January- February, 1998
A Note From Ed
Well, 1997 has ended pretty well financially, due to several large gifts. PTL! - we were able to catch up on most of our bills. God is so faithful to provide our needs and we thank all of you who support this work with your prayers and giving. We do pray that the giving continues, so we can catch up on expenses and the expanding needs in the ministry.
As You will see in this Newsletter, we have a lot going on and are experiencing a remarkable increase in contacts from Mormons and Masons who seeking the truth.
Not only are our upcoming mission trips firming up, but we have added MORE! Jason is bringing a team of over 30 to minister in the South Pacific Island Nation of Tonga during the Easter weeks, evangelizing and leading youth rallies throughout that country.
I am quite active, very healthy and doing radio, TV and church ministries regularly, as well as becoming more active in our local church. That has been one of my heart’s desires, having been on the road ministering for so many years.
You are in my prayers....
Your brother in the Lord,
Intern Training Program Planned
With our new space and expanded facilities, we will begin a new project, something that has been on my heart for a number of years now. Beginning in September, we will accept a small group of interns each Fall and Spring for a three month training program at Saints Alive.
The program will cover every area of ministry, from in-depth studies of Mormonism, Freemasonry and other cults to Bible doctrines, witnessing techniques, telephone counseling, correspondence ministries, computer systems, tract and Newsletter development, Intercessory prayer, worship and even some training in accounting and mail room systems.
There will be a number of great people working with us as featured speakers and trainers. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity for those few who are serious about making this kind of ministry a life’s goal.
The training will be done at our facilities in Kirkland with outreach and witnessing trips built in.
There will obviously be a cost for this and it will not include housing, meals or transportation. We will have that figured out soon.
Interested? For more information, contact our office for details.
(425) 822-1198
The God Makers
Revised, Expanded and Updated
It is with great Joy that I announce the release of a New and expanded version of The God Makers, the book that changed the way the world looks at Mormonism. With all the changes the LDS leaders have made to look more and more Christian, this vital update is urgently needed.
You can get your own copy of the first new printing for only
$10.00 plus s/h
Visit the Bookstore
online to order
or call 1-800-861-9888
We Have Moved
After over 20 years of ministry in Issaquah, We have moved our offices to Kirkland where we will have space in the former Overlake Christian Church building
It is being purchased by our home church, The City Church.
Pastor Wendell Smith has invited Saints Alive to take advantage of
the large facility and we are delighted to be there.
We will have to make some renovations to our new space and will need some extra finances for the move, phones, new carpet and other expenses this month. If you can send a special gift to help, we would be so grateful.
For now, our P.O. address will stay the same
Is The Book of Mormon
the Word of God?
I received an e-mail from a Mormon, Duncan S.., the other day. He wrote:
The Bible doesn't teach lies. The teachings in the Bible have been altered or misinterpreted, the Mormon religion does not teach that the holy scriptures are false. As for the other matters contained within your web site. You have not received revelation from God pertaining to these matters and as such neither have I. Sometimes, and you should know, it takes a little faith to understand. There is a way to receive a confirmation of the truth and that way is found in the book of Mormon, Moroni 10:3-5. I challenge you to read it.
Duncan’s note is similar to many that come in from Mormons, who feel that we have somehow missed the point and need to pray for that burning in the bosom by which Mormons "Know" it is true. This is my response:
Dear Duncan, I have read it many times. It is not scripture....welll, unless you count the portions of real scripture copied into it. It (the BOM) actually fails the test of scripture on page One.
Starting with the very first page of the Book of Mormon, in the First Book of Nephi, we read the account of Lehi, the key prophet of the second migration. It is through this man that the actual Book of Mormon story comes forth.
In I Nephi 1:4, we are told, "For it came to pass in the commencement of the first year of the reign of Zedekiah, King of Judah, (my father, Lehi, having dwelt at Jerusalem in all his days); and in that same year there came many prophets, prophesying unto the people that they must repent, or the great city Jerusalem must be destroyed."
Throughout the rest of Chapters One and Two, we see that Lehi is a mighty prophet of the Lord, preaching repentance, and after much danger leaves the city of Jerusalem at the Lord's bidding. Taking the clue that we are dealing with the reign of Zedekiah, we are able to go to II Kings 24:17, 18 and see that Zedekiah reigned for 11 years, starting about 600 BC. and ending his reign with the 4th and last siege of Jerusalem.
This siege was conducted by Nebuchadnezzar and ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity. At that time Daniel and Ezekiel had already been taken captive to Babylon- Daniel in the first siege and Ezekiel in the third siege.
The only true prophet left in Jerusalem during Zedekiah's reign was Jeremiah and he makes that perfectly clear. There were other, false prophets in the city, preaching the very same things Lehi was preaching.
Jeremiah 2:8 "and the prophets prophesied by Baal"
5:31 "and the prophets prophesy falsely"
6:13 "and from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely"
8:10 "every one dealeth falsely."
14:13-16 "the prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not....They prophesy unto you a false vision and divination."
23:16 "Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you"
23:21 "I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken unto them yet they prophesied"
27:14-17 "Therefore hearken not unto the words of the prophets that speak unto you, saying, ye shall serve not the King of Babylon: for they prophesy a lie unto you...hearken not to the words of your prophets that prophesy unto you...hearken not unto them; serve the King of Babylon and live."
29:8,9 "Let not your prophets and your diviners, that be in the midst of you deceive you...for they prophesy falsely unto you in my name: I have not sent them, saith the Lord."
Not Sent Of God
All these scriptures warn the people NOT to listen to ANY of the other prophets because they were ALL false and spoke lies. It is quite clear that Jeremiah was the only true prophet of God left in Jerusalem during the reign of Zedekiah. Since God didn't deliver Ezekiel, Daniel, and Jeremiah from bondage, but wanted all the people to serve the King of Babylon, why would he favor a biblically unnamed prophet with a message in total contradiction to the one given to Jeremiah for the whole nation of Israel?
He gave absolutely no biblical indication that some had to serve in Babylon, but some would be spared. In fact, He gave some pretty severe warnings to those who would attempt to escape captivity.
In Jeremiah 28, we read about the false prophet, Hananiah, who fled Jerusalem, in rebellion against the Lord. If the judgment of the Lord against Hananiah was death, why would God call and send forth another prophet, Lehi, with the same rebellious message to the very same people and call him a true prophet?
Impossible! If the Book of Mormon were true scripture, Lehi would be in direct disobedience to God in leaving Jerusalem to escape capture and bondage in Babylon. He would be a false prophet.
So, coming back to page One of the Book of Mormon, it immediately fails the basic test. It does not fit into its time frame correctly as true scripture. One need not go a page further to know that we are dealing with a false prophet.
Hope that helps..... What do you think??
Ed Decker Gal 6:14
Freemasonry - Why Do we Care?
I have been besieged of late to explain why I just won’t go away and leave the Masons alone to do their "good works." Let me share a little history about this ministry and me. My comments come from forward to an upcoming book on the subject.
I lay on the floor of the bathroom, retching. I was sure I was going to die. I had a TV show to do in just a few hours and I was certain that I wouldn’t live to see it. I pulled myself up, leaning against the wall next to the toilet, trying to pull away from the pain I was in and sort out what was happening.
I supposed that I had contracted food poisoning during the Pastors’ lunch earlier, but then, my table companions, sharing the same pizza, were not in here fighting for space at this receptacle. I remembered the two out-of-town visitors, whose attendance our host expressed concern over. "This is a dangerous business, and I don’t know these fellows," he warned.
"Don’t give it another thought," I answered. "God is our protector." Then I recalled that one of them had offered to refresh my drink and I had consented. A half hour later, I was convulsing in pain.
Reflecting back, years later now, I guess I ought to have questioned the wisdom of going to Inverness, Scotland to do a TV program on "The Occult Origins of Scottish Rite Masonry." My host was correct in his concern, yet God truly was my protector.
I rose up that evening by His strength and did that program, standing up. Yet, by the morning I was too ill to continue my tour and the next day began a terrible journey back to Seattle, to my own doctors and my own family. I arrived home barely able to walk The poison had effected my involuntary muscle system and it was difficult to use my hands and feet and hold my head steady. I arrived in Seattle more than 25 pounds lighter than I left.
Tests showed that I had sustained a high, lethal dose of arsenic, enough to have killed me a few times over. It took months to recover from the incident. Not only had the poison done serious damage to my digestive system, but I would lay in bed, sleeping fitfully while my body twitched continually. Later, the heavy metal worked its way out through vicious sores in the tops of my hands and my head, making a terrible odor that smelled like dog urine.
Even just recently, years later, while I was undergoing lung surgery caused by a bus accident, several blood vessels in my lower back broke spontaneously for apparently no reason. The doctors puzzled over the phenomenon for the better part of the day until a nurse asked my wife if I had been exposed to metallic poison in a work environment. When Carol told them about the Scotland incident, they had their answer. Tests showed that pockets of arsenic still in my system [lower back area] had been the cause and the vessels broke while I was in severe trauma.
I suppose we could have pointed out the man who poisoned me. He would have gone to prison, but as one Scottish friend warned, our host would have paid the price at the hands of the Masons in response. It wasn’t worth it. I am still alive and I am still speaking out the awful truth of the lodge. I am sure there are more than a few Masons in Scotland that can’t understand why I am still alive. I do.
The trip to Scotland wasn’t by chance. I had been studying , writing and lecturing on Freemasonry for a number of years. Somehow, I had become an expert. It wasn’t an easy transition.
When I began to study the Lodge with a critical eye, it meant that I had to look back at my own father, grandfather and their fathers before them for almost two hundred years. They were honest men, church men who took our faith, our family and our country seriously, fighting in its many wars. Generation after generation, each son followed after his father and entered into membership in the Lodge. That line ended when I stepped out of the DeMoLay to join the Mormon Church.
The Mormon church told me that Masonry was a society of "secret combinations" and "works of darkness." I was forbidden to continue membership in the De Molay and later, as an active Mormon, I would not seek to follow my father into the Lodge.
Years later, after I became a born again Christian, while I was at a service in a Baptist church teaching on the LDS Temple ritual, I discovered from an angry church Deacon that the ritual of the Masonic Lodge was the actual foundation of the LDS temple ritual. I knew that if what he said was true, I would have to expose the roots of Masonry to the same light of truth that I was bringing to bear on Mormonism. That was easier said than done.
Within a month of that experience, I found myself at the funeral of a friend’s father and once seated, discovered I was about to witness a Masonic funeral. By the time those men in their somber clothes walked down the church aisle, I knew that this was birthed in the very pit of hell and it had become rooted within the church, itself. I knew there was work to do.
It wasn’t like the work hadn’t been done before. Great men like Charles Finney had discovered its evil core and brought it to the church, but the church soon forgot the danger, choosing not to rile the Masons who ran their boards, paid their salaries, settling instead for the ten shekels and the shirt they offered. For the next century, lone pastors would study it and bring out its darkness from the pulpit. That usually resulted in the pastor being removed from that pulpit, his career usually destroyed in the process and the preaching of the truth of the lodge removed from the ears of the Masons in the church.
Freemasonry and Christianity are as far from each other as the North and South poles. His ignorance of the Luciferian roots and dark secrets of Freemasonry will be no excuse on that day of judgment for the man who calls himself a Christian Mason. Woe unto him.
Well, ministries like ours still speak the fire of truth and godly pastors are still speaking out in spite of the threats from the Masons and their the odious acts of ignominy in defying the very Word of God.
Missions Programs for 1998
Manti Pageant
Youth Missions Outreach
Monday, June 15-through
Tuesday, June 30th
Saints Alive will be directing a dynamic Youth Missions outreach to Utah and Idaho this summer.
It will include attendance at the Capstone Conference, specialized training, ministry among a number of Christian Church youth groups, 6 days of ministry at the Mormon Manti Pageant where the training will continue and then ministry at several Christian concerts. It is an exciting and spiritually maturing experience. This is a soul winning trip!
If you want to team up with us, drop Jason Decker a note, or call our office for detailed information.
Individual costs will be $250.00
Saints Alive - Summer of Missions 1998
Hawaii Style!
July 9 - 20th
Discipleship Training
and Evangelism
You will spend 12 days on the island of Oahu at the new Grace Bible Church Youth Center called the X-Factory, being challenged by our featured speakers. Then into the streets of Waikiki, local Mormon communities and on to the beaches.
Saints Alive South Pacific Missions Directors, Tom and Cindy Bauer, will lead you in a life changing experience. The cost, $250.00, covers your room, meals, local transportation and lecture costs. Airfare to/from Hawaii not included. For more information:
Capstone Conference 1998
We are pleased to announce that Saints Alive will be hosting another International Conference on Ministry to Mormons in Salt Lake City beginning Thursday evening, June 18th. through Saturday night, June 20th. If you are in this vital ministry, be there.
Cost for registration and materials will be $50.00
Email us for a brochure. The theme:
New Visions for Mormon Evangelism.
This Newsletter is Published by the ministry of
Saints Alive in Jesus
P.O. Box 1347
Issaquah, WA 98027-0055
www.saintsalive.com
edecker@nwlink.com
ISE