Background:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or the Mormons, was one of a number of religious groups which grew up in the United States in the last century, the best-known being the Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, and the Mormons. Each one of these new groups put forward the claim of being the only true expression of Christianity. Each one claimed that the Christian Church had fallen into error very early in its history, and that the new group was the only true restoration of God's truth to the world. Now, obviously, all three of these groups could not be true, since each claimed to be the only true church, and its founder to be the only true Prophet in their day.

The founder of the Mormons was Joseph Smith, a young man with a rather dubious past. He had a reputation as a con-man, and had been brought before a judge at least once in his young life for fraud. He had claimed to have a magic stone; and when he put the stone in a hat and looked through it, he could tell where buried treasure was hidden. In his account of how he became the prophet of a new revelation, Smith told how he had been approached by an angel named Moroni, who had revealed to him the existence of plates of gold on which were written the history of a people who had lived in the United States centuries earlier. He was given a stone. When he put the stone in a hat and looked through it at the golden plates, he could translate the strange language he found there. By this means he translated the Book of Mormon, the main source of authoritative teaching in the Mormon Church. Once the translation was completed, the angel Moroni came and took the golden plates away again.

The Book of Mormon claimed to be the story of a group of Israelites who had left the Middle East and traveled to North America centuries before Christ. There, they had settled and grew in numbers, filling the land with cities and settlements. A portion of the people grew evil and turned against God, who, in punishment, gave them dark skins. This is how the Mormons believe the American Indians came to be, evil apostates from God. For decades, as a result of this belief, the Mormon Church refused to accept as full members anyone whose skin was not white. Between the death and Resurrection of Jesus, Mormons believe that he visited the people of North America, preaching the Gospel to them also. Afterwards, the "good" people were finally annihilated by the Indians, the last of them, Mormon, completing the record and hiding the golden plates, and all memory of these Israelites was lost until Joseph Smith found the plates.

There is very little in the Book of Mormon that was not found in a number of novels at the time Smith was "translating". The idea that Israelites had traveled to the New World, even the idea that the Indians were their descendants, was a common one in popular literature of the time. Smith included quite a number of anachronisms in his work, as one might expect from an intelligent, but uneducated young man. For example, he refers to elephants, horses and bronze weapons in North America in the centuries before Christ. In fact, no remains of elephants, nor of bronze weapons, nor of the thousands of cities which "filled the land" have been found; and horses were introduced to North America by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. Another familiar aspect of the Book of Mormon is the 27,000 words taken directly from the King James Version of the Bible. Considering that Mormon was writing long before 1600, in a different language and culture, it is amazing to find that so much of what he wrote is identical to much of the New Testament found in the KJV.

Joseph Smith claimed that, because of the divine inspiration of his translation, the Book of Mormon was "the most correct book" in the world. In spite of this, many thousand changes had to be made to subsequent edition of this Most correct book to eliminate grammatical and spelling mistakes, anachronisms, factual errors, etc. In fact, as the Mormon Church grew and expanded over the following years, Smith added three other books to the canon of the Church: Doctrines and Covenants, The Pearl of Great Price, and The Book of Abraham. These form the main source of authority in the Mormon Church, coming ahead of the Bible, which they claim to honour, but which they also claim has been hopelessly adulterated by the Catholic Church over the years.

Teachings:

Mormon missionaries work very hard at convincing prospective converts that they are an orthodox, Christian church believing much of the traditional beliefs of Christians. If they are asked if they believe in the main doctrines of biblical Christianity, they will immediately state that they believe in the Deity of Jesus, the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, etc. However, the Mormon Church believe in none of these teachings. They completely redefine the meaning of these terms so as to alter them out of all recognition.

The main planks of Mormon teaching may be summarised as follows:

Although they believe Jesus is God, they do not believe he is the only one. They teach that every planet in the universe has its own God, and Jesus is simply one of an infinite number of such Gods. Mormonism is based on a spiritual theory of evolution. Every Mormon male can become a God by following the rituals and rules of the Church (including spending time as a missionary, going through rituals at the Temple in Salt Lake City, tithing, etc.]. As a God, he will then have as many "spiritual wives" as he pleases by whom he will have "spirit children". These "spirit children" will then be born into babies on Earth, or whatever planet it may be. These children will then have the opportunity of growing up and, if male, becoming Gods of their own world in due course. Along the way, they go through a stage of being an angel. Thus, Moroni, the angel who showed Smith the golden plates, was once a man himself, one of the Israelites who lived in North America.

This procreation of "spirit children" is possible because, according to Mormon teaching, all Gods have flesh and bone bodies, just like us. When, therefore, they speak of Jesus' "virgin birth", they mean something quite different from the Bible account. They mean that the Father [the "God of this world"], having a body like ours', had sex with Mary and so she conceived a son, who can therefore be called "the Son of God". How this can be reconciled with Christian belief regarding a virgin birth is hard to see.

This teaching of an infinite number of Gods needs to be kept in mind when examining Mormon claims to accept the Trinity. Christians mean by this term that there are three separate Persons in one substance of the Godhead. Mormons believe that Father, Son and Spirit are three separate Gods. Even then, they are not the only ones, but simply the ones of interest to people on Earth. There are many other doctrines held by the Mormon Church which are completely at variance with Christian teachings, but those dealing with the nature of God and man are clearly central to any decision regarding the truthfulness of Mormonism.

Mormonism and the Bible:

What has the Bible to say concerning the idea that all Mormon priests can become God of their own planet? Does the Bible give any support to the idea that the Father is a flesh and bone man like us, or that he had sexual relations with Mary in order to conceive Jesus? How many Gods does the Bible say exist in all of creation, and are angels simply men on their way to godhood?

First of all, let us look at some of the things God says about himself.

"This is what the Lord says -Israel's King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God." [Isaiah 44.6]

"Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one." [Isaiah 44.8]

"I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God." [Isaiah 45.5]

How do the Mormons respond to this? There are two replies: 1. The Bible does not mean what it says, and 2. The Bible has been changed to say this by the Catholic Church.

The first response to unconvincing, claiming that these verses simply mean that there is no other God "with whom we have to do". In other words, God is simply saying that he is the only God for this planet. Of course, this is adding to the text in order to make it say what you want. That is unacceptable and cheating. The God of the Bible clearly says that he is the only God, "there is no other".

The second response - that these verses were added or changed by Christians to suit themselves - can be disproved easily. The verses quoted above come from Isaiah. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1948, a complete copy of Isaiah was found which had been written about 100 B.C. It had never been seen by any Christian, much less altered by anyone, yet it was identical in content to the Isaiah of our Bibles. Nothing has been changed, and the Mormons are left with a major contradiction between their central doctrines and the clear teaching of the Bible.

Furthermore, the Lord declares openly that, as the only God, as the First and the Last, he will not share his glory with another [Isaiah 42.8]. He is the only Creator, the one who laid out the heavens and the earth by himself:

"I am the Lord , who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself." [Isaiah 44.24]

Almighty God, who alone made the heavens and the earth, who is the First and the Last, is also the only Saviour:

"I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no saviour." [Isaiah 43.11]

Now, if, as the Mormons believe, the Father and Jesus are two separate Gods, then they have to explain how the Father can be the only Saviour, when Jesus is also called by that title. The only way to understand these verses is by accepting traditional Christian doctrine regarding the Trinity: there is one God. Jesus is that God made flesh. He is the Saviour and Lord. The Father is the Saviour and Lord. Therefore, as Jesus himself said: "The Father and I are one". This oneness cannot simply mean "one in purpose", which is how the Mormons explain this verse: it means something far deeper than that. There is only one Lord, only on Saviour. Therefore Jesus and the Father share a unity that is fundamental. As John expresses it so wonderfully in his Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...The Word became flesh and lived for a time among us, full of grace and truth.

Part of the difficulty Mormons have with the Trinity stems from their false concept of the Father. As we have seen, they believe that God has a flesh and bones body like ours'. But Jesus specifically says about the Father: "God is spirit". The verses from John just quoted clearly say that God became flesh, meaning that he was not made of flesh before Jesus.

There are many other doctrines of the Mormon Church which are contradicted by Scripture. But it is enough, I think, to show that their beliefs about God are not in keeping with the revelation given by Jesus. If you're wrong about God, then nothing else you have to say is worth hearing. Certainly, it is clear that Mormons are quite incorrect to call themselves Christians in any meaningful way.

Mormon confusion:

It is very interesting to note that Mormon teaching does not only contradict the Bible, but very often it contradicts itself too. The Book of Mormon was produced at the very start of Joseph Smith's career, and is, to a large extent, quite orthodox in its doctrine. It was only as he was forced to add other "scriptures" to deal with a growing organization and to excuse increasingly erratic behaviour that his teaching began to deviate from traditional Christianity. The second book in the Mormon scriptures, Doctrines and Covenants, contains many of the false teachings upon which Mormonism is based. Very often, these doctrines are contradicted by passages in the Book of Mormon itself. For example, the Trinitarian view of God is taught in the following passages of the Book of Mormon: Mosiah 15.4; Alma 11.28-29; and 2 Nephi 31.21. The plurality of Gods, the official Mormon teaching, contradicts these passages and may be found in Doctrines and Covenants 121.32.

Doctrine and Covenants 130.22 says that "The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's". Yet the Book of Mormon refers to him often as "the Great Spirit", eg., Alma 18.26-28, Alma 22.9-10.

Unlike God, Mormon doctrine about the nature of God changed over the years. In the early period, the Book of Mormon was quite orthodox in stating that God was unchanging, everlasting, eternal. For example, in Moroni 8.18 it says: "For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity". By the year of his death, however, Joseph Smith had developed his doctrine of an evolved God. In a famous speech given at a funeral service, he said:

God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man...We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea...he was once a man like us...and you have got to be gods yourselves...the same as all Gods have done before you, namely by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one. [King Follett Discourse, pp. 8- 21]

These contradictions may be dismissed by Mormons, or may be explained away as natural developments in the revelation received by Joseph Smith. However, this cannot be supported. If the Book of Mormon is "the most correct book", and was given and translated by divine guidance, then why are so many of its teachings contradicted by current Mormon doctrine? If the Book of Mormon is God's revealed scriptures, why does it contradict the Bible and later Mormon teachings.

One last point should be made regarding Mormon confusion. When it becomes clear that Mormon beliefs regarding the Trinity, the Deity of Jesus and the Virgin Birth are so much at variance with Christianity, why do their missionaries hide the fact? Why do they insist that they accept these doctrines, when they know that their interpretation of these terms is so different from those of Christians? Mormon missionaries are instructed not to reveal their true teachings on these subjects unless asked about them. They are instructed not to return to the home of anyone who questions them on these contradictions within Mormon scriptures. They believe that their destiny as "gods" depends on doing what they are told while living as missionaries, and apparently that includes lying by omission. They will allow you to believe that they agree with you, even though they know that they mean something quite different when they use terms like "Trinity" and "virgin birth", etc.

It is important for Christians to bring these things into the open when dealing with Mormons, and to make sure the ground-rules are clear before entering into serious discussion on doctrines. Missionaries are usually very nice and very sincere people, who will impress you with their testimony that "they have prayed and have received assurance from God that Joseph Smith is a prophet". The fact remains, God does not contradict himself. Mormonism contradicts the Bible (and itself), and therefore cannot be from God. Feelings are not enough to ensure truth. As the great apostle Paul says, and we should keep Joseph Smith and Moroni in mind here:

But even if we [apostles], or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, he is to be accursed. [Galatians 1.8]

Contents

David Shanahan.

E-mail: dshanaha@magma.ca