Many Christians have a neighbor, a co-worker, or even a relative who is a Mormon. Christians and Mormons in America share many of the same national and community commitments, and generally strive to be loving, kind, respectful and patriotic.
Mormons believe four books were inspired by God: The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, and the Bible. The founder and first prophet of Mormonism authored the three Mormon books. Joseph Smith (1805-1844) claimed he received golden plates from an angel named Moroniin 1827 containing information that was translated into the Book of Mormon.
There are of course many major discrepancies between the Bible and the three Mormon books. Mormonism rejects the Trinity, while also claiming that God was once a man. In addition, Joseph Smith manufactured “another Jesus” (2 Cor. 11:4) who is a created being. In actuality, the “Jesus” of Mormonism does not exist. This imaginary god is a counterfeit Christ that can help no one!
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Mormons essentially place their soul into the hands of Joseph Smith by believing the renegade prophet’s newfangled doctrines. Mormons assume Smith’s writings were inspired by God even though his revelations clearly contradict the Bible. And it wasn’t just Joseph’s doctrine that was aberrant, but his insatiable appetite for sexual immorality.
Joseph Smith had up to 40 wives, including 10 teenagers and 11 women taken from living husbands. Smith’s behavior was as deviant as the imprisoned cult leader and polygamist Warren Jeffs with his 78 wives. The second president of the Mormon organization was Brigham Young, who followed Joseph’s licentious example by having 56 wives.
No one should hold Mormons today responsible for the sins of their founder, especially since the Mormon church began prohibiting polygamy in 1890. But what Mormons are culpable for today is choosing to surrender their soul to the pernicious doctrines introduced by a wolf in Mormon clothing.
Joseph Smith’s “first known affair was with a 16-year-old teenager named Fanny Alger who was living with Smith and his first wife Emma in their Kirtland, Ohio, home.” Smith “further cemented his reputation for fooling around by making moves on a then-married teenager, Zina D. Hunington, whom he asked on October 25, 1841 to become another one of his multiple wives. Smith informed her (using a line he also employed with Emma and others) that he was ordered to do so by a sword-wielding angel who was threatening to kill him if he disobeyed.” Joseph Smith’s “moves to seduce other men’s wives were so brazen and notorious that they led one distraught husband, Orson Pratt, to attempt suicide in Nauvoo, Illinois, on July 14, 1842.”
Imagine the Apostle Paul engaging in sexual sin with several single women, let alone a bevy of married women and teenagers. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit would never have used an unrepentant, sexually immoral individual to write a single New Testament letter, let alone the 13 or 14 epistles written by Paul.
While God never endorsed polygamy in the Old Testament, He did surprisingly allow it to take place at times. Nevertheless, polygamists were barred from leadership in the New Testament church (see 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:6). The bottom line? The Apostle Paul would never have allowed a serial adulterer like Joseph Smith to serve as an elder in a New Testament congregation.
Imagine if Joseph Smith belonged to the church in Corinth. Paul taught the Corinthian Christians how to discipline anyone in the church who was sexually immoral and unrepentant: “Expel the wicked man from among you” (see 1 Corinthians 5:9-13). St. Paul would have made sure that Joseph Smith was kicked out of the congregation.
Compare the spiritual darkness within Joseph Smith’s soul to the light of the New Testament which instructs believers to “keep the marriage bed pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral” (Hebrews 13:4). Joseph Smith’s selfish agenda to seduce women opened his heart to embrace many false and deceptive doctrines, which in turn have lured millions of young Mormons into spiritual deception. (See the insightful resource, “Ten Lies I Told as a Mormon Missionary.”)
Paul wrote to the young pastor Timothy, “Watch your life and doctrine closely” (1 Timothy 4:16). Joseph Smith’s life and doctrine were diametrically opposed to sexual purity and true doctrine. Christians, and especially Christian leaders, are required to “abstain from sexual immorality” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). Will you believe the inspired and inerrant Word of God, or the fanciful opinions of a wayward prophet who slept around with dozens of women?
Paul wrote, “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18). Any spiritual leader who deliberately and repeatedly devotes his body to sexual sin invites demonic input into his thoughts, writings and revelations.
Mormon historian Richard Bushman says “the ‘signal feature’ of Smith’s life was ‘his sense of being guided by revelation.'” And since Joseph Smith’s life and doctrine violated Scripture so explicitly, he obviously was not getting his revelation from the Holy Spirit. Instead, a dark angel seized upon an ambitious and sexually immoral young man who became an eager medium for “a different Gospel” (Galatians 1:6) and the launching of a new religion.
In my CP op-ed, “Why a Former High Priest Left Mormonism,” Mike Wilder testified that after coming to faith in Christ, “I took off my Mormon garments I had been wearing for 30 years … and I put on a cross at that point … because in 30 years in the LDS church I never heard one sermon about the blood and the cross.”
If you are a Mormon, be assured that God loves you, and the Holy Spirit can introduce you to the real Jesus! Stick with the Bible, and completely disregard Joseph Smith’s deranged doctrines and fanatical tales. Thankfully, many former Mormons have met the real Jesus and been born again through the real Gospel! (see John 3:1-18).
Dan Delzell is the pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Papillion, Nebraska.
