Mormonism

Mormonism is a splinter religion from Protestant Christianity, starting in the early to mid 1800's by a man named Joseph Smith living in upstate New York. Mormonism starts in upstate New York and, through a series of tumultuous events, ends up in Utah. Mormonism is extremely controversial, as Protestant and Catholic Christians alike refer to it as a cult and should not be described as Christian due to:

• Rejecting the Trinity
• Claims that faithful Mormons can become God of their own universe
• Claim Jesus was a spirit child just as we all were at one point
• Claim that a living person can be baptized on behalf of the dead
• Endorses Polygamy

Joseph Smith lived in the "burned-over district," where repeated evangelical Protestant revivals during the Second Great Awakening in America were so frequent that they sparked significant social movements and religious beliefs. During this period, 1820, Joseph Smith claimed to have a vision in which an angel appeared to him. During this vision, Joseph Smith asked the angel which church was the true church, and the angel answered that none of the churches was true.

In 1823, Joseph Smith claims to have received another vision from the angel Moroni, who tells him that the true records of the Native Americans are buried in the hills of New York, but that he can't access them yet. In 1827, Joseph Smith was allowed to obtain the records, which are contained in golden tablets with seer stones to translate with.

Joseph Smith then proceeds to translate these tablets into the Book of Mormon. He does this by putting the seer stones into a hat and reading the words that would appear on them to a fellow Mormon who would transcribe his words, most notably Oliver Cowdery. Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery would soon claim that they received appearances from John the Baptist, Peter, James, and John, who bestowed upon them the Melchizedek and Aaronic priesthoods. During this period, the golden tablets were returned by the angel Moroni; only 8 people claimed to have physically seen them, and 3 claimed to have seen them in a vision.

In 1830, the Mormon Church was founded; originally named the Church of Christ, it would be renamed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A prominent preacher at the time, Sydney Rigdon, converted to Mormonism, and his congregation followed suit in Ohio. Joseph Smith established the Mormon headquarters in Ohio shortly after. Smith soon establishes the first Mormon temple in Kirtland, Ohio, and a church-run bank, which would eventually fail due to a bank run. Smith also declared that Missouri would be where Christ would eventually return, and, under the threat of legal action and arrest in Kirtland, Smith fled to Missouri.

Missouri does not take well to the Mormon presence, increasing after they had expelled Mormons from Jackson County. This escalation led to the 1838 Mormon War between the Church of Latter-day Saints and the settlers of Missouri. This conflict led the Mormon movement to move to Commerce, Illinois, which Joseph Smith renamed Nauvoo, where it rapidly grew in population.

Joseph Smith had, during this time, claimed to have been continuing to have Revelations from God, and the one that became controversial was the taking of multiple wives, polygamy. This is met with resistance from a large portion of the church, as Joseph Smith had an estimated 30-40 wives. When this drew criticism in a local newspaper, Smith shut down the newspaper and declared martial law. This led the Illinois government to arrest Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. While in jail awaiting trial, Joseph and his brother were killed by a mob that had gathered in protest against him.

Due to Joseph Smith not having a clear succession of leadership, since he died unexpectedly at 38, Mormonism splinters, with the largest faction standing alongside Brigham Young, 55 wives, and due to pressure in Nauvoo, led the Mormon movement west to the Salt Lake Valley in modern-day Utah, where it has remained since then. Brigham Young becomes the second prophet of the Mormon Church and builds what Mormonism is today.

The Book of Mormon is centered on the supposed Lehite Migration, in which, before Jerusalem was conquered by Babylon, 590 BC, a prophet named Lehi receives visions and is told to flee into the wilderness with his family. Lehi attempts to recover the brass plates before he leaves, which contain a scriptural record. After multiple failed attempts to retrieve them from their keeper, Laban, Lehi murders Laban and impersonates him to retrieve the plates. Before completely leaving Israel, another family, Ishmael and his daughters, joins Lehi in his exodus. Lehi travels with his family through the Arabian Desert, leaving from modern-day Oman on the peninsula's coast, and reaches the Americas. During this time, a feud is highlighted between the sons of Lehi, with Nephi righteous and Laman and Lemuel evil, seeking to destroy Lehi.

In the Americas, they built a large civilization with a distinct divide between the Nephites, followers of Nephi, and the Lamanites, followers of Laman and Lemuel. According to the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites become cursed according to 2 Nephi 5:21

"21 And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them."

God cursed the Lamanites to have a different skin tone than the white skin they had and made them nomadic warring tribes.

As time goes on, the Lamanites and the Nephites engage in constant warfare while the Nephites build a large civilization. In the process, the Nephites grow in wickedness with a series of prophets and judges called to preach against wickedness and defend their nation. During this period, Jesus Christ comes and ministers to the Nephite nation, ushering in 200 years of peace. Eventually, wickedness seeps back in, and the period of peace ends in 200 AD.

Between 3 and 400 AD, the prophet Mormon, the namesake of the book, leads the Nephite military and speaks of the evils of the Nephites and Lamanites. In a final battle in upstate New York, every Nephite dies except Mormon's son, Moroni, who records the accounts on golden tablets and buries them, where Joseph Smith would recover them 1400 years later after Moroni appears to him.

• The Book of Mormon claims that Native Americans descended from the Jewish people, when genetically tested Native Americans appear to descend from East Asia and Siberia in Migrations across the Bering Straight during the Northern Ice Age (Khan, 2024).
• Book of Mormon claims the following animals to be indigenous to the Americas that we're not, but brought over from the Old World to the New World: Horses, Elephants, Donkeys, Swine, Cattle, Sheep, and Goats.
• The Book of Mormon also claims Wheat, Barley, Figs, and grapes were indigenous to the Americas; they were brought over from the Old World to the New World.
• The Nephite civilization had over 230,000 people during their final battles, theoretically a very large civilization for that period, yet there is no archaeological evidence of their civilization.
• The Nephites started synagogues in the Americas, yet synagogues were not developed until after the Babylonian captivity.
• In the Book of Mormon, the Nephites would have used Hebrew as their language or a language descended from Hebrew, yet they refer to Jesus as Jesus. For clarification, Jesus' name is Yeshua in Hebrew and is translated into English. The New Testament is written in Greek due to the influence of the Greeks after Alexander the Great's conquest, and Jesus is the Hebrew-to-Greek-to-English translation. These people who did not speak Greek used Greek to speak of Jesus.

During the translation of the Book of Mormon, when Joseph Smith put his head into a hat and spoke what the book would say, and someone else transcribed it, Martin Harris was the scribe for the first section of the Book of Mormon. An early supporter of Smith, he wanted to show his skeptical family the Book of Mormon as proof of his faith. He asked Joseph Smith for the 116-page manuscript, but Joseph Smith said no multiple times until he allowed it on the third request.

When Martin Harris brought it home, he kept it in a locked bureau, and his skeptical wife, Lucy Harris, later stole them. Lucy challenged Joseph Smith to retranslate the missing section, and she would compare it with the first draft to see if they matched. In response, Joseph Smith said God was angry with him and would not allow him to translate those 116 pages, and that God foresaw this and would have him translate another account of the same events. During this translation, the book of Isaiah is quoted. Under academic scrutiny, it appears that the Book of Mormon quotes the King James Version of Isaiah, an English translation widely used to this day, rather than the Hebrew text that Lehi would have supposedly taken with him from Jerusalem. To clarify, Joseph Smith is challenged to recreate this divinely given text, but he refuses, creates another text, appears to plagiarize an English translation of the Bible, and claims that God is mad.

In 1835, Mormonism was headquartered in Kirtland, Ohio, when a traveling exhibitor of Egyptian artifacts came to town. He brought mummies and papyrus scrolls, one of which Joseph Smith identified as the Book of Abraham, which he translated and added to the Pearl of Great Price, a sacred Mormon text. It is important to understand that at this time, Egyptian was a dead language, so when Joseph Smith translated the golden tablets and the Book of Mormon, God would have had to reveal to him how to translate Egyptian. The papyrus scrolls were handed down for generations and thought to have been lost in the Chicago Fire of 1871, until fragments of the original scroll were found in 1966. Now, during this period, Egyptian was no longer a dead language, and academics could easily translate the scrolls. Keep in mind that Smith's scribes created a document called the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, which they used in the translation of the document. When translated, it was clear that this Book of Abraham was actually the Egyptian Book of the Dead and that Smith's translation was impossible to have actually produced from the text.

Brigham Young, the second prophetic head of Mormonism, instituted a ban on those of African heritage, disbarring them from the priesthood, which in Mormonism would have been any male lay member of the church. In Mormonism, this meant that any black man would not be able to baptize his children, could not be sealed together for eternity, perform temple service, advance in leadership, or do anything that a white male 12-year-old would have been allowed to do.

According to Brigham Young when God had his spirit children, every person on Earth was a spirit child of God before they were born on Earth, on the planet Kolob, where he still resides today, there was a war between God and Lucifer and the good spirit children sided with God and the fence sitters were punished by God by having dark skin on Earth. Brigham Young endorsed that the priesthood ban should be permanent until every person on Earth receives the priesthood, interracial marriage should be punishable by death, and that Black people bore the Mark of Cain from Genesis 4.

According to Mormonism, Brigham Young would have been speaking directly for God in these statements; however, Mormonism would eventually change its mind on this subject. During the civil rights era, many advocated for changes in the Mormon church and began putting pressure on it to right this wrong. In 1978, the head of the church, Spencer Kimball, announced he received a new revelation that God wanted to remove the ban and no longer have the racial division within the church. The Mormon church has never apologized for its history or explained why this theology was in place or how it changed.

In Mormon theology, every person was born as a spirit child of God on the planet Kolob; there, he arranged the "plan of happiness". The plan is for all spirit children to experience mortality away from God to test their loyalty in response to this 3-group structure: those in favor, the dissenters, and the neutral party. Lucifer and the loyalists lead the dissenters against Jesus Christ, and Lucifer and the dissenters are cast out. Lucifer is cast out, and the remaining parties follow through with the plan to be born on Earth; however, the neutral party is cursed with dark skin on Earth, hence the previous section on the Mormon theology of Africans.

On Earth, people sin, and corruption is spread, and Jesus, the first spirit child of God, atones for our sins in his death on the cross. Because of the atonement on the cross, all spirit children on Earth when they die will go to one of three places: the telestial kingdom, the terrestrial kingdom, or the celestial kingdom. To advance in these kingdoms, you must embrace the atonement of Christ, complete the ordinances, and the covenants- creating a gospel of doing good works.

Those who reject the plan of salvation will go to the Telestial kingdom, which is the glory of the stars; they will be separated from their families for eternity, but it is extremely glorious and something anyone would desire. The Telestial Kingdom is similar to Hell in mainstream Christianity, with the idea of separation from the love of God. Still, the individuals do not endure a physical, eternal punishment; instead, they are ministered to by the Holy Spirit.

The Terrestrial Kingdom is the glory of the moon, and it is for those who lived honorably but rejected the fullness of the Mormon plan for salvation. These individuals will be ministered to by Jesus Christ, but not by God the Father; they will be separated from their families for eternity.

The Celestial Kingdom is the glory of the sun and is the greatest kingdom. It is for those who fully accepted the plan of salvation, completed all the saving ordinances, and kept covenants. Here you are eternally sealed with your family and enjoy union with Jesus and God the Father. Whoever you were married to on Earth will be with you in the celestial kingdom, still married, and those who were married outside of the temple or were single cannot receive full exaltation. The highest degree of the celestial kingdom is to become God of your own universe, and that God was once a mortal man who existed in a universe with another God.

Mormonism claims that there is an infinite number of Gods, but the Bible says:

“Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the First, and I am the Last; Besides Me there is no God."

Isaiah 44:6

Jesus was not God but was, in fact, a created being, but the Bible says:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

John 1: 1,14

The Holy Spirit is not God, but a created spirit to do God's work, but the Bible says:

But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? “While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”

Acts 5: 3,4

Mormonism rejects the identity of God, affirms a plan of salvation that requires good works to reach a paradise, and affirms the idea that men can become God. Additionally, Mormonism is built on claims that have been proven false, or they have had to drop such claims as Native Americans being Jewish, Africans being cursed, clear manipulation and the corruption of Joseph Smith, widespread endorsement of Polygamy, the wrong translation of the Egyptian book of the dead, the missing 116 pages, and clear biblical rejection of claims made in their theology.

Mormonism is categorically false in theology and historical claims; there is no perceivable path for someone with Mormonism to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ and to receive eternal life.