Unveiling Mormonism

What does it mean to be human? What kind of beings are we, and how do we relate to God and everything God made? While Latter-day Saints use many words and phrases familiar to traditional Christianity, the underlying world view of Mormonism is very different from historic, biblical Christian faith. This is seen most dramatically when comparing what the two groups believe about the nature of God and the nature of human beings.

Latter-day Saints believe that all human beings are eternal spirits. We existed before this earthly life as God’s spirit children. In fact, they believe that human beings are uncreated and co-eternal with God. As the LDS scripture Doctrine and Covenants says, “Man was also in the beginning with God'' (93:29). In this view, human beings are not dependent on God for their ultimate existence. As premortal spirits, humans are seen as literal sons and daughters of heavenly parents. In the Pearl of Great Price (Abraham 3:22) we read, “Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones.” Apparently God provided these primordial “intelligences” with spirit bodies in the premortal life.

The Bible teaches, however, that human life and existence begins in this world. Genesis 2:7 states, “Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.” When God made Adam, he did not place an already existing personal spirit into a physical body. Instead, he animated that body with the breath of life. The man’s personal existence as a living being began at that moment.

When Mormons say that human spirits were created by God, they mean that we actually became God’s spirit children in the spirit world, before our birth. The LDS instruction manual Gospel Principles says:

All men and women are literally the sons and daughters of God. ‘Man, as a spirit, was begotten and born of heavenly parents, and reared to maturity in the eternal mansions of the Father, prior to coming upon the earth…’”

To Latter-day Saints, we are related to God in a similar way that children are related to their earthly parents. Hence we were not simply created by God, but “begotten and born” by our heavenly parents (God the Father and his spouse) - although LDS scriptures and prophets have not made explicit exactly how this works.

By contrast, the Bible teaches that being a child of God is not a genetic relationship, but a spiritual one. Human beings become children of God by faith. John 1:12-13 says, “But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.” In other words, only those who trust in Jesus alone as Savior can join God’s eternal family and become children of God. Romans 8:14-16 puts it like this:

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.

Anyone can become a child of God by adoption, when we receive His Spirit at the point of spiritual conversion. That happens in this life, not in some premortal existence.

If people are literal children of God, it follows that we are of the same species as God. The LDS Church website, in an article called “Becoming Like God,” states:

Latter-day Saints see all people as children of God in a full and complete sense; they consider every person divine in origin, nature, and potential. Each has an eternal core and is ‘a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents.’

In Mormon thought, human beings are just as “divine in origin, nature, and potential” as God himself is.

The biblical view of humanity is vastly different. The Bible teaches that humans are finite creatures, not potential deities. Psalm 8:4-5 says, “What are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them? Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.” It’s true that human beings are amazing creatures. Made in the image of God, we bear tremendous glory. We reflect God in important ways. But we are creatures - “mere mortals” who are, in fact, “lower than God.”

God is not an exalted man, and we do not have a divine nature or divine potential. God and humans are two completely different kinds of beings. God is infinite and self-existent. We are finite and dependent on God for our existence.

As this entire article has implied, Mormons believe that humans can become powerful beings that create, populate, and rule worlds just as God did. Gospel Fundamentals, a manual for LDS high school students, describes it like this:

To live in the highest part of the celestial kingdom is called exaltation or eternal life. To be able to live in this part of the celestial kingdom, people must have been married in the temple and must have kept the sacred promises they made in the temple. They will receive everything our Father in Heaven has and will become like Him. They will even be able to have spirit children and make new worlds for them to live on, and do all the things our Father in Heaven has done.”

Sometimes LDS rhetoric softens the implications of this belief by saying that we can become “like” God. They clearly mean, however, that humans (if worthy) are capable of doing “all the things our Father in Heaven has done.” As Joseph Smith declared in the King Follett Discourse: “You have got to learn how to be a god yourself.”

Yet in the Bible’s view, human beings - although made in God’s image - are fallen and spiritually lost. Not only are we finite creatures, but we are sinners in desperate need of God’s mercy to save us. Romans 3:10-11 declares, “As the Scriptures say, ‘No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God.’” Verse 23 adds, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” This more realistic view of human nature is hard to reconcile with the Latter-day Saint idea of divine potential.

Our ultimate authority is God. But how can we know what God is like and what he wants? Both Latter-day Saints and traditional Christians agree that God has revealed himself in written scriptures. But the similarities end there. Let’s take a look at what Mormonism teaches about scripture and revelation compared to the biblical perspective.

The Unveiling Mormonism podcast pulls back the curtain on Mormon history, culture and doctrine. Join us for new episodes every Monday.

Find resources to talk about these episodes at pursueGOD.org/mormonism.

Help others go "full circle" as a follower of Jesus through our 12-week Pursuit series.

Click here to learn more about how to use these resources at home, with a small group, or in a one-on-one discipleship relationship.

Got questions or want to leave a note? Email us at [email protected].

The LDS Church recognizes four standard scriptures: the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price (which includes the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham). As one of four volumes of scripture, then, the Bible alone is not enough for Latter-day Saints. In fact, in the Book of Mormon (2 Nephi 29:10), God describes how more scripture, beyond the Bible, is needed: “Wherefore, because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written.”

For traditional Christians, however, the Bible stands alone. The early Christian church went through an extensive process to discern what writings had the features that validated them as being from God. Many books claiming divine authority did not make the cut. And unlike other books that claim to be scripture, the Bible is well supported by the external evidence of history and archaeology, as well as its internal consistency over thousands of years.

Christians recognize that Jesus, not any book, is God’s final revelation of himself to humanity. Hebrews 1:1 declares, “Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son.” Jesus himself is the highest revelation of God. Yet the Bible is the source by which we know Jesus. It tells us the history of God’s action leading up to his coming. It reveals his life and work. It explains his message and describes how it spread. It details how his people learned to follow him in the practical issues of life. 

Mormons revere the Bible. Yet paradoxically, they also believe that the Bible cannot ultimately be trusted. The Bible Dictionary published by the LDS Church says:

This explains one reason why the Bible is not the final authority for Mormons. They believe it has been changed over time. Errors have crept in. Thus, the Bible can only be understood in light of LDS scriptures and modern prophets. In fact, Joseph Smith undertook a major revision of the Bible called the Joseph Smith Translation (JST), in which he attempted to correct the errors he believed had corrupted the Bible. (For various reasons, the JST is not the official Bible of the LDS Church. Instead, they use the King James Version.) 

By contrast, historic Christianity holds that the Bible has been divinely safeguarded. Latter-day Saints cannot provide any specific example of a text in the Bible where an important truth has been lost, or where intentional corruption has occurred. To the contrary, an abundance of evidence points to the remarkable preservation of the biblical text. 

Consider the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in the 1940s. One of the scrolls is a complete copy of the Book of Isaiah dating to about 200 BC. Before this discovery, the oldest copy of Isaiah was written in the 10th century, over 1,000 years later. When compared, these two documents proved to be amazingly similar. This undermines LDS claims of intentional or unintentional corruption, demonstrating how sophisticated and successful were the copying methods used to accurately transmit the biblical text.

The LDS view of scripture and revelation diverges from historic Christianity in another important respect. Mormons believe that their church is led by modern day prophets who continue to receive direct revelation from God. One of their recent prophets, Spencer W. Kimball, said, “But again we testify to the world that revelation continues and that the vaults and files of the Church contain these revelations which come month to month and day to day.” For example, consider one important example from Kimball’s own tenure as the LDS prophet. From the early years of Mormonism, Black men were not allowed to receive the LDS priesthood. In 1978, Kimball received a revelation changing this policy. 

While most of the revelations received by LDS prophets are not added to the LDS standard scriptures, a few have been and others might yet be. In the Pearl of Great Price, we read, “We believe that [God] will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.”

The Bible never really claims that God will not or cannot ever reveal himself again in formal scripture. Yet we saw in Hebrews 1:1 that the coming of Jesus rendered the old approach to prophetic revelation obsolete: “Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son.” This verse describes two eras of revelation. God revealed himself in the “long ago” era partially and sporadically through prophets. Now, “in these final days,” God has revealed himself through Jesus, the ultimate prophet. Why would we want to go back to an imperfect form of revelation that marked a bygone era, when we now have something greater?

The Bible also makes it clear that any claims of new revelation must be tested against what God has previously revealed. Deuteronomy 13:1-3 outlines the standard: 

Anything a prophet says that leads in a new direction is illegitimate. It doesn’t even matter if the prophet demonstrates supernatural power. If his words lead to a new conception of God previously unknown, that prophet and his teaching must be rejected.

If we want to know God’s character and will, the Bible is perfectly reliable and complete. The additional scriptures and revelations of Mormonism fail the test in many ways, including leading people in a very different direction from what God has already revealed.

What we believe about God is probably the most important thing we can believe. Everything else in a world view starts with our concept of God. So let’s try to understand what Mormonism says about God so we can compare our own beliefs.

The Unveiling Mormonism podcast pulls back the curtain on Mormon history, culture and doctrine. Join us for new episodes every Monday.

Find resources to talk about these episodes at pursueGOD.org/mormonism.

Help others go "full circle" as a follower of Jesus through our 12-week Pursuit series.

Click here to learn more about how to use these resources at home, with a small group, or in a one-on-one discipleship relationship.

Got questions or want to leave a note? Email us at [email protected].

God the Father has not always been God.

According to Latter-day Saint thinking, there was a time when God was not God. Before he became divine, he existed as a mortal human being. Joseph Smith, the founder and first prophet of Mormonism, put it like this in a message called the King Follett Discourse:

God himself was once as we are now…. It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for certainty the Character of God,...that he was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did.

Our Heavenly Father, says Smith, was once human, just like us, and dwelt on some planet much like ours.

Lorenzo Snow, a later LDS prophet, summarized this doctrine in a famous saying: “As man now is, God once was.”  

By contrast, the Bible teaches that God has always been God. Psalm 90:2 declares, “Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from beginning to end, you are God.” Long before anything else existed, God was still God. One translation says, “From everlasting to everlasting, you are God.”

God the Father is an exalted man.

But the being Mormons worship as God did not remain in his mortal human state. Over time, he progressed to become a god.  This is what the word “exalted” means to Mormons: to be exalted is to become like God, with all the powers and prerogatives of God. In the King Follett Discourse, Joseph Smith added: “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!” In other words, God is the same kind of being as humans are.

Thus in Mormonism, deity is not an intrinsic condition, but an attainable status or role. If godhood is intrinsic, humans cannot become gods, because humans are a different kind of being than God is. But to Latter-day Saints, God is not a different sort of being, the same kind of being who has achieved a higher standing or position.

By contrast, the Bible teaches that God is not a man, nor ever was a man. Number 23:19 states quite clearly, “God is not a man, so he does not lie. He is not human, so he does not change his mind.” God does not have the failings that human beings have, such as deceit or uncertainty. The reason is not because he is more highly evolved or exalted than we are in our present condition. The reason is because God is not human at all.

God the Father has a physical body of flesh and bone.

If God is an exalted human being, it follows that he would have the same anatomy as we do. This is expressed in a training manual called Gospel Principles: “His eternal spirit is housed in a tangible body of flesh and bones.” It makes sense that if God is or was a man, he would have a human body with two arms, two legs, internal organs, and the rest.

But the Bible teaches that God does not have a body. God  is a spirit. In John 4:24, Jesus simply said, “For God is Spirit….” He didn’t say that God has a spirit, but that God is spirit. By definition, that means God is not embodied. For example, in Luke 24:36-39 (ESV), when the resurrected Jesus appeared to his disciples, they thought he was a spirit. Jesus set them straight: “A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

In Jeremiah 23:24, God says, “Am I not everywhere in all the heavens and earth?” This would not be possible if God had a physical, human body - even if it was an exalted or glorified body. 

Human beings can become like God is now.

Earlier we quoted Lorenzo Snow: “As man now is, God once was.” This saying has a second part: “As God now is, man may be.” If God was once a man who became God, it makes sense that others can do the same thing. 

But while this idea may be logically consistent within the LDS worldview, the Bible teaches otherwise: that God is a far different kind of being from us. We can never become deities. This is the lie the serpent tempted Adam and Eve with in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:5). He claimed that if they are the forbidden fruit, “You will become like God.”

 The prophet Isaiah condemns in the strongest terms those who fail to maintain that distinction. He quotes a king who thought he could become like God (Isaiah 14:14-15): “I will climb to the highest heavens and be like the Most High.” Isaiah warned him of the consequences of this attitude: “Instead, you will be brought down to the place of the dead, down to its lowest depths.”

Human beings cannot become gods.  To think so is an insult to the uniqueness and glory of the one being who really is God.