Audio Teaching

Who are the Mormons?

“For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully.” 2 Corinthians 11:4

“For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. [14] And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. [15] It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.” 2 Corinth. 11:13-15

“God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." John 4:24
“And He [Jesus] was saying to them, „You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. 24 Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.?" John 8:23-24

1. UNDERSTANDING THE FOUNDER OF MORMONISM: JOSEPH SMITH

# We do know he had many leadership qualities
# Keen wit
#Good deal of charm
# Loads of charisma
# Natural speaker
# Handsome and athletic
# However we also know he was a deceiver
# Publicly denied he was a polygamist
# Privately the historical record says he had 33 wives. 11 wives were still married.
# Some of his wives were young teenagers
# He was also an occultist
# Smith used seer stones to search for buried treasure
# Arrested in 1826 for hiring himself out to another person for the purpose of money-digging. He admitted in court using a special stone for seeing hidden treasure.
# Other occult activities he practiced throughout his life:

o Magick (making impossible things happen): Not art of magic but what we might call black magic of the occult.
o Divination (special knowledge through the supernatural): Bible directly speaks against.
o Astrology (studying the positions of the stars and how they affect humans)
o Soothsaying (predicting the future), which he continued even after the founding of the Mormon Church in 1830.1

1 Abanes, Richard, “Becoming Gods,” Harvest House Publishers, 2004 p. 45

# False First Vision
# Mormon Church makes a big deal out of the first vision of Joseph Smith.
# Truth is Smith?s visions have undergone multiple revisions over the years. They have been expanded and changed to what we have today.
# Charts are available that demonstrate how changes were made over the years to what we have now.
# However, the Mormon Church today says they have the true vision of Smith in spite of the multiple contradictions in early publications.

2. ASSESSING THE BOOK OF MORMON
# At age 14 Joseph Smith while in the woods he said he saw God the Father and the Son. Smith asked God which church was the most correct upon which he was told all were all bad; he was to have nothing to do with any of them. It was here God Almighty supposedly commissions Joseph to “restore” the one true church.
# Later Smith was visited by the angel Moroni and told about some golden plates. This work is called the Book of Mormon.
# The Book of Mormon is the history of two people groups who came to the Americas. This first group was called the Jaredites and they became a powerful nation in America. However, after many centuries? of wickedness they annihilated themselves.
# Hundreds of years later, a second group of people of Hebrew decent arrived in the Americas led by Lehi. God had told him to flee Jerusalem prior to the Babylonian captivity. After Lehi?s death two of his sons, Nephi and Laman, took over. Some people gave their allegiance to Nephi, while the rest to Laman. The Book of Mormon describes these two Hebrew people groups as the Nephites and the Lamanites. After many battles between the two groups, by the 5th century A.D., the Laminates finally destroyed the Nephites at the battle of the Hill Cumorah. According to Mormon belief, the descendants of the Lamanites are the American Indians.

# Moroni, who was the son of Mormon, was the last living Nephite. He recorded the events of this time period and buried the record of his people in the Hill Cumorah, which is located near present-day Palmyra in upstate New York. This record was written on golden plates and was later discovered and translated into the Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith2.

1 Thess. 5:21 the Apostle Paul writes, Test everything. Hold on to the good. How do you test the Book of Mormon?

# Stolen Transcripts: A group of critics stole 116 pages of the Book of Mormon transcript and then waited to see if Joseph Smith could bring forth the exact same words. If the Book of Mormon was truly from God, Joseph Smith should have no problem translating the text exactly the same. However, he avoided this test by translating a different set of plates, said to have been attached to the original plates.
# No Archeological evidence: Smithsonian Institution of Natural History released a statement calling the evidence for the Book of Mormon fictional.
No artifact, in the Mormon Museum across from Temple Square, can be traced to the cultures mentioned in the Book of Mormon3.
# Major DNA problem
Book of Mormon teaches that the ancient inhabitants of the Americas are descendents from the Israelite group called the Lamanites (Laman was a son of Israelite Lehi). DNA evidence shows no connection between American Indians and Israel.

3. UNDERSTANDING THE LDS CHURCH ORGANIZATION
# General Administration: Directed by general authorities
# First presidency – Thomas Monson & 2 counselors
# Assisted by a “Council of Twelve” apostles
# The “First Quorum of the seventy”
# The “Second Quorum of the seventy” and its presidency, a “presiding Bishopric,” and the Patriarch of the church.
# Local Administration
# Wards and Branches. Members of the Church are organized into congregations that meet together frequently for spiritual and social enrichment. Large congregations are called wards. Small congregations are called branches.
# Stakes, Missions, and Districts. There are usually 5 to 12 wards and branches in a stake.
# A mission is a unit of the Church that normally covers an area much larger than that covered by a stake.
# District is a smaller version of a stake.

1 Abanes, Richard, “Becoming Gods,” Harvest House Publishers, 2004 p. 45
2 McKeever & Johnson, “Mormonism 101,” Baker Books, Michigan, 2002, pg. 106
3 Bill McKeever & Eric Johnson, Mormonism 101, Baker Books, Michigan, 2000 pg. 112

© Steve Bruecker Mormonism pt. 1 http://biblicalworldviewacademy.org/