Truth in Religion - Mormonism
We had been invited to meet with two young Mormon missionaries. I was surprised that they insisted on being addressed as Elder, which started off the relationship in a strange way. I can only assume this was because they wanted to present an air of authority.
After pleasantries we began to talk about the importance of truth in spiritual matters. I explained that the last thing I wanted was to be conned as there are so many differing options in religious matters.
They asked if I had read the Book of Mormon and I was able to reply that I had and that it worried me. We then began to discuss the difficulties. Their response was surprising,
“Have you prayed about this?”
I wanted to reply with another question, but refrained from asking,
“Does prayer overcome factual difficulties and truth?”
When we started to discuss these they clearly became irritated, and they suddenly walked away, saying,
“There is no point in continuing this discussion.”
“Please stay. Doesn’t truth matter?”
But they didn’t look back! These are the issues I would like to have discussed.
Does Mormonism teach that a person has to believe in Joseph Smith as a prophet in order to be saved?
Brigham Young has written,
“I want you to tell them and tell all the great men on earth, that the Latter-Day Saints are to be their redeemer . . . Believe in God, believe in Jesus and believe in Joseph his prophet, and Brigham his successor, and I add, If you believe in your hearts and confess with your mouth Jesus is the Christ, that Joseph was a prophet, and Brigham is his successor, you shall be saved in the kingdom of God. . . No man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter the Celestial Kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith.”
This is in sharp distinction to the Bible’s teaching where commitment to Christ and Christ alone is the condition for salvation Peter told the Sanhedrin,
“Salvation is found in no-one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:12
The quote of Brigham Young is adapted from a passage written by Paul where the emphasis is on commitment to Christ alone as he is the only source of salvation.
“That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9
The apostle John similarly emphasised that Jesus is God and therefore it is only through commitment to Jesus that admission to God’s eternal kingdom will be granted.
“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning . . . He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him . . . Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” John 1:1-2,10-11
The obvious question is who is right? The reason the Bible emphasises faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is because of the claim that he is God incarnate. Jesus himself said,
“I am the way, and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. . . Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” John 14:6-7,9
Throughout history there have been people who have claimed to be prophets and who have added their name as the route to salvation to that of Jesus. Amongst these are Muhammad who founded Islam, Charles Taze Russell who founded what was to become the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Sun Myung Moon who founded the Moonies, Mary Ann Baker who founded Christian Science and Joseph Smith who founded Mormonism. It is strange that very few adherents to these religious groups are willing to debate the veracity of their founder’s claims.
Where is God’s authoritative revelation?
Mormons claim that they are the restoration of the church founded by Jesus and his apostles. The difficulty is that their teachings are so different to those of the apostles. The divinity of Jesus Christ is a major difference. The usual response is to claim that the Bible has been wrongly translated as the original documents have been changed or lost by the established churches. Thus the Book of Mormon states,
“. . . many parts which are plain and most precious; and also many covenants of the Lord have they taken away. And all this they have taken way. And all this they have done that they might pervert the right ways of the Lord.” 1 Nephi 3:26b-27
An early apostle of the Mormon Church, Orson Pratt, said,
“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?”
How different this is to the teaching of Christ’s apostles. These are just some passages on the authority of Scripture in the New Testament,
“All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17
“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:12
“I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the teachings, just as I passed them on to you.” 1 Corinthians 11:2
Paul goes even further. He says that to reject apostolic teaching given in the Bible is to reject God’s salvation.
“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again; If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!” Galatians 1:6-9
The writer of the Book of Hebrews adds weight to this. If God has not ensured that since the time of Jesus we have a reliable word from God, he has left the world without hope.
“In the past God spoke to our fathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” Hebrews 1:1-3
Fortunately there are literally thousands of very early manuscripts in many languages that show remarkable congruity. There is no evidence that the churches have tampered with early documents.
This is why these questions are so important and need to be widely addressed by all who have moved away from the apostolic faith. Their salvation is at risk.
Mormons are taught that the Book of Mormon is inspired by God.
“We also believe the Book of Mormon to be the Word of God.”
Of great concern is the discovery that most of the Mormons I have met have only a superficial knowledge of the Bible. They give lip service to the Bible’s authority but in practice it is not treated in the same way as the Book of Mormon. Even more important to many Mormons are the teachings of the head of their church, who is regarded as a ‘living prophet’. Ezra Taft Benson was president of the Council of Twelve Apostles said that the living prophet is
“. . . more vital to us than the standard works.”
Indeed to question what the leadership teaches is deemed to be heretical. Perhaps this is why it is so hard for practising Mormons to be open to discussion about their beliefs. They have been told,
“Any Latter-day Saint who denounces or opposes, whether actively or otherwise, any plan or doctrine advocated by the prophets, seers, and revelators of the church is cultivating the spirit of apostasy. . . Lucifer . . wins a great victory when he can get members of the church to speak against their leaders and to do their own thinking. . . . When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done. When they propose a plan – it is God’s plan. ~when they point the way, there is no other which is safe. When they give directions, it should mark the end of the controversy.”
This is a recipe for brainwashing as it means the teachings of a church cannot be tested. In Christianity the teaching of someone in authority should always be checked against biblical teaching. As Paul said to the Corinthian church that was being disturbed by false prophets,
“Do not go beyond what is written.” 1 Corinthians 4:6
Doctrines
Differences between the teachings of the Church of Latter Day Saints and the Bible are now stark. Mormons believe in many gods. Joseph Smith taught,
“In the beginning, the head of the Gods called a council of the Gods; and they came together and concocted a plan to create and populate the world and people it.”
“The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s”
Milton Hunter, a Mormon writer concluded,
“Mormon prophets have continuously taught the sublime truth that God, the Eternal Father was once a mortal man who passed through a school earth similar to that through which we are passing. He became God – an exalted being”
Jesus is not the unique Son of God but just a special human.
“His humanity is to be recognised as real and ordinary – whatever happened to him may happen to any one of us. The Divinity of Jesus and the Divinity of all other noble and stately souls, in so far as they, too, have been influenced by a spark of deity – can be recognised as manifestations of the Divine.”
In contrast the Bible teaches that God, the Word,
“ . . . became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. ” John 1:14
Mormons have rejected the Bible’s teaching of a judgment to come, with either heaven or hell as our fate. They are taught that there is a general salvation for all people with everybody going to one of three levels of glory. They are told that there is a celestial kingdom which is reserved for those described as the Melchizedeck priesthood and they will become Gods. There is also a second level terrestrial kingdom for those who fail to gain admission to the celestial kingdom, and finally a telestial kingdom which is the lowest division of glory reserved for those having no belief in Christ or the gospel.
The Bible teaches that there are only two possible destinations.
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him” John 3:36
Salvation, and the right to living eternally with God in heaven is only given by Christ to those who are committed to him and him alone.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves and, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no-one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:8-10
In the Bible everything depends on who Christ is, on what he won for us on the cross and on his ability to save people. It is only through commitment to Jesus that we can be given the status of being members of God’s kingdom and this allegiance cannot be shared. For example,
“Just as man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.” Hebrews 9:27-28
The Bible is clear what God expects all people to do. When Jesus was asked,
“’What must we do to do the works that God requires? Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’”
The context makes it clear that that person is himself. The Biblical concept of ‘belief in Jesus’ is nothing less that trusting him for the salvation he has won for us and hence committing ourselves to living as he wants. Obedience to Christ and him alone is the mark of true belief.
Problems with the Book of Mormon
Cross-checks
The authenticity of the Bible can be substantiated by cross checking with known facts. Thus when Luke describes Paul’s missionary journeys in the book of Acts he gives many details that can be checked from other writings and archaeology. When Paul writes about the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus he emphasises two ways that the facts can be checked.
“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.” 1 Corinthians 15:3-6
Clearly the Old Testament prophecies about the nature of God’s Messiah can be independently studied and the evidence of the many eye-witnesses questioned. The phrase, ‘most of whom are still alive’, must have been included as they can be questioned about their evidence. Questioning is not the enemy of truth but the way to substantiate truth.
This same approach can be used to check the claim that the Book of Mormon is inspired by God.
Changes in the Book of Mormon
Joseph Smith claimed that the Book of Mormon is ‘The most correct book on earth’. It was first published in 1830. Joseph Smith claimed that he had supernatural power from God so that he could accurately translate the plates recording the history of the Nephites. The accuracy of this translation was later confirmed in the book ‘Doctrine and Covenants’ that was published in 1831. Yet the recent edition of the Book of Mormon has made over 3000 changes. Thus, the original 1830 edition says,
“Behold the virgin which thou seest, is the Mother of God.” (p 25)
The modern version has,
“Behold the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God.” 1 Nephi 11:18
Similarly, the original version says,
“ . . . that the Lamb of God is the eternal Father and the Saviour of the world.”(p. 32)
This has been changed to,
“ . . . that the lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father . . .” 1 Nephi 13:10
Did Joseph Smith get it wrong or has the teaching subsequently changed?
Archeology
The Book of Mormon describes how a family of 15 to 20 people left Jerusalem in 600 BC to travel to the New World, where they arrived in 589 BC. They then started to build a temple like Solomon’s and this took 19 years. Such a feat by so few people, most of whom had to be children is not possible. Solomon’s temple required 153,000 workers and 30,000 overseers and even then that took seven and a half years. Needless to say there is no archaeological evidence whatsoever for this feat. It goes on to say that in less than 30 years they had multiplied so dramatically that they divided up into two nations.
Indeed there is no evidence that any of the ancient cites mentioned in the Book of Mormon ever existed. None of the names given in the Book of Mormon have been found in ancient New World inscriptions. No Hebrew inscriptions have been found supporting the claim that these early Jews travelled to the Americas and there is no evidence that anyone held Christians or Jewish beliefs in the ancient New World. . There are no inscriptions that in any way resemble the ‘reformed Egyptian’, the language that the Book was supposed to have been written in. No documents that in any way resemble the Book of Mormon have been found. This is all very embarrassing even for Mormon scholars.
Errors within the Book of Mormon
There are many other difficulties in accepting the reliability of the Book of Mormon. It contains many small errors. It states that river Laman empties into the Red Sea Yet at no time has there ever been a river in Arabia that enters into the Red Sea. It states that at the time of Jesus’ execution darkness covered the earth not just for three hours, as the Bible says, but for three days.
It states that believers were called Christians back in 73 BC whereas the first record of this word was when it was contemptuously given to the followers of the Lord Jesus in Antioch (Acts 11:26) It is hard to imagine how this title could have been used before Jesus was born!
One section, purporting to have been written in 6 BC specifically quotes John 5:29 introducing it with the words, ‘We read . . ‘. Yet John’s gospel was not written until at least 60 years later!
Although the Nephites were said to have left Israel in 600 BC to travel to the New World, they are able to quote from post-exilic Jewish prophets such as Malachi (around 435 BC) who lived many years later. The book of Daniel could only have been written after 539 BC yet the Book of Mormon includes the following that is so reminiscent of the stories of Shadrah, Meshack and Abednego in the fiery furnace and of Daniel in the lion’s den.
“And thrice they were cast into a furnace and received no harm. And twice they were cast into a den of wild beasts, and behold they did play with the beasts as a child with a suckling lamb, and received no harm.”
It also says that Alminadi,
“ . . . interpreted the writing which was upon the wall of the temple, which was written by the finger of God.”
This is so similar to the account of Daniel reading the writing on the wall at Belshazzars feast – and that was only in 539 BC!
Furthermore there are more that 400 word for word quotations from, or allusions to, events in the New Testament, so how could these be in the possession of the Nephites in 600BC.
Reformed Egyptian
Most interesting is the recently exposed fraud of the so-called Book of Abraham which is part of the Mormon Scripture known as ‘The Pearl of Great Price’. Josh McDowell gives the following account.
“This (The Book of Abraham) was assertedly translated from an ancient Egyptian papyrus found in the mummy wrappings of certain mummies which had been acquired by a certain Michael H Chandler.
In 1835 Joseph Smith became very much interested in these papyrus leaves which he first saw in Kirtland, Ohio, on July 3, and arranged for the purchase of both the mummies and the manuscripts. Believing he had divinely received the gift of interpreting ancient Egyptian, he was delighted to find that one of the rolls contained the writings of Abraham himself, whose signature he had personally inscribed in the Egyptian language.
In 1842, Smith published his translation under the title, ‘The Book of Abraham’ in ‘Times and Seasons’. He even included three drawings or vignettes appearing in the manuscript, and interpreted the meaning of these illustrations: Abraham sitting on the throne of Pharaoh, the serpent with walking legs who tempted Eve in Eden.
For many years this collection of papyri was lost, but somehow they (or else a duplicate set of them from ancient times) were presented to the Mormon Church by the Metropolitan Art Museum of New York city on November 27, 1967. This made the translation skill of Joseph Smith susceptible of objective verification.
The unhappy result is that earlier negative verdicts of scholars like Theodule Devaria of the Louvre, and Samuel A B Mercer of Western Theological Seminary, and James A Breasted of the University of Chicago, and W F Flinders Petyrie of London University (who had all been shown Smith’s facsimiles) were clearly upheld by a multitude of present day Egyptologists.
Their finding was that not a single word of Joseph Smith’s alleged translation bore any resemblance to the contents of this document. It turned out to be a late, even Ptolemeic, copy of hieratic script of the Sensen Papyrus, which belongs to the same genre as the Egyptian Book of the Dead.”
This is very similar to the origin of the Book of Mormon. The story goes that in 1823 Joseph Smith had an angel visitor, Moroni by name, who revealed to him that several golden plates had been hidden on a hill called Cumorah, near Palmyra, New York in AD 420. On these was inscribed the history of the Nephites who left Jerusalem in 600 BC to come to America. Young Joseph went to the spot and found the plates and a large pair of spectacles – Urim and Thumin he called them - by the aid of which he was later able to decipher and translate into English the mystic hieroglyphics which he claimed were in Reformed Egyptian. A copy of what purported to be on the plates was shown to Professor Charles Anthon, a noted linguist who made the following comment,
“A very brief investigation convinced me that it was a mere hoax, and a very clumsy one too. The characters were arranged in columns like the Chinese mode of writing, and presented the most singular medley I have ever beheld. Greek, Hebrew, and all sorts of letters more or less distorted, either through unskilfulness or from actual design, were intermingled with sundry delineations of half moons, stars and other natural objects, and the whole ended up in a rude representation of the Mexican zodiac.”
Reformed Egyptian is completely unknown to Egyptologists.
Eyeglasses
Eyeglasses, which were said to have been buried with the golden plates in 420 BC, had not been invented till much later. The earliest eyeglasses were made in Italy at about 1286, over 860 years later. The first record of eyeglasses that we know of was made in a sermon delivered on February 23, 1306, by the Dominican friar Giordano da Pisa (ca. 1255–1311). He said,
"It is not yet twenty years since there was found the art of making eyeglasses, which make for good vision...And it is so short a time that this new art, never before extant, was discovered.”
Everything Jesus did was done publicly in the presence of witnesses who could verify the truth about all he did. Why were neither the golden tablets nor the spectacles shown so that that story could be verified?
A Precursor - ‘The Manuscript Found’
It is now known that a Presbyterian preacher, Solomon Spaulding, had written an imaginary history of the people who inhabited America in the early days which he called ‘The Manuscript Found’. He left the draft of this book with a printer called Patterson in Pittsburgh but it was not accepted for publication. The author died two years later. An unfrocked Baptist minister, Sidney Rigdon, a friend of Joseph Smith, came across the document and it was soon after this that Joseph Smith published his story about an early people coming to the Americas, called the Nephites.
Red Indians
Joseph Smith refered to native people in the United States, the Red Indians, as being the "Lamanites". He reported that when the golden plates were revealed to him in New York, the angel told him that the plates contained "an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang." Brigham Young and other 19th-century church leaders also equated Lamanites with native Red Indians. In 1971 a Lamanite Youth Conference was told,
"With pride I tell those who come to my office that a Lamanite is a descendant of one Lehi who left Jerusalem six hundred years before Christ and with his family crossed the mighty deep and landed in America. And Lehi and his family became the ancestors of all of the Indian and Mestizo tribes in North and South and Central America and in the islands of the sea".
Ted E. Brewerton, a Mormon authority , said in 1995,
"Many migratory groups came to the Americas, but none was as important as the three mentioned in the Book of Mormon. The blood of these people flows in the veins of the Blackfoot and the Blood Indians of Alberta, Canada; in the Navajo and the Apache of the American Southwest; the Inca of western South America; the Aztec of Mexico; the Maya of Guatemala; and in other native American groups in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific islands".
An introductory paragraph added to the official 1981 edition of the Book of Mormon stated,
"After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians."
In a 2006 edition, the statement was altered to indicate that,
"the Lamanites ... are among the ancestors of the American Indians."
Genetic studies have now been performed on a large number of descendants of native Red Indians and these have not shown any of the genetic markers seen in people with Jewish ancestry. Red Indians are now known to be descendants of Asians and there is no genetic evidence of Middle Eastern origins.
Polygamy
Why was polygamy accepted by the leaders of the early Mormon church when it is clearly contrary to Scripture? It was only officially abandoned in 1889 when state laws prohibited it, but it has still been sporadically practised subsequently. Joseph Smith is quoted in the 1994 edition of ‘Doctrine and Covenants’,
“If any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have bowed to no other man, then he is justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given to him; for he cannot commit adultery with that which belongeth unto him and unto no-one else. If he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore he is justified.”
Brigham Young, Joseph Smith’s successor was even more forthright,
“Now if any of you deny the plurality of wives and continue to do so, I promise you that you will be damned; and I will go further and say, take this revelation, or any other revelation that the lord has given, and deny it in your feelings, and I promise that you will be damned.”
This brings us back to the question of ultimate authority. On the question of polygamy the Bible is clear,
“He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray.” Deuteronomy 17:17
“Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife . . .” 1 Timothy 3:2
“A deacon must be the husband of but one wife . . .” 1 Timothy 3:12
“An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife . . .” Titus 1:6
The Source of God’s Truth
Does the authority of God lie in the proclamations of the leaders of the Mormon church or with any other religious leaders or does it, as Jesus and his apostles claimed, lie in Scripture. When Paul wrote to the troubled church at Corinth he recognised that they faced the very same issue as many people face today. Pseudo –apostles had infiltrated into the leadership of the church who felt that God was speaking through them yet what they taught was not in accord with the word of God. He wrote,
“Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command. If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored.” 1 Corinthians 14:36
These are vital questions that must be addressed. Jesus says that we must hold and live by the gospel that he gave to his apostles as he alone is the Saviour of the world. This good news is timeless and doesn’t need to be updated; it is the only gospel by which men and women can be saved. Paul continues,
“Now brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I have preached to you. Otherwise you have believed in vain.” 1 Corinthians 15:1-2
True faith is not blind, it is not a leap in the dark, it is always based on evidence, both objective and subjective. Shouldn’t facts trump feelings? The Bible is clear that religion can be false even if miracles are demonstrated. Salvation depends on our being lovers of the truth. Jesus said that truth is embodied in himself. When people reject the prime authority of God’s Son that is revealed in God’s word they offend the one true God himself. They are then open to all sorts of actions that also displease God. The deceiver is all around us. Paul wrote,
“The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.” 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12
Many members of the Church of Latter Day Saints are pleasant, moral people. They are sincerely religious but their religion does not save them. Only the Lord Jesus can do that. It is therefore a heinous thing for religious leaders to put themselves above Jesus Christ and above his Scriptures.
BVP
April 2015
