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. 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 Shafawaloff, my colleague at MRM. We are looking at a statement that was put together towards the end of the 19th century by a Presbyterian group in the state of Utah. This statement attracted the attention of other Christian groups. It was reprinted and published in different formats, including even in the United States. Even as an article, you might say, in the Deseret News, which is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The title of it was Ten Reasons Why Christians Cannot Fellowship the Mormon Church. And what's interesting in going through these statements, many of them are certainly very pertinent today. Nothing has really changed in these areas. Now, a couple of areas have changed. One, of course, is being the subject of Adam-God, which, as we mentioned yesterday, was still an issue when this publication came out.
Towards the end of the 1800s. Today, we're going to look at point number seven. And we're not going to look at all of the proofs, as I've mentioned earlier, but we are going to show that they did have some examples that supported the premise that they were making.
So we will be looking at least at some of them. Now, again, the context is important, as I mentioned before. This is being written towards the end of the 1800s. Polygamy is still an issue, even though the Manifesto came out in 1890, seven years prior to the publication of this statement. It is still a big problem in Utah. In fact, I think even many people back then, especially if you're living in Utah, they knew that the Manifesto signed by Wilford Woodruff, the fourth president in 1890, really was a vain promise. They could witness this for themselves, no doubt, living in Salt Lake City and other places in rural areas as well. But the statement that they teach a plurality of gods, that has not changed. That's still a part of Mormonism today. I'm thinking of one Mormon apologist in particular who used almost that very same wording to describe the god that he believed in. So certainly that is something that is believed by many Latter-day Saints, I would assume, even today. That's a great way to think about the difference between Mormonism and Christianity. While Christianity teaches that men and God are of different species, you could say, in Mormonism they're of the same species, the same kind of being, but in Christianity, in Biblical Christianity, God is an altogether different kind of being.
Well, wouldn't this go along with, as we mentioned yesterday, the Lorenzo Snow couplet, as man is, God once was, as God is, man may be. If they're using that as a pattern, and that is the path, you might say, how God came to be God, at least Elohim, the god of this world, they don't usually talk about the gods of other worlds. That doesn't seem to interest most Latter-day Saints. It should interest us as Christians, because this is a part of their theology. There's a myriad of gods out there, even though the Mormons may only refer to Elohim, who is the god of this world.
But they do have a number of proofs that support that premise. Point number eight deals with the subject of salvation. Again, this is a very important subject, as you mentioned earlier, Aaron. When it comes to who God is, absolutely, that cannot be overlooked. Their own leaders have admitted their god is different. And we should take that seriously.
It's not a conspiracy theory, folks, when you're quoting them, okay? They're admitting to this. But when it comes to the subject of salvation, again, we have an issue that cannot be overlooked. And here's what it says under the subtitle, salvation. baptism by immersion by the hands of a Mormon, together with faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, with the Mormon definition of the Trinitarian persons, as conditions of human salvation. It uses the atonement of Christ to cover original sin, the sin of Adam, and teaches its adherence to depend on good works as the basis of pardon for personal sins. It also teaches a doctrine of baptism for the dead. That is antagonistic to the Bible doctrine of retribution, and that encourages people to remain impenitent.
That last statement there, I think probably should have been explained a little bit more. But for the most part, I think the accusation that's being made in this section is altogether absolutely correct. Now, a Mormon might say, Well, wait a minute, you're talking about faith in Joseph Smith. Are you assuming that we worship Joseph Smith?
That's not what the statement is saying. But certainly, as we've already discussed, you have to have faith in Joseph Smith at least being a prophet of God because of all the things that he brought forth. Why would you think he wasn't a prophet of God if he brought forth, let's say, the Book of Mormon and all the various revelations that are found in the Doctrine and Covenants? You have to trust in the books he produced. You have to trust in the priesthood.
If you're a male, you have to believe in continuous revelation, and you also have to believe in baptism by immersion by the hands of a Latter-day Saint who has the authority to do so. So I don't think they're being incorrect when they say this. Let's talk about some of the details in this statement, Aaron, because I think it could be said that the references that they gave really are not hitting the salvation issue. It seems like they're going back and they're rehashing maybe Revelation or Joseph Smith and priesthood, because some of the citations that they give have more to do with Joseph Smith's authority to give revelation and things like that. This is one of the sections that I would probably be a little bit critical of, and the reason why is if you're going to talk about salvation, how can you not talk about the necessity of commandment-keeping? And yet I don't find in this list of proofs any mention to section 1 verse 32 in the Doctrine and Covenants that says, Nevertheless, he that repents and does the commandments of the Lord shall be forgiven. Certainly, that's a denial of justification by faith. It doesn't mention Doctrine and Covenants section 25, 15, and 16. Keep my commandments continually in a crown of righteousness thou shalt receive.
Except you do this where I am, you cannot come. It doesn't mention, for instance, section 42, 78 in the Doctrine and Covenants that says, Yeah, the most interesting part about this section is that Mormonism teaches dependence on good works as the basis for pardon for personal sins in the larger context of things. The whole point of life in Mormonism is to come here and prove your worthiness in your body, to participate in this merit system, to be proven worthy enough to go to the celestial kingdom distinct from the bottom kingdoms, where people are not as valiant and someday become a god. And the whole Mormon system of works is designed to help you merit and qualify for and earn this post-mortem position.
They bit off more than they could chew though here. They expanded it to other topics. I think their proofs are kind of going in different directions and I wish they would have focused on the sort of merit orientation of the Mormon system. Very quickly, let's discuss this one sentence in here. It uses the atonement of Christ to cover original sin, the sin of Adam, and teaches its adherents to depend on good works as the basis of pardon for personal sins. Now we've talked about the need to depend on good works for pardon for personal sins, and I've cited some passages from the Doctrine and Covenants that supports that. But the language that's used here, it uses the atonement of Christ to cover original sin, the sin of Adam. Now maybe they are thinking of a statement that was made by Orson Pratt, since they do cite Orson Pratt's works in this statement.
But Orson Pratt is cited in the Journal of Discourses Volume 1, page 329, as saying, Now, what's interesting is the language that Pratt uses. He's speaking of the original sin of Adam, but yet some Mormon leaders have insisted that Adam didn't sin. Right, this is a rat's nest. I feel bad for my Christian brothers who are trying to summarize this intelligibly and coherently because Mormonism is essentially teaching that the atonement gives universally salvation from death, so there's going to be a general resurrection. Yet this is the effect as a negative punitive, you could even say effect, of something that Mormonism otherwise teaches wasn't a sin. So there's death for all as a result of Adam's transgression, which they say wasn't a sin. So now we need salvation from the effects of this thing that wasn't a sin, and they don't even acknowledge original sin as a traditional category. It's not a sin, and Adam's act, which they say is not a sin, even if it was a sin, they don't think that any sin was imputed to the rest of humanity. They don't think we inherit a sin nature from Adam and Eve as our ancestors.
This is a tough rat's nest. Yeah, I wonder how a modern Latter-day Saint would try to interpret what Orson Pratt said in the way he said it, because it certainly sounds like he's contradicting what a lot of modern Latter-day Saints would believe regarding the act on the part of Adam and Eve. Point number nine was polygamy. The Mormon Church believes in polygamy.
The doctrine is to them both sacred and fundamental. They believe and teach that Jesus Christ was a polygamist. The Manifesto of September 24, 1890 was not a repudiation of the doctrine of plural or celestial marriage, and did not claim to be such.
It was, as all honest Mormons freely confess, only a suspension of the practice for the time being. They hold the principle to be as eternal as God himself. Now, again, this would be one of those topics that, as it was practiced in the 19th century, certainly is not how Latter-day Saints believe plural marriage to be today. They do believe that plural marriage will be taken up in the hereafter, so it's still something that goes on in the next life, but it's not supposed to be practiced here.
This, of course, was not really the case when this statement was made in 1897, but looking at the proofs, again, they're citing from the seer in point number one. If none but gods will be permitted to multiply immortal children, it follows that each god must have one or more wives. The evangelists do not particularly speak of the marriage of Jesus. One thing is certain that there were several holy women that greatly loved Jesus, such as Mary and Martha, her sister and Mary Magdalene, and Jesus greatly loved them and associated with them much.
If all the acts of Jesus were written, we no doubt should learn that these beloved women were his wives. Now, some Mormons might say, but that's the seer. Brigham Young, you know, he basically denounced Orson Pratt and the seer, even though this was not the issue that Brigham Young had with Orson Pratt. The issues of polygamy, I don't find anywhere where Brigham Young had a problem with what Orson Pratt had to say, so I would think that that citation would be very valid. Next week, we're going to finish the tenth point of the Ten Reasons Why Christians Cannot Fellowship the Mormon Church, and then we're going to look at the response to this statement by Brigham Roberts, B. H. Roberts. 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.
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