10 Common Mistakes Made When Reading the Bible Part 5

Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. Hoping you're having a very pleasant Friday, welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. Today we wrap up our look at an article that Eric has written, an article titled Ten Common Mistakes Latter-day Saints Make When Reading the Bible.

And if you're new to this series, I have mentioned in the past that this is not only a good lesson for professing Christians to learn, but it's also of course good for Latter-day Saints. But if we are going to understand the Bible accurately, there are some rules that we need to follow in order to come to that conclusion. So today we're going to be looking at point number nine and ten in Eric's article.

But before I go there, Eric, where can people find this on our website? So, point number nine, making a verse say something that the speaker or author never intended to say. I think we've touched on that in a previous broadcast this week, that it's very important to try as best we can to understand what the author was intending to say, not what we think we need to hear. We need to know, for instance, what did Paul mean when he wrote dot dot dot?

Or what did James mean when he wrote James dot dot dot? We start off in this section, Eric, by saying perhaps a verse we hear on the streets more than any other is Matthew 7-1, where Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, quote, judge not that ye be not judged. You say this verse is often cited when someone doesn't like an evangelist, or we could even say just your average Christian acquaintance, passing out tracks or witnessing saying that nobody should judge.

How many times have we been standing outside, let's say the LDS temple in Salt Lake City, and they say, why are you here? And you say, well, I'm just trying to share the good news. And they said, well, you shouldn't judge. Well, what's a good reaction if somebody states that to you, you shouldn't judge. Well, the problem with that is it's self refuting because in saying that you've made a judgment call. And I think that's lost on not just Latter-day Saints.

I think it's lost on a lot of people who are not well versed in what logical fallacies are all about. This is why we sometimes get emails from upset Latter-day Saints telling us that we are not acting like a Christian because we're judging. And my response many times has been very simply, well, then why did you write me? Because what you wrote is a judgment against me.

You're saying I'm not being a Christian because I've done such and such. That's a judgment. And I think we need to point this out as delicately as we can. Sometimes keeping your answers very short, allowing them to think it through can be very helpful.

But let's be serious. A lot of people don't catch hints very well. And sometimes you have to spell it out for them. And sometimes by explaining that what you just did was a judgment against me, but yet you said you shouldn't judge. Do you see a problem with what you said? And I think the question you're using here is asking, why are you judging me? I think that's a simple way when they say you shouldn't judge. So why are you judging me?

And I think we get this from Greg Kochel in his book Tactics, an excellent book if you want to learn how to witness and dealing with showing that the emperor has no clothes. What I have had Latter-day Saints tell me is they'll say, well, I'm not judging you. I'll say, okay, so what are you doing? Well, I'm just saying what you're doing is wrong. Well, isn't that a judgment call?

Of course it is. And so really the accusation is a backfire and it goes back into their face. And I have had Mormons just shaking their heads and finally say, I don't know how I can express it.

I just know what you're doing is wrong, but I can't explain it. I say, well, if it can't be explained, then it must not be very logical. And it must not be what Matthew 7, 1 is talking about. Can you agree though, Eric, that it really boils down to the Latter-day Saint not liking what we've said. We could be citing their own material and I've had Latter-day Saints dislike me citing their own material. But the reason I'm doing it is because I assume, and I think correctly that they should respect what I have just cited to them. If it's a quote from their current prophet or a current apostle or from a source that they should respect their own scriptures, whether it's the Book of Mormon or the Doctrine and Covenants or Pearl of Great Price, quoting their own material, I find, gets us much further down the road in the conversation than, let's say, citing someone who might be a Christian critic of Mormonism.

And I can't even recall when I've ever done something like that because I know it's not quite as effective. And I want to use my words as effectively as I can in the shortest amount of time, because I don't know how much time I'm going to have with this individual. People tend to get weary when you bring up things that make them uncomfortable. And so we should keep that in mind when we're talking to them. The Bible is very clear about judging. John 7, 24, Jesus says, judge according to righteous judgment. So there are times we have to make a righteous judgment. Paul said the Christian is responsible to judge those in the church in 1 Corinthians 5 and chapter 6. Your intentions are important.

I mean, you can go around and point fingers. Jesus talks about that as well, because if you have a log in your eye and you're pointing out somebody else's splinter, then you need to look at yourself in the mirror and say, I have some things to change. But John writes in one of our favorite verses, Bill, 1 John 4, 1, it says that we're supposed to do what?

We're supposed to test the spirits because many false prophets have gone out into the world. And so for us to take a look at what other people have to say and say, no, this is not right, according to what the Bible is saying, if I'm wrong, then go ahead and show me that. But just to try to get out of the situation by saying, well, you shouldn't tell me I'm wrong. Well, tell me why I am wrong.

And I think we can go somewhere with that. But then they just say you were wrong and saying they were wrong. See, that's the problem. Point number 10, and we'll wrap it up here. Confusing terms given to mean something completely different. Now, I think this would come under the category of equivocation. Why don't you explain what you mean by that when you cite 1 Corinthians 15, 40 through 41. Yeah, let me quote those verses. Paul writes, there are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial but the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars.

For one star differth from another star in glory. Bill, you had this verse used on you one time in a witnessing encounter where a woman opened up her Bible and read those verses to support the three kingdoms of glory. What was your response? It was an interesting encounter.

I think I have talked about it on the air before, but I remember having this very good conversation with this LDS woman and she was trying to defend to me this concept of three degrees of glory, as you just mentioned, the celestial, terrestrial and telestial kingdom. So I asked her if she could prove what she believed from the Bible and she felt very confident that she could. So she opens up her Bible to 1 Corinthians 15, 40, and she starts reading it.

I'll never forget this. She closed her Bible very softly and looked at me with this smile on her face like, see what I just did. I asked her, I says, I don't recall you mentioning telestial in that list. She opened up her Bible again and started looking and she looked up at me and she said, it's not there.

I says, no, it's not. Telestial really folks is a word that Joseph Smith made up and it seems pretty easy how he came up with that. He just takes terrestrial and celestial and combines the two together as I think he did in many cases when it comes to names in the Book of Mormon, but it's not in the Bible. It's not something that Christians have believed.

In the article, I continue on and I say there are several problems. One, if this is supposed to be a rundown of the three kingdoms of glory, then what happened to the telestial kingdom, which is lowest of Mormonism's three kingdoms? There are in fact only two bodies listed here, as you mentioned, and just like 1 Corinthians 15, 29 that we talked about, we must understand the context of 1 Corinthians 15. And Norm Geisler and Ron Rhodes, I think do a good job of explaining this when they write the context of the passage very clearly has to do with resurrection bodies.

See verse 35. Paul in this verse is talking about the heavenly, the celestial body, as opposed to the earthly or the terrestrial body. He says the earthly body has fallen temporal and perfect and weak while the heavenly body will be eternal, perfect and powerful. So there is a reason why he doesn't mention celestial because he's not talking about comparing three things.

He's talking about the human body and the physical body we have, but we're going to have a celestial body someday. And that's what the Christian calls glorification of the body. That's the whole purpose of 1 Corinthians 15. If you don't understand 1 Corinthians 15, that's how you're going to make mistakes like the three kingdoms of glory and baptism for the dead. And we might mention that quote that you gave from Norm Geisler and Ron Rhodes can be found in their book When Cultists Ask, and that's on page 239.

How do we wrap this up, Eric? Because I think this subject, as I mentioned, I think in every previous show, is important for us as Christian believers, just as important as it is for our Latter-day Saint friends and acquaintances, that if we are going to read the Bible, we have to follow certain rules. You mentioned earlier in one of the broadcasts that we call this hermeneutics. There are rules that we must use if we hope to understand as best we can. And I've got to admit, folks, sometimes it's hard because we're talking about a document that is several hundred years old, coming from a culture that I personally am not acquainted with. I have to educate myself on this culture because I was not raised in that culture. And plus we're dealing with other languages, and that can make it even more difficult.

So I will admit, sometimes it can be a little hard. Well, it can be hard as well if you're sticking to the King James Version of the Bible. The version that the Latter-day Saints use comes from 1769.

That's over 200 years where you have different words used, words that we would understand one way are used in a different way there. So I'm going to recommend, if you're a Latter-day Saint, I know that the official version is the King James Version, but if you want to just do yourself a favor and do your devotions, try a version such as the English Standard Version, such as the New International Version or the New American Standard Version. There are many good English versions out there. You can go to BibleGateway.com and for free read from these different versions. Compare it to what the King James says. You might see some things in there that you didn't see before because it's in a modern language that's more understandable for the 21st century.

Try it out. Read the book of John. Read the book of Romans and see if what you're reading is the same as what you understood the King James to be. As I've said many times on this show, I cut my teeth in my early years of Christianity on the King James Version, and so a lot of the thes and thes and oh wows don't have the same effect on me as it may have on someone else who was not used to that. One of the reasons why I personally feel that the LDS Church is going to be very slow, if they ever do it at all, to get away from the King James is because I personally, Eric, I don't think the LDS leadership really want their people to actively read and understand what the Bible has to say. And why do I say that, folks? Because I'm not denying that they do studies in the Bible. I'm not saying they don't. But I think once an individual Latter-day Saint has a genuine hunger for the Word of God, wants to read it and understand it, they're going to quickly see Mormon doctrine can't be supported from the Bible.