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Monday, September 8, 2014

MINI MISSIONARY LESSON: USING GUILT AND MANIPULATION TO BAPTIZE MORE PEOPLE

With the lowering of the mission age, the Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer is doing its part to help train young men for the rigors and blessings of doing God’s work. As part of this effort, Elder Kory Anton, who is hoping to clear things up and return to the mission field very soon, offers his insights to help others prepare.

God wants you to use all means possible to get
people to enter the yoke
As a missionary, your sole purpose is to baptize. Talk all you want about getting close to God or growing spiritually or becoming a better person—those are really just things that loser missionaries say who didn’t baptize as many people as they should have. Missionaries might make up lame excuses, like “we served and loved many people” or “I hope this or that family eventually feels like baptism will bless their lives” or “I honor and respect the lives and agency of those I met,” but all of that is cover for their failure to baptize thousands like early missionaries or anyone in South America. We know that the Lord is bound when we do what He says, and what I’m about to say is bound to give you the highest number when people back in your ward ask how many you baptized.

The key to getting people baptized is using guilt and manipulation. Others may not really say it like that, but trust me, you probably have already had some youth leader (or parents!) who used plenty of both, probably to get you on a mission. Guilt and manipulation can be the very key to heaven; they are truly a bright, shining, morning star!

If you are unfamiliar with how to use guilt and manipulation to baptize more people, let me explain. The key is to use someone’s beliefs or relationships against them. Say, for example, you are working with someone who says they believe in the Bible. Your goal is to force them to see how if they believe in the Bible then they must believe everything you are teaching and get baptized. Read some scripture like Amos 3:7 about prophets, and then say that if they believe the Bible then they must believe that there are always prophets all of the time and since you have a church with a prophet, you must be right and, since they believe in the Bible, they have to get baptized. Or read the scripture in John about other sheep not of this fold and prove that that means that the Book of Mormon is true and that if they believe the Bible then they must believe in the Book of Mormon and be baptized. As you can see, your study time should be spent finding scriptures you can use to force people to see that if they believe the Bible then they must believe you and be baptized. It is as easy as that!

Some people are either not yet convinced or they don’t believe all that much in the Bible. Fair enough. Then you ask them if they love their children or parents. If they say yes, then you say that if they really love them then they will join the church that helps them be together forever and that they must get baptized. If they dodge this, then show something like “I’ll Build You a Rainbow” or something else that makes a powerful emotional appeal, and show them that if they really love those people, they will get baptized. 

Some missionaries lose sight of this. Instead of being bold, denouncing sin with the power of the sword of truth, they talk about creating a mutually respectful environment where they are as open as they would want the investigator to be. Those missionaries have lost sight of the fact that they are the only ones with the truth and that you have been commanded to baptize. Missionaries who have lost the true vision of missionary work love and weep for people who decide to no longer hear their message. True missionaries keep going back, keep using powerful emotional pressure, and keep making arguments that are tighter and tighter until every investigator enters the yoke of the Lord. It may be hard work keeping investigators anxious and feeling the heavy load of guilt and manipulation, but trust me, if you want get rid of ambiguity and doubts and if you want to tell your mission president, parents, ward members back home, and friends that you had lots and lots of baptisms, there is no other way!

The Best of Luck,

Elder Kory Anton

PS: This article is probably from Satan--Avoid!

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