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.
Has our Bible been mutilated, changed, and corrupted? 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 Aaron Shafowaloff, my colleague at MRM. This week we've been looking at a document that came out towards the turn of the 20th century.
It actually came out in 1897. It was titled, Ten Reasons Why Christians Cannot Fellowship the Mormon Church. And this statement listed, as it says, ten reasons that were very problematic with the churches in Utah at that time.
This statement was circulated among a lot of the Christian denominations within the state of Utah. It was published in a number of different ways and was even printed in the church-owned Deseret News, which still puzzles me why they would do that. I can't even imagine the Deseret News printing something like this today. They even stopped allowing us to get our temple newspapers printed by the Deseret News.
A lot of people don't know. We had Deseret News publish our handout that we use at temple openings. When we needed a reprinting, they refused us, which, okay, it's their publishing house.
They can do whatever they want with it. They put the Book of Doctrine and Covenants on a par with the Bible. In my experience, and from what I've read, they put those books above the Bible because the Bible is the only scripture that the LDS Church accepts with qualification. And I was mentioning Article 8 yesterday that says that we believe the Bible to be the Word of God as far as it is translated correctly. They don't say that about the Book of Mormon, even though there's been a number of Book of Mormon translations into the Bible.
They don't go back to other languages, which of course can only go back to the English. They can't go back to the Reformed Egyptian, which was allegedly on the gold plates because we don't have the gold plates. In this accusation, they listed a number of proofs, and we were talking about some of these proofs, such as this catechism, another one that we kind of went over only because it was just a reference. It's called Lectures on the Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon, and it's just the title of, say, the chapter or the work without any specific quotations from the work. Everywhere else, they've given a quotation and then a reference. Here's just a reference, and I thought, why would they just list the reference? Bill, who's this by, and why do you think they just made a passing reference to the entire work? I think the reason why they felt it only necessary to list the work is because the entire work seems to prove the point that they're trying to make. Orson Pratt, who was a Mormon apostle at the time, is the one who wrote the Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon. And I want to read just a portion from it, and you'll get the gist of probably why they only felt to list the reference.
This is what Pratt said, and this is found on page 47 of this particular work. What shall we say then concerning the Bibles being a sufficient guide? Can we rely upon it in its present known corrupted state as being a faithful record of God's word? We all know that but a few of the inspired writings have descended to our times, which few quote the names of some 20 other books which are lost, and it is quite certain that there were many other inspired books that even the names have not reached us. What few have come down to our day have been mutilated, changed, and corrupted in such a shameful manner that no two manuscripts agree. Verses and even whole chapters have been added by unknown persons, and even we do not know the authors of some whole books, and we are not certain that all those which we do know were written by inspiration. Pratt goes on to say, add all this imperfection to the uncertainty of the translation, and who in his right mind could for one moment suppose the Bible in its present form to be a perfect guide? 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?
Offhand, my response to that statement alone would be, if Orson Pratt would only take a good course in textual criticism, every one of those objections could be answered. And so the question here is, were the Presbyterians reasonable to make reference to this in supporting the notion that the LDS church has so far gone on their view of the Bible from that of Christians that we cannot fellowship with them? I think this is reasonable because someone like Orson Pratt is having an incredible influence on LDS culture, and it even in the time of this statement reflects an attitude that many Mormons have about the Bible being severely corrupted. And we still see that attitude among many Latter-day Saints today. I had a conversation in front of the BYU stadium during an evangelistic encounter where we walked through some passages in the book of Isaiah about the nature of God, and she fell back on, well, that seems to contradict other passages in the Bible, and I think that the passages you've just given me perhaps were subject to corruption through something like the telephone game.
Wow. Now point number three in the 10 reasons why Christians cannot fellowship the Mormon church has to do with Joseph Smith himself, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Point number three says this, and it's very short. The Mormon church makes belief in the person and mission of Joseph Smith as a prophet of God, an essential article of faith, so essential that the person who rejects the claims of, quote, the modern prophet is a rank heretic. Would you say that that's basically a true statement today, or would you reword it? Well, you're not allowed to join the LDS church unless you have a testimony of Joseph Smith being a prophet, so they won't let you join the only true church on earth, so-called, unless you affirm the prophetic identity of Joseph Smith. I think the question here is, were there Latter-day Saints statements at this time which were speaking to the nature of the movements rejecting the validity of Joseph Smith? What I would say, though, is that the very idea of heresy itself in modern Mormonism is hard to see clearly played out. I don't think modern Mormons have a very robust view of heresy.
They tend to think that if you reject all of the claims of Mormonism, you should still stay on the rolls and still participate in their services, whereas evangelicals are more sensitive to the idea that if someone rejects the fundamentals of the faith, their salvation is in danger, and they ought to reflect that by not being on the formal membership rolls. It's interesting, there was an article in the Chicago Tribune that came out on July 29, 2005, titled Mormons Revisit Sacred Place, and the quotation that was used in that article says, If Joseph Smith and his mission are true, then the Church has everything. If it is not true, we become a fraud. And that seems to go along with what Gordon B. Hinckley said regarding the First Vision. If the First Vision did not take place, as Joseph Smith claimed, then the Church is engaged in blasphemy. And then you have Jeffrey Holland that said basically the same thing about the Book of Mormon, so you can see how the standards are so high. Well, you figure the First Vision, the Book of Mormon, it all goes back to Joseph Smith. You have to really believe that Joseph Smith was in fact a prophet, because that gives legitimacy to the Book of Mormon, for instance, and the whole Church. If he's not a prophet, then obviously the Church can't be true. One of the proofs that they list here is a statement from Doctrine and Covenants, section 28, verse 2, But behold, verily, verily, I say unto thee, No one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church, excepting my servant Joseph Smith, Jr., for he receiveth them even as Moses. You have to understand a little bit of Mormon history behind a statement such as this. There were others in the Church, some that were in leadership positions that were having their own revelations, and some of them were conflicting with Joseph Smith. So he had to come out and say, look, hey, from now on, you guys aren't allowed to have these kind of revelations.
God is going to only speak through me. And that's how he shut them down, because that would cause a lot of confusion when, even though the Church tells its membership, you're all subject to having personal revelation. But your revelations don't supersede the position you have, such as if you're a husband in your family, then your revelations deal with you and your family. They do not have anything to do with the bishop or the stake president or certainly not the apostles and the prophet. He goes on to cite and say, The next reference we have, quote, Joseph Smith is a new witness for God, a prophet divinely authorized to teach the gospel and reestablish the Church of Jesus Christ on earth. That's from New Witness for God by B.H.
Roberts. Point number three says, Which is the greatest dispensation? Answer, the dispensation of the fullness of times opened through Joseph Smith. And this is referring to catechism.
Chapter 18, question number four. Let's pause there and think about the nature of this claim. In the New Testament, we have statements like Hebrews 1-1, which says, Point number four is a statement by Brigham Young. It's found in the Journal of Discourses Volume One, page 81, where Brigham Young says, I will ask them, speaking of faithful saints, if Joseph lived and died a prophet of God, and what would they answer?
All men and women know by the power of the Holy Ghost, by the Spirit, they know it. I think maybe that might be another jab at perhaps some of those who were witnesses to the Book of Mormon, such as Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer, who struggled with Joseph Smith's prophethood towards the end. They still maintain, they say, a belief in the Book of Mormon, but struggled with Joseph Smith being a true prophet.
They felt that he was a fallen prophet in many regards. And then there's point number five, which is also a statement by Brigham Young that's found in the Millennial Star Volume Five, page 118. It reads, every spirit that confesses that Joseph Smith is a prophet, that he lived and died a prophet, and that the Book of Mormon is true, is of God, and every spirit that does not is of Antichrist. Now, you started to say Jesus when you went to quote that, because it sounds very similar to a New Testament passage, because that's exactly what the New Testament is saying, only instead of the name Joseph Smith, it has the name of Jesus in there. Yeah, I had 1 John in the back of my head, my brain's thinking, oh, you're just quoting from 1 John.
They've basically replaced the word Jesus there with Joseph. And as it troubled the Christians in that era, when they wrote this, Ten Reasons Why Christians Cannot Fellowship the Mormon Church, that should bother us today when they do that, when they put Joseph Smith's name in where Jesus's name should be. Tomorrow we're going to look at point number four, dealing with the priesthood found in the statement Ten Reasons Why Christians Cannot Fellowship the Mormon Church. Thank you for listening. If you would like more information regarding Mormonism Research Ministry, we encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org, where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism.
