/jesusislord/ - A Christian Discussion Board

A Different Gospel? A Different God?

Wholesome and hardworking, serious and sacrificial . . . the image of the people called Mormons is exemplary. Their personal discipline is praiseworthy. Their advertising is first class. Their business presence is booming. Their humanitarian projects get headlines. Their tithing commitment is commendable. Their young missionaries are meritorious. Men and women between ages 19 and 25 sacrifice two years of their lives as missionary volunteers. Who are these "good and upstanding people," and what do they believe?

Questions to Ask and Answer

“Why are people, even Christians, attracted to the Mormon Religion?”

People are attracted to Mormonism for the very reasons that people are attracted to any religion: they appeal to our three God-given inner needs for love, for significance and for security.

•- Mormons appeal to our God-given need for security, our need to belong and to feel accepted. The door-to-door evangelism done by wholesome looking young missionaries and the persistent follow-up by members of a local church can give a lonely person a sense of being noticed, cared for, and a feeling of being wanted.

•- Mormons appeal to our God-given need for significance as they present their version of meaning and purpose in life. Their plan of salvation teaches that “You can be a god” if you learn to obey the requirements of Mormonism.

"Do Mormons Believe in the Bible?"

Yes, but conditionally. Their Eighth Article of Faith says, “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.”

What God Says

"Before Me no god was formed, nor will there be one after Me. I, even I, am the LORD, and apart from Me there is no savior." Isaiah 43:10-11

Regards, Admin

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>>17

Ok. Thank you.

To put aside all the false things circulating about Mormonism..

The reason I reject the modern North American latter day saints movement happens to do with the fact that there is no support for the supposed tribe of Israel that came to North America, and no support for the tablets in which the extension of priesthood was formed.

The worst thing I've heard from Mormons that actually alarms me is that they believe that God creating matter itself is contradictory to God, so therefore matter always existed with God. Absolutely contradictory to scripture. God was in the beginning with the Word (Jesus Christ) and the word was with God, and the Word was God.

And the fact that there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one.

Mormons deny that and a lot of other things, so I could not bid them God speed.

TLDR: Neigh

Lol, a mormon here.

I appreciate the things that were said. I think it takes a well developed person to notice so much good in anyone. Very often we just pass by each other without even paying attention so, wow, Admin is an incredible person.

So of course I'm going to try to increase understanding of my religion.

>So why are people, even Christians, attracted to the Mormon Religion?

Well, we are Christians. Christ is the center of our religion. He is the center of our sacrament and the center of our meetings when we are running them right. He is also the center of our studies.

>Their plan of salvation teaches that “You can be a god” if you learn to obey the requirements of Mormonism.

Yes and no. I think Paul in Galatians makes it much more clear that it is not the Law but faith that makes us whole and allows us to progress. Paul also says:

>But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid.

I'm a big fan of context and was never one for posting a single verse of scripture to make a point and I think really the surrounding doctrine in that book is needed to fully understand what he is saying.

He is saying that by faith we are made whole and walk not as ourselves but as Christ because we are made alive in Christ. This is what he means when he says if we sin is Christ made a minister of sin.

Faith saves and we enter in a covenant with Christ now representing him. Because of this covenant the law is reintroduced as a part of that covenant. We can not pretend to have faith while disobeying the covenant that is a product of that faith and a requirement of it.

Paul later says: Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us

We don't often talk about Christ being a curse, but well, he sort of is. Paul seems to think so. The law was a curse that would separate the righteous from the unrighteous by its dictum. It just so happens that its judgment would have left everyone on one side only. Christ is a curse (sort of), that would separate the righteous from the unrighteous by his dictum. This makes it possible to be saved as opposed to the law. It still means we can fail but if we fail we fail in the judgment of Christ and not the judgment of the law. What are the requirements of Christ. Faith is primary but as paul noted, not sinning is one of the requirements. It is not the law that saves but the law is a condition of the arrangement that is saving.

So when it is said as you said earlier that "You can be a god if you learn to obey the requirements of Mormonism."

The belief is that you can inherit all that the father hath, or that which could be deservable by Christ, via faith and that the requirements of faith, or covenants, are requirements. For us "requirements of Mormonism" and requirements of faith or repentance are the same thing. Paul himself taught that faith and repentance are not no strings attached solutions. He merely was teaching that obeying the law without faith is pointless because by the law alone we will not make it and when we obey the law after we begin faith it is not to obey the law but to follow Christ. Following Christ is a requirement and not an optional good deed that we do repentance when and if we feel like it and requires actual action just like his life required action.

>Mormons believe in the bible selectively.

We are supposed to but really we pretty much don't keep good track of what was translated well and what wasn't so we pretty much just take it at face value. Isaac Newton was one of the first people to find flaws in the bible. It has been messed with for sure. That may have been a controvercial statement in Joseph Smith's time but in this day and age that is just fact. But even then we really do in practice read the bible at face value even if really we aren't supposed to.

>Before Me no god was formed, nor will there be one after Me. I, even I, am the LORD, and apart from Me there is no savior.

We of course believe that we believe in the same God as everyone else. It only seems to be others saying that we don't so we fully agree with that scripture.

So that was Isaiah. You do realize that the jump from a Judaic God to Christ is a bigger leap then between reformationists and people who claim to worship the same God as the primitive Christian church. Yet it was correct to ask the Jews to make that leap, while we are not asking anybody to worship a different God at all.

>No support for tribe of Israel in North America.

So one there is support. I will get to that. Two North America is BIG. Let's take a look at the western middle east (Isreal, Lebanon, Syria). How many peoples have been in that tiny area over that last millennia. I think even mormons sometimes get the false conception that the Nephites were the primary populates of North America. Even the book of mormon disagrees with that concept. The Mulikites made the Nephites look tiny. We are talking about one small culture that had maybe 20 cities in its highest point. Compare that to Isreal that was much larger and existed over a timespan several times larger. Yet Isreal as a civilization was not the main cultural driver in its day and would have nearly no footprint there today if it wern't for what happened in Europe more recently and the Persians allowing them to go back earlier. Isreal has nearly no cultural influence despite impressive luck to remain in the region. Compare that to what happened to the Nephites. There culture was removed from off of the face of the Earth by genocide.

But surprise, not everyone in the Americas came from the land bridge. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131120-science-native-american-people-migration-siberia-genetics/

I'm not saying those guys are Nephites. I'm just saying DNA in the Americas comes from all over, proven, and it's taken us this long to track down a one third constituency. That's a pretty big deal that we suck at this problem that bad.

But also here is Mississippian Culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_culture

A culture that builds its houses and cities on mounds which increases the cost of establishing a household by many fold and doesn't make any sense except as a traditional response to war, started by the first General Moroni (Not to beconfused with the Moroni who gave Joseph Smith the plates. He was named after the general). This culture started about 500 years after a diaspora and dis-settlement that happened in line with the end of the Book of Mormon. These people built on mounds because they learned from past military tradition and 500 years of dark ages that you build on a hill or you are wiped off the planet.

Do you know how much work it takes for a human to move dirt to make a 12' high mound with the footprint of a household with no mechanical equipment. People didn't just do this because it was there culture. They learned from their past.

>Tablets in which the priesthood was formed.

Priesthood didn't get passed through the tablets. It goes from person to person. Aaronic priesthood came from John the Baptist and the Melkezidik or higher priesthood came from Peter, James, and John. Tablets, or just writings, have nothing to do with priesthood.

>God didn't create matter.

You've got us there on what our beliefs are. I just don't think it is contradictory to scripture. "God was in the beginning with the Word (Jesus Christ) and the word was with God, and the Word was God."

It doesn't say matter didn't exist as well. We can't draw that conclusion honestly from that scripture. We actually believe that everything is matter, God is matter and so is Spirit. So is light. Turns out we've been right on a few of those things. I have some physics backgrounds so I may just have a expanded conseptualization of what can be clasified as matter. Of course Mormons were taught to have that expanded conseptualization before it was cool. Like pre-quantum and way pre standard model.

God was in the beginning but science has shown us that matter was at the beginning as well. Believe it or not the theory of the big bang was started by a Catholic priest. Science being in disagreement with religion is just stupidity. The big bang happened and matter was there in the beginning. God was there in the beginning as well.

Let's take a look at what kind of arguments Christians had to deal with before science advanced. An argument that might be made is: "Christians say that there was a beginning and also that the heavens and earth will pass away and grow old and that there was a creation. From science we know this to be wrong and everything always was." A former athiest viewpoint. Now that we have a big bang theory and we can see the accelerating expansion of the universe and can already observe its darkening we know every claim that formerly was made against Christian beliefs is taken care of. There was a beginning. The the heavens will wax old. There was a creation process between the beginning and now. They've had to adjust their attacks and have somehow claimed that the big bang displaces God instead of it being in agreement with when before the lack of a big bang was taken as disproof of God. We can't change reality and matter has been hear from the beginning. We need to ask if the scriptures really disagree with that or just our conceptualizations of the scriptures. The Jew's scriptures did not disagree with the Savior being a spiritual savior but there conception did. Matter from the beginning wasn't even subatomic there are many layers of creation needed between then and the formation of a planet that can support life (the primary focus of creation talked about in Genesis). There was plenty of creation to call God a creator. Even the laws of physics depend on context. The everyday physics and chemistry we deal with depend on there being strongly interacting fermions at low energy levels taking up separate localities influenced by electro-magnetic fields. Every element of that is a post big bang creation.

>And the fact that there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. Mormons deny that.

Uh, no we don't. We very much testify of that.

Anyways it's all been good. I appreciate a lot of what was said. I thought I would just clarify what our beliefs actually are. Hopefully it didn't come off too defensive. I feel like most of what was said by you guys was positive and it was truly a minority of what was said that I needed to address and that only because of misunderstandings which are of course going to exist. I am open to criticism. My role though is to address criticism and hopefully desipte the limitation of the internet do it in a way that doesn't come off brash. Feel free to address other concerns or ask for clarifications.