The God of Christianity vs. The "gods" of Mormonism

 

 This is part 2 of this blog series. You can read part 1 here.

Not only did the Council of Nicaea condemn the Arian heresy, but they also recognized the need to codify the church’s Biblical position concerning the nature of Christ. This is what led to the Nicaean Creed, which states; (For the sake of this discussion I have only included the section that deals specifically with the nature of Christ). 

“We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven; he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, and was made human.”

It needs to be repeated that the church's creeds and confessions are not inspired Scripture. They are an encapsulation of what Scripture teaches on a given subject. Think about them as a statement of faith. Any creed or confession that lines up with the Bible is correct and any creed or confession that contradicts the Bible is false. Now that we have dealt with some strawmen and laid the Nicene Creed out on the table, let’s analyze it to see if it lines up with the Christ of the Bible or the Christ of the LDS church. Before we proceed I want to remind the reader of the deductive argument that I am aiming for; President Hinckley admitted that the LDS church doesn’t believe in the Christ of the ancient church creeds. The ancient church creeds line up perfectly with the Biblical Jesus. Therefore, the LDS church doesn’t believe in the Biblical Jesus. Let’s walk through the Nicene Creed. 

“We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.” In the very first sentence, we already find our first discrepancy between Biblical Christianity and the LDS church. To put it plainly, Mormonism is a polytheistic religion. They don’t believe in the one true God of the Bible but in countless gods. I know that my LDS friends will respond by claiming that they believe that Heavenly Father is our one true God. But the Bible teaches that He is the only true God. The LDS doctrines of eternal progression and exaltation teach that God was once a man on another planet, but he was exalted to godhood and now he has created our universe and populated the earth with his spirit wife, heavenly mother. The LDS church also teaches that if we become worthy of exultation we can also become a god one day, creating our own earth and become heavenly parents. 

I get a lot of blowback from my LDS friends when I say this. They claim that I am straw-manning what they believe and that the LDS church doesn’t teach these things. In their defense, there seems to have been a concerted effort on the part of the LDS church over the last 15 to 25 years or so to water down these doctrines, as they so egregiously contradict the clear teachings of Biblical Christianity. In fact, I have had several Latter-Day Saints in recent years tell me that the church doesn’t teach that we can become gods but that one day we will be like God. They then quote Romans 8:17 concerning being joint-heirs with Christ. These are two very different things, and if I accuse my LDS friends of believing the former while they actually believe the latter then I am absolutely guilty of straw-manning. However, I am about to prove that the historical teachings of the LDS church are polytheistic, promise godhood to the worthy, and deny the one eternal God of Scripture.  

For starters, let me give a couple of examples to prove that the LDS church has fairly recently watered down this teaching of becoming gods/heavenly parents, as I don’t want to make a baseless assertion. Gospel Principles is a standard work of the LDS Church and has been used as a manual for the home and family for decades. As recently as the 1997 edition in the chapter entitled “Our Father in Heaven” it says, “All good things come from God. Everything that he does is to help his children become like him- a god.” However, in the 2009 edition of Gospel Principles the phrase “a god” was removed. This one small change in wording makes a big change in doctrine. So do faithful Latter-Day Saints become gods after they die, or just become like God? 

This wasn’t some strange printer error either. In chapter 38 (“Eternal Marriage”), the 1997 edition reads, “The Lord has said that if we are true and faithful, we will pass by the angels to our exaltation. We will become gods.” However, in the 2009 edition of Gospel Principles, this statement was reworded: "The Lord has said that if we are true and faithful, we will enter into our exaltation. We will become like our Heavenly Father.” To be transparent, there is at least one place in the newer editions of Gospel Principles that still states that people can become gods. However, when the definition of becoming a god is watered down to make people think that we merely become like God, even this becomes fuzzy. Does anyone see the sleight of hand here? If it’s true that we can become gods then why water that truth down? If it’s not true, then why did the LDS Church ever teach that doctrine in the first place? 

In reference to becoming Heavenly parents (like God), the 1997 edition (chapter 38) says, “Heavenly Father has given us the law of eternal marriage so we can become like him. We must live this law to be able to have spirit children…We can, at some future time, increase our family by having spirit children.” In the 2009 edition, the last two sentences were removed completely. Just one more reference before I move on. In chapter 36 (“The Family Can Be Eternal”), the first paragraph of the 1997 edition says; 

“The first family on earth was established by our Heavenly Father when he gave Eve to Adam in marriage (see Moses 3:21-14). Since then, each of us has been commanded to marry and have children so that through our own experience we can learn to be heavenly parents. President Brigham Young explained that our families are not yet ours. The Lord has committed them to us to see how we will treat them. Only if we are faithful will they be given to us forever. What we do on earth determines whether or not we will be worthy to become heavenly parents.”

This entire paragraph was removed from the 2009 edition of Gospel Principles. No wonder my LDS friends (especially the younger generation) go cross-eyed when I tell them about what the LDS church has historically taught concerning exaltation and godhood. My personal opinion is that it seems that these doctrines were watered down so that the LDS church could appear to be more Christian. And it’s impossible to look like a Christian denomination in a Google world when you teach doctrine that is so far from Biblical Christianity. However, Joseph Smith and the early church leaders didn’t live in a Google world. That’s why they were much more open and candid about these things. Ironically, as we are about to see, the church leaders have always been open about these things until about the time that we did start living in a Google world and they lost their echo chamber.  

On April 7, 1844, Joseph Smith preached perhaps his most popular sermon, known as the “King Follet Discourse.” Even before I cite this sermon I know that many of my LDS friends are probably rolling their eyes right now because they will say that this sermon was never official LDS doctrine and was never canonized into LDS scripture. But this is a very strange concept for two reasons. First, by the very nature of its belief in living prophets and apostles, as well as continual revelation, the LDS church has never been confined by canon. Second, this is what Joseph Smith, the founding “prophet” of the LDS church taught publically in a sermon that lasted almost two hours. I don’t think that it can get any more official than that. If the founding prophet taught these things as truth, what sense does it make for the church and its members to say, well that’s not official doctrine?   

This sermon has been cited countless times over the years in General Conference and the official writings of the church. Even the official church website states, “Since 1844, the Church has continued to teach the core doctrines that Joseph presented in the King Follett discourse and to view the plan of salvation in light of the truths Joseph Smith taught about humankind’s premortal existence, mortal experience, and divine eternal potential.” So I don’t understand the resistance to the teachings of Joseph Smith in this sermon. If he was a true prophet of God by all means follow him. But if he was a false prophet spewing heresy he ought to be rejected. With all of that said I wish to quote a large block of this sermon because it’s that important. Smith said; 

“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make himself visible—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another…In order to understand the subject of the dead, for consolation of those who mourn for the loss of their friends, it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how He came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see. These ideas are incomprehensible to some, but they are simple. It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know that we may 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 Himself did; and I will show it from the Bible…you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you attain to the resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, and to sit in glory, as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power.”

If words have any meaning at all then Joseph Smith taught that there were other gods before God, that God was once a man like us on another earth, that he later became God, and that through exaltation we can become a god like him. He reiterated this in Doctrine and Covenants when he said the following in reference to the ordinance of marriage; “Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject unto them. Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them.”

Later on, the 5th President of the LDS Church, Lorenzo Snow, coined a now infamous couplet encapsulating the teachings of Joseph Smith. Snow said, “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be.” I have talked to many LDS who try to distance themselves from Snow’s couplet, stating that it’s being taken out of context, or that the LDS church doesn’t teach that. But Snow and many other church leaders would disagree. Dr. Huggins writes; 

 “At first, Snow did not share his couplet with anyone besides his sister Eliza, and Brigham Young, with whom he served in England. But in January of 1843, after returning from his mission, Snow mentioned it to the Prophet Joseph Smith, who said to him: “Brother Snow, that is true gospel doctrine, and it is a revelation from God to you.”

In 1892, Snow wrote a poem about exaltation which reads; “This royal path has long been trod By righteous men, each now a God: As Abra’m, Isaac, Jacob, too, First babes, then men—to gods they grew. As man now is, our God once was; As now God is, so man may be,— Which doth unfold man’s destiny.” Huggins also points out that just five days after being elected President of the LDS church that Snow preached a sermon in which he tripled down on the teaching behind his couplet. In that sermon, he made the following statement; 

“That exalted position was made manifest to me at a very early day. I had a direct revelation of this. It was most perfect and complete. If there ever was a thing revealed to man perfectly, clearly, so that there could be no doubt or dubiety, this was revealed to me, and it came in these words: “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be.”

Sixty years later, in his 1958 work “Mormon Doctrine”, former member of the Quorum of the Twelve, Bruce R. McConkie wrote; 

“That exaltation which the saints of all ages have so devoutly sought is godhood itself. Godhood is to have the character, possess the attributes, and enjoy the perfections which the Father has. It is to do what he does, have the powers resident in him, and live as he lives, having eternal increase. It is to know him in the full and complete sense, and no one can fully know God except another exalted personage who is like him in all respects. Those attaining the supreme height are sons of God…They are gods.” 

Ironically, immediately following this statement, McConkie went on to cite a large excerpt from “The King Follet Discourse.” And even as recently as the Fall General Conference of 1994, the 15th President of the LDS church, Gordon B. Hinckley said; 

“The whole design of the gospel is to lead us, onward and upward to greater achievement, even, eventually, to godhood. This great possibility was enunciated by the Prophet Joseph Smith in the King Follett sermon . . . and emphasized by President Lorenzo Snow. It is this grand and incomparable concept: As God now is, man may become!” 

I must move on as this chapter is getting longer than I intended. But I wanted to provide sufficient evidence to prove that it is no tin foil hat conspiracy to say that up until the last two or three decades, the LDS church had been very open about their doctrine of God once being a man and our opportunity to become gods as he did. This flies squarely in the face of what the Bible teaches about there being one eternal God. Let’s take a moment to analyze the Biblical teaching and its compatibility with the Nicene Creed concerning the one true God who created everything. 

Scientists have concluded that everything in existence falls into one of four categories; time, space, matter, and energy. We find all four of these in Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” This means that God brought everything into existence; time (beginning), space (heaven), matter (earth), and energy (created, “let there be light”). Before any of these things existed, God was. There has never been a time when God was not. This removes any possibility that any gods existed before God, or that there will be any gods after God, as Joseph Smith taught. In fact, God’s covenant name, Yahwah (Jehovah) means the “eternal or self-existent one.”  Even God’s name dismisses any possibility that he was the offspring of another god, or that He was once a human on another planet that He didn’t create, or that He later became a god. 

Many Scriptures clearly highlight this truth. I Kings 8:60, “That all the people of the earth may know that the LORD is God, and that there is none else.” Deuteronomy 4:35, “Unto thee it was shown, that thou mightest know that the LORD he is God; there is none else beside him”… (39) “Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the LORD he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else. Isaiah 43:10, “Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.” Isaiah 44:6, “Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.”... (9) “For I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me.” Psalm 90:2, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.” There are dozens more that could be listed from both the Old and New Testaments, but I’m sure that the reader gets the gist.

It’s basic Judaism and Christianity 101 that there is only one true God. There always has been and always will be. He is eternal and immaterial. The Old Testament prophets, the New Testament Apostles, and the Christian church of the first 1829 years wouldn’t have a clue what Joseph Smith was talking about. That’s because the LDS church worships a different God than Christians do. God is the eternal creator of all things, not a glorified man who is just further along the progression trail than we are. The good news of Christianity is not that men may become gods, but that God became a man in order to die for sinners. So the Nicene score after one sentence is Biblical Christianity- 1, Mormonism- 0. Not only do Mormons side with Arius by teaching that Christ isn’t eternal, they even teach that God the Father isn’t eternal. Even Arius would have scoffed at such an idea.

More to come...

References used:

1. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/king-follett-discourse?lang=eng

2.  Ronald V. Huggins 2006. “Lorenzo Snow’s Couplet: ‘As Man Now Is, God Once Was; as God Now Is, Man May Be’: ‘No Functioning Place in Present-Day Mormon Doctrine?’ A Response to Richard Mouw.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49 (3): 549–68.

3. LeRoi  C. Snow,  “Devotion to Divine  Inspiration," Improvement Era  (June  1919)

4. Lorenzo Snow, “Unchangable Love of God” (Sept. 18, 1898) in Collected Discourses 5.453

5. Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine 2nd Edition (Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City, UT, 1979) 321

6. Gordon B. Hinckley, “Don’t Drop the Ball”, October, 1994

The True Christ vs. The Christ of the LDS Church (part 1)

     

When my oldest daughter, Allison, was around the age of four she had an imaginary friend that she called Elizabeth. We used to have a great laugh in the evenings when we would sit down at the table for supper, as we would leave an empty chair at the table for “Elizabeth.” Allison wouldn’t allow anyone else to speak directly to Elizabeth. So if we wanted to ask anything of Elizabeth, we would have to ask Allison to ask Elizabeth on our behalf. I remember one specific incident when we asked Allison if Elizabeth wanted a plate of food. Allison leaned over to the empty chair and asked, “Would you like a plate of the food my mom cooked.” She then leaned back in her chair and confidently proclaimed that Elizabeth didn’t like the food that had been cooked and that she would like to have some chicken nuggets from McDonald's instead. My wife and I instantly burst into laughter because we recognized what was going on. It was Allison who wanted McDonald’s chicken nuggets because she didn’t like the meal that had been prepared on that particular night. This was the comedy behind the creation of Elizabeth. Allison was projecting herself onto “Elizabeth”, her desires, her likes and dislikes, her tastes, appetites, etc. 

The creation of Elizabeth in the mind of my four-year-old daughter was all cute and fun, and she grew out of it as we knew that she would. Sadly, however, many people do the same thing with Jesus Christ as Allison did with Elizabeth. Instead of worshiping and following the Christ of the Bible, they worship a Jesus that they have created in their mind, projecting onto Christ their likes and dislikes, their preferences, their morals, and sadly even comforting affirmations of their pet sins. This is why the first two commandments in the Decalogue have to do with our worship of God. The first commandment states, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3). The very next commandment states, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.” (Exodus 20:4-5). Although these two commandments are connected, there is a distinction to be made. In essence, the first commandment is warning people not to worship a false god, while the second commandment says not to worship the name of the true God falsely. 

A great example of the latter is found in Exodus 32 when Aaron and the Israelites melted down their gold and formed a golden calf while Moses was away receiving the law of God. Once the calf was complete the people began to worship it. At this time Aaron declared, “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the LORD. And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.” (Exodus 32:4-6). Aaron gave credit to the golden calf for being the god(s) that delivered them from Egypt, even building an altar unto the LORD (the sacred name of Yahweh). They were worshiping the name of the true God in a false way, which means that they were worshiping a false god. As a Bible-believing Christian, I humbly contest that the LDS church has erected a golden calf and called it “Jesus Christ.” This chapter will be dedicated to proving this point. 

Christianity vs. the Creeds?

Without a doubt, I get more pushback from my LDS friends on this subject than any other, and it’s not even close. The LDS passionately contend that they worship the same Christ as Christians. However, merely asserting something doesn’t make it so. In an attempt to maintain civility, I would like to start by quoting former President Gordon B. Hinckley. When Hinckley was asked if the LDS church believes in the traditional Jesus he responded, “No I don't. The traditional Christ of whom they speak is not the Christ of whom I speak. For the Christ of whom I speak has been revealed in this the dispensation of the fullness of times.” Four years later he also stated;

“As a Church we have critics, many of them. They say we do not believe in the traditional Christ of Christianity. There is some substance to what they say. Our faith, our knowledge is not based on ancient tradition, the creeds which came of a finite understanding and out of the almost infinite discussions of men trying to arrive at a definition of the risen Christ. Our faith, our knowledge comes of the witness of a prophet in this dispensation who saw before him the great God of the universe and His Beloved Son, the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.” 

Hinckley made it clear that the LDS church gets its version of Christ from Joseph Smith and not from the ancient creeds. Now I know what the knee-jerk reaction from many of my LDS friends will be. They will make a distinction between the Christ of the Bible and the creeds of the early church. They will then claim that Joseph Smith’s witness lines up with the Biblical Jesus in contrast with the creeds. But what if I could prove that the early church creeds line up perfectly with the Biblical teaching on the person of Jesus Christ? Wouldn’t that mean that Hinckley unwittingly admitted that the LDS church doesn’t believe in Biblical Christ? The deductive argument goes like this; President Hinckley admitted that the LDS church doesn’t believe in the Christ of the ancient church creeds. The ancient church creeds line up perfectly with the Biblical Jesus. Therefore, the LDS church doesn’t believe in the Biblical Jesus. I’ve got my work cut out for me, so here we go. 

Perhaps the biggest strawman in all of the teachings of the LDS church is that the creeds of the early Christian church were a corrupt departure from Biblical teaching. Please hear this; the creeds were nothing more than an encapsulation of Biblical doctrine in certain theological areas, most specifically the person and nature of Christ. Due to the rise of the Arian heresy, the church wanted to put out an official statement on its Biblical position concerning the nature of Christ. I can feel my eyelids start to twitch when I hear someone attempt to pit the creeds against the Bible. To put this into perspective, the LDS “Articles of Faith” is a type of creed. It’s a quick reference guide to 13 core beliefs of the LDS church. To accuse the ancient creeds of being a corrupt departure from Biblical Christianity would be like calling the LDS “Articles of Faith” a corrupt departure from Mormonism. It makes absolutely no sense. And only someone who isn’t familiar with LDS doctrine would believe such a claim.

The Council of Nicaea

While there are other church councils and creeds that could be discussed, for brevity’s sake I will only deal with this one. My LDS friends seem to have a special disdain for the Council of Nicaea so I thought I would go straight for the jugular on this one. When I hear the LDS describing the Council of Nicaea, they make it sound like a group of church leaders met secretly in a back room in one of those shady Italian restaurants, smoking cigars and sipping expensive wine as they sat down to decide what they wanted to remove from the Christians scriptures. Of course, I am being facetious, but you get the point. However, this simply didn’t happen. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Pastor Mallinak and I committed to not making this book too long so I can’t go into great detail, but there are a few things that need to be pointed out about the Council of Nicaea. For starters, there was a bishop by the name of Arius who was spreading a disturbing heresy concerning the nature of Christ. Arius taught that “God was alone, and the Word as yet was not, nor the Wisdom. Then, wishing to form us, thereupon He made a certain one, and named him Word and Wisdom and Son, that He might form us by means of him.” In other words, Christ is not eternal God and co-equal with the Father. Instead, Christ is a created being, a mere creature of God. This is a gross contradiction to what Christ Himself, the Apostles, and the early church all taught concerning the nature of Christ. This caused an uproar among the churches in the Roman Empire, forcing Emperor Constantine to seek a solution. I have heard my LDS friends give all kinds of conspiracy theories about Constantine’s motivations and role in the Council of Nicaea. However, his reasons for calling this council are pretty simple. This heresy had caused unrest in the empire and he needed everything to calm down. Although, to the Christian church, this was a much more important matter. To this point, Dr. Putman writes; 

“Constantine had political interests in calling for the council; the new emperor feared a divided Christendom would further weaken the unstable relationship between the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire. But church leaders recognized something far more important than imperial power at stake in the controversy. Arius’ denial of the true divinity (and true humanity) of Jesus had two momentous implications for the Christian faith. First, if Christ is not truly God made man, then he cannot save us from our sins. No mere man can save other men from their sins. Second, if Christ is not truly God, then the church which worships Christ is guilty of idolatry and blasphemy against God. So for the bishops at the Nicene Council, this controversy was more than a political or semantic debate; it was a battle for the faith once delivered to the saints.” 

Constantine called the Council of Nicaea to convene in 325 AD. Here are some quick hitters as to what needs to be known about this council. First, this was not a secret meeting. It was very public, with as many as 318 bishops from all over the empire in attendance. Second, these bishops were not Great Value Brand Christians. Many of them had suffered greatly for the cause of Christ under the iron fist of Emperor Diocletian. These were men of renown, such as Athanasius, Alexander of Alexandria, and Nicholas of Myra. These men had an impeccable reputation for their commitment to Christ in the face of unspeakable evil. Third, this council was not simply a monologue. It was an open debate between Arius and his handful of followers and the bishops. Before I move on I also need to insert that contrary to popular belief, this was not a meeting of the Roman Catholic Church. This was a council of the unified Christian church. The word “catholic” means “universal” or “worldwide.” The catholic church of the first 400 years of church history was simply the unified Christian church. The Roman Catholic Church came along later and hijacked the name in an attempt to try and prove that they are the one true church, but it isn’t so. 

One of the most telling things about the Council of Nicaea was the vote. The council voted against the Arian heresy by a count of 314 to 2. Now I do want to be transparent in that there isn’t a perfect consensus among historians as to the exact numbers. Some accounts say that there were as few as 214 Bishops in attendance as opposed to 318. Some accounts also state that Arius initially received 17 votes in his favor until Constantine threatened them with exile. However, all the accounts that I have seen state that two bishops decided not to vote, and in the end, there were only two votes in favor of Arius and his position. So let me be as generous as I can be and say that the final vote total was 214 to 17 against the Arian heresy (although 314 to 2 seems to be the most widely accepted account). Even with my generosity, over 92% of this council voted against Arius’ teaching that Christ was not eternal God, but that He was a created being. 

I recognize that truth can't be discerned by simply counting heads. However, honest objectors must ask themselves “Why?” Why did such an overwhelming majority of these sound Christian leaders renounce the Arian heresy? What information did they use to guide this decision? What standard did they use as a measuring stick to direct their theology? Did they just come up with this out of thin air? Was this just the result of a “finite understanding proceeding out of the almost infinite discussions of men trying to arrive at a definition of the risen Christ” as President Hinckley stated? Or could it be that the bishops at Nicaea recognized that Arius’ teaching flew squarely in the face of the clear Biblical teaching concerning the nature of Christ? The latter is the obvious answer. So when Joseph Smith, President Hinckley, and the LDS church condemn the Council of Nicaea and its creed, not only are they siding with the losing team, but they are aligning themselves with the Arian heresy against the Biblical Christ. As we are about to see, the LDS doctrine of Christ is much closer to the Arian heresy than it is to the Christ of Biblical Christianity.

More to Come...

[1] Gordon B. Hinckley, "Crown of Gospel is Upon Our Heads," LDS Church News, (Saturday, 20 June 1998): 7.

[2] Gordon B. Hinckley, "We Look to Christ," Ensign (May 2002): 90

[3]  Athanasius, Orations Against the Arians, 1.5-6

[4]  Rhyne R. Putnam 2020. “Before and After Nicaea: Arianism as a Test Case for the Ongoing Development of Heresy.” Criswell Theological Review 18 (1): 3–21.

The Covenant Keeping God Vs. The Covenant Breakers of the LDS Church

 

The Failure of Man and the Victory of Christ in the Covenants

There are two things that are true about every Old Testament covenant; man failed miserably to live up to the conditions of the covenant, and Christ came along later and succeeded where men and women failed. The following is a simple overview of Christ in the covenants. 

The Adamic Covenant

This is also referred to as the covenant of works. Although the word “covenant” isn’t used in reference to God’s interactions with Adam, it is clearly implied. Prior to the fall of Adam in Genesis chapter 3, God gave Adam some commands and conditions, both positive and negative. The single negative command was that Adam not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:26-17). The condition upon disobedience of this command was death. However, God also gave Adam some positive commands. Adam was to be God’s vice regent and have dominion “over all the earth” (Genesis 1:26). This included dominion over the fish, birds, cattle and all other animals. He was also commanded to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). God also placed Adam in the Garden of Eden to “dress and keep it.” Even though the Bible isn’t specific about the conditions upon Adam’s obedience, it doesn’t take alot of assumption to believe that there would have been some type of reward (possibly eternal life without the possibility of sin). It doesn’t seem consistent or feasible to think that there was such a harsh condition for disobedience and no reward for obedience. The truth is that we may never know because Adam disobeyed God. 

What we do know is that when Adam disobeyed God and failed to fulfill the conditions that God set before him, the whole world was plunged into sin and death. Paradise was lost. Adam managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and fail God in a nearly perfect situation. However, Christ came to the earth as the second and last Adam to redeem what the first Adam lost. I Corinthians 15:21-22 says, “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”... “And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.” (I Corinthians 15:45-47). Adam acted as our federal representative in the garden of Eden. When he sinned, we sinned. When he died, we died. The human race both sinned and died in Adam (See Romans 5:12). However, Christ acting as the federal head of all of those who would ever come to Him by grace through faith brings them eternal life through His death and resurrection. 

Think about the contrast between the temptation of Adam and the temptation of Christ in the wilderness after He had fasted for forty days and forty nights (Genesis 3, Matthew 4, Luke 4). Adam disobeyed God in a perfect paradise. Christ obeyed God in a barren wilderness. Adam ate when he had plenty. Christ rejected food when he was starving and weak. Adam obeyed the word of the serpent over the Word of God. Christ obeyed the Word of God over the word of the serpent. Adam submitted to the sin of his bride. Christ died for the sin of His bride. Adam brought death through disobedience. Christ brought eternal life through His obedience unto death. Time simply will not permit me to go into greater detail on this incredible subject. Suffice it to say that where man miserably failed, Christ perfectly succeeded. 

Even in the same chapter as the fall of Adam, we see the very first promise of this coming Messiah who would redeem sinful humanity. Genesis 3:15 is called the protevangelium, meaning “the first good news” or first gospel. God said to the serpent, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” There are several key elements in this prophecy. First, “the seed of the woman” is a promise that a coming redeemer would enter into the world through the human race. Some theologians also speculate that it could also be a prophecy about the virgin birth since biologically, it’s the man that has the seed and not the woman. The second element that needs to be mentioned is that this seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent by the bruising of His heel. This is a clear reference to the cross. Christ was bruised on the cross but by this same bruising He crushed the head of the serpent. I hope that by now that the reader has seen that even though this covenant was given to Adam, it was ultimately about Christ, the last Adam. 

The Noahic Covenant

The Noahic Covenant can be found in Genesis 8:20-9:17. This is an example of an unconditional covenant of promise because the Lord makes promises without any condition on the part of man. The Noahic Covenant has both universal and specific aspects to it. Sometimes this covenant is referred to as the covenant of common grace because it makes universal promises to “every living thing” (Genesis 8:21). God promised that He would never again destroy the world with a flood and that as long as the earth remained, “seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22). We also find the first institution of human law in this covenant with specific laws against murder (Genesis 9:5-6). 

This covenant gets more specific with the promises that God makes to Noah and his descendants. Genesis 9:9 says, “And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you.” This is the second instance of the “seed” that we have seen. This connects the Noahic covenant back to the seed of the woman in Genesis 3:15 and also looks forward to the coming Messiah. This is clarified in Genesis 9:27 when it says, “God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” This is Noah’s prophecy concerning his three sons. Noah stated that God would dwell in the tents of Shem. We know that Shem was the progenitor of the race of people that would eventually spawn the Jews. So now the prophecy of the “seed” has gotten even more specific. It has gone from the seed of the woman (the human race) to the seed of Shem (a specific race). It also gives a clue that somehow God Himself would be born through the line of Shem. 

God has kept the promises of the Noahic covenant in three main ways. First, despite the wickedness all across the face of the earth, the Lord has kept His promise and not destroyed it. Second, despite whatever may be going on across the globe, the 24 hour day and the four seasons have continued right on schedule. Third, the Lord did send the Messiah, Jesus Christ, through the line of Shem. We know this because the genealogy of Christ in Luke’s gospel tells us that Christ is a direct descendant of Shem (Luke 3:36). However, perhaps that greatest truth concerning Christ and the Noahic covenant is that in the Old Testament God judged the sins of the world in a flood. In the New Testament God judged the sins of the world in His Son, Jesus Christ. As God commanded Noah to run to the ark, so He commands men and women everywhere to run to the cross. Here we see that God both made and fulfilled all of the conditions of the covenant in Jesus Christ. The covenant might have been given to Noah but ultimately it was about Christ.  

The Mosaic Covenant 

 Also known as the covenant of law, the Mosaic Covenant is a conditional covenant that promises blessing for obedience and punishment for disobedience. As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, the Israelites promised to keep all of God’s commandments, but immediately broke them in one of the most profane ways imaginable. This has always been the problem. There is nothing wrong with God’s holy law, the problem is with sinful people who could never live up to God’s standard. There are people who make the mistake of thinking that God would never command us to do something if He didn’t think that we were capable of doing it. However, this is an incorrect assumption. The giving of the law isn’t a reflection of what God thinks about our abilities, it’s a reflection of God’s holy character. God commands us not to steal because He isn’t a thief. He commands us not to lie because He’s not a liar, and is actually incapable of doing so (Titus 1:2). We could go on down the list. Unlike us, God is perfectly, sinlessly holy and righteous. 

There are 613 laws given in the Old Testament. There are moral laws (laws of do’s and don'ts), civil law, ceremonial law, etc. Most people couldn’t even memorize all of these laws, much less perfectly perform them. This is why it’s inconceivable that man would be so arrogant and self righteous so as to look at the law and think “oh I can do that.” The law was supposed to be seen as an Everest that couldn’t be climbed. The law is meant to show us our need for a Savior greater than ourselves. This is why in Galatians 3:24 the Apostle Paul calls the law a “schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.” He also stated in Romans 3:20 that, “by the deeds of the law there shall be no flesh justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” 

Think about this in terms of the 10 commandments, which is God’s minimum standard of human behavior. Has the reader ever told a lie? That makes you a liar. Has the reader ever looked upon someone with lust in their heart? That makes you an adulterer (see Matthew 5:28). Has the reader ever stolen anything? That makes you a thief. Has the reader ever used God’s name in vain? That makes you a blasphemer. Has the reader ever placed anything above God in their life? This makes you an idolator. If God were to judge us by the 10 commandments alone, we would all be condemned. God is very clear about His diagnoses of mankind and it’s not good. “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10-12). This is why we need a Savior. 

Moses wasn’t even allowed to enter the promised land with the people of Israel because he had disobeyed God as well. Instead of speaking to the rock in order to obtain water as God commanded, he struck the rock instead. This is why it’s so special that one of the greatest themes in the Gospel of John is Jesus as a new and greater deliverer than Moses. We find this first in John’s prologue, “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). This is also seen in the feast cycle of Jesus’ ministry. Think about the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus was in the wilderness feeding thousands of hungry Jews with supernatural manna, during Passover. The allusion to Moses and the children of Israel being fed with supernatural manna in the wilderness is glaring. This is when Jesus took the opportunity to say, “Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world… I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. (John 6:32-33, 35). Jesus says in no uncertain terms that Moses may have given bread to the people, but He gave Himself as the bread that would be broken for the sins of the world.

So much more could be said about this contrast between Moses and Jesus. However, the bottom line is that Moses was unworthy to lead the people of Israel into the promised land. Both he and the people of Israel had failed God miserably at every turn, which is why they wandered for over 40 years in the wilderness. Christ on the other hand came to this earth, lived a perfectly sinless life, fulfilling the just demands of God’s law, died on the cross for sin, rose from the dead three days later and ascended to Heaven in power and glory 40 days after that. Mission accomplished. None of us could ever keep the covenant of law, but Christ kept it on our behalf (Matthew 5:17). Christ not only died for us, He lived for us as well. He lived the perfect life that we could never live. Christ is the greater Moses and He is enough!  

The Abrahamic Covenant 

The Abrahamic covenant is very important to this discussion because it is a covenant of promise that foreshadows, and in some ways even initiates the covenant of grace. The Abrahamic covenant can be found in Genesis 12, 15, 17 and 22, becoming more specific with each chapter. Genesis 15:4-6 says, “And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.” There is a lot to unpack in these three verses. First, the “heir” of Abraham has a dual meaning. The near fulfillment came through his son, Isaac, whom the LORD miraculously gave to him and Sarah at a very old age. However, the ultimate fulfillment would come through Lord Jesus Christ. 

This brings us to the second thing that must be gleaned from this text. When God promised Abraham that through this heir would come a seed as numberless as the stars, there is also a dual meaning here. Through Isaac would come the nation of Israel. However, the ultimate fulfillment would come through Christ. The main focus of this promise is found in all of those who come to Christ in saving faith. The Apostle Paul left no doubt about this when he wrote Galatians chapter 3; “Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham…And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Galtians 3:7-9, 29). Those who come to Jesus Christ in saving faith are the spiritual seed of Abraham, and therefore in this covenant of promise. 

Something else that needs to be pointed out here is that in both Genesis 15 and Galatians 3 (see also Romans 4) it says that “Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Paul even said in Galatians 3 that God Himself preached the gospel unto Abraham, and that’s what he believed in. This brings up a very important point that must be mentioned before moving on. Salvation has always been by faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Old Testament saints were saved by faith in the coming messiah. New Testament saints are saved by faith in the messiah that has already come. Salvation has never been by good works, temple sacrifices, man-made covenants, an earthly priesthood, etc. Nor could it ever be. Salvation has always come by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. 

Later in Genesis chapter 15, Abraham asks the LORD, “whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” (15:8). This brings us to the official sealing of this covenant through a blood sacrifice. Dr. Michael Horton has written extensively on the sealing of the Abrahamic covenant and for this next section I am relying heavily on his work. The LORD answered Abraham’s question by instructing him to take various animals and sever them in half, leaving a walkway through the severed pieces. Abraham did so without asking any questions or acting like the Lord’s instructions were strange or out of place. This is most likely because in that day this was a common practice among kings of the Ancient Near East. They called it “cutting a covenant.” With a conditional covenant, two kings had to come to an agreement as to the terms and conditions of the covenant. For example, a suzerain (greater king) might want more taxes from the vassal (lesser king) in exchange for military protection at the vassal’s request. Once the terms were agreed upon, they would sever several animals and leave a walkway through the severed pieces. The two kings would then lock arms and walk between the severed pieces. What they were essentially saying in this sacred ceremony was, “if I don’t fulfill my end of the covenant, let me become as these severed animals.” It was a very serious thing. 

On the other hand, with unconditional covenants of promise, one king (usually the suzerain) would promise to fulfill all of the necessary conditions of the covenant by himself. In this case the king would walk through the severed pieces by himself. Knowing this information really makes the end of Genesis chapter 15 come to life. “And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.” (Genesis 15:17). The LORD shows up in the appearance of a smoking furnace and a burning lamp and walks through the severed pieces by Himself! He did not say, “come on Abraham, walk through these pieces with me.” Here in this chapter, we find God making promises of a great savior and a great salvation, and He made the commitment to fulfill all of the necessary conditions. 

In Genesis 22 the picture of this covenant comes even more into view. The LORD commanded Abraham to take his son, Isaac, to the top of Mt. Moriah and sacrifice him on an altar of wood. However, the LORD would intervene and provide a ram for the sacrifice instead. The allegory of Christ as pictured by Isaac is glaring. For starters, Mt. Moriah is where the Jewish Temple would be built (think of all of the animal sacrifices also picturing Christ). Mt. Moriah is also in the same vicinity in which Christ would be crucified. The Abrahamic covenant (picturing the covenant of grace) is God’s promise of salvation to all of those who come to Christ in faith, guaranteed by the death and resurrection of Christ Himself! God spared Abraham’s son, but He would not spare His own. “Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” (Hebrews 13:21) 

Closing Thoughts

Time will simply not allow me to expound upon Christ in all of the covenants. However, in this brief chapter we have seen a few things very clearly. First, the LDS church places the burden of salvation upon the individual by mandating the keeping of their covenant promises to God. This is very problematic because as we have seen, mankind has never been able to keep their covenants with God. Adam failed, Moses failed, the Israelites failed, etc. Knowing this information, why would anyone want to try and shoulder the responsibility of their salvation, contingent upon keeping their promises to God? What a pressure cooker. Listen to the words of Elder Richard Maynes from the Fall General Conference of 2004; 

“Brothers and sisters, we are all looking forward to the day when we can return home to our Heavenly Father. In order to qualify for exaltation in the celestial kingdom, we must gain the trust of the Lord here on earth. We gain the trust of the Lord through earning it, and that is accomplished through our actual performance in living His gospel and keeping our covenants. In other words, we earn the trust of the Lord by doing His will.”   

The Biblical gospel of grace isn’t about the Lord trusting us, it’s about us trusting in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ! Salvation isn’t something that we can earn, it was earned by Christ on our behalf if we would just trust Him! He is the greater Adam, the greater Moses, the greater David and the fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham! After seeing man’s failure and Christ’s success in the covenants, how could anyone reduce the covenants to broken promises that we make to God?  “But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. (Hebrews 8:6)