What Do Mormons Believe? | Rapp Report Daily Wrap-up 0014 | Striving for Eternity

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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Welcome to the Rapid Bull, daily edition, where we provide a quick Biblical interpretations and applications.

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This is a ministry of striving for eternity. This week we're taking a look at the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, also known as Mormonism. As we wrap up, let us just explain that you're going to see a big difference between what the

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Bible teaches and what the Mormon Church teaches. Now the Mormon Church says that the true church fell away, something

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Jesus, by the way, said could never happen, but they believed that the church fell away and that Joseph Smith was used to restore it.

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Joseph Smith was a con artist. Joseph Smith was not a person to be trusted in his own testimony of himself.

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And what you end up seeing is that Joseph Smith was one who basically fooled many people.

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He came up and bought even a supposed book of Abraham and translated it.

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At the time there was no way to prove he was wrong, but we now read Egyptian, we have found a

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Rosetta Stone, and we end up realizing he didn't know what he was doing when he was doing those translations. It's nothing like it.

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And you have a whole religion that's built really on the belief that one man who is a known con artist was telling the truth.

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He died, and he was followed by Brigham Young. Brigham Young is someone who really took

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Mormonism far from where Joseph Smith had taught and taught much further. And it gets into the belief that there's multiple gods, that you as a man could become a god, that God once was a sinful man on another planet, all kinds of things.

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They have their own temple, and that temple is very different. And I would encourage you to evangelize to people like this, and the best book

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I know of is a book that just came out called Sharing the Good News with Mormons. This book that just came out is a book that has 24 different ways to share the gospel with Mormons.

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So not only do you learn about Mormonism, but even more so, even if you're not interested in evangelizing Mormons, you learn a whole bunch of different tactics and styles and ways to evangelize

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Mormons. So keep that in mind, and maybe this podcast, as we wrap up the whole weekly podcast, will encourage you to get that book so you can reach out to these folks.

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But here is this week's wrap -up on Mormonism. This week we're going to take a look at the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, also known as Mormonism. And you're going to see that there's been differences in views and different separations and different offshoots of the

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Mormon church over the years. That becomes an important issue when they make the claim that the reason they know they have the true church is because there's all the different denominations in Christianity.

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But they started, because of a man named Joseph Smith, who said all religions were wrong and fallen away, and that he was given the

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Book of Mormon on gold plates, that we don't have in existence today, but he had these gold plates and he translated some of it into what's known as the

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Book of Mormon, and that was to restore the gospel message. Now, the Book of Mormon is different than the

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Bible. They do have a Bible that they accept as an authority. There is the Joseph Smith translation, but they most often will use the

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King James translation. But they have other documents, also known as Prologary, Price, and Doctrine and Covenants.

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Those are the two other authorities in their religion. Now, here's the thing to understand.

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The Book of Mormon was, in the 1800s, it was translated and said to be the most accurate translation, and this is inspired by God, and yet there's 4 ,000 changes in the one that Joseph Smith did to the ones today.

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There shouldn't be a need for that with the printing press. So there shouldn't be copying errors at all.

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So this makes us wonder if it really is the authority they claim that it is. As we look at the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, also known as the Mormons, and we see their view of God, well, it's a little bit more like science fiction.

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Now, here's the interesting thing to note. When you look at the Book of Mormon, we mentioned that's one of their authorities, the

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Book of Mormon doesn't really mention multiple gods. It actually seems to be more in line with the Bible in that way, but when you look at their other documents, like the

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Prologary, Price, and more so Doctrine and Covenants, and then you look at what the Church, the President, and Prophets, and Apostles end up teaching, you see that they believe in a

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Godhead, meaning multiple gods. They actually will argue that God the

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Father was a sinner on another planet, who on that planet was obedient, and in that obedience, he was able to get his own planet, this one, that he and his spirit wives produce offspring for.

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That seems strange? Yes, some of that offspring is Jesus Christ and his brother,

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Lucifer? That's right, Lucifer. And so what you end up seeing is they believe that as God once was, we could be.

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This is a phrase that they'll say, that as we are, God once was, and as God is, we could be.

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That is what they view it, that God was once a man like us, physical form, who evolved or became a

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God of his own planet, and that we too could be like that if we're good Mormons. That is straight out of the pit of hell, just saying.

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But if you want to get more on this, get my book, What Do They Believe, at whatdotheybelieve .com and learn about Mormonism.

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As we started to see yesterday, that the Mormon Church has a very different view of God than what we see in the

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Bible. They would believe that God was once a physical being, Jesus Christ was a physical being.

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They believe that we could become like God and be gods of our own planet. Now their view of Jesus is going to be a little bit different than what we see in the

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Bible, because first off, they're going to see Jesus Christ as a created being.

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Real problem when it comes to Colossians 1, when it says that Jesus created all things, because he would have had to create himself.

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Furthermore, if he was born on the planet Kolob, which is what they believe, then he would have had to create that planet before he was born.

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And furthermore, by the way, he supposedly had parents, God the Father and his goddess wife, he would have had to create them as well.

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And furthermore, since God the Father supposedly has parents, therefore Jesus Christ would have had to create not only the planet

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Kolob before he was born, but his parents, and also create his grandparents all before anyone was born.

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You see, this becomes a problem and a contradiction that you see within the scriptures. They believe that he is the brother of Lucifer.

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This is where you end up seeing that there's a vast difference between what Mormonism teaches and the Bible. How do you witness to people that are

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Mormons? Well, may I encourage you to get a new book that just came out called Sharing the Good News with Mormons.

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26 different authors, 24 different ways of sharing the gospel with Mormons. Sharing the

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Good News with Mormons. You can get that at strivingforeternity .org. As we've seen with the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, they have a very different view of God the Father and of Jesus from that which the

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Bible teaches. We also see that they have a very different view of salvation. Now keep in mind that when

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Joseph Smith started this church known as Mormonism, the thing was that he argued that the gospel message had been lost, and he was given the

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Book of Mormon to restore the gospel message. What is this gospel that we see in Mormonism?

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Well, it is a works -righteous system. You have to do good works and live perfectly. You can see this in 2

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Nephi 25 -23 where it says, For we labor diligently to write to you to persuade our children and also our brethren to believe in Christ and to be reconciled to God.

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For we know that it is by grace that we are saved after all we can do.

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In other words, after everything you can do, then grace kicks in. But you must do, son, you must do good works.

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This is not a new gospel. This is not a new message. This is the message of every man -made religion.

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Every single false man -made religion adds human efforts to righteousness. It is only biblical

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Christianity, that which we see in the Bible, that teaches that we're saved by faith alone, through Christ alone, by the work that God did alone, not by man's works.

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If you'd like to learn how to witness to Mormons, get the new book, Sharing the Good News with Mormons, available at strivingforeternity .org

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in our store. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, also known as Mormonism, you see very different views of the end times than we would see in the

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Bible. First off, as we've been discussing all week, they have a view that they can become God. That's not something you see in the

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Bible. They believe that when they get married here on earth in their temples, that that marriage continues for eternity.

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What you end up seeing is that in Mormonism, it is a man -made religion.

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Now, I'm not saying man -made as in human -made. I mean man -made as opposed to female, because what you see in heaven is everything for the guy.

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The woman, what does she get to go to heaven? She gets to be with her family and be eternally pregnant, producing spirit babies.

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Now, their children on earth could become gods of their own planets. Don't quite know how the family structure stays that way.

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I mean, there has to be gods everywhere if Mormonism is true. But all the planets would have to be populated because they'd have all these gods out there.

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And so, they argue that in heaven, what you have is men who have their multiple wives, and there's three levels of heaven, in fact.

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There's a level just for the Mormons where the celestial kingdom, the good Mormons go. They can have their own planets.

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You have the terrestrial, and then you have the lowest level. You also have hell. Hell is, by the way, lightly populated, only people like me would be there that disagree with Mormonism.

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But if you want to get examples of how to witness to Mormons, get the new book called Sharing the Good News with Mormons that just came out.

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It's available at strivingforeternity .org. This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry.