10 Reasons Why We Cannot Fellowship with the Mormon Church Part 4

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 Aaron Shafowaloff, my colleague at MRM. Aaron and I have been discussing a statement that was made towards the end of the 19th century by a Presbyterian group in the state of Utah.

This statement was reprinted probably in a number of different formats. It's called 10 Reasons Why Christians Cannot Fellowship the Mormon Church. Today we're going to look at point number four that deals with the Mormon view of the priesthood. The Mormon Church makes faith in the Mormon priesthood and submission to the same essential to man's future blessedness, and unbelief in this priesthood is a damning sin. It teaches that authority to officiate in the gospel is vested only in the said priesthood, that this priesthood is the infallible and the only medium between God and man, that it is invested with the very power of God himself, so that when it acts and speaks, it is in the most real sense God who acts and speaks, and that all who refuse to submit to this priestly power are damned. I would tend to agree that a lot of these statements, most Latter-day Saints probably would not really have a problem with them, but when it says at the end, all who refuse to submit to this priestly power are damned, well that has to be a true statement, because damnation, according to how it's been defined by Mormon leaders, is ending up in anything lower than the highest of the three levels in the celestial kingdom. Even the second and third level in the celestial kingdom has been described as damnation, at least by Bruce McConkie, a Mormon apostle. Yeah, that would put you outside of the locale of your immediate family, if they were sealed, if they're exalted.

It would put you away from the community of the exalted gods, it would get you away from the fellowship of Jesus Christ and the Father, you would be away from the presence of God. What was the first proof that they listed in this? They quote B.H. Roberts, which is notable because the rebuttal we'll be looking at is by B.H.

Roberts. It's from his New Witness for God, it reads, Men who hold the priesthood possess divine authority thus to act for God, and by possessing part of God's power they are in reality part of God. Men who honor the priesthood in them honor God, and those who reject it reject God.

Now that's quite a statement in and of itself. Men who honor the priesthood in them honor God, and those who reject it reject God. So you can see the serious nature of this doctrine within the context of Mormonism.

Priesthood is absolutely essential. I have to admit, I do take a little bit of an issue with the reference that they give for point number two. Remember that subject matter is the priesthood, and in point number two, it's citing from Orson Pratt's works, paper number one. Paper number one is titled Divine Authority, or Was Joseph Smith Scent of God? The quotation that they use as a proof is at the bottom of page one, He that rejects it will be damned. The problem is when you look at the context of where that statement is found, I don't think it's really referring to priesthood specifically. It's actually, in my opinion, referring to the message that Joseph Smith brought forth, and here's why I say that. Prior to that quotation, He that rejects it will be damned, it says, opinions, creeds, invented by uninspired men, and doctrines originated in schools of divinity, all vanish like the morning dew, all sink into insignificance when compared with a message direct from heaven. That seems to be setting the stage for this comment, because it goes on to say, He that receives the message and endures to the end will be saved.

He that rejects it will be damned. So I don't know if that's a good reference to support what they're trying to get across here, although I think the statement itself, without the reference, is an accurate understanding of what the Latter-day Saints believe regarding their unique priesthood. Yeah, maybe you could extrapolate the priesthood significance from the general teachings of Smith from this quote, but perhaps they had better sources to choose from. Point number five deals with the subject matter of God.

The Mormon Church teaches a doctrine of God that is antagonistic to the Scriptures, dishonoring to the divine being, and debasing to man. It teaches that God is an exalted man who was once as we are now, and who is forever changing, ever advancing, becoming more and more perfect, but never becoming absolute perfection. Now it sounds like they're citing a little bit there from the Lorenzo Snow Couplet, when it says it teaches that God is an exalted man who was once as we are now. And that wording right there sounds very familiar to Lorenzo Snow Couplet, as man is, God once was, as God is, man may become. The first proof is from the Journal of Discourses, volume six, page three. We should probably state here, Aaron, that in today's Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mormons are told not to take the Journal of Discourses all that seriously.

That was not the case around the turn of the 20th century. What does it say in Journal of Discourses, volume six, page three, citing a sermon by Joseph Smith? It reads, God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens.

That is the great secret. Now that would certainly support the premise they're making in point number five when it comes to the person of God. And then in the same sermon, it is the first principle of the gospel to know that he was once a man like us, yea, that God himself, the father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did.

Then in point number three, it cites Doctrine and Covenants, section 130, verse 22, the father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's. Because the subject is fellowship, okay? Not friendship, fellowship. They are arguing why Christians should not or cannot fellowship with members of the LDS Church. If we fellowship, we fellowship with other believers.

It's not that we agree on every single minute little teaching that could be debated and discussed, but on the basics, we have an agreement. We agree as to who the person of God is. In this subject, the Latter-day Saints are certainly outside the parameters of Christianity. The God that they are speaking of is not at all the God that we are speaking of. And what's interesting, even some Latter-day Saints have said as much, especially when it comes to the person of Jesus. Mormon leaders have made it very clear their Jesus is not the same as ours. So I can understand why this is an issue, and I would affirm that they are absolutely correct that on just this point alone, we would have problems fellowshipping with Latter-day Saints.

Yeah, it's interesting. When you think about Christian doctrine, sometimes you can start by talking about God, or you can start by talking about the basis of knowledge for what we know about God. So sometimes people will start talking about Scripture. Sometimes people will start talking about the nature of God.

This, for me, is number five, the most important of the entire list of the 10. This gets to the heart of why we cannot fellowship with other Mormons. We worship a different God with a different nature, with a different history, with a different set of attributes, with a different set of perfections. What do you think of Latter-day Saints who don't have a problem fellowshipping with us, knowing that their God is certainly different? I guess the question could be asked, do they really know that their God is different, or maybe they think they're the same?

I mean, how many times have we heard even well-meaning lay members of the church say, well, we believe in the same Jesus, even though their leaders have denied that? Yeah, I think those people aren't taking their own religion seriously enough, and they're not thinking about the importance of the basis of substantive fellowship. We're not going for superficial agreement, we're going for substantive spiritual agreement and fellowship on the basis of basic truths. Point number six deals with the person of Adam. Now, here is a section where I think it may not be that big of an issue now, because the church has certainly gotten away from this teaching that Brigham Young brought forth originally in 1852, in a general conference message, I might add. But point number six is this, the Mormon Church teaches that Adam is God, the supreme God, the creator of this world, our God, and the only God with whom we have to do, and that Jesus Christ is his son by natural generation. That's almost a word-for-word citation, a portion of that at least, of Brigham Young's original Adam-God sermon, as I mentioned was given in 1852, the only God with whom we have to do. That's exactly what Brigham Young said. Now, that was certainly controversial when Brigham Young taught that. I know Orson Pratt, a Mormon apostle, really struggled with that doctrine.

You could say that Orson Pratt was kind of beaten into submission, that he better go along with it or he's going to lay an axe to the root of the prophetic tree there, and he did seem to acquiesce to that pressure, but later on Pratt starts to be critical again. This is an issue at the time this statement is being written, and remember now we're talking 1897. Young gave that sermon in 1852, so we're talking almost a half a century. This is still having an influence, so much so that this group of Christians find this to be troubling because it's still circulating. Yeah, I was reading a book by Hans P. Fries in 1908 called The Letters of an Apostate Mormon to His Son, and he was explaining why he had left the LDS church. Unfortunately, it's not clear to me that he became a Christian, but he tells a story about how in the LDS church, he would hear an old man get up, for example, and bear his testimony of Adam-God and the younger people of the church.

It made them cringe. It's something they were hoping to move on from, but it was really interesting evidence for me that there was a time of transition. There was a time when a lot of Latter-day Saints were even writing letters to the First Presidency asking, hey, is this something we agree on still? Is this something we still believe? Because there had been other issues that publicly had been denounced and yet privately practiced. People were wondering, is Adam-God among these meaty doctrines that we are to believe in private but not confess in public? There was a confusing time of transition within Mormonism on this topic of Adam-God. At what time in Mormon history do you feel that the church officially put that to bed? I would say that the 1916 First Presidency statement drafted by James Talmadge on the nature of the Father and the Son was their effort at putting it to rest. Even though you could say there are a lot of fundamentalist groups, splinter groups, that still teach that.

Yeah, it's not just water under the bridge. There have been tens of thousands of Mormons break off groups, and I've met mainstream Mormons who still believe it today because Brigham taught it. Now, to support the premise that we cited earlier, they have a number of citations taken from, for instance, the Journal of Discourses Volume 1, page 50. That's the original sermon that Brigham Young gave, and certainly that is still in existence today. It's not that hard to find. You can go to the Journal of Discourses on our website.

We have it there that you can look it up for yourselves. And then it also talks about the Pearl of Great Price, page 60, where it says, "...and also with Michael or Adam, the father of all, the prince of all, the Ancient of Days." Now, I found that reference interesting because it's always been my suspicion that what Brigham Young did was take what Joseph Smith said about Adam being the Ancient of Days, and of course the Ancient of Days has always been known as another name for God, and maybe Brigham Young just kind of conflated those two ideas and then ran with it. In tomorrow's show, we're going to go to point number seven, dealing with the subject of plural marriage. We'll join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism.