Is Mormonism’s Jesus the Biblical Jesus

Previous Article

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now emphasizes the fact that they believe in Jesus Christ and they are therefore Christians. They do believe in a “Jesus Christ,” but is He the Jesus of the Bible? The biblical Jesus said, “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets….” And the apostle Paul told the Corinthian Christians that he was afraid if someone came preaching “another Jesus”, they would be deceived in the same way Eve was deceived by the ser­pent (2 Cor. 11:3-4). He didn’t think they could tell the difference between the true Jesus and a false one. Many who call themselves Christians today can’t tell the true Christ from a false one. Mormonism is among several religious organizations that teach things about Jesus that are not in the Bible. (For any who want to check the references in this article, LDS Apostle Bruce R. McConkie’s book entitled Mormon Doctrine is frequently used and abbreviated as “MD.”)

The Bible teaches that Jesus is eternally God in John 1:1; Hebrews 1:8; and Philippians 2:6. But LDS leaders teach that “Jesus became a God and reached His great state of understanding through consistent effort and continuous obedi­ence to all the Gospel truths and universal laws” (The Gospel Through The Ages, p. 51).

Mormonism also teaches that in a pre-mortal spirit world, Jesus was the first spirit baby born to Eloheim, who is God the Father and His unnamed wife (MD, pp. 84, 392). Jesus was named Jehovah in the pre-mortal spirit world. After His birth in the pre-mortal spirit world, Jesus’ brother, Lucifer, was born to our Heav­enly Father and Mother (MD, p. 192), and then all people who have lived or will ever live, were born as Jesus’ pre-mortal spirit brothers and sisters (MD, p. 84, 278). “By obedience and devotion to the truth He (Christ) attained that pinnacle of intelligence which ranked Him as a God, as the Lord Omnipotent, while yet in His pre-existent (pre-mortal) state” (MD, p. 129).

But McConkie also said, “Celestial marriage itself is an order of the priest­hood… If a man gets the fulness of the priesthood of God, he has to get it in the same way that Jesus Christ obtained it, and that was by keeping all the com­mandments and obeying all the ordinances of the house of the Lord,” which is an LDS temple (MD, p. 482). Unless there is an LDS temple in the pre-mortal spirit world (and Mormons say there isn’t), how could Christ gain the fulness of the priesthood required to become a God there?

Mormons teach that our Heavenly Father, Eloheim, is a resurrected, glorified man with a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s (MD, pp. 321, 742; Doctrine & Covenants 130:22) and our Heavenly Mother is also a resurrected, glorified woman with a body just like Eloheim’s. So, how did their resurrected bodies of flesh and bones produce spirit babies instead of babies with tangible bodies like their own? Any life reproduces its own kind of life.

Mormonism teaches that Christ was not begotten here on earth by the Holy Ghost, but by the same immortal Heavenly Father who fathered Him as a baby spirit in the pre-mortal spirit world. They do not explain how Eloheim’s immortal body fathered Jesus as a spirit baby in the pre-mortal world and then as a mortal baby with flesh and bones here on earth. But they teach that He and the Virgin Mary were involved in a “marriage” relationship to produce the physical body of Jesus here on earth and the designation “Son of God” means that Christ was literally fathered by Eloheim (MD, pp. 85, 546-547, 742, 822; The Seer, pp. 158- 159). Mormonism also teaches that Mary was a spirit daughter of Eloheim in the pre-mortal world and then she became His “wife” here on earth in order to pro­create the baby Jesus (MD, p. 471).

But the Bible clearly teaches that Mary conceived Christ by the Holy Spirit in Matthew 1:18, 20 and in Luke 1:35 and He was called the Son of God. The Book of Mormon even agrees with the Bible when it says that Mary would conceive Jesus “by the power of the Holy Ghost” in Alma 7:10. But the same verse also says that Jesus “shall be born of Mary at Jerusalem.” The Bible, however, says that Christ was born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:1; Luke 2:4).

During His earthly life and death, the biblical Christ never harmed anyone, not even the money changers that He drove out of the temple in John 2:15. When the Samaritans didn’t receive Jesus on His way to Jerusalem, James and John wanted to call fire down on them like Elijah did on two different companies of fifty men and their captains in 2 Kings 1:10-12. But Jesus rebuked James and John and said, “The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (Luke 9:56). Even during the earthquakes at the time of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, no one was killed.

However, in the Book of Mormon, 3 Nephi chapters eight and nine tell a very different story of what happened when Christ died on the cross at Jerusalem. It says at least 16 cities were completely destroyed along with all of their inhabit­ants here in the Americas! And in 3 Nephi 9:1-15 “Jesus Christ” repeatedly claims that He destroyed all of those people and their cities! The same chapters also claim that terrible earthquakes shook the whole earth and changed the face of it and that there were three days of thick or intense darkness that covered the whole land! The Bible tells of only three hours of darkness in the Jerusalem area when Christ died and there is no mention of any great destruction (Luke 23:44).

Why did the death of “Jesus Christ” cause so much death and destruction inAmerica according to the Book of Mormon, yet the Bible reports nothing like that in Israel where He was actually rejected and crucified? Obviously, the Jesus described in this Book of Mormon passage as well as the Jesus described by Mormons in this article is not the Jesus of the Bible. The biblical Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh to the Father but by me” (John 14:6). So, no other “Jesus,” including the one described by Mormons, will lead to eternal life with God.

Those who want to read more about the LDS view of Christ can do so in chapter three of Gospel Principles, published by the LDS Church. Our next article will consider Jesus’ part in our salvation.