Written by a staff writer for the John Ankerberg show, here is an article entitled “Are Mormons Christian?” (https://blog.jashow.org/the-apologetics-corner/are-mormons-christian?)

Mormons identify themselves as a Christian[1] denomination, in the same category as Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, etc. After all, they will tell you, they are “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!” But does their claim stand up to scrutiny when compared to what the Bible teaches? We will take a look at a few of Mormonism’s key teachings about Jesus and compare them to what the Bible says about Him. With this information in mind, you will be better prepared to answer the question: Are Mormons Christians?

First, Mormonism teaches that Jesus was a created being, and not eternal God. Rather, He was merely the first of billions of spirit children of the “Father”.

• Doctrine and Covenants 93:21-23: “Christ, the Firstborn, was the mightiest of all the spirit children of the Father.”
• The Articles of Faith: “Among the spirit children of Elohim, the firstborn was and is Jehovah, or Jesus Christ, to whom all others are juniors.”

Furthermore, since Satan was also a preexistent spirit child, Jesus and Satan are brothers.

• “As for the devil and his fellow spirits, they are brothers to man and also to Jesus and sons and daughters to God in the same sense that we are.”

Second, Mormonism teaches that because Jesus was only a man, a “spirit offspring” of the earth gods, He must earn His salvation, just like all other men.

• “Jesus Christ is the Son of God.…He came to earth to work out His own salvation.…After His resurrection, He gained all power in Heaven.”
• “…by obedience and devotion to the truth, [Jesus] attained that pinnacle of intelligence which ranked Him as a God.”
• “Christ…is a saved being.”

Third, there is nothing particularly special about Jesus. Sure, He is divine now, but every person has the same opportunity to attain “godhood” just like Him. His only unique claim is that rather than having a human father, he was the product of sexual union between “Elohim,” the earth god, and Mary.

• “Jesus is man’s spiritual brother. We dwelt with Him in the spirit world as members of that large society of eternal intelligences, which included our Heavenly Parents.”

Fourth, Jesus was conceived through sexual intercourse between God (Elohim) and Mary.

• “sexuality…is actually an attribute of God…God is a procreating personage of flesh and bone” and “the Holy Ghost was not the father of Jesus.”
• “Christ was begotten of God. He was not born without the aid of Man and that Man was God”!
• “Christ was begotten by an Immortal Father the same way that mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers.”

According to Brigham Young, “The man Joseph, the husband of Mary, did not, that we know of, have more than one wife, but Mary, the wife of Joseph, had another husband [that is, God].”[2]

Biblically, of course, all of this is false.

First, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is God. He is eternal creator whose origins are “from old, from ancient times” in other words, He has eternally existed.

• John 1:1-3: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
• Colossians 1:16-17: For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
• Isaiah 9:6: For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
• Micah 5:2: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”

Further, Jesus Christ is not the brother of the devil. The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus is in fact God:

• John 10:30: I and the Father are one.
• Colossians 1:15-17: The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
• Colossians 2:9: For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.
• Hebrews 1:3: The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

Second, Jesus did not, nor did He have any need to, earn His salvation. Rather, He came to bring salvation to all mankind through His death on the cross.

• John 14:6: I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
• Ephesians 2:8-9: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.
• 1 Peter 2:24: He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

Third, Jesus did not attain godhood, He has been God from before the foundation of the world.

• John 1:1-3: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
• John 1:14: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
• Ephesians 1:4: He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
• Colossians 1:15-17: The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

And finally, Jesus was not the product of some physical sexual union. Rather He was virgin born.

• Isaiah 7:14: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.
• Matthew 1:18-23: This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about]: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. [See Luke 1:26-38] Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”)

Once again, we must ask: Are the Mormon Jesus and the Jesus revealed in the Bible the same? Your answer is important, because your eternal future depends on believing in the right Jesus.

“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

You can learn more about what Mormons believe in by downloading our Side by Side guides here. You will also find numerous resources on our website, including DVDs and books to help you study further.

[1] Merriam Webster Dictionary defines a “Christian” as “one who professes belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ.” The website gotquestions.org explains, “Despite the wide variety of beliefs that fall under the general ‘Christian’ label today, the Bible defines a true Christian as one who has personally received Jesus Christ as Savior, who trusts in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ alone for forgiveness of sins, who has the Holy Spirit residing within, and whose life evinces change consistent with faith in Jesus.”

[2] These quotes are from Mormon sources and/or Mormon leaders. Consult John Ankerberg and John Weldon, The Facts on the Mormon Church (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1991) to see the sources.

Pastor Jeff Durbin in conversation with two Mormon missionaries in Provo, Utah:

Article by Eric Johnson “8 Questions a Latter-day Saint Needs to Answer about the First Vision” – https://www.mrm.org/first-vision-questions?

Dr. James White – Part 1:

Article by Jared C. Wilson (source: https://ftc.co//resource-library/1/4274)

The young man shifted nervously on my doorstep, his cheerful face belying his anxiety. He wore the customary white short-sleeved shirt and black tie and carried a backpack. He had just knocked on my door and just discovered that I was a pastor.

“Oh good!” he said. “It’s always great to meet fellow Christians.”

He was a young man on his requisite mission, the rite of passage of sorts for the LDS Church.

This is new, I thought. I had not heard Mormons call themselves Christians before.

“Why do you call yourself a Christian?” I asked.

“Because we follow Jesus Christ, the son of the heavenly Father.”

“Have any of the Mormon beliefs changed in the last several years?”

“No,” he said, “not really.”

“Then I don’t think you’re any more Christian than you used to be.”

“Well, we believe the same things other Christians believe.”

He began to list out some bullet points of the Christian faith, things nearly every evangelical would agree with—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are all real persons, for instance. That Jesus died on the cross to atone for sins and rose again and ascended to heaven.

For a moment, I was sort of shocked. Maybe things actually were changing in the Mormon church. The desire to be considered evangelical seemed new, but maybe it brought with it some theological reforms, as in the apparent turnaround in the formerly heterodox Worldwide Church of God.

You may be inclined to think so too. Today in the evangelical marketplace, Mormon figures sometimes play subtle yet significant roles. Christians share videos of Mormon singers and teaching on social media. Mormon families participate in local Christian organizations (there are several Mormon kids in the “Christian youth theater” with which my daughter used to perform shows). And many Mormons, of course, stand side by side with Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants in opposing many social ills like abortion and pornography, etc.

The push to be considered evangelical is a real push. But it comes at the cost of some doctrinal obfuscation. So are Mormons becoming evangelical Christians? What do we make of those sweet folks across the street with the awesome kids and neighborly spirit? If anybody is a Christian, wouldn’t they be?

I decided to go deeper with my LDS visitor, asking him pointed questions about distinct beliefs that have historically defined evangelical Christianity. Here are significant things Mormons have always and still believe:

1. Jesus isn’t God.

Mormons call Jesus the Son of God and say lots of things about him that the Bible says – that he was born of a virgin, that he died to atone for sins and rose again, etc. – but they also say he is a created being, directly contradicting biblical orthodoxy. They also say that he “inherited divine powers” from the Father. Mormons deny the historically Christian teaching that Jesus Christ is equal with the Father in essence and substance. On that note . . .

2. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit aren’t equally one God.

Mormons affirm a conception of the Trinity – what they typically call the Godhead, interestingly enough – but deny the traditional understanding of God’s triune nature. They say that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share one purpose or will but do not share the same essence or substance. They say the three persons of the trinity are “separate personages” that share divine attributes, but deny that they are co-equally and simultaneously distinct persons who are together one God. Mormons believe God literally birthed the “spirit-children” Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

3. God was created.

You have to dig a bit deeper into their doctrine to get to some of the stuff they don’t widely publicize, like this key teaching for instance: the God we worship as our heavenly Father is not an eternal, uncreated being. Mormons believe God was once a man of flesh and blood, a created being, who ascended to divinity. Joseph Smith taught that there was even a “God” above the God we know as God the Father, who created the man who eventually became the God we know as Father. This is obviously in direct opposition to historical Christian orthodoxy, which affirms the Bible’s claim that there is no God but God and that before anything else ever existed, the great I AM existed.

4. Christ’s atonement redeems everyone and grace is a reward for those who obey him.

In a kind of strange two-part confusion about Christ’s atoning work on the cross, Mormons believe in a kind of universalism in which everyone who dies will be “saved” by Christ’s work, although they do teach that there are also four different eternal destinies for resurrected persons—godhood for faithful Mormons, a kind of lower heaven for unfaithful Mormons and people who only accept God after they die, a temporary place of suffering for wicked people who reject Mormonism, and an eternal place of suffering for the devil and people who received the Holy Spirit but then denied it. If you find that difficult to follow, you should consider what they teach about salvation. Mormons superficially affirm salvation by grace but how they define grace (and faith) muddles the biblical and evangelical understanding. 2 Nephi 25 (in the Book of Mormon) says that “we are saved by grace, after all we can do.”

In other words, for the Mormon, grace is a reward for faithful effort. For the biblical Christian, however, grace that is deserved is not grace at all. Grace is given to the undeserving, those who could never earn God’s favor or rewards. Grace empowers faithful obedience, yes, but grace also precedes it. Mormons get the gospel/law distinction wrong.

There are other interesting departures from orthodoxy to be found in LDS teaching—what they believe about the Bible and ongoing revelation, what they believe about pre-existing human beings, about Jesus coming to North America to minister to the Native Americans, etc.—and lots of questions to suss out about Mormonism’s prophetic and historiographical claims. (The historical record is not kind to the former, when you begin to honestly appraise the character of Joseph  Smith in particular, and the archaeological record is not kind to the latter.) But the bottom line is that on four very key points of Christian orthodoxy, Mormonism utterly fails the test.

After I quizzed my new missionary friend on these key tenets and finding that we believed some very, very different things about them, he still wasn’t willing to admit Mormonism should not be considered Christianity in any theologically meaningful sense of the word. He wanted to call his companion (who was stationed at the front porch of the house next door) for backup. I encouraged him to do so. Because I knew if these Mormons were to be considered Christian, they’d need to believe the biblical gospel, and I was eager to share it with them both.

I know too many Christians are prone to throwing around the “heresy” word in a willy-nilly fashion at anyone who disagrees with them. Preachers who talk about social justice or have rock-and-roll worship on stage are called “heretics.” But the word has an historical legitimacy. It does apply to some beliefs that depart from the faith once delivered. And the historical record of creeds and councils of the Christian church is clear, as is the word of God from which they are deriving their theological guardrails: if you deny the traditional doctrines of the deity of Christ and of the triune Godhead and mess with salvation by grace, you are indeed a heretic.

Article “Dear Mormon—I Can’t Call You a Brother in Christ” by Josh Buice (original source here)

Yesterday I had lunch with a very kind and gracious man in our community. This man is a committed member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In short, my friend is a Mormon. He was respectful, gracious, and I enjoyed our conversation very much. However, at one point the conversation shifted and he asked me if I was willing to call him a brother in Christ?

I explained that we both hold to very different doctrines that cannot stand in harmony—especially the teachings about the person and work of Jesus Christ. He said that he was offended by that statement. I acknowledged how that would be offensive, but I must stand upon the gospel of Christ. The most loving thing I could do would be to point him to the truth. The most unloving thing I could do would be to ignore the differences and embrace him as a brother in Christ.

The devil is the father of all lies and he is really good at causing people to embrace error as truth. How do you determine the difference between denominations of Christianity and other religions outside of Christianity? In other words, we know that Baptists and Methodists are quite different on many theological levels, but they’re both Christian denominations. Today, a growing number of people continue to purport the idea that Mormonism is just another denomination like Methodists within the family of orthodox Christianity.

How can we determine if Mormonism is Christian or cult? Based on foundational doctrinal evidence—I can’t embrace Mormons as fellow Christians.

Mormonism Rejects the Sufficiency of the Bible
If you can add to the authoritative body of teachings of the church each year by a vote—it would make the religion more fluid and apt to change with culture or adapt over time based on pressures from the culture. This is true of the Roman Catholic Church regarding their belief regarding the RCC’s official tradition. The same thing is true of the Mormon religion. At one point polygamy was defended as permissible, but later it was changed.

Christians stand upon the absolute sufficiency of God’s Word—something that does not change with time, circumstances, and geographic location. Not one other source from church history is needed outside of God’s Word alone as the sufficient guide for God’s revelation of himself to humanity. For the Mormons, they hold to a group of writings called the “Four Standard Works.” This body includes the King James Version of the Bible (as properly translated), the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and The Book of Mormon.

Anytime a religion adds books to the same divine level as God’s Word—that should cause an immediate red flag to be raised. Consider what Joseph Smith said, “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book” (History of the Church,4:461).

Mormonism Rejects the Deity of Jesus
While the Mormons do uphold Jesus as “a god”—they do not embrace Jesus as “very God of very God” who is one with the Father (John 10:30; John 8:58). Mormons believe Jesus is a god, but they also believe it’s possible for any human to become a god (Doctrine and Covenants 132:20; Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 345–354). In John 10:33, we find these important words:

The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”

The driving reason that Jesus was nailed to a Roman cross was on the basis of his teachings—which threatened the authority and teaching of the religious establishment of the day. Jesus made it clear that he is God. If Jesus is the Creator of all things—how can he be a created being? That does not make sense and it certainly doesn’t align with the Word of God. Mormons claim that Jesus was the first of the spirit beings begotten through a physical relationship between Elohim and one of his many heavenly wives. This is in clear violation to Matthew 1:20, but nevertheless, they maintain aberrant doctrines about God the Father existing in flesh like a perfect man who would be capable of such a relationship.

According to the Articles of Faith on the Godhead, the LDS doctrine of God consists of a God who possesses a physical body. In comparing the LDS beliefs with Christian doctrine, their Articles of Faith read, “But where Latter-day Saints differ from other Christian religions is in their belief that God and Jesus Christ are glorified, physical beings and that each member of the Godhead is a separate being.” Jesus said something quite different in John 4:24, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Mormons are not Christians based on several key teachings. Some of those troubling teachings include the spirit brotherhood of Satan and Jesus, the baptism for the dead, a racial problem, a polytheistic view of many gods, and a clear denial of the Trinity. These teachings stand in clear contradiction to the teachings of God’s Word—and have never been embraced as merely another Christian denomination.

Mormons have a troubling past with Joseph Smith Jr.—the founder who had multiple wives—one of whom was only 14 when he was 39. Their troubling past also includes a lengthy letter by Professor Charles Anthon of Columbia University who was said to validate the translation of Jospeh Smith’s writings (Book of Mormon) from the “Golden Plates.” According to Professor Anthon, “The whole story about my having pronounced the Mormonite inscription to be ‘reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics’ is perfectly false.” While all of these things are troubling—none are more troublesome than their rejection of the deity of Jesus Christ as second Person of the Godhead who is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Spirit.

In short, the Mormons have one Jesus and the Christians have a very different Jesus. Make no mistake—they aren’t the same Jesus. For that reason—I can’t call my Mormon friend my brother in Christ. I want to, but I simply can’t. Therefore, I will continue to have such gospel conversations praying that God will open his eyes to the truth.

Witnessing to Mormons Seminar with Lynn and Mike Wilder

Eric Johnson came to Redeemer Bible Church in Gilbert for a special Wednesday night on October 17, 2018 to share a message on Sharing the Good News with Mormons.