The Immutability of God and The Cycle of Gods in Mormonism

One of the things that distinguishes Mormonism and Christianity as fundamentally-different religions is their respective views of God. In Mormonism, God the Father, whom they call Elohim, was a man like us on another planet. There he fulfilled the plan of salvation of the god of that planet, and was rewarded with exaltation to deity and a planet of us his own. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, said, "God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man... I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea... He was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth" (Ensign, April 1971, p.13-14).

In fact, Mormonism teaches an infinite recursion of such exalted gods, each having been a man on the prior god's world: "But if God the Father was not always God, but came to his present exalted position by degrees of progress as indicated in the teachings of the prophet, how has there been a God from all eternity? The answer is that there has been and there now exists an endless line of Gods, stretching back into the eternities" (B. H. Roberts - Mormon Seventy and LDS church historian, New Witness for God 1:476).

In contrast, biblical Christians point to the Bible's teaching that there is and has ever been only one God, who has ever been and ever shall be as He is now. The fundamental text regarding this is Isaiah 43:10: "'You are My witnesses,' declares the LORD, 'and My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am He. Before Me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after Me.'" He denies that there were any gods before Him, or that there will be any after Him, just as there are none besides Him. Compare that to the recursion of gods mentioned above.

Why is that significant? Well, Mormons admit that there have been revelations to their "prophets" which were abrogated by subsequent "prophets." The best-known such prophecy is that regarding blacks in the priesthood. One revelation forbade it and a later one allowed it. How can anyone depend on a deity who says one thing at one time and another, possibly even an opposite, at a later time? His promises can be given and then revoked. The way of salvation can be one thing at one point and a different thing later. Mormons admit this possibility, but are unbothered by it. They have told me that to expect consistency from their god is to put him in a box.

In stark contrast, the biblical God binds Himself to the very consistency which the Mormon poo-poos. "God is not man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind. Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not fulfill it?" (Numbers 23:19, see also I Samuel 15:29). The God of the Bible dismisses the Mormon view of deity as depriving Him of His deity, not as a limitation. He refuses it, promising instead that we can depend on His promises exactly because He is not a changeable man. 

One thing that should be clear here is that the Christian and the Mormon are not brothers, and that the Mormon claim to being Christian is false. Not only are Christianity and Mormonism distinct religions, they are different kinds of religions. Another is that Christian should pray for the biblical God to open the eyes of Mormons to their deception. As long as they are bound in their cloud of lies, then they deny to themselves the felicity that comes only from knowing the biblical God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.