9 - LDS, Part 2

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10 - Mormonism, Part 3

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy's School of World Religions. We're glad to have you with us. We are here to discuss different world religions in our classes as we go through many different topics.

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We have many different schools available at strivingforeternity .org. You can see we have a school on how to interpret the

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Bible called Biblical Harmonetics. We have a school on Systematic Theology. We have a school on Discipleship.

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We're going to be adding a school on Apologetics soon and one on the Bible. So we're adding more and more of them.

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If you go to strivingforeternity .org, you can find out more about the Striving for Eternity Academy, which this is one of those classes.

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My name is Andrew Rappaport. I will be your teacher tonight. We are going through in this class, as we work our way through this class or series of classes actually, this is an

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Introduction to the Major Western Religions. The lesson we'll be dealing with today is a lesson on the

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. It's lesson number four in your syllabus.

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If you have a syllabus, if you'd like to get a syllabus and get all the notes, you can go to strivingforeternity .org

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and order one. They are $25 each and you can pick up a syllabus. It will be shipped to you.

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It has all the notes and then some. It has some stuff for you to fill in the blanks and has some things where you'd be able to follow along.

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A quick note to those who may be new, we had a number of people argue with us after last week's class on what

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I'm going to say is the LDS. That stands for Latter -day Saints. It's a shorthand for Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

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Saints or Mormons. We're going to call them LDS. It's the term they're using nowadays.

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The point being though is that many were basically arguing that I don't know what

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I'm talking about when I criticize the LDS. I should go to their website.

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Hmm. If you want to make that argument, just ask yourself the question, what's more authoritative in the

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LDS doctrine? Your website or Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, the places

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I am actually quoting from. Just saying. The website has been scrubbed. If you go back to what the website said even 20 years ago, you'll see that nowadays it sounds more like Christianity, which is kind of funny.

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I do find it interesting. Because the LDS say that they are the Latter -day Saints because remember in last class we looked at it that they had to be restored because the church fell away, something that by the way

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Jesus said wouldn't happen, but okay. But that aside, the church supposedly fell away and needed to be restored.

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Well, if the Latter -day Saints are the restoration of the church, my question to any of you

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LDS that are watching, why do you want to sound like us if we are the ones that supposedly fell away?

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Just saying. Why don't you stand up on your own doctrines and admit what your doctrines are? Don't pretend like you believe in justification by faith alone when that's not what you believe.

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These are the things. When we end up looking at this, we end up seeing that they will argue for things and their website has been scrubbed to make it sound more

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Christian. It shouldn't. If you believe the church fell away, you shouldn't try to be like the

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Christian church. Now, let's be fair. Really what I think Joseph Smith was really dealing with historically was the

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Roman Catholic Church, which then we would agree. They did fall away because they aren't

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Orthodox. They don't follow the Bible. They make the same mistake as we looked at in the last class. If you missed part one, we talked about the authorities in the

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Latter -day Saints. And they add to the Bible. They add things like the

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Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price. Once you add to God's Word, now they would say, no, no, no, this is

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God's Word. The problem is once you have additional resources that you say this is equal in authority to God's Word, but there's contradictions between what

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God's Word says, the Bible says and these new revelations, you have an immediate problem.

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And that should be an indicator to say, you know what? I think that maybe, just maybe the new revelation is wrong.

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God's Word doesn't need to change. And so if there's a contradiction, it's a problem. So, last class we looked at the authority, the authority of the

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LDS. Today we're going to look at God. What is their view of God?

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I'm going to give a warning. If you have never studied the

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Latter -day Saints, if this is the first introduction you have into the Latter -day Saints, you're going to question whether what

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I'm saying is true. I'm letting you know that. You're going to say they can't possibly believe this and that and the other.

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And I'm going to give you the quotations to make the case so that you understand it is part of their doctrine.

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It's just not part that they kind of let everyone know. As one Mormon who realized he wanted to be honest and not tell me that I was lying, he knew what

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I was saying about Mormonism was true. But he said, you can't possibly have known that because we don't teach that to new people.

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You have to be in the temple before you learn those things. And so there right there you see an issue. What they say to the average person is different than what they say to people that have gone through the ceremonies and whatnot because they can be trusted more as this person told me.

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Well, the reality is that these things are from their documents. We can read them. We don't need to go through ceremonies and have to hear it secondhand.

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We actually have a brain and we can read and interpret. Yeah. So when they deny it, it's just because they realize how far -fetched it sounds.

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All right? So let us begin by looking at their doctrine of the

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Godhead. If you have your syllabus, this is going to be on section number two, God. And as we go through this,

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I think what we're going to get to today is their view of God, specifically the Trinity and their view of Jesus Christ.

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And specifically, we'll look at a little bit of what their view is of His deity. But the LDS do not accept the term

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Trinity, at least not in the way we would use it. And I say that because what you end up seeing is that, again, they'll use that term, but ask them, what do you mean by that?

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Great question. I always ask when you deal with people like this because they're using Christian terminology and they have a different meaning from it.

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Now, their view of the Godhead would be two, ready for this, physical persons.

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That's your blank there, physical persons. Two physical persons and one spirit in one

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Godhead. That's how they end up defining it. It's two physical persons, the

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Father and the Son, and one Holy Spirit that make up the Godhead. Therefore, they could claim three persons in one

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Godhead. However, two of these persons have a physical body. We're going to deal with this.

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If you've taken our class on Biblical hermeneutics, on how to interpret the Bible, we dealt with the topic there and we also dealt with it in our systematic theology of anthropomorphisms.

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What is an anthropomorphism? That is where God describes Himself with characteristics of a man.

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Now, what you end up seeing is that in Latter -day Saints, they take those characteristics where He describes

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Himself as a man and they take it literal. So, when God says in Genesis 1, 26 -28, that, let us make man in our image, they take that to mean the physical image that humanity was created in.

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And they believe that God is a glorified being of flesh and bones, not just a spirit of essence.

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I'm going to give you some passages for that. So, what you end up seeing is they believe that God the Father, we would agree

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God the Son did have a physical body and is God and is glorified in that sense.

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Not in the same sense we would be glorified because He didn't have to get rid of the body of sin. But, the issue being is they would end up seeing that God the

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Father had a physical body. And that's where we're going to have some issue of contention. And they see that because they see passages that talk about God having hands and feet and eyes and ears.

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But, you know what, in the Psalms it says that God the Father puts us under His wings.

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Is God a chicken? No, God's not a chicken. It's an anthropomorphism or in the sense with the chicken,

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He's using a description of animals to describe a character of God.

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When it says that God sees, it doesn't mean He has eyes. It means that He knows things. It's a way of describing characteristic.

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They take it literal. Can you support that, Andrew? Yes, I can. Doctrine and Covenants 130 verse 22.

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This is in your syllabus if you have one. One of the advantages to a syllabus, by the way. And actually, I should say up front that all of this that I'm giving you is from my book,

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What Do They Believe? You can order that at strivingforeternity .org. What Do They Believe? a systematic theology of the major Western religions.

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So, you could pick up a copy of that and get all the quotes. The ones I go over in this class and more are in that book so that you have them there.

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But in Doctrine and Covenants, which by the way is more authoritative than the website, okay, because this is actually supposed to be inspired, says, quote, the

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Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's.

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The Son also, but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones but is a personage of spirit, unquote.

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That is Doctrine and Covenants 130 verse 22. What you see there is that this isn't something where you go, oh, you're taking it out of context.

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The context here, he's trying to emphasize not only that, to separate, not only that God the

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Father has a flesh of body, a flesh and bones, it's tangible, so it's describing, it's tangible, it's material and it's as man's.

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And it's different than the spirit. The spirit does not have that. So God the Father is like God the

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Son in having a physical body. And some will try to say, no, no, no, you're misinterpreting that.

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Well, it's emphasizing it not by just saying that he's got a body, but he describes the body as several ways.

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One, flesh and bones. That's how he's describing the body. Two, it's tangible.

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Three, it's like man's. That's the description. This is where we're going to have real contention.

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Well, you want to go to the website? All right, let's look at what their website used to say. Like I said, it's been scrubbed and so some of these things are no longer there.

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This is a direct quote from what they used to say on their website. Quote, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

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Saints worships a God and a Jesus Christ with bodies, with parts, and with passions.

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The belief that God has no body, parts, and passions is not a doctrine of Jesus Christ or a doctrine of the

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Holy Scriptures, but is a doctrine of men. And to worship such a

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God in vain. The message of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints to the people of the world is that God, the

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Eternal Father, and Jesus Christ live and are personages with immortal bodies of flesh and bones and passions.

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And with all mankind are children of God and created in the image and likeness that Jesus Christ, through his prophet

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Joseph Smith, restored his church with all his doctrines, commandments, and ordinances as recorded in all of the

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Holy Scriptures. Unquote. That is from their document, their website, what it used to say.

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What do you end up seeing? A, just a little note, Christians believe that Jesus had a body.

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So, when they say that we're teaching that Jesus didn't have a body, that's not what Christian doctrine teaches.

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Christian doctrine teaches that Jesus was fully man, fully God. But we don't believe that God the

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Father had a body. Well, what do you say then? I mean, if you're familiar with the

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Gospels, you're going to go, but wait a minute. In John chapter 4, it was very clear that Jesus, sorry, that God the

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Father is a spirit and he should be worshiped in spirit and in truth. This is

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John 4, 20 -24. Well, let me give you how Joseph Smith, in his translation, the

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Joseph Smith translation, translated John 4, 24. He translated it this way, quote, for unto such hath

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God promised his spirit and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth, unquote.

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Now, that's a big difference. And anytime you have to do a translation that actually changes the doctrine, then your translation is in error.

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And that's what you have here. In the Greek, it says that God is a spirit and you must worship him in spirit and in truth.

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Joseph Smith had to add this phrase, promised his spirit. That God promised his spirit is very different than God is a spirit.

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There's no manuscripts at all, anywhere in any Greek manuscript that justifies

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Joseph Smith's translation of God promised his spirit. That is addition to scripture.

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He's blatantly making it up. And so, what you see is that they believe in God the

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Father being a physical body. Now, did you also catch on the website where they read, he's not eternal, he's immortal.

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That's a big difference. What's the difference? We went through this when we were teaching the classes on systematic theology.

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Think of it this way, if you're familiar with math, you had a line and an array.

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A line was a line with two arrows on either end, meaning it goes in infinite directions, in both directions.

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That's eternal. Immortal would bore more like array where there's a starting point and then it goes on forever in one direction.

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That would be immortal like you and I. We had a time we were created and then from that time on we live forever.

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However, God is eternal. From everlasting to everlasting, he is

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God. In both directions, he never had a beginning. However, the

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God of the Latter -day Saints had a beginning and then lives forever.

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That's why they say he's immortal and not eternal. Big difference. This is the issue when they say, we are

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Christian, they've been doing all these commercials, we are Christian. They are not Christian the way the

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Bible describes Christianity. When they want to say they're just like us, no. They worship a different God.

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Their God has a physical body. The Bible teaches the opposite. Their God was born.

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Our God, the Bible's God, the true God, was not. Let's go on because this next thing is why

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I say that for some this is, they look at Mormonism and they go, this is science fiction.

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I know it is. Keep in mind that this was before an age where we had the scientific discoveries that we have now.

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And people actually believe that some of these things could be true, like life on other planets.

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Oh wait, some people still think that. They're called scientists that are trying to explain evolution.

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Yeah. So, because they can't explain how life can come from non -life. So they say, it was aliens.

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Doesn't solve your problem there, right? It just pushes it out. How did the aliens get life from non -life?

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We don't know. Okay, that's a science of the gaps. Alright, so letter B in your syllabus. Ready? God lives near Kolob.

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What? Yeah, he's on a planet called Kolob. The Latter -day Saints doctrine teaches that God used to be a man on another planet.

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That is your blank there, on another planet. And that he became God by following the laws and ordinances of that God of that world and he brought one of his wives to this world with whom he produced spirit children who inhabit the human bodies at birth.

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The first spirit child born to him was Jesus. The second was the person we know of as Satan or Lucifer.

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And then all others followed after that. The Latter -day Saint Jesus is definitely not the same as the biblical

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Jesus. Alright, so first off, what do we see here? And I'm going to give you some a support for this.

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But here's the thing. First off, God was born physically. That's opposite to what we're saying the scripture teaches.

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God the Father that we're speaking of. He was born, came into existence, had wives.

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Here's the problem. I remember saying this because I spoke to a Mormon once who worked for me when

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I was working in the secular world. And she would try to convert me to Mormonism.

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And I asked her, I said, do you believe that God the Father created all things, everything in the universe, everything that ever was created?

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And she said, yes. I gave her some scriptures. I said, well, how about Jesus Christ? I mean, Colossians 1, 15, and 16 says that Jesus created all things.

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And all things were created by Him and through Him. Nothing that was created was not created by Jesus.

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That's what Colossians 1, 15, and 16 say. Did Jesus create everything that was created?

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She said, oh, yes. I said, did Jesus Christ have physical parents, God the Father and His wife? Yes. Did God the

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Father have physical parents on Kolob? And she said, yes. I said, here's my She goes, what's that?

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I said, here's the dilemma is this. How did God the Father create His parents and the planet

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Kolob before He was born? And furthermore, how did Jesus Christ create His parents and His grandparents and the planet

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Kolob before His grandparents were born? You see a problem? They're trying to answer the question, where did

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God come from? The Bible's answer is God didn't come from anywhere.

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He is. That's the meaning of the name I am Yahweh or Jehovah, however you want to pronounce it.

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But it is the idea of I am, self -existing one. That's the importance of that.

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So what you have is they have a God that they're trying to answer, where did God come from? They have a God who existed at some point, came into existence at some point, had physical parents.

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So the LDS teach this, and I know this seems bizarre to those of us who, you know, we look at this and just are amazed, but a facsimile from the book of Abraham, we end up seeing that I have in my book, you'll see in my book,

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I give you this facsimile where they give the explanation with Kolob and how signifying the first creation nearest this celestial existence of God.

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And so they have a whole Egyptian description of this supposedly. But according to Abraham 3 .4

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it says this, quote, the Lord said unto me by the Urim and Thurm that Kolob was after the manner of the

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Lord, according to it's a time and season in the revelations thereof.

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And one revelation was a day unto the Lord. Therefore, after his manner of reckoning, it is being one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that wherein thou standest.

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This is the reckoning of the Lord's time according to the reckoning of Kolob, unquote.

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And so what you end up seeing is they're saying in the LDS state that in Abraham, okay, this idea to the

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Lord a day is a thousand years and a thousand years a day, this is the quote unquote Lord's time.

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A day is a thousand years long because what is one day to us is one thousand years on Kolob.

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Okay, so there's one revolution on Kolob and that one revelation is going to take us a thousand years to actually happen.

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So you end up seeing that they have this kind of, you know, I mean I'm hoping that you're listening to this and going this is strange.

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I understand that. There are things here that we look at this and just go this doesn't seem to make sense to us.

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And have I been giving the slides? That's right, I forgot to give you the, you haven't been, okay, so let me just say this is my fault for those of you who are watching.

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I put slide numbers in and I didn't rename them so when

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I'm giving the slides the engineer has not been putting the slides up because of the fact that I just have slide, it just says slide 175, 176 and that's not helpful and so the person doesn't want to get in trouble and put up the wrong slide.

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Go ahead and just as I go through this put it up. If you have to flip them, we'll flip them. That was, I'm sorry about that.

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That was my fault. Which ones did you have? Let's put up, let's put the first one up because I probably did, okay, so the first one there is

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Doctrine and Covenants 130 verse 22 which I read earlier. The Father has a flesh of bones, a flesh of body, flesh and bones as tangible as man's and the

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Son also. But the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones but is a personage of the

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Spirit. What was the next one that we had up there? Okay, that was the quote that I gave from the LDS church so you could see that.

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What about the next? Oh, this is, okay, so this is a good one. Good, see we can read this one. This is from Mormon 7 -7.

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It says, And he hath brought to pass the redemption of the world whereby he that is found guiltless before him at the judgment day hath it given unto him to dwell in the presence of God in his kingdom to sing ceaseless praises with the choirs above unto the

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Father and unto the Son and unto the Holy Ghost which are one God in a state of happiness to that end.

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So what you end up there is they end up saying that this is their way of explaining the Trinity but you see it's three separate, it's three separate persons as we would agree but they're separate, distinct and not really in one

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Godhead. It's a strange thing. What's, is there another slide? Okay, that's the one that I just read.

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Okay, so that is Abraham 3 -4. Good. So that is their view of God. So when we look at their view of Jesus Christ, they're not having the view of a

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Trinity the way you and I would view the Trinity, okay? They have a very different view of Trinity and so we want to take that into account and recognize the fact that they are going to say they believe in a

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Trinity but what do you mean by that is an important question because they're going to interpret this very, very differently.

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When you start believing that God had a physical body and lived on a planet, you're just in a different realm of what

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Scripture teaches. Let's move on to what's their view of Jesus Christ. What's their view of Jesus Christ?

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And this becomes important because we said, let's start with their view of the deity of Jesus, alright?

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And we'll see if I have the slides for you or not. It could be fun, you know?

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We could see. So, when we look at Jesus Christ, they do not believe in the dual nature, that's your blank there, dual nature being both fully

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God and fully man. This is what we call in theology the hypostatic union.

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The hypostatic union means that we believe that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man in one person.

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Now, I'm sorry, you and I cannot understand that but just because we do not understand that does not mean that it's not true.

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In fact, for me, it gives me greater assurance to know that there are things I cannot comprehend about God because He is greater than my ability to understand

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Him. And that's the point. God is greater than my ability to understand and He's going to be incomprehensible.

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I can't fully understand Him and when you start trying to fully comprehend God, we've dealt with this with Islam where they try to do this.

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And when you start dealing with something where you think you can fully comprehend God, you're asking for trouble.

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I'm just saying. So, they do not believe in the dual nature of Jesus being fully

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God and fully man. Jesus was God, became man, died and became

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God. Again, Christ is, and actually there's some, this is, this is a thing where, this is, well, let me read on and then

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I'll read that quote. This idea that Jesus was a man who became God and they would say that He was born of a spirit.

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We're going to look at this next week when we talk about the way they view spirit beings, that we are all born at one point in our spirit and then we come to earth and we're given human bodies.

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But Jesus was the first born of God the Father and His wife.

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By the way, His brother is Satan. Okay. Very different than the

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Bible. In the Bible, God, the Son, Jesus Christ created

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Satan. They're not brothers. He was a created being. Jesus was not.

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So, Christ, according to LDS, Christ is now fully

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God but subordinate to the Father where we would say Jesus was always, even from eternity past,

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He was always eternal God and yet He still was subordinate to the

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Father in some way that we know within the Trinity it seems from Scripture that both the Son and the

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Spirit are subordinate to the Father in some way. We don't fully comprehend that. That's okay.

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But Jesus is Jehovah in the Old Testaments according to the LDS. So, let's see if I have the right slide.

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Let me read this to you.

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So, I guess when those who are watching live, you're watching me put my head down and read my notes when the slide should have been up to hide the fact that I'm looking down and you see the bald spots on my head.

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It says here, and now, and I'm going to butcher the names by the way just so you realize, and now,

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Biden said unto them, I would that ye should understand that God Himself shall come down among the children of men and shall redeem

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His people and because He dwelleth in flesh He shall be called

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Son of God and having subjected the flesh to the will of the

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Father, being the Father and the Son, the Father because the

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Son conceived the power of God and the Son because of the flesh, thus becoming the

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Father and Son, they and they are one

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God. Yay! The very eternal Father from heaven and earth.

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Are you confused by that? Yeah, I am too. So, Jesus is both the Father and the

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Son? How's that? You see, this is the problem. They can't reconcile these things.

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I mean, if God's a completely separate physical being, how did Jesus, because He took on flesh, become the

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Father? And He's the Son because He took on flesh, and He took on the

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Father because He got the Spirit of the Father. It's like, you know, you see it starts breaking down.

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You end up seeing some of the confusion that they end up having and trying to answer questions that human beings can't answer.

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We can't understand everything there is to know about God, and yet they're trying to do this, and what you end up seeing them teaching is that Jesus, well, look, they have a phrase, let's see, am

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I going to get to it in my notes? There's a phrase that they have that says, speaking of Jesus, as we are,

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God once was. As God is, we may be.

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And the idea there is God the Father was once a man like you and I, as we already saw in passages.

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He's tangible just like us. And He was once like us and He became

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God. And since He could become God, just like He is now, we may be.

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We could become like Him. If you know your Scriptures, that should sound very, very similar to a passage of Scripture, say, in Genesis chapter 3.

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What was the temptation that Satan offered to Eve? Heeded the fruit and you could become like God.

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You see, it didn't end in the garden. Demons are still trying to deceive people to think that they could be like God.

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Just as God is, we could be? Wow. That's really, and you're going to see it.

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Now, some people are going to deny that. They're going to, no, no, no, we don't believe that. Let's look at some quotes. Let's see, I don't know what, what do we have next there, but put it up and I'll, okay.

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So this is Mormon 7 -7. No, that's in the wrong one.

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Yeah, there we go. This is Doctrine and Covenants chapter 20, 21 -28.

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So this is a longer passage, but let me read this to you. It says, quote, Wherefore, the

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Almighty God gave His only begotten

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Son, as it was written in those scriptures which have been given of Him.

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He suffered temptations, but gave no heed to them. He was crucified, died, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven to sit down at the right hand of the

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Father, to reign with Almighty power according to the will of the

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Father, that as many as would believe and be baptized in His holy name and endure in faith to the end should be saved.

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Not only those who believed after He came in the meridian of time in the flesh, but all those who from the beginning, even as many as were before He came, who believed in the words of the holy prophets, who spake as they were inspired by the gift of the

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Holy Ghost, who truly testified of Him all things from the beginning, even as many as were before He came, who believe in the words of the holy prophets, who testify in Him in all things, should have eternal life, as well as those who should come after, who should believe in the gifts and calling of God by the

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Holy Spirit, with beareth record of the Father and of the Son, which

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Father and Son and Holy Spirit are God, infinite, eternal, without error.

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Amen." Do you see a problem there? I hope you do. That one just said He's eternal.

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You see, this is where you end up seeing they have contradictions because they'll refer to God as eternal, and then later it sees immortal.

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Now, where do you see this? What you end up doing is you see, as I said last class, this has been a progression through time and their theology developed over time.

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As it developed, they tried answering things. As they answered things, they had to fix dilemmas that they had, and so they would do that.

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And so when you read the earlier stuff and the later stuff, it doesn't mesh. You don't have that with the

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Bible. The Bible was written over 1 ,500 years, and you don't have these kind of things that don't mesh.

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And yet, what you end up seeing in these false religions is that they have things where it doesn't mesh and it's within one generation.

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I mean, Muhammad, in his lifetime, one man's lifetime, in his later years,

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I mean, because he was in his 20s, from his 20s till he died, he can't even get his theology to mesh.

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One person can't stay consistent. Same with Joseph Smith. Can't stay consistent.

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And that's what you have. So, you end up seeing this view of Jesus with his deity. They have him being

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God. They do see that Jesus was divine, but in a different way than Christians would see it, alright?

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In a way that was never in the scriptures. Here they also see, as we saw there, that he was born of a virgin, alright?

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The LDS believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, marry in some unspecified manner, was made pregnant by God the

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Father through the power of the Holy Spirit. Hence, Jesus is not a metaphorical son, but a begotten son.

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Again, this is where they're taking things literal. And so, Jesus is not the son of the

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Holy Spirit, but of the Father through the Holy Spirit. I had one

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Mormon elder explain to me this is why they believe in polygamy, because God the

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Father was a polygamist because he not only had his wife, but he had Mary as a wife.

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I don't get that. Now, I'm going to say it. An elder told me that's not what I got from their doctrines.

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Like I said, it's unspecified in their doctrines how this happened. I had one person that explained to me, another elder of a

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Mormon church explained to me that how this happened was that God the Father's wife became, you know, she had a spirit and that spirit was

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Mary. And so, God the Father had relations with his wife.

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It was once his physical wife and she became a spirit that became human again and returned back.

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And I just scratched my head and go, okay, you know, how did she do that?

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And you know, this is where they end up having their dilemmas. I think that we might have, do we have almost 710?

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Let's put it up and see. There we go, there. So, and behold, he shall be born of Mary at Jerusalem, which is the land of our forefathers, she being a virgin, a precious and chosen vessel, who shall be overshadowed and conceived by the power of the

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Holy Ghost and bring forth a son, yea, even the Son of God. And so, what you see is, this is one of the dilemmas and we saw this earlier in a different passage.

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When they refer to Jesus as Son of God, they don't have the same notion that the Bible says. Bible calls him

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Son of Man to refer to his flesh. They say Son of God is how he became man.

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Strange, because we would say that Son of God means he has the essence of God and when he's called Son of Man, he's the essence of man.

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They would argue that Son of God means he's the essence of man. Kind of backwards. Now, the reality is, is at least

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I'm being consistent with Jewish thinking who are the people, the culture that use the phrase Son of God and Son of Man.

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When Jesus was called himself Son of God, the Jews wanted to stone him for claiming to be

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God, not claiming to be man. Alright? And so, what you see here, let me do a time check.

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Alright, so let me just read, this won't be in the notes, that you end up seeing, actually it's a lengthier one, so maybe

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I won't, but 1 Nephi 11, 13 -20 is another one where you're going to see that she's referred to as a virgin, most beautiful and fair above other virgins.

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So, she's a virgin and yet somehow she had relations with God the Father to have

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Jesus. And so, it says in there, and he said unto me, knowest thou the condescension of God?

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And I said unto him, I know that he loveth his children nevertheless. I do not know the meaning of all things.

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And he said unto me, behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the

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Son of God, after the manner of flesh. And so, you end up seeing this idea that she was this virgin, but somehow she wasn't a virgin because she had relations with God the

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Father. Remember, he's a physical being. He's not a spirit like the Holy Spirit.

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He's a physical being. And so, you end up seeing some things that we would just have real issues with,

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I think, as Christians. Other beliefs, let me just read some things since we have a little bit of time. Other beliefs about Jesus are found in the

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Book of Mormon, a book called Mormon Doctrine. So now, let me qualify.

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This book is not an authority. It's not one, they don't say this is inspired by God. However, the author is one of their quorum of twelve and by himself is an authority.

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So, if someone who's their prophet, their president, their quorum of twelve, the authority of the church on earth today, and he doesn't know

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Mormon Doctrine, he's trying to define Mormon Doctrine, hmm. You know, this is the thing.

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You'd think he would get it right. And if he doesn't know it, if people are going to argue that their living prophet, president, quorum of twelve member, doesn't know what

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Mormon Doctrine teaches, then how do you know you have it right? Because he's supposed to be the spokesman.

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Maybe you're the one that has it wrong and he has it right. And I'm saying that because many people will challenge me when

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I give you these five points that are from his book, Mormon Doctrine. I get challenged, well, that's not like Book of Mormon.

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That's not authoritative. It's not inspired. I agree. But since Mormonism has this hierarchy structure where he is the spokesman, the living prophet, then he's the spokesman.

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He's the one that speaks for you and he's the one that would know better than you what Mormon Doctrine is.

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So, in his book, some of the LDS are going to dispute this, I understand. But I think that your prophet should know better than you what the

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Mormon teaching is. So, I'm going to quote him and I'm going to go to his book. So, speaking of Jesus, he is the first spirit to be born in heaven was

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Jesus. This is Mormon Doctrine, page 129. So, the first spirit to be born in heaven was

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Jesus. Number two, the devil was born as a spirit after Jesus, quote, in the morning of pre -existence,

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Mormon Doctrine, page 192. Number three,

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Jesus and Satan are spiritual brothers and we are all born as siblings in heaven to them both,

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Mormon Doctrine, page 163. Number four, a plan of salvation was needed for the people of earth.

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So, Jesus offered a plan to be the father and Satan offered a plan to be the father.

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But Jesus' plan was accepted. In effect, the devil wanted to be the savior of all mankind and to, quote, deny men their agency and to dethrone

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God, unquote, Mormon Doctrine, page 193.

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Also, you'll find this in the Journal of Discourses, volume six, page eight.

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And the fifth one, before we go over these, God had sexual relations with Mary to make the body of Jesus, Brigham Young's Journal of Discourses, volume four, pages 218.

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Also, in volume eight, page 115. And so, this is one that is disputed among many

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Mormons and not always, quote, unquote, officially taught and believed. Nevertheless, Brigham Young and the second prophet of Mormonism taught it to the church.

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And so, you end up seeing that according there, Mary could not have been a virgin. Why? She had physical relations with a physical being.

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Alright, I hope you see after this, this Jesus of Mormonism is very different than the

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Jesus that we have in the Bible. The Jesus of the Bible was not born.

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He is eternal God. He never had a creation moment. He ever existed.

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He was born into humanity and He came into humanity, but He always existed as God.

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The fact that Jesus and Satan are brothers and we all share in being born as their siblings, well, just think about that and realize that, you know, if they were first born, then why weren't they

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Adam? I mean, if they were the firstborn of the spirits, why wasn't that Adam and whoever was

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Adam's first child? I mean, this would be the idea. Also, you see this notion that they had this plan of salvation and Satan, because his plan wasn't accepted, wanted to ruin the plan of salvation by dethroning

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God. First off, why would there need to be a plan of salvation at all?

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You see, here's the problem. Their argument is that Satan caused the fall because of the fact that his plan for salvation wasn't accepted, but there wouldn't be a need for a salvation if his plan was accepted.

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So, what was the salvation? There wasn't a need. It was only when his plan wasn't accepted that he decided to cause them to fall.

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But why would they be arguing over a need for salvation if at that point there wasn't one?

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This is before, as it says, you know, in their pre -existence. And so, what you end up having here is this idea that these two brothers are fighting over who's going to be the savior of mankind, but why would mankind need a savior?

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That's the issue. The reason they needed a savior is because Satan's plan wasn't accepted and so he caused them to fall.

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They wouldn't have fell if, you know, that's the reality, if this was the case. And so, you also see in this this idea that Jesus becomes the

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Father. That is so confusing. What do you mean He becomes the Father? Is He the Father or is He the Son? Which is it?

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You see this mixture. This is a consistent problem that you see in Mormonism. Now, next week, what we're going to do in the next class is we're going to finish this up.

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We're going to look at this. We're going to look at their view of sin, their view of salvation, and their view of end times. And what you're going to see is the idea that they have that all men pre -existed like Jesus and Satan, pre -existed as a spirit and become man.

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But I want you to see this doctrine that they have is very, very different than the

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Bible. And keep in mind that they're not going to be open and forthright with what they believe. But I'm giving you their documents.

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You can go check out what their documents say. Don't take the guy in the white shirt with the black tie riding his bicycle who's going to say, no, no, no.

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Let me tell you what the church believes. I'm sorry, but the authority of the church says this.

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I'm giving you what their authority is teaching, not the guy who may be wrong about what the authority is.

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You go to the authoritative source. That's why we started with what's the authority. So, if you have questions about this lesson or any other, you can contact us at academy at strivingforeternity .org.

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Academy at strivingforeternity .org. You can always go to strivingforeternity .org. Find out more about us.

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You can go there and donate and help support the ministry that puts these on. We put these classes on for free so that you can learn and get a free education.

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You buy the syllabuses. You can go to the store at store .strivingforeternity .org to get a syllabus. Those syllabus help fund being able to put these classes on for you.

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You can also at the store get my book, What Do They Believe? The book is available and you can get that where we go into much more detail than we do in this class.

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Also that you can go is sign up your church or group or organization for our seminar, Bible Interpretation Made Easy.

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Learn how to interpret the Bible. In one weekend, six sessions, eight hours, we will train you on how to interpret the

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Bible so that your church, your group will learn how to handle God's Word accurately and what you'll end up doing is even when you look at something like Mormonism, you can look at their documents and realize where they have things in context here, things in context here don't agree.

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God is a physical God, physical being, yet He becomes the Father and then you have a physical being, the

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Son, who becomes the Father. They're two separate physical beings, can't happen. So this is the problem you end up seeing when you read it in context, you see the problems that you end up having.

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This is why interpretation is important, learning how to do that. So my challenge to you is to get that seminar and learn how to interpret the

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Bible rightly. We usually have a brother or sister of encouragement and I don't have any for you.

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We want to encourage you. You can email us at theacademyatstrivingforeternity .org and let us know who you want us to encourage.

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We didn't have anyone on the list and we just had to get class going and so didn't have a name.

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So that being said, let us know who you want us to encourage. We want to train people to encourage one another.

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That's really it and until next class, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.