Recently, I was visited in Woodbridge, Virginia by two teenage Utah men who were part of the 75,000 fulltime missionaries of the LDS Church. As a former elder of the Mormon Church who had my name removed from the records of the church in 2013, I suppose that they were somewhat interested in my response to them. For 30 years, from 1970 until 2000, I was a stake missionary on 8 stake missions, and finally was a ward mission leader in Mountlake Terrace, Washington. In 30 years', time, I probably presented Joseph Smith and the five standardized discussions to over 3,000 families and individuals through the USA and the world as a U.S. Marine in many wards and branches. I had memorized the content of the five discussions by 1984 and had unfortunately baptized or confirmed 65 souls into Mormonism by the year 2000. So, I knew these eager youngsters very well as they approached me.
It is not what these missionaries tell lukewarm Christians, ignorant of Mormonism, about Mormon theology, doctrine, and history that is so bad, since the crux of Mormonism, the Book of Mormon, has been significantly changed in the years following 2000. I recall Craig Burgess and Barry Erickson, from Utah, in October 1970 showing me a flannel-board picture of Joseph Smith actually sitting in front of the alleged golden plates with the Urim and Thummim around his neck actually translating the golden plates and dictating to his scribe Oliver Cowdery sitting across a veiled table. This was the basis for Smith alleging to have actually translated the Egyptian papyri that comprised the Joseph Smith Papyri discovered in the New York Metropolitan Museum in 1965. Yet now the storyline has substantially changed to "dictation" instead of translation. In 2013, 13 apologetic essays were place on the LDS.org website telling what had never been told for many decades since 1830, that Smith, Jr. had not even used the alleged golden plates to create the Book of Mormon, but had placed a seer stone, that he had claimed to use to find buried treasure for his Palmyra, New York neighbors, into a dark hat and read to his scribes what he read on the seer stone. A major revision of Mormon history, theology, and doctrine occurred in the time period before the demise of Smith, Jr. which was placed in these 13 essays. Most of the investigators to Mormonism don't realize just how much Mormonism has changed since 2000, and it is what these missionaries don't tell these investigators about Mormonism that is so damning.
I gave these two missionaries color copies of the 1984 "Lesson 21-Man May Become Like God" and encouraged them to read them and get back to me about what anything to which they disagreed. A link follows for a PDF copy of the 1984 Melchizedek Priesthood lesson from the 1984 39-lesson priesthood study guide, "Search These Commandments."
http://www.mormonthink.com/files/Lesson ... 201984.pdf
This Lesson 21 was taught to all prospective elders in 1984 and if read verbatim to Mormon investigators today would cause them to ask the Mormon missionaries to leave and not return because of the heresies contained within it. The things that the Mormon missionaries deliberately withhold from investigators before baptism about Mormon theology are stated in "Lesson 21." So far, those two Woodbridge missionaries have not contacted me about their impressions of "Lesson 21." If they do, I will be glad to sit down with them and discuss New Testament Christianity and the grace and salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus.