Friday, April 3, 2015

The Deceptions of Mormonism

One of the issues that divides Mormonism from Christianity is over the question of the Trinity. Christians hold that there is, and has always been, one God, who exists eternally in three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. In contrast, Mormonism teaches tritheism, i. e., that the Persons are distinct gods. Not only that, but Mormonism holds that these three are gods only on earth; there are an unknowable number of gods on other worlds, and good Mormons will become gods themselves, with their own planets. The god of this world was once a man on another planet.

The problem is that  Mormon missionaries, those clean-cut young men in ties riding their bicycles, don't tell people that information. They tell people to read the Book of Mormon, and then pray about whether or not it is the word of god (lower-case intentional). But what does the Book of Mormon say?

Mosiah 7:27: "He [the prophet] said unto them that Christ was the God, the Father of all things, and said that he should take upon him the image of man...; and that God should come down among the children of men, and take upon him flesh and blood, and go forth upon the face of the earth."

Mosiah 16:15: "Teach them that redemption cometh through Christ the Lord, who is the very Eternal Father."

Alma 11:38-39: "Is the Son of God the very Eternal Father?... Yea, he is the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth..."

III Nephi 11:36: "Thus will the Father bear record of me [i. e., Christ], and the Holy Ghost will bear record... of the Father and me; for the Father, and I, and the Holy Ghost are one."

And of their doctrine that God was once a man on another planet, serving another god, one can read in Mormon 9:9-10: "Do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in him there is no variableness, neither shadow of changing? But behold, I will show unto you a God of miracles, even the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and it is that same God who created the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are."

Now, to be upfront, I will unequivocally confess that I consider the Book of Mormon to be a load of nonsense. It is no more the word of god, any god, than is any other work of fiction, such as those created for the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. Rather, my point in posting these quotations is to demonstrate why I consider the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, i. e., the Mormons, to be, not a Christian church, but to be a soul-destroying, anti-Christian, pagan cult. Their missionaries distribute literature that would give the mistaken impression that they hold the doctrines of historic Christianity. It is only as a convert gets drawn in ever more deeply that he is exposed to their more-bizarre teachings. You can see a description this from an ex-insider in Beyond Mormonism: An Elder's Story, by James Spencer, a former stake missionary, who was later converted to Christianity.

I anticipate getting comments to the effect of, "It is unfair to criticize your Christian brothers this way." I see this in the reviews of every anti-Mormon book on Amazon. I will not post such comments. Mormons are not my Christian brothers. In addition, such complaints drip with hypocrisy. Mormon missionaries tell their prospects, "We call it the Apostasy. The true church did fall away and mankind plunged into the Dark Ages. It wasn't until 1820 that God found someone worthy enough to restore the Church through - the Prophet Joseph Smith." That supposed prophet said of other churches: "I must join none of them, for they were all wrong, and the personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in His sight: that those professors were all corrupt." And Brigham Young agreed: "He did send His angel to this same obscure person, Joseph Smith jun., who afterwards became a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, and informed him that he should not join any of the religious sects of the day, for they were all wrong." Thus, while weeping crocodile tears over their own martyrdom, Mormons are, at the same time, describing all other professing Christians as apostate, an abomination, and corrupt.