LDS The Questions I Asked a Mormon

[Rescued One]

My Q.
How is the Mormon Jesus different from the Biblical Jesus?

Mormon A.
He is not, as he is the Biblical Jesus.

My Q.
Why should Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Catholics follow the Mormon Jesus?

Mormon A.
Because it is only through him that we might be saved.

Today's question.
If the Mormon Jesus is the Biblical Jesus, why should we convert to Mormonism?

We Christians aren't Mormons yet we are obedient to the command, "Come follow me."

 

[1stcenturylady]

My Q.
How is the Mormon Jesus different from the Biblical Jesus?

Mormon A.
He is not, as he is the Biblical Jesus.

My Q.
Why should Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Catholics follow the Mormon Jesus?

Mormon A.
Because it is only through him that we might be saved.

Today's question.
If the Mormon Jesus is the Biblical Jesus, why should we convert to Mormonism?

We are obedient to the command, "Come follow me."

When they say, "Come follow me" are they referring to Jesus or Joseph Smith?

I went to a Mormon Sunday service with a Mormon girlfriend once, and was amazed at their hymnal. The music was the same as our classics, but the words were changed to be about Joseph Smith.

 

[Rescued One]

When they say, "Come follow me" are they referring to Jesus or Joseph Smith?

I went to a Mormon Sunday service with a Mormon girlfriend once, and was amazed at their hymnal. The music was the same as our classics, but the words were changed to be about Joseph Smith.

Most of the hymns aren't about Joseph Smith unless they've come out with a lot of new ones.

"Come follow me" is from the Bible and refers to our Savior.

However, these are some of their words:

Doctrine and Covenants 84
35 And also all they who receive this priesthood receiveme, saith the Lord;

36 For he that receiveth my servants receiveth me;

37 And he that receiveth me receiveth my Father;

38 And he that receiveth my Father receiveth my Father’s kingdom; therefore all that my Father hath shall be given unto him.

39 And this is according to the oath and covenant which belongeth to the priesthood.

40 Therefore, all those who receive the priesthood, receive this oath and covenant of my Father, which he cannot break, neither can it be moved.

41 But whoso breaketh this covenant after he hath received it, and altogether turneth therefrom, shall not have forgiveness of sins in this world nor in the world to come.


Doctrine and Covenants 99
1 Behold, thus saith the Lord unto my servant John Murdock—thou art called to go into the eastern countries from house to house, from village to village, and from city to city, to proclaim mine everlasting gospel unto the inhabitants thereof, in the midst of persecution and wickedness.

2 And who receiveth you receiveth me; and you shall have power to declare my word in the demonstration of my Holy Spirit.

3 And who receiveth you as a little child, receiveth my kingdom; and blessed are they, for they shall obtain mercy.

4 And whoso rejecteth you shall be rejected of my Father and his house; and you shall cleanse your feet in the secret places by the way for a testimony against them.



"Among the insights the Doctrine and Covenants provides is the role that the Book of Mormon plays in individual salvation and in the mission of the restored gospel and the Church."
Kay P. Edwards, What the Doctrine and Covenants Says about the Book of Mormon, Ensigh, January 1989
What the Doctrine and Covenants Says about the Book of Mormon - ensign

 

[Jane_Doe]

When they say, "Come follow me" are they referring to Jesus or Joseph Smith?

Christ 100%. Joseph Smith is regarded as a servant to Him. Christ alone is the Savior, Son of God.

 

[withwonderingawe]

this is why this place became sooo boring

 

[1stcenturylady]

Most of the hymns aren't about Joseph Smith unless they've come out with a lot of new ones.

"Come follow me" is from the Bible and refers to our Savior.

However, these are some of their words:

Doctrine and Covenants 84
35 And also all they who receive this priesthood receiveme, saith the Lord;

36 For he that receiveth my servants receiveth me;

37 And he that receiveth me receiveth my Father;

38 And he that receiveth my Father receiveth my Father’s kingdom; therefore all that my Father hath shall be given unto him.

39 And this is according to the oath and covenant which belongeth to the priesthood.

40 Therefore, all those who receive the priesthood, receive this oath and covenant of my Father, which he cannot break, neither can it be moved.

41 But whoso breaketh this covenant after he hath received it, and altogether turneth therefrom, shall not have forgiveness of sins in this world nor in the world to come.


Doctrine and Covenants 99
1 Behold, thus saith the Lord unto my servant John Murdock—thou art called to go into the eastern countries from house to house, from village to village, and from city to city, to proclaim mine everlasting gospel unto the inhabitants thereof, in the midst of persecution and wickedness.

2 And who receiveth you receiveth me; and you shall have power to declare my word in the demonstration of my Holy Spirit.

3 And who receiveth you as a little child, receiveth my kingdom; and blessed are they, for they shall obtain mercy.

4 And whoso rejecteth you shall be rejected of my Father and his house; and you shall cleanse your feet in the secret places by the way for a testimony against them.

View attachment 223770

"Among the insights the Doctrine and Covenants provides is the role that the Book of Mormon plays in individual salvation and in the mission of the restored gospel and the Church."
Kay P. Edwards, What the Doctrine and Covenants Says about the Book of Mormon, Ensigh, January 1989
What the Doctrine and Covenants Says about the Book of Mormon - ensign

I only went with her just once. So I don't know if ALL the songs were about Joseph Smith, but they were that day. I was shocked.

The reason why I questioned "me" is because it wasn't capitalized. I thought you may be pointing to someone other than Jesus, and emphasized that fact with an underline.

 

[1stcenturylady]

this is why this place became sooo boring

If you are bored already, maybe you should become a Pentecostal and get baptized with the Holy Spirit. You'll never be bored again.

 

[Jane_Doe]

I only went with her just once. So I don't know if ALL the songs were about Joseph Smith, but they were that day. I was shocked.

That would be very unusual. THere's only like 6 hymns specifically about Joseph Smith of the ~350 hymns in the book.

(Cool avatar photo, bytheway).

 

[dzheremi]

I take the LDS claims to be ecclesiological rather than theological, in the sense that they seem much more willing to claim that they worship the same Christ as Christians do (whether we agree with them on that or not) than to claim that Christian churches have authority that is somehow absent from the LDS church.

So I don't really think there's much of a contradiction here, necessarily, though I would certainly advise against joining Mormonism in any form for both theological and ecclesiological reasons.

It seems much more fruitful to me to ask them why or how it is that they see fit to identify their Jesus figure with the Christ of traditional Christianity if traditional Christianity fell so far into apostasy that it was completely taken from the world. How is it that such an apostasy would not negatively affect their theology to the point of warping their idea of who or what Christ is, such that it is not appropriate to identify your God with theirs? If you look at Christian history, anyway, while there were a great many schisms in the early centuries related to disciplinary ecclesiastical matters (i.e., which did not really touch on theology so much as on the running of the Church), such as the quartodeciman controversy or the controversy concerning the 'lapsi' and the Novatianists (and later Donatists in North Africa), nearly all the ones that still affect us today -- because they created separate communions or communities which still remain with us until now -- were either theological or had major theological aspects which help keep them alive: the schism between the Nestorians/East Syrians/Persians and the rest of the Church following the Council of Ephesus in 431 (regarding the nature of Christ); the schism between those who accepted the Tome of Leo and those who didn't following the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (again, regarding the nature of Christ); the controversy involving the monothelites and the dyothelites which led to the third Council of Constantinople in 681 (historically, their embrace of monothelitism is what led the Maronites -- a particular group of Syriac Christians native to Syria and Lebanon who have been in union with Rome since the Crusader times and today form the Maronite Catholic Church, the largest Christian community in Lebanon -- into isolation relative to the larger Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christian communities), etc.

It just seems weird to me to say "You guys are in complete apostasy, but yeah, we worship the same god as you do." Again, it is possible to have great disagreement without necessarily having a change in theology, but it's not very common. Generally speaking, when one group leaves/is kicked out of communion, it includes a charge of some kind of violation of previously-held theology. Not to mention the obvious fact that if what was supposedly revealed to Joseph Smith and his successors regarding the nature of God is what is in fact true, then quite logically they ought not say that we worship the same God, since we don't affirm the theology that is unique to Mormonism, and obviously they have 'revelations from God' that ought not be compromised on for any reason. Unless the Mormon god(s) reveal to them theological truths that he/they also tell them they may compromise on if it gets everyone to play together nicely.

Hmm...that's not something the Christian God does...

 

[Jane_Doe]

I take the LDS claims to be ecclesiological rather than theological, in the sense that they seem much more willing to claim that they worship the same Christ as Christians do (whether we agree with them on that or not) than to claim that Christian churches have authority that is somehow absent from the LDS church.

Worshiping Christ versus taking about which churches have Christ's authority are two very different things.

For example, Catholics acknowledge Baptists as Christian, worshipping the same Christ, but do not believe a Baptist priest as the authority to conduct Mass.

 

[dzheremi]

Yes indeed. That's my point. That's why I wrote that, to communicate to Phoebe Ann that a Mormon or Mormons in general may believe that we worship the same Christ but still believe that we need to be Mormons for other (ecclesiological) reasons.

 

[1stcenturylady]

That would be very unusual. THere's only like 6 hymns specifically about Joseph Smith of the ~350 hymns in the book.

(Cool avatar photo, bytheway).

Well, you would know more about how many than I do. I only went once, and it was about Joseph Smith. But the tune was familiar, and the original is all about Christ. They changed the words.

avatar: I love raccoons. I've had a mother raccoon under my shed for about 7 years, and I've fed her. Each year she brings her babies. About three years ago I started seeing if I could feed the babies by holding a cup of food, and they did. This year this new crop are eating out of my hand. There are four this year and it is so cute to see them all standing in a row leaning on the glass door to the deck. I open the door, and they all fall into the house. So cute. I'm Charismatic, so the avatar depicts Pentecostal raccoons praising the Lord!

 

[BigDaddy4]

Yes indeed. That's my point. That's why I wrote that, to communicate to Phoebe Ann that a Mormon or Mormons in general may believe that we worship the same Christ but still believe that we need to be Mormons for other (ecclesiological) reasons.

Except that in 1998, the former lds prophet Gordon Hinckley confirmed that the lds believe in a different Jesus.

"In bearing testimony of Jesus Christ, President Hinckley spoke of those outside the Church who say Latter-day Saints 'do not believe in the traditional Christ.' '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. He together with His Father, appeared to the boy Joseph Smith in the year 1820, and when Joseph left the grove that day, he knew more of the nature of God than all the learned ministers of the gospel of the ages.'" (LDS Church News Week ending June 20, 1998, p. 7).

So for an lds layperson to say they worship the same Jesus as Christianity is either not the truth or they are in disagreement with their prophet for which they are supposed to sustain.

 

[dzheremi]

Well yeah...

I'm trying to put things in the way I've actually heard Mormons on here put it, though, which is usually not that they worship the true Christ while we worship a false one, but rather that they are in the true church while we are not. (Which, of course, in this ecclesiological setup begs the question how the untrue church/es -- being, as the Mormon sources put it, "the church of Satan", following 1 Nephi 14 -- would therefore somehow worship the true Christ, hence the rest of that post about the theological differences between Mormonism and Christianity which Mormons are loathe to discuss, because it hurts their claim about both Mormons and Christians worshiping the same Christ.)

 

[Jane_Doe]

Except that in 1998, the former lds prophet Gordon Hinckley confirmed that the lds believe in a different Jesus.

"In bearing testimony of Jesus Christ, President Hinckley spoke of those outside the Church who say Latter-day Saints 'do not believe in the traditional Christ.' '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. He together with His Father, appeared to the boy Joseph Smith in the year 1820, and when Joseph left the grove that day, he knew more of the nature of God than all the learned ministers of the gospel of the ages.'" (LDS Church News Week ending June 20, 1998, p. 7).

So for an lds layperson to say they worship the same Jesus as Christianity is either not the truth or they are in disagreement with their prophet for which they are supposed to sustain.

The OP here asked about the Biblical Jesus.
The quote you bring up is talking about the Traditional (aka Creedal) Christ. Two different things.

If you wish to move the goal posts and ask "Hey, Mormons, do you believe in the Christ as revealed in post-Biblical documents?" that's a different subject.

 

[Jane_Doe]

Well yeah...

I'm trying to put things in the way I've actually heard Mormons on here put it, though, which is usually not that they worship the true Christ while we worship a false one, but rather that they are in the true church while we are not. (Which, of course, in this ecclesiological setup begs the question how the untrue church/es -- being, as the Mormon sources put it, "the church of Satan", following 1 Nephi 14 -- would therefore somehow worship the true Christ, hence the rest of that post about the theological differences between Mormonism and Christianity which Mormons are loathe to discuss, because it hurts their claim about both Mormons and Christians worshiping the same Christ.)

You don't worship in the church of Satan. That's not a physical building/organization. And insomuch as your beliefs come from scripture I celebrate them-- most of all your love of Christ.

 

[Rescued One]

I take the LDS claims to be ecclesiological rather than theological, in the sense that they seem much more willing to claim that they worship the same Christ as Christians do (whether we agree with them on that or not) than to claim that Christian churches have authority that is somehow absent from the LDS church.

So I don't really think there's much of a contradiction here, necessarily, though I would certainly advise against joining Mormonism in any form for both theological and ecclesiological reasons.

It seems much more fruitful to me to ask them why or how it is that they see fit to identify their Jesus figure with the Christ of traditional Christianity if traditional Christianity fell so far into apostasy that it was completely taken from the world. How is it that such an apostasy would not negatively affect their theology to the point of warping their idea of who or what Christ is, such that it is not appropriate to identify your God with theirs? If you look at Christian history, anyway, while there were a great many schisms in the early centuries related to disciplinary ecclesiastical matters (i.e., which did not really touch on theology so much as on the running of the Church), such as the quartodeciman controversy or the controversy concerning the 'lapsi' and the Novatianists (and later Donatists in North Africa), nearly all the ones that still affect us today -- because they created separate communions or communities which still remain with us until now -- were either theological or had major theological aspects which help keep them alive: the schism between the Nestorians/East Syrians/Persians and the rest of the Church following the Council of Ephesus in 431 (regarding the nature of Christ); the schism between those who accepted the Tome of Leo and those who didn't following the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (again, regarding the nature of Christ); the controversy involving the monothelites and the dyothelites which led to the third Council of Constantinople in 681 (historically, their embrace of monothelitism is what led the Maronites -- a particular group of Syriac Christians native to Syria and Lebanon who have been in union with Rome since the Crusader times and today form the Maronite Catholic Church, the largest Christian community in Lebanon -- into isolation relative to the larger Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christian communities), etc.

It just seems weird to me to say "You guys are in complete apostasy, but yeah, we worship the same god as you do." Again, it is possible to have great disagreement without necessarily having a change in theology, but it's not very common. Generally speaking, when one group leaves/is kicked out of communion, it includes a charge of some kind of violation of previously-held theology. Not to mention the obvious fact that if what was supposedly revealed to Joseph Smith and his successors regarding the nature of God is what is in fact true, then quite logically they ought not say that we worship the same God, since we don't affirm the theology that is unique to Mormonism, and obviously they have 'revelations from God' that ought not be compromised on for any reason. Unless the Mormon god(s) reveal to them theological truths that he/they also tell them they may compromise on if it gets everyone to play together nicely.

Hmm...that's not something the Christian God does...

Joseph Smith called the Trinity a monster.

 

[Rescued One]

Well, you would know more about how many than I do. I only went once, and it was about Joseph Smith. But the tune was familiar, and the original is all about Christ. They changed the words.

avatar: I love raccoons. I've had a mother raccoon under my shed for about 7 years, and I've fed her. Each year she brings her babies. About three years ago I started seeing if I could feed the babies by holding a cup of food, and they did. This year this new crop are eating out of my hand. There are four this year and it is so cute to see them all standing in a row leaning on the glass door to the deck. I open the door, and they all fall into the house. So cute. I'm Charismatic, so the avatar depicts Pentecostal raccoons praising the Lord!

Ha ha! We fed some mallard ducks and put out a pan of water for them. They came back every spring and quacked at our front door until we came out.

 

[Rescued One]

I only went with her just once. So I don't know if ALL the songs were about Joseph Smith, but they were that day. I was shocked.

The reason why I questioned "me" is because it wasn't capitalized. I thought you may be pointing to someone other than Jesus, and emphasized that fact with an underline.

My bad. I was typing it with a lower case letter because the Bible didn't use an upper case M. BTW, I edited my post because I wasn't clear.

 

[Rescued One]

The OP here asked about the Biblical Jesus.
The quote you bring up is talking about the Traditional (aka Creedal) Christ. Two different things.

If you wish to move the goal posts and ask "Hey, Mormons, do you believe in the Christ as revealed in post-Biblical documents?" that's a different subject.

The Nicene Creed is Biblical.