📖 Cults & World Religions — Unit 4: The Latter-day Saints

Anchor: Galatians 1:6-9 — with Galatians 1:8, 11-12; 2:16, 21 (NKJV)

A Word Before We Begin

The Latter-day Saints present Mormonism as another branch of Christianity, and their missionaries carry the name of Jesus around the world. But the Jesus they carry is not the Jesus of the Bible, and their gospel is not the gospel of grace. Mormonism teaches a God who was once a man and a man who may become a god, a plurality of gods, and a salvation completed by our own works and temple rites. That is not a variation within the faith; it is another faith in Christian dress. And where the Bible gives us the eternal Son, Mormonism rests finally on the word of Joseph Smith, a man — for a later prophet, however sincere, cannot overturn the finished revelation of God. We weigh it by the Word of God and, where it departs from the gospel, say so plainly and in love (Ephesians 4:15).

Who Are the Latter-day Saints?

The Latter-day Saints, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, trace their beginning to Joseph Smith in the United States in the 1820s and 1830s. They teach that true Christianity fell into a "Great Apostasy" after the apostles and was restored through Joseph Smith. They are directed by a living prophet and apostles, use their own additional scriptures, build temples for sacred ordinances, and are widely known for their young missionaries. Much in their conduct is admirable. Our concern is not their diligence but what they teach about God, about Christ, and about salvation.

What They Teach, in Their Own Terms

Concerning God, the Latter-day Saints reject the Trinity. They teach that the Godhead is three separate beings, each a god, united in purpose; that the Father has a body of flesh and bones; and, most strikingly, that God the Father was once a man who, over long ages, progressed to godhood. Their fifth president summarized it: "As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may become." They teach, therefore, that many gods exist, and that faithful Latter-day Saints may themselves one day become gods.

Concerning our origin, they teach that all people lived first as spirit children of Heavenly Father (and a Heavenly Mother). Jesus, they say, was the firstborn of these spirit children, and so the elder spirit brother of all humanity — and of Lucifer as well, since Satan too is held to be a spirit son of God who rebelled. Jesus then became a god before His mortal birth.

Concerning Jesus, they honor Him as Savior, affirm His atoning death and His bodily resurrection, and call Him the Son of God. Yet within their system He is one of several gods, a being who Himself progressed to godhood, the eldest of the Father's spirit children — not the one eternal God the Son.

Concerning authority, they accept the Bible "as far as it is translated correctly," and add to it the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price, along with continuing revelation through a living prophet.

Concerning salvation, they teach that nearly all people are "saved" by grace into one of three kingdoms of glory through the universal resurrection. But the highest, called exaltation or eternal life — godhood in the celestial kingdom — must be obtained by accepting the restored gospel, repentance, baptism by their priesthood, temple ordinances, tithing, and obedience to the commandments. Their own scripture says we are saved by grace "after all we can do." We have stated these things as fairly as we can. Now we must test them by Scripture.

Testing the Root (1): A Different God and a Different Christ

Once again everything turns on the root. Scripture knows nothing of many gods or of a God who was once a man. The LORD declares, "Before Me there was no God formed, nor shall there be after Me" (Isaiah 43:10); "I am the First and I am the Last; besides Me there is no God" (Isaiah 44:6); "Is there a God besides Me? Indeed there is no other Rock; I know not one" (Isaiah 44:8). He is "from everlasting to everlasting" God (Psalm 90:2), and He says, "I am the LORD, I do not change" (Malachi 3:6). A God who was once a man and progressed to godhood, and creatures who become gods, are not in the Bible; there is one eternal, unchanging God, and the line between the Creator and the creature can never be crossed. And the true Christ is not a created spirit brother of Lucifer but the eternal Word, "the Word was God" (John 1:1), through whom "all things were made" (John 1:3) — "all things... whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers" (Colossians 1:16), which means the angelic powers, Lucifer among them, are His creatures, not His brothers. The angels worship Him (Hebrews 1:6). The God and the Christ of the Latter-day Saints are not the God and the Christ of the Scriptures.

Testing the Root (2): A Different Gospel of Salvation

The second failure is the one Galatians was written to answer. To gain exaltation the Latter-day Saint must add to Christ a long list of works — baptism by their priesthood, temple ordinances, tithing, and lifelong obedience — and even their grace is "grace after all we can do." But Paul says, "a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ" (Galatians 2:16); "I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain" (Galatians 2:21). Salvation is "by grace... through faith... not of works, lest anyone should boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9); it is "not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy" (Titus 3:5); and "if by grace, then it is no longer of works" (Romans 11:6). Eternal life is not a prize earned by ordinances but "the gift of God... in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23), and it is a present and certain possession: the believer "has passed from death into life" (John 5:24) and may "know that you have eternal life" (1 John 5:13). Nor is salvation channeled through one church's priesthood, "for there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). To make exaltation rest on works and ordinances is to change the root.

Why This Is "Another Gospel"

A message that gives us many gods, a Christ who is a created spirit brother of Lucifer, and an exaltation earned by ordinances is not the same gospel with extra features; it is "a different gospel, which is not another" (Galatians 1:6-7). Paul's warning is solemn, and it touches the very origin of this movement: "even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:8). Latter-day Saints trace their gospel to the visit of an angel; but Paul says that no angel, and no human prophet, however sincere, may bring a gospel other than the one already given. For the true gospel is "the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3); it did not need to be re-revealed in the nineteenth century. The issue is not the morality or sincerity of the Latter-day Saints, in which they are exemplary. The issue is whether there is one eternal God, whether Jesus is that God the Son, and whether sinners are saved by grace. On all three, this is another gospel.

The Book of Mormon and DNA

The Latter-day Saint faith rests not only on distinctive doctrines but on a book that presents itself as real history. The Book of Mormon tells of ancient peoples in the Americas, chiefly a family led by the prophet Lehi said to have sailed from Jerusalem about 600 B.C.; their descendants, the Nephites and Lamanites, are portrayed as principal ancestors of the American Indians — indeed the book's own introduction long described the Lamanites as "the principal ancestors of the American Indians" (softened in 2006 to "among the ancestors"). This is a testable historical claim, and modern population genetics has tested it. Extensive study of the DNA of native peoples across North, Central, and South America — both the mitochondrial line and the Y-chromosome — consistently traces their ancestry to eastern Asia and Siberia by way of migration across the Bering region, and finds no distinctive Near-Eastern or Israelite genetic signature among pre-Columbian populations. In fairness, the Church has answered this in an official essay, Book of Mormon and DNA Studies. It argues that the record never claims Lehi's family were the only people in the Americas; that on a "limited geography" reading the events may have occupied a small region, so that a tiny founding group's DNA could have been absorbed and rendered undetectable within far larger surrounding populations; and that genetics therefore cannot finally prove or disprove the account. Others reply that for more than a century the book and its teachers presented these peoples as the principal ancestors of the American Indians, and that the limited-geography defense is itself a significant retreat from that long-held claim; writers within the Latter-day Saint intellectual tradition, in journals such as Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, have argued that the genetic evidence is fundamentally inconsistent with the traditional narrative. The believer need not settle every technical dispute to see the point: the historical foundation on which this second scripture rests is, at the least, gravely in question — and behind the question of the book stands the deeper question of the gospel it teaches.

The Question of Fellowship

This leads to the same hard but necessary conclusion. Because the Latter-day Saints confess a different God, a different Christ, and a different gospel, we cannot recognize their teaching as the Christian faith, nor join with it in the fellowship and work of the gospel. This is not personal hostility and never a license for unkindness. We honor them as neighbors, treat them with courtesy and warmth, and gladly do them good. But love does not pretend. Scripture will not let us call a different God and a different gospel merely another Christian tradition: "Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God... If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him" (2 John 9-10) — that is, do not welcome him as a fellow worker or endorse his message. We are not to be "unequally yoked together with unbelievers" (2 Corinthians 6:14). So we do not share in their worship or their mission, for it rests upon another foundation; yet we gladly reason with them from the Scriptures.

A Redemptive Aim

And all of this is for a redemptive end. We draw these lines not to shut people out but because we long for the Latter-day Saints to come in — to the true God and the true Christ. The good news we bring them is greater than the gospel they have received: there are not many gods but one, eternal and unchanging, who was never a man and who shares His glory with no other; and Jesus is not a god who progressed but the eternal Son, the Creator come in the flesh, who gives full, free, and certain salvation to all who trust Him — with no ordinance to complete it and no doubt to cloud it. Many Latter-day Saints sincerely seek God and live upright lives; we pray that God will lead them to rest in the finished work of the one Lord Jesus Christ. We treat each one as a person Christ died to save — with patience, prayer, and an open Bible.

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