GospelGuardian Interviewed By Authentic Gospel Podcast

Watch the full discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un1KDalc9Mo

The Miracle Nobody Saw Coming: What Happened Before That Conversation With Sam Shamoun

By now a lot of you have seen or heard about the conversation between myself, Latter-day Logic, and Sam Shamoun on the Trinity and the LDS Godhead. What most of you don't know is what happened the night before.

I want to tell you that story.

Who I Am and Why Any of This Matters

I go by Gospel Guardian. Most of you know that. What fewer people know is that this page was never supposed to be about me. That is the whole point of the name. Anyone can be a guardian of the gospel. I am not special. I am a person who reads a lot, loves the scriptures, served a mission in Portland Oregon from 2017 to 2019, and felt a prompting from the Lord to start sharing the gospel on social media.

That is it. That is the whole origin story.

I had a choice at a fork in my life between going deep into politics, where I had real connections and a path forward, or going the religious route. I took it to the Lord. I went to the temple. And I felt strongly to do this instead. Around the same time, 50 or 60 other people felt the exact same prompting and started similar pages without any of us having spoken to each other first. That is not a coincidence. That is the Lord moving people simultaneously because he needs them.

The Night Before

Sam Shamoun is one of the most knowledgeable Christian apologists alive. He can cite five or six scriptures on any topic before you have finished forming your question. He is also known, at least in debate circles, for being aggressive. Gish gallop. Interruptions. The occasional personal dig. If you have watched his debates with Muslims or Jehovah's Witnesses you know exactly what I mean. A peaceful Sam Shamoun was not something anyone had ever seen.

So when Latter-day Logic invited me to come on and sit down with Sam, I was scared. I am not going to pretend otherwise. We were preparing for a battle and doing everything we could to stay on the offense because Sam on the offense is a force.

And then the night before, I received an impression.

Pray that the conversation will be peaceful and constructive.

I almost laughed. That felt like the most impossible thing to pray for given who we were walking into that room with. But the question I asked myself was simple. What is it going to hurt? So Devin and I prayed together that night and asked the Lord to make something happen that had never happened before in that man's debate history.

What Happened Next

We walked in the next day and Sam greeted us with embraces. Compliments. Jokes. Warmth.

Before we started recording he turned to the camera and said something that his own followers could not believe when they watched it back. He said he knew everyone was expecting a bloodbath but that was not what was going to happen that day because he loved us.

We sat down and had two hours of one of the most genuine, respectful, and intellectually honest conversations I have ever been part of on this subject. You can go watch it right now. Even his most dedicated fans were in the comments asking who this version of Sam was.

A few days later Sam posted a ten minute video about his experience. He said he went back to his hotel room and cried. He said he could not reconcile how two people trying that hard to follow Christ and be good could end up in hell. He was genuinely wrestling with it.

Would that have happened without that prayer? I cannot prove it either way. But I believe it was a miracle. A modern one. Quiet, unspectacular on the surface, but real.

The Lord can soften the hardest hearts. I watched it happen in real time.

What This Has to Do With You

I did not share that story just to recap the video. I shared it because that miracle only happened because I knew how the spirit speaks to me well enough to hear that impression and act on it even when it seemed unreasonable.

That is the thing I feel most called to talk about right now. Learning how the spirit communicates with you personally.

President Nelson's warning has been echoing in my mind for a long time. He said it will not be possible to survive the coming days spiritually without the constant guiding influence of the Holy Spirit. That is not a suggestion. That is a warning from a prophet. And I do not think we are taking it seriously enough.

I see complacency in the culture of the church. People going to sacrament meeting, paying tithing, reading their scriptures here and there, and feeling like that is enough. I say this with love and with the same lesson my mission president taught me about my own pride: none of us are above that warning. None of us are done. The level of faith we read about in the Book of Mormon, in Nephi, in the brother of Jared, in Alma, is the level the Lord is going to need from us. We are not there yet. Most of us are nowhere close.

How to Start

Here is the simple version of what I tell people.

Start writing down your spiritual experiences. Every one of them. It does not matter if it was a quiet feeling to text a friend or something that shook you to your core. Write it down. Over time you will begin to see patterns. The spirit communicates with each of us differently. Some people feel it. Some people hear it in their mind. Some people receive images or impressions. Some people feel physical warmth. Whatever it is for you, those patterns are how the spirit has learned to reach you.

Once you know your patterns, you will stop second-guessing. You will stop asking yourself if that impression was real. You will know. And from knowledge comes action. And from action comes miracles.

I also believe with everything in me that we as a church are still under the condemnation described in Doctrine and Covenants 84. We have not taken the Book of Mormon seriously enough. We have not learned what it is actually teaching. If you want somewhere to start, read 1 Nephi and look for the endowment in Lehi's journey. See what is hiding in plain sight. Then ask yourself what else you have been missing and let the spirit show you.

Final Thought

I know God is real because he answered the prayer of a seven year old kid at the side of his bed in the dark. I know the spirit is real because he has given me directions at intersections, turned cars around, softened hearts that had no business being softened, and led me to people who were ready and waiting.

None of that makes me special. It makes him good.

Learn how he speaks to you. Act on it when he does. Be the tool he needs you to be. The days coming will require it.

Come and see.