Polemics, Mormonism

We're going to be talking about Mormonism. It's probably one of the most well-known variations on Christianity and Christendom, as we've talked about Christendom being the overarching secular view of that which is Christianity, but not necessarily everything that is true Christianity.

How many of you have had a pair, usually a pair of young men come dressed in black with white suits or black suits with white shirts on and they want to come talk to you about the Latter-day Saints and why you should become a Mormon. Has everybody had an experience like that? I think generally we can all raise our hands.

Actually, it's been about 10 years since I studied Mormonism because back in high school I lived literally 300 yards, or I mean 100 yards away from a Mormon stake center. They don't call them churches, but it's a stake center where it's just a big building and they would have all their meetings there. There were two in Carson City and I just happened to live really close to one of them. So, being that close, my dad thought, well, we better get geared up because they're going to come by. Ironically, after the first couple people showed up to our house, they stopped coming by. I think they marked our house, hey, listen, these people are just never, they're going to go to hell. So, the Mormons didn't like us, I guess.

I'm wearing this shirt, for those of you who are listening by tape or can't read it, it says, by reading this, you have given me brief control of your mind. Which is kind of a joke, I guess. It's one of those things where the people that have bought into the Mormon ideology have read all of the Mormon things and are unable to think critically about what's there. They're not able to address the arguments against Mormonism in a logically consistent way, so that atheists or Christians or Jehovah's Witnesses, because the Jehovah's Witnesses are very anti-Mormon, they have a whole section of their website dedicated to how to combat the Mormons. All the other groups come and are critical of it, and they just don't have good, solid answers for it, but they try.

So this morning, does everybody have handouts? There's handouts here. Marilyn, do you need one? I'll get you one. Other people need handouts, if you could pass them out, that'd be handy. Okay, two over there. Anyways, whoops, you need another set there. I wanna be handing these things out. This is gonna sound great on the tape.

The first thing we have here, we're gonna take a brief, and I mean very brief, look at Mormon history. There is so much Mormon history that's available because For some inexplicable reason, they have documented just about everything that has ever happened in the Mormon church and almost everything that Joseph Smith ever wrote, they have copies of. So Mormon history is actually quite robust. They have a lot of things that have happened since Joseph Smith started the Mormon church back in the 1830s, I believe it is. Well, it's 1820s roughly in there, but it didn't really start to build some steam until the 1830s. But there's a lot of history, but we're not going to go in it. First of all, Joseph Smith Jr., he was the second Joseph Smith of that family lineage, was the founder of Mormonism, also known as a prophet. If you read more about him from various Mormon authors, he's esteemed pretty high. He's pretty much up there with God. They really like him.

He received a revelation from God that a new church was to be formed. He had apparently gone around looking at the various churches that were in the area where he was at, and they were insufficient. So God gave him a revelation that he was going to lead Joseph to some plates or some documents that would help him start a new church. Later, he was led by the angel Moroni, God was using to direct Joseph Smith to the Hill Cumorah, where he was given these plates, shown where they were.

And he pulled out these heavy golden plates from the ground, and he quickly covered them up, and he took them home, and nobody could see them. But they were covered up. Took him home to a family of two parents, and he was one of six children, and nobody else could see him. but they were heavy things in a pillowcase is what his brother wrote. That's an impressive document. No one can see it. It's that special.

Anyways, he was supposed to start the true church that was to replace the old not true church. I don't know what to call the old church if what he's starting is the new true church. We're going to look at his life a little bit more as we discuss the events, but I wanted to introduce you to Joseph Smith.

The next guy I've got here on this list is Brigham Young. How many of you have heard of Brigham Young University? Okay, I say that's a pretty well-known university out of Utah. Brigham Young was the one to follow Joseph Smith as leader of the Mormon Church. Joseph Smith, the year he died, he was 38 years old, actually was running for president of the United States.

He had thrown his hat in the ring, and so he was doing church things there in Utah, but he had various people dispersed throughout the United States, either as missionaries of Mormonism or politically campaigning for him. Well, he died, and when he died, there was a lot of skirmishes going around about who was going to be the leader of the church, and Brigham Young finally won out. Actually, the church split into various different segments, and there's not just the Mormons in the generic sense. There's a bunch of different Mormon churches, but most people are familiar with Latter-day Saints.

So Brigham Young took the helm of the Mormon church, Actually, Brigham Young was quoted as saying that Joseph Smith would judge the people who would get into God's mansion in heaven. Joseph Smith would be the one that would choose whether or not you could get into the mansion of God. You would still be in heaven if you were a believer in Mormonism. But you would have to go before Joseph Smith who would say, yes, no, yes, no, I'm sorry. I don't like the way your hair looks today. You can't get in or whatever it is.

Joseph Smith was the one that'd be there. Brigham Young taught that. So those are the two first early leaders. If you go on throughout history, they've had other presidents, but those are probably the two first and they're also the most well-known. The last person I've got on here is Moroni, who is the angel that led Joseph Smith to the golden plates. He was actually, according to the Book of Mormon, the last Nephite prophet. The Nephites were one of the Jewish groups that traveled to the Americas from the Middle East. Throughout history, the Book of Mormon teaches there were three Israelite groups that came over to the United States, or to America, sorry, not the United States, I'm pretty sure it wasn't the United States then, and started Indian or Native American groups that were not really Native American, they were Israelites. This is so weird to talk about. It's like, are you serious? But they actually believe this.

Moroni later became an angel. So first he was a prophet, and then he was an angel, and he led Joseph Smith to these plates that turned out to be the Book of Mormon. I don't understand all of how the Mormon theology works that other people are going to become gods of their own planets later on. This angel Moroni used to be a prophet, but somehow he didn't cut it to be a god, so he had to be an angel. I'm like, dude, how do you get to be so good that you have these whole prophetic books that you've written in this language, but you're demoted to being an angel? I don't know. Whatever he did, he screwed up. So that's Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Moroni.

Any questions on those before I jump on to the next thing? Oh, we're going to get there, but yes, just to answer your question, which was, do they claim to still have the golden plates? The angel Moroni took Joseph to the hill of Gomorrah, and he showed him the plates. Joseph Smith took the plates, took them home, kept them hidden, actually then got married.

I have a pile of hats over here. He had a seeing stone or a pair of goggles, and he would put his face So, there's a table here, pretend this in your imagination, and you've got the stones, the plates that are there. Stick his head in the hat, which is going to really sound good on the microphone, and the Lord would divinely reveal to him the text of the plates, through the hat and the seeing stone. I know that sounds crazy, I know what you're thinking, but that's official doctrine. Well, he was dictating to his wife. I hope she could hear everything through the hat.

Art, yeah. Oh, well, we're not, we're there. We're getting to the history part. So, so we'll get there. Taking a look, I've got several dates here on your paper and some other ones that aren't on the paper that I want to talk about briefly. I really wanted to focus on the political side of what was going on with Mormonism as it interfaced with the United States government in this section, because there was a lot of stuff and it involves what you're asking, Art.

September 21st, 1823 is when the angel Moroni revealed the tablets to Joseph Smith. Moving on from that place, the summer of 1829, the plates were returned to the angel Moroni. According to the written records of Joseph Smith III, his father translated the plates with his face in the hat, dictating what he was revealed to his wife, Emma, who was sitting next to him. The thing is that these plates were in an unknown language.

They were not in a known language that Joseph Smith would have been able to learn. For example, Greek is one of those languages that we can learn today. And that's why we have the Old Testament and New Testament. We can study the Greek and Hebrew and know what they say. Well, these plates were written in a language that Joseph Smith could not have previously known.

And so, He was, by the Holy Spirit or by God, given the translation of what these meant. No other human being saw them and read the text and had copies of the text of these plates. They were given back to the angel Moroni. So, what you got is from Joseph Smith. They were divined from Joseph Smith, and that is your reference. There is no golden plates for you to go back and double-check on. It's what he said or nothing. It's really easy for you to determine whether or not that's authentic or not, because they've only got one source. So Joseph Smith receives the plates and then translates them and gives them back to the angel Moroni.

Now, in 1838, and this is what Art was asking about, was the Missouri-Mormon War. The Mormons started gathering in Missouri. I don't know why, but they did. And actually they gathered in Jackson County there. And believe it or not, the local people in Missouri were not really fond of them. So they made a pact or an agreement with the state of Missouri that they would get their own county. All the Mormons could go to their county and do their Mormon things and be isolated. So, that didn't work so well. That's when the locals started to get more and more irritated, because they realized that they were losing political power. This was a political issue for the locals.

The religious side of it, yeah, they probably thought, a little weird, a bit nutty. The military records, because the different people that were involved with the war, some of them were part of the US military, They actually described the Mormons as just a zealous group of religious people. They didn't really describe them as a cult like we would today. But this zealous group, the locals formed a militia and kicked them out.

They had had enough of that. Well, Joseph Smith and several of the other leaders were actually put in jail. and managed to escape from jail, because when you're an upright, outstanding citizen, nothing is better than having on your record that you escaped from jail.

But he's a man of God, so we won't mess with that. I guess Peter did. We can't really mess with that. God let Peter out of jail, so we'll leave that alone. So this war starts, and there's a group called the Danites, and that's what you were asking about, Art, and they were a particularly zealous group. They said, hey, we don't care if Joseph Smith is talking out of his rear end and is a liar. Whatever Joseph Smith says goes. And so there's a group of Mormons that started together called the Danites, and they kind of broke off.

They stayed there to be strong for Mormonism in Missouri. Then they moved to Illinois because Missouri wasn't gonna have anything to do with them. And 1844 is the year that was really pivotal for Mormonism because they went to Missouri, or Illinois, I'm sorry, and they, have you heard of Nauvoo, Illinois?

Because that's the town that they started. They actually drained out an area of the Mississippi River there. there on this land that they drained out, they started this town. And just like with Missouri, where they had a special grant or a county given to them, Illinois did the same thing. They said, sure, you can have your own county. If you wanna drain the river, go for it. That's your choice. So they got together and everybody quickly moved in. Why? Because they'd all been, relieved of their property in Missouri.

So suddenly the Illinois people were going, hey, wait a minute. They didn't just trickle in. They just showed up as a big bunch, which was a real problem because suddenly, as you can imagine, they were worried about their political power. Well, 1844, Joseph Smith threw his hat in the ring for the presidency. And so people were dispersed about. Well, the people in Illinois removed their charter and gave them several months to take off. We don't like you. You're a screwy.

Well, when they removed the charter, they came in and they grabbed Joseph Smith and a couple of the other leaders and they put them in jail. And the militia was put to guard the jailhouse. But as is common in the case where people really don't like you, if they're on guard for you, but they really don't like you, they may happen to look the other direction when a group of masked people came and with guns shot Joseph Smith and everybody but one other person that was in his party that they'd arrested. So Joseph Smith died in 1844 and He was shot June 27th in 1844. And then in December, Illinois kicked him out. You're gone, move on. So then where did they go? Can anybody make a guess on where they went? Utah, Deseret.

That's God's promised chosen land. It's where he was going to build. This is the place. God's going to build His kingdom. The kingdom that, if you were here when they went through the Revelation class in the main service, and we talked about God's kingdom on earth, it was the New Jerusalem there in Utah.

So, Utah was it. The Salt Lake City, oh boy, oh boy. I flew over Salt Lake City, I'd never actually been there, and I was like, are you serious? This is the promised land? That's what they think. So that's all right. So I'm just giving you, this is the history and we won't go into my personal opinion of Salt Lake City. But in Salt Lake City, they had another issue with the government, but it wasn't just a local state issue. It actually became a federal issue because Brigham Young was the governor of Utah, which isn't a big surprise.

No one else was there. It's like, well, who else wants to take over the territory? Which at that point in time actually included Nevada. And those of you who like what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, the Mormons actually started Vegas too, but it's hard to believe now.

Brigham Young wanted more power over what was happening in Utah, and the federal government said, well, we think not. Brigham Young actually called in Mormons from all surrounding the area, including, I spent most of my growing up teen years in Carson City, Nevada.

Right outside of there is Genoa, which The Mormons had owned the area there and they had a trading store so that right before you crossed the Sierras, you could buy your supplies from the Mormons and they were happy to give it to you. Well, Brigham Young decided he wanted to have a skirmish with the federal government, so he called in all the Mormons from Kansas and Nevada and Utah and the surrounding areas, and they abandoned their lands to come in case there was a war. Well, not being Mormon, the fine non-Mormons of Genoa took their land, so the Mormons lost their property there. So then you can trade with non-Mormons before you cross the Sierras.

But the Utah Mormon War, they declared a scorched earth policy. Is anybody familiar with that? If I say scorched earth policy, Thomas, what they would do is they were prepared to completely burn down Salt Lake City and move to Provo, Utah, because that's where the federal government was going.

However, Brigham Young chickened out. They won't teach you that if you go to the Mormon history classes, but he chickened out. And he gave over the title to General Cummings, Alfred Cummings, of governor of Utah, and he surrendered. So they didn't burn down Salt Lake City, but they were ready to.

They actually burned out property and farms leading into Utah, and there were some folks from Missouri, we talked about Missouri briefly, that were part of that zealous group that actually came in and destroyed 29 of the provisioning wagons for the federal governments, the US military army that was coming in, so that the military got delayed further, so that there ended up being no shots fired really in Utah or a big war. They barely escaped unscathed, but they did.

So that's a very brief look at the history of things. That's just getting started. Yes. Well, Salt Lake City, they were there. Brigham Young was ready to move them to Provo. But like I said, he chickened out. So he handed over the title of governor, but maintained his power over the church. and they also didn't have to rebuild their entire city a fourth time. Oh yeah, in honor of him, for sure. I mean, when a guy's as good as he is, you got to take him. You got to name a town after him. So we have people and events. And briefly, I wanted to also talk about the tablets. The tablets contain the text of the Book of Mormon. The Mormons have four holy books, which we'll get into in just a moment. One of them was the Book of Mormon, which is divinely given from these tablets.

It was supposedly written in the language of the Nephites, which we have no other record of the Nephite language, just for whatever that's worth. So it'd be really difficult to determine if his translation was accurate or not. So anyways, that's the only other real tangible archeological document. Everything else they have is different.

So let's take a look at doctrinal error here, which is the next section, that's page two, I believe. We talked about the four holy books that they have. They have four sources of theology and doctrine. The Bible, okay, we all have heard of that one. The Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, and the Doctrine and Covenants. Okay, now the Bible, it's important that we understand that how they view the Bible is not how you and I may view the Bible, okay? How many of you believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God? I'm hoping everyone raises their hand. Yes, okay.

Wait, you didn't raise your hand, no. Anyways, so a book of truth, though it was not considered to be accurate, and Joseph Smith taught that it was full of error and parts were lost. Yes, it's only, and we'll go over this when we get to the Articles of Faith, it's only accurate as far as it was translated accurately. So, when you and I go to argue, not argue, we're not going to argue, when we go to discuss theology with a Mormon, and you pull out your Bible, and you say, look, here it is, it's the Word of God, and you start quoting it, they're going to look at you like, are you out of your mind?

That's not a reliable book. So that's the first thing to know. The Bible is part of their canon of holy books, but it's not accurate. So that's the first thing is the Bible there. But however, okay, if you've got an inaccurate book, what are you going to do to know what's accurate? We can eat something else that is accurate.

And so they use the Pearl of Great Price, which is made up of writings by Joseph Smith that they consider to be accurate. The Book of Mormon, obviously, is accurate because it was preserved. Joseph Smith had the original manuscripts, and he translated them. And, of course, Joseph Smith can't do anything wrong, so he's good. The Book of Mormon's right. That's okay. That's all right. So the Bible's questionable, but the Book of Mormon, you're all right with, because Joseph Smith had the original manuscripts.

Then you have the Pearl of Great Price. Now, the Pearl of Great Price is really interesting. It's a collection of writings by Joseph Smith, including the rewriting of the beginning of Genesis. So, how many of you are familiar with Genesis chapter 1? It starts out with, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Hopefully everybody is relatively familiar with that.

When I was a little kid, every Sunday, when I learned how to read, every Sunday, we'd get in the car and we'd go to church. And on the way to church, I'd open up my Bible. I haven't read my Bible all week. I better read it. So I'd open a Genesis. So I read Genesis chapter 1 lots. Yeah, I knew Genesis chapter 1 pretty well. Well, Joseph Smith had Genesis chapter 0.

He actually has a whole dialogue between God, and his two sons. Who would God's two sons be? Jesus and Satan. Oh boy! Jesus' brother Satan. That sounds so funny to say. I feel like lightning should come out of the ceiling or something, but God's gracious.

So you have this whole thing taking place here, and this holy book is more accurate than the Bible, and God is revealing to Joseph Smith things that he didn't... Prophet Isaiah? We're studying that in the main service normally, although this morning Mike's going to be teaching on the doctrinal statement. Prophet Isaiah, inaccurate. God had all these prophets. You go throughout there, prophets. He didn't reveal to them things that would have corrected Moses, since Moses apparently screwed something up.

But you have just some serious issues there with the Pearl of Great Price. And the last book, and this one's a humdinger, the last book is the Doctrine and Covenants. It used to be called the Commandments, but they changed it to the Doctrine and Covenants. This book is not finished. You know how the Bible, we say, okay, 66 books as Protestants, that's all we got? That's the whole thing. It's done. Book of Mormon, he had the plates, divine, translated, whatever you want to call it, the whole thing, done. Joseph Smith died, so the Pearl of Great Price is done, because you can't add any more to that. But the Doctrine and Covenants, it's not done. How do you argue with somebody whose theological context is changing still? You can say, hey, this is what your doctrine is, and he can go, well, might not be in five years, because it's still changing.

The president of the LDS or the Mormon Church is still getting revelation. He is a prophet of God, just as much as Isaiah, just as much as Jesus Christ was a prophet of God. John, oh no, Joseph Smith could still get revelation, or the president of the churches. Oh yeah, it's still getting added to. They still get new revelations. We're going to get into a little later on.

God cursed black people. If you were in the Mormon Church prior to the civil liberty movement, ironically, strangely enough, You could never be in leadership in the Mormon Church, because God had cursed black people. That's why you knew they were cursed, because they were black. I have a problem with that, but if you had dark skin, that must have meant that you were of this cursed line of people.

Well, then they had the Civil Liberties Movement, and then God through a prophecy and revelation to the president of the Mormon Church, repealed that doctrine. So, if you're a Mormon president and you come into a political situation, the Lord could really help you out and give you a new revelation to deal with the political scenario. Tom? The extent of that was they had several priesthoods and they said, Okay, yeah, they extended it so that there could be some priesthoods that the black people could associate with, or people of dark skin. It's really more generic than black, but they definitely have been targeted.

So the Doctrine and Covenants is still being written. Most of what is in Doctrine and Covenants is actually ecclesiological, or having to do with the running of the Mormon Church on a governmental level, and not so much new books like the Nephite stuff that they had in the Book of Mormon.

So that's the four sources. Obviously, we have a real concern over the Bible and the inerrancy of the Bible, okay? We need to worry about that. But let's take a look, starting on this page and actually creeping into the next two pages, is the Articles of Faith. On the left-hand side is the Articles of Faith, which Joseph Smith gave to a reporter who asked, can you summarize what Mormonism is into a few points? A few apparently meant 13. And I have on the left Joseph Smith, on the right I have some answers from the Bible that I've put together.

You can study this in much greater detail if you want. We don't have that kind of time. So on the left, let's just go through these briefly, and try not to laugh out too loud. It's disrupting. Anyways, first thing, we believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost. Sounds good, doesn't it? You can sort of buy that, you can go, okay.

Except for that, if you read on further in other doctrines, and we talked about this earlier, who is Jesus' brother in the Mormon Church? Satan. He apparently wasn't part of what we would consider the Trinity, he was on the good team, and apparently Satan was on Al-Qaeda or something.

So the Bible teaches a Trinity, that's not the teaching of the Mormon Church, there is not a trinity. There is actually a biological relationship between God the Father and Christ the Son in the heavenlies. Not just an earthly incarnation where God is the Father and Mary is the Mother and there you go. In the heavenlies, God actually procreated and had Jesus and Satan. in the Mormon doctrine.

Now, he doesn't state that in the Articles of Faith, so I want to say that I have extrapolated that from other texts. So that's the first thing in the Articles of Faith. It reads nice, but if you look at the doctrine further in the details, you have problems.

The second one is, we believe that all men will be punished for their own sins and not for Adam's transgression. How many of you are familiar with the idea of Oh, I should have wrote down my keyword here. Original sin. The Adam sinned, and that sin carried on. We're all, as descendants of Adam, we all have a sin nature.

I think that's a common teaching at Olly Hills, but I just wanted to remind you of that. Their doctrine is that when you are born, you do not have a sin nature. You are a pure, perfect spirit baby in a pure, perfect human body. So, you don't have a propensity towards sin. You make that choice as you get older. In fact, you make that choice when you're eight, according to their doctrine. That's the age of accountability. This is a problem.

I mean, if you look at Romans 5.14, let's take a brief look at Romans 5.14. If you have your Bibles, please turn there.

It says, nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who was a type of him who was to come. Now, they didn't sin in the way that Adam sinned, but they still sinned, didn't they? Because they were descendants of Adam, and they had to be there, and death reigned. It was part of what was there.

How many of you, let's see, Romans 3.23? Let's take a look at that. "...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Why? Because they have a propensity to sin because they're descendants of Adam.

That's a pretty strong doctrine that carries throughout Scripture, and yet, when you're born, you are pure. You are righteous. You were made righteous when you were born, which is a very different idea than what we get throughout Scripture. Yeah, the blank slate idea.

Okay, moving on to the next point here, and I know we're racing through these, but there's 13 of them and we only have so much time. The next one, we believe that through the atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel. What are the laws and the ordinances of the gospel? I'm just going to answer it with the next point, but what does Romans 6 say about the believer's relationship to the law? We're dead to the law. We're dead to it. You can't have some of the law. You can't have 1% or 100% of the law. You are dead to it. Maybe Romans just wasn't translated accurately, so they just dismiss it.

The next one here carries on with that idea. We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the gospel are, first, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Do we agree with that? Okay, so we can agree with him on that. But he keeps going, and that's where we have trouble.

Second is repentance. Believing in Christ, if you read 1 Corinthians 15, inherently ties in belief with repentance. So I would say making it a second step is kind of funky. Let's pretend that we're going to ignore that and say, And then the third one is baptism by immersion for the remission of sins. Now, does baptism bring salvation? Not according to the doctrine of Molly Hills, and I think scripture clearly teaches that it's not associated. We could go look into baptism. 1 Corinthians 15 talks about the sins being forgiven and remitted, and belief being tied in with remission. It's all there in 1 Corinthians 15 when Paul writes the gospel. So baptism is definitely not part of it. Fourth is laying on of hands for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Now that's a really special one. Who laid their hands on Joseph Smith to give him the Holy Spirit? There wasn't anybody, so God had to do it especially for Joseph Smith.

But then, from that point on, guess how you get in? If you're going to be on the inside, you've got to have all the right connections, and you've got to have your hands laid on. Forget salvation by having faith. Let's say the person's on the dying bed, and some Mormon person comes in and preaches them the way to get to hell through Mormonism, and they're laying there on the bed, and they buy in.

But there's not a group of elders from the Mormon church to lay hands on them. Even if they could sprinkle water on them, they still don't have that fourth step. That person's going to hell. Because you've got four steps to salvation, and they can't nail number four. if they die on their dying bed, without having had all the elders gather around them.

So that's an issue. Their gospel is not the gospel that we teach at Holly Hills, or I believe is biblical, and you can find many other churches that teach a gospel that's biblical. This is not one of them. Is there another church that we studied recently, say last week or the week before that, that has similar steps involving salvation? There is a pattern here. The Mormons are not alone in teaching that you've got to do extra stuff to be saved.

Obviously, we talked about Catholicism in the Orthodox Church. Baptism is often associated with that. Fortunately, you baptize all the babies when they're infants, and so it doesn't matter. So, moving on, the next thing here, we believe that a man must be called of God by prophecy and by the laying on of hands, there that is again, by those who are in authority to preach the gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof. Did Joseph Smith meet those qualifications? No, but that's okay because he's Joseph Smith.

Acts 2.47 is one of those passages that is not directly answering this, but you see in Acts 2.47 that the numbers of people that were gathering to the teaching of the apostles was growing. Do you think it was because just the apostles were out there teaching, or do you think that other people might be sharing the gospel with their friends? I hope that they laid hands on them and had been called specially by God by prophecy, so the apostles were busy prophesying who was going to be called to be an evangelist. No, it's because we can all share the gospel. That's how we're saved. We can share that with our friends and our family, and there's no restrictions. You don't find those restrictions in Scripture.

All right, the next step we have here is, we believe in the same organization that existed in the primitive church, namely apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth. Namely so forth, but whatever so forth is, we'll ignore. Apostles, I don't find biblical texts proving that apostles still operate today. I have a distant relative whom I went to church at his church there, and that was an apostolic church, and their pastor was teaching as if he was an apostle, and he was prophesying and doing other things that were rather questionable. You don't find a biblical text telling us that we need to have further apostles. And if there were further apostles, they could do some really awesome stuff, don't you think?

Because didn't the apostle Paul breathe life back into the guy who fell out of the window dead? If Joseph Smith was that great of a guy, why didn't he have one of his buddies that he'd prophesied or had as a prophet come heal him back from being shot and falling out of the second story of a jailhouse? Well, he didn't, they couldn't do it, but that's okay. He was a martyr and things grew.

So we have issues with their idea of apostles. How about prophets? Do we have prophets that are in the church today giving us new revelation? Come on, I have a word of knowledge that somebody is going to give me $5,000. Nobody's pulling out their checkbooks, come on. Okay, so I have some concerns with the prophecy thing too. I think that as you look at pastors, teachers, okay, we have those here, don't we? So I guess we can't discredit them on that. The thing is that they've redefined these terms.

When the two guys in their black suits on a hot summer day show up at your door sweating, and they wanna come in for a glass of cold water, cause they're just thirsty. What do they have on their name tags? Does anybody remember? It says elder. 23 years old, 19 years old, elder. I'm like going, come on. Elder.

No, I don't think so. But they've redefined the terms to give everybody a label and they've got a structure and a hierarchy that's in place that's impressive. But it's problematic. They've redefined the terms, but they haven't really redefined the terms, because the problem is that the texts of the Bible are wrong, or highly questionable.

So, we've got to keep moving on here as I churn through these. We believe the Bible to be the Word of God as far as, and this is the Humdinger, this is number eight, 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.

So as far as it is translated correctly, how do you know if it's translated correctly? Anyone give me a guess? Yeah, put the hat over your head. Maybe it takes a top hat or something more pious, you know. I have a seeing stone in here. It's a camera lens. It doesn't help me see through the hat, though. I don't have one of those x-ray lenses. So how do you know? You can't. Unless, of course, the prophets are given special revelation to tell them which is good and which isn't.

Now, I was studying this stuff this last couple days just so much, it was crazy. I kept going, are these people real? Are they really believing this? But when you say, hey, salvation is by faith alone, they are more than glad to point out texts in scripture, out of context, of course, but we'll ignore that, pull out texts in scripture saying, see? It's not by faith alone. and they'll quote the Bible. And I'm like, how do you know that's an accurate verse that you can quote to prove your point? I don't know. There's no answer for it. But anyways, we believe that the Bible is inerrant. It's accurate.

We can understand and know the languages. We can learn them today and translate for ourselves if we want. Ironically and amazingly, we haven't come up with really wild variations on the translations because we know what it means and it's easy to understand.

Moving on, just because we have to, we believe all that God has revealed, all that he does now reveal, and we believe that he will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God. Okay, so Doctrines and Covenants, that other book that keeps going, it's going to keep going because God's going to continue to reveal new stuff. You cannot pin somebody down on doctrine that could change.

You can say, listen, this is contradictory, or this is problematic, or this is wrong, and they can say, might not be in five years, might not be in ten years, might not be in a hundred years, but it doesn't matter because it's true. This is a problem when we discuss Islam.

They have the same problem. It's true. There is no arguing whether or not it's true. There's not right or wrong. It's true. Period. There you go. There's not arguing about it. You can't come up to them and say, hey, that's wrong. They're going to say, that's what I believe. That's it. You can't argue with me about this. This is how it is. So, same thing with the Mormons. This is true. There you have it. It's kind of hard to argue with that kind of reasoning. I have a three-year-old, and I found that she has sometimes the same mindset.

Because if she wants thickened butter toast, which is actually, let's see, it's salted butter that's been out to be softened on toasted bread. Thickened butter toast, don't ask, but that's what she wants, and there's no arguing with, hey, there's no protein in that, or I hate protein. So it's just there, that's how it is, there's no, back and forth, there's no discussing things on a logical level. It just doesn't happen.

This is how it is. So they believe that, and they believe more revelation is coming. And if you don't like that, tough, you're going to go to hell anyways, because you don't believe it. Moving on. We believe in the literal gathering of... and this is just... I have a hard time reading this.

This is another lightning strike one. We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the ten tribes that Zion, the New Jerusalem, will be built upon, the American continent, which previously was never recorded in the scripture, that Christ will reign personally upon the earth, and that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradiasical glory. Basically, the book of Revelation and all of the other prophecies in the Bible, which are also suspected by these people, aren't there. We're going to take a look at replacement theology, which is what this is, in a subsequent section briefly. So I'm just going to say, hey, wow, and we'll move on.

We claim the privilege of worshipping Almighty God according to the dictate of our own conscience, it's how we feel, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may. How can you tell people that are going to go to hell and then say they can worship what they may? I don't understand it. The Bible doesn't say you can just worship what you want, and then you're going to go to hell. Well, actually it does say that, but it doesn't say what this says here. You can worship however you want, and what you want, and the way you want, and that's all good.

We'll be friends. We're just going to do our thing. You do your thing. There is only one true God. John 4, what does Jesus say to the the woman in John 4 about spirit and in truth. He says, time will come when we will worship in spirit and in truth. Okay. Truth. Truth is an absolute thing and it's not wishy-washy and it doesn't do whatever you want to do is good for you and whatever I want to do is good for me.

Like I said, there have actually been whole chapters of books written that address these things. So we're screaming through it, but if you want, there are some various sites and books that address this that you can look at later on. Next thing here, we believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law. I believe when he says law, there it is in the context of civil government and not the Old Testament. I believe this is the only one that I can just wholeheartedly agree with because Romans 13 says that we should subject ourselves to the leadership in the government. Last on this list here is we believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men. Indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul.

Crazy that they would do that. We believe all things. We hope all things. They believe all kinds of things, actually. We have endured many things and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things. I think that we can look at the New Testament scriptures and say that we don't just believe in being moral people. That's generally the idea behind this, is that we're going to be moral. If we abide in Christ, we will be moral, but we're also going to do a lot of other amazing things with the power of the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 2.10 says that God has good works planned for us to do. So we're not just going to be chased. We're not going to be benevolent or nice or virtuous. Those are all nice, but that's what the world tells us we should do to people anyways.

Unless, of course, we can get something out of it. But we've got to keep moving on here before I get distracted with this, because I have just a little bit more material to cover, and I think I can do it in five seconds. Concerns when you're dealing with evangelism or discussing this with people. First of all, salvation is not by faith alone. We talked about that a little bit briefly.

They have those four things. They are really, really keen on saying, well, we believe that you have to have faith in Christ. It's just the same as what you're saying, you have to have faith in Christ. But then they tack everything else onto it. You've got to have more. There's got to be more than that.

Because if I can't see an outward sign of your salvation, how do I know? That's the big question, isn't it? How do I know? I've got to prove that you're saved to me. It's not between you and God. I've got to see it. So anyways, that's a concern. You're going to have to open your Bible for that to show them, but then they might just ignore it. But we'll get to that in just a second. The Bible's not an authority. The next one I've got here is burning in the bosom.

When they are saved, when they've completed all four steps and are wearing the right clothes and whatnot, They get what's called the burning in the bosom. It's an experience. It feels good. It's the warm fuzzies and that validates their salvation. You are saved in the Mormon Church and you know it because you had your experience. This means that when you come to somebody and you tell them, hey, I think you're smoking crack. Okay, you might not say that. I would, but you might not. And you come to them and you say, I disagree.

They say, but I had an experience that validates it. How do you argue against experience? Can you argue against experience? I think you can, but so many people in American culture are conditioned to validate things by experience. that it's very difficult. So you're going to want to evaluate the type of character of the person that's listening. If they default back to the experience argument, you're going to have a tough time swaying them because they have had their experience.

I've experienced all kinds of things in my life. I don't always use that to validate things. Do they differentiate this kind of burning in the bosom as being different in some way from what you would feel when you have a brand new baby, or somebody who graduates from college, or whatever? Yeah, it's definitely its own unique thing. They do? Oh yeah.

Well, see, the thing is that, having been in a charismatic church as a teenager, I had several experiences that fit in with the charismatic, Outlook, yeah, I'm like, what's a nice way to say that? Charismatic perspective. And I had those experiences, and I felt those completely validated my theological view, because I had had the experiences. I had felt the second baptism of the Holy Spirit in my life. Not only did I have the second baptism, I had like thirst force and You know, I kind of liked it, so I did it again and again. They were experiences. Did they line up with the doctrine laid out in Scripture? No. But that didn't matter because my experience validated it.

That's the problem. When you come in contact with these people, you're going to have to be willing to be persistent, to go back to Scripture, and don't let it get to be an emotional thing, because emotions are going to kill logic. Yes, art. Oh yeah, it's written in King James language because that's the English that God speaks. Apparently. But yeah, I mean, it is an interesting observation.

There's so much, I actually, my dad back when in high school wrote to the Smithsonian Institute because someone had said, hey, the Smithsonian Institute uses the Book of Mormon for archeological research. So my dad sent a letter to the Smithsonian Institute saying, hey, do you really do that? Because we were going to like bomb the Smithsonian. I didn't say that. I'm just kidding.

We weren't really going to do that, but we were really upset if that was the case. Oh my gosh, if this goes up on the internet, they're going to come in and take me out. We'll have to edit that out, I guess. They're listening to my phone conversations. And anyways, yeah, just kidding. The Smithsonian Institute, being a little bit more intellectually honest than that, sent a letter back to my dad and we've got a scanned in copy of it. I can email it to you if you're interested. actually saying, are you out of your mind? No, we don't do that. That's totally unreliable.

The Mormons have an answer to that, of course, though, and that is, how can you expect any archeological artifacts to last 1,500 years? There's no way they could last that long. I'm gonna ignore the fact that you can go and go to Jerusalem and see all of the things that are in Jerusalem that are archeologically still there intact, connecting to the biblical stories, or I can go to Jericho or all of those tells that we are finding archeologically in the Middle East that are lining up with scripture. You can't expect the artifacts to actually last that long. That'd be silly.

The last thing, because I said I'd go over it, and I'm going to have to stop there because we're running out of time, is replacement theology. And that is that the Mormon Church actually has taken over the place of Israel as we know it. Israel in the Old Testament carried on, and because the three different groups of Jewish people came over to the America and continents, back historically, and then the Nephite prophet Moroni left these texts, the Mormon Church has assumed the Israel nationality. Israel, the country that we know of, is a group of ethnic people, but the Mormons are the true Israel, because they have carried on the doctrine that was passed down to these people. So it's replacement theology. They have replaced Israel, as it was given in scripture, with Israel, the Mormon Church.

There are other churches that actually do that. The Catholic Church does that as well. They believe that they carry on the truth in the line of Israel, and Israel is displaced, and that's why in the Catholic Church the Muslims are going to heaven because they're descendants of Abraham from a different line, but the Jews are not, unless they come into Catholicism, because the Catholic Church has replaced Israel. Totally distracted there, sorry about that. So that's replacement theology. It's very dangerous because suddenly you have things that God promised to Israel being fulfilled in the Mormons.

Like we said, or he said here, that he's going to build his kingdom in the Americas. Right. I'm going, man, this is such a crummy place to build a kingdom. I mean, look at all the, Weird stuff we do, but anyways. That's a brief look at Mormonism. And man, there was so much material I had to cut out to get here. There's a last section here on progressive revelation.

I already talked about one of the issues. Joseph Smith initially prophesied the return of Christ. Didn't happen. Bummer. But he's still a good prophet, right? We'll take a look at some other things. Next week, I believe, we're going to be taking a look at Seventh-day Adventism. Adventism? which is all kinds of fun.