10 Reasons Why We Cannot Fellowship with the LDS Church Part 8

Unprepared to engage Mormon missionaries when they knock on your door? Perhaps the book online, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ a group of Presbyterians back in the late 1800s, 1897 to be exact. It was titled, Ten Reasons Why Christians Cannot Fellowship the Mormon Church. Last week we went through a lot of the reasons why these Utah Christians had problems with the LDS Church, and this week we're looking more closely at a response to their statement, a response that was made by a general authority by the name of B.H.

Roberts. Continuing where we left yesterday, Aaron, he says that the second of the 10 reasons stated is as follows, the Mormon Church places the Book of Mormon in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants on a par with the Bible and requires subscription to the inspiration and authority of those books as a condition of acceptance with God and fellowship with his people. What's interesting about that, that's the statement that the 10 reasons included, and B.H. Roberts' response? That is true, that they got it right, and that's what's interesting.

A great number of the responses that B.H. Roberts gives to this statement, he tends to agree. Now the third point though, it looks to me like he's just playing a game of semantics. The objection in the statement was, 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 the of the quote modern prophet is a rank heretic. Roberts responds by saying, well no, not heretic, much less rank heretic, and then he goes on to explain that to really be a heretic you have to belong at one time to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

So he's really just playing a semantical game. But then he gets to the priesthood. Point number four, the objection read, the Mormon Church makes faith in the Mormon priesthood and submission to the same essential to a man's future blessedness and unbelief in this priesthood is a damning sin. Again, we find that Roberts tends to agree with this statement. Roberts says, but when it comes to the priesthood of God in the government of his church, God's church, and in the proclamation of the gospel by word of mouth unto the inhabitants of the earth, when it comes to administering the sacred ordinances by which men receive a forgiveness of sin and wherein they receive baptism of the spirit by confirmation through the laying on of hands, it is true that the priesthood of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only priesthood holding the keys and power and authority to do those things and to say less than that would not represent our mission to the world. So BH Roberts is saying that what this statement, 10 reasons, is telling us is absolutely correct in the context of Mormonism. And then we get to the fifth point, the doctrine of God.

The Mormon Church teaches a doctrine of God that is antagonistic to scriptures, dishonoring to the divine being and debasing to man. It teaches that God is an exalted man who is once as we are now and who is changing forever, ever advancing, becoming more and more perfect, but never becoming absolute perfection. Roberts says in response to this, it is true in the main that we teach these doctrines concerning God, but we certainly deny that they are antagonistic to the scriptures or dishonoring to the divine being. And then in point number six, which deals with the subject of Adam being God, the supreme God, the creator of this world, our God and the only God with whom we have to do. And as I mentioned, when we looked at this, that's almost a direct quotation from what Brigham Young said in his original sermon on Adam being God.

So what does Roberts have to say in response to that? He says, as a matter of fact, the Mormon Church does not teach that doctrine. Some men in the Mormon Church have held such views and several of them quite prominent in the councils of the church, but the church has made announcement of no such doctrine, nor has the church propounded it to the world and accepted any article of its faith. Here I invoke the principles laid down in the early part of my remarks that the church may only be rightly charged with those doctrines, which may be adduced from the official documents she herself sets forth as the sources of her doctrine, the very revelations of God that she has officially accepted. And from these sources, the above charge may not be proven.

This is interesting. He goes on to say, Brigham Young and others may have taught that doctrine. It has never been accepted by the church as her doctrine, and she is not in any way responsible for it.

The strangeness of that statement is Brigham Young, the prophet of the Mormon Church, who made that statement, called it a doctrine, and he even said this at the end of the sermon, Now let all who may hear these doctrines pause before they make light of them or treat them with indifference, for they will prove their salvation or damnation. I think the question that I would raise, if a Latter-day Saint was to give me that rebuttal that you just read from B.H. Roberts, who has more authority to speak on this issue? Brigham Young being the president of the church, or B.H.

Roberts, who held a lower position in authority. Now a Mormon could argue, yeah, but Brigham Young died, so that all of a sudden nullifies everything Brigham Young had to say. If nothing else, that should raise a bunch of flags for anybody who's having this kind of a conversation. It's truth while the guy's alive, and then when the prophet dies, and all of a sudden all his so-called truths are no longer relevant any longer, that should be a huge problem for us in talking with our Latter-day Saint friends. Christians don't treat the words of the prophets of God as spoiled milk. It's not as though it's something that has a shelf life.

It's not fresh food that it'll go bad. Jesus said, heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will never pass away. The grass fades, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord stands forever. The word of God is said in Hebrews to be living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. So the word of God being God's very word, it has an extension, if you will, of the attributes of God. It's appropriately reflecting the nature of God in being something that can't be said to be untrue. It reflects upon the character of God. It's durable.

It's stable. And so when somebody claims to speak for God, God does an omnipotent, wise act in preserving the words of this person not to speak rank heresy. Do note with me though, as just a historical matter, BH Roberts is not denying that Brigham Young taught it. Instead, he's saying Brigham Young may have taught it. And then he vaguely says, we have had quite prominent people in the councils of the church hold to these views.

I just find this is incredible. He's basically in a soft way admitting this has been held to by people high up in our church. It's perhaps been taught by Brigham Young, but you're not allowed to make charges against our church unless we say so, unless it becomes a part of the official documents. This minimalist standard of things only being binding if they're in the official documents is not a standard Mormonism itself follows. Brigham Young promoted an expansionist, maximalist version of what counted as binding. Even today in recent general conferences, you've had the 14 fundamentals that were rehashed, which teaches that essentially there are authoritative sources beyond the standard works that we ought to pay attention to. The modern manuals of the LDS church will often celebrate things that are revelatory.

The delivery and the source of the Lorenzo snow couplet, for example, was couched in revelatory terms. Even the recent LDS church positions on baptism of say children of gay parents, there's kind of a back and forth on that, but there's various claims that the LDS leadership is operating by revelation. And we just talk to Mormons all the time who celebrate the fact that they have living prophets that are delivering revelation. Another complaint that B.H. Roberts had was the point made in the 10 reasons statement that the Mormon church is polytheistic. It teaches a plurality of gods.

B.H. Roberts doesn't really seem to deny that. He just doesn't like the way it's said.

He goes back to this idea that they're trying to present this position in the most odious way as possible. In other words, it's not so much that we don't really believe it. We just don't like the way you say it. Have you ever had a Latter-day Saint say that to you, Aaron?

Well, it's not so much that what you're saying isn't false. I just don't like the way you're saying it, which of course is the fact that you're just saying it at all is probably what's bothering them. Yeah, it seems like some of these controversial Mormon teachings. Mormons prefer that they be stated with euphemisms or with rhetorical flourish or a little bit of ambiguity. It's like certain Mormon doctrine functions best in public when it's kept ambiguous. Phrases like becoming like God or statements about God's nature.

You know, I like to use a lot of crisp clarity. God in Mormonism is a cosmic regional deity over one branch of the family tree of the gods, and he has a potentially endless ancestry of relationally superior deities. That's not how a Mormon would talk, but when I unpack that, it essentially ends up being affirmed. But you know, it's interesting about God. When you talk about the true God, when you speak to his nature, it is beautiful. It is strong.

It's stable. The attributes of God are compelling, talking about God's eternal holy past. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. Yeah, I've often heard complaints about the rhetoric used, even if the descriptions are accurate.

Well, even here, B.H. Roberts, he doesn't deny that the Latter-day Saints believe in the plurality of gods. In fact, he goes on and says, we shrink not from the charge that in this sense, in our doctrine, there is a plurality of gods. So he's admitting that that is a part of LDS teaching. This is what I find very interesting in this whole discussion. As we do now, we raise our objections to what we see in Mormon teaching. Mormons act or feign, in this case with B.H. Roberts, how it's said, but like you were explaining, it's still something that they believe. Just be honest with us and say, yes, I do believe that.

Give us something to talk about. Don't act like, like you said, let's not talk about it because it bothers me, you could say, but here B.H. Roberts isn't denying it at all. So what they said in this statement was absolutely correct. So much so that B.H.

Roberts really didn't have an out. He couldn't explain it away. All he could do, as he does in other points that he's addressed so far, is to agree. And I want to make note here that the charger, the seventh reason given by the Presbyterians why we cannot fellowship with Mormons, again, this is an 1897 document. Part of this point was that in Mormonism, the gods were once men who became gods, and that men in the future can become gods. This is divided into two sections, God's past and our future.

A lot of modern Mormon evangelical LDS dialogue tries to act like this issue of God's past is just a matter of speculation. B.H. Roberts doesn't repudiate it.

B.H. Roberts doesn't even distance himself from it. He basically says it's true. And he does not contest this claim that in the Mormon faith, in the Mormon system, the gods, the plurality of the gods were once men who became gods.

In the 1920s, B.H. Roberts is not objecting to this. He basically thinks it's an accurate depiction of LDS doctrine. And that's a good point to make that I don't think we've stressed enough this week is this statement came out in 1897. This discussion is taking place a couple decades later. So it's still something that's going on in the community, in the Christian community, you might say, in the state of Utah. Tomorrow, we're going to continue looking at some of the objections that B.H. Roberts had to this statement titled, 10 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.