Tonight we are beginning our series on Mormonism. I’m pretty excited about it as this is a very relevant topic to our community. To read the transcripts of the talk, just click that "read more" button.
Hook:
#1 Playing with fire crackers… eventually your mom is right, you will
get hurt.
#2 There are Mormons among us.
– They may look like Christians
– They may act like Christians
– They may say they are Christians
– But they are clearly not Christians
This is the reason for this summer series.
– We’re not out to bash Mormons
– We’re not out to make you afraid of them
– We’re not out to give you info so that you can go
out and give someone “sound bytes” that are more destructive than good.
The goal with this series is simply to help you understand a little
about what they believe and how that is contradictory to what Jesus teaches.
Book:
Central to
Mormonism is the belief that you can become a god.
"The Lorenzo Snow[former president of LDS, whom Mormon holds as
faultless] couplet expresses a
true statement: ‘As man is, God once was; and as God is, man may become.’"
Seventy Bruce C. Hafen
The Broken Heart: Applying the Atonement to Life’s Experiences, 1989, p.133
http://www.mrm.org/multimedia/text/lorenzo-snow-couplet.html
This is obviously contrary to what the Bible teaches about
the nature of God and the nature of man.
But where did this
come from? A little background history on the Latter-day Saints.
If you were to decide to sit down and talk with the
missionaries in town, these are the things they would likely tell you:
http://www.exmormon.org/tract2.htm
Why we cannot become gods…
We only hold to the authority of the Bible. Just like we don’t
hold that church history or the teachings of any pastor or teacher are perfect…
we don’t acknowledge the Book of Mormon as Scripture.
I want you to know
that the God that LDS talks about is vastly different from the God of the
Bible.
They teach:
- God was once a man like us.
- God has a tangible body of
flesh and bone. - God lives on a planet near
the star Kolob. - God ("Heavenly
Father") has at least one wife, our "Mother in Heaven," but
she is so holy that we are not to discuss her nor pray to her. - We can become like God and
rule over our own universe. - There are many gods, ruling
over their own worlds.
What the Bible
teaches:
Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD
is one.”
God is One. Absolutely, completely One.
Moses makes it very clear to the Israelites that even though
there were people all around them that taught that there were many gods in the
universe… There was really only one God with a capital G.
– In Deuteronomy 4
Moses give them a little flashback.
32
Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created
man on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so
great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? 33 Has any other people heard the
voice of God [a] speaking out of fire, as you have, and
lived? 34 Has any god ever
tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by
miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm,
or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the LORD your God did for
you in Egypt before your very eyes? 35 You were
shown these things so that you might know that the LORD is God; besides him
there is no other.
o Then
Moses gives the nation the 10 commandments.
§ #1 You shall have no other gods before me
o He
wants the Israelites to acknowledge that there is One God, and One alone so
much that he finishes with this command.
§ Impress this on your children
§ Talk about it as you walk here and there
§ Tie it on your hands and write it on your
forehead
§ Write it on the doorframes of you house and out
on the gates outside.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism says about God…
Question. 5. Are there more Gods
than one?
A. There is but one only, the living and true God.
This
is what makes so many people hate Christians
Look:
If someone told you that you could be God, would you be
interested?
Probably not…
If someone told you that if you were really, really good in
your life… that you could become Holy… would you aspire to be that?
Absolutely.
The reality is that Later-day Saints have
created a religion that tempts us with something that we couldn’t possible
have.
– Doing good work,
while good… do not make us God-like in any way.
o Ecclesiastes
7:20
says, “There is not a righteous
man on earth who does what is right and never sins.”
– We are all under
sin
o Romans
3:9-12 says, “ 9What
shall we conclude then? Are we any better[b]? Not at all! We have already made the
charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. 10As it is written:
"There is no one righteous, not even one;
11there
is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
12All have turned
away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one."
Took:
What does this
matter?
Why are we dwelling
on this so much?
So what, who really
cares if
Remember how I said
that this was one of those talks that would make people mad?
It matters that there is only one God and that the mormon
god isn’t it is…
God is exclusive. There is not a lot of ways to God… there
is only one way. Those people who are putting their faith, hope, and trust in
the idea that Mormonism is true and that they too, if they are good enough,
could become a god themselves over their own heaven and earth… The Bible says
those people are wrong.
John 14:6 “Jesus
answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the
Father except through me.
So… if there are people out there…
– no matter how sincere they are
– no matter how much they believe it
– no matter how nice they are to you
– no matter how “ok” they seem to be
They aren’t OK. If they are trying to come to the Father any
way but through Jesus… Jesus’ words are quite
clear.
No one comes to the Father, except through Jesus.
Yeah but, we’re
talking about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Certainly, they believe
they come to the Father through Jesus.
Well, wrong Father… we’ve shown that.
Wrong Jesus… the mormons don’t
believe that Jesus, the Son of God, is God. They believe he is just like you
and me. He is a son of the god of this planet.
Small group discussion
· Mormonism began in 1820 when a teen-aged boy
in western
New York
named Joseph
Smith was spurred by a Christian revival where he lived to pray to God for
guidance as to which church was true. In answer to his prayers he was visited
by God the Father and God the Son, two separate beings, who told him to join no
church because all the churches at that time were false, and that he, Joseph,
would bring forth the true church. This event is called "The First
Vision."
Fact: This story was not written down until 1838, 18 years after it
apparently happened. In 1828, he applied for membership in the local Methodist
church.
· In 1823 Joseph had another heavenly
visitation, in which an angel named
Moroni
told him of a sacred history written by ancient Hebrews in
America
,
engraved in an Egyptian dialect on tablets of gold and buried in a nearby hill.
Joseph was told it was the history of the ancient peoples of
America
,
and that Joseph would be the instrument for bringing this record to the
knowledge of the world. Joseph obtained these gold plates from the angel in
1827, and translated them into English by the spirit of God and the use of a
sacred instrument accompanying the plates called the "Urim and
Thummim." The translation was published in 1830 as The Book of
Mormon, now revered by Mormons as scripture, along with the Bible.
Fact: Joseph Smith was known in his area not for his religious vigor
but for being hired out by local farmers to find buried treasure. In fact, he
was tried in 1826 for this type of fraud. Though he claims “great persecution”
there is no evidence that he ever received any in his early years.
· The Book of Mormon is a
religious and secular history of the inhabitants of the
Western
Hemisphere
from about 2200 BC to about 421 AD. It tells the reader
that the American Indians are descended from three groups of immigrants who
were led by God from their original homes in the
Near East
to
America
. One
group came from the
Tower
of
Babel
,
and two other groups came from
Jerusalem
just before the Babylonian Captivity, about 600 BC. They were led by prophets
of God who had the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is thus preserved in their
history, the Book of Mormon. Many of the descendants of these immigrants
were Christians, even before Christ was born in
Palestine
,
but many were unbelievers. Believers and unbelievers fought many wars, the last
of which left only degenerate unbelievers as survivors, who are the ancestors
of the American Indians. The most important event during this long history was
the visit of Jesus Christ to
America
,
after his crucifixion, when he ministered to (and converted) all the
inhabitants.
Fact: The Book of Mormon has always been under scrutiny for it’s
claims. The only persons who claimed to have actually seen the gold plates were
eleven close friends of Smith (many of them related to each other). Their
testimonies are printed in the front of every copy of the Book of Mormon.
No disinterested third party was ever allowed to examine them. They were
retrieved by the angel at some unrecorded point. Most of the witnesses later
abandoned Smith and left his movement. Smith then called them "liars."
· Joseph Smith was directed by revelation from
God to reestablish ("restore") the true church, which he did in 1830.
He was visited several times by heavenly messengers, who ordained him to the
true priesthood. He continued to have revelations from God to guide the church
and to give more knowledge of the Gospel. Many of these revelations are
published in the Doctrine and Covenants, accepted by Mormons as
scripture, along with the Bible and the Book of Mormon.
Fact: The detailed history and civilization described in the Book of
Mormon does not correspond to anything found by archaeologists anywhere in
the
Americas
. The Book of Mormon describes a
civilization lasting for a thousand years, covering both North and South
America, which was familiar with horses, elephants, cattle, sheep, wheat,
barley, steel, wheeled vehicles, shipbuilding, sails, coins, and other elements
of Old World culture. But no trace of any of these supposedly very common
things has ever been found in the
Americas
of that period. Nor does the Book of
Mormon mention many of the features of the civilizations which really did
exist at that time in the
Americas
.
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