Basic Beliefs Of The Mormon Cult

Beliefs of Mormonism

Editors note:  The below listed facts are taken from the official documents and teachings of the LDS Church.  The angel Moroni appears to Joseph Smith

The God (s)  of Mormonism

1. “In the beginning, the head of the Gods called a council of the Gods; and they came together and concocted a plan to create the world and people it” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 349) 2. “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man…”(Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 345) 3.  “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangilble as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Spirit has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit…” (Doctrine and Covenants, 130:22) 4. “God exists and we had better strive to be prepared to be one with them” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 7:238) 5.  “As man is, God once was: as God is, man may become” (Prophet Lorenzo Snow, quotedin Milton R. Hunter, The Gospel Through the Ages, 105-106) 6. Remember that God, our heavenly Father, was perhaps once a child, and mortal like we ourselves, and rose step by step in the scale of progress, in the school of advancement; has moved forward and overcome, until He has arrived at the point where He now is”  (Apostle Orson Hyde, Journal of Discourses, 1:123) 7. “Mormon prophets have continuously taught the sublime truth that God the Eternal Father was once a mortal man who passed through a school of earth life similar to that through which we are now passing. He became God—an exalted being—through obedience to the same eternal Gospel truths that we are given opportunity today to obey”  (Hunter, op.cit., 104) 8. When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one his wives, with him.  He helped to make and organized this world.  He is Michael, the Archangel, the Ancient of Days! About whom holy men have written and spoken—He is our FATHER and our GOD, and the only God with whom we have to do”  (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 1:50)[6]

Jesus Christ

Jesus is the brother of Satan this is revealed in the Pearl of Great Price, Book of Moses 4:1-4 and affirmed by  Brigham Young in the Journal of Discourses, 13:282) Jesus also married Mary and Martha and the other Mary at Cana of Galilee, “Whereby he could see his seed, before he was crucified” (Apostle Orson Hyde, Journal of Discourses, 4:259; 2:82)

Holy Spirit

God is everywhere present; but this does not mean the the actual person of any one member of the Godhead can be physically present in more than one place at one time….Admitting the personality of God, we are compelled to accept the fact of his materiality; indeed an immaterial being, under which meaningless name some have sought to designate the condition of God, cannot exist, for the very expression is a contradiction in terms.  If God possesses a form, that form is of necessity of definite proportions and therefore of limited extension in space.  It is impossible for Him to occupy at one time more than one space of such limits  (Articles of Faith, 42-43) This contradicts the doctrine of the Holy Ghost in Articles of faith 115 which states the Holy Spirit is an immaterial Spirit and yet God.

Salvation

“We believe that men shall be punished for their own sins and not for Adam’s transgression”  (Article 2, Articles of Faith) “We believe that through the atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel” (Article 3, Articles of Faith) The extent of the Atonement is universal, applying alike to all descendants of Adam. Even the unbeliever, the heaven and the child who dies before reaching the years of discretion all are redeemed by the Saviour’s self-sacrifice from the individual consequences of the fall…of the saved not all will be exalted to the higher glories.  No one can be admitted to any order of glory, in short, no soul can be saved until Justice has been satisfied for violated law…In the kingdom of God there are numerous levels of gradations provided for those who are worthy of them (James Talmage, Articles of Faith, pp. 85,91) I want you to tell them and tell all the great men of the earth, that the Latter-day Saints are to their redeemer…Believe in God, believe in Jesus and believe in Joseph his prophet, and Brigham his successor, and I add, If you will believe in your hearts and confess with your mouth Jesus is the Christ, that Joseph was a prophet, and the Brigham is his successor, you shall be saved in the kingdom of God…… No man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter into the Celestial Kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith…every man and woman must have the certificate of Joseph Smith, Junior as a passport to their entrance into the mansions where God and Christ are---I can not there without his consent….He reigns there as supreme, a being in his sphere, capacity, calling, as God does in Heaven …(Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 6:229, 7:289)

Satan

Satan and Jesus are brothers and both offered competing plans of Salvation to the father on the great star Kolob, Jesus plan was accepted and Lucifer’s rejected this can be found in the Journal of Discourses 13:282. And the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying; That Satan, whom thou has commanded…came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all manknd surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor. But, behold, my Beloved Son which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me—Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever. Pearl of Great Price, Moses 4:1-2

Eternity

In Mormon theology, there are three heavens; the Telestial, the Terrestrial, and the Celestial: McConkie states that “Most adults” will go to the Telestial kingdom and that it is composed of the  “the endless hosts of people sensual, and devilish; who have chosen the vain philosophies of the world rather than accept the testimony of Jesus; who have been liars and thieves, sorcerers and adulterers, blasphemers and murders” (Mormon Doctrine, 1966, 778) The Second kingdom (the Terrestrial) will be inhabited by Christians who did not accept the Mormon message, Mormons who did not live up to their church’s requirements, and men of good will of other religions who rejected the revelations of the Latter-day Saints (Mormon Doctrine, 1966, 784) The highest or Celestial heaven is itself divided into three levels.  Only this highest level is godhood or the possession of a kingdom for one’s self and one’s family to be gained. This particular estate has as its prerequisite the candidate’s having been sealed by celestial marriage in a Mormon temple while upon the earth. Even in the celestial kingdom, godhood is a by slow progression, and in the end each who beomes a god will, with his family rule and populate a separate planet of his own.

Mankind

Man is a spirit clothed with a tabernacle. The intelligent part of which was never created or made, but  existed eternally-man was also in the beginning with God (Joseph Fielding Smith, Progess of Man)

Eschatology

Mormons believe in a literal second coming of Christ, the Mormons teach that at his return the Jews ill have been gathered to Palestine, the Mormons will be miraculously gathered together in Missouri, and the judgment of the Lord will be poured out upon the earth everywhere except on old and new Jerusalem. (Doctrine and Covenants 29:9-11) and Article 10, Articles of Faith

Virgin Birth

When the Virgin Mary conceived the child Jesus, the Father had begotten him in his own likeness.  He was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. And who was the Father? He is the first of the human family; and when he took a tabernacle (Body), it was begotten by his Father in heaven, after the same manner as the tabernacles of Cain, Abel and the rest of the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve; from the fruits of the earth, the first earthly  tabernacles were originated by the Father and son in succession…..Jesus, our elder brother, was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the garden of Eden, and who is our Father in Heaven” (Journal of Discourses, 1:50-51) “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proclaims that Jesus Christ is the Son of God in the most literal sense. The body in which He performed His mission in the flesh was sired by the same Holy Being we worship as God, our Eternal Father” (Teaching of Ezra Taft Benson, 7)

Living Prophets

Any Latter-day Saint who denounces or opposes, whether actively or otherwise, any plan or doctrine advocated by the prophets, seers, and revelators of the Church is cultivation the spirit of apostasy…Lucifer…wins a great victory when he can get members of the Church to speak against their leaders and to do their own thinking… When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done.  When they propose a plan—it is God’s plan. When they point the way, there is no other which is safe.  When they give directions, it should mark the end of the controversy. (Improvement Era, June 1945, p. 354)