10 Reasons Why We Cannot Fellowship with the LDS Church Part 9

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 Shafowaloff, my colleague at MRM. Last week and this week, we've been looking at a statement that was made in 1897 by a Presbyterian group in Utah. This statement kind of grew among a lot of the various denominations in the state of Utah. It was titled, 10 Reasons Why Christians Cannot Fellowship the Mormon Church. So we've been going through some of the problems that they had when it comes to LDS doctrine, and this week we're looking at the rebuttal that was given by a Mormon General Authority by the name of B.H.

Roberts. So far, Aaron, he seems to be agreeing with much of what has been said in this statement. He doesn't like the way some things are said, but he can't deny that the premise of what they're objecting to seems to be true. We do not believe our own good works is the basis of individual forgiveness, but, and here's the interesting part, we regard the atonement of the Christ and the fact that He suffered for our sins and the sins of all the world as the basis of forgiveness, but we do believe, and it is scriptural, that men must on their part repent of sin, obey the ordinances of the gospel, and thus, by coupling their obedience with God's grace, they must be obtained unto salvation. This basically confirms the suspicion, even though he says it's not so, it's on the basis of works. It's confirming the suspicion by coupling works with grace. It shows that he's not really operating from the biblical categories of, for example, salvation by grace through faith, apart from works. The idea here is that faith is the basis of salvation. Confirming the suspicion by coupling works with grace, it shows that he's not really operating from the biblical categories of, for example, salvation by grace through faith apart from works. The idea here is that faith alone, faith only, is the instrument which a believer uses to receive the immediate and free and permanent gift of the forgiveness of sins and eternal life and the gift of the Holy Ghost. But he's teaching that we need to keep the ordinances and couple God's grace with our obedience to attain this salvation.

So there's a little bit of semantics going on here. Again, the whole Mormon system from beginning to end is a merit system. The whole reason why we're coming to earth is to prove our worthiness in our mortal bodies, to see if we are going to qualify and merit the kind of position one could have in the celestial kingdom, where one becomes a God, where one is worshiped by a future set of spirit children.

I mean, the whole division of the three kingdoms of the celestial, terrestrial, and telestial kingdoms is on the basis of a differentiation of merit, a differentiation of performance, a differentiation of obedience and worthiness. That's the language of the Mormon church. This worthiness language is thorough within the LDS church. Just kind of shifting emphasis or sprinkling on some rhetoric of grace. It doesn't really change the fact that when you cut into the cake of Mormonism, underneath the frosting is a rank merit system.

Now, based on what B.H. Roberts said, now let's go back because he was responding to point number eight. The Mormon church teaches an anti-biblical doctrine of salvation. It requires faith in Joseph Smith and the books he produced or translated in the priesthood in continuous revelation and in baptism by immersion by the hands of a Mormon, together with faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. So the rebuttal that you just gave us seems to concur with the accusation that was made against the LDS church in point number eight of this statement, 10 reasons why Christians cannot fellowship the Mormon church.

This is what I find fascinating. He's actually agreeing that they got it right. There's no greater compliment that when you bring up something to a Latter-day Saint about their unique doctrine, and they say to you, yeah, you got that right.

That's exactly what the church teaches. There were some issues with the document that we had. We thought it could be nuanced, better clarified at times. And there's a few things over which B.H. Roberts took issue with, but in large part, by the end of the rejoinder, by the end of the rebuttal, the conclusion is, oh wow, B.H. Roberts responding to these 10 complaints, he in essence, and as a whole confirms the complaints that the Presbyterians had with the LDS church. He also has a section in there on the doctrine of baptism for the dead.

What does he do with that? He quotes 1 Corinthians 15, 29, else what shall they do, which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all, why are they then baptized for the dead? Just because that's mentioned in the New Testament doesn't mean that it goes along with what the Mormons believe today. We have no evidence from that vague statement that Paul makes that they were actually going to the temple to be baptized for the dead, because that's the only place it can be done. There's no way that the Christians would have even had permission to go use the temple for such an ordinance. The Jews would never have let the Christians do that, if that was going on at all. That's an interesting point. These Corinthian believers, they're in Corinth.

Correct. And it's Paul who's sort of making a circuit journey around to Asia Minor and, you know, Thessalonica and down to Corinth. At a different time, he's trying to collect money to go all the way on his journey back to Jerusalem.

And when he arrives at Jerusalem, there's quite a bit of drama that Paul, you know, or other Christians are there. So the idea that the Corinthian, the common Christian in Corinth was making some sort of trek all the way down to the Jerusalem temple, I guess you'd have to kind of modify that claim, wouldn't you, that they were doing some sort of baptism for the dead outside the temple? Well, they're not supposed to, according to modern Mormonism, it has to be done in a temple.

That's one of the major reasons for the temple, since most of the rituals being done in a Mormon temple has to do with baptism for the dead. In point number nine, this Presbyterian statement said, 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. You have to remember the date, folks, because this is the day of the 1800s, and certainly a lot of these teachings were pretty fresh at that time. You don't hear this doctrine being espoused often today, but that was a different time back then. And so this was an objection that they raised. But his response was, the Mormon church does not teach that Jesus Christ was a polygamist.

It is absolutely silent on that subject. Well, Mormon apostles were pretty vocal on that. I mean, we find Orson Hyde talking about that, Jedediah M. Grant talked about that, and I don't recall them ever being rebuked by Brigham Young. I think this is the essential complaint of the Christians, is that your highest leaders were celebrating and disseminating this idea that God himself was a polygamist, and that this is sort of the order of the cosmos of the exalted beings. And then this became a belief of the Christian church, and that the belief among the Mormons in response to the teaching of your leaders, it was never repudiated. And again, this is 1897 when this document originally is drafted with the 10 complaints. And the 1890 manifesto, which suspended polygamy, did not principally condemn it as a theology.

It basically looked forward to a time when it would be recovered someday. And so, you know, forget critics. If you're a Latter-day Saint, what do you do? If you're a Latter-day Saint and you are a part of the generation where you were sitting in the tabernacle when your highest prophet taught this, do you just throw that away when he dies? What do you do with all these older believers in the LDS church who believe that God was a polygamist? To say that the institution is silent is not to say that older prophets haven't taught it and had tremendous influence on the members with respect to this belief in the name of God, presenting as an oracle of God. The 10th point, this point deals with a complaint made in this statement that the Mormon church teaches that God is a polygamist, the natural father of all intelligent beings in heaven, earth and hell, that angels, men, and devils are his offspring by procreation or natural generation, and that Adam is the father of Christ's human nature as Brigham was father of his children. He says the Mormon church, and he's got Mormon in quotation marks, does not teach any of those things here set forth.

Really? Now I'm sure he's only referring to what he views as an official capacity, but folks, you have to remember this was being taught by people during this time period. I mean, Brigham Young, for instance, he made it very clear. Why do we believe in and practice polygamy? Because the Lord introduced it to his servants in a revelation given to Joseph Smith and that the Lord's servants have always practiced it. And is that religion popular in heaven? It is the only popular religion there for this is the religion of Abraham. And unless we do the works of Abraham, we are not Abraham seed and heirs according to promise. If the only men who can become gods, even the sons of God are those who enter into polygamy, and that's what Brigham Young said on August 19th, 1866, this can be found in the journal of discourses 11, page 269, would it not make sense that if God or Elohim, heavenly father of Mormonism, was to be exalted to a God, and this is an eternal principle, would not have God the father practiced polygamy. It seems like a part of the original system here was a scheme of glory, where if you were adding wives, you could build up your kingdom, you could build up more children, you could build up more of a family. And so it seemed natural to early Latter-day Saints that God would have been a polygamist and that the highest and most honored members of the LDS church, the leaders would be polygamists.

And so they took great pride in this. Again, I have to ask, are you willing to belong to a religion where you claim to have living oracles of God that publicly teach things about God and the gospel that you later have to treat as falsehood? Are you going to be obedient to Jesus?

Are you going to be a disciple of Jesus? Jesus said, watch out for false prophets. And then he essentially says, you'll know they're false prophets when you start treating them like diseased trees.

What B.H. Roberts is doing here is he's basically saying that if you're going to be a polygamist, he's basically saying that LDS leaders in part have been diseased trees, thorn bushes, and thistles on the question of whether God is a polygamist. Well, what about in the statement where they talk about that angels, men, and devils are his offspring by procreation? Wouldn't that go along with the story of the war in heaven? That you had Lucifer, who Mormons do not disagree, was a spirit brother of Jesus, a son of Elohim and heavenly mother, or one of the heavenly mothers at that time. It gets very confusing because this is during the polygamy era, but they believe that he was a literal offspring. They believe that all the demons are literal offspring of heavenly fathers, or so much for the idea that many Latter-day Saints have told me, well, God would never punish his own children in such a way such as hell. Well, that's exactly what he's doing with the demons because they're all his sons and daughters, and they're all going to outer darkness. So obviously that is a part of Mormon theology.

So when he tends to say that that's not really true, I don't know if he's being accurate on that. B.H. Roberts doesn't seem to contest so much the idea that there's a system of sexual generation between the gods and offspring.

He more contests, perhaps, more of the details, say, around God himself being a polygamist. In tomorrow's show, we're going to look at the rejoinder to B.H. Roberts, because after B.H. Roberts gave his defense, this group of Christians in Utah at that time, this would be in the 1920s, offered a response to what B.H.

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