Understanding Mormons

Confronting Cults and Counterfeits  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented
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INTRODUCTION

There are 17 million Mormons in the world today. There are nearly 7 million in the United States.
For some, when you think of Mormons, you think of...
...Missionaries in white shirts with black ties, riding bikes and proselytizing in your neighborhood.
...You may think of polygamy or Netflix documentaries about scandals and cover-ups.
…You may think of The Salt Lake Mormon Temple or Utah in general
For others...
Before you think of a stereotype, you think of people.
You think of people you know.
People you have met who were Mormons.
Neighbors you have had that were Mormons.
Co-workers you have now that are Mormons.
The chances of you knowing a Mormon are about the same as the chances of you knowing someone who is avidly practicing Judaism.
It is not so rare.
Mormons, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, are a group we will spend two sessions talking about.
This is because they are a large group.
This is because they are so active in our area.
The chances of you ending up in a Gospel conversation with a Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness is far greater than the chance that you end up talking with a Scientologist or Christian Scientist.

ANOTHER GOSPEL

Like all of the cults and counterfeits that we are talking about in our series, the Mormons—or the Church of the Latter-Day Saints—teach and preach another Gospel.
Much like the Watchtower Organization or false religions like Islam, Mormonism is a system of works-righteousness.
It is a form of religion in which one is seeking to be justified by good works before God.
Here is what Paul said about the idea of “another Gospel.”
Galatians 1:8–9 ESV
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.
The Galatians were being swayed by a different gospel.
It was a gospel that said the work of circumcision must take place if someone if going to be in a relationship with God.
Therefore, if a Gentile were to come to Christ, in order for them to truly be saved, they must first be circumcised.
In doing this, the Galatians were no longer trusting in Christ alone, but in Christ + law-keeping.
It was another gospel.
When Paul says that anyone, including himself, should preach another gospel, he should be accursed.
He is saying that assuming they do not repent, they should be cut off from God forever.
The Mormon gospel that we are talking about over the next couple of weeks is in that category.
Damnable teaching that leads people astray and away from the true Jesus.

JOSEPH SMITH AND THE BOOK OF MORMON

But to talk about the unsound doctrine that is worthy of condemnation, you have to back up and start with the man who started it all—Joseph Smith.
Mormonism is quite literally, Joseph Smith’s story.
It begins with him and it comes from him.
No man can accept Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world, no man can accept this as his church, unless he can accept Joseph Smith as God’s mouthpiece and restorer of his work in these latter days.
Harold B. Lee, 11th President of the Mormon Church
Joseph Smith was born in 1805 in Vermont.
He was one of eleven kids.
He moved to upstate New York when he was around the age of ten.
His dad was a mystical guy who would dig for lost treasure and he tried to mint his own money, which got him in trouble with the local authorities.

FIRST VISION ACCOUNT

When Smith was a young teenager, he began to be interested in spiritual things and started praying and asking God which church he should join and wanted forgiveness for his sins.
While kneeling, he felt a dark power try to bind his tongue and thick darkness manifested all around him.
As he tried to call out for God, a bright light fell on him.
He saw two people and one of them said, “This is my beloved Son! Hear him!”
He felt delivered from the enemy.
During the vision, Smith asked Jesus which church he should join and Jesus said, “None of them.”
Mormons call this the “First Vision Account.”
This is the beginning of Jesus supposedly restoring authority to his church through Joseph Smith.
This is the beginning of the Lord setting him apart as a prophet.
This supposedly happened in 1820.
But here is the thing about the “First Vision.”
There isn’t one account. There are multiple.
In 1831, Smith said that in this First Vision, he saw the Lord.
In 1835, he changed his story and said he saw a person—one person.
And then, in 1840, the story evolved from one person to two persons.
Smith claimed he didn’t recall that Father God and Jesus were there until later, but that is pretty ridiculous.
Tony Brown illustrates how ridiculous this is well in his book Sharing the Gospel with a Mormon.
He says that this would be like you meeting Prince William and running around and telling everyone you know the story for 5 years.
And then—all the sudden—after 5 years of telling everyone the story, you start saying, “Oh yeah! King Charles was there too! I forgot!”
You’d be like, “You forgot the King was there?”
So the whole thing starts on the shaky word of man.

THE BOOK OF MORMON

Now, when it comes to so-called Scripture, the Mormons believe there are four works:
The Bible
The Doctrine and Covenants: A collection of supposedly divine revelations Joseph Smith received. It can be added to by the Prophet-Presidents that come after Joseph
The Pearl of Great Price: Another product of Joseph Smith with various selections of his work
And then of course—The Book of Mormon.
When it comes to the Book of Mormon, there is no high authority. There is no book of greater importance:
All scripture is not of equal value…Of the four great standard works of the church—the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price—I would particularly urge you to read again and again the Book of Mormon and ponder and apply its teachings.
In the Book of Mormon, Latter-Day Saints claim to have another testament of Jesus Christ.
And not just another testament, but the one that matters the most.
Smith claimed that the angel Moroni—the son of Mormon and the final Nephite prophet—showed up at his bedside and told him about the Book of Mormon.
It was inscribed on golden plates that were buried in a hillside in upstate New York and he was to go and unearth them.
He went and dug them up and thus, you have the book of Mormon.
Smith said that this novel testament from God was written in a language called Reformed Egyptian—which is not a real thing in any other context, in case you are wondering.
Smith was able to understand it and translate it into English because God provided him some tools.
These included a pair of glasses that had two clear stones in them and he would look through them to see the true meaning.
He also looked through a seer stone.
Once he got done with the translation work, he gave the plates back to Moroni and that is why he couldn’t show them to anybody.
I mentioned earlier that Moroni was the son of Mormon.
Mormon was allegedly an ancient prophet who compiled the writings and the sayings of a people who lives in the Americas around 600 BC until 422 AD.
Mormon gave his writings to his son Moroni who added some things and then buried the plates until Joseph found them in 1823.
What the plates revealed is an entire alternate continental history for the Americas.
It tells the tale of a group of Israelites that traveled from Jerusalem into the Americas in 600 BC.
Once they were there, they separated into two groups---the Lamanites and the Nephites.
They warred against each other for a long time.
But then Jesus visited them after His resurrection and the fighting stopped for a bit.
But sadly, it was temporary. Finally, the Lamanites committed genocide and wiped the Nephites off the face of the Earth.
Moreover, these Lamanite victors are the ancestors of the Native Americans.
Before we starting diving into major doctrines, it is worth noting that archaeological research has done nothing but undermine the claims of the Book of Mormon with its alternate history.
The Smithsonian has publicly stated that their archaeologists find no direct connection between the Book of Mormon and what has actually been found in the New World.
Here is Walter Martin talking about how the Nephites and Lamanites are not spun as small tribes, but as pervasive, warring mega-cultures in the ancient world.

The Book of Mormon indicates the tremendous spread of the cultures of these races. There are numerous cities catalogued in the Book of Mormon, evidence that these were indeed mighty civilizations, which should, by all the laws of archaeological research into the culture of antiquity, have left vast amounts of “finds” to be evaluated.

But those “finds” simply are not there.
One of the bigger pieces of evidence working against Smith’s testimony is that the facial structure of people who are indigenous to the Americas and the facial structure of those indigenous to ancient Israel are different.
Archaeological evidence of the facial bone structure Native American ancestors simply does not indicate that they came from Israel.
Furthermore, delving into the realm of anthropology and genetics, there is the DNA issue.
Here is Walter Martin again:

If the Lamanites, as the Book of Mormon claims, were the descendants of Nephi, who was a Jew of the Mediterranean Caucasoid type, then their descendants, Native Americans, would by necessity have the same blood factor genotypically, and phenotypic or apparent characteristics would be the same. But this is not at all the case.

Bentley Glass, a legendary geneticist from Johns Hopkins University, said that when it came to the Book of Mormon, its narrative was “out of harmony” with the findings of geneticists and anthropologists.
The book of Mormon should also be questioned because of how much correction it has required.
Since its original publication in 1830, it has received over 4,000 corrections.
It is hard to understand how something that is called the Word of God could need so much fixing from its original state.
Now—with a bit of history laid down and with an understanding in place regarding the importance of the Book of Mormon, let’s evaluate some Mormon doctrine.

WHAT MORMONS BELIEVE

The farther we have pressed into the 21st Century, the more efforts have been made for Mormonism to be viewed as a denomination of Christianity.
For example, millions of dollars were spent to re-brand the official organization as the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints.
But no matter how much money is spent, the differences between Mormonism and biblical, historical, confessional, orthodox Christianity are stark.
They are not hard to find.
I am just going to jump into the Mormon system of belief and I guarantee that it will take only a matter of seconds for you to start recognizing the differences.

MULTIPLE GODS

First of all, Mormonism, at its core, is not a monotheistic religion that believes in one God.
Instead, they are polytheistic. They believe in multiple gods.
In fact, they believe in countless gods.
Mormonism believes there are an untold amount of planets scattered throughout the cosmos and each of these planets has their own god.
And each of these gods were once human like us.
They say that long ago, on one of these planets, a god and his goddess wife conceived a spirit child named Elohim.
He was later born to human parents who gave him a physical body.
Elohim went from being a man to being a god by following Mormon teaching, just like his father before him.
Mormons believe Elohim is the heavenly father of this world and the he lives on a planet near the star called “Kolob.”
On this planet, the god of Mormonism, Elohim, and all his goddess wives, are having endless celestial relations and producing billions of spirit children.

THE COUNCIL OF THE GODS

To decide the destiny of all these spirit children, the head of the Mormon gods called a council meeting.
Elohim’s two oldest sons were there—Lucifer and Jesus.
A plan was presented to create Earth as a place where they could send the spirit children to take on human bodies and learn good from evil.
Lucifer stood up and declared he wanted to be the savior of this new world.
In order to gain glory for himself, he planned to force everyone into becoming gods.
But Jesus stood up and said, “I think that no one should be forced and humans should have free will like humans do on other planets.”
There was a vote in the council and the Mormon Jesus won and was now destined to be the Savior of the earth.
Lucifer was hot about it so he convinced a third of the spirits that were destined to be sent to earth to fight with him in a rebellion.
This is how he became the devil and his followers became demons.
They were sent to the Earth where they would live without bodies of flesh and bone.
Some of the spirit children refused to take a side in the battle between Lucifer and Jesus.
They were cursed with black skin.
It wasn’t until 1978 that black Mormons were allowed to participate in temple ordinances.
Without temple ordinances, you can’t get to the highest level of heaven.
It wasn’t until 2013 that the church wrote a letter disavowing itself from its racist past.
They took beliefs like this, along with doctrines like the one that said righteous black people would be white in the resurrection, and wrote them off as “folk beliefs.”
But these folk beliefs were very much the official teaching of authoritative Mormon leaders for over a century.
The spirits who fought most valiantly against Lucifer in preexistence would be born into Mormon families on earth.
These people are described by the book of Mormon as “white and delightsome.”

ELOHIM AS ADAM AND THE VIRGIN BIRTH

Early Mormon prophets taught that Elohim and one of his goddess wives came to earth as Adam and Eve to start the human race.
Now Mormons deny this doctrine now. They no longer say that God came to earth as Adam.
Now they say that Elohim is simply a resurrected, glorified man.
But the teachings of their earliest and most important prophets—Joseph Smith and his disciple, the 2nd President, Brigham Young—undeniably taught the “Adam-God.”
They taught that Elohim is a man and he came to earth as Adam.
Here is Joseph Smith in his famous “King Follett” funeral sermon:

I want you all to know God, to be familiar with him. . . . What sort of a being was God in the beginning?

First, God himself, who sits enthroned in yonder heavens, is a man like unto one of yourselves . . . if you were to see him today, you would see him in all the person, image and very form as a man. . . .

I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined that God was God from all eternity. These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are the simple and first principles of the gospel, to know for a certainty the character of God, that we may converse with him as one man with another, and that God himself; the Father of us all dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did

Here is Brigham Young:
As man is, God was once was: As God is, man may become.
Brigham Young
And then in their own writings:

When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. . . . He is our FATHER and our GOD, and the only God with whom WE have to do (Journal of Discourses, 1:50–51).

When the time for the birth of Christ came 2000 years ago, Mormons believe that Elohim traveled to earth once more.
This time, he left Kolob in order to impregnate the Virgin Mary so that Jesus could be conceived.
This is both blasphemous and disgusting.
It resemble Greek mythology much more than anything biblical. Here is Walter Martin on this:

We see, then, the Mormon teaching concerning our Lord’s birth is a revolting distortion of the biblical revelation and one that is in keeping with the Mormon dogma of a flesh-and-bone god. In Mormon thinking, as reflected in the authoritative declarations of one of their prophets, our Savior was produced, not by a direct act of the Holy Spirit, but by actual sexual relations between “an immortal or resurrected and glorified Father” and Mary—a blasphemous view, which takes its place beside the infamous mythology of Greece, wherein the gods fathered human sons through physical union with certain chosen women.

THE MORMON JESUS

After Jesus grew into manhood, Mormons teach that he took at least three wives:
Mary
Martha
Mary Magdalene
Through these wives, Jesus fathered a bunch of kids
Then he was crucified and resurrected.
This is when he appeared to the Lamanites and Nephites in the Americas, establishing his church on the Western side of the world just as he has done in the East.

THE RESTORED CHURCH AND THE RESTORED PRIESTHOOD

Now, if you wonder—Where in the world is all of this coming from and how do they really believe this—you have to understand what Mormons believe about how the Gospel is corrupted and there is no authority in a church like ours.
Mormons believe their gospel is a restored gospel.
They say that after the death of the apostles, the church drifted from the truth and in that drifting, lost their authority.
The authority they are talking about is what is called “priesthood authority.”
Priesthood authority enables someone to act as a church leader and perform ordinances.
According to LDS doctrine, the authority of the same priesthood that belonged to Aaron in the Old Testament, was given to Joseph Smith.
Who gave it to him? John the Baptist, himself.
Not long after, the the priesthood authority from the line of Melchizedek was given Smith.
This time is was placed on him by Peter, James and John.
Joseph then handed the priesthood authority down to other LDS males and it continues on today.
Any qualified males that is 12 or older can become a priest in the line of Aaron.
Qualified males 18 years or older can become a priest in the line of Melchizedek.
Smith was also the Prophet-President.
There have been 17 since him.
The Prophet-President can get new revelation from God that is added to their “Doctrine and Covenants” Scriptures
If you are not under the authority of the Prophet-President and if you are not baptized by someone with priesthood authority, there is no way to be a part of God’s restored Church of the Latter Day Saints.
There is no way to enter into the highest heaven.
Therefore, all of this doctrine that sounds so crazy—this new gospel that they have come up with—it is accepted because those in the church are deceived into believing that this is the one true church on earth.
They are deceived into believing there is no divine authority outside of the Mormon church.
There is no endowed authority outside of the Mormon leaders.

PLAN OF SALVATION

So what have those with this so-called authority taught them about the plan of salvation?
This is what a Mormon really wants to talk to you about when they come to your door.
It isn’t Kolob and spirit children being cursed with black skin.
It is the Mormon plan of salvation.
The plan of salvation gives an overview of God’s plan to save humanity from sin and to provide them with the highest level of eternal bliss.

PRE-MORTAL EXISTENCE AND MORTAL BODIES

The plan of salvation begins with pre-mortal existence.
We were all Heavenly Father’s spirit children before we were born to human parents here on the earth.
But we don’t remember this because of what is called the “veil of forgetfulness.”
We all had to pass through this veil, causing us to forget the preexistent state.
Now we have been given mortal bodies and hopefully, we will one day return to Heavenly Father and even become like him.
While we are in our mortal state, we have agency. We have free will.
This was Jesus’ idea at the council of gods.

AFTER DEATH

When you die , our bodies go into the ground and our spirits go off to the spirit world.
In the spirit world, there are two sections—Spirit Paradise and Spirit Prison.
If you die as a faithful Mormon, you go to Paradise.
If you die as a non-Mormon, you go to Prison.
However, these are not the final destinations of the souls of men and women.
If you are a non-Mormon, you will be visited by spirit Mormon missionaries who will offer you a second chance to believe the Mormon gospel and be obedient to its laws and ordinances.
If you accept those teachings, you can be released into Mormon Paradise, but you have to be baptized first.
This is hard to do when you don’t have a mortal body.
But don’t worry. At a Mormon temple, they will baptize stand-in’s for the dead.
If you repent in Spirit Prison and someone is baptized for you, you get to go to Paradise.

RESURRECTION UNTO THREE WORLDS

If you’d like to avoid all of that, then you should just be a good Mormon.
If you are, you will be in Spirit Paradise until the resurrection.
At the Resurrection, all souls will be judged and in some ways, all souls will be saved.
You either spend your eternal existence in the Telestial Kingdom, Terrestial Kingdom or Celestial Kingdom.
Telestial Kingdom: This is the lowest eternal destination.
It is a glorious place that surpasses all understanding and it is where the souls of most people will end up.
Heavenly Father and Jesus will never visit there.
The people there will pay off a debt from their sin, but once they do, they are allowed to live in wonderful freedom forever.
This is for everyone from Hitler to the nicest Hindu you ever met.
Terrestrial Kingdom: This is for Christians and lukewarm Mormons.
Jesus will visit occasionally, but Heavenly Father will never come.
It will apparently have the glory of the moon.
Celestial Kingdom: This is where Heavenly Father and Jesus will abide. This is only for those who have accepted Mormon doctrine and been obedient to the laws and ordinances.
Families will be reunited there.
Marriages will exist for eternity
In fact, the most exalted Mormons can even become gods themselves and be given their own celestial planets to rule over and send spirit children to.
There is also a place called Outer Darkness for Satan and his minions.

LAWS AND ORDINANCES

So how does someone get to the Celestial Kingdom? What does a good Mormon do?
They will say that salvation is by grace alone. However, it doesn’t take much digging to see that this is classic cultic language confusion and this is not what they believe at all.
Instead, they believe in salvation by grace PLUS the work of keeping the laws and ordinances.
In Acts 16, as well as many other places, the Bible makes it clear on how one is saved:
Acts 16:31 ESV
And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”
But that is not what we see taught by Mormons.
2 Nephi 10:24 says, “For we know it is by grace that we are saved after all we can do.”
Mormons believe that Jesus suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane and then died on the Cross and rose again as a sacrifice for sin.
He died for the sins of all mankind so that he could help us with our affliction.
But simply receiving the Mormon Jesus into your heart is not going to get you to celestial glory.
This is where things go beyond grace to the keeping of laws and ordinances.
A believer, who converted out of Mormonism—Micah Wilder—describes what he was told by his Sunday School teacher growing up regarding salvation.
Here is how eternal life is found:
Be baptized and confirmed as a member of the Church; remain active in my Church duties and meetings; solidify my testimony; tithe; obey the Prophet; receive the priesthood; perform temple ordinances; follow the Word of Wisdom; live the law of chastity; go on a mission; get married in the temple; and endure to the end by staying faithful to the laws and ordinances and commandments of the Church for the rest of my life.
Micah Wilder
It may not be Jesus + circumcision, but you can see how this is truly another gospel which is no gospel at all.
You can see how this is grace + works, not grace alone.
There are a couple of terms there we haven’t touched on yet, so let me clarify so we can have an even greater understanding of exactly what is required for salvation.
Right in the middle of his list he mentions:
The Word of Wisdom
The Law of Chastity
Going on a Mission

THE WORD OF WISDOM

The Word of Wisdom is like God’s health code for LDS members and it is to be followed strictly.
In the Word of Wisdom, God told Joseph that the following things are good:
Fruit and wholesome herbs, including vegetables
The flesh of beasts and fowls, which should be used more sparingly
Grains such as wheat and rice and oats, which are the staff of life
But Gold told Joseph that the following things were bad:
Alcoholic beverages
Tobacco
Tea and Coffee
Hot drinks in general
Although most drink hot chocolate for some reason
But says one, “If I am offered a cup of tea or a cup of coffee I cannot refuse it.” Then, according to the word of the Lord, you are too weak to be a Latter-Day saint.
Joseph Smith

THE LAW OF CHASTITY AND POLYGAMY

Next we have the Law of Chastity.
This is where the marriage bed is to be honored and all sexual relations are confined to a marital relationship between a man and a woman.

THE MORMON MISSION

And then finally we have the Mormon mission.
This is when young Mormon men and women go out and serve on the mission field and leave behind all other personal affairs.
Here is Micah Wilder again, describing the mission:
Leaving behind all other personal affairs meant forsaking my family, friends, girlfriend, school, work and home for 24 months. In addition, I would be required to sever all regular contact with the outside world and live a disciplined lifestyle dedicated to my missionary duties. Communication with my immediate family would be limited to weekly emails (through the Church’s e-mail system) with the luxury of only two phone calls per year—Mother’s Day and Christmas. Our commitment would incorporate a complete severance from worldly entertainment: no TV, computers, magazines, newspapers, movies or dating. I would be required to retire to bed at 10:30pm and wake up at 6:30am each day for 730 consecutive days. I would labor intensely for 12 hours each day, earnestly seeking potential converts...
Micah Wilder

BAD DOCTRINAL MARRIAGE

So do you want to be in the Celestial Kingdom?
Do you want you and your wife to have the ability to have eternal celestial relations and send spirit children of your own to a planet of your own one day?
Then none of this can be forsaken or taken lightly.
From the membership to the baptism to the hot drinks to the mission—it has to happen.
It is God’s grace PLUS your work that will earn you such celestial glory.
This shows just how Mormonism is really a horrible marriage of bad doctrine about God and bad doctrine about man.
In terms of God, you must believe that there are many gods. That there have been potentially millions of God before Elohim ruling millions of planets.
And you must believe there could be potentially millions after Elohim, ruling other planets.
You must believe that God the Father was and is a glorified man who had sexual relations with Mary to give Jesus a mortal body.
You must believe Jesus is not God, but a the twice-sired spirit child of Elohim and the brother of Satan.
In terms of man, you must believe he can become god. And you must believe that God’s grace will only get you so far.
You must work for your salvation.
In the end, it is poisonous teaching.
And it worthy of damnation. It is fit to be accursed as Paul said.
Mormons say that when they consider Joseph’s testimony it causes their hearts to burn.
In fact, this is one of the major reasons they say that his testimony is true—because of their subjective feelings.
But in truth, when it comes to burning, that which Joseph taught is from Hell and destined to return there.
It is another Gospel.
We will pick it up here next week with a message called Joseph Smith: The Treasure-Seeking, Heresy-Preaching, Militia-Man.
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