Before you read the rest of this post you MUST watch the following video. It is short (a little over 2 minutes) and I will be referring back to it frequently. The man speaking is Jefferey R. Holland. To give you a little bit of his background, he is a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which means he is accepted by the LDS Church as a prophet, seer, and revelator. Holland is a voice for the Mormon Church. Here is the LDS Church’s claim to Christianity.
Well, are you a Mormon now? That sounded pretty good. What part of that might a Christian disagree with? He said, “Jesus is the literal living son of our literal living God.” Are those words unbiblical? I see nothing unbiblical in those words. He said, “He [Jesus] was born of a virgin mother.” Yes, that is true. He goes on to describe how Jesus performed “mighty miracles”. He even says that Jesus “took upon Himself the sins of the world”. Well, that sure sounds Christian, doesn’t it?
Yes, it sounds Christian. What must be understood here is that words have meaning. The LDS Church takes words from the Bible and Christianity and changes what those words mean. They say the words we say but they mean completely different things. Let me illustrate this by explaining to you not only the words Mr. Holland says in this video but also what he means.
Who is Jesus?
When he says he believes that “Jesus is the literal living son of our literal living God” he does not mean the same thing I mean when I say those words. He does not mean the same thing the Bible means when it calls Jesus the “Son of God”. The Mormon Church believes that Jesus is the literal living PHYSICAL son of God. They believe that God (Elohim) has a physical body of flesh and bone. He has many wives, and His first spiritual offspring was Jehovah who later becomes Jesus. They believe that the reason Jesus is immortal is because he had a literal immortal father when Elohim came in a physical human body and literally had a sexual relationship with Mary and impregnated her. So Jesus (in Mormonism) is the literal physical son of their literal living God, who is a literal living man who lives on the planet Kolob (I am not making this up. It is found in the Mormon scripture entitled The Pearl of Great Price). Hopefully you can see the differences when a Mormon says they believe that “Jesus is the literal living son of our literal living God”. They are saying the same words but they mean something TOTALLY different.
What is the Virgin Birth?
When he talks about the virgin birth he doesn’t mean the same thing a Christian means when they say, “Jesus was born of a virgin.” The Mormon believes Mary was a virgin at the time of conception but not at the time of birth. This means that Mary was a virgin and the very first sexual relationship she had was with Elohim and she became pregnant. This is referred to as a “virgin birth” because she was a virgin up until conception.
What is the Atonement?
When Holland said, “took upon Himself the sins of the world,” he was not speaking of the same atonement that the Bible speaks of. Did you notice what image was on the screen when he said those words? It was an image of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. In Mormonism the atonement is primarily in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was sweating drops of blood. The atonement that the LDS Church teaches is nothing like the atonement that the Bible teaches. Not only is the location, time, and events of the atonement in Mormonism contrary to the Bible, but their whole idea of the atonement is completely false. They believe Christ’s atonement only made salvation possible and didn’t actually save anyone. LeGrand Richards, one of the LDS apostles said that Jesus “atoned for Adam’s sin, leaving us responsible only for our own sins.” (LeGrand Richards, A Marvelous Work and a Wonder (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1958), 98—99.) That certainly is not the atonement of the Bible.
Who is the Only True God?
When Holland refers to “the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent” he is actually quoting John 17:3. This is quite the irony to hear a Mormon quote this verse because they do not mean God is the only true God. What Holland means, and what the LDS Church teaches, is that God is the only true God for us. But they teach that God once lived on a different planet as a man and had a God. And that God once lived on a different planet as a man and had a God. And one day, you can be the God of your own planet and be their “only true God”. The Bible contradicts that belief in Isaiah 43:10 when it says, “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.” They do not mean what the Bible means when it says God is the ONLY true God.
Are Mormons Christians?
Well, there you have it. Are Mormons Christians? After all, they believe Jesus is the son of God, that He was born of a virgin, and that he took upon Himself the sins of the world. But they don’t mean the same things the Bible means when they say those words. They take the words and change the meaning so they can say a completely different thing in the exact same way. Mormons are not Christians. They do not believe the words of the Bible. They do not believe the words of Christ. They take those words and change the definition to fit what they want to believe.
Testifying to the gospel of the grace of God,
Robbie
Acts 20:24
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