Showing posts with label Jesus' conception. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jesus' conception. Show all posts

Friday, 10 April 2009

21 Questions about Mormonism – A Cult? You Decide

To find out what this series is about look here.

To Summarise:

The Mormon Plan of Salvation is the plan by which God himself became God according to Mormonism. God made this planet to accommodate his spirit children (us) and faithful Mormons will go on to create and inhabit their own planets, which will be populated by their spirit children who will, in turn, worship them – and the whole process starts again.

The god of Mormonism has a body and, like the Wizard of Oz, he only appears omnipotent. Pull back the veil and you see a man. Mormons use the phrase “literally the Son of God” of Jesus as though it is a classic orthodox Christian tenet but by this deceptively simple phrase they are conveying their belief that an “exalted man” with a physical body had intercourse with an exalted woman and, from that union, came the “literal Son of God”. While the Bible teaches and Christians believe that Jesus is “literally God the Son”, the eternal God, Mormons believe he is “literally the Son of God”, the offspring of a man they worship as God and a woman they regard as their goddess mother.

Kolob illustrates the idea that the Mormon god is relatively omniscient (an oxymoron), not an eternal God but an exalted man who is only eternal going forwards; going backwards he clearly decreases until that time when he did not reign.

Following this example, Mormon men intend to become gods, just as their god has done before them. Joseph Smith taught this and, in 1974, Mormon apostle Marion G Romney stated, “God is a perfected, saved soul, enjoying eternal life.” That is what “salvation” is to a Mormon, i.e. godhood. (Salt Lake Tribune, Oct.6, 1974)

Not only do Mormon women need to have passwords but they need the permission of their husband to access heaven. Mormon women take the role of “heavenly Mother” with their god husband, heavenly Father, yielding “the most perfect obedience to their great Head.” Not only so but eternal happiness depends on entering into this eternal arrangement, a wife among countless wives of an exalted man among many gods. The seemingly innocent Mormon message about the family is the basis for this dynastic arrangement.

Mormons in their tens of thousands go out every year into areas where traditional Christianity is already established and the Christian message regularly preached. This despite the fact that there is no evidence for or reason to believe Mormonism, its original founders and witnesses discredited and/or excommunicated, denounced by their fellow Mormons and the larger world.

Why do some call the Mormon Church a cult? I think you can answer that question for yourself.

Previous Posts:

Mormonism: A Cult?

Jesus: God the Son, or the son of a god?

Kolob: Where God Lives?

God, Mary and the 'S' Word

Jesus in America

What Every Mormon Wants: godhood

Mormon Women

Mormon Secret Underwear

More Than One Kolob?

In Black and White

The Elusive Gold Plates

The Mormon Java Jive

Mission or Metaphor?

Family of The gods

Monday, 16 March 2009

21 Questions about Mormonism - God, Mary and the 'S' Word

To find out what this series is about look here.

Q: Does the Mormon Church believe that God and Mary had physical sex to conceive Jesus?

A: The Church does not claim to know how Jesus was conceived but believes the Bible and Book of Mormon references to Jesus being born of the Virgin Mary.

Qu: “The Only Begotten of the Father (Moses 5:9). These name titles all signify that our Lord is the Only Son of the Father in the flesh. Each of the words is to be understood literally...Christ was begotten by an Immortal Father in the same way that mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers” (McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, pp. 546/7, c.f. Talmage, Jesus the Christ, p.81 where he writes of “celestial Sireship” and “the ordinary operation of the fundamental law of heredity”).

C: Jesus was naturally conceived and not supernaturally, and is just “the only begotten of God in the flesh”. In the spirit we are all sons of God (Joseph F Smith, Gospel Doctrine, p. 69). They avoid Mt.1:20 in this answer in which they claim to believe the Bible account. The answer they give here is simply dishonest and misleading since, in Mormonism, we are all spirit children of God and Jesus is marked out only by the facts that he is 1) the firstborn spirit child (our elder brother) and 2) the only one of God’s children who is literally the Son of God in the flesh. This is a well attested Mormon teaching, they know it, and to deny that knowledge is a lie.

Let me make this clear. All men and women were born to and lived with God in a premortal existence and Jesus is the eldest of that vast family. The only thing that otherwise makes Jesus different is that, while everyone else was born into this world as a result of mummy and daddy having sex, Jesus’ mummy was Mary and his daddy was God; otherwise the operation was no different. McConkie and Talmage are giants of Mormonism in theological terms and their books formative in Mormon thinking. Note McConkie’s words, “Christ was begotten by an Immortal Father in the same way that mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers”. Note Talmage’s reference to “celestial Sireship” and “the ordinary operation of the fundamental law of heredity”. This is what Mormons believe by the term “only begotten”, i.e. only begotten in the flesh but first begotten in the spirit.

Look, the Mormon god is a man with a physical body. He has a wife (or rather wives) with a physical body. Mormon men expect that one day they will be gods with physical bodies with wives who have physical bodies. Vive la difference!

Previous Posts:

Mormonism: A Cult?

Jesus: God the Son, or the son of a god?

Kolob: Where God Lives?

Coming Up:

Jesus in America

What Every Mormon Wants: godhood

Mormon Women