Are Mormons Christians?
Growing up in my home church I heard about these people called “Mormons,” and I was told hardly anything about them or what they believe and I even felt that I was being told that Mormons were born-again Christians, but they simply had some weird doctrines.
As I got older, I met some Mormons and befriended several. Even they, however, struggled to tell me exactly what they believed as Latter Day Saints. If I were to summarize all of the answers I received, It would go something like, “It’s complicated.” Eventually, I decided to stop asking people about Mormonism and investigate it at the source.
When I looked into official LDS scriptures such as the Pearl of Great Price, and also sermons from the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, it became clear to me that Mormonism strays far from core essentials of the Christian faith, and therefore cannot be called “Christian.” Let’s look at a few examples.
First, we’ll look at Mormon soteriology (the doctrine of salvation). As born-again Christians, we know that we cannot do anything to earn our salvation. It is purely a gift from God, received by faith, apart from works. However, Mormons believe something very different, and yes, it is actually complicated.
Mormons believe in a salvation that is a mix of works and grace. Jesus gets you resurrected, but you’ll have to work like a dog to achieve exaltation. I have been told by a Mormon friend of mine that they do in fact believe that salvation is by grace through faith alone, but that, I believe, is due to their unbiblical doctrine of heaven. Mormon teaching involves three different levels of heaven, or “degrees of glory.” The ultimate goal in Mormon teaching is not to simply be with God in glorified human bodies, but to actually become a god themselves! To achieve this though, there is a long list of works you must do first.
In one of Joseph Smith’s last sermons, the King Follett sermon, he says, “Here, then, is eternal life—to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all gods have done before you, namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you attain to the resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, and to sit in glory, as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power.” Not only do you want to be saved in Mormonism, you want to work up to becoming a god one day. There is a long list of things you must do if you wish to inherit the “Celestial Kingdom,” where you might be able to become a god if you are good enough. This is in stark contrast to the Christian soteriology. This is a different gospel entirely, and in the words of the apostle Paul in his epistle to the Galatians, “But even if we (or an angel from heaven) should preach a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be condemned to hell.”
Next we’ll look at the very nature of God. Christians believe that God is one being, eternally existent in three distinct persons. Namely, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Mormons, on the other hand, believe that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three separate beings who are only one in purpose or will. On the official LDS website under the topic “Godhead,” this is what they say Latter Day Saints believe about the nature of God in this respect: “Like other Christians, Latter-day Saints believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost). Yet, Church teachings about the Godhead differ from those of traditional Christianity. For example, while some believe the three members of the Trinity are of one substance, Latter-day Saints believe they are three physically separate beings, but fully one in love, purpose and will.” This is not the Trinity. This is polytheism. The Bible teaches repeatedly that there is only one God, yet Mormons believe the Father, Son, and Spirit are three different gods.
So what do Mormons say about this? They will say that they only believe in one God, but what they mean is they only worship one God, yet if I had two wives, but I only loved one of them, I would still be a polygamist.
What else did Joseph Smith teach about God’s nature? In the sermon mentioned earlier, the King Follett sermon, Joseph Smith teaches that God was not always God, but was once a man! Read what he said here, “We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see. These ideas are incomprehensible to some, but they are simple. It is the first principle of the gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with Him as one man converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.” He proceeded to fail to show it from the Bible. According to Joseph, it is the first principle of the gospel to believe that God was once a man. If you have spent any time in the Bible, you know that this is blasphemy.
There are many more problems with Mormonism, but this article is just meant to serve as clarification for those who aren’t sure whether to call a Mormon a brother or sister in Christ. I wish they were, but the fact is that the LDS church teaches a false gospel and blasphemes the nature of God. I encourage the reader to look more into Mormonism and its teachings, but only to be better equipped to witness to LDS friends and family.
Recommended Resource:
Reasoning from the Scriptures With the Mormons by Ron Rhodes