What is Mormonism?

One such movement, professing to be the only true religion, outside of which there is no salvation, and originating in the United States of America, is known as THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS.

It is alternatively called Mormonism after their Book of Mormon, which they put on an equality with the Holy Scriptures of truth. We cannot put their claims to a better test than that laid down by our Lord, “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned” (Matt. 12:37).

The Mormons, or (as they now prefer to be named) “The Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter Day Saints,” have their headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States of America. Here they have a great and costly temple, to which they say Christ will come at His Second Advent. The sect was founded on April 6th, 1830, by Joseph Smith, its first prophet and Seer. It claims a membership of several hundred thousand “in the organized states of Zion,” besides fifty thousand in various missions, with a hierarchy of Presidents, Apostles, Patriarchs, High Priests, and Elders, numbering 10,000, divided into two orders, bearing the names of the Melchizedeck and Aaronic Priesthood. Year after year, groups of preaching Elders are sent forth by the Apostles, working under their direction, to gain new converts and make Mormon disciples by their Gospel of Faith, Repentance, Baptism, and Laying on of Hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost. In this capacity, stylishly dressed young men of attractive personal appearance, enter towns and villages, usually in pairs, at first discoursing on subjects which they know to be generally accepted among Christians. Then as they gain the ears and the confidence of their hearers—more particularly of the weaker sex, to whom they pay particular attention, for reasons which will hereafter appear—the real doctrines of Mormonism, or as many of them as it is politic to advance, are brought forth, with every persuasion to embrace and confess the Mormon faith, and be enrolled as true members and citizens of the coming Zion, to be built upon the American Continent. While as the preachers themselves confess, little progress is being made in these “orthodox” and Bible-loving lands, there are always a few stragglers ready to take up with every new religion, no matter what its merits. And the apparent sincerity and zeal, with which the Mormon preachers set forth their doctrines, is an attraction to some who have not known the “depths of Satan,” or with what subtlety and cunning be seeks to deceive and seduce from the Gospel of God's grace and the simplicity that is in Christ (2 Cor. 11:3), into paths of error and moral degradation.

It will be shown in these pages that the Mormon creed is a complete denial of the fundamental truths of the Christian faith, a corruption of the grace of God, a caricature of the Church as set forth in the Scriptures, and a degradation of the sacred relations of husband and wife as God has instituted them and means them to continue. To expose and warn against such blasphemies and immoralities becomes a duty, and if these pages are used to warn the unwary, and deliver any whose feet may be in the snare, they will serve the purpose for which they go forth.

It is only fair that the history and doctrines of this people be here given, as set forth in their own acknowledged writings, by their accredited teachers, and not from the criticisms of their opponents We therefore quote from “the Book of Mormon,” which lies before us, a bulky volume of 623 pages, which they acknowledge to be of “Divine Authenticity,” and which they confess they “believe to be the Word of God” as much as the Bible. We also quote from the works and utterances of Joseph Smith the founder, Brigham Young his successor, and other accredited Presidents and Prophets, who are accepted and proclaimed in the Mormon Church as “divinely authorised to teach.” There can be no doubt therefore that these are the true doctrines and practices of the Mormon Church, as it exists at the present time.

Joseph Smith's Narrative

Mormonism teaches that God used to be a man on another world and that he became a god by following the laws and ordinances of his god on his home world. He brought his wife to this world, a woman he had married on the other world. She is, essentially, a goddess. In his present god-state, he rules our world. He has a body of flesh and bones. Since god and his wife are both exalted persons, they each possess physical bodies. In their exalted states as deities, they produce spirit children that grow and mature in the spiritual realm. The first spirit born was Jesus. Afterwards Lucifer was born along with the rest of us. So, Mormonism teaches that we all pre-existed in the spirit realm having been produced from the union of god and his goddess wife. Therefore, we all existed in spirit form before coming down and entering the bodies of human babies that are being born on earth. During this ‘compression' into the infant state, the memories of their pre-existence are 'veiled.'

It will be an astonishment doubtless to some, who have been inclined to think charitably of this people and of their doctrines, to learn that according to the Mormon creed, there is “no God,” that is, no Divine Being such as the Scriptures reveal. Here is what the Prophet, Joseph Smith, says: “God Himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man.” “God Himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on earth the same as Jesus Christ did.” “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's.” And the following, by Brigham Young, leaves no doubt as to who this “exalted man” is, I who was “once as we are,” and is now a God. “When our father Adam came into the Garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his celestial wives. He helped to make and organize this world. He is our Father and our God, the ONLY God with whom we have to do” (Journal of Discourses). This is blasphemy! What is the need of a Gospel to convert sinners to fallen Adam, as the “only God” with whom they “have to do,” or of “preaching elders” evangelising to bring converts to worship “an exalted man,” who formerly lived in Eden with one of his celestial wives? The Mormon creed goes on to say that Jesus Christ was Adam's son by ordinary generation, that the Fall was a necessity, “that men might be,” and that those who practise celestial marriage on earth, will “pass by the angels” and “be God's themselves. This brands the Mormon faith as Polytheism of the lowest and grossest kind.

The Gospel, as “sent forth by the hand of Joseph Smith,” consists of first principles and ordinances as follows:—First, Faith; second, Repentance; third, Baptism for the remission of sins; fourth Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost,” and “All mankind may be saved by obedience to these laws and ordinances.” Men are to be punished for their own sins, but not for Adam's transgression,” and if any die unrepentant and especially unbaptized, they can be hunted up in the “spirit world” by Mormon prophets, who go preaching the Joseph Smith Gospel there, and relatives on earth may be baptized as “proxies” for them, so as to keep intact the “ordinances” which are so essential to salvation. But all this is “another Gospel,” which the apostle declares, if he or “any man,” or even “an angel from heaven”—such as Joseph Smith's Moroni claims to be—preaches, “let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:6-8). The Gospel of God, which is His “power unto salvation” to every one that believes it (Rom. 1:16), has no “ordinances” added to it. It needs no “hands” of man laid on to make it effectual. No “Sponsors” or baptism by proxy are required to complete its work. It brings the good news of a present, known, and enjoyed salvation, which is immediately the possession of all who believe it (Acts 16:30), and every sinner who as such comes to the Lord Jesus Christ is received by Him and never cast out (John 6:37). When did the dying thief receive baptism for the remission of his sins? Will any say in the face of Luke 23:43, he did not go to be “with Christ” for want of it?

The Book of Mormon

The bulky volume which bears this name, and claims to be a translation of the writing found on the golden plates, is a fictitious history written in imitation of the Bible, composed of various books, each bearing the name of its writer, beginning with Nephi, a Jew, who lived in Jerusalem B.C. 60, and ending with Moroni, who claims to have lived after Christ, and had been charged to give an account of the order and ordinances of the church, to be used for guidance of the Latter Day Saints. Its weird and frivolous stories are utterly groundless, and although interwoven with Scripture, can deceive none save the “simple” (Rom. 16:18), and such as are “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14). Mormons claim that the book was written by “inspired men” and is “a volume of Scripture” of equal value at least with the Bible, which is acknowledged to be “the Jewish Scriptures,” for saints of the Eastern hemisphere, while the Book of Mormon is “also the Word of God of equal authority with the Bible,” especially for the Western hemisphere, of whose early saints the Bible knows and says nothing. The Bible, according to the Mormon creed, is a very faulty book, full of inaccuracies and errors, with whole books omitted, and at best it is only one of many “Revelations” given to men, “the Book of Mormon, the Book of Covenants and Doctrines,” and other works of the prophets being equal in authority. Isaiah, Paul, Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young are all “Revelators,” the latter, if anything, being of a higher order than the former. The following, culled from many such deliverances in Salt Lake Tabernacle, gives the acknowledged position of the Mormon Prophets, Revelators, and Bible makers: “Joseph Smith was a prophet, Brigham Young was a prophet, Wildford Woodruff is a prophet, and I know that he has a great many prophets around him, and he can make Scriptures as good as those in the Bible.” And Joseph Smith's revelations are evidently of far greater value in the Mormon Church than those of the Apostles, for it is declared by Brigham Young, his successor, that “if any make light of, or treat them with indifference,” they will prove their “damnation.” Nor need we wonder when we are told that Joseph Smith was not only an inspired prophet, but “he spoke by the authority of an endless priesthood which was upon him,” and all who “hold the priesthood possess Divine authority thus to act for God; and by possessing part of God's power, they are in reality part of God.” Prodigious! This is surely the “spirit of Antichrist,” of which Scripture warns, which begins by men claiming to have Divine authority, and culminates in “THE Antichrist” claiming to be God, and demanding to be “worshipped as God” (2 Thess. 2:4). Any sect which claims to be receiving continuous revelations through its priests and prophets, which are to be regarded as the voice of God, equal to or greater in authority than the written Word, has in its hands a weapon whereby it can deceive its votaries to any extent, and hold them in its chains. Rome, whose “Tradition” is of equal authority with Scripture, was the first to introduce this deception, and in her hand it succeeded so well that every upstart sect has copied it, and must have in some form its “revelations” through pope, priest, or prophet, making as of old “the Word of God of none effect” (Mark 7:13). Irvingites, Spiritualists, Christian Scientists, Perfectionists, and numerous smaller sects, while differing in much, agree in this, that there is something besides, something beyond Scripture, through which God now speaks, supplementing, and in many instances overturning the Holy Scriptures He aforetime gave, whereas the Word claims for itself that it is complete—filled full (Col. 1:25), that nothing is to be added to it (Prov. 30:6) or taken from it (Deut. 12:31), under awful penalties (Rev. 20:18-19), and that it has within it ALL that is required for all stages of Christian life, from the making wise of a “child” unto salvation, unto the full equipment and furnishing of “the man of God” for “every good work” (2 Tim. 3:17).

Organization of the Mormon Church

In Mormonism, men and women have the potential of becoming gods. President Lorenzo Snow said, "As god once was, man is. As God is, man may become." In order to reach this exalted state of godhood, a person must first become a good Mormon, pay a full ten percent tithe to the Mormon church, follow various laws and ordinances of the church, and be found worthy. At this point, they receive a temple recommend whereupon, the Mormon is allowed to enter their sacred temples in order to go through a set of secret rituals: baptism for the dead, celestial marriage, and various oaths of secrecy and commitment.

Additionally, four secret handshakes are taught so the believing Mormon, upon entering the third level of Mormon heaven, can shake hands with god in a certain pattern. This celestial ritual is for the purpose of permitting entrance into the highest level of heaven. [3]

For those who achieve this highest of heavens, exaltation to godhood awaits them. Then, he or she, will be permitted to have his or her own planet and be the god of his own world and the Mormon system will be expanded to other planets.

I suppose they called themselves Christians once. Their doctrine is this, that, supposing the people are married for all eternity, and have children all through eternity, and supposing the world that they are in gets too full, they, by faith, create another world, and he who so creates, is the god of the world he creates; and he packs off part of his children there; and so they believe that the One whom we call God and Father, is One who has created this world, and packed us off into it.

In the Mormon plan of salvation there needed to be a savior: Jesus. But Jesus was a spirit in heaven. For him to be born on earth, Brigham Young the second prophet of the Mormon church said that instead of letting any other man do it, God the Father did it with Mary. He said that the birth of our savior was as natural as the birth of our parents. Essentially, what this means is that Brigham Young taught that ‘god the father' came down and had relations with Mary, his spirit daughter, to produce the body of Jesus. Though many Mormons will not entertain such incestuous thoughts about God and Mary, this is what Brigham Young taught and as far as we know, this has not been denied by the Mormon church. Nevertheless, Jesus was born, got married, and had children. [2]

Mormonism teaches that every person, who is not of their persuasion, is outside the pale of God’s grace. Here is an extract from their Catechism: Q. Will all people be damned, who are not Latter-Day saints?

A. Yes, and a great many of them [Latter-Day Saints] except they repent speedily