3. Major teachings of Mormonism

[Music] somebody asked me before uh the service uh the first service if i had put together any kind of say outline or something that shows a point counterpoint kind of discussion of mormonism versus say presbyterian beliefs and so on i have not done that however the books that i recommended last week which were available from the presbyterian church actually as i understand it from julie griffin there is that kind of outline in those books and so if you wanted a resource that would be something of a comparative analysis the mormons believe this uh presbyterians believe that you know kind of thing in a summary sort of way then uh that would be the place to go just go to the prostrating church website which is pcusa.org and then just start poking around and you know if you are accustomed to playing around with the internet you'll find it eventually and they're not expensive and you might order a several thousand of them and pass them out to your friends that sort of thing so uh that's uh that's my suggestion there you know there's a there's a bunch aren't there a bunch back here uh i just had a fistful that i there should be quite a few um so before we uh cut down any more pine trees i think i made thank you don uh this morning as you know we're coming to the last of our series a short series on understanding mormonism uh this is by no means an exhaustive or uh adequate treatment but the three weeks that we've devoted to it is as much as we thought was appropriate for a course such as this so uh this is going to do it uh if uh you were you're aware that next week this class will not meet at all the congregational meeting takes place in the hour that would ordinarily be adult education the week after that we'll be starting a new series in here if you're interested it'll be a short quick running survey of paul's letters the letters of paul in the new testament taking them in chronological order so we're going to be constructing a brief analysis of paul's major writings in the new testament especially focusing on the place he was uh the people to whom he was writing the historical background it won't be so much an exegetical kind of approach or a verse by verse sort of thing we'll probably spend one or two weeks on each letter so it'll go pretty fast just a fly low kind of quick survey trying to put these letters into their historical setting and see what the issues were and why paul addressed the issues quite the way he did in those documents so that's going to be our uh project for the spring the first sunday of february we'll start that and that'll carry through them through the rest of the church school year next fall i'm not quite sure what we'll be doing but i have had some rumblings about doing some other presentations on alternative religions and so it would be not necessarily mormonism but maybe jehovah's witnesses or something on that order i'm not sure that's what we'll do uh and so i'm just indicating to you that uh that's been suggested and um uh that thought is out there but in any event this morning uh we want to come back then to the question of uh mormonism and really this morning take up what is in my estimation by far the most difficult of all of these subjects that we're going to be treating which is mormon theology as such uh and trying to do something of a casual comparison of what has been mormon belief and what it is today and possibly even projecting a little bit of where it's going uh with respect to the benchmark we're using at least of what we would consider to be classical orthodox christianity and particularly as we find it uh in the presbyterian flavor of uh traditional christianity uh so that's a little more challenging than just doing the historical survey that we've done in past weeks but obviously a series like this would hardly be complete if we didn't undertake uh that kind of discussion so that's what's before us this morning let's uh let's have a word of prayer and we will get underway father we are grateful that you give us this privilege of gathering together here and continuing our conversation about these matters that have to do with friends of ours often family members people who are committed deeply and sincerely to a religious system uh which at the same time we have found to be different from and uh in fact fall short of what we believe to be the standards of biblical truth we pray however that our conversation would be seasoned with the deepest sense of your grace and mercy and that we would not in any sense be driven by uh motives that would be uh to condemn or to uh bash or to be destructive but rather that all of this would be assaulted with your grace and driven by the goodness that is in christ we give you thanks for it in jesus name amen i appreciate it very much uh janine's sermon this morning i thought it was very timely because obviously anytime uh we start taking up subjects such as this where we are actually engaged in something of a critique of other people you know uh it's easy for that to drift into something somewhat more malicious and uh that has not been my interest or uh ambition in making this presentation uh we all have family friends close relatives some of us ourselves have come out of mormon backgrounds and have uh close associations with folks that we may have left behind in that community and i'm aware i've had at least a couple of folks come to me after and and basically say that they still are mormons they were just here you know for interest in this presentation so uh and that may be you this morning so i just want to make it clear for the record right off the bat that uh this is not intended in any sense to be some sort of shot you know a torpedo or anything like that but rather it is hopefully a way in which we who are presbyterians and christians can learn to uh reach out more intelligently to our mormon friends and have conversations with them that are at least somewhat better informed than they might have been otherwise and that's my hope that's my ambition uh and i i'm hopeful that my own attitude and style in making this presentation has been uh has been consistent with that uh having said that i need to say at the same time now that this will probably be the presentation that will seem the most critical because in fact this is the point where we are having to make some distinctions and say here's what mormons have believed uh at this point seem to believe and here is where it seems different from that which we as uh presbyterian christians and even just in the classical uh tradition of christianity of believe to be the case and obviously there's differences uh if if there weren't differences we wouldn't be having this conversation and obviously we also believe at least i'm presbyterian i'm not a mormon you know so that uh by necessary inference means i think i'm right and i think that there's some people who are mistaken you know and so i want to say this charitably lovingly but at the same time i think in the spirit of fairness it has to be pointed out there are differences and those differences as it stands right now in my estimation are irreconcilable that the mormonism is not simply another branch of the christian faith but in fact there are some deep and significant differences that that remain uh just uh huge in terms of trying to uh correlate these two uh ways of understanding uh christian truth analyzing mormon theology is difficult because it has been a bit of a moving target and i think if you have a mormon background and you're reasonably well informed you will grant that point uh mormon theology does not affirm today exactly the same thing that brigham young said or joseph smith said there have been changes there has been a substantial evolution in mormon theology and i'm happy to say that movement has tended to be toward orthodox christianity okay i don't want to overstate that but it has not been a movement away from orthodoxy every change that has taken place as far as i can tell has been where mormonism has given up something that was uh that was really viewed as seriously deviant from biblical teaching and has moved generally in a direction that would we would consider more consistent with biblical teaching but like i said i don't want to overstate that so if mormonism was once a million miles away it's like now it's 900 000 miles away you see it's moving in the right direction but there's still huge differences and so i just want to make clear that that i i'm happy with the trajectory of the movement at the same time i don't want to be sanguine and say that well you know everything's fine and there's no problem anymore so anyway with all of that uh preamble uh let's just take a look at this my plan this morning is just to move rapidly through the major branches of theological subject matter and just try to do a rather brief and casual discussion of the way in which both mormons have seen these ideas and the way we have viewed them in the confines of what i'm calling classical orthodoxy now when i use the word classical orthodoxy i simply mean this all three branches of the of the christian church worldwide the eastern orthodox church the roman catholic church and protestant communities including this one would go back to classical formulations as to the nature of god the nature of christ and related matters we would for example go back to the nicene creed 325 a.d it is still a creedal statement that we all embrace it hasn't gone anywhere we're not going anywhere our understanding of it has deepened but it has not deviated from that and so when i talk about classical orthodoxy i mean a kind of nicene understanding let's say of the nature of god the trinity or when i talk about the classically orthodox view of christ i mean what was spelled out the council of child savan in 451 where the church affirmed that christ is two natures and one person and that those two natures come together in that one person perfectly but the two natures retain their own attributes christ is both on the one hand fully god truly god and at the same time truly man and that would be classical orthodoxy all branches of the church embrace that you see so what i'm saying is we have not been such a moving target because we've had that sort of benchmark and when i use that term that's what i'm referring to uh but when i use the term classical orthodoxy that's what i have in mind all right well what uh what do we make of the mormon view of the nature of god at its beginning when for example uh joseph smith uh first delivered to us the book of mormon uh if you were to look in that writing you would find very little that would actually appear to be theological in character it is a story as i was intimating to you the first week we were together there are however theological comments here and there and for the most part they would not be highly offensive probably to anyone in the tradition of classical orthodoxy for example if you were to read uh third nephi 1127 from the book of mormon you'd read these words quote from purportedly from jesus verily i say to you that the father and the son and the holy ghost are one and i am in the father and the father in me and the father and i are one see well if that's what the mormons said on the subject we wouldn't be having this conversation you see we'd be saying well this is there's no problem that really is pretty consistent with a traditional trinitarian formulation of the nature of god it seems to strongly imply the deity of christ it seems to give us an idea of monotheism and all of those would be fairly compatible obviously with what we would otherwise hold to be true however that's not the whole story you see even by the end of the life of joseph smith we have some considerable departure from a statement even such as the one i just read to you probably the most famous example of this is from the so-called king fallout discourse king fallout was uh a guy who died this was a funeral oration that joseph smith he was not a king this was just his first name you know king followed that was his name but anyway at his funeral joseph smith made the following statement and this is footnote 1 then in my handout and it goes like this this is from joseph smith the year is 1844. quote first god himself who sits enthroned in yonder heavens is a man like unto one of yourselves that is the great secret i'm going to tell you how god came to be god we've imagined that god was god from all eternity god himself the father of us all dwelt on an earth the same as jesus christ himself did you have got to learn how to be gods yourselves see now a statement like that makes us a little nervous uh because that would not be at all compatible as i'm sure you're aware with traditional uh understandings of the nature of god the nature of the trinity or the nature of man brigham young expanded on that idea and had other things to say on it that were basically uh consistent with it so for example at foot note 2 i have this uh quote then uh or at least a reference uh for this quote from brigham young uh quote god is our father the father of our spirits and was once a man in mortal flesh as we are and is now an exalted being how many gods there are i do not know but there never was a time when there were not gods god has once been a finite being so again in uh brigham young's at least statements you have an idea that would be utterly incompatible honestly with the classically unorthodox understanding of the nature of god brigham young of course also made clear and this does continue to be mormon teaching to this day that salvation involves a process in which you are fundamentally deified you can become god so at foot note 3 this reference again which is taken from um brigham young he said quote we are created to become gods like unto our father in heaven man is the king of kings and lord of lords in embryo and that really is a really a fundamental idea in mormonism that there's a kind of exaltation that takes place in which by the process of salvation you are exalted into something like the status of deity probably the most important mormon theologian of the 20th century is a man by the name of bruce mcconkey i would highly recommend you read his work i've cited it's in the bibliography i've provided to you there it continues to be probably the definitive work for mormon theology today and so and it does represent some great adjustments from what you would read for example in brigham young or joseph smith but uh it is probably the authoritative work that's out there uh today bruce mcconkey says this is a footnote for uh the following quote indeed this doctrine of plurality of gods is so comprehensive and glorious that it reaches out and embraces every exalted personage those who attain exaltation are gods so again you have an idea here you see that there is a plurality of deities and that you yourself have the potentiality to become deity and indeed as we'll see uh to be worshipped as such by a population of people who would recognize you as deity uh and so it's you know at that point you just have to say this there's no way we can connect those dots you see that this would be abhorrent really to classical christian teaching there's just no conceivable way to reconcile those views i don't know of any way to do it and that's why from the point of view of traditional christianity we've had some concern about mormon teaching on this particular point just because the authoritative spokes people out there are making those kinds of statements and and it raises those kinds of alarm bells another point at which mormon theology uh is different from classical orthodoxy would be the affirmation that god himself god the father we would say has a physical body uh for example and this is a footnote five uh this is in doctrine and covenants quote the father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's the son also but the holy spirit has not a body of flesh and bones but as a personage of spirit were it not so the holy ghost uh could not dwell in us so we have this idea then that god is not only an evolving kind of being uh over time having evolved from humanity to deity but also that god still retains in a sense a human nature at least in so far as he has a physical body um probably one of the more controversial points of mormon teaching which has been abandoned so this would not be norman teaching today bruce mcconkey would disavow this but it was affirmed strongly by brigham young is that the god that we worship was once in fact adam in the garden of eden you see uh for example at the foot note 6 i make reference to this which is from brigham young quote when our father adam came in the garden of eden he came into it with a celestial body and brought eve one of his wives with him he helped to make and organize uh this world he is michael the archangel the ancient of days about whom holy men have written and spoken he is our father and our god the only god with whom we have to do now again what i'm saying is mormonism does not teach that anymore that's the point you see where they've moved toward orthodoxy that's a that's a good step in the right direction they do not identify the god we worship with adam who was in the garden of eden but you can see that's kind of where it was coming from you know and and that's uh in itself somewhat significant certainly however in spite of that minor uh and and really positive adjustment polytheism is still very much a part of the mormon cosmology and its theology the idea uh certainly at least is out there that uh there is a possibility of various gods being worshipped by various populations throughout the universe or possibly as mcconkey speculates through multiple universes so that uh there is uh a plurality of deities and a plurality of worshiping communities uh throughout all of uh uh all of reality uh the god that we worship here uh on this planet is named elohim uh that of course is a biblical word that's a hebrew word for god literally gods but it's used in the hebrew sense to refer to the ultimate god the mormons use that name to refer to uh the god that we worship and they say of him that he has an eternal celestial wife so there is elohim and there is his wife and they have born offspring who are spiritual offspring so the celestial father and mother bear as it were spirit children who are awaiting the opportunity to be born of physical human parents and begin their own process of growth and maturity and exaltation and hopefully deification so the idea is you've got two sets of parents this this heavenly parents and the earthly parents within the view of mormonism milton hunter this is at foot note 7 [Applause] who was a high mormon official milton hunter said quote the stupendous truth of the existence of a heavenly mother as well as a heavenly father became established facts in mormon theology and so that idea that there is that kind of couple you see that uh reign over this planet where does jesus christ fit in well jesus is the first born child of elohim and his celestial wife the firstborn is jesus uh and then jesus was eventually born as a human being uh into life on this planet at foot note eight uh the following comment this is from orson pratt who was a mormon apostle quote hence the virgin mary must have been for the time being the lawful wife i'm sorry i started the quote a little let me just back up orson pratt was was was indicating at this point that elohim was the father of jesus as the firstborn spiritual son and then elohim was also the father of jesus as his earthly father and that came by virtue of his uh relationship with mary so again from orson pratt the following quote the fleshly body of jesus required a mother as well as a father hence the virgin mary must have been for the time being the lawful wife of god the father you see uh if you follow that the idea then that there is an act of sexual intercourse that takes place between elohim and mary and it's out of that that jesus himself was born uh that suggests of course that uh jesus was born not by a virgin birth as traditional christianity has maintained but uh that for a time elohim actually took mary as his wife and hence their release by inference is a denial of the virgin birth and at foot note 10 the following i believe is from uh doctrine and covenants is that right now this is from joseph fielding smith the descendant of joseph smith uh the birth of the savior was a natural occurrence unattended by any degree of mysticism and the father god was the literal parent of jesus in the flesh as well as in the spirit so again basically a denial of the notion of a virgin birth now having said all of that i'm going to leave this discussion of the nature of god at this point but i know that many of you have talked to mormon folks who've had more mormon missionaries at your door as i have from time to time and they are quick to say these days we believe in the trinity uh that was not always the case mormonism at one time disavowed the term trinity uh brigham young wouldn't use that word but but nevertheless it has come to be it has come to have currency within the mormon community the caution that we have to raise here is you know what the the word trinity obviously can mean more than one thing uh if trinity means what we understand to be the nicene formulation of it then that would be quite incompatible with the fundamental tenets of the mormon view as at least we understand them from the writings that are available and so even though there may be an affirmation of trinity uh we need to be very cautious that the way in which that word is used the definitions that are attached to it seem to be strikingly different from those that would be part of our traditional understanding there all right some other uh points just to uh touch on here uh as we go along the mormon view of the bible first of all the bible is an official mormon scripture they included among their scriptures but they have been uh quick to point out that the bible is not necessarily binding on later generations for example the book of mormon itself says this quote this is page 101 uh quote because ye have a bible you need not suppose that it contains all my words nor need ye suppose that i have not caused more to be written so the idea that the bible is there it's important but not necessarily with a with a long-term binding effect orson pratt said quote it is not binding at all upon those who were dead and gone be before it came neither will it be binding upon any generation which shall come after unless god should raise up men and send them with the same gospel uh so again the notion that the bible has some importance but uh it's a somewhat limited importance i've often heard i've had mormon people say to me this word well we believe the bible but only in so far as it was correctly translated if you've ever heard that stephen orson pratt for example said quote who knows that even one verse of the bible has escaped pollution so as to convey the same sense now that it did in the original now i'm if you pardon me i'm going to drop you a footnote and just tell you on the side that makes me a little crazy um this um you know there is no i'm going to tell you i don't think i am stand in fear of contradiction from anybody anywhere there is no book in the history of the world that has been subjected to more painstaking concern for accurate translation there are libraries thousands upon thousands of scholarly volumes and treatises analyzing some of the most innocuous little points of translation of the new testament and uh you know this this in other words is simply not a really reasonable or rational way to just be dismissive about the bible to say it's only correct in so far as it's correctly translated okay i'll just leave it at that but i just want to make that passing remark i think you're aware that mormon uh the mormon church also affirms other writings besides the bible so along with the bible you've got three other major sacred writings these are the book of mormon as we uh talked the first week the pearl of great price which itself incorporates uh several other documents for example the book of abraham that i mentioned is in the pearl of great price and also doctrine and covenants uh the book of mormon of course as we indicated the first time out was uh really a story of a jewish person coming over to the new world or coming over to central america really i should say and a whole a series of events that took place there i'll simply say this uh in further comment about the book of mormon uh there has been a significant amount of effort to try to find historical justification or evidence to support the story that's found in the book of mormon essentially the efforts have been uh have been unsuccessful there has not been any uh significant evidence to verify any of the major teachings of the book of mormon and most mormons at least who are informed on the subject recognize that they have sponsored some of those expeditions and i have come up wanting you will find contemporary mormons who are schooled in these matters will often say that it's not so much whether it was historically true it's the it's the message that counts you see and kind of distancing themselves a little bit from a notion that that's real history even though traditionally it was viewed to be that it strikes me as very similar to what happens in some quarters of the christian church where you'll find kind of liberal spirits will say well it's not so much what the bible says in terms of whether it's real history it's the message you know you'll get that um i i have to say i view that liberal movement mormonism is a good thing i'm not so sure i view it as a good thing in you know in christian circles but that's a different topic so anyway doctrine of covenants we mentioned earlier that's essentially a compilation of revelations given principally to joseph smith and others so uh basically that's where we are in terms of mormon writings and the view of the scripture who is christ uh we indicated earlier that jesus is viewed as the one who was the firstborn uh spirit child of elohim and his celestial wife uh brigham young said journal of discourses volume 1 page 50 quote when the virgin mary conceived the child jesus the father had begotten him in his own likeness he was not begotten by the holy ghost and who is the father he is the first of the human family jesus our elder brother was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the garden of eden who was our father in heaven now as i indicated to you uh the mormons have stepped away from the view that god was adam but that idea that jesus was born first of the celestial pair and then was born physically at a later time continues to be good mormon teaching jesus is as at least traditionally broadly viewed as having been a polygamist for example um orson hyde said in journal of discourses volume 2 page 80 quote we say that jesus christ who was married at cana to the mary's and martha and so the marriage of canaan was actually jesus marriage and he was marrying those three women at least according to orson hyde now he's not necessarily an especial uh you know he was a mormon apostle so when he speaks we listen but uh that wouldn't necessarily be a universal mormon belief along those lines uh i'm going to talk a little bit about the significance of the death of christ on the cross a little later so we'll just hold that for the moment and move uh rather to a brief conversation about how mormons view humanity how do they view what's the view of man probably the most famous statement on this came from brigham young but has continued to have currency and mormonism and it's this one this very simple little phrase what god once was we are now what god is now we may someday be uh that's the idea that really captures it in many ways the mormon view that god is a being who himself started at a lower status and was exalted into as a word deity and that you have the same possibility you have the same potentiality uh mormonism is therefore at its heart a theology of salvation by deification uh and at that point i don't think there's any single point where i'd have to say there is more of a gulf fixed between christian theology and mormon understanding than at that point classical judaism classical christianity have been zealous and jealous to preserve the sharp distinction between creator and creature and there is no sense in which no matter how intimately we may come to a fellowship with god that we ever in that process become god that has been uh at the heart of a very uh closely protected idea within traditional christian understanding uh and so at this point again i'd say there's a more or less irreconcilable tension there between the two the place of marriage we alluded to last week obviously marriage has a huge uh significance within mormon practice and within mormon theology a marriage is only legal if it is if it takes place in the mormon church first of all there are even within the mormon church two different levels of marriage there is what's called the celestial marriage and then the lesser temporal marriage a celestial marriage can only take place in a mormon temple uh that marriage is a marriage which can and should last for eternity and that pair who are married at that point have the possibility to become as it were spiritual uh uh you know uh celestial uh father and mother to uh to a whole population that would worship them uh temporal marriages even if they take place in the mormon church have a limited ability for exaltation so many mormons have who've been previously married would go to the temple and be married there you see just to make sure that they've had that ceremony performed at that in that setting the question was asked last week uh what happens to a uh unmarried woman we were discussing that women in the mormon church have a status that is somewhat inferior to the man's she depends on the man he must call her secret temple name at the time of the resurrection in order for her to join him in eternity uh she in other words depends on him that's that's still very much a part of mormon instruction what happens to a good mormon woman who dies unmarried uh is there some kind of ceiling in other words into the level the degree to which she can be exalted under those circumstances i talked to a friend of mine who is quite an expert much more of an expert by far than i am on mormonism and i said that that question would come up and you know what was the answer the guy has encyclopedic knowledge of the subject and he immediately responded so i'm just passing this on to you uh and i think it was my gut reaction but i i was appreciative of his uh further insight he said traditionally uh she is simply uh out of luck uh if she uh if she dies and no matter how uh devoted she was to the mormon faith if she doesn't have that benefit of marriage in the temple uh then there's no possibility for her in terms of eternity reaching that highest status however bruce mcconkey has addressed the point in his book mormon theology and he has adjusted that view slightly and so if you want to see at least what is probably contemporary speculation uh in mormon theology on the point you'd want to read his book what he says is this he thinks that in terms of eternity there will be equity that some women who actually were married in the uh celestial marriage nevertheless did not turn out to be worthy and their husbands may not call their names it may happen that the husband does not call her name because in fact she wasn't worthy to have her name called at the time of the resurrection and mcconkey speculates that the husband may in fact call some other woman to whom he was not married on earth but who was more worthy and she would be substituted in now that's not official mormon teaching that's bruce mcconkey but mcconkey is the reigning mormon theologian of the 20th century so again when he speaks we want to listen and take that seriously so i hope that at least addresses to some degree uh that view there's been of course as you know a heavy emphasis in traditional mormonism on having many children polygamy in some ways was driven by the concern to have many children the reason for that frankly is because you've got a lot of spirit children who need to get going and uh and and uh so the idea of having children and and multiple wives and so on in some ways was aimed at uh being able to give these spirit children many of them you see an opportunity to start the process of salvation all right the holy spirit at this point we have a little bit of a mixed message sometimes the holy spirit is called a person edge joseph smith will talk about the holy spirit on occasion as a personage that would imply that the holy spirit is a person with a personality but it seems that the more probable view right now and this is my impression i think it's fairly well informed is that the holy spirit is not a personality but is more of a force for example orson pratt writes in a book that he authored absurdities of immaterialism the following concerning the holy spirit quote no two persons can receive the same identical particles of this spirit at the same time a part therefore of the holy spirit will rest upon one man and another part upon another and the idea that the holy spirit is sort of a uh a vapor i guess you'd say that that can rest part of the holy spirit on one part on another seems to imply more of a force than some sort of uh personal uh being with whom you would have uh some kind of intimate fellowship which would be more the uh the idea of traditional orthodox christianity um again uh you know you have to say to your mormon friends uh when they say we believe in the trinity you just have to examine that a little bit more closely what about the holy spirit who is this holy spirit exactly and i i think as soon as you put the question under a little bit more of a microscope you begin to see that there are differences there and even though the word trinity may be used uh it may not be a fair representation of the classical view of trinity and that's really the the point here of thinking in those terms uh as i've alluded to several times in this conversation there is an idea that we have two sets of parents this continues to be good mormon teaching to this day uh we were conceived of as pre-existing spirits before our birth they have a true idea of the pre-existence of the human soul uh they are not the only ones that subscribe to that idea plato had an idea like that so at this point uh they're in good company you know but that has not been the traditional christian understanding uh but the pre-existence of the soul originated with the birth of these spirit children from the celestial father and mother at which time these spirit children are in a position of waiting uh for their possibility for physical birth at footnote 11 i make reference to this uh let's find it here this is from joseph fielding smith uh and uh he says quote we were all created untold ages before we were placed on this earth man animals and plants were not created in the spirit at the time of creation of the earth but long before uh so we have this pre-existent uh ex life existence as souls or spirits and then we're born of human parents and begin our earthly life as such how do you get saved this is what's called soteriology the doctrine of salvation first and foremost in mormonism it is essential that you affirm that joseph smith was a prophet of god uh that does continue to be a very important part of mormon teaching to this day brigham young said at the millennial star volume 5 page 118 quote every spirit that confesses that joseph smith is a prophet that he lived and died a prophet and that the book of mormon is true is of god and every spirit that does not is of antichrist and that would be still a very consistent affirmation i've had mormon missionaries in my living room who have been quite emphatic you you have to believe in your heart joseph smith is a prophet of god and they will affirm they do believe that in their heart and believe they have an inner testimony to that effect uh not withstanding any evidence i might be trying to shovel at them in the into the contrary um and i don't know if i have this opportunity to be anecdotal i'm going to take 60 seconds and tell you this i wasn't planning to but i did have this was this was probably 25 years ago uh before i had seasoned and mellowed you know i was i was uh i was probably 28 years old and i had my guns loaded for for mormon bear you know what i mean i'm embarrassed about this i am not saying this to brag i'm just saying it was a it was an experience i had well i was probably about 28 and i had two lovely mormon missionary young women come to the door and uh and they began to tell me the story in the hopes that i would take an interest in becoming a mormon i listened politely for a little while and then much to my embarrassment i have to tell you i just kind of lost it this is not good style but i just really did kind of unload on them and i had i had been studying all of this so i had i was ready to go and i just started peppering them with questions all kinds of questions about stuff and they just sat there like two deer caught in the headlight of an oncoming train you know one of them was in tears literally uh the other one was just kind of looking at me aghast and uh after i thought i had really you know pretty much turned both of them into grease spots i asked them you know if they had anything to say and the one that was the leader between the two of them said um i don't know how to answer those questions i do not know the answer all i know is that in my heart i'm convinced joseph smith was a prophet of god you see and that's what she came back to and then the problem is there's no way to quite access you see if that is the true conviction in the heart uh in spite of evidence then in a sense i i wasn't sure where to go from that and i i have a feeling when it was all done and the smoke had been dust settled all i had done was train them and um so i'm i i don't recommend that i don't think that's the way you should approach i'm i'm appalled now that i would have done something like that but it was when i was it was before i was a presbyterian i was a baptist back then you know so you got you got to give me a break i've i've kind of grown up a little bit in the meantime anyway uh the uh the affirmation that joseph smith is a prophet of god uh is of course essential uh but uh there is an important place that christ plays in salvation but it's much more limited than for example we and our our classical of you would have it jesus died on the cross and atoning death however the death for which he died is restricted to the sin uh sorry the sin for which he died the sin that he atoned for was restricted to the sin uh related to adam and eve in the garden of eden and even the seriousness of that sin is greatly mitigated in mormon theology it is viewed almost as a necessary evil that they had to commit the sin in the garden of eden which is usually conceived of in sexual terms in order that this process of salvation could get underway had they not done so then the whole possibility of redemption as it's described by the mormon church would not be possible but it did involve a sin and so christ's death is to atone for that sin you see so there is an atonement aspect to jesus death but as i say it has a much more limited scope that we of course would affirm uh from our perspective uh fundamentally however in mormonism salvation is a function of good works mormonism is a religion based on the idea of living a virtuous life in order to achieve either salvation or higher states of salvation in eternity it is a heavily works oriented religion at that point it of course shares something in common with many religions in the world and even some forms of christianity have drifted in that direction on many occasions all right just a few other points uh quickly here baptism uh the mormons affirm a notion of what's called baptismal regeneration baptismal regeneration is the belief that baptism itself conveys the state of being born again this of course is not uniquely mormon you would find something quite comparable to that in roman catholic communities anglican lutheran and some others uh so at this point this is not any point where we have a huge you know grave disagreement here this is a there's there's a variety of christian traditions that have the same idea the point where baptism of course does depart somewhat from uh traditional christian teaching is the notion of multiple uh baptisms for the dead or proxy baptism for the dead the idea here is that by being baptized for someone who has died you commission a person to go and present the mormon gospel to that deceased individual and give them the opportunity to repent and embrace the mormon gospel and at least begin some kind of process of salvation it is truly a religion of a second chance if i'm wrong uh in my presentation this morning i'm sincerely wrong and i'm happy to report someday i will have the opportunity hopefully if someone will be baptized for me to make that particular response i don't believe that's the way it's going to work out but nevertheless i want you to realize that uh many you see who missed the gospel of mormonism or died before joseph smith's time have that opportunity to come to faith through that means the biblical basis for that is first corinthians 15 29 in which paul says else why are they baptized for the dead if the dead rise not if the dead are not raised why are they baptized for them a very enigmatic quote you know people have labored long and hired for many years trying to figure out exactly what paul was talking about there i'm not going to try to go into that separately it's a it's a it's a puzzling text i think there's answers to the question what paul was talking about but obviously the mormons see there a huge justification for this highly elaborate uh program of baptism for the dead and the genealogical studies they do and so on uh and of course others of their writings uh basically expand on that quite a bit so uh is there anything like that in any form of traditional christianity the only thing i could think of would be the selling of indulgences which did have a sort of uh idea within it of of doing something that would benefit someone who had died already uh of course martin luther got very upset about that when texel was selling indulgences in the streets of wittenberg and was saying every time a coin changed a soul from purgatory springs you know that little chant and that that caused luther to write the 95 theses and pack them on the wittenberg door and uh here we are 500 years later uh but uh that that has not been as a rule very uh conspicuously part of most classic christian teaching the idea basically is that once you're dead it's over you know uh it's given unto man once to die and after that judgment that's the statement of the book of hebrews that does seem to foreclose an idea of second chances further opportunities and so on that would be uh pretty much the the traditional understanding all right very quickly just in the last couple of minutes here mormon eschatology as it's called it's view of the last things there's both corporate eschatology and personal eschatology corporate eschatology means what's going to happen in the history of the world mormonism is pre-millennial uh if you know that word that means they affirm that jesus will return to earth joseph smith said he would return to a region in western missouri and uh that that is where the second coming would take place this is before the course the community had moved to utah uh and that the uh the uh temple would be built there i think mormon teaching today is more likely that utah will be the venue for the second coming of christ but in any event uh christ would set up an earthly kingdom and reign over it for a thousand years this is not by any means uniquely mormon i think you're aware that many christian people have a premillennial eschatology the whole left behind series presupposes a pre-millennial eschatology it is not traditional presbyterian understanding but many fine christian people have that nevertheless and so we wouldn't view that as some huge uh abhorrent problem that they have a pre-millennial view of the future in terms of personal eschatology of course there's this uh idea of gradations of exultation so if you do all the things you ought to do you have a celestial marriage in the temple and otherwise participate and are a good stan in good standing in the mormon life and so on uh and then you have the possibility of realizing the celestial kingdom that's the highest state and the possibility actually of of becoming as we said earlier a god uh yourself now there is a terrestrial kingdom which is a lesser status and that would be for mormon people who were not so scrupulous in their behavior or practice or for sincere and righteous non-mormons there's probably a lot of presbyterians there in that terrestrial uh kingdom then there is what is called the celestial kingdom that is for people who were really kind of unrighteous they were not good people uh it's really not even there a place of pain or punishment it's just a more dismal region than the others that are higher there is in mormon theology an idea of hell hell is for the people who are truly wicked the really bad ones uh the stalins and hitler's and genghis khan's you know of history that have huge amounts of bloodshed on their hands and so on uh even their view of hell however is only as a temporary abode so hell is a place where such a person would be punished for a period of time and then after that pass into annihilation they cease to exist they vaporize and that's uh that's the end of it all right let's uh closing the market my time is up and and i've i just want to make a rocket passing if at any point along the way my comments have seemed strident harsh condemning i apologize especially if you have sympathies for mormonism that hasn't been my intention i hope it has helped us to understand the differences my hope prayer intention is that this helps us love our norman uh mormon neighbors friends family more thoughtfully more intelligently that we can show we actually have an interest in those things that they hold dear and are prepared to engage in a conversation with them of course the ulterior motive in my mind and hopefully in yours is that we win them to christ be christ of these scriptures the christ who is the second person of the eternal trinity and who has been in that situation throughout all eternity and who does not change who is the same yesterday today and forever and within whom there is no shadow of turning and at that point i think we have to say to our mormon friends you know we're sorry this is not this is not you see the god that we are worshiping here the god that you're describing who's changing and evolving and so while i want to be loving and gracious at the same time i don't want to sacrifice uh what i think is the clarity of god's word uh uh you know for the sake of a friendly conversation so let's let's try to keep both of those in balance thank you all it's uh been a pleasure to present this to you let's uh let's have a word of prayer and we'll be dismissed a father we're grateful for the opportunity to explore these matters we do again pray that this would serve to give us that loving compassionate interest in reaching out in the name of christ and of the christian gospel to those who are friends and neighbors in such a way that we would uh exemplify for them the very heart and grace of christ himself we give you thanks for it now ask your blessing on the service to follow offering all these prayers in the name of christ our lord amen [Music] you

Channel: Bruce Gore

Views: 1,710

Rating: 4.8857141 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 4atOACtsG1M

Length: 54min 43sec (3283 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020