Hi Cos Sorry it took me so long to respond, I'm really busy this time of year.
You have asked a very serious question indeed. Mormonism is the fastest growing religion that I am currently aware of, and by all outward appearances it seems to be a Christian denomination. Outward appearances, however can be very deceptive. I seem to recall that some of your relatives are involved with Mormonism so I'll try to be as forthright as I can, without being insulting. Mormons like anyone else, are free to believe whatever they like. I have found most of the Mormon people that I have met to be very nice, caring and moral people, but I would not consider Mormons to be biblical Christians and I'll try to explain why.
It is tempting to take issue with Mormons on the obvious subjects such as polygamy and the, how should I put this, somewhat colorful history of the founders of this uniquely American religious movement. These things however, are to my mind, peripheral at best, and really don't tell us much about Mormon truth claims. What I do find very important though are the differences with biblical Christianity in a couple of key areas. They are the doctrine of God, and The person of Christ..
First, the doctrine of God.
Christianity being of Jewish origin, is, and always has been, a monotheistic religion. The doctrine of the Trinity asserts that within the nature of the one true God there are three distinct persons, and those three persons are uncreated and eternal (having always existed) and co-equal. So, God is one in essence and three in persons.
Mormonism on the other hand is polytheistic, having a seemingly endless regression of gods who started off as men, created by a former god, and have themselves through their own efforts attained the position of god. So god had a father and he in turn had a father and so on and so on...... This is not how the bible portrays God. "I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no God" Isa 44:6
Second , the person of Christ.
"In the beginning was the Word..... and the Word was God." Jn 1:1
To the Christian Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity, the God- man. Who has existed with the father and the Holy Spirit eternally.
To Mormons, Jesus Christ is the spirit brother of Lucifer, and one (firstborn) of the created children of Elohim.
You could add to this the fact that Christian salvation is by Grace not by works. In other words our relationship to God is not something that we can accomplish on our own. All of our efforts, piled on top of each other are no more effective to reach God than was the tower of Babel. That Scripture about our righteousness having to exceed that of the Scribes and Pharacies was simply making the point that the best that man can do on his own is not good enough. As one person put it how would you like to be in line behind Mother Teresa and hear God say to her " lady you could have done so much more". The standard for heaven is perfection. Since no one is able to meet that standard, God is not required to let any into his presence. In fact it would violate his character to disregard justice. Therefore, God sent His Son Jesus into this world to live a perfect sinless life, and having lived it, to then lay it down as a propitiation or satisfaction of the justice of God. I would challenge you to read the first three chapters of the book of Romans with this in mind and see if what I have said lines up with it or not. Hope that helped.
Essentially Mormonism has a different God and a different Gospel than Christianity. Their god was once a man who worked his way up to become a god like his daddy before him, and their gospel is one that must be achieved by work instead of received by Grace.
Have a good evening, I'm off to sleep.
Greg |
