Mormon Coffee

The LDS Church embraces four volumes as scripture: the Bible, the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price. Following are ten statements from Mormon sources explaining how the LDS Church and its members view the Bible.

“I believe the Bible as it read when it came from the pen of the original writers. Ignorant translators, careless transcribers, or designing and corrupt priests have committed many errors” (Prophet Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p.327).

“Many versions of the Bible are available today. Unfortunately, no original manuscripts of any portion of the Bible are available for comparison to determine the most accurate version. However, the Lord has revealed clearly the doctrines of the gospel in these latter days. The most reliable way to measure the accuracy of any biblical passage is not by comparing different texts, but by comparison with the Book of Mormon and modern-day revelations” (Presidents Ezra Taft Benson, Gordon B. Hinckley, and Thomas Monson, “Letter Reaffirms use of King James Version Bible,” Church News, June 20, 1992, p.3).

“The words contained in this Bible are merely a history of what is gone by; it was never given to guide the servant of God in the course he should pursue, any more than the words and commandments of God, given to a generation under one set of circumstances, would serve for another generation under another set of circumstances. There must be something to suggest or to draw forth the command to answer the circumstance under which we are placed at the time” (Apostle Orson Hyde, October 6, 1854, Journal of Discourses 2:75).

“…who in his right mind, could for one moment, believe the Bible in its present form to be a perfect guide? Who knows that even one verse has escaped pollution, so as to convey the same sense now that it did in the original?” (Apostle Orson Pratt, Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mormon, p.47.)

“As all informed persons know, the various versions of the Bible do not accurately record or perfectly preserve the words, thoughts, and intents of the original inspired authors” (Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p.383).

“The Book of Mormon has been, is now, and will forever remain secure in the hands of the servants of the Lord, for which we are immeasurably grateful. But with the Bible it was not and is not so. It is now in the hands of intellectuals and unbelievers and ministers whose delight it is to twist and pervert its doctrines and to spiritualize away the plain meanings of all its important parts. And it once was in the sole and exclusive care and custody of an abominable organization, founded by the devil himself, likened prophetically unto a great whore, whose great aim and purpose was to destroy the souls of men in the name of religion” (Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, “The Doctrinal Restoration,” p. 12; quoted in Monte S. Nyman, Robert Millet, ed., Joseph Smith Translation: The Restoration of Plain and Precious Things).

“The Latter-day Saint use of the Bible differs from the Judeo-Christian norm because it is not the sole LDS source of authority (see Scripture: Authority of Scripture). The Bible is interpreted and understood by Latter-day Saints through four important means: (1) other LDS scriptures, which enrich and give perspective to an understanding of biblical teachings; (2) statements of modern prophets and apostles on the meaning of some biblical passages; (3) the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible; and (4) personal revelation through the gift of the Holy Ghost enhancing the comprehension of the scriptures. Consequently, Latter-day Saints are not left without information about the meaning of many difficult passages that have divided the entire Christian world for two millennia” (Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 1:107).

“During the Dark Ages—during the Black Millennium, if you, will—even the Bible that now is was kept from the people. Many is the martyr who suffered death by fire for reading or possessing biblical manuscripts. The translation and publication of the scriptural word was opposed with satanic fury in that day. For the present the devil has lost that round. Today he centers his powers on denying the authenticity of the scriptures and using them to prove such false doctrines as that God is a Spirit or that we are saved by grace alone without works” (Monte S. Nyman and Robert L. Millet, ed., The Joseph Smith Translation: The Restoration of Plain and Precious Things, BYU, p.13).

“The final contribution of the Prophet to our understanding of the Apocalypse is in the actual work he did on the text of Revelation as part of his inspired translation of the Bible. As was noted above, he deleted from, added to or changed a total of ninety verses. Obviously, not every one of those changes are of equal significance. The committee that worked on the LDS edition of the King James Version included changes for only forty-seven of the ninety verses, or just slightly better than half of the total changes.” (Monte S. Nyman, Robert Millet, ed., The Joseph Smith Translation: The Restoration of Plain and Precious Things, BYU, p.258).

“The infallibility of the Bible is a fundamental doctrine among Bible cultists, though by their own admission they cannot find a book, chapter, or verse within the Bible to sustain this doctrine. Infallibility and mortality are incompatible. We no more have infallible books than we have infallible men. Such a belief quickly leads to the ridiculous” (Joseph Fielding McConkie, Gospel Symbolism, p.232).

Comments (16)

Since 1981 the Introduction to the Book of Mormon has stated,

“The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible. It is a record of God’s dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas and contains, as does the Bible, the fulness of the everlasting Gospel.”

Recently the Introduction was changed; among other things, the words “as does the Bible” have been removed. This change is consistent with the teaching of LDS Apostle Boyd K. Packer found in an article which appeared in the March 2008 issue of the Ensign magazine. In “Who Is Jesus Christ?” Mr. Packer stated, “Nephi testified that the Bible once ‘contained the fullness of the gospel of the Lord, of whom the twelve apostles bear record’” but later the “great and abominable church” took away many “plain and most precious” parts of the gospel (Ensign, March 2008, 16).

The above reference to the teaching of Nephi in the Book of Mormon has been a component of LDS doctrine since the Church’s inception. LDS prophets and apostles have preached continuously that the Bible has been corrupted and much truth lost from the original text. This LDS view of a corrupted Bible is now and has always been a major concern among Christians. The idea that the Bible is missing parts of the LDS Gospel is nothing new or shocking; but with this recent change to the Book of Mormon Introduction, the incongruity of the pre-changed text is brought to the forefront.

The Introduction was originally written for a new edition of the Triple Combination (one volume which contains the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price) published in 1981. The new edition of the scriptures was heralded as “the product of years of research and inspired direction.” * One wonders, therefore, how the inaccurate claim that the Bible contains the fullness of the everlasting Gospel came to be included in the first place. It certainly did not reflect the true teachings or doctrine of the LDS Church, yet it remained in the Book of Mormon Introduction for about 25 years.

Why?

———–

* Edward J. Brandt, “Using the New LDS Editions of Scripture—As One Book,” Ensign, October 1982, 42

Comments (74)

The March 2008 issue of Tabletalk included a good article on Jesus’ words found in Matthew 7:21-23. The article is here reprinted with permission.

——————————————————————-

The Most Frightening Words

by Tom Ascol

As Jesus draws His Sermon on the Mount to a close, He makes one of the most frightening statements to be found in Scripture. Martyn Lloyd-Jones calls His declaration the most solemn and solemnizing words ever uttered in this world.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart form me, you workers of lawlessness’” (Matt. 7:21-23).

It is hard to imagine anything more devastating than to hear the meek and lowly Jesus Christ utter these words to people who were expecting to be welcomed into heaven by Him. These are people who have been deceived. They lived their lives believing a lie.

Think about the kind of people Jesus describes here. They are not irreligious. They call Jesus “Lord.” They know the lingo and even make a proper profession about Christ. Furthermore, they have been very active in the practice of their religion. They have been preachers, exorcists, and miracle workers, and they did all of their religious works in the name of Jesus.

On that fateful day, however, neither their religious fervor nor their activities will save them. They have deceived themselves into believing that they know Christ, but in reality they have missed Him. They profess to having a saving relationship with Him. He professes never to have known them. And Jesus’ profession is the one that ultimately matters.

Self-deception is an insidious condition. You will never meet a person who knows he is self-deceived. By definition, those ensnared are completely unaware that they are.

This is why God gives us so many warnings to be careful in our walk through this world (Acts 13:40-41; 2 Peter 3:17; Heb. 3:12, etc.). It really is a dangerous journey.

John Bunyan graphically depicts this in the final scene of The Pilgrim’s Progress. After describing the glorious reception that the king gave Christian and Hopeful into the Celestial City, Bunyan describes the outcome of the character he called “Ignorance.”

His name is not a commentary on his intellect but on his lack of understanding of the true way of salvation. Earlier in the story we learn the Ignorance is quite confident that he will make it to heaven because, as he says, “I know my Lord’s will and have been a good liver; I pay every man his own; I pray, fast, pay tithes, and give alms.” Furthermore, he speaks freely of Christ and says that he often thinks of God and heaven and genuinely desires to go to them.

Despite Christian’s and Hopeful’s best efforts, they are unable to dissuade Ignorance from his confidence, ill-founded though it is. He has not been born again. He is not trusting Christ alone to justify him before God. Thus he is not living by faith in obedience to God’s commands.

So in that final scene that takes place at the very threshold of heaven, Ignorance’s self-deception is exposed when he is not allowed to enter. The king has him bound hand and foot and taken away. “Then,” Bunyan writes, “I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven.”

That is the very point that Jesus makes in the Sermon on the Mount. Why does our Lord speak these frightening words? Is it simply to scare us? Is it to make us worry about our salvation or keep us from assurance?

No. It is to warn us and to spur us on to “make our calling and election sure” (2 Peter 1:10). It is to motivate us to “examine ourselves to see whether you are in the faith (2 Cor. 13:5). Jesus speaks these words not to rob us of joy but to help insure that we do not miss the joy that comes from knowing Him savingly.

At the end of the day, what matters is not a profession of religious zeal and activity. What matters is that we are known – savingly known – by Jesus Christ.

Those who know Christ and are known by Christ follow Him by obeying His commandments. They don’t obey in order to be right with Him, but because they have been declared to be right with Him.

This, after all, is the basis on which the Lord will make His shattering pronouncement on the Day of Judgment. Heaven is reserved for those who do the will of God. Those who do not do His will will be exposed as “workers of lawlessness” and, despite their religious professions, will be removed from His presence forever.

It is a great kindness that our Lord speaks so plainly to us in His Word. We are without excuse. He warns us of self-deception and instructs us in the way to avoid it. He speaks frightening truth in order to save.

Dr. Tom Ascol is pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, and executive director of Founders Ministries.

—–

Reprinted from Tabletalk, March 2008, volume 32, number 3. Used by permission of Ligonier Ministries, home of Renewing Your Mind.

Comments (61)

Back in April (2007) LDS Apostle M. Russell Ballard talked in General Conference about “The Miracle of the Holy Bible.” He spoke highly of the Bible, expressing his love for “its teachings, its lessons, and its spirit.” In his Sunday morning talk he said,

“How grateful we should be for the Holy Bible. In it we learn not only of the life and teachings and doctrines of Christ, we learn of His Church and of His priesthood and of the organization which He established and named the Church of Jesus Christ in those former days…

“Without the Bible, we would not know of His Church then, nor would we have the fulness of His gospel now” (Ensign, May 2007, page 81).

Shortly after Mr. Ballard’s address, the morning Conference session drew to a close. When the afternoon session began, LDS Apostle L. Tom Perry took the stand and spoke on “The Message of the Restoration.” He said,

“Our message is unique. We declare to the world that the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored to the earth” (Ensign, May 2007, page 88).

Indeed, Mr. Perry identified the medium through which the fulness of the gospel was restored: The Book of Mormon.

“…the Lord brought forth the Book of Mormon, another testament of our Lord Jesus Christ. This ancient volume of holy scriptures is a sacred companion to the Bible, containing the fulness of the everlasting gospel of Jesus Christ. It also provides convincing evidence to the world that Joseph Smith is truly a prophet of God” (Ensign, May 2007, page 86).

The question arises, then: Which of these men, both of whom Latter-day Saints sustain as prophets, seers and revelators, was correct in his teaching at the April General Conference?

Mr. Ballard taught that the Bible is necessary in order for the fulness of the gospel to be present on earth today. He could have meant that the Bible contains the fulness of the gospel (as the Introduction to the Book of Mormon affirms), or he could have meant that the Bible and the Book of Mormon together contain the fulness of the gospel. Either way, his teaching was not consistent with what Mr. Perry taught.

Mr. Perry taught that the Bible does not contain the fulness of the gospel. Though the world has long had access to the Bible, the fulness of the gospel was missing; it needed to be restored — which it was, through the Book of Mormon. Mr. Perry taught that the Book of Mormon, by itself, contains the fulness of the gospel (which is also consonant with the Introduction to the Book of Mormon).

Though the two LDS apostles didn’t agree with each other, Mr. Perry’s talk expressed the majority view found among leaders in the LDS Church. Consider a few pertinent statements from the past:

“Because of the New Testament, Joseph Smith was inspired to pray. And because he prayed, the gospel was restored in its fulness and we now have the Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ” (Charles Didier [then general president of LDS Sunday School], Church News, 1/7/95, page 3).

“…the Book of Mormon remains secure, unchanged and unchangeable, …But with the Bible it was not and is not so…it was once in the sole and exclusive care and custody of an abominable organization, founded by the devil himself, likened prophetically unto a great whore, whose great aim and purpose was to destroy the souls of men in the name of religion. In these hands it ceased to be the book it once was…our present Bible contains only a fraction of the holy word that once was compiled with and included in it as the acceptable word of the Lord” (Bruce McConkie, The Joseph Smith Translation, The Restoration of Plain and Precious Things, pages 12, 13, 16).

“This Jewish Bible was deliberately altered by the great and abominable Gentile church, which took ‘many plain and most precious parts,’ and ‘many covenants,’ and much gospel out of the book (1 Nephi 13:27). The alterations were done early, for it was after the Bible was altered that it went ‘to all the nations of the Gentiles’ (1 Nephi 13:29). …To rescue the world from this spiritual blindness, the Lord [brought] forth the Book of Mormon and other books to ‘make known the plain and precious things that have been taken away’ from the Bible (1 Nephi 13:35-40)” (Church News, 11/8/2003, page 5, report on the BYU Sidney B. Sperry Symposium on the Scriptures).

It is clear that, according to Mormonism, the Bible is lacking the fulness of the gospel. Notwithstanding Mr. Ballard’s praise for this volume of scripture, for many LDS leaders the Bible takes second place to the Book of Mormon — if not third or fourth.

In this one thing I agree with Mr. Ballard: We should be grateful for the Holy Bible. For in truth, it is God’s Word to us,

Living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Hebrews 4:12).

Comments (43)

Eric and I had an interesting conversation on Sunday, October 7th, over Skype with a Mormon named Jason who lives in Utah. He runs a web site dedicated to Joseph Smith and is a committed Mormon. We talked among other things about the nature of God, eternal progression, and marriage. Our discussion on marriage brought out something I thought was worth sharing. We spoke to Jason about the views of Paul and Jesus on marriage, specifically on it being better, if possible, to remain single than to get married (cf. 1 Corinthians 7 and Matthew 19:9-12). Eric asked Jason what he thought of Paul’s teaching and how he thought these passages might fit into the Mormon worldview (which not only values marriage but also centralizes it to the point of being mandatory for all who can enter into it). Jason was apparently unprepared for this question, especially over Paul’s admonition to remain single for the sake of single-minded devotion to God. It’s quite OK that Jason hadn’t considered 1 Corinthians 7. We weren’t simply trying to score “aha, gotchya!” points. We were trying to talk reasonably about the implications of scripture, hoping that the Holy Spirit would make an impact through it.

Jason’s response is worth sharing. After some thought he literally said, “Well, down with Paul, and up with Joseph!” Jason went on to say that he would take the “modern-day revelations” of the restoration “any day” over the letters of a “guy dead for two thousand years.” Jason then went on to suggest that 1 Corinthians could in fact be pseudepigrapha, which is, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, “spurious writings, especially writings falsely attributed to biblical characters or times.” In other words, he suggested that 1 Corinthians might be falsely attributed to Paul and really written by an impostor. What surprised me wasn’t the substance of the response but the forthright, raw, and blunt manner with which he expressed it.

Technically speaking, evangelical Christians agree that the Bible as we have it today is God’s word “as far as it is translated correctly,” but the problem is that this phrase is loaded in Mormonism with extra meaning. Lay Mormons identify the phrase as associated with the idea that crucial books originally destined for New Testament canon were taken out and are now missing, that the original content of the New Testament was significantly and even fatally corrupted almost from the beginning, that the text wasn’t reliably-preserved over the past two milleniums, and that today’s translations are overly dependent on prior translations, even resulting in the classic end-mess of a “telephone game.” Appealing to the supposed unreliability of the Bible often functions as a defense mechanism for Mormons.

It’s not uncommon for me to hear Mormons contrast “modern day revelation” with the writings of “dead men” in the Bible. As Eztra Taft Benson taught, “The living prophet is more vital to us than the Standard Works.” (>>) This frequently affirms for me something I have long claimed as prevalent in Mormonism. Mormons seem to have a very low view of the inspiration of scripture. That it was written by men who are now “dead” is used in a way that betrays a lack of belief in the dual-authorship of scripture. I believe that the Bible was and is inspired by God, communicating the voice and mind and authority of God himself, what God is saying and telling. Mormons tends to write off the Bible at convenient places, appealing to its human authorship as though that settled the matter. If a portion of scripture wasn’t ultimately authored by God himself, then it doesn’t have the binding authority and seriousness that it might otherwise have. For Jason, the best recourse for dealing with 1 Corinthians which seemed to contradict “modern-day revelation” was to question the integrity of 1 Corinthians.

Any evangelical who frequently witnesses to Mormons (both friends and strangers) will affirm that this kind of thought process is common among Mormons. It’s less than desirable that I would simply have to make this general claim from collective experiences of evangelicals who interact with Mormons. I would rather point to clear examples of the thinking in church-published curriculum. But apologists usually polish it up and Mormon leadership would never speak this kind of thinking with bluntness. But it’s deeply embedded throughout Mormonism, and I can testify to that on account of numerous interactions. Beyond the passing verbal tributes of LDS leaders to how much they “love” the Bible and find it “precious” and “the word of God,” Mormonism cultivates a very low view of it. It is essentially treated as dispensable whenever it is perceived to contradict what “modern-day revelation” has provided. Officially, Mormonism says that the Bible doesn’t contradict Mormon doctrine. Unofficially, the notion is cultivated that even if Mormonism does contradict what the Bible teaches, that’s quite OK since we can’t trust the Bible anyway like we can trust the products of the Mormon restoration.

Receiving Paul’s letters as the word of God (cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:13),

Aaron

Comments (39)

I was recently reading in The Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith — History regarding the events leading up to Joseph Smith’s First Vision. As Joseph told the story, he talked about his confusion over which church was correct in the things they taught. Or, he wondered, were they all wrong? Joseph said all the different “religionists” were “endeavoring to establish their own tenets and disprove all others” (1:9). He found himself in the midst of a “war of words and tumult of opinions” (1:10). He wrote,

“…unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible” (1:12).

Yet appeal to the Bible he did. Joseph said when he came across James 1:5,

“Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know,… At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs…So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt” (1:12-14).

Joseph had the idea that his spiritual questions could not be settled by an appeal to the Bible due to the propensity of men to interpret the text in different (incorrect) ways, but for some reason he believed he could correctly and adequately interpret James 1:5. It was Joseph’s personal interpretation of this verse from the Bible that sent him into the woods to ask God which church he should join.

But Joseph fell victim to his own fears. He did not correctly interpret James 1:5, and so he looked for his answers in the grove, rather than in God’s Word.

The context of James 1:5 places James’ instructions for seeking wisdom into a very specific situation. James wrote:

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (James 1:2-5).

Here James was writing to encourage Christians who were in the midst of suffering intense persecutions for their faith. Against all human wisdom, James told them they were to joyfully recognize their trials as beneficial to their faith. If they had trouble understanding how this could be, James said, they were to ask God for the wisdom to understand His plan in their suffering. Christian theologian John Calvin (1509-1564) commented on this passage:

“As our reason, and all our feelings are averse to the thought that we can be happy in the midst of evils, he bids us to ask the Lord to give us wisdom. For wisdom here, I confine to the subject of the passage, as though he had said, ‘If this doctrine is higher than what your minds can reach to, ask of the Lord to illuminate you by his Spirit; for as this consolation alone is sufficient to mitigate all the bitterness of evils, that what is grievous to the flesh is salutary to us; so we must necessarily be overcome with impatience, except we be sustained by this kind of comfort.’ Since we see that the Lord does not so require from us what is above our strength, but that he is ready to help us, provided we ask, let us, therefore, learn, whenever he commands anything, to ask of him the power to perform it” (Calvin’s Commentaries XXII::281-2).

Joseph Smith decided that the Bible could not provide answers to his questions. Though the Bible is the very Word of God, though God commands us to “Be diligent to present [ourselves] approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15), and though God confirms “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17), Joseph disregarded it all.

Having the form of godliness, Joseph did make “an appeal to the Bible.” He chose a verse, removed it from its context, and subsequently pursued a course not supported by scripture. Joseph sought answers apart from God’s revealed Word and in due time came to fulfill the woeful role of false prophet.

Comments (47)