What Mormons Believe

Joseph Smith, Original Mormon

You’ve seen them before. They’re the guys that wear ties and carry their belongings in backpacks and spend their time going to every house they can find. They are Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS for short). They are kind, very dedicated and very sincere (at times more so than Christians). However, how sincere they believe doesn’t change what they teach.

So, the next question is what do they teach? Hang on tight. This gets a bit complicated.  

 

Let’s begin with what Mormons believe about God. First they don’t believe God has always been God. In fact they teach that God used to be a man on a completely different world far from this one. According to Mormon teaching, he became a god by following all the laws and ordinances that was put in place in his home world by, get this, another god. The god of this world also had a wife on his home world. When he became the god of this world she came along, basically making her a goddess.

 

Right now, as the god of this world, he (and his wife) has a body of flesh and bones. After all, that’s all they used to be. Now they are both in an exalted state of deity and as such they have produced spirit children. You can probably guess who Mormons say is the first of their children; it’s Jesus. God produced everyone else after Jesus, including Lucifer. That’s right! Jesus and Lucifer are brothers!  

 

All the rest of us were born only spiritually at first. We exist as spirits until we enter the body of a human baby and are born on this earth. Mormons call the move from spirit to baby “compression.” Our memory of everything before our birth is simply “veiled.” 

 

From this point on we have to remember who we are talking about when we mention “the Father” and his sons Jesus and Lucifer because it is with them that the story for our world begins.

 

The father, worried about the eternal salvation of all of his children here on earth, came up with a plan to save them. Here we take a detour. Jesus approved of the plan and wanted to be a part of it. Lucifer, on the other hand, did not. He became jealous of the love the father was showing to the people of this world and rebelled. The father then cursed him along with the large number of spirits that had followed the rebellion. The cursed spirits became demons and were barred from every being born human.

 

The rest of the spirits stayed faithful to God.  As a reward for their faithfulness, when it comes time for them to be born on earth, they get are born into races and places that are as good as they had been. The better they were in heaven, the better their situation on earth. 

 

So, let’s get back to the father’s plan for saving the world. Jesus volunteered to be the savior that the people needed. The problem was he was still a spirit. Now it get’s complicated.

 

One of the original leaders of the LDS church who is considered to be a prophet, Brigham Young (hence the university) taught that the father actually came to earth and had a physical relationship with Mary the mother of Jesus, who as we see in Mormon teaching is technically his spirit daughter. That relationship produced the physical body of Jesus. Obviously this is a hard thing to deal with and many Mormons refuse to face the issue at all. But, the fact is this is what Brigham Young taught and the church has never officially denied it.  

 

So, Jesus was born on this earth and grew to be an adult. However, Mormons teach that as an adult Jesus got married, and, you guessed it, had children. According to the LDS, Jesus did die on the cross, but his sacrifice didn’t start or end there. Jesus began to pay for the sins of the world by his suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane.

 

So, where does that leave us? Well, according to Mormonism, we are in the same position that the father was in before he became the god of this world. Lorenzo Snow was the president of the LDS church at the turn of the twentieth century. He put it this way, “As god once was, man is. As God is, man may become.” If we follow the law that he has given, as he followed the law that was given to him as well as accept the salvation that Jesus has provided, we could become the god of our own world. Reaching that point includes consistently giving ten percent of our income to the church, following the rules and ordinances, and being found worthy by the church.

 

Good Mormons then go on to an advanced type of preparation in a recommended temple. They are taught to practice several secret rituals. They learn baptism for the dead, celestial marriage, and even a four secret handshakes with which they are to greet god once they get to the third level of Mormon heaven. No joke! Achieving the highest of the Mormon heavens, the advanced Mormon gets to be the god of his own world.

 

It’s kind of funny to think that all of this is what those two guys are working when they knock on your door.

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