What's the Difference?
04/21/2002 - Mormonism
Salt Lake City. The Mormon Tabernacle choir. Donny and Marie Osmond. Brigham Young University. Bill Marriott. Andy Reid. All names that we've come to associate with Mormonism also known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or the LDS Church for short.
Often when we think of people who call themselves Mormons we think of hard working, clean living, successful, family orientated people. The kind of people we see portrayed on full length television commercials sponsored by the Mormon Church that encourage us to read the Bible, pray and have family nights, the kind of people who make good workers, fine neighbors and great friends.
But it hasn't always been that way. Not too long ago in this country, when people thought of Mormons they thought of strange people, prejudiced people, who lived on secluded ranches way out in Utah and had lots of wives. The kind of people you want to stay away from.
But thanks to some very clever marketing funded by an organization that takes in $14.5 million dollars a day and has assets estimated at close to $30 billion dollars that image has changed. More and more Mormonism is being positioned as an expression of traditional Christianity. If you go to their website at www.mormon.org, you can find a summary of their Thirteen Articles of Faith that sounds thoroughly Christian.
We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost. We believe the Bible to be the word of God. We believe that men will be punished for their sins. We believe in the atonement of Christ, in the need for faith, in the call to preach the gospel. We believe in freedom of worship and the need to obey authority and to live honest, virtuous lives. It all sounds so good and it's very well packaged on their website and in their literature.
Which is why Bruce McConkie, one of their Mormon apostles, said not too long ago, "Mormonism is Christianity. Christianity is Mormonism. They are one and the same, and they are not to be distinguished from each other in the minutest detail …. Mormons are true Christians. Their worship is pure, unadulterated Christianity authored by Christ and accepted by Peter, James, and John and all the ancient saints."
Gordon B. Hinckley, the current LDS President, has said, "We are Christians in a very real sense and that is coming to be more and more widely recognized. Once upon a time people everywhere said we are not Christians. They have come to recognize that we are, and that we have a very vital and dynamic religion based on the teachings of Jesus Christ."
The leaders of the Mormon Church, over the last few decades, have made an all out effort to position their organization as mainstream Christianity. But is it, really? Dr. Norman Geisler, a former professor of mine at Dallas Theological Seminary and now dean of Southern Evangelical Seminary has said, "On every major doctrine, the fundamental teachings of evangelical Christianity and Mormon doctrine are diametrically opposed."
An article in Newsweek magazine dated September 10, 2001 stated, "Mormonism now insists it be regarded as a Christian church, albeit one with doctrines about God, salvation and the priesthood that differ radically from traditional Christianity."
So which is it? Is the Mormon Church a true expression of biblical Christianity, or is it a cult masquerading as Christian but fundamentally denying the truth of the Bible? Today we continue our series called What's the Difference? with an honest look at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As I mentioned last week, we've now turned the corner in this series. We began last month by examining the major world religions and so we looked at Hinduism and Buddhism, Judaism and Islam. Then last week we explored the New Age Movement, a worldview that's become pervasive in our culture.
Now for the next three weeks we're going to turn our attention to some of the major cults operating in our country. There's a difference between a religion and a cult. Religions, like the ones we've studied, make no claim to be Christian. Cults on the other hand do. They parade under the banner of Christianity and refer to God, Jesus and the Bible, yet they deny the central truth claims of the Christian faith. In fact, there are three marks to every cult. They all have another leader besides Jesus. They all have another authority besides the Bible. And they all deny the deity of Jesus Christ. Once again, as with the major world religions, Jesus is the issue.
Now to understand Mormonism, we need to understand how it began. Mormonism was made in America by its founder, Joseph Smith, the one standing in this illustration. One LDS president said, "Mormonism stands or falls on the story of Joseph Smith." So let's look at his story.
Joseph Smith was born on December 23, 1805, the fourth of ten children, on a farm in Sharon, Vermont. In search of a better life, his parents moved to Palmyra, New York, a small town about thirty miles east of Rochester, when Joe was ten years-old. When he was about fourteen he really wanted to know which of all the churches was true. He wanted to know What's the Difference? Later he wrote that a passage from the New Testament book of James led him to a grove of trees near the family farm where he was visited by God the Father and then by Jesus Christ. He claimed that they told him that all Christian churches were wrong, their creeds were an abomination, and their leaders were all corrupt.
As you can imagine not many people bought his story and the pastors in Palmyra started to keep an eye on little Joe. Yet he insisted that his vision was true. Then in 1823, while Smith was praying in his bedroom, he claimed to have another heavenly visit, this time from an angel who introduced himself as Moroni. The angel told the seventeen year-old Smith that he had buried a set of gold plates in the area that contained the record of an ancient American civilization.
According to the record, written down by a prophet named Mormon, Moroni's father, descendants of the Jewish tribe Manasseh, had sailed to America in 600 B.C. to escape the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. After arriving in this country here they formed two separate nations, the Nephites and the Lamanites. And they lived side by side for about 800 years, until A.D. 385 when they fought a catastrophic war in upstate New York that left two million people dead. Although no archeological evidence has ever been found to support that claim. In fact, the Smithsonian Institute has published an official two-page letter saying that there is not one shred of evidence to substantiate the historicity of anything said in The Book of Mormon.
According to the story, Moroni appeared to Smith several more times telling him that he was chosen to retrieve the gold plates, show them to a few others, and then translate them from Egyptian into English using special stones and eye glasses, after which the gold plates would be taken back up into heaven by Moroni never to be seen again.
Finally, four years later, on September 22, 1827, when Smith was twenty-one, he discovered the gold plates buried in a stone box on the side of a hill near his home and started the translation. He showed them to three other men Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Martin Harris.
Cowdery was a schoolteacher and a relative of Smith's and became the principal scribe for the translation. Whitmer was a friend. And Martin Harris was a New York farmer who got so interested in Smith's project that he mortgaged his farm and used the money to publish the results of the translation, which became known as The Book of Mormon, the final word of God.
It's interesting to me that Joseph Smith was found guilty of fraud in 1826 for selling his services as one who claimed to have the power to find buried treasure. When he failed to produce for several of his clients, he was convicted as an imposter.
It's also interesting to me that later on Martin Harris, one of the so-called witnesses, admitted that he never did see the gold tablets since they were covered over with a cloth. And the two others, Cowdery and Whitmer eventually turned on Joseph Smith, were accused of theft and counterfeiting and left the Mormon church. And yet in the front of every copy of The Book of Mormon is the testimony of these three witnesses.
In May 1829, Smith claimed that John the Baptist visited him and ordained him as priest after the order of Melchizedek. Then in 1830, he founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Fayette, New York. Latter-day refers to the time just before Jesus returns and saints refers to the members of LDS churches which are called "wards."
By the end of the first year the church had grown to almost three hundred, but they were ridiculed for their beliefs so they moved west first to Ohio, then to Missouri, and then to Commerce, Illinois, a town on the Mississippi River where Smith became mayor. In 1843, Smith had another vision. This time he claimed God gave him the vision to grow the church biologically, to take more than one wife so that he could produce more saints for the movement. And so Smith took forty additional "wives," some he married and some he didn't. Today we call it adultery.
As you can imagine, that wasn't his best public relations move especially in 1844 when he ran for president of the United States. That's when newspapers started writing nasty articles calling him a false prophet, condemning his practice of polygamy and the LDS Church. Which didn't make Smith real happy. In fact, he got so upset that he broke into the local newspaper and started smashing printing presses for which he was arrested. But before he could be brought to trial he was shot and killed by an angry mob on June 27, 1844, at the age of 39, after by the way he had shot and killed two others. But now Mormonism had its first martyr.
After his death, the Mormon Church divided. Some followed Smith's first wife, Emma, to Missouri and established the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints. But most followed Brigham Young, who became the apostle Paul of the movement. Young led the church to Salt Lake City, Utah, the new Promised Land, arriving in July 1847. Like Smith, he was determined to grow the movement single handedly and carried on the practice of polygamy, marrying 27 wives and fathering 56 children.
And from those turbulent beginnings the Mormon Church has grown over the last 150 years to more than 10 million people worldwide. Over fifty thousand missionaries aggressively spread the Mormon faith door to door in 162 countries. Most of us have probably had them knock on our door. At the age of 19, many Mormons give two years of their lives to full-time missionary service, spending twelve hours a day, six days a week sharing their faith with the goal of making six converts of a year.
And what is it they're sharing? Let's take a look now at Mormon beliefs. Mormon beliefs are based on three books The Book of Mormon, which by the way contains hundreds of quotes from The Bible, Doctrines and Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price. Their beliefs are also based on continual, ongoing revelation that comes through living prophets. Joseph Smith was the first living prophet. Today Gordon Hinckley, the current President of the LDS Church, is the fifteenth living prophet. And when a living prophet receives a new, infallible revelation from God it immediately becomes unchallenged truth for every single Mormon worldwide. It's "thus saith the Lord."
But this ongoing revelation has been a source of embarrassment to Mormons over the years because of the contradictions that have occurred. Joseph Smith supposedly received an infallible revelation from God to practice polygamy in 1843, but in 1890 because of pressure from the United States government Wilford Woodruff the fourth living prophet received an infallible revelation to abolish polygamy although many Mormons still practice it today.
From the outset The Book of Mormon prohibited blacks from full participation in the Mormon Church with racial slurs I can't even repeat. That doctrine stood for well over a hundred years until 1978 when Spencer Kimball, the church's twelfth prophet, under enormous pressure from civil rights groups, supposedly received a revelation from God allowing blacks to become full members of the Mormon Church.
Is Mormonism really mainstream Christianity? Far from it! Let's take a look at some of the differences.
Mormons believe God the Father was once a man who then became God. But he is one of many gods. He has a physical body, as does his wife, the Heavenly Mother. And one day worthy men and women can also become gods too. Which is why a common Mormon phrase is, "As man is, God once was. As God is, so man can become."
The Bible doesn't teach anything like that. Instead, Psalm 90:2 says, From everlasting to everlasting you are God. God has always been God. And we will always be human beings. God is holy and separate from us.
Mormons don't believe in a Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Instead, they believe that Jesus is a separate god. He was the physical child of God the Father who had sexual intercourse with the Virgin Mary. Jesus was married, according to Mormons, had several wives, but no children. He did die on the cross and rise again, but in order to have eternal life we not only need to believe in Jesus, but we need to be baptized as Mormons, tithe 10% of our income, be married in a Mormon Temple and obey the teachings of the Mormon Church. It's salvation by works, not by grace through faith in Jesus.
And one day we all will stand before a tribunal of God the Father, the Mormon Jesus and Joseph Smith and be judged accordingly. Brigham Young said, "If I can pass brother Joseph, I shall stand a good chance of getting passed Peter, Jesus, the Prophets, Moses, Abraham and God the Father."
There are a variety of other differences as well. Mormons believe that every person existed prior to birth as a spirit child, which is why many Mormons have so many kids, because these spirits floating around need bodies. They believe most people will eventually end up in one of three separate heavens with some becoming gods and goddesses of their own planets. Only apostates and murderers will go to "outer darkness." They believe that marriage is for time and eternity. They believe that the dead can be converted to Mormonism if someone is baptized on their behalf, which explains their obsession with genealogical records. The LDS Church has the largest genealogical library in the world with over 2 billion names.
Mormonism is a far cry from biblical Christianity no matter how hard they try to repackage themselves. Mormonism is not biblical Christianity. For me this has been the most disturbing study yet, because it's so deceptive and so many Christians have been lured away from Jesus and into the Mormon Church. Jesus warned us about false teachers and wolves in sheep's clothing that would lead his followers astray.
I'm not saying Mormons are bad people. They're not. They 're wonderful people that God loves and we need to love too. They have some good values and a zeal that would put many of us to shame. But they're misguided, trying to prove themselves worthy, striving so hard to achieve godhood.
There is one God and his Son is Jesus Christ. There is only one truth source, the Bible. It's the only inspired book in the world. We don't need another book or another prophet. And there is one way to be made right with God and that's by believing in Jesus, accepting his sacrifice for our sin and resting on it alone. It is not Christ plus anything. It's Christ plus nothing. Do you want Joseph Smith or do you want Jesus who said, "I am the Way. I am the Truth. I am the Life. No one comes to the Father except by me." Have you trusted him?