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Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Hi, and welcome to Renewed Mind. I'm your host, Romuald Gossein, and today we have with us Dr. James White, who'll be discussing with us the group, or the people, who are commonly known as the Mormons.
First of all, welcome to the show, James. Great to be with you again. So, what I would like to talk about today is Mormonism and the LDS Church, but what I would like to start off with is, often when you do speak to a Mormon, you feel as though they understand your words, but you're not quite communicating with them.
It's the same words, the same terminology, but it doesn't seem to make sense.
The greatest difficulty in reaching the Mormon people is bridging the language barrier. We have the same lexicon, we've just changed all the meanings is what's going on, and many times Christians will spend a great deal of time talking with Mormons, thinking they're getting somewhere, thinking that there's agreement between what we're actually saying, and then all of a sudden they'll say something and you realize you've been missing each other all along.
And so, in talking about Mormonism, we could literally spend hours talking about things like the Book of Mormon, and temple ceremonies, and Joseph Smith, and false prophecies, and all the rest of this stuff.
But I think what would be best, and really help people the most, is to grab hold of the central core of LDS teaching, understand what they believe about that, and that will function to translate the language, so that when you hear them speaking, you'll understand, look, it's up to us as Christians to bridge this gap.
It's up to us to get past this. And notice I did say Christians. Some people in the audience might be saying, well, Mormons are Christians, aren't they? Well, I could give you a quick answer to that, but I think what I'd rather do is explain what Mormons believe at the core of their faith, and I think once I'm done, you'll be able to see pretty quickly whether this is a Christian faith or not.
Yes, yes. So we actually have a graphic that will be able to explain this, and as we take a look at it, you'll notice that it's supposed to go in a circle, basically. You start at the upper left-hand corner with intelligences and matter, and you end up coming out the process at the upper right-hand corner with the celestial kingdom and spirit children.
But as in any circle, you have to jump in at some point. We have to jump into this circle called the law of eternal progression at some point. In the upper left-hand corner are intelligences and matter.
These are the two eternal things in Mormonism. Notice God is not in that box because God has not eternally been a god. Intelligences and matter are the only two things that eternally exist. What are intelligences?
They're intellects. You and I even existed as long as God has in that form. There are some Mormons who question this, but most Mormons would accept this, that we existed as intelligences, and matter is eternal.
The Mormon god cannot say, let there be, and there is. He can only organize preexisting matter. Out of that realm come spirit children. Now, how you get to those spirit children we'll see at the end of this process, but you just have to trust me until now, until we get there.
The point is that there are spirit children who are born to divine beings, and they're born in the spiritual realm, and yet they then grow, they develop, they learn. They have spiritual fingers and hair and eyes.
Joseph Smith taught that the spiritual realm is very material in its essence, but it's a more refined kind of matter, so we can't see it with the physical eye. From the spirit realm, you enter into the mortal probation.
You follow the arrow down to the mortal probation. That's where you and I are right now. According to Mormonism, we existed as spirit children before we came here. Then we entered into this life. The memory of that preexistence is taken away from us so we can be tested properly in this life.
In this life, we are called to follow the gospel as defined by the LDS Church, and to live a life of repentance and things like that. Again, there are differences here. You'll see two arrows leaving mortal probation.
One goes down to spirit prison, the other goes up to paradise, and it's marked by A and B. The A is what's called the four fundamentals of the gospel in Mormonism. Faith, repentance, baptism by someone holding the proper authority, which is only found in the LDS Church, called the Aaronic Priesthood, and laying out of hands to receive the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, which also is found only in the LDS Church.
It's called the Melchizedek Priesthood. Those four things have to happen for you to enter into paradise and enter into the celestial kingdom, but those are the minimal things. They have to happen, but those are the minimal things.
Beyond those is B, continued obedience to gospel rules and principles. That is the demonstration of one's worthiness. If you want to use our terminology, a very strongly argued works salvation, works righteousness concept that is included along with those four fundamentals, faith, repentance, baptism, and laying out of hands.
So there are five ways basically to get to paradise?
Well, those four are absolutely necessary. The fifth is absolutely necessary as well, but it will differ some depending on your calling in life and things like that, whether you're sealed in the temple and things along those lines.
And the soul is immortal? Yes, yes, definitely. The soul is definitely immortal. Now you'll notice that the line leaving mortal probation is not nearly as big as the one going down to the spirit prison because there are only about 14 million Mormons in the world today in comparison to 6 billion people.
And even if all of them were considered faithful, which not all of them are, it would still be a relatively small percentage of the human population that goes directly into paradise upon death. The vast majority of us, you and I included, go down to what's called the spirit prison.
And one thing you've got to give the Mormons, they are a missionary people. We see those Mormon missionaries all over the place. Well you don't even get to stop being a missionary once you die in Mormonism because faithful Mormons will actually come down from paradise and preach the gospel in the spirit prison.
Now if you accept the gospel in the spirit prison, and why you wouldn't when you can't get out and they can, I'm not really sure why that would be, now remember I said there are four things that are necessary to enter into paradise.
So if a person in the spirit prison accepts the gospel preached to them by one of the Mormons that comes down, you still have to do certain things. It's possible for a spirit to repent. It's possible for a spirit to believe.
It's very, very difficult to lay hands upon the head of a spirit or to baptize a spirit by immersion. So you'll notice that one of the little lines goes up to baptism for the dead. This is one of the things that sets Mormonism apart.
We see these temples that they build around the world. Not the little meeting halls in your neighborhoods, but the large temples that they build. And we see people going in, they're carrying this bag.
Many times they're going in to be baptized for the dead. They've done genealogical studies, and they've found out who their ancestors are. And they've put those names down, and they're going into the temple to be baptized in the place of their dead ancestors.
And they then have hands laid upon their head to receive the Holy Ghost in the name of these people. So literally, they'll be baptized for 50 people. They'll go under the water in the name of so-and-so who is dead.
They will come out. They'll do that 50 times. Then they'll go into a room, and these priesthood holders wearing their temple garments will lay their hands upon the head in the name of da-da-da who is dead.
And they lift their hands, and they do it again. This is doing the ordinances for the dead so that if they believe in the spirit prison, then the four fundamentals will be fulfilled. They have faith and repent, then somebody else has been baptized and had hands laid on their heads for them.
They can go via baptism into paradise. You can even be married for them in the spirit prison and receive the temple endowments for them as well. So that theoretically, you could die as a non-Mormon and still receive the highest level of exaltation in the celestial kingdom, at least theoretically.
The Mormon church would not suggest that. So that's what the line through baptism for the dead is. Now the large line going over to the right that splits off and leads to two other boxes, the terrestrial and celestial kingdom, for some reason, the majority of people in the spirit prison still don't believe this Mormon gospel, despite the fact that the Mormons get to go in and out, and when you accept it, you get to leave too.
But still, the majority of people don't. It crosses the line that is marked resurrection.
Sorry, is there suffering in this so-called spirit prison?
I don't believe that there's suffering like there would be in hell itself. But you'll notice that the only people who go to hell, there's a small little line that comes down into the spirit prison from the Mormon line going up to paradise, and those are apostate Mormons.
Only apostate Mormons actually go to hell. Them and Satan and the demons. Nobody else will. Adolf Hitler, whoever you want to think of, will still end up in at least in the telestial level of glory, because he's not an apostate Mormon.
Only apostate Mormons go to hell, but you'll notice that that line crosses the resurrection, so sort of the consolation prize is that if you're an apostate Mormon, you will rule and reign over Satan and the demons in hell, because you got farther through the law of eternal progression than they did.
You got a physical body, and they did not, which is one of the reasons that Satan and demons want to inhabit physical bodies. But that's a whole other story, and you can tell I'm going very, very fast.
So at the resurrection, up at the top, you have the celestial kingdom. That is the highest level. If you see the temple in Salt Lake City, if you look at the side of the temple in Salt Lake City, up at the top you'll see stones that have suns on them, in the middle you have stones that have the moon on them, at the bottom you have stones that have stars on them, taken from 1 Corinthians 15.
The celestial level of glory is the highest. The terrestrial level of glory is the middle. And then Joseph Smith, if you've never heard of the word telestial before, it's because it never existed. Joseph Smith took the first couple of letters of terrestrial, slapped it on the end of celestial, and came up with a new word, telestial, which is the third level of glory.
So what happens is, to the people down on this lower line, is they're judged by their works, and I've had some Mormons tap me on the shoulder and say, don't worry, you'll make it in the terrestrial level of glory.
You're a good man, you're moral, you'll get to the terrestrial level of glory. And you know, whoremongers and drug addicts and so on and so forth end up in the telestial level of glory. Joseph Smith said that if you'd even see the glory of the celestial kingdom for a moment, you'd commit suicide to get there.
That's the lowest level, so you can imagine what the glory of the celestial is. But even up in the celestial level of glory, there are different levels. If you are not married in the LDS temple, and you're not sealed to your wife in the LDS temple, then you know what you become when you die?
No, what? An angel. An angel. You have to be sealed in the Mormon temple to gain the highest level of exaltation, because that allows you to, as a man, resurrect your wives, bring them with you, because remember Mormonism was originally a polygamous religion, and now what you do is you start your own planet.
You have a body of flesh and bone, no blood, because flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, according to Joseph Smith and the Bible, but that's how he understood it. But you have a body of flesh and bone, you engage in natural relationships with your wives, but they produce spirit children.
That's where the spirit children came from, which is where we started. So let me apply all this to our situation. According to Mormonism, the God of this universe, or of this planet, is an exalted man named Elohim.
When I say planet or universe, Mormonism has sort of had to expand things out and thinks that there's many universes now. That really wasn't Joseph Smith's original idea, but be that as it may, this creation is ruled over by the God of this world, who is Elohim.
Sorry, if I can stop you there.
So was this Elohim a mortal or a spirit. Children?
He went through all of this. He was a spirit child, went through mortal probation, through paradise, and when he died, he was exalted to the status of Godhood. So God the Father was once a sinner. He's a redeemed sinner.
Think about what that means and you'll get the idea. He brought his wives with him. He organized this world, and his firstborn spirit child, once he was exalted to the status of Godhood, is Jehovah, who is Jesus.
So Elohim and Jehovah are separate and distinct gods. In fact, some Mormons speculate that Jesus will have to marry and have children to become a God himself. Lucifer is one of his firstborn spirit children, too, one of his eldest spirit sons as well.
So Jesus and Lucifer are spirit brothers, just as all of us are spirit brothers with Jesus and Lucifer, because we are all the offspring of Elohim and one of his heavenly wives. He lives on a planet that circles a star named Kolob, according to the Pearl of Great Price, the book of Abraham, the Pearl of Great Price.
And so what he's doing is he has literally billions and billions of spiritual offspring. He's been quite busy. And it is his purpose to send them down so they can enter into mortal probation and choose as to whether they will walk the right path, follow after him, be like him, and become gods themselves.
So the worthy Mormon male believes that if he follows this path, that at his death and resurrection, he will become a god, and he will organize the planet, and then he will have spirit children, and he will be worshipped by his spirit children, just as the god of this world does.
Wow. So that's the objective of a Mormon. Yes, that is the ultimate objective of the Mormon, is to live a worthy enough life that upon his death, burial, and resurrection, which includes being sealed in the temple, receiving the temple rituals, the temple priesthood, the endowment ceremonies, the whole nine yards, that is all involved in showing your worthiness to be exalted.
Because in Mormonism, the power of God is twofold. It's the power of the priesthood and the power of procreation. You see, everyone in the terrestrial and celestial kingdom, their bodies are changed so they can no longer have children.
But those in the celestial kingdom have the power of eternal lives. We use the term eternal life. They say eternal lives in their ability to have offspring, have those spirit children. And so the words that we use, son of God, in Mormonism, the reason that Jesus can be a savior, and the reason he can take his life back after his death, is that he is immortal.
Why? Because he had a physical, immortal father, Elohim, and a mortal mother, Mary. Specifically, Elohim has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as any man's. Doctrine and Covenants, section 130, verse 22.
He fathered Jesus. There is truly no virgin birth. Because the miracle of the birth, of the virgin birth, was that Mary was a virgin at the time of conception. There is no miracle of a virgin birth, exactly, you understand what I'm saying?
So God the Father was literally married to one of his offspring to create the body of Jesus for a period of time. And had a physical relationship. And had a physical relationship to create the body of Jesus.
That's why he was immortal. So I go through all of this very carefully in a book that I wrote called Is the Mormon My Brother? Because the young Mormon missionary, the 19-year-old kid at your doorstep, probably doesn't know that part.
He knows most of the rest of this. But there are certain parts that today are not talked about as much as they used to be. And you have to really look at the original sources very, very carefully.
Is that because a lot of people now within the Mormon church question it? Is that why they...
I've met Mormons that did. But I think most of the changes in Mormonism is because Mormonism has been trying to mainstream. Trying to look more and more Christian. The reality is this is the most polytheistic system I have ever seen in my life.
I have had serious Mormon apologists actually defend the idea that there are an unlimited number of gods in the universes. An infinite number of gods. Now I can't think of any Eastern religion that's ever come close to positing an infinite number of gods.
And that's why I say that when you look at the realm of religion, whether you believe there is one true and eternal God, you're a monotheist. Or whether you're a polytheist, you believe there are many gods, is one of the most fundamental differences between religions.
And using that definition, Islam is closer to Christianity than Mormonism is. Because Islam believes there is one God who created all things. Mormonism, Joseph Smith said in the King Follett funeral discourse in 1844, we have imagined suppose God was God from all eternity.
I will refute that idea and take away the veil so that you may see. And he said it is the first principle of the gospel to know for certain the character of God. And that we may converse with him as one man converses with another.
Yea, that God, the father of us all, was a man who dwelt upon another planet. So in Mormonism, God, men, and angels are all of the same species. We're just at different levels of exaltation and different levels of progression.
So then how does Jesus fit into the picture? I know you briefly explained it, but how can he be the only savior, the only way to eternal life? I mean, they've completely changed that. From what I'm listening to, what you're saying is that we can be like Jesus.
Well, let's remember that Jesus' atonement takes away original sin, takes away Adam's sin. But there are certain grievous sins that we can commit that our blood must be shed to atone for them, which is why back in the United States, there is one state in the Union that still has the firing squad as a proper method of state execution, and it's the state of Utah, because only in a firing squad would you shed blood.
Your own blood must be shed to atone, and in LDS theology, the atonement takes place primarily in the Garden of Gethsemane and is only finished upon the Cross of Calvary. So there is even a fundamental difference at that point.
So the problem you have is that Jesus in Mormonism is one God amongst many gods. He is the first begotten of the Father in the flesh. He is not the creator of all things. And His atonement only makes it possible for us to be resurrected and to receive forgiveness of sins, but not a full forgiveness of sins, certainly not the kind of justification, union with Christ, all the things that we as Christians associate with the biblical doctrine of salvation.
Because you must remember, the Bible is not the central book of LDS theology. They have a canon that includes the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price. And it's only the Bible, they say, is the Word of God as far as it is translated correctly.
According to them, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price are perfect. So if you have three perfect books and one imperfect book, which one is going to end up interpreting the others?
That becomes the real problem as far as dealing with Mormonism is concerned.
That's right. I mean, you've made it absolutely clear, James, that really they do need salvation. They are not saved. They need the gospel. They need the gospel. That's right. Thank you once again for your time.
Thank you very much for having me. To our viewers, we really hope and pray that you found this episode to be a challenge. If you are a Mormon and you've happened to get your hands on this episode and you're watching it, we would like to ask you to discover and investigate for yourself some of the things that have been discussed on this program.
It would be really good for you to be able to look at the other side and see what it is that the Bible does teach apart from what the religion of Mormonism has been saying to you. I think the best way is to be able to go back to the scriptures and to ask God to help you to understand the true meaning of his book.
Please stay in tune for the very next episode of Renewed Mind, and may God bless you.