Apologetics Session 38- Defending Against Mormonism

Prayer and Introduction to Mormonism

Who would like to open us in prayer? Oh, you volunteered someone, so you have to do it, Rich.

Heavenly Father, we rejoice in knowing you, Lord God, and being privileged to be called your children because of the work of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. Lord God, we exalt you, we honor you, we love you, Lord Jesus.

And Lord God, I just pray you anoint Jeff tonight to teach us about the errors of Mormonism so we can confront those that believe in it and we can lead many Mormons to Christ in the process. I pray you, Lord God, be exalted in all things for we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.

Amen.

When I say Mormonism, what are some images that come to mind?

Lancaster.

What's that?

Lancaster.

Lancaster, interesting. Mormonism in Lancaster.

Utah. What else?

Yeah, certainly. Utah is more common.

The Golden Plates.

The Golden Plates.

The special underwear.

The special underwear, okay.

What else?

Temple in D .C.

That big temple in D .C. while you're driving down the highway?

Joseph.

Joseph Smith.

Joseph Smith, right. All right, my goal this evening is not to give the perfect and most wide-ranging overview of Mormonism. It's not to inform, you know, as much as possible or refute every possible thing like Mormon underwear.

Although that is actually tied to the temple priesthood and the certain Melchizedekian and Aaronic priesthood that they think that they have. They wear special underwear because they think they're priests.

But my goal is to put the finger on the crucial spots. The things about Mormonism that are most egregious or most against the gospel. The things that need to be refuted in order for a person to be saved.

In other words, we're not going to focus on the fact that they don't drink coffee or tea.

Because I don't drink coffee or tea either.

You know, so what? But what we're going to do is talk about the doctrine of God, the gospel, the doctrine of scripture, and a couple of other things along those lines that are just really the most crucial differences between Mormonism, which is why we should unapologetically say that Mormonism is a cult.

It is an absolute denial of the gospel. Now, how many of you are familiar with The Chosen TV show?

Okay.

We as an elder board have not stood against or for it at this point. We're in a wait-and-see mode. There are some warning signals related to Mormonism. At one point, Dallas Jenkins said that Mormons worship the same Jesus.

But then he retracted that and said that it was only the certain Mormons that he knew, and they don't really hold to all the doctrines of Mormonism. So he tried to walk it back. We know that VidAngel is a Mormon company, but they're not owned by the church.

It's just Mormons who happen to have a company. So how much do you want Mormon actors and Mormon producers and salespeople?

You're part of the world, right?

You're a TV show, so it's kind of questionable how far you can go in employing those kind of people. The key, I think, is that Dallas Jenkins claims to be evangelical, and his script writers do as well, although they do have a Roman Catholic involved in that.

But they say that they do not endorse Mormonism. So we're at a wait-and-see kind of mode with that. But you can see that Mormonism wants to be recognized as Christianity. They don't want to be known as a cult, obviously, but they also don't want to be known as a different religion.

They claim to be Christian, which is why we must defend genuine Christianity, the faith, Jude 1 -3, which has been once and for all handed down to the saints, against a counterfeit that masquerades as if it's the same thing.

Joseph Smith, the Restoration Movement, and the Book of Mormon

So today what we're going to do is just look at the most crucial differences, and I think some of them will be eye-popping. Now, as a general overview before we do that, you need to know that Mormonism started around the year 1820 when Joseph Smith claims to have been visited by two personages, one being God the Father, the other being Jesus the Son.

So his claim is that God the Father and Jesus the Son are both men, and they're separate, different gods. From then he developed a theology. He claims that at some point in the early 1800s upstate New York, he was able to discover golden plates, which were buried by American Indians, maybe the mound builders or something like that, but they were of a certain tribe that were relating to God because Jesus had visited the new world and left them with these scriptures.

And those entrusted with these scriptures, which were engraved on golden plates, the world was going corrupt, and so they hid them, they buried them. And he was the restorer who found them. And then supposedly the Book of Mormon is a translation of what he found.

Now a few things you need to know about Joseph Smith prior to this. He was a treasure hunter. He was interested in discovering treasure. He was even on trial for defrauding people, promising to recover treasures.

He had spent much time in occultic kind of practices along those lines. When he claims to have discovered these plates, he has witnesses that say that they saw them. Oliver Cowdery and a couple of others.

However, upon investigation, they later said they only saw them with spiritual eyes, not physical eyes, and they never saw them or were able to discern for sure whether it was true. In fact, when Smith was translating, he wasn't looking at these big plates of gold and reading the language by some gift of interpretation.

He would take a top hat, a black top hat, and bury his face into it with a seer stone at the bottom of the top hat. And from there he would recite while one other would write down what he was saying. So it was more of an occultic practice than even any kind of translation as we would know it.

So this is kind of the concept that he recovered this restored gospel that brought things back to the way they were prior to the corruption of Christianity. And the big idea here is that sometime shortly after the apostles, Christianity fell into an apostasy and the genuine message was lost.

And here is Joseph Smith as the restorer of genuine Christianity. So it's part of the restoration movement, which was common in the 1800s. So he fashions himself as a prophet and he begins to gather followers.

They move from place to place and tend to get run out. For example, in Ohio it was a banking scandal. Later on it had to do with his sexual transgressions because at one point he was tarred and feathered because of his behavior.

And it was basically a cult that moved from place to place and gathered steam around the personality of the prophet. So what else do you guys know about or have questions about the idea of Mormonism? The big plan here before we get into refuting it.

Anything else need to be said or questions you have so far?

That men can become a god.

We're getting there. That'll be the first part.

Maybe about the Birmingham Massacre.

Yeah, the Mountain Meadows Massacre. There was a group of traveling people that they considered a threat and they came upon them and massacred them. Largest massacre of travelers in U .S. history.

We'll rule our own solar systems in glory.

Okay, yeah, we'll get to that in a minute.

Polygamy?

What's that?

Polygamy.

Polygamy, yeah.

That's a big one.

When you read the Book of Mormon, you won't find much any of that stuff.

No historical basis for it.

Well, no, no, you won't find much any of the polygamy or the multiple gods. The Book of Mormon is essentially an introduction that gets you interested. And then there are later revelations that come more in the 1840s.

The Pearl of Great Price and especially the Book of Abraham within the Pearl of Great Price. And this book called Doctrine and Covenants. And this is where the deeper things of God and then especially Joseph Smith's King Follett discourse where he's preaching at a funeral and begins to reveal some of these deeper things about there being a plurality of gods.

So let's get into that. Let's get into refuting.

Yeah, Mike.

Also, before I forget, I've heard you mention, use this term before, with heaven and hell, how there's no outer darkness. There's no hell. I think they use that term. I don't know what that is.

They have three levels of glory. The celestial glory and the terrestrial meaning this world and then something in between which name escapes me. I forget. But you can go to any three of them. And hell is only reserved for like the worst apostates that you could imagine like the Judas Iscariots or apostates from Mormonism.

So it's kind of like a purgatory type.

Yeah, I think the terrestrial would be lesser and the celestial glory, if you get to that third level, that's where you can be with your spirit wife creating new worlds.

So let's get into that.

A Plurality of Gods and the Mormon View of Jesus and Lucifer

All right, so Mormonism at the Book of Mormon seems like it's only a story about Jesus coming to the new world. After he accomplished his work in Asia Minor there in Palestine, he then kind of flew to the new world and revealed these same doctrines to the American Indians.

And the record of that was then buried on plates. And it seems like kind of fanciful. Joseph Smith used to tell these tales for years growing up and his mom would talk about how he loved to talk about the Indians and he just had an imagination.

You'd think maybe it's not that harmful. It's a big deal, you know. Well, he's creating new scripture. That's a big deal. But let's get into where this then goes next. Here's a quote. Joseph Smith says, These three, referring to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, constitute three distinct personages and three gods.

Three gods. Very explicitly denying the Trinity that there's only one God existing in three persons within the one God, he says that there is a Father, a Son, and a Spirit and each three, each of the three, are separate gods.

Yes.

Hence, the doctrine of a plurality of gods is as prominent in the Bible as any other doctrine. He says in History of the Church, Volume 6, page 474,.

In the beginning, the head of the gods.

Called a council of the gods, and they came together and concocted a plan to create the world and people it. So prior to the creation of the world, he has the god of this planet counseling together with other gods.

So we can recognize now, he does not view the world as existing even under the three so-called gods, Father, Son, and Spirit, but there's other gods involved. Well, what of the god of this planet, the one we call Elohim or Yahweh, Jehovah?

He says this in Journal of Discourses, Volume 6, page 3, God himself was once as we are now.

And is an exalted man.

We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea and will take away and do away the veil so that you may see. And that he was once a man like us, yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did.

So now notice the way Smith is thinking. Jesus Christ is the Son of God and by that he means that the Heavenly Father procreated with the Heavenly Mother to bring Jesus into being.

And prior to that then,.

God the Father was once a man on a different planet and he has exalted to this place to populate his own planet with the spirit wife. You see what happens? So that God, the God of this world, is actually the Son of a prior God and wife.

And this is an infinite regression of gods procreating gods. Now what would that of course mean for the Mormon living on planet earth now? And you can think back to the Garden of Eden, what the serpent said?

You can be your own gods. This is a demonic lie against the true God and it is absolutely the claim that you Mormon can exalt to become a god of another planet with your spirit wife which is the reason for the temple rituals.

Now what they actually do in the temple, you can watch on YouTube because people have snuck cameras in. There are secret handshakes, there are secret passwords, secret names given to progress into the celestial room.

But these are borrowed from Mormonism, from masonry. He was a 33rd degree mason. He learned these things from masonry and the secret passwords to get there. But the reason why he's bringing the temple into this is that by a temple sealing ceremony, a husband and wife can be united forever for the future populating of a planet.

So the temple is not like you and I would think about a church. It's not where you go to pray and preach and hear the word and relate to God by prayer. It is rather a place where men and women can be sealed in eternal marriages and have an eternal family.

So it's very cultic behavior what happens in the temple. We got to tour the Philadelphia one before it opened. But this is the concept here. The appointment of Jesus to be the savior of the world was contested by one of the other sons of God.

He was called Lucifer,.

Son of the morning.

Haughty, ambitious, covetous of power and glory. The spirit brother of Jesus desperately tried to become the savior of mankind. The idea is that Jesus's brother,.

The second born was Lucifer.

So a contract Colossians which says says that Jesus is the creator of everything. Heavenly beings and spiritual beings as well as as us. Jesus is an offspring and so is Lucifer. God chose not Satan Lucifer's plan, but Jesus's plan.

And that's why the devil fell into rebellion and rages because God did not elect him to be the savior, but elected the firstborn Jesus to be the savior. Now the next test is what the next slide is what I'm going to call the Deuteronomy 13 one to three test.

So Phil would you turn to Deuteronomy 13 one to three. And throughout this presentation we are going to defend the faith against the lies of the devil because these are the lies of the enemy and don't be mistaken.

When we were at Princeton, we've shared the gospel. One of the young men was Mormon. There's maybe 50 or 60 there at Princeton, but around this country, there's millions 15 million. If you go to Salt Lake City,.

It's half the city.

Yeah, I was thinking at you know, the things he got for example, we were just saying about Jesus and Satan Lucifer. I was thinking that Jacob and Esau, they got that story there and put it into Christ and Satan.

Yeah.

The same principle and you look and think he probably got from there.

I think you're right.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's incredible.

Yep.

So Phil, would you read Deuteronomy 13.

One to three?

This is the first test of a so-called prophet and this is important for us to discern whether this is of God.

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass. And if he says, let us go after another God which you have not known and let us serve them.

You shall not listen to the words.

Of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams.

For the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart.

And with all your soul.

Okay.

So even if he were to come doing miracles.

And he claimed to have healed someone's arm. He claimed to be a revelator who received the plates and all these miraculous dreams and visions.

Even if he does things that blow your mind.

If he tells you to chase a God other than the God of Israel as the Shema says, the Lord our God is one God or as Isaiah 43 11 says and I'm going to present this to you as the key verse to go to first when refuting a Mormon.

All right.

And when helping a Mormon come to the true saving faith Isaiah 43 11. Drew, would you read that?

You just read it right off the screen. Before me there was no God formed and there will be not after me. I even I am the Lord and there is no Savior besides me.

Amen.

Isaiah 43 11. I've used probably a hundred times because when I was in the city I would run into a lot of Mormons. They had their little missionary station and time and again it is the strongest punch that we can level.

And our goal is not to harm the person but to knock the lie right out of them. And this verse right here is truth from God. Before me there was no God formed and there will be none after me.

I even I am the Lord.

And there is no Savior besides me. So mark that in your brain as the go-to verse. To begin with because the goal of Mormonism is to teach other gods.

That were formed prior.

And this directly refutes that. Forgive me, so I know. In several other places in the Bible it states outright that God is eternal.

Yeah.

But what does after me imply in this situation? Yeah, so this is. Isaiah 40 through 48 is the trial of false gods. And the false gods here are fake gods of the nations. They're idols and you'll hear Isaiah in these passages, the next chapter, speaking about how they take a block of wood and they chop it up and they form it into an idol.

And then they use the remainder of the wood to burn, to make fire, to keep themselves warm. And then the next day they turn and they worship the idol that they made with their own hands. And the same wood that they used to warm themselves has become their God.

And how absurd that is. God is putting the false gods on trial.

And so he's saying.

There's no God after me. I am the one and only. I'm the first and the last, the alpha, the omega. Anything else is just an idol. So there's nothing else to come. Don't be looking for another God. There is only the one true God.

Everything else is the idols of the nations. That's the context of Isaiah 40 all the way through 48.

Yeah. Yeah. All right.

So the first test of a prophet is if he teaches other gods, right? Now, what is it that prophets do? They prophesy. They speak for God, quote unquote. And so that could be foretelling or it could be foretelling.

And suppose prophets cannot help but prophesy and begin to foretell things. And this then becomes the second test of a prophet given to us in the Bible. So prophecies. Let's look at some of Joseph Smith's and the test will come from Deuteronomy 18, 20 to 22.

But let's look at what he said first. In Doctrine and Covenants 84 verses 4 and then 31 cited here, but the whole DNC 84, he says this,. Verily, this is the word of the Lord that the city, New Jerusalem, shall be built by the gathering of the saints.

Beginning at this place,.

As he stood in Independence, Missouri, they had been run out of Ohio and now they're in Missouri. Even the place of the temple, which temple shall be reared.

In this generation,.

In this generation upon the consecrated spot as I have appointed. Well, tourists like to go to that spot and what they find is it remains.

As it was then.

An empty grass field. He claimed it would be in this generation in Independence, Missouri. It's written in their quote-unquote scripture, Doctrine and Covenants 84 and it never came to pass, let alone in that generation that was the one in which he was speaking.

Another one. Joseph Smith prophesied the return of Christ by the year 1891. History of the Church, Volume 2, page 189. He predicted that the nations of the world would be dragged into the American Civil War.

D &C 87, 1 to 3. He foresaw a civil war coming, which there was a civil war, but the nations of the world did not come into it. He foretold that the end times, end times signs in the skies will happen in not many days.

Because remember, they're the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Latter-day Saints. That's the concept there. So here is the test of a prophet. Deuteronomy 18, 20 to 22. John, would you mind reading that?

You can read right off the screen. If you don't mind, or is it?

You can read it.

But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, how may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?

When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass, or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.

Amen.

So false prophecies indicate that the prophet is false. I had brought up D &C 84 to Mormons before, and none of them that I've spoken to about that had heard.

They had heard of it,.

But they never considered that it said, in this generation, because their answer was, well, it'll still happen. The temple is going to be built there. And then I showed them that it said, in this generation.

He said, I don't know. I'll have to get back to you on that. But that's, you know.

It's hard, man.

Just think about if you were a Mormon kid, just raised to believe this stuff your whole life, and you've never had these things tested. You're indoctrinated by your whole family. And it's just kind of what you know.

The Test of a False Prophet by His Fruit

So the third test of a prophet is from Matthew 7. You guys will know it. Beware of false prophets. They come in sheep's clothing.

You will know them by your, by their?

Fruit. All right.

Joseph Smith's sexual immorality was found out in the cases of Nancy Miranda Johnson. Nancy Miranda Johnson is one of the reasons that he, well, is the primary reason that Joseph Smith was physically tarred and feathered.

Now, the Mormon church, in their Sunday school curriculum, will claim that he was the victim of this. And look how our prophet was persecuted. But his uncle, the uncle of Nancy Miranda Johnson, is the one who did this to him because of his immorality with her.

And that's why that happened. Also, Eliza Winters, Mrs. Hill,.

Fanny Alger,.

And Miriam and Rhoda Stoll. Well, you say, okay. It's real easy for people to claim. Remember the whole Me Too movement?

Believe women.

If they say that this happened, then you just believe them. Do we think that way?

No.

As Christians, just because someone is accused of something, and he was accused something like 20-something times, that doesn't mean that he actually did it.

Right? Okay.

So, because Proverbs 18 and 17 says, one man seems right when he presents his case until the other comes to examine him. There has to be due process, cross-examination. Well, here's some evidence that it's actually true regarding Fanny Alger.

The one who claimed that he saw Smith and Fanny Alger in a barn together, and in the act, was named Oliver Cowdery.

Significant.

Significant.

Because Oliver Cowdery is one of the three witnesses in the introduction to the Book of Mormon. He's one of the three witnesses that first claimed that he, yeah, I hefted the plates, which under this rap, he said he felt the weight of it.

Who knows what Joseph had under there.

But at one point, he testified to Smith having received the golden plates. Later in life, he was among and was excommunicated for trying to discredit the prophet, but his name remains in the cover of the book.

Furthermore, Emma Smith, which is the wife, caught Joseph in a barn, and in a letter dated January 21st, sorry, that's, yeah, Oliver Cowdery's words were, a dirty, nasty, filthy affair of his and Fanny Alger's.

That's testimony of one of the three witnesses. But Joseph's own wife reported the affairs and the polygamy to William McClellan in August 28th, 1847. Joseph died around 1845, something like that. After he died, she left the church and reported his polygamy.

Interesting. You'll find out later why she didn't leave earlier. According to Leviticus 18, verse 18, you shall not marry a woman in addition to her sister. Seems pretty reasonable, right? Especially at the same time.

So Joseph Smith claims that he wasn't having sexual relations with his 32 wives. Is that all? Yeah, is that all? But, and he, of course, all Mormons will admit that he did have the 32 wives. But a simple problem, according to Leviticus 18, 18, even if it was true that he never consummated the marriage with these two, he was married to both Emily and Eliza Partridge, two sisters and other sisters as well.

Helen Mar Kimball was only 14 years old when Smith married her, and her journal has been discovered in which she thought it was only to be a ceremonial marriage, and she was very uncomfortable when it turned out that sex was expected of her.

Fourteen-year-old girl whose name is Helen Mar Kimball and whose journal records these things. Now here is a relic of the past. It is held at the George Albert Smith Family Papers Special Collection, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.

It's dated 18 August, 1842. Signature of the document in the handwriting of Joseph Smith. This is a letter that Joseph wrote to one of his spirit wives. The only thing to be careful of is to find out when Emma comes.

Then you cannot be safe, but when she is not here, then there is the most perfect safety. Only be careful to escape observation as much as possible. I know it is a heroic undertaking, but so much the greater friendship and the more joy.

When I see you, I will tell you all my plans. I cannot write them on paper. Burn this letter as soon as you read it. Keep it all locked up in your breasts. My life depends upon it. I close my letter. I think Emma won't come tonight.

If she don't, don't fail to come tonight. I subscribe myself your most obedient and affectionate companion and friend,.

Joseph Smith.

Evidence.

This is not just hearsay, me too movement kind of stuff. This was exactly what the 32 wives was all about. Now the works of the flesh are evident. Here is the test of fruit, right? When Jesus taught us, you will know them by your fruit.

What are the fruit of the spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness to your spouse, gentleness, self-control. And what are the fruit of the flesh? They're evident. Who would like to read that for us?

Someone with good eyes or glasses?

The works of the flesh are evident.

Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Will not inherit the kingdom of God. The first three are related to sexual immorality as, you know, impurity, sensuality, and that is the first test of a false prophet. Muhammad, false prophet, multiple wives, and taking children, Aisha as young as 8 years old.

Yeah, all of these things, it's obvious. Now what about sorcery? When they arrested Joseph Smith in Illinois and they threw him in jail, he had a gun in his pocket, supplied by one of the Mormons, and a mob that was angry with him because of all this polygamy came to him to try to kill him, to lynch him.

And he went down fighting, he shot somebody and killed him on his way down, ended up falling out of a window, and what did they discover in his pocket? A Jupiter Talisman, which is an occultic symbol, which he held on his person his whole life.

From the beginning of his life, when he was a treasure hunter, and using seer stones, which he called the Urim and the Thummim, he was equating these to the Old Testament symbols, he was an occultist, which explains a lot.

But that sorcery is apparent in idolatry, enmity, strife, and jealousy. You should read the King Follett discourse where he says that there are so many gods and that Elohim was once a man and all of these things.

He was preaching a funeral and the majority of the sermon was him lambasting other preachers. He was a rival to the Campbellites, who were the first restorationists before he picked up on, oh, the church went into apostasy.

The Stone Campbell movement, he was trying to pick off from their flock. He was jealous, given to fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, and envy, and all of the things of this nature. So the test of fruit, he fails miserably.

And when speaking to a Mormon, it is okay to bring up the moral character of the so-called prophet. Fanny Alger, the testimony of his own wife, and of one of the three witnesses. Next, yeah.

Would they kick back on that, though, with guys like Abraham or David?

In particular?

Yes, and what would you say to that? We have recorded of David's adultery, and he's still called a prophet. We have Psalm 51, which is his repentance. But you have no evidence of Joseph Smith repenting of his polygamy.

And they'll say, well, in the Old Testament, there was polygamy. God, for some reason, looked over it, right? However, the New Testament is the new covenant in the blood of Jesus. And the qualifications of an elder in the book of Titus is husband of one wife.

So even to be a New Testament elder, he's not qualified based on taking wives. So that's where you push back to their pushback. So the next element is the doctrine of Scripture, because all of this started with him considering himself a revelator, someone who brings revelation.

Smith fancied himself a revelator. Now that certain scholars, Egyptologists, can translate Michael Chandler's artifact, the book of Abraham can be tested.

You say, well, what's that all about?

After the book of Mormon in the 1840s,.

He wrote another book of Scripture called the Pearl of Great Price. One section of that is called the book of Abraham. And he claimed that this Egyptian artifact that they bought from Michael Chandler, a traveling salesman who would go from place to place, the church had bought it for $2 ,400, and Smith claims to translate it.