Tonight’s Temple Square theme: drama & spiritual warfare.

As I arrived there was a large group of young believers praying — mostly from Chicago. We scattered and covered different spots around Temple Square. I don’t know how their night went, although I did see a young man from their group at the North Gate named Ben. He was bold! He kept kindly handing out tracts and weathering repeated rejection with an excellent, kind attitude.

I met a young Mormon couple from Draper who were on a date at Temple Square. I asked them if they had ever heard the gospel from a born-again Christian. They hadn’t, and then let me spend some time summarizing. As I am in the middle of this we hear BAM! BAM! BAM! A large tour bus had some sort of compartment open to its side. It hit the side of multiple cars. The bus stopped, cops came, and they surveyed the damage. If you zoom into this picture, you can some some of the damage.

Meanwhile we continued our conversation. They heard a clear gospel presentation. The man cordially replied that he understood, but he that he believed in the genealogy of gods. I proceeded to warn them and clearly call them to repentance — to worship the Most High. He took a tract and then we peacefully parted ways.

Sometime later I spoke to a Mormon apologist named Darrell — we have talked occasionally for a decade. He explained that he thought the Early Church Fathers taught we could become gods. I explained that such superficial similarity of language wasn’t adequate to support Mormonism. Christians are quite fine with “becoming gods” if that means being resurrected with glorified bodies and becoming sinless. But if it means becoming the kind of being worthy of worship, or having God’s own unique attributes, then that’s idolatry. The early church fathers and C.S. Lewis had the former, not the latter, in mind with their language.

The Christians were busy having conversations and handing out tracts. At some point a family walked by and took tracts. But the mother angrily took hers and ripped it up.

Shortly after I spoke alongside Logan with Mike, a Mormon who was flirting with the Hebrew Roots movement. He wanted to tout his special, unique, metaphoric interpretation of the Old Testament. I told him I’d rather him plainly tell us what he believed and what positions he was trying to promote. He spoke in a meandering, roundabout way. I pressed some passages from Isaiah with him, departed, and let Logan continue the conversation.

Then an old friend showed up with a dramatic looking cane(?). He spoke in a low, growling, demonic way. It wasn’t clear if he was demon-possessed or if he was trying to present that way to get attention. He was clearly unstable, so I took him aside and tried to calm him down. I prayed for him and then tried to speak with him. I had to quickly end the conversation as he began shouting vile words. He wasn’t himself. I joined some other Christians to pray for him.

He then went over and joined another group conversation. I asked a brother to help run “interference”, to try to calm him down and keep him from disrupting conversations.

A white truck then pulled off to the side. It was four BYU students. They asked for tracts, so I gave them as many colors as I could from the GodLovesMormons.com set. They asked why we were out here. We had a good conversation about our motivation and about the nature of God.

Suddenly we heard some commotion. The previous angry lady came through again, this time was yelling at the Christians. Some of the Christians tried to reply to her, but it only escalated her anger. I yelled out, “Disengage!” People like that don’t warrant a retort, even if the retort is true. Just let her have the last word. Otherwise it creates commotion, confuses others passing by, and disrupts existing conversations. My BYU student conversation partners made some critical remarks about it, and then we tried to keep talking.

But then the fraught man erupted. Some of the Christians who know him hugged him and tried to speak words of encouragement to him and calm him down. But he was frenzied and angry and out of control. It seemed bad enough that I called 911 and asked for an officer to come to calm him down. I continued the conversation with the BYU students, but they left when the cop came. When I turned around and greeted the cop I looked over and saw the fraught man sitting down calmly with Luke. Luke, a brother, had his hand on his shoulder and was praying for him and speaking to him. The situation seemed contained. The cop left.

At some point some Christians from Hawaii came by and said hi. They do ministry to Mormons there! What a double-treat — to meet those who are brothers AND who share in the same kind of ministry! And then later Earl Erskine came by and said hi. Always good to see a brother! Sorry, Earl, it isn’t typically this crazy!

Then Mike, the Mormon mentioned earlier, returned and talked with me. We walked through some Bible passages, but ultimately I told him we needed to stop talking: he was treating it like a sport. He was smirking and laughing like it was a game. I rebuked him and said we were done. I perhaps should have exited that conversation even earlier.

After this, a man — who I have mentioned in earlier posts as a severe thorn in our side, disrupting our evangelism — came over to me. With a seemingly calm, sound mind, and a peaceful spirit, he apologized to me for having wronged me. I was in joyful shock. Yes, I forgive you! He said he had also found a church and was attending it. I encouraged him to still sit down with me, one of his pastors, and one of my pastors, to talk through things and further reconcile. He said, “Jesus died for my sins, so I should try to make things right with you. Your request is reasonable.” He said he’d tried to make it happen!

Late, late, late into the night Luke continued to talk to the fraught man. Luke patiently spoke to him till maybe 10:45pm. The fraught man then came over to me and apologized for speaking vile words. I hugged him and I encouraged him to get some sleep and eat some food — he looked terrible. Then I showed him some local churches on a map close to his home — some within walking distance.

About five of the brothers stayed even till this late, and we walked to our cars and some of us prayed. It sounds like a lot of people had great conversations tonight. At the North Gate, however, it was punctuated by some bad ones, and some undesirable drama. Wow. What a night. What is God up to? Not every night is like this.

Tomorrow morning I am having breakfast with a Mormon I met last week at Temple Square. Pray!