 per missionary year. That is just counting the full time missionaries and does not include the more than 100,000 part time local ‘stake’ missionaries. Add them in and it is less than 2 converts for an entire year of missionary work. Over 100,000 less people are being converted to Mormonism each year and over 10,000 less young men and women are going on missions than just a few years ago.
New reports show that in Mormonism, where an overall
30% activity rate is considered good, Sociologist Armand Mauss states "75 percent
of foreign [LDS] converts are not attending church within a year of conversion. In the
What these reports tell me is that more people are leaving the church each year than those being converted. I think that is good news. It means the last 30 years of hard work by so many Ex-Mormons and concerned Christians are paying off.
When I came out of Mormonism as a born again believer in 1975, there were few people witnessing to the Mormons and books and written information were few and far between.
When we converts to Christianity began groups like Ex-Mormons for Jesus and Saints Alive, we were considered wild eyed zealots. When Dave Hunt and I wrote The God Makers book, it became one of the top selling Christian books for over a year and it is still selling strong after 23 years. "The God Makers" movie hit the Christian world by storm and was being shown in over 1,000 churches a month for several years. Video and DVD sales still account for much of our Web bookstore activity.
The two changed the way the world looked at the strange doctrines of the LDS church and now the world knew what was really behind the smiling faces of the LDS missionaries.
The advent of the World Wide Web and the Internet has literally exploded the availability of information across the world. While Saints Alive is just one of many ministries to the Mormons now, we have over 150,000 visitors to our web site alone each month, from over 75 countries and these visitors down load an average of over 500,000 pages of data every month.
The story is the same with Freemasonry. The Lodges are emptying out. More Masons are dying each year than there are men joining the lodges. It’s an old man’s club now. In today’s world, most business and professional men do not feel the need to join a secret society in order to succeed in this global world today.
Most of these men would rather put their money into a membership at a good country club where they can also enjoy the company of their wives and play golf instead of learning secret rituals and handshakes from the 18th century.
The Grand Lodge of Masons in
These are exciting times and we are thrilled every time a Mormon or a Mason finds the Real truth and is set free. That joy will never get old.
Remember, too, that in the midst of all the activity around us, we still make prayer our number one priority. Prayer is what makes everything else work and I personally pray diligently for the prayer needs you share with me.
Speaking of zeal for the lost, our good friends at ACTION
International Ministries [see their web link on our web site] have been able to
go into
The local pastors who handled the printing said this
is the first Christian book printed in
The Fast Facts book, now out in an expanded and revised edition has been a powerful tool of ministry in a number of countries where it has been published. I guess over 200,000 copies are now out in circulation. You can order your copy today on our secure, online bookstore.
A SPECIAL PLEA
We are seeing dynamic results. But, it has been at a cost. With the instant access of the Internet, we have seen a real drop in our support that traditionally comes from our mailed newsletter. With the lack of funds, we are sending out fewer newsletters and the cycle just continues. We do see support from the Web site, but far less than we would hope. It does not sustain the Web side of our ministry nor does it contribute to the over-all costs of the ministry, yet this web presence is so vital.
As we have labored in this battle over the last 30 years, we have hit some bumps along the road and have had a few crises of our own. We are at one right now. Over the last few months, our donations have dropped severely and we have run out of the financial buffer we had. We urgently need a strong and immediate financial transfusion.
Please, we ask you to prayerfully consider a special gift today, something that will make a difference. If your gift helps us be there for even one more salvation, it is money well spent. You know that we squeeze $2.00 out of every dollar we are given. Please send in a gift today and help us stay on the front lines.
It is so simple to do! .Just click on the Give a Donation button on the left side of our www.saintsalive.com front page and you are ‘there.’
Thank you for all of us!
Your brother in Christ,
Email Subscribers - Watch your email inbox in the coming days for the next chapter of Ed's new book
My Kingdom Come - The Mormon Quest for Godhood
A Letter From an Honest Mormon
Dear Ed,
I have been looking for answers and explanations for a long time now. It has just been recently that I have allowed myself to put it all on the line in the name of finding out what is really true and what really isn't.
For a long time I assumed either you had once been a member of the LDS religion who had given into sin or that you had allowed yourself to be deceived by the devil and that you had gone into some kind of insane rage of apostasy. I felt like you were on the devil's side trying to somehow possess me with the same evil spirit that you had. then I realized that you had the true spirit of Christ and that you were trying to share it with others and that before I could have the same spirit an exorcism would almost be in order.
I was baptized in the LDS church when I was 8 years old and my ancestors were pioneers and the whole deal. I went on a mission and served faithfully, but deep down I knew that a lot of things didn't add up and I felt deep down that truth should add up. I had so many questions about things that obviously contradicted themselves in the church.
The funny thing about a cult is that it teaches its members to ignore the obvious, so for many years I did. I had a little explanation for everything. I got to the point that I realized I was acting just like one of those wonderful devoted housewives covering up for her alcoholic husband. I had an excuse for everything and if anybody tried to detract from my overly esteemed opinion of the church, I would simply withdraw from them and cut them off completely. I could not hear the criticisms of those who opposed the church. deep down I wondered if these people could really hate me so much that they wanted to take away the best thing in my life.
Then I realized that the best thing in my life had already been taken away from me. I KNEW I had lost Jesus somewhere in the midst of it all. I was crying out for Jesus to come back and rescue me, and yet every time he would send someone to come save me, I would push them away thinking they were the enemy of my soul. luckily, Jesus doesn't give up, so he kept reaching out to me and kept trying to minister to me even despite my resistant efforts to push him and his ministers away. it is so hard to understand how I could so desperately seek his help and so defiantly push his messengers away when they would come to warn me of the terrible disaster that I was in the midst of.
To me, I just thought I was worshipping Jesus more fully than Christians such as you, and that was why they didn't understand my commitment to these things. I was always of the opinion that anyone that opposes the Mormon church either must an adulterer or is deceived of an evil spirit. I mean, who else would want to get in the way of the lord's one true church? Though it was not specifically taught per se, this was engrained into me all along the way from the time I was very young.
It was interesting to me when I finally realized that I was getting so caught up in the mechanics of things, for example, the perfecting of my own life and the accounting for my every bad choice that my heart grew cold in other areas a little at a time. it was such a slow occurrence that I didn't catch it until I was so far away from what Jesus actually taught that I didn’t care anymore. All I cared about was this routine of going to church, reading my scriptures daily, serving people, and focusing on my own spiritual welfare so that I could be exalted and become a god like my "elder brother Jesus" had done when he was in this world.
It was so engrained into me that "Love thy neighbor" was the SECOND commandment, and that "Love God" was the first, that I started to feel like I had no business focusing on the "second commandment" until I got the first one down. "After all," I said, "I am not here to gain acceptance or favor of my fellow man anyway, am I?" "I am here to please God, not man," so I went on with my life convinced deep down that it didn’t really matter what kind of attitude I had toward others as until I could look God in the eyes and say "Lord, I have given blessings to the sick and done my home teaching and worked many miracles in your name, and I have done many great works to honor you." Then I figured I would be able to work on the second commandment at that point.
The Lord said to people who were like I was, "Truly, I never knew you. Depart from me ye that work iniquity." I always thought he was talking about the people that didn’t keep his commandments "to the letter" of the law. I never did realize that he was talking about the people that were so caught up in the letter of the law that they had forgotten the majority of his commandments which are based on one simple principle of loving one another. He said "this is how ye will know ye are my disciples. If ye have love one to another."
Sure, we all know the song and we sing it, but do we know the walk and do we in fact walk it? or are we so busy focusing on keeping the commandments that we have looked beyond the mark? have we forgotten the whole purpose of Jesus? coming to earth? It was for us! He came here to teach us by example. He did not spend his time building temples and church houses and he did not spend his time obsessing over all of the laws that there are for us to keep. He spent his time on earth doing one thing and one thing only: ministering to his people by showing them how to forgive the way he forgives us.
I truly believed that I was following in the footsteps of Jesus until I took a challenge to read the New Testament in the Bible itself for 30 minutes a day instead of reading the Book of Mormon. I reluctantly thought "well, it's the same Jesus anyway, and the bible has all these errors, compared to the Book of Mormon, which is translated by the prophet himself, so what's the point?" But I took the challenge, even though I was convinced that it would do nothing for me. Well, it changed my life.
The more I studied the Bible every single day, I discovered that this record, the Bible, was not as inaccurate as I had been taught to think it was. In fact, I was learning more about Christ in than I had ever learned before. There is a big difference in mentioning the name of Christ as a point of reference and having a direct discussion about Jesus’ life and what he was really like. The book of Mormon talks a lot about Christ in referring to him as our savior and that we should look to him. But the BIBLE talks about who Christ was, what he wants, what he did while he was on the earth, and the specific miracles and actions that he and his disciples brought about while they were on the earth. It is a first hand account of Jesus himself.
If you really want to get to know Jesus, first you need to know who he is. The Book of Mormon offers accounts of people that talk about him a lot, and it made me feel great reading these things but these prophets of the Book of Mormon didn’t ever actually know Jesus. The bible has specific accounts of people that were his friends that walked with him in the flesh while he was among us. It has records of the people that were around him the most, the people that knew him better than anybody. These people painted a much better picture for me of who Christ was when he was on the earth.
I can talk about Jesus all I want, and I can do the things that he did, but for it to mean anything, I really have to know him. Otherwise, what else can he say but, "I never knew you." When we get to know Christ, we understand why he did each of those things he did while he was on the earth. It helped me understand that his agenda was SO much different than that of the Mormon church, even though Satan has transformed himself into an angel of light and appears as the exact mirror of Jesus and Christianity... the Mormon church appears to have the right things in mind for us. They are just close enough to the truth to make reason stare, but far enough from it to deceive even the very elect into the gates of hell.
Anyways, thank you, Ed, for helping me to see that you do what you do out of the pure love of Christ. Thank you for helping me to take an honest look at who Jesus really is, and where I can find him, as compared to where I have been looking for him in the past. Thank you for helping me to really see what lies beneath the tidy outward appearance of the ever so carefully painted picture of Mormonism. If there were not defenders of truth such as you and I, there would have been no one for me to turn to when I started to have so many questions and no answers.
Without ministers there saying "hey, look out for that lake of fire" I would have regressed right back into the very thing that my soul was crying out against... that is, the very grasps of the devil that seemed so harmless when I was caught in the middle of them. I started to realize that things didn't add up in the Mormon cult, but all I had around me in every direction were brainwashed cult members who were past the point of feeling and far beyond the idea of being open to the truth (even though I truly love them very much). Every time I asked a question that was out of the box, I got beaten back into the mold and even though I could see that something was wrong, I had no place to turn for refuge. Thank you for pointing me to my true refuge, Jesus. The real one. The ONLY one.
By the way, I checked out all of your
references all the way back to the original sources and I was surprised when I found out
that they were all
Thank you for caring enough about Jesus to stand up for him at any cost.
Your friend in Christ, Thomas
p.s. Write me back sometime, I’d seriously love to hear from you. thanks
Dear Thomas...
What a great, real testimony of who Jesus is in your life. I love the 14-16th Chapters of John, where He taught us to be one with Him. You have come down a long road, one I had to travel myself. Until you make that trip, it doesn't make much sense.
I appreciate you understanding that what I and others do isn't from hate or evil living, but a very hard call to go back to ones you love and tell the truth, even though it hurts. So many thousands of my Mormon loved ones (as you were) have found the same truth you found. That it is all about Jesus. This is why my life has been so richly rewarded. You have lifted my spirits. Thanks you for your story!
God Bless You, Ed Decker
Dear
Ed...
Dear Ed,
...... I am also an ordinance worker in
the XXXXX temple. I have noticed a change in the initiatory ordinance. It used to be that
one went in naked except for the shield that was worn. They entered a booth, where a
worker washed them, and then washed certain parts of the body (eyes, ears, bowels, loins,
legs, arms etc.) They then proceeded to the anointing portion where one was anointed
with olive oil. (With all this why go to a day spa) and the same thing was repeated.
Finally they stepped out of the anointing booth to a booth where in they were clothed in
the garment. This has changed within the last two weeks. I am wondering if this is a
Church wide change (I am assuming it is, as a friend of mine just went through
We have been asked not to discuss these changes outside the temple, and we have not been given ANY information regarding this change. I feel bad for the old people who spend so much time trying to memorize this stuff. At least for me I can quickly learn the stuff. But I wanted to let you know of the changes. They no longer wash and anoint specific parts of the body. One is washed on the forehead, and the same words are used, but those body parts are not washed. They then go to the anointing booth, where they are anointed as if given a blessing. All the same words are used, but no specific anointing. They then go and are clothed in the garment, but oddly enough they wear their one piece garment throughout the entire ceremony now. The temple gets stranger and stranger. Maybe someday we will also do away with the green little apron.
XXXX
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Saints Alive In Jesus
ed@saintsalive.com
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