Core Beliefs and Doctrines Part 3

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. So glad you could be with us for 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. What are the core beliefs and doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? We've been discussing this for the past few days, and we're getting a lot of our information from an article. It's a PDF version of an article found on the official website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Church of Jesus Christ dot org.

And the question we've been asking is if you were interested in joining the LDS Church, let's say you had a conversation with some Mormon missionaries or perhaps your neighbor, and you were intrigued by some of the things that they said, and they encourage you to go to their official website and look up what the Church believes. And let's say you went to the search box on their official site and you typed in basic beliefs or core beliefs. You would see a number of links that go to articles that talk about some of the basic beliefs. And if you looked at them, you would notice many of them are very vague. A lot of the descriptions are put within a paragraph or two. It's not to say that there are not other articles that go much deeper into individual topics, but how would you know where to find those articles that go deeper?

Most people probably wouldn't know where to look. So we're looking at this one paper called Core Beliefs and Doctrines. We've looked at the nature of God and we've talked a little bit about modern prophets and continuing revelation, but we also were looking at the subheading Christian. As it starts off, it says the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a Christian church, but is neither Catholic nor Protestant. And in yesterday's show, I read a portion from a book written by 15th president Gordon B. Hinckley titled One of the Mormons, where he makes it very clear that the theology of the LDS church is not in many regards the same theology that you find in other traditional Christian faiths. But it goes on in this section to say that Latter-day Saints believe God sent his son Jesus Christ to save all mankind from death and their individual sins. Now Eric, based on your understanding of Christian theology, how would you interpret that sentence at face value?

What is it saying to you? It seems like everybody who is ever born is going to have their sins forgiven. It sounds like that to me, but is that what the LDS church really believes?

No, of course it doesn't. In fact, all you need do is look to the second column in this article to show that there is a clarification when it comes to that. It's under the heading, Baptism and Confirmation. It says, Baptism into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints requires full immersion in water by a person who holds the priesthood authority to baptize. It is the means by which people join the church. Those who are baptized into the church are cleansed of their previous sins and promise to live the principles of the gospel.

Now you notice there is a qualification there. If you want to be cleansed of your sins, your previous sins, you must not only be baptized by someone who has priesthood authority in the LDS church, but you must also promise to live the principles of the gospel. So we see by that statement, works are definitely involved. Well, technically you could say baptism in water is a work, it's something that you have to do. It would be considered, I would assume, a righteous work, but then Titus 3.5 says we're not saved by righteous works, we're saved by the mercy that is given to us by Jesus himself. I think it's important too to notice it says promise to live the principles of the gospel, but if you look at LDS scripture and the LDS leadership, it's not just a promise to live, but it's actually accomplishing that by living the principles of the gospel.

That's an excellent point. A mere desire to want to keep all the commandments and to adequately repent of all your sins in the context of Mormonism, which is of course, confessing your sins and then abandoning those sins, never to repeat those sins again. That's how it's been described by Mormon leaders.

It's not just merely, oh Lord, forgive me of all my sins I did today. It has to be a little bit deeper than that in the context of Mormonism. But getting back to this phrase, Eric, when it says to save all mankind from death and their individual sins, that would certainly be what we call the doctrine of universalism. Now we wouldn't say in our understanding of the theology of the LDS church that they hold to a traditional understanding of universalism, even though that sentence seems to imply it does. I would say probably most Latter-day Saints would question that sentence. If we were to dig into it a little bit deeper with them, they would have to agree, yeah, you're right.

Not everyone is going to be saved in the true sense because of what Jesus came and did for mankind. But if that's the way it is, why does it read this way? Who wrote these things? That's the question I often ask.

Who writes a lot of these articles that we find on their official website? Because many of them are very confusing. And if this is where we're going to go to get a basic understanding of what our LDS friends and acquaintances believe, help us out LDS church.

Be a little more clear on this because this is not clear. But even though I've said that, this other article titled Core Beliefs, which is found at the newsroom website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it states here that while respecting the divergent views of other people of faith, church leaders want to be clear about the beliefs that help define Latter-day Saints. And I almost find that kind of laughable because neither does this article titled Core Beliefs give you all that much clarity, but the one we've been looking at here, Core Beliefs and Doctrines, does not give you all that much clarity. We wrote a book called Mormonism 101.

We first wrote that in 2000 and later we published it in 2015 with Baker Books. And our purpose was to show what Mormonism teaches. We go to the standard works and to the leadership and the correlated curriculum to explain what they believe, and then also to show what Christianity believes. Our biggest criticism that we have received from LDS critics is that we're not capable of being able to explain Mormon beliefs. You ought to go to them to be able to explain, but here you're saying you go to their website, you're trying to understand this, and the core beliefs are not well laid out and understood.

It's very nebulous, and so you have to kind of figure it out on your own. And I think I would probably agree with any Latter-day Saint that says, well, if you want to understand what we believe, you should go to our sources. You'll notice, folks, on this show, that's what we do. We are often citing LDS sources. We've been doing it clearly in this series for the past three shows, going right to what their website says on these very important teachings.

But then it goes on in that same paragraph, Eric, under Christian. It says, the only way to salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ. The only way to salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ. Now, I'm not taking away the teaching from the LDS church that you have to have faith in Jesus Christ to be truly saved. But at the same time, folks, you don't have to have any faith in Jesus Christ, according to Mormonism, if you end up in a lower heaven, such as the terrestrial or telestial kingdom. You don't have to have any faith in Christ at all to ultimately end up there. Now, they might argue that by the time you're sent there, you probably will have some understanding that there exists a Jesus because of the judgment that you're going to face.

But up until that time, that's not necessary. You can be an atheist and end up in the terrestrial kingdom. You can be an atheist and end up in the telestial kingdom.

But at the same time, you could be a member of the LDS church and end up in the terrestrial kingdom. Probably not so likely in the telestial, but definitely the terrestrial, because according to Joseph Fielding Smith, who was the 10th president of the church in his book, Doctrines of Salvation, 215, and bear in mind when I read this, keep in mind what this section said, Latter-day Saints believe God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to save all mankind from death and their individual sins. Yet Joseph Fielding Smith said, not half the Latter-day Saints to be saved.

Well, that doesn't make me feel very encouraged, does it? Because if not half the Latter-day Saints are going to be saved, according to the 10th president of the church, how am I supposed to believe that Jesus came to save all mankind from death and their individual sins? But yet, as I said, when you look across the page, the only way your sins are going to be cleansed is if you're baptized by someone with authority in the church. They must have the proper priesthood authority to baptize. And when you are baptized into the church, it says that you are cleansed of your previous sins, but you must promise to live the principles of the gospel.

Now notice, you have to be baptized by someone with authority in the LDS church, which means you're basically joining the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So when it says the only way to salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ, based on what we read in the second column, we are not included in that. Because even though we may have faith in Jesus Christ, and we do, we have the faith that Jesus paid for our sins, and by our faith in what he did on our behalf, we will not face the penalty of our sins.

They are forgiven. There is a section following that called Plan of Salvation, and this is what it says in part. Latter-day Saint Scripture teaches that all human beings are children of God and lived with him before this earth life. God presented a plan by which we could obtain physical bodies and a period of earthly experience. It goes on and says, while our bodies remain on the earth, our spirits will reside in a state of rest or in a state of learning until the resurrection and judgment, when all will be judged by a perfectly merciful and just God. We will inherit a place in a realm of glory corresponding to our faithfulness. While all human beings will receive the gift of eternal life or an eternal union of the body and spirit, God desires for us to live in such a way that we also receive the gift of exaltation, eternal life with our families in God's presence. And we should add that that is really what most faithful Latter-day Saints are looking forward to.

They are looking forward to being exalted and being with their families. And it says in God's presence. Now, this even becomes confusing because according to Mormonism, our Heavenly Father, they would say, because of his righteousness as a mortal human at one time, which I don't think it talks about how God was once a man in this paper. So if you were wanting to understand what Mormons believe regarding God, that would be something you would be completely ignorant of.

But they would say that it was through his good works that he eventually inherited his own world. That's what most Latter-day Saints are looking forward to, even though it really doesn't talk about this in this paper. But when it says that you, we are to receive the gift of exaltation, well, what do you have to do in order to get the gift of exaltation according to Mormonism? Well, Mormon leaders have been very clear about that.

What have some of them said, Eric? You mentioned Joseph Fielding Smith. He wrote this in the Way of Perfection, page 206, to enter the celestial and obtain exaltation. It is necessary that the whole law be kept. The word of the Lord is that they of the celestial world are those sanctified from all unrighteousness. So even though it says that Jesus came to save all of mankind, and even though it says the only way to salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ, it seems like there are a lot of other things that are absolutely essential if an individual hopes to seek that salvation. Once again, as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism.