Are Mormons Christians?

No.

Part Three.  Case against Mormons calling themselves Christians from the heart of Mormon Orthodox Theology.

personal note:  If anyone doubts that I was every LDS, I was.  The first twenty years of my life was saturated with everything Mormon (24 hours – 7 days).  Enough that when I presented this idea to my Aaronic Priesthood leader, a Bishop, when I was a sixteen year old priest who would weekly bless the sacrament, he agreed that “Mormons need to be distinct from other groups” and it was a command from God to be distinct from others including garden variety Christians.  So from the dark recesses of my memory I offer the following proof to my LDS neighbors the same proof I shared with my bishop all those years ago to not call themselves Christians, but to stick to their own brand of Religion “Mormon”.  If that brand does not sell to the public anymore, some self examination should be taken as to why? that is.  I would suggest it is the false doctrine, the false prophets, and the false Christ it devotes itself to.

If you believe that Joseph Smith, jr. is a prophet and seer.  If you believe that He did in reality receive a visitation (not a vision) from God the Father and His Son-Jesus.  If you believe these two core points of the LDS Faith.  Then you should shrink away from any outside associations.

From the official account of the “first vision” of Joseph, he records how God commanded him to not join with any of the sects.  As far as I know Christians were the sects God was speaking about.  So the first command of this dispensation was for Joseph to not join with Christians–that would include in name also.

If as a faithful member of LDS church you want to be disobedient to your God, and break your baptismal covenant which you renew each week when you partake of your sacrament and recieve the condemation for hypocritically partaking, then be disobedient to the first commandment of your God in these Latter Days and join those sects in name.  Call yourself a Christain.  Fall off that first stair of your eternal progression and break your baptismal covenant.  It should not matter that much, for you don’t really believe there is a hell, just differing degrees of glory.  Sell yourself into one of those glories for your thirty pieces of silver and be counted among the unfaithful and disobedient to your God.

Are Mormons Christians?

No.

Part Two.  Religion versus Relationship
(Comparison of Mormonism and Christianity)

When I boil Mormonism down to its barest from.  It is a religion of process.  The plan of salvation outlined by Mormon Theology is an eternal process which the God of Mormonism inherited from His God and some day faithful LDS Members will inherit from the God of Mormonism and then they can use that same eternal process on the worlds they create.

In this world the process looks like this–Faith, Baptism, Repentance, Holy Ghost, …(Sacred Temple Ordinances)…  The plan of salvation (Mormon’s call it the gospel) can best be described as a staircase to heaven.  If you climb each step you make it to celestial glory.  But since man is not perfect, but always striving for perfection, no one can actually climb all the way up but the truly faithful and obedient will get really, really close and then the Jesus of Mormonism will provided the balance due.  The Jesus of Mormonism provides for a limited atonement by his suffering in the garden, on the cross, and his death.  An atonement that is an earned wage–not a free gift.

Mormonism is self-centered.  It is a process of self to achieve Godhood.  The work of achievement is up the individual.  The Jesus of Mormonism came to show how to be perfect.  Mormons are to seek that same perfection by following the same process that Jesus did.  Then they will be perfect also.  Arguments may come from Mormons that they are all about Family.  Not really, Family is just another vehicle to propell self up the staircase.  In the end, It is Individual.  It is self-centered.

Christianity is not religion.  Christianity is not a process.  True Christianity is relationship.  The leader of Christianity, Jesus, when he walked on the dusty roads of Galilee and Judea taught the commandments, both are relational.  Love the Lord your God with all your might, and second Love your neighbor as yourself.  The relationship with God is pre-eminent in Christianity.  Christianity is God-centered.  Relationship that can only be restored by individual belief (faith, trust) in Jesus.  The relationship with God was broken because of rebellion by man.  Rebellion is sin.  Jesus alone is sufficient to restore that relationship by his death for all sin.  The work of salvation is all ready completed.  No further work is needed.

By faith in Jesus the believer is spiritually born, beginning his/her relationship with God.  Each believer begins their journey from far and wide locations there is no blue print to perfection.   [Yet the Bible is the handbook for the daily journey.]*  Jesus is the Light and true believers often called sheep hear their masters voice and walk toward Him.  He is the way and the Destination of Christianity.

Final Thoughts

I climbed some of those stairs on my way to the celestial glory by my strength and my power.  The process (Mormon plan of Salvation) is a tired and lonely climb.  So Mormonism is Me-ianity.

Then I saw the Light (Jesus) and trusted in Him got off that stairway to my glory and started seeking the glory of God.  God guides me one step at a time down the path.  Each step is a step of faith onward toward the light of Christ’s glory.  So Christianity is Christ-ianity.

*added to clarify that the bible contains God’s complete revealed word on both the relationship between God and man and between fellow men.

Are Mormons Christians?

No.

Part One. My appeal from my personal experience.

If you read my short biography to left you will note that I now identify myself a Christian.  In the simplist definition that means I am a disciple or follower of Jesus Christ.  The unifying figure of Christianity is Jesus.  The question is, Who is Jesus? From my personal experience, I was not able to be both a Christian and a Mormon.  I tried it for about a year, but it was not possible.  The more I read and studied the Bible and was taught by God.  The author of the Bible, I could no longer associate myself with the heretical teaching of Jesus that is proclaimed by the Mormon Faith.

Why ask this tired and overused question again?

Once again the deception machine of another Danite Mormon group has turned losed the most disingenuos web site I have seen to date.  It’s purpose is to study Christianity and convince its readers through whatever logical or emotional appeal it can,  patterned after the saying, “the ends justify the means,” to include the Mormon Church as simply another demonination of Christianity and just leave Mormons alone.  And allow then to call themselves whatever they want to be called.  It is a call for making the tent of Christianity warp and grow to include a group of heretics.

A line must be drawn.  Shall we allow for muslims to be called Christians as well, they believe in Jesus.  Does it matter that they only say he is a prophet.  Where will this nonsense of watering down words end?  Even the LDS joined the fight in California to maintain the definition of marriage yet now they fight to enlarge and expand the definition of Christianity to include their heretical teachings and beliefs.

I will never consider the LDS faith to be a part of Christianity.  I have lived my life as a Mormon and as a Christian, and those two lives are as different as night is from day.  One is black the other white.  They are opposites.

Authentic Conversion

Authentic Christian Conversion or Social Gospel Worker?

From February 5th President Obama shared a small glimpse into his faith and conversion to Christianity.  Only God knows if Obama has an authentic faith and this may not be his complete testimony, story of his conversion, but from my perspective this account is lacking authentic conversion for a Christian with no mention of Jesus at all.

“I didn’t become a Christian until many years later, when I moved to the South Side of Chicago after college. It happened not because of indoctrination or a sudden revelation, but because I spent month after month working with church folks who simply wanted to help neighbors who were down on their luck – no matter what they looked like, or where they came from, or who they prayed to. It was on those streets, in those neighborhoods, that I first heard God’s spirit beckon me. It was there that I felt called to a higher purpose – His purpose.” — President Barack Obama

The beginning of President Obama’s apparent conversion to Christianity is his work and service to others.  Then after his work his heart was opened to hear God.  This is backward conversion. Helping others is a noble cause, but do works position anyone for salvation?  what of admission of personal sin, a need for a Messiah-Jesus, and submission to God. It is nice to hear the call to God, but what of His Son, Jesus Christ? The Holy Spirit?

Is God’s highest purpose to serve and help mankind here on this world? Is it to feed, cloth, and heal the sick only? Or is there more? Is there greater purpose, heavenly purpose?

Conversion is not earned through helping your neighbor.  Helping your neighbors and other acts of love follow after salvation not before. Ephesians 2:8-10 “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

Love for our neighbors begins with the love God gives to us.  By ourselves we have no love.  God is Love. 1 John 4:7-11 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

Again, I don’t know if Barack Obama is a Christian or not. Or even if he believes in God.  If He does believe in God, then why does he not practice his own words, “There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being.”  Mr. Obama, what of legalized on-demand Abortion?  Is that not the taking of an innocent human being?  An unborn baby is not a group of tissues or a parasite feeding off a mother. It is life.  It is human life.

If it is true that God does not condone the taking of innocent life, Why Mr. Obama do you go against God and condone it? why do you support on-demand abortion?  You can not have it both ways. You can not chose to listen to God on the streets of south Chicago, and then ignore him when you visit a planned parenthood clinic.  Chose God and life or chose Abortion and death.

Apparently there is a god that does condone the taking of an innocent human being.  The god of the pro-choice movement, and Mr. President you are taking the lead in that movement now–with your recent decision to fund overseas abortions with taxpayers money.  What other actions will you take against God? Matthew 7:15-20 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”

A Friend moves on

The only constant is that everything must change.  Change is hard.  It is not always good.  But it is not always bad either.  I had to say good-bye to a friend.  I have known him only about 2 short years.  But just about every week we would share a breakfast either at Angie’s or the Village Inn here in Logan.  He is my brother in Christ.  We would also share what was going on in our lives the good and the bad.  We would prayer for each other.  But he is now off to another place.

The words from my favorite Poet Robert Frost, Nothing Gold can Stay, do far better at expression this.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
so dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Perhaps a new dawn is on its way,  and there is always the daylight of old friends that still provide that gold for your life.

Exclusive Salvation

This paragraph from the Bible (one of many that could be chosen) presents an exclusive salvation narrative.  It is a picture of the return of the Savior written by the Apostle Paul, Silas, and Timothy to first century saints living in a Greek city of Macedonia.

From Chapter 1 of 2 Thessalonians

“5 This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— 6 since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, 7 and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels 8 in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, 10 when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed. ” (English Standard Version)

There are two eternal destinations for all people.

Destination number one is for people who do not know God and are disobedient to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.  They are on their way to an everlasting destruction as punishment (1:8-9).  Everlasting destruction is not annihilation it is ongoing and continuous ruin.  A crumbling soul eroding away for ever.  From these two things are denied.  All men are given general revelation that there is a God, through creation.  It awakens a need to search and find him.  But in seeking God, the search yields an incomplete picture of God and often turns to false gods or idols that are substituted for the True and Everlasting God.  The missing piece is the gospel of the Lord Jesus.  It is in ignorance or rejection of this gospel that brings the ruin of the soul of man.  So Christian spread the good news for it is the power of salvation.  The small act of not embracing the simple message of John 3:16 leads to an endless eroding life.

Destination number two is for the people counted worthy (1:5).  They are counted worthy not because they are in affliction and suffering persecution, although they patiently endure it.  They are given relief for being counted worthy (1:7).  At the return of the Lord.  Jesus will be glorified and admired by the saints who believe. (1:10) They believed the testimony of the apostle.  A testimony of God rescuing a Pharisee enforcing man’s exclusive religion.  His robe was splattered with the blood of saints.  A sinner like all of us given sight by the Physician after being blinded by his sin.  He looked upon the face of the Messiah.  His life was transformed after he was snatched from the devouring lion of eternal destruction.  Rescued by Wonderful (Isaiah 9:6).  This testimony convinced men and women of the first century to believe in the Messiah.  He alone saves.

Will his testimony convince you?  Will it bring you into exclusive salvation?  Salvation only by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

If you would like to hear more about this exclusive salvation join me this Sunday at Maranatha Baptist Church in Logan, Utah at 9:30 am.