Mormonism

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Well, out of curiosity, how many of you have Mormon friends? A few.
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Get some! They're nice folks.
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You know, it was 10 years ago that Mitt Romney ran for president. When he did so, what did he say?
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I'm a Christian. Here's some testimonials for him.
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When I hear Mitt Romney say that he believes Jesus is the Son of God, that he's the Christ raised from the dead, that he's his savior, that's good enough for me.
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Who said that? That is correct for $200. Joel Osteen.
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See the cashier on your way out. Another televangelist said he liked
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Mitt Romney's politics and saw the Mormon presidential candidate as an, quote, outstanding candidate.
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Now, who was that? So close and yet so far. Pat Robertson. Pat Robertson.
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A lot of evangelical leaders supported Mitt Romney. Some evangelicals,
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I can name some people, would not vote for him because they thought that Mormonism was a cult.
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Well, who's right? Let's go to the tiebreaker. Of course, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day
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Saints itself. What do they say? Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day
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Saints. That's what they prefer to be called, by the way, not Mormons. Unequivocally affirm themselves to be
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Christians. Okay, well, it's settled then. Listen to what they say.
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They worship God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Jesus Christ. This is from Joseph Smith.
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He said, the fundamental principles of our religion. This is a Sikh, meaning there's a problem here with the grammar.
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The fundamental principles of our religion is the testimony of the apostles and prophets concerning Jesus Christ, that he died, was buried, and rose again on the third day and ascended up into heaven.
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And all other things are only appendages to these which pertain to our religion.
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When you hear that, you think, well, wait a minute, that's the gospel, right? Jesus died.
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Of course, what does it say in 1 Corinthians 15? He died for our sins, right?
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Was buried and rose again. And of course, it also adds according to the scriptures. The Mormons go on to say this, in recent decades, however, some have claimed that the
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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints is not a Christian church. The most often used reasons are the following.
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This is, again, this is from them. Latter -day Saints do not accept the creeds, confessions, and formulations of post -New
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Testament Christianity. It's a little bit of a problem. We're Christians, but we don't accept historical
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Christianity. The Church of Jesus Christ, I'm going to shorten it just to the
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Mormons. The Mormons do not descend through the historical line of traditional Christianity.
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That is, Latter -day Saints are not Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant. Now, that sounds like we're not
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Christians, but that's not the way they take it. They take it to say that here are the historic
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Christian faiths, whether you want to include Eastern Orthodox or Catholic in there.
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But essentially, they would say this, we have truths that those people don't have, so we're actually better.
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Now, before I get into the meat of the message here, I just want to say this. I love
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Mormons. I have many family members and friends who are still in the
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Mormon Church. As a child, actually, from the time I can remember anything to the time
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I joined the Army when I was 19, most of my friends were Mormon. Most of the people
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I loved and even liked were Mormon. The most fun experiences I ever had in my life were through the
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Mormon Church. If I needed help, it was often I got help from Mormon families.
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In fact, I was just reading yesterday about somebody who had taught me in high school before—it sounds awkward—high school mornings before we went to school, we would go to the church and we would get instructed every day for an hour.
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And one of my teachers recently died, so I was sorry to read that.
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But I'm going to say things tonight that would disturb members of the church. Why? Because I'm going to quote them and compare them to the
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Bible. Mormonism is a cult. It's a theological cult. If you weren't here last week, there are differences between a theological cult and a kind of sociological cult.
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You can get into Mormonism and you can get out of Mormonism, as opposed to some sociological cults where they just cut you off and have nothing to do with you.
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But tonight, I'm going to share a few verses with you, verses that will expose some of the errors of the
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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. And we'll go to our confession as well. And I made myself a handwritten note here.
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So many errors, so little time. There just isn't enough. If I were to examine every doctrine of the
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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints that's wrong, we would be here for weeks, and I wouldn't do that to you.
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So what I'm doing tonight is I'm going to follow the outline that we started last week. Three elements of a cult.
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Putting the Mormon religion to the test. Is Mormonism, in fact, a theological cult?
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And if it is, here are the tests. It will have a different source than Scripture alone.
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It will have a different Savior than Christ alone. And it will have a different means of salvation than grace alone.
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It's not going to be, in other words, historic biblical Christianity. But the Church itself already gave that away when they said, we're not like those other guys.
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We don't descend from any normal tradition. So how's
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Mormonism going to do? Well, you know, spoiler alert, it's not going to do very well. Let's look first.
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First S, source. What is the source of all the different doctrines of the
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LDS Church? Are they all found in the Bible? I told my wife I was going to go outside of my notes, and I will right now.
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Anybody familiar with 1 Corinthians 15 29? Yes, go ahead,
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Daniel. Yes, talks about baptism for the dead. Now there are a wide variety of interpretations of that.
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And none of them would say that you need to go to the temple and baptize people for the dead.
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But that's what the Mormon Church does. Are they all found all their unusual doctrines found in the
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Bible? No. What do Mormons think of the Bible? Well, their own articles of faith provide some guidance.
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Let me quote them again. This is article of faith. There are 13 articles of faith because they are different.
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Not 12, 13. Number eight, we believe the
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Bible to be the word of God. Sounds good. Who would sign on for that?
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I would, too. But they keep going. That's sad times. We believe the
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Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. Even then.
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We might go, OK, I was talking to somebody about a problem I have with the ESV in John 1 12 today.
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But they don't stop. Says we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.
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That's a problem. Where did the Book of Mormon come from? What's in it?
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Should we have it? Well, this is what the church says. The Book of Mormon came forth in this dispensation by the will of the
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Lord. Is that true? Certainly not by his decreed of will, right?
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He didn't say there was going to be the Book of Mormon. And then it goes on to say it is a record of God's dealings with the people who lived in ancient
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Americas, the ancient Americas, North and South America. Prophets of the
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Lord engraved the original records on golden plates. The Lord declared that the
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Book of Mormon contains, quote, the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Now, what does it mean or what does it imply that the Book of Mormon has the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, Brian?
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It implies that the Bible is insufficient. We have a real problem because we don't have all that we need.
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We need the Book of Mormon according to the Mormons. Here's how our confession of faith begins.
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The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience.
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We say the Bible is all we need. We say the Bible is sufficient.
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We say the Bible is accurate. They say, well, no, it's not. Now, Mormons will say a lot of nice things about the
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Bible. They will read it. They will use bits and pieces of it. To proof text their doctrines, but they have to deny its sufficiency and its inerrancy.
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Because if it's sufficient, then why do we have all this other stuff? And if it's inerrant, then why do their scriptures contradict what the
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Bible says? I've told this story to a few of you, but my brother used to study the
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Bible every single day while he was on his Mormon mission. Why did he do that? Because he wanted to be able to preach the
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Mormon gospel from the Bible. And what happened to him? He got converted, right?
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He started asking questions, and the more questions he asked while he was on his mission, the more trouble he got into.
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They didn't like that Cooley kid. He was a problem, which I understand. I mean, I grew up with him, you know, but if you remember the
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Mormons in their articles of faith, they say, as far as the
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Bible is translated correctly. So they can then challenge a translation.
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They'll just say something like, well, you know, that's not translated correctly.
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Or they'll say, that's your interpretation. Because they're used to taking scripture out of context and making it mean something that it doesn't mean.
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Proof texting is something that we were trained, actually trained to do. Or they will cite the precept.
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This is a Mormon precept that many plain and precious things have been removed from scripture.
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How can they say that? Well, here we go. This is the Mormon church talking about the
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Book of Mormon again. During the vision, which Nephi, and I'll explain, well,
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I really, I'll sort of explain who Nephi is. Nephi is believed to be an ancient
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American prophet. It's kind of complicated. I'll just leave it at that for the moment.
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During the vision, which Nephi experienced after praying to understand his father's dream, he saw a time when scripture would be intentionally corrupted.
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Then they go on to say that, this is quoting the Book of Mormon, many plain and precious things would be removed.
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They say, because of those omissions, many people would stumble and fall under the power of Satan.
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An angel promised Nephi that his descendants would play a role in rectifying the situation by making known the plain and precious things which have been taken away.
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So that's one of the things that they do. They say, you know, the Bible is not complete. That's why you need the
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Book of Mormon. And that's where additional doctrine comes in. And they have lots of doctrines that aren't even in the
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Book of Mormon. So what's in the Book of Mormon? It is a record of God's dealings with the ancient
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American people, as I said before. Now, these ancient American people, the head, the patriarch of the family is a man named
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Levi. And what supposedly happens is the Lord visits Levi in, wait for it, where do you think he was?
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What's that? No, not the woods. No, that's Joseph Smith. Levi actually starts in Jerusalem.
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Jerusalem. He's a Jew. And God warns him that great judgment is about to come upon Jerusalem.
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And so he should leave. So he and his family build these boats. And, you know, the way
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I learned about them, they're basically like something of a combination between an ark and a submarine.
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They leave on these things and they wind up in North America. Okay, they eventually get to North America.
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So what happens is there's a period of relative peace while they're exploring this new land and all that.
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But eventually the people get divided into two groups. The Nephites, the people who follow the righteous son of Levi, Nephi.
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And then there are the Lamanites who follow the unrighteous son of Levi, a man named
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Laman. The Lamanites, because they turn away from God and are idolaters, they are cursed by God with darker skin.
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That's an ongoing theme, by the way, in Mormonism. Cursed by God with darker skin.
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And they are today what we would call indigenous people, native people,
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Indians. And then the Nephites are eventually wiped out by the
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Lamanites in a big war. Now, much of the Book of Mormon, I mean, that's the historical part of it, but much of the
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Book of Mormon is copied, plagiarized from the
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King James Bible. So there's a lot of thee and thou and it's old, you know, the old King James English.
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What's not plagiarized is believed by some non -Mormons to follow a book, kind of the story of a book written by a pastor named
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Solomon Spalding. It's called the Spalding Manuscript.
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And this book was written maybe a decade or two before the founding of Mormonism.
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The Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, describes the Spalding Manuscript this way. I mean, it's interesting because how many of you know that the
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Mormons have been losing members left and right over the last decade or two? I mean, they've gone from like five million people down to,
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I think they're like two and a half, three million or something like that. And their basic problem has been this.
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People find out the truth about Joseph Smith, and they find out the truth about a lot of the scandals in Mormon Church history, and they find out what the
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Bible actually says versus what the Mormon Church teaches, and they leave. So they become very adept at putting things on the internet and then spinning things a little bit.
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So this is what they say. Similarities between the Spalding Manuscript and the
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Book of Mormon are general and superficial. Spalding's fiction is about a, listen, is about a group of Romans blown off course on a journey to Britain who arrive instead in America.
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So it's way different. One of the Romans narrates the adventures of the group and the history of the culture of the people they find in America.
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A major portion of the manuscript describes two nations near the Ohio River. After a long era of peace between the two nations, there was a great war and the loss of much life.
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So it's completely different or pretty much almost the same. Now, where did the
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Book of Mormon come from? An angel named Moroni, the last, in fact, if you've seen a
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Mormon temple, how many of you have seen a Mormon temple? The gold angel up on the top, you know, a lot of people say
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Moroni or, you know, something like it's Moroni is the correct pronunciation.
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So now you know. He is the last supposed prophet in the
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Book of Mormon who then becomes an angel. Don't ask me why. He delivered these golden plates to Joseph Smith.
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And then by the power and again, this is Mormon Church saying this, by the gift and power of God, the prophet
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Joseph translated the record into English. Okay, so that's one source they have is the
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Book of Mormon, but that's not their only source. Again, articles of faith. Number seven, we believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, and so forth.
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What does that sound like? Sounds like charismatic. You know, when I tell people,
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I said, how hard is it to convert a Mormon? It's very difficult because they are, in effect, charismatic for starters.
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They've had a feeling, they've had a sense. They believe all kinds of things that are extra biblical.
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So it's hard to dissuade them from that. Articles of faith number nine, we believe all that God has revealed, all that he does now reveal, and we believe that he will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
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So it's not unusual to them to have, for example, how many of you have heard of the word of wisdom?
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Okay, the word of wisdom is a series of Mormon rules that you have to obey for starters to get into the temple.
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You have to be a full tithe payer, but you also have to obey the word of wisdom, which means no smoking, no drinking, no drinking coffee, okay, or hot tea.
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You know, they have a series of things that you're not allowed to eat or drink. Now, it's interesting that they have, and that came about by a later revelation, later than Joseph Smith.
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They have a series of these so -called prophets who come up with these revelations, and sometimes these revelations get reversed.
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Joseph Smith, I mentioned it this morning when I was talking to somebody, Joseph Smith had the, and we're gonna talk about it, the vision about polygamy, the revelation about polygamy and why it should be legitimized.
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It was actually a command from God. But when Utah wanted to join the union, wanted to become a state, the
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United States said you can't do that as long as you practice polygamy. So the prophet at the time had a revelation and polygamy was not reversed, but it was kind of put on hold.
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It's an eternal principle, but we don't have to live it out right now. And they've had several kind of incidents like that where things change.
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But they have prophets today. They have apostles today. They believe in prophetic visions.
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They believe doctrine can change. They also have two other scripture or books that they call scripture, the
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Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants. One way of looking at the
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Doctrine and Covenants is it's a series of so -called revelations given to different prophets.
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Most of them were to Joseph Smith, but there are some later ones as well. But the interesting part about their canon of scripture is it can be added onto.
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There's no limit to how big it could get. Now I want you to consider a moment or the scripture for a moment.
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Jude 3. Jude 3. Now my notes say Jude 1 3. Why do they say 1 3?
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Because my Bible computer program is dumb. It automatically, if you say
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I want Jude 3, it goes there is no such thing. So Jude 3.
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Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
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Now I want to just focus on that last bit. Once for all delivered to the saints, we have a common faith that is once for all delivered to the saints.
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Well, what does once for all mean? Is it going to change?
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No. And I think it's also interesting you see that verb delivered.
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And what is that? Is it active or passive? It's obviously passive.
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So where does it, you know, if something is delivered to you, somebody brings it to you, right? In this case, who would the deliverer be?
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Who delivered the saints or deliver the once for all delivered faith?
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Who would that be? Okay, it would be God, the Holy Spirit.
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Kistemacher says this, what is this faith Jude mentions? In view of the context, we would understand the word faith to mean the body of Christian beliefs.
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It is the gospel. It is the gospel of the apostles proclaimed, and therefore it is equivalent to the apostles teaching.
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So let's go back and let's review some of the things the Mormons say. Many plain and precious parts were lost.
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What does Jude say under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? It's once for all delivered, given to them by God, to the saints, destroyed, corrupted or lost.
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Well, how could that happen? The Mormons say it was corrupt men. Well, what does that suggest though?
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What does that tell you about God? That he's not as powerful as these men.
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God's not able to stop them from corrupting the word that he gave to the saints.
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Our confession says the authority of the Holy Scripture for which it ought to be believed depends not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God who is truth itself, the author thereof.
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Therefore, it is to be received because it is the word of God. I knew a man,
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I worked with a man who went from being a nominal Lutheran to becoming a
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Mormon. Eventually, he would leave the Mormon church and go to an evangelical church. But one time when he was in the
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Mormon church, he and I were out in the gym together and he was just being annoying and he says,
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Steve, isn't it great that we have a prophet in Salt Lake City who hears from God? And I said,
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I said, isn't it great that we have a God who's given us his word and has preserved it against all assault, attack and predation of man?
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And he was like, he didn't like that. But I said, it depends on what kind of God you believe in.
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If you believe in a God who's like us, only a little bit better, well, then
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I guess the Bible can be corrupted. If you believe in a God who speaks and the entire universe leaps into existence, then the answer is no.
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Mankind is not going to thwart his will. Who could stop his hand? The answer is no one. So that's the source and you can see
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I've got too much stuff. Okay, savior. Savior. Who's the savior of Mormonism?
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Well, according to Mormonism, you do need one. And there is only one, Jesus Christ.
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However, he's not really quite the Jesus that you're used to. They do have a different Jesus.
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It's often said that the LDS church, how many of you have heard this said that, you know, the Mormon church teaches that Jesus and Satan are spirit brothers.
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You heard that one? Probably. And I say the reality is much worse because I will often say, well, actually, it's worse than that because they teach the
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Jesus and I were spirit brothers. And yes, they do. Here's from the
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Mormon church. Their documents again, when the plan for our salvation. Now, we believe that there's a council, a heavenly council that plans out salvation.
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Who is president of that council? Anybody know? I mean, who planned our salvation?
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OK, the Trinity, right? You know, there were a group of three who planned it out. The father, son of the
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Holy Spirit. But listen to this. When the plan for our salvation was presented to us in the premortal spirit world.
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We were so happy that we shouted for joy. We understood that we would have to leave our heavenly home for a time.
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And while we were away, all of us would sin and some would lose our way. Our heavenly father knew we would need help.
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So he planned a way to help us. We needed a savior to pay for our sins and to teach us how to return to our heavenly father.
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Our father said, whom shall I send? Jesus Christ, who was called
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Jehovah, said, here am I send me. Jesus was willing to come to Earth, give his life for us and take upon himself our sins.
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He, like our heavenly father, wanted us to choose whether we would obey heavenly father's commandments.
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He knew we must be free to choose in order to prove ourselves. Listen, worthy of exaltation.
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That's going to become important in the next part. Worthy of exaltation. Jesus said, father, thy will be done and the glory be thine forever.
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On the other hand, that's party number one. Jesus saying, here's my plan.
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I'm going to give everybody their free will and I'm going to show them what to do. And if they follow me, then they'll return to you.
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The other person, the other plan at this pre -existence council was
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Satan, who was called Lucifer. And he also came saying, behold, here
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I am, send me. I will be thy son and I will redeem all mankind that one soul shall not be lost.
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And surely I will do it. Therefore, give me thine honor. Under Satan's plan, we would not be allowed to choose.
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He would take away the freedom of choice that our father had given us. Satan wanted to have all the honor for our salvation.
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Under his proposal, our purpose coming to earth would have been, or our purpose in coming to earth would have been frustrated.
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And that's, by the way, written by the first prophet that I grew up under, David O. McKay.
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When I was just a little kid, it was David O. McKay for a long time. After hearing both sons speak, heavenly father said,
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I will send the first. In Mormonism, we all existed as spirits prior to coming to earth.
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Jesus and Satan are essentially the leaders. They present the two plans.
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The father chooses Jesus's plan. And since Satan's plan was not chosen, what does he do?
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I mean, you already know this. You can kind of figure it out. He rebels, right?
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He rebels and one third of the preexistent spirits follow him. Now that sounds somewhat vaguely biblical, right?
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And of course they lose and they become the demons. They're going to populate hell essentially, because spoiler alert, everybody who chose
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Jesus, y 'all are in this room and all of you are not going to hell.
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According to Mormonism. Good news. But so what are they saying?
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They're saying Jesus was the first created being. He was created spiritually and through him then all of creation was not created, but was organized from preexisting matter.
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They don't believe in creation by fiat. They believe it was just the reorganization of things that already existed because in their view,
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God is not, they call him eternal father, but he's not eternal. He was once just like you.
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He was a man who had a preexistence, who had a God and there's this whole chain of gods so that I think it was
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Joseph Smith once said something along these lines and we'll see if I can get it straight.
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As man is, God once was and as God is, man may become.
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I mean, you know, how many scriptures could he come up to just go, wait a second? You know, when
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Isaiah looks up and sees the heavenly vision, does he think, you know, one day
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I'm going to be just like our confession of faith 8 .2.
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Says this, the son of God, the second person in the Holy Trinity being very and eternal
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God. The brightness of the father's glory of one substance and equal with him who made the world who upholds and governs all things he hath made.
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That's Jesus. This Jesus who's just like me, only a little bit better.
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I don't recognize that. And you know, when you talk about a council before the world even started, what about election?
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What about the sovereignty of God? All those things are eradicated because you know what they say?
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The whole goal of creation is the reason we're all here is that we might have joy.
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Very interesting concept because what does the Bible say? Why are we here? To glorify
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God. So when did Jesus become God?
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Mormons answer this before he created the world, he entered into.
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He was made God by the father for his performance in the pre -existence like a promotion.
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But he didn't even get the fullness of that till after the resurrection. What did
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Jesus do? This is again from them. They say the savior came to earth and set a perfect example for us to follow.
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Only through Jesus Christ can we be saved. Now they do talk about the atonement.
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They talk about it quite a bit. Listen to this. Through the atonement, the savior provided redemption from physical and spiritual death.
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I mean, we could argue about that, but okay. Jesus is the mediator between God and us and is our advocate with the father.
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I like that. The son of God is our true and righteous judge. Okay. The father's will is carried out to perfection by the son.
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I actually like that. Although Jesus is the son of God, he is sometimes called the father.
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Well, I mean, Isaiah 9, you know, other places. Okay. How about this? Jesus is the rock upon which we must build our foundation in order to overcome the temptations of Satan.
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Yeah, that one. I don't, I can't, I can't really go for that. But there's a clue there.
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Our job is to overcome the temptations of Satan. Is that true? We want to do that.
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We don't want to fall to temptation. But is that why we're here? No. Ultimately, what
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Mormonism teaches is this, that you are to become like Jesus, not in the sense that the
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Holy Spirit is working in you and sanctifying you and eventually, post resurrection, you will be like Jesus, but in the sense that in order for you to become a
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God, you have to be sinless. So you have to learn to overcome these things.
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Jesus died for your sins, but you need to stop sinning so that you can get to the highest degree of glory.
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Okay, I have to move on. Jesus, born of Mary, was begotten of Elohim, the
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Eternal Father, not in violation of natural law, but in accordance with the higher manifestation thereof, the offspring from that association of supreme sanctity, celestial sireship, and pure though mortal maternity, was of right to be called the
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Son of the Highest. Using very veiled language, what they're saying is that God had relations with Mary, is what they're saying.
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Heresy. We believe absolutely that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, begotten of God, the firstborn in the
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Spirit, and the only begotten of the flesh. Again, same thing. There cannot be any doubt in the heart of a
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Latter -day Saint regarding Jesus Christ being the Son of the living God because God himself introduced him, the
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Father introduced Jesus to Joseph Smith. If you've ever seen this, the first vision kind of film, here's one, you know, glowing being with beard and white hair and all that stuff, and then his like doppelganger shows up next to him.
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So it's the Father having a body, and then Jesus shows up and looks exactly like him.
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This is what they believe. They believe that God has a body. Note what
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Jesus Christ is not, according to Mormonism. He's not our righteousness.
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Why? Because we have to have our own. He's not eternally begotten, as the ancient creeds and confessions would say.
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He's not truly God. He becomes God, but he's not eternally
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God. He's not wonderfully formed in the womb of Mary by the Holy Spirit.
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His work is not sufficient. We need our works. Interestingly, Joseph Smith said this
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Well, okay, this is supposed to be a revelation from God. It's Joseph Smith writing this in all humility.
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Joseph Smith, the prophet and seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world than any other man that ever lived in it.
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So is Jesus enough? No, you need Joseph Smith too. This is also a quote from Joseph Smith.
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A large majority of the whole church have stood by me, talking about back then with the
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Mormons. Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it.
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I boast that no man ever did such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from him, but the
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Latter -day Saints never ran away from me yet. Okay, so that's their savior.
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I mean, they sing a song called Praise to the Man, which is all about Joseph Smith, and it's sung in worship songs, in worship services.
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One of the lines from it, I mean, you know, music and all that. One of the lines from it says this, talking about Joseph Smith, and you can read it plain as day if you look up the lyrics.
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It's called Praise to the Man. Some of the lyrics, mingling with gods, talking about Joseph, mingling with gods, he can plan for his brethren, the brethren that are still here on the earth.
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He can plan for his brethren. Then it says, death cannot conquer the hero again, talking about Joseph Smith.
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He's up there in heaven, planning for the saints that are left behind on earth.
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Let's talk about salvation. We don't have much time here. We talked about the grand council here before the world began.
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Here's what the church says. We learned that if we followed his plan, we could become like him, like heavenly father.
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We would be resurrected. We would have all power in heaven and on earth. We would become heavenly parents and have spirit children just as he does.
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We learned that he would provide an earth for us where we could prove ourselves.
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That's where we are now. A veil would cover our memories and we would forget our heavenly home.
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This would be necessary so we could exercise our agency to choose good or evil without being influenced by the memory of living with our heavenly father.
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He would help us recognize the truth when we heard it again on earth. In other words, we are free to make our own choices because this life is a test to see if we are worthy of godhood to see if we can be like he is.
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At the grand council, we also learned the purpose of our progression to have fullness of joy.
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Again, you know, the man -centeredness of this. Let's bring God down.
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Let's elevate man. And let's even take man and just say, you know what? What you are now is nothing compared to what you will be.
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Now, how important? Oh, I'm skipping ahead here.
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In the pre -mortal world, pre -mortal spirit world,
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God appointed certain spirits to fulfill specific missions during their mortal lives. This is called foreordination.
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It does not guarantee that individuals will receive these callings or responsibilities, but they will have opportunities.
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The doctrine of foreordination applies to all members of the church, not just to the savior and his prophets.
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Before the creation of the earth, faithful women were given certain responsibilities and faithful men were foreordained to certain priesthood duties.
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As people prove themselves worthy, they will be given opportunity to fulfill the assignments they then received.
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Or our confession of faith says to all those for whom Christ has obtained eternal redemption.
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He does certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same, making intercession for them, uniting them to himself by his spirit, revealing unto them in and by his word, the mystery of salvation, persuading them to believe and obey, governing their hearts by his word and spirit and all of free and absolute grace without any condition foreseen in them to procure it.
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In other words, God is sovereign and he gets his men and women. Just a moment about temple marriage.
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How important is temple marriage to exaltation? The Doctrine of Covenant says this about it.
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For behold, I revealed to you a new and everlasting covenant talking about temple marriage, but also polygamy.
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And if ye abide not in that covenant, then ye are damned. For no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory.
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Now, why is that such a big deal? You might wonder. Doctrine and Covenants section 132 is fascinating reading.
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It's very long for even for a book in the Doctrine and Covenants. Because Joseph, when he wrote this, when he received this quote unquote revelation, had already taken other wives.
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His wife was not very happy about this. So this is the pattern of the church.
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Get into trouble, get a revelation. So verse 54, same chapter.
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And I command mine handmaid Emma Smith, that's Joseph's wife, to abide and cleave under my servant
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Joseph and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment, she shall be destroyed, sayeth the
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Lord. I mean, Joseph's writing this and man. For I am the
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Lord thy God and will destroy her if she abide not in my law. Then verse 56. And again,
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I say, verily I say, let mine handmaid forgive my servant Joseph his trespasses, like those extra wives.
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And then shall she be forgiven her trespasses, wherein she has trespassed against me.
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And I, the Lord thy God, will bless her and multiply her and make her hard to rejoice. So how warped is
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Joseph Smith's understanding of the Bible? Listen to verse 65 in the same chapter. Therefore, it shall be lawful in me if she received not this law for him to receive all things whatsoever.
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I, the Lord his God, will give unto him blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let me skip to the end. Sarah, who administered unto
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Abraham according to the law when I commanded Abraham to take Hagar to wife.
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Is that what happened? I really don't remember that part. Now listen to the first, this part of the first vision.
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First vision is where Joseph Smith is visited. He goes out and he's 14. He goes out into the woods, allegedly because he's confused about all these different churches, wants to know which one to join.
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So he prays. And the father and then the son both appear to him as personages there.
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The church says this, the truthfulness of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, listen, rests on the truthfulness of the first vision and the other revelations the
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Lord gave to Joseph Smith. In other words, if Joseph Smith is a liar, then the whole religion falls.
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What did Joseph Smith reportedly hear? That every other religion was an abomination. So when we call them a cult, you know, and they get mad about it and they do,
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I go, hey, you guys started it with this whole abominations thing. But they teach that the, the
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Christian church was corrupted after the apostles died off. It was influenced by Greek philosophy and adopted false teaching like the
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Trinity. The true gospel they teach disappeared from the face of the earth for more than 1700 years.
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And then Joseph Smith restored it. Now, did the gospel vanish from the truth from the earth?
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Did that happen? Well, we've already said Jude said it was the once for all delivered faith, right?
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It's delivered by God. How about this one? And this is when I, I've used a few times. Jesus promised.
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He promised, I'm not going to read all of it, but Matthew 16, 18. And I tell you, you are
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Peter and on this rock, I will build my church and listen and the gates of hell, Hades, death shall not prevail against it.
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Jesus says, I'm going to build my church. Nothing's going to stop me from building my church.
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Joseph Smith says, something stopped Jesus from building his church. So I say to return missionaries, which one of them is wrong,
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Jesus or Joseph Smith? Not that hard.
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What do you have to do to be saved? You have to be baptized, a member of the church. You have to have the priesthood.
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You have to be married in the temple. And then there are three kingdoms of glory. And by the way, you're already saved from what we would say is hell.
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And according to Mormonism, by virtue of your performance that you don't remember in the pre -existence.
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I hope that's all clear to you. And then what happens is you get by obedience, you get to attain higher levels of glory and in the afterlife.
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And there are three kingdoms, which they get from Paul saying he went to the third heaven. Don't ask, you know, instead of the third heaven being, you know, the earthly heaven and then the heavens we can't see.
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And then the heaven where God is. Nope, they have three heavens, the telestial kingdom, lowest kingdom, terrestrial kingdom, the celestial kingdom.
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And each of those has three degrees, but we don't have time for all that. There is a hell, it's called perdition, sons of perdition.
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And those people are basically those who chose the wrong side in the pre -existence and or certain people.
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And you say, you know, who are the worst people in history? You know, maybe Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Paul Pott.
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Nope, they don't qualify. It would be those who fell in the pre -existence and people like Judas Iscariot, who had a perfect witness of the truth and then worked against it.
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And there are a few others who betrayed Joseph Smith, of course, and they're probably in perdition, but nobody else.
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So let me conclude here. Are Mormons Christian? I just scratched the surface tonight, gave you the tip of the iceberg.
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They have different sources of truth, sources that minimize and distort the Bible. They have a different savior, a
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Jesus who was created, was wrong and needed the help of Joseph Smith and also needs your help if you're going to get to heaven.
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And they have a different salvation. All are essentially saved and then we get to different places.
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They say exaltation, which is the highest level of the highest kingdom, according to them, by obedience, by our own works.
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All men are born innocent. They teach, you know, without original sin. So what do we do with them?
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I once was asked to present to a group of men, you know, how do we reach Mormons?
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And I gave them this long list of problems. They've got, they've got a wrong view of sin and salvation and the savior and scripture and all these other.
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I think I had a bunch of S's and they said, okay, well, is there one verse? No, but they've got a wrong view on all these things.
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They need to be taught all these things. I think the sticking point for me, and I'll just close right here, the sticking point for me.
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And when the one thing that kind of the Lord used to just drive me to ruin, ultimately was this idea that I had, that there was nothing
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I could do about sin. I couldn't stop. Couldn't stop sinning. And I thought
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I am never going to get to the celestial kingdom. I'm never going to be a God and have my own planets.
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I remember when I was a teenager saying that to one of my buddies and he's like, oh, don't worry about it. You'll make it. Mormons need to hear the gospel.
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It's going to be shocking to them to hear about the God man, truly
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God, truly man who lived a perfect life that we're supposed to live and we don't.
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And they know that, that died and was raised on the third day. And if you tell them, you're going to see absolute shock in their face when you say, all you have to do is believe in him, trust in him.
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And they'll go, well, wait, wait. If I do that, I can live however
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I want. Right. They will be shocked. They will be mortified by the gospel because they're so unused to hearing it.
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And if you take them through the Bible, they'll go into panic mode because they really don't know what to do.
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They're so used to works. They're so used to being on that treadmill that the idea of entering into the rest of Jesus Christ.
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It sounds crazy, but it's what they need.
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Let's pray. Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for this time that we've got to look at this maze, really, that is
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Mormonism and all these works that they have to do. Father, there are people out there who desperately need to hear and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Pray that we would find these people, that we would preach it to them, that we would watch them, try to refute them, refute the truth.
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But Father, I pray that you would grant us the joy of seeing them yield, that your spirit would convict them of sin, that they would believe in the