Apologia Academy w/James White: Mormonism

The Mormon Temple Marriage Manual and Official Doctrine

And what I'm going to read to you comes from this book right here. This is Achieving a Celestial Marriage, Student Manual, The Church, Jesus Christ, Latter-day Saints. This from 19, let me see, 19, well, it was first written in 1976, then the copyright was renewed in 1992.

And I think it was up until 2001 that if you want to be married in the Mormon temple, now please recognize the temple is different than a ward chapel or a stake center or anything like that. Temples used to be pretty rare things.

And then they went on a big temple building binge. And so now there are a lot more temples around than there used to be. But to be sealed in the temple is the highest goal for the Mormon. To be sealed to your wife for time and eternity in the temple, important stuff.

If you wanted to do that, this was the manual that the church provided to you that you were to study, fill out the study forms, et cetera, et cetera. This is the church. It's copyright Corporation of the First Presidency of the Church, Jesus Christ, Latter-day Saints.

Corporation of the President of the Church, Jesus Christ, Latter-day Saints. So this is the Mormon leadership telling Mormons what we believe. You can't get any more official than what this document says.

And I point that out because very often we're told, well, you know, you're just going with what you're reading in some anti-Mormon book or something like that. No, what you're gonna be reading here is directly from what the Mormons themselves say.

So let's overcome the language barrier and let's see if we can understand where Mormonism is coming from here. There's the information there at the top. And you will notice, God was once a man who by obedience, advanced to his present state of perfection through obedience and celestial marriage, we may progress to the point where we become like God.

This is the subtitle. This is the assertion that is being made. Proclaiming the divine potential of God within man, John Taylor once wrote, knowest thou not that thou art a spark of deity struck from the fire of his eternal blaze and brought forth in midst of everlasting burnings.

Elder B .H. Roberts said, man has descended from God. In fact, he is the same race as the gods. His descent has not been from a lower form of life, but from the highest form of life. In other words, man is in the most literal sense, a child of God.

This is not only true of the spirit of man, but of his body also. Can you see the implications of these two statements as they relate to you and to your eternal destiny? Elder James E. Talmadge did. He declared, in his mortal condition, man is God in embryo.

However, any individual, now a mortal being, may attain the rank and sanctity of Godship. That's from Articles of Faith, and I can assure you that when more missionaries go out on their missions, there is a set of books that they're always given as part of their going away.

A marvelous work in a wonder by Grand Richards and Articles of Faith by James Talmadge. Talmadge is one of the leading authorities in the Mormon Church a long time ago, but still one of their leading scholars.

How is this possible? What course of action will bring this potential to fruition as you study this lesson? Look for the answers to these questions. So what you have, sub-point, God became God by obedience to law.

God became God by obedience to law. Now this next section was very clearly written by some frustrated English student at BYU. It's rather strange stuff, as you'll see. But it was late afternoons, we sat in my office, but I felt the time had been well spent.

He sat silently, now obviously contemplating the ramifications of the things we'd been discussing. We had talked of God, of how he'd become God, and of what that meant in terms of our own experience. And finally, he spoke.

Now what I've done is I've put the young Mormon in italics and yellow, and the mature Mormon is in white and in regular black. So the young Mormon asks, what is this law of exaltation in which you keep speaking?

Well, it involves the whole of the gospel law. Everything required of us by God is associated with this law, but the major crowning point of the law, which man must obey, is eternal marriage. Therein lies the keys of eternal life, or as the Doctrine and Covenants puts it, eternal lives.

In other words, an eternal increase of posterity. Now right there, you immediately see what I mean by the necessity of overcoming the language barrier. Because when you and I use the phrase eternal life, we think we know what we're talking about, but right there you see the Doctrine and Covenants eternal lives, in other words, an eternal increase of posterity.

Eternal lives is the ability. Part of what makes God God is the power of the priesthood and the power of procreation. And so God is God because he can have billions and billions of spirit offspring, of which you and I are some of them.

And so eternal lives is his ability to have these offspring, which are then placed in human bodies and live on an earth. So can you imagine how often Christians speak with Mormons at the door and talk about the gift of eternal life, and the Mormons thinking about increase in posterity of the exalted gods, and the Christian is thinking about what we think about as eternal life, and that is a free gift in the presence of God, the banishing of death, the forgiveness of sins, and it takes 45 minutes before someone figures out, you know, I don't think we're saying the same thing to one another.

And that's exactly the problem that we have here in this situation, and you can see it right there. So then what you're saying is that God became God, a little fast there, then what you're saying is that God became God by obedience to the gospel program, which culminates in eternal marriage.

Then there's a sub point, which says through obedience to law, we can become like our father in heaven. Yes, do you realize the implications of this doctrine as far as you are concerned?

I think so.

If God became God by obedience to all the gospel law with the crowning point being the celestial law of marriage, then that's the only way I can become a god. Now, by the way, I don't know if you saw, these are pages four and five.

This is the beginning. This is how you start your study to prepare to be married in the temple. This isn't at the end. This isn't an appendix. This isn't for advanced study. This is where they started in explaining what this is about.

Right, and it is the law that assists us in reaching that potential. It tells us what we must do to gain the ultimate freedom. In fact, it is by obedience to law that we have progressed to our present position.

You mean we have always been governed by law? Now, the next little paragraph is the most amazing paragraph in all of the thousands of pages of Mormon material that I have read over the years, and here's what it says.

Always, you are an eternal being. You were never created, and you cannot be destroyed, but you can advance, progress, and develop by obedience.

You see that?

This is the Mormon leadership teaching the Mormon people what they believe, and their assertion is, you're not a created being. You have no creator. You were fathered by a heavenly father and one of his many wives, but you've always existed as an intelligence just as God did.

You're of the same race as the gods. You're not a creature. You, yourself, are uncreated and cannot be destroyed, but you can advance. Amazing, amazing stuff to see. Now, this is why I say it's painfully obvious to me that this was written by some kind of frustrated English student.

Then, Hamlet's question, to be or not to be, is not the question. I mean, that's not even well done. Right, not in the ultimate sense, at least. Order means law, and that law is the law of the celestial kingdom.

Any who come under that kingdom must obey that law, but I thought godhood meant freedom. If I have to do things to become God, am I really free? Now, here you're gonna see some of the incredible exegesis offered within Mormonism.

Certainly, Joseph Smith did this a lot. You've got it wrong. It was the Savior who said, if you continue in my word, that is, obey the law, ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Anyone ever read John 8?

That's really not what Jesus was saying. So, by obedience to law, we learn truths by which we become free, but not free from the law. Can you see that?

I think so.

I can be a god only if I act like God.

Exactly right.

Can you imagine the state of the universe? Listen to this. If imperfect gods were allowed to spawn their imperfections throughout space, if beings who did not have law under their subjection were free to create worlds.

This is not some weird science fiction novel that I picked up while driving over here at some place near the university. This is the Mormon church teaching the Mormon people what they believe. I guess that'd be pretty disastrous, but I'm not sure I see why celestial marriage becomes the crowning apex of this progression.

Marriage doesn't seem directly related to the creation of the, please note the plural, universe says, not universe, universe says. There are many universes in Mormonism. Oh, but don't be limited by your mortal perspective.

God himself, now listen to this. Why does God exist in Mormonism? Why does God exist in Mormonism? God himself has declared his own reasons for existing. Remember he said, for this is my work and my glory.

I see his purpose is to bring to pass the immortality in eternal life of man, Moses 139. That's God's purpose. God's purpose is wrapped up in man. Well, that makes sense because God is a man. God's an exalted man.

We're all the same species. You don't have a creator. You don't have a transcendent being. The worldview of Christianity and the worldview of Mormonism, utterly different from one another, fundamentally different from one another, which involves giving birth to spirit children and setting them on the road of exaltation.

If that is to be done, you must have an exalted man and an exalted woman. Well, at least they're not promoting homosexual marriage, but that's a different issue. Exactly, an exalted man and woman who have been joined together in an eternal marriage.

If this man and woman were obedient to all gospel laws except celestial marriage, what would be the result? They still could not be gods. Now I understand celestial marriage is the crowning ordinance of gospel.

Right, I said with a smile. And with that comment, I think we can end the discussion. So there's what the Mormon people teach their own people. There's what the Mormon leadership teaches their own people about who is God.