God's Many?

Idaho Open House and Church Visits

Hey, we had a great time in the state of Idaho over the weekend. Had an open house last night at our sister station KCLP, which was a great event. Then we spoke to a couple of churches on Sunday. A Romanian Church presented us with a host of beautiful musical numbers, and the Calvary Chapel in Nampa, with pastors Rich and Paul, had their worship leader Kevin introduce me with a rocking version of “Rusty Cage” – that’s the song at the end of the show. Loved it all.

Listen, we love to speak to churches as it is a win/win for all involved. The churches win because we are able to bring people to the church who have never been there before, and our ministry wins because more people are exposed to what we’re doing. Talk to your pastors about having us come and speak to your church. You can reach us at www.bornagainmormon.com.

I Was A Born-Again Mormon

Available at: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, Gift of Grace Christian Supply in Springville (by the way, this coming Monday evening, we are going to be at Gift of Grace Christian Supply on main street in Springville from 5 to 7 pm. Come on out and see us!), Oasis Books in Logan, Calvary Chapel SLC, Sam Weller’s downtown, Christian Gift and Bible in Sandy. And of course, online at www.bornagainmormon.com.

LDS Church Policies and Doctrine

I received an email from someone not too long ago mentioning that they had trouble understanding who speaks for the LDS church, what is doctrine, what is not, and how the church morphs and manages all of its changes. In essence, the writer wanted to know how the “Church gets away with it?”

I thought I’d take just a minute and explain something a number of people don’t understand about the Church, its doctrines, and its practices.

First, the LDS leadership very, very rarely totally rescinds anything relative to revelations or doctrine. Even when they commanded that plural marriages cease by manifesto, all they did was discontinue the earthly practice, but they did not rescind the doctrine – which is why the LDS scriptures today still teach the eternal laws of polygamy. The 1978 revelation that black males could receive the LDS priesthood was not an apology for them not being able to receive it prior, but it was merely a change in practice.

By refusing to rescind doctrines or to call them an error of the times, the LDS leadership is forever in a position to re-institute any doctrine or practice they want while maintaining the “integrity” of the original prophetic stance. Now a strong and active sub-plot to this non-rescinding practice is the church's convenient use of “non-authoritative spokespersons.”

For example, members of the church are allowed to teach and embrace a whole host of beliefs that have been issued “non-authoritatively” by members of the church – even leaders of the Church – but when such teachings are criticized or brought to the light, the standard response from the Church and its defenders is, “Well, it was never doctrine.” The late apostles John A. Widstoe and Bruce R. McConkie are perfect case points. They were allowed to say all sorts of insane junk, teach all sorts of insane junk, and get true believing Mormons to embrace all kinds of insane junk.

The Authority on Doctrinal Teachings

Today, the standard reply is, “Well, the work of McConkie or Widstoe or whomever was never canonized – or made scripture.” So what it does is it gets members believing stuff while the unofficial spokesperson is alive that is later discounted. How freakin sick! This is why nobody with a right mind should listen to one thing a Bob Millet-type writes or says.

You see, the leadership will use these guys – and there are hundreds of them around today – to say the right things to the media, or to the Christian churches in which they are invited to speak, but rest assured, when the rubber meets the road, the Church will always call the words of these men their “opinions” and not doctrine. Now that Mormonism has world power, it is calling on their own respective members to speak loudly on the things they hold true. So in addition to the Millets of the world – the educated, seem like spokesmen but are not guys – we now have thousands of regular old members running around sharing their particular views.

But remember, it is the leadership that determines doctrine, and if an unofficial member were to say something that didn’t benefit the public image of the church – whether true or not – the leadership will step in and crush whatever has been said. This is the game. This is how they manipulate the media, and the masses, and are able to so do without apology.

I thank God that we have His Word as a lamp unto our feet, and not the machinations of men which are constantly being used to manipulate the actions of the masses.

A Theological Debate on Creation

Let me share a factual either/or with you tonight: Either matter has always existed OR it was created out of nothing. Pretty wild thought, huh? Let me say it again: Either matter has always existed OR it was created at some point out of nothing.

Bible believing Christians believe that God – the eternal One, the first and the last – created everything – all matter – out of nothing. The fancy phrase for this is “creatio ex nihilo.”

LDS doctrine, as a result of Joseph Smith, Jr., believe that matter has always existed, that it can’t be created or destroyed . . . even by God Himself. These different theological positions on matter or material lead us straight into our topic tonight – which is the LDS idea of there being many God’s – or, as the theologians put it, their belief in an “eternal regression of God’s.”

Biblical Assertions on God's Uniqueness

The Bible is very, very plain on this subject. Listen to what God says about Himself and other Gods:

Exodus 8:10 reads:

“there is none like unto the LORD our God.”

Deuteronomy 32:39 says

“See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me:” (god is a lower case g here)

2nd Samuel 7:22 says

“Wherefore thou art great, O LORD God: for there is none like thee, neither is there any God beside thee, according to all that we have heard with our ears.”

(This is a really important verse because the God in “neither is there any God beside thee” is God with a capital G, meaning there is no elohim besides Him! WOW!)

1st Samuel 2:2 says

“There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God.”

As a side note, who does the Bible call the Rock? J-E-S-U-S. You could read this “Neither is there any Jesus like our God.”

Isaiah 45:22 says

“Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.”

Listen to this, you fools who believe God is a Man or has a body of a Man . . .

Isaiah 40:18

“To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?”

How about Isaiah 46:9

“Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me.”

Isaiah 44:8 asks

“Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any.”

ANOTHER CAPITAL “G” God meaning there is no “Elohim God” beside Him.

Finally, the Psalmist writes:

Psalms 90:2 “ . . . even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.”

But along came Joseph Smith, Jr.

And what did he say on the subject?

The King Follett Discourse

At a funeral of a man named King Follett, just before Joseph was shot, he said: “We have imagined and supposed that God was…”

Understanding LDS Beliefs on the Nature of God

Psalms 90:2 says God is “everlasting to everlasting,” meaning no beginning to no end, and Joseph Smith said, “I will refute that idea!”

Now LDS defenders will say that the King Follett comments are sketchy because they were all recorded in personal journals. Today, the Mormon church is attempting to PUBLICLY – PUBLICLY, distance itself from Joseph’s views on God. They try and pass these teachings off as “couplets” or as teachings that are at best vague in the minds of the Saints.

Listen to apostle Orson Pratt’s comments in the Journal of Discourses: “remember that God, our Heavenly Father was perhaps once a child, and mortal like ourselves, and rose step by step in the scale of progress . . .” pg 26. James Talmage, another respected Apostle for the Church said: “God is a being who has attained His exalted state by a path which now His children are permitted to follow.”

The LDS teachings have always been, regardless of what they say publicly or infer deceptively, that God was once a man, that God had a father, who had a father, who had a father, and that man may become a God by obedience to the Laws and ordinances of the Mormon Church. Anything less than this is deceptive.

Public Statements and Internal Beliefs

The late Gordon B. Hinckley was living evidence of the churches leaders attempts to deceive the general masses on these fundamental LDS teachings. Back in 1997, in an interview with a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle, Hinckley, instead of boldly proclaiming this fundamental LDS belief, was rather vague:

The reporter asked: “Don’t Mormon’s believe that God was once a man?” Hinckley replied: “I wouldn’t say that. There was a little couplet coined, “AS man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.” Now that’s more of a couplet than anything else. That gets into some pretty deep theology we don’t know very much about.”

Anyone listening to this interview would walk away with the idea that the LDS are not so firm on the position that God was once a man. Bull-shitake mushrooms! It is a fundamental teaching, belief, and driver in the church. Any active member would have to agree.

Hinckley's Ambiguous Responses

Then Hinckley, in an August 97 interview in Time magazine, is quoted by writer David Van Biema as saying – in regard to the doctrine that God was once a man –

“I don’t know that we teach it. I don’t know that we emphasize it.”

You gotta be freaking kidding me? How could he say this? Just one year earlier, Robert Millet, BYU professor wrote about God in the Church published magazine, The Ensign, and said:

“He is an exalted and glorified being; that He was once a man and dwelt on an earth.”

President Hinckley got some heat by people for his response. In an act of sheer duplicity, and less than a year later, he stood up in an LDS General Conference and provided a coded message that would be consistent with his public deception while at the same time support the Saints knowledge of the doctrine.

He asked: “What is the Mormon doctrine of deity, of God?” Then he quoted from Joseph Smith himself:

“It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for certainty the Character of God, and to know that we converse with Him as one man converses with another . . .”

Why was his using this quote duplicitous? Because he didn’t finish it! And stalwart member knew it.

Had he finished it, he would have said:

“It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for certainty the Character of God, and to know that we 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 did, and I will show it from the Bible.”

Eternal Regression and LDS Doctrinal Challenges

We’ll get to the biblical verses the LDS use to support these erroneous teachings in a minute. Naturally, if God was once a man, then God had a father – who had a father, who had a father. This is that eternal regression of God’s I spoke of earlier.

Where Christians believe God when He said “Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any.” Joseph, once again, has led millions to believe Him and to doubt God’s Word.

President Joseph Fielding Smith wrote: “Our Father in Heaven, according to the prophet, had a father, and

Eternal Regression of Gods

Since there has been a condition of this kind through all eternity, each Father had a Father . . ." (Doctrines of Salvation). Many years earlier, Brigham Young said in the JOD: "How many Gods are there, I do not know. But there never was a time when there were not Gods and not worlds, and when men were passing through the same ordeals that we are now passing through."

A final and fundamental LDS teaching, which is a natural extension of the doctrine of an eternal regression of Gods and the idea that God was once a man, is the LDS teaching that men and women have the potential to become Gods too! In June of 1993, in an article in the LDS published magazine, the Ensign, it said: "The stunning truth, lost to mankind before the Restoration, is that each of us is a god in embryo. We may become as our heavenly parents. We, too, in exalted families, may one day preside in our own realms . . . ."

Potential to Become Gods

Of late, missionaries and unofficial/official spokes-apologists for the Church are claiming that the teaching is actually that people can become "like" God, instead of "a" God, a distinction they hope will add legitimacy to their claims on being Christian. But this has never been the teaching. Prophet Spencer W. Kimball said: "In each of us is the potentiality to become a god – pure, holy, influential, true, and independent of all these earthly forces. We learn from scripture that each of us has an eternal existence, that we were in the beginning with God. And understanding this gives to us a unique sense of MAN'S DIGNITY."

Man's dignity! I can’t help but contemplate my dignity as a man every time I get up in the morning, stumble into the bathroom, sit down on the toilet, and look across the bathroom sink in the mirror at my rapidly deteriorating face and body. Glorious dignity! My inherent dignity just glows every time I see a woman in a swimsuit, and every time I am treated unjustly by another. Thank you, President Kimball for this ray of light! Why, I actually feel empowered to go and figure out how to set the clock on my VCR.

God is emphatic, my friends, that we are lowly creations, made from the dust. Yes, He loves us – so much that He sent His son. But He is emphatic that we should see ourselves for what we are relative to Him, in our lowly sinful state, with broken humility and general abasement.

Biblical Context of Many Gods

Before I address the Bible verses the LDS use to justify their teachings of many God's, let’s open the phone lines so our operators can start clearing the calls: (801) 973-8820, (801) 973-TV20.

I’m going to cover three, though there are maybe seven others that use similar language to convey a similar message. The three passages are:

1st Corinthians 8:5
John 10:34
Revelation 1:6

Let’s read and review:

First to a missionary favorite, 1st Corinthians 8:5-6:

1st Corinthians 8:5-6 For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.

6 But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.

John 10:34 "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?"

Revelation 1:6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

What is the context of these passages?

First, Paul was talking to the people of Corinth, which was a Grecian city. It was noted for its wealth, and for the luxurious and immoral and vicious habits of the people. They had a pagan temple in Corinth where they would worship their pagan God's and idols and offer up sacrifices to them. These heathens at Corinth worshipped some gods that were supposed to dwell in heaven, some that were supposed to reside on earth, and others that presided over the inferior regions, like Pluto. Where Paul says "Whether in heaven," He may be alluding to the sun, moon, and stars or to the celestial deities – or to those who were supposed to reside in heaven like Jupiter, Juno, or Mercury. Where he says "or in earth".

Pagan Gods and Biblical Interpretations

He is referring to the pagan gods (lower case g) that rule on earth, like Ceres, Neptune, etc. The contextual catch for this simple verse is found in verse six, which is contextually consistent with the rest of the Word. Duh.

The next misused passage – John 10:34 – where Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees who are saying He has blasphemed by calling Himself the Son of God. Jesus meets the rabbis on their own ground in a thoroughly Jewish way when He responds to them. First of all, the “G” in God’s is lower case and it refers to Elohim, or the title of a god. Remember last week where we said Elohim can refer to the title of God or to men? The OT reference Jesus quotes here is in reference to human judges or magistrates, who do the work of God on earth and were called “elohims” gods. It’s Jesus hitting the Jews with their own logic, tying them up with reason from which they had no reply. The response has nothing to do with men being gods in embryo or with the fact that there are many gods like unto Jehovah God.

Revelation 1:6

Finally, Revelation 1:6. This is a doozie! If a Latter-day Saint ever uses this on you, you are in a great position to crush them with context. “And hath made us kings and priests” This is speaking of the Royal priesthood all believers share with Jesus their King.

“. . .Unto God and His Father . . .” And this is speaking of the believers royal priesthood coming through Jesus (God) and His Father. Bottom line, Revelation 1:6 further evidences that Jesus was God, because it is speaking of Him and His Father, NOT God the Father and His Father. Get it?

Conclusion

Let’s go to the phones.

Emails

Pastor in the Pub tonight!

Appreciate your love, support, and prayers. God bless . . . and we’ll see you next week, here on Heart of the MatterTGNN’s original show where Shawn McCraney deconstructed religion and developed fulfilled theology..