So, I met someone the other day who was Mormon and wanted to help me find peace and joy.
Anyone know a lot about Mormonism and how they truly differentiate in beliefs to mainstream Christianity?
While obviously the best thing would be to look at historic, orthodox Christian sources for Christian beliefs, and then look at Mormon sources for Mormon beliefs and to compare and contrast. That said, from the Mormon POV not only do they believe that they are Christians, they believe they are the one and only true expression of Christianity.
The founder of the Latter-Day Saint movement (i.e. Mormonism) was Joseph Smith, Jr. Smith made a number of claims, such as that he was a prophet for the latter days to restore the true church on earth because all other churches were false abominations. Smith claims that God Himself personally told him this. He also claimed that he had been visited by an angel for several years, in the original accounts told by Smith he gives this angel the name of Nephi, but later on the angel's name was changed to Moroni, and in official Mormon literature it's the name Moroni that you will find. Nephi/Moroni eventually led Smith to a spot in upstate New York where he supposedly discovered golden plates upon which was written an account of how a group of Jews escaped the Babylonian Captivity by boarding ships and sailing to the Americas. Smith then said that by the divine power put some "seer stones" into his hat, then gazing into his hat God supernaturally gave him the ability to translate the golden plates into English--this supposed translation of these golden plates are what Mormons refer to as the Book of Mormon, which is one of the official scriptures of Mormonism, along with the Bible.
After Smith's death there was a crisis in the leadership of the movement, and it splintered into several different groups. But the group that we know today as Mormons are the Brighamites, those who followed Brigham Young and settled into Utah. Under Brigham Young new doctrines and practices were added, though some of these (as well as some of the beliefs and practices from the time of Smith) have been changed, edited, expanded upon (etc) through subsequent prophets/presidents of the Mormon church. As Mormonism believes that it is essential that the "true church" has a living prophet who leads it, and the prophet is the very mouthpiece of God on earth--what the prophet speaks is what God has spoken.
The following is based upon my own looking at Mormon sources, and regular conversations and debates from Mormons themselves. I'm not using anti-Mormon sources here, this is what I have learned from Mormon sources and practicing Mormons themselves--it is always possible I may have misunderstood some things, but I have also tried to seek clarification when I was unclear as to what Mormons believe. Note also, that there have been times where I've heard slightly competing ideas from Mormons and Mormon sources, which I do not know how to resolve; and in some cases Mormons seem highly reluctant to be forthcoming about some ideas, usually claiming that such things are "too sacred" to be talked about. One example of this is the idea that God has a wife, that there is a "heavenly mother". There is a reluctance among Mormons to talk about "heavenly mother" because they claim it is disrespectful to do so, because God doesn't want people to talk ill about his wife, and somehow that means Mormons talking about it with non-Mormons is at least partially taboo (or at least that appears to be the case in my own talks with Mormons)
Some distinctive Mormon doctrines that are radically incompatible and in contrast to historic, orthodox Christianity include:
1) God was once a man, just like you and I, and he lived on a planet just like earth, and he became God by following the commandments and precepts of the god of that planet and then was exalted to godhood, and he with one of his wives then procreated to produce spirit offspring.
2) These spirit offspring include all human beings alive or whoever lived, or whoever will live eventually.
3) At a gathering of God and his spirit children there was some kind of argument, God's firstborn spirit child, Jesus proposed one idea, another of God's spirit children Lucifer proposed another idea. God picked Jesus' idea, which made Lucifer jealous (yes, in Mormonism Jesus and the devil are literal brothers). And so Lucifer managed to convince a number of God's spirit children to rebel with him. For which they were kicked out of.
4) Since we are the literal offspring of God and his wife, then we can one day become as God is. That is, by following all the rules and regulations of the Mormon religion, and obeying all of God's commandments (as understood and believed in Mormonism) then one has the chance of one day being exalted and becoming a god themselves.
5) Since God, spirits, and human beings are all, fundamentally, the same "thing", there is in essence a hypothetical nearly uncountable number of gods, the "Heavenly Father" is simply the God of this part of the universe, over earth, and so the biblical command to only worship one God does not mean there is only one God that is worthy of worship, but that only this god, among the countless gods out there in the universe, is to be worshiped by us, since we are his literal flesh and blood offspring (since God being an exalted man, has flesh and blood). There could, at least possibly, in Mormon thinking be a nearly infinite number of gods already, and a nearly infinite number of future gods through these exaltations going on ad infinitum. Since matter and "intelligence" (another Mormon term) is eternal, and it is this eternal matter and uncountable "intelligences" which arise through procreation (such as when God procreated with his wife in heaven to produce his spirit children.)
That's really just the very tip of the iceberg.
Again, my goal here isn't to make fun of, attack, or malign, or speak ill of Mormons. But since the question is what differences are there between Mormonism and orthodox Christianity, this is important.
If you are well acquainted with basic Christian theology, then it should be pretty obvious as to how fundamentally different the two are from one another. Christianity teaches and believes that there is only one God, who created all things, and God is a Trinity of three co-equal, consubstantial Divine Persons of one undivided Essence, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That God the Son became flesh as Jesus Christ, our Lord, and that He is therefore both truly God and truly human. That God in His essence is formless, eternal, without beginning and without end, incomprehensible, beyond all things, before all things, after all things, etc. That God's gracious work is the coming down into our world of the Lord Jesus, who was born of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, buried, and dead, and who rose on the third day, ascended to the right hand of the Father from whence He will come again as Judge of the living and the dead, bringing with Him His never-ending kingdom. That our salvation is the work of God's loving kindness, forgiving us our sins, rectifying our broken relationship and communion with Him by adopting us as children in Christ, and promising us eternal life, that Christ will return, the dead shall be resurrected, and God will make all things new, a world without end--a new heavens and a new earth. There is, therefore, a beginning to the story of creation, and its consummation in Christ through whom all of creation will be healed, made new, that future day and age being endless in the glory and light of God--no more death, no more suffering, no more weeping and mourning, but justice, peace, and love, forever. For God will be all in all. Amen.
-CryptoLutheran
