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Is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints 'Christian'.
- Thread starter Sonny
- Start date
Sonny
Active Member
It isn't so much about who is worthy but what happens to those who say, "Lord, Lord", are wrong and are sent to the only other existing place. That is why Jesus told us to Go and make disciples. He wants everyone to be saved. But, there is a problem...there are people who lie and convince the innocent and gullible that they are from God, that, somehow- against Jesus' own words, even- they have seen Jesus. And people flock to them. Then, once in its hard to leave. Have any of you seen Leah Rimini expose Scientology on A&E? After 30 years in there she woke up, left and is doing everything she can to show the world what Scientology really is. We were shocked that they do these things. Maybe more shocked that it is legal. But, Scientology is far from the only one that teaches these ... things.
I can show where the LDS church told its members not to go to doctors but pray for healing and God would heal them. On a personal side, since I was falsely arrested, tortured and crippled by a Utah Highway Patrolman (I was innocent! Have blood tests to prove Utah cops are liars and corrupt) and caused to develop the most painful condition the world has ever known, I can say for an absolute fact that prayer does NOT cure or stop medical issues. I wonder how many LDS died back then as a result of 'obeying' that teaching?
JiSe
Member
Pros for Mormon being Christian:
- Professing of Belief in Jesus Christ
- Bible is quite important
- Additional scriptures (BoM, D&C, JS bible "translations") might not be accepted as part of the same storyline.
- Temple and its rituals that differ quite much from mainline Christianity, and resemble masonic stuff.
- Blood Atonement is somewhat contradictory to most views about JC's Atonement.
- A Man becoming a god, and by implication that there are countless other gods, might not fit the Monotheistic model.
- Ways of early revelation in Mormon church differ somewhat from what Prophets of old experienced.
- The claim that all other churches are fallen is somewhat dividing.
Sonny
Active Member
Care to provide some proof? Be careful, the Devil does good things, too. But he does them to hurt God's people and keep them from heaven and God's love.
Sonny
Active Member
- Bible is not as important as they say it is. The LDS don't really believe it.
2. Temples in OT had blood everywhere bc of sins of the people- sacrifices had to be done and done in temple. LDS temples, which are numerous (Jews only had one temple at a time) are for weddings and celebrations. Nothing close to Bible's temples.
3. Blood Atonement (or, as some would say, human sacrifice) was called by JFS in 'harmony with God's laws'. See, Doctrines of Salvation (DOS 1:136)
4. I have a quote from JS. It says there are 10,000 x 10,000 worlds with different creatures/types of people (?) in heaven from them. 'Worlds without number' is what the LDS often said (say?).
5. As does 'what' the revelations are and are about. God-an Army of 200 million would come. LDS/JS- temple in Jackson, Mo would be built and God come out of heaven and rest in cloud that is above temple. Temple never built- none of the major 4 were built and/or used by God in any way. Excuses had to be given when mere mortal men stopped the LDS god from doing his 'all-powerful' and 'all-knowing' will. Doesn't seem so all-anything now, does he?
6. Oh, that isn't all they taught. You should see what the LDS repeatedly called Christians. Whoa! Saying Christianity is of the devil. Calling them 'whoemasters' 'ignorant' and 'fools' all bc we believe in only what the Bible teaches and they refused to accept JS as a man of God.
In the end it depends on what God said in His only word to mankind, the Bible. Feelings are never mentioned as a way to know God's truth in the Bible. But, facts are mentioned in both Testaments and a few times overall (that I've found). Yes, facts are important but living by feelings (without any clear facts) are a sure sign one is not a Christian.
Terrywoodenpic
Oldest Heretic
I am quite sure that Jesus's teachings are to teach us how to live our lives in the love of God and care for all his creation.
Dogma , church rules and specific beliefs are not important.
How we live our lives is.
Jesus never saw a Gospel or a Christian Bible. Yet we dig about and mine it to confirm all our prejudices.
We should rely on Jesus teachings, the guidance of the holy spirit within us, and the Love of God.
We should not concern ourselves about our souls.
They are in the hands of God.
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metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
That's quite an assumption, so can you provide one piece of evidence for this?
Katzpur
Not your average Mormon
Actually, you have judged us. But that's okay. God's not going to take your opinion of us into account anyway.
Mormons believe that Jesus Christ was "God" "in the beginning." He didn't attain Godhood at some point in His existance, like at His birth, His baptism or His resurrection. He was God when He created the earth, He was God when He walked the earth, and He is God today.
Yes, we believe that Michael aided Jesus in the Creation. So what?
God is functionally omnipresent, and that's all the Bible ever speaks of Him as being.
Yes. We are created in His image.
Yes, God knew exactly what was going to happen when He put Adam and Eve in the Garden and allowed the Serpent to tempt them. Adam didn't put one over on Him or do something to thwart His plan. God truly had our welfare and happiness in mind when He created this world and allowed us to come here. What an unselfish and loving Father in Heaven we have.
Well, we shouldn't have to provide a Bible reference for the "beliefs" we don't believe (like that Jesus only became God at some point in His existence instead of always being God). And we don't have to provide a Bible reference for the other beliefs since we are not limited in our understanding to just one volume of scriptures.
Sony, with all due respect, you seem overly obsessed with the LDS churches teachings that seem to go beyond a friendly discussion of what's different between your two faiths. Did you at some point have a negative encounter with a Mormon?
Sincerely
What wrong with it?
You are not your own, you have been bought with a price---God
I have not judged hou. I have judged your theology and pointed out why is not Biblical.
Jesus did not create the world---In the beginning GOD
It is not Biblical. If you wasn't to make up theology, be my guest.
Katzpur
Not your average Mormon
Interestingly, we have absolutely no record anywhere in the Bible of Jesus Christ defining the word "Christian" or saying what one must believe or must not believe in order to be called a Christian. He did, however, state that people would be able to recognize His followers by the love they showed to their fellow men. That appears to have been very, very important to Him.
The doctrines of the Church affirm that the Atonement wrought by the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is efficacious for the sins of all who believe, repent, are baptized by one having authority, and receive the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands. However, if a person thereafter commits a grievous sin such as the shedding of innocent blood, the Savior's sacrifice alone will not absolve the person of the consequences of the sin. Only by voluntarily submitting to whatever penalty the Lord may require can that person benefit from the Atonement of Christ.
Several early Church leaders, most notably Brigham Young, taught that in a complete theocracy the Lord could require the voluntary shedding of a murderer's blood-presumably by capital punishment-as part of the process of Atonement for such grievous sin. This was referred to as "blood Atonement." Since such a theocracy has not been operative in modern times, the practical effect of the idea was its use as a rhetorical device to heighten the awareness of Latter-day Saints of the seriousness of murder and other major sins. This view is not a doctrine of the Church and has never been practiced by the Church at any time.
Early anti-Mormon writers charged that under Brigham Young the Church practiced "blood Atonement," by which they meant Church-instigated violence directed at dissenters, enemies, and strangers. This claim distorted the whole idea of blood atonement-which was based on voluntary submission by an offender-into a supposed justification of involuntary punishment. Occasional isolated acts of violence that occurred in areas where Latter-day Saints lived were typical of that period in the history of the American West, but they were not instances of Church-sanctioned blood Atonement.
(I'm going to need to divide my response into two separate posts, 'cause I'm so darned long-winded.
)
Our belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Savior of all who come to Him, acknowledging His great atoning sacrifice and promise to cleanse us from our sins, is the foundation upon which we live our lives. There is not one thing the Bible has to say about Jesus Christ that we do not accept as valid and true.
Yes, Mormons hold the Bible in very high regard, as if clearly evident in the following sermon given on the subject by M. Russell Ballard, an Apostle in the LDS Church: The Miracle of the Holy Bible. In fact, in our adult Sunday School classes, we study it two years for every one year we study The Book of Mormon. It has been described as "foremost among the Standard Works of the Church."
I'm going to address each of these individually, but I would like to know if you would care to provide any scriptural citations that would indicate that a Christian can not believe any of the following and still be considered a Christian?
I'm not sure what, exactly, you mean by "storyline." The stories in The Book of Mormon, for instance, take place on an entirely different continent than those in the Bible do, and involve an entirely different group of people. But I wonder why this should really even matter, if, in fact, the book does testify of Jesus Christ. Do you know that in the Book of Mormon, Jesus is referred to by name 188 times. He is named as "Christ" in 398 instances! He is spoken of as our Savior, Messiah, or Redeemer 85 times, and as the Son of God 51 times. He is spoken of as "God" on numerous occasions, including a couple of times in which He and His Father are said to be "one God" (Ex: Mormon 7:7 "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 Father, and unto the Son, and unto the Holy Ghost, which are one God, in a state of happiness which hath no end.") And that's in 531 pages as compared to the Bible which is several times that long. He is testified of starting on page 2 and ending on page 531.
There are some definitely similarities between the LDS temple endowment ceremony and some of the ceremonies in Free Masonry. Joseph Smith was briefly interested in Masonry, although he only attended about a half a dozen meetings. He chose to use some of masonry's symbols but incorporated them into the temple ceremony as learning tools. Symbols, of course, can mean anything those using them determine that they're going to mean. For instance, long before Hitler ever adapted the swastika as a symbol of the Nazi party, the symbol was used to represent a great many other ideologies. Since I am not a mason and have never witnessed a masonic ceremony, I believe it would be out of line and inappropriate to try to second guess the meanings the masons gave to certain symbols. I know what they represent in Mormonism, but other than that they have been used before Joseph Smith used them, I really have no further comment.
Mormons would whole-heartedly agree with this statement. Brigham Young could be quite a "hellfire and damnation preacher when he wanted to, and he clearly liked to put the fear of God in the hearts of his congregation. Sometimes he got kind of carried away with himself. But, just so that you can see what the actual history behind this principle in Mormon history, I'm going to quote from this article on the subject instead of trying to paraphrase it: (By the way, the underlining is mine.)
The doctrines of the Church affirm that the Atonement wrought by the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is efficacious for the sins of all who believe, repent, are baptized by one having authority, and receive the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands. However, if a person thereafter commits a grievous sin such as the shedding of innocent blood, the Savior's sacrifice alone will not absolve the person of the consequences of the sin. Only by voluntarily submitting to whatever penalty the Lord may require can that person benefit from the Atonement of Christ.
Several early Church leaders, most notably Brigham Young, taught that in a complete theocracy the Lord could require the voluntary shedding of a murderer's blood-presumably by capital punishment-as part of the process of Atonement for such grievous sin. This was referred to as "blood Atonement." Since such a theocracy has not been operative in modern times, the practical effect of the idea was its use as a rhetorical device to heighten the awareness of Latter-day Saints of the seriousness of murder and other major sins. This view is not a doctrine of the Church and has never been practiced by the Church at any time.
Early anti-Mormon writers charged that under Brigham Young the Church practiced "blood Atonement," by which they meant Church-instigated violence directed at dissenters, enemies, and strangers. This claim distorted the whole idea of blood atonement-which was based on voluntary submission by an offender-into a supposed justification of involuntary punishment. Occasional isolated acts of violence that occurred in areas where Latter-day Saints lived were typical of that period in the history of the American West, but they were not instances of Church-sanctioned blood Atonement.
(I'm going to need to divide my response into two separate posts, 'cause I'm so darned long-winded.
)
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Katzpur
Not your average Mormon
Easy one! Since our critics love to ridicule us, this is one doctrine that they have really outdone themselves in terms of parodying and caricaturing what our actual belief is. We are frequently accused of believing that they can, at some point in the future, become "Gods." Understandably, to many who do not fully understand our doctrine, the mere idea is out-and-out heresy.
Let's start by clearing up two big, big misconceptions:
(1) We do not believe that any of us will ever be equal to God, our Eternal Father in Heaven. He will always be our God and we will always worship Him.
(2) Nothing we could possibly do on our own could exalt us to the level of deity. It is only through the will and grace of God that man is given this potential. And "with God, nothing is impossible."
We believe, as you know, that ours is a restoration of the very Church Jesus Christ established during His ministry here on earth. It would follow, then, that we believe we are teaching the same doctrines as were taught then and accepted by Jesus’ followers. Throughout the New Testament, there are indications that this doctrine (known as deification or exaltation) is not one the Latter-day Saints invented, but that the earliest Christians understood and believed it, as well.
Romans 8:16-17, 2 Peter 1:4, Revelation 2:26-27 and Revelation 3:21 are the four I like best. Through these verses, we learn that, as children of God, we may also be His heirs, joint-heirs with Christ, even glorified with Him. We might partake of the nature of divinity and be allowed to sit with our Savior on His throne, to rule over the nations.
Now, if these promises are true (as I believe they are), what do they all boil down to? To the Latter-day Saints, they mean that we have the potential to someday, be “godlike.” One of our prophets explained that "we are gods in embryo." If our Father is divine and we are literally his "offspring", as the Bible teaches we are, is it really such a stretch of the imagination to believe that he has endowed each of us with a spark of divinity?
Finally, there is considerable evidence that the doctrine of deification was taught for quite some time after the Savior’s death, and accepted as orthodox. Some of the most well-known and respected of the early Christian Fathers made statements that were remarkably close to the statements LDS leaders have made. For example:
In the second century, Saint Irenaeus said, “If the Word became a man, it was so men may become gods.” He also posed this question: “Do we cast blame on Him (God) because we were not made gods from the beginning, but were at first created merely as men, and then later as Gods?” At about the same period of time, Saint Clement made this statement: “The Word of God became a man so that you might learn from a man how to become a god.” And Saint Justin Martyr agreed, saying that men are “deemed worthy of becoming gods and of having power to become sons of the highest.” Some two centuries later, Athanasius explained that “the Word was made flesh in order that we might be enabled to be made gods. He became man that we might be made divine.” And, finally, Augustine, said, “But He that justifies also deifies, for by justifying he makes sons of God. For he has given them power to become the sons of God. If then we have been made sons of God, we have also been made gods.”
Even the noted Christian theologian, C.S. Lewis, said much the same thing in his book "Mere Christianity."
“The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were “gods” and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him – for we can prevent Him, if we choose – He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said."
Finally, according to The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, “Deification (Greek theosis) is for Orthodoxy the goal of every Christian. Man, according to the Bible, is made in the image and likeness of God…. It is possible for man to become like God, to become deified, to become god by grace.”
So, the "Mormons" really didn't come up with this doctrine. We only restored that which had been lost for many, many years.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure where you're going with this one, but it seems to me that God should be at liberty to reveal His word to anyone He chooses in whatever way He chooses. Certainly not all of the Old Testament prophets received their revelations in exactly the same way.
I believe that the divisions in Christianity today are pretty evident. I don't see Mormonism as contributing to this at all. I am 100% convinced that we more readily accept other denominations as "Christian" than they accept us. To us, if a person genuinely believes in Jesus Christ, looks to Him for salvation, tries to live a Christ-like life and considers himself to be a Christian, that's what he is. While it is true that we believe the ancient Church fell into apostasy rather early in its existence, we recognize that there have always been many true Christians on earth, and that a great deal of truth can be found in all denominations.
Note: We never start threads trying to malign or vilify other people's religions. We don't have sections in our bookstores with anti-Catholic or anti-Protestant books. We don't picket other people's worship services. And we don't create movies trying to "educate" our members on the "evils" of other Christian faiths. In this regard, we are among the most Christian of Christians.
What would you personally consider the "core doctrines" of Christianity to be, and why? Do you think Christ's Apostles believed these "core doctrines"? I'd kind of have to agree with Joseph Smith's way of putting answering this question. He said, "The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it."
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InChrist
Free4ever
.....does the LDS church fit the criteria of a Christian church?
Personally, I do not believe it does. I was raised Catholic, but left the Catholic Church in my later teen years being distracted by various things in life. After a few years I began exploring other religions and spiritual practices. At the age of 27 I met some Mormons and was introduced to the LDS faith. I went through the meetings with missionaries, read the book of Mormon, and visited various church meeting and events, but did not join immediately. About a year later I was baptized into the Mormon Church. Eventually, I met my husband and we were married in the temple....but that was an event which God used to begin the process of bringing us out of Mormonism and into a true relationship with Jesus Christ.
I think the defining difference between a real Christian church and the Mormon Church or any other church which claims to be Christian, but isn't is that in a true Christian church based on the biblical gospel "Jesus is Enough". All the others which claim to be Christian whether they be Mormon wards, Kingdom Halls, or even the Catholic Church have additional requirements beyond the grace and sufficiency of Jesus Christ.
I appreciate the testimony of the young man in the following link as he shares his understanding of the grace he found in Jesus which he never knew in Mormonism he was raised in...
Adam's Road Ministry | "I am not ashamed of the Gospel" | Home
Personally, I do not believe it does. I was raised Catholic, but left the Catholic Church in my later teen years being distracted by various things in life. After a few years I began exploring other religions and spiritual practices. At the age of 27 I met some Mormons and was introduced to the LDS faith. I went through the meetings with missionaries, read the book of Mormon, and visited various church meeting and events, but did not join immediately. About a year later I was baptized into the Mormon Church. Eventually, I met my husband and we were married in the temple....but that was an event which God used to begin the process of bringing us out of Mormonism and into a true relationship with Jesus Christ.
I think the defining difference between a real Christian church and the Mormon Church or any other church which claims to be Christian, but isn't is that in a true Christian church based on the biblical gospel "Jesus is Enough". All the others which claim to be Christian whether they be Mormon wards, Kingdom Halls, or even the Catholic Church have additional requirements beyond the grace and sufficiency of Jesus Christ.
I appreciate the testimony of the young man in the following link as he shares his understanding of the grace he found in Jesus which he never knew in Mormonism he was raised in...
Adam's Road Ministry | "I am not ashamed of the Gospel" | Home
I take issue with this.
What does it mean to believe in Jesus if what and who Jesus is and what he taught can mean absolutely anything? In that respect, don't Muslims believe in Jesus?
As far as I'm concerned, if you cannot honestly recite the Apostle's Creed then no matter what you call yourself your faith has nothing to do with mine no matter how "Christian" your themes may be. I don't recognise your "Jesus".
JiSe
Member
Yeah, I don't do scriptural debates no more, and I mostly presented things that might, according to some views, differentiate LDS beliefs from those Held by other Christian churches. And I personally think that drawing lines that exclude some sects that think themselves as Christian is a futile effort.
Sometimes i get in a hurry and use the format of another forum I am in. Sorry about that. If I can find it, I will correct it.