Mormonism makes a
bold claim, which is why they also take a lot of heat from other Christian
religions. They believe that Jesus
Christ established His Church when he was on the earth. That Paul wasn’t
kidding when he said that there was “One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism” (Eph
4:5). They believe that before Christ was killed, he bestowed the priesthood
upon Peter and the apostles. (Matt 16:19) They were ordained and set apart by
Christ himself. (John 15:16) That the apostles held a power that could not be
purchased with money, (Acts 8) or acquired at a university. They believe that
men should not be paid for their ministry in the gospel which is why they spend
countless hours on missions and in various church callings without receiving
any monetary gain. (1 Cor 9:18)
As time went on
in the first century, the apostles and the Christians were hunted and scattered
by almost every group in the region. Peter was crucified upside down in Rome
and Paul was beheaded after his 5th missionary journey. The other apostles met
a similar fate with the exception of John the Beloved. Before the apostles
died, all they did was travel and write to the various churches (who were all
actually one church with different locations) in order to keep them in line.
The New Testament is primarily a collection of those letters in which the
apostles are trying to govern the church. With them gone and no one to lead the
church, men began interpreting the scriptures for themselves and twisting the
doctrine. Over time, the churches began to fall away from the truth because the
apostles were not there to lead them. By 325 AD, the nature of God and the doctrine
of the Christian faith was being voted on by pagans in Rome as a political
maneuver rather than a religious one. Formal creeds, and a Catholic, or
“Universal” church was formed as the state religion for the most powerful
country in the world.
If you doubt any
of it, I have a 45 volume set of Ante-Nicene, Nicene, and Post-Nicene writings
sitting on my shelf as a reference. (They are not written or edited by Mormon
scholars.) The early Christian fathers witnessed the church fall into deep
apostasy and they wrote about it. This is
the primary reason for all of the great reformers who came on to the scene to
“protest” (protestant) what the Catholic church was doing at the time. No
one believed that Christ’s church was found upon the earth, and therefore many
sought to reform what they already knew. These were righteous dudes who deserve
our respect, but as sincere as they were, they did not have the power to
restore the church. They tried their best according to the knowledge they
possessed. Many longed for the day when Christ would restore His church and
call apostles to lead that Church once again. Roger Williams, the founder of
the Baptist church in America, said that “there is no regularly constituted
church on earth, nor any person qualified to administer any church ordinances;
nor can there be until new apostles are sent by the Great Head of the Church
for whose coming I am seeking.” (Picturesque America (1872) by
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
This is where
Mormons start getting crazy to people. Mormons believe that a prophet as
notable as Moses or Elijah was called in 1820 to “restore” Christ’s church in its
fullness on this earth. They claim that God the Father and Jesus Christ
appeared to Joseph Smith in North America. They claim that an ancient record
called the Book of Mormon was buried in the earth and that it contains a
history of some of the ancient inhabitants of North, South, and Central
America. They believe that this nation was established and the revolutionary
war was fought so that religious freedom could prevail. They believe that this
was and is the only nation on the globe that this restoration could have taken
place in because of this new found religious freedom that had never occurred in
the history of the world. They believe that the priesthood was restored, and
that families can be sealed together after death. They believe that there is a
prophet and 12 apostles that walk the earth today. I won’t go on but there is
plenty more…
But think about
it for a second. If all of this is false, it would rank as one of the greatest
deceptions in human history. It would give new meaning to the word hoax. BUT if
this restoration did actually happen and it is true, it is the greatest message
that could ever be shared second only to the message of the Atonement of Jesus
Christ. IF it is true there could be nothing more exciting for the people on
this planet to know at this time. It seems like an outrageous claim, but I
guarantee that when Noah starting building an ark, his generation thought that
was pretty outrageous as well. When a Prophet is on the earth…few ever accept
him. Christ made that very clear when He said, “ye build the tombs of the
prophets, and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous, and say, If we had been
in the days of our fathers, we would have accepted the prophets” (Matt
23:29-30)
I am a Mormon for
reasons other than logic, but if I was to rely on logic alone… here is my logic
on the topic.
Catholicism
claims that they are the true church and that they perpetuated the priesthood
through the generations. Therefore Catholicism claims that all other protestant
and Evangelical churches are nothing but apostate off shoots of the Catholic
church. So…you must think to yourself, if the Catholic church is right…and they
do have the truth and the priesthood authority to lead and administer Christ’s
church, then they are technically right about protestant Christianity. Any
church that broke off from them or received the Bible through them cannot have
the fullness of the gospel. However, if the Catholic church never had the
authority and it was lost in the early centuries shortly after the apostles
were killed, then none of the reformers could have the complete truth or the
authority because…well…where could they have gotten it from?
The only Church
on the planet that could have a solid argument would be one that claims a
complete restoration through a prophet that has had direct communication with
God. Anything short of that would place someone in the pool of thousands of
reformers that are dividing to form new Churches on a daily basis.
Mormon’s make a
claim equal to the almost unfathomable stories you might hear in the Bible. Prophets, apostles, miracles, additional
scripture, temples, and a massive missionary force makes the Mormon church stick
out like a sore thumb…and seldom do people like sore thumbs.
Though it sounds
a little crazy… is not a message like this worth a few minutes of
consideration? I thought it was. -21 March 2014 posted on Greg Trimble blog
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