Respectful: Christians vs. Mormons

And we're Christian's Neighborhood, we love you guys. We're not here to be hostile or just argue, because that's not really profitable. But I was telling him, one of the concerns we have is when we ask our LDS neighbors questions about how you reconcile some things.

The Oneness of God and the LDS Teaching of Many Gods

For example, the LDS teaching of there's many gods, each in a progression. One day you can become a god. And then the teaching of Isaiah 43 .10, where God says, I'm the first, I'm the last, before me there is no god form, neither shall there be after me.

And then you have Isaiah 44, 46, it's a constant testimony of God saying, He's the only God. So how would you guys reconcile that with...

Yeah, I think we believe in God the Eternal Father and in His Son Jesus Christ and in the Holy Ghost. That's the first article of faith. Okay. So I think we share that belief, right? That there's one God, the Father, and then there's the Son Jesus Christ and there's the Holy Ghost.

I think one of the things... You probably heard this right from President Gordon B. Hinckley. This is going back 15, 20 years now. But one of the things he says is, yeah, there's a lot of truth out there.

A lot of the churches, the churches that you guys attend, there's a lot of truth in there. The truth about God. And what we believe is, of course, that through the Prophet Joseph Smith, there's been many more truths that have been revealed to us in these days, these latter days.

Truths restored that have been lost from the Bible during the apostasy. And I know that... I know there's many things that we still don't know and we still don't understand about God, right? I mean, it's not somebody that you come to understand very quickly.

Nobody completely understands God. And so I think that for me, the blessing of being a member of the church is to know that truths are being revealed. And that God has a prophet today on the earth. And man, I'm glad because I need that sort of direction.

Real quick, where are you from? Your accent's amazing. Oh yeah, I'm from England. I love it, dude. I love it. So that was just a side note. So would you say though, would you say you hold to the beliefs of the Bible, what the Bible teaches?

If the Bible says something, would you say you agree with it?

I think for me, we believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it's translated correctly. We also believe the book of Mormon to be the word of God.

Testing Joseph Smith by Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18

Because you mentioned Joseph Smith and I've done not extensive research, I'm not going to lie to you, but some research on him. And when you go to Deuteronomy 18 in the Old Testament, it gives us the test of a prophet, right?

And it says that if a prophet says something that doesn't come true, that doesn't come to pass, that you shouldn't fear him, don't follow after him. And then in Deuteronomy 13, it tells you that if a prophet leads you after other gods that you haven't known, say, don't follow him, don't fear him.

And with Joseph Smith, our concern is, is he made tons of prophecies that are recorded. He said, we're going to have this specifically in his time that didn't happen. And so it's almost like building your beliefs on sinking sand because you have Joseph Smith who says something.

And then Jesus says, if a prophet says something that doesn't come true, don't believe him. So if you take Joseph's word and you build your belief, your faith, your worldview on it, it's building it on sinking sand.

And Jesus tells us in Matthew, he says, whoever hears my words, believes them and obeys them is a smart person. They're the person who builds their house on rock, right? And Joseph Smith is more building your house on sinking sand because from the beginning, it falls apart.

Because Joseph said things, he said that Jesus would come back in his lifetime. Jesus didn't come back.

That's a good one. Because you're right. I mean, that sort of thing, it makes you think. It does. You know, in the New Testament, right? What does Christ say, right? He says that like in this generation.

That's very important. I'll come back in this generation. And Christ says that. He did. And so for me, it's like, I don't know if we fully understand exactly what he means by this generation, right? Maybe a generation feels a little bit different.

I like that you know that too. That's pretty good. Because that's important. I mean, I think there's going to be so much.

A lot of my brothers and sisters don't refer to that passage. So that's good. I would say Jesus, when he was talking about him coming back in that generation, he was talking about, if you read it in all its context, about his judgment on Israel.

So he indicts the Pharisees. He tells them, hey, your house is left to you desolate. He talked about the temple. He said this temple is going to be destroyed. He gives them all these woes. He tells them, woe is you for this.

Woe is you. He's talking about his judgment on Israel, which Israel got judged in 70 AD. They got destroyed. And everything Jesus said in that generation happened exactly. I think, again, our heart is if there's two fundamental contradictions.

For example, is Jesus created?

The Eternal Christ Versus a Created Jesus

Do you think Jesus was created? I think he's the only begotten of the Father, you know. I don't know. I think in terms of spirit, right, it's eternal. Matter is not created. Yeah, everything's eternal, I think.

I love your accent, by the way. Thanks very much. Northeast England. No, it's beautiful, brother. Where are you from? Just a quick question. A town called Hartlepool in the northeast of England originally.

Okay.

So one thing that I think we could agree with you on is you said you love that we do get to know God, right? Because God reveals himself. God gives us revelation. And we get insight to who God is. We get to be intimate with our creator.

And what we want for you guys is we want you guys to know the true living God. We want you guys to be in saving relationship. When the Bible says that God takes us and he adopts us, and now we can call him Father. He changes our legal standing where once we were guilty of our sin.

The wages of sin is death. He now sets us free in Christ. And he presents us as holy and blameless, which if we're going to be honest, we know that we're not blameless. We have a record of debt. We know our sins.

We know we deserve God's wrath, but he saves us anyways. But the important thing is that only happens through the true Christ, the true God. And the Christ that the LDS church teaches is one who's created.

In John 1, it says that Christ created all things that came into being. If anything was made, if it falls into a made category, Jesus made it. You have that repeated in Colossians 1. It says he gets very specific.

He says visible, invisible. Thrones are dominions. Rulers are authorities. If it's in heaven, if it's on earth, it was made through Christ and for him. And then in Hebrews 1, it tells us—these are all my friends.

In Hebrews 1— We have a ministry to our LDS neighbors.

In Hebrews 1, you have Jesus who creates the world, sustains the universe by the word of his power. And that's a different Jesus who created everything versus the Jesus who was created and was the creative—.

I don't know.

I can't see the difference. Because all those scriptures that you cited and the fact that you're saying Jesus created everything. I don't know about you. That sounds like a very familiar doctrine to me.

I mean, that sounds something that I would sign up to that straight away. I think that's what I would teach in the church, and I think that's what I would have been taught.

What if Joseph disagreed with you? Who would you agree with then?

If Joseph Smith disagreed with me about whether Christ created everything? I'd be very surprised, but I would think—I would say, well, no. Christ is the creator. I mean, we have it, and that's what I think I've been taught.

Have you been taught anything different from that? I don't know.

No, it sounds right to me. Yeah, and it sounds right because that's the clear teaching of scripture. It's undeniable. We just gave you a couple of scriptures, and it sounds right because it makes sense, right?

But Jesus being the eternal God, being the only true God, he's the reason why we can have atonement for our sins. He's the reason why we can have peace with God. In Romans 5, verse 1, it says,. Therefore, being justified by faith in Christ, we have peace with God.

Right? And the thing is, if you have the Jesus that LDS Church teaches, who is a created being, who didn't create all things—.

Talk to me a little bit about that created being business because, again, I'm not—. I don't find that our doctrines disagree with anything you've said up to now about Jesus Christ being the created being, with the Father in the beginning, right?

Through him, all things were made that were made. Yeah. Like, I don't remember being taught differently from that, so I'm—. But you're finding a difference there, and you're saying, look, there's something about him being a created being.

And, well, I don't know where that's coming from.

Okay, so let's start that. Do you think Jesus is the one true God? Yeah, I think so. I mean— Would you say you believe in one God, or would you say you believe in—.

Okay, I see what you're getting at. So maybe we're getting at the difference between a Trinitarian and a non-Trinitarian or something like that, right? To say that we believe in maybe three distinct personages, whereas you would say—.

Oh, we agree with that.

Oh, okay. Three persons, but one being of God. So there's one being of God. Yeah. There's one God, and he's shared by three persons, co-equal, co-eternal. Right. The Holy Spirit is called God, Jesus is called God, and the Father is called God.

Right.

So there's only one God.

Right. And there's no God after him.

Okay, so you're saying, like, the apotheosis thing, right? You're saying, okay, listen, we're not going to become like God. Yeah.

Okay. Could I make a small interjection, just to, like, clarify? I used to be LDS. I recently came with this ministry about two years ago, and this is probably the most confusing thing to me. And it took a while to get through this, but one of the things that helped me out a lot was the idea— Matthew 19, if you remember the story of the young rich ruler, you know, he comes to Jesus and he says, Good Master, good Lord, what should I do to enter Heaven?

Right. And Jesus kind of comes back to him, and he's like, it's interesting you call me that, because there's only one that's good, and that's God in Heaven. Right. So a question I have for you is, do you believe that Jesus was good?

Do you believe he was perfect? Right, yes. So now we have Jesus' testament of who is he. God, yeah. He's God. For sure. Right? And so the Trinitarian idea is you have to understand that you and I would both agree that God is omnipotent.

He's fully all-powerful. So there's nothing stopping him, one being, from personifying himself in three different persons. Okay. Now when we're thinking about Christ, okay, we believe that God is a spirit.

Christ comes down, descends to us, and takes on the body of flesh. And there are certain aspects of his Godhood, his omnipotence and his omniscience, that he strips of himself so that he can experience this world as we do.

Okay. So this is God saving us from God, in a sense. That sounds a little weird, but it's just like you and I remember that God has to be just and he has to be merciful. Right. Only the only person that can appeal to us righteousness to get to heaven is somebody who's perfect.

Right. Jesus just said there's only one that's perfect. Right. Right? And so basically what I'm trying to get at is that if you guys are familiar with baptisms for the dead, for example. Yeah, for sure.

That is something you would say is a vicarious work, right? You're doing a work for somebody else. Right, right. That's what imputation is. Jesus Christ is vicariously taking upon your punishment to himself, and he's vicariously giving you his righteousness.

And he's perfect. Right. Right? So in Romans 3, which is so important to realize when Paul's talking about the imputation of righteousness, and this pairs really well with Ephesians 2 .9, which you may have heard of, and then James 2, where God works his dead.

And we can clarify that if you'd like to. But basically where this all gets to is that if you, which is what we're worried about, we're concerned about, right? Is that, you know, he's talking about there are different Jesuses, there are different gospels.

You know, Paul writes to Galatia in the very first chapter, and he says, I'm astonished that you would leave the gospel and leave the Christ that you already knew about. Right, right. And that if any man comes to you with a different gospel or a different Christ, they are accursed.

Right. So that puts you and I in a respectful predicament, right? Right. Because right after that, he says, if we're respecter of persons and not respecter of God, we should not be servants of God. Okay.

So what that tells you and I is that you and I cannot say, well, you believe your stuff about Christ, and I believe my stuff about Christ, and hey, we're all Christians, so we're good.

I'm still waiting to hear, like, the difference between the two.

Let me quote from Joseph Smith, and you tell me if you agree with this. Okay. He says, I'm going to tell you how God came to be God. He says, we have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity.

I will refute that idea and take away the veil so that you may see. Okay. So do you agree with him there?

So I see what you're taking. So you're taking issue with the, like, as man is, God once was. As God is, man may become. Okay. Yeah, so I understand that might be a doctrinal difference between you and I.

So you would agree with Joseph there? Yeah, and I think what I would want to do and what I probably do do, right, is I probably try to see how both of those things can be reality, right? Both of those things can be true.

Yes, there's one God. And I think the way that I've done that, the way that I understand that, right, is that there's one God. God the Father, the Son of the Holy Ghost. We're all on the same page, it seems, on that.

And about Christ's role in our redemption. And I guess I just, you believe that we're children of God, right? We're sons of God.

Well, we wouldn't say that, no. I wouldn't say only humanity. We'd say only those adopted into his family, which is why Paul talks about adoption so much.

And John 1, the one who he's given right to become children of God. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So not all human beings are sons of God, but we're creation. We're creation, and God creates us out of dust. Who created his image, right?

Yeah, and we would affirm that. Originally, though, we are children of wrath. This is our whole team, by the way. Okay. And when we accept Christ and we accept that faith, we then become children of God with that new rebirth.

Well, that's good to start to see the sort of differences of where we're going.

Isaiah 43 and the Claim That There Is No God Before or After

So when God was a man, did he have a God on top of him?

Right, I mean, that's a great question, right? And I mean, you have to sort of assume that that was the case, right, if you're going to accept that doctrine.

Don't you think, though, Daniel, don't you think that that's in contradiction with Isaiah 43 .10, where he says, Before me, there was no God formed.

Right, I mean, you know, what's the context of that? What's Isaiah trying to do? My guess, right, is—well, maybe an educated guess, right? But I imagine, right, that what Isaiah is trying to do in that situation is he's trying to get the Israelites not to be worshiping any other gods, which, of course, is the exact right thing to do.

We shouldn't be worshiping any other gods but God, right, but the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And so what I imagine that Isaiah is doing there is he's got a mission from God to prevent the children of Israel going astray, going after false and other gods.

And so he's saying, hey, listen, this is what we—this is the God that we worship. This is the God that we need to worry about, that we need to focus on. Never mind going after strange gods. And so, yeah, I mean, absolutely, Isaiah was doing God's work when he was saying that.

And so the God he's pointing him to, though, Yahweh, when he's constantly pointing him to this God, this God constantly reveals himself and he makes it clear. He says he's the only God. None before him, none after him.

He says he's beginning and the end, and then he asks a rhetorical question. He says, is there any other gods? He says, no, I don't know of any other gods.

And the other thing, it might be like a milk-before-the-meat kind of a thing as well, right? You know, we know the ancient Israelites. I mean, you know what we teach about that, right? They were not righteous to the point where they had the full gospel, right?

Remember Moses went up the mountain and he came back and they're all worshipping this false idol, right? I mean, he had enough on his hands just to get them to stop worshipping false idols. And so to expect Isaiah to have then taught the ancient Israelites, okay, right, but we have this other part.

You know, you're not quite living the very basics, but we're going to give you something a little bit more. That might have been a lot for Isaiah to have done, right? That might have been way too much.

That might have been beyond the scope of what the Lord was asking him to do at the time. And so I think like, you know, it's, I think it's sort of rational and logical to say contradiction there, right?

And what you're doing is saying, look, Isaiah says X, Joseph Smith says Y. So, and they seem to be in contradiction and I'll give it to you. They do seem to be in contradiction. But I think there's probably a context, probably in both cases, where we can understand why Isaiah was saying what he said when he said it, and why Joseph Smith was saying what he said when he said it.

Some clarification to give you is that I know that you're hitting the target pretty accurate, that Isaiah was reacting to the idols. That is correct. But we can't dismiss the extra information that he gave us.

Okay? So he said, there's no gods before me or after me, right? So if we were to assume exactly what you just said, this is, let's just say that you had said to us, that's only regarding false idols, right?

Could you imagine that since Isaiah said that, has there been more idols that have came into existence since that point? Yeah, absolutely. So I would imagine what God is saying is that he's giving a better answer than just responding to the idols.

He's saying there is literally nobody else. I am the highest, I am the only, and he's encompassing everything with that answer.

And you know, I honestly feel like, so, and I think both doctrines are necessary. I think this is why I think, I honestly live my life as though my Heavenly Father is God, right? And is the only God that I need to, well, we have Jesus Christ, we have the Holy Ghost, and of course we need to be concerned with them all.

But he's the only God that I pray to. He's the only God that I worship. He's the only God that I know anything about. He's the God that I want to emulate, which is a big word, right? And a big ask, right?

And of course I don't come close. As nobody does, right? Nobody does. But we want to try and think, right? That's what we want to do. And strive to become as much like him as we possibly can. Even though we're going to sin and fall short, and we're going to have to repent every single day, and we're going to have to sin every day.

So, I mean, I live my life, I think, and I live my religion as though there's no good before him, because I don't know anything about it. Well, I know something about it, right? I know that it seems likely that maybe that's some part of an eternal pattern, right?

And I believe that I'm a child of God, and I believe that we're all children of God, and we're all, everywhere in the world, a child of God. And I think God, our Heavenly Father, because he's our Father, we have the potential to become like him.

And I think that, I mean, that's what Christ is doing. He's giving us the pattern. He's showing us the way. And he's telling us, actually. Like, if you're not, you know, if you're not in, you know, if I'm not in you, if you're not in me, then, or if you're not one, right?

You're not mine. But you can inherit, right? The disciples of Christ can inherit all that I have, right? Which is all that the Father had. So we, so I believe that Christ taught us that. I believe he taught us we can become like God.

And while I admit, right, that it's, it can get pretty complicated if we start to go back, right? And say, well, okay, who was God before God then? Well, then who was God before that? Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

But I think that that doctrine is important to me because it says, hey, look, you know, I can, I can, okay, in the eternities, right? Not, probably not tomorrow. Probably not tomorrow. But I can become like, like my, like God.

I can become like my Savior Jesus Christ.

I can become like God. So I think we would, we would agree that the person of Christ is significantly important. He's, he's all throughout scripture. He's, he's supreme. And you answered this earlier, but I don't remember how you said it.

I asked you if you believe he was created.

You said he was the begotten of. Yeah. The only one of the father. Yeah. Cause I didn't fully understand the creative part.

But so, but so do you think Jesus, well, he, you would say he didn't always exist because God was once a man and then God exalted. And then, and then he begot Jesus is what you would say. Right, right.

Uh huh. So. And, and you remember those verses we quoted earlier about Colossians, about how Paul gets specific. He says visible, invisible thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities. If it's in heaven, if it's on earth, it was created through Christ and for Christ.

And then John one, right? We said that if it falls into a maid category, all things were made through him. And, and John kind of repeats himself. He's showing an emphasis. He's saying if, if it's made, if it falls here, it was made through Jesus.

And so that's, I think our concern is if the Messiah is significant person in scripture, if Jesus is massively important, if he's the redeemer, we have to get him right. Or else what happens is, is all of us will stand before God and all of us will have our sins.

We admit that. Um, and we're going to need to be clothed in a righteousness that is not our own. We're going to need to be saved. We're going to need someone to come in and present to God us in a way that scripture says holy and blameless.

And so if we have two different Jesuses, if you have a Jesus who didn't create everything, who was only to be God and of the father, and then God used him to create everything we see now. That's a completely different Jesus than the one who I would say sustains all of this and created all of this.

I think completely different might be too much. Right. It is. It is a detail. It is a difference. For sure. It's a difference. Would you say it's a big difference? I mean, I'm not sure exactly what, what it does.

So if you're saying, so what I'm hearing you say is you're saying, okay, no, no. The Jesus that we worship, the Jesus that we know, the Jesus that's our saviour. He was not like, like I think we would say, right, that he's a spirit child of the father.

I think we would say. So I'm saying the difference. Right. So I'm saying that, yeah, before the earth was, before everything was like at the beginning of time, as far as we understand anything about what time is right.

Beyond the foundation of the earth. Right. And beyond that, when I say at that moment, yeah, that Christ was a choice spirit. Spirit. Spirit. Yeah. Begotten of the father, right? Spiritually begotten of the father.

And then of course, actually begotten like physically in the flesh when he came to the earth. So the difference is that if we look back before the foundation of the earth, before Christ created everything and before his, the light of Christ that sustains everything here.

So before that, and before probably eons before that, that Christ was, and I'm saying he was a spirit child of Elohim, right? No, no, no. He was always there. Okay. That's a difference. Right. That is a difference.

And that probably does have some significance. Yeah. But I'm not sure how much. I have 43, excuse my ignorance. I'm sorry, man. I'm jumping a little late, but I just want to understand your position. I don't want to misrepresent you.

Sure. Right there it's saying, I am Jehovah. Before me was no God formed. From your view, would that be speaking of Christ? Yeah, I think so. So would that Jehovah know of a God before him?

Would he know of his father before him? I think I would say back again, like we said, I think Isaiah, right? He has an idea there that he's going to teach the Israelites on a mission from God, right? That, hey, listen, worship Jehovah.

There's no other gods that you need to be worshiping. There's no gods before me. And I guess I read that as like no gods ahead, like no gods in front of me. There's nobody that you should be worshiping that's better than me.

I think the big difference though is Daniel, that both of us, we need God to die for our sins. Not a spirit child. Not someone who was created. Not someone who came after. We need the eternal God. Psalm 90 verse 2, from eternity into eternity, you are God.

We need that one to pay for our sins. Not a spirit child. So you would say you have a spirit child of Elohim coming to die for your sins. And I would say that's insufficient. It can't cover. It won't save.

What we would say is you need the true God. And this is what makes the gospel so beautiful. It's almost ridiculous to think that the eternal God, the God who always existed, who knows everything, that he would actually, like he would come to his creation.

He would descend. He would wrap himself in flesh. And then we're talking about God hanging on a tree. So the same wood that God created, he's hanging on it. He's looking down at Roman guards whose breath is in his hands.

This is God on a tree we're talking about. It's beautiful. And which is why it saves perfectly. Because this is why we have verses like God takes our sin. He puts it as far as the east is from the west.

Although we are stained, he washes us white as snow. Because it's God himself who's sacrificing his own life. So to have a spirit child, it isn't enough.

Yeah. And I guess, okay, and I see your point. I see that, I see where you're making the difference. And I still would not make a difference there. Okay. Because I would say like the one that has inherited all that God is and all that God has, he is God, right?

For sure. Like I don't want to diminish the Godhood of Christ in any bit. I would not do that at all. And I don't think our church would teach me to do that either.

I don't think you want to, but I think if you're consistent with what they teach, I think you have to. I don't think you want to. I think your heart is good. And I believe that you don't want to, but I think that if you take what Joseph says, I think you have to.

I mean, imagine like that.

It says on the church of Jesus Christ, right? Yeah. I mean, everything we do, we do in his name. So I guess what I'm saying is in terms of diminishing the role and the importance and the holiness of Jesus, of the Godhood of Jesus, I just think if everything we do is in his name, we're actually going to teach him Christ.

What is it? What's that? You can probably quote it better than me, but there's that scripture. What is it? We teach him Christ.

We speak with Christ. The one where he says, not able to say to me, Lord, Lord, we get into heaven. No, no, no. I wasn't going to say that. They say, they say, they tell Jesus, we prophesied in your name.

We did this in your name. We did that. And they give everything you just said. They say, we did this in your name. But he says, I never knew you.

Yeah, you're right. Apart from me, you work out of iniquity. Can I ask one question to you? When you said, you know, when Jesus atones for our sins, are you trying to clarify then that in his state of theosis and in his completed progression, then he became God to take our sins?

Because we're saying, again, a spirit child can't take the wrath of God, but God can take the wrath of God.

I think for sure he was God before he came to earth. I think for sure. Like, I don't think he yet inherited everything the father had, but I think he does, right, while he's on the earth. I think John 17, right, where he does that intercessionary prayer, right?

He talks about how he's inheriting everything that the father has. Well, he talks about it a few times when he's ministering, right, doesn't he? He says, look, you know, well, what does he say? He even says he's God, doesn't he?

He says, before Moses I am or something like that, right? I mean, he's, so yeah. You got it, bro.

Yeah, that's good. The question is always, though, who is the I am? And I think you asked a good question earlier. You said, well, I don't understand how it's that big of a difference. If it's Jesus different in this aspect, I can tell you.

I can tell you how. Because if you change Jesus by what scripture defines him as by any means, you'll end up with a different gospel, right? And that's something we need to be worried about. Because in Galatians 1, 6, it says if anyone comes preaching a different gospel, even an angel from heaven, let them be accursed.

So, for example, if we have Joseph Smith's Jesus, right? The spirit brother of Lucifer, right? The not eternal God, but a created being who is the spiritual offspring of Elohim in one of his goddess wives, right?

Or we have the Jesus of scripture who is the eternal God. Philippians 2, though he existed eternally in the form of God, came and took on flesh and was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, right?

The thing, the difference, the main difference is this. That the Christian believes that we're justified by grace through faith alone, apart from our works, right?

Well, just listen real quick.

Grace Through Faith Alone Versus Righteousness by Works

So, when Jesus died on the cross, when Jesus died on the cross, the veil to the temple was torn, right? It was torn. The temple was done away with, right? So, just listen. So, in LDS doctrine, since you have a different Jesus, you're going to have to try to make up some of the righteous works on your own because Christ wasn't enough.

I don't fancy that. Right? Obedience to the gospel ordinances and principles, right? Obedience to the word of wisdom being sealed in the temple. All of these things are righteousness of your own that you want to present before God one day.

But the Jesus of scripture states otherwise. I don't know. I don't know if it's exactly... Why does it say it's different otherwise? So, do you need to be baptized? He said we did. Right. So, here we go.

So, in terms of the righteousness of Christ, I am justified by my faith alone, not necessarily my work. I believe that baptism is very important. I don't believe that it gets me into heaven. Oh, it doesn't get you into heaven.