Contributed by Answers in Genesis
What if I told you the President Bill Clinton I believe in is a 6’4″ Asian man who won a Nobel Prize in Physics? Confused? I’ll explain in a second.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons or LDS, claims the gospel was lost in the early centuries of the church age and was restored to its fullness in 1820. New revelation was supposedly given through Joseph Smith and later “prophets,” including a radically different view of Jesus.
Since Christians believe that the Jesus of the Bible is Yahweh along with the Father and Spirit as part of the Trinity, there are some massive distinctions.
1. The Mormon Jesus is the brother of Lucifer.
The LDS prophets have taught that “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 in a temporal body.” So every being—human, angelic, or demonic—is a spirit brother or sister. This means that you and I would be spiritual siblings with Jesus, the firstborn spirit, and his brother Lucifer. These spirits were generated from a union of the heavenly Father and mother.
In contrast, the Jesus of Scripture is “the only begotten from the Father” (John 1:14; see also John 1:18, 3:16, 3:18). Jesus is explicitly stated to be of a higher status than the angels in the book of Hebrews, which says, “For to which of the angels did He ever say, ‘You are My Son, today I have begotten You’? And again, ‘I will be a Father to Him and He shall be a Son to Me’?” (1:5; see also 5:5).
2. The Mormon Jesus is a created being.
Since the LDS Jesus is generated from another god, he himself cannot be eternal. Something that has a beginning is not, by definition, eternal. But their teachings and writings conflict here as they have invented the idea of “intelligences” that are uncreated and eternal. Jesus can’t be both created and eternal.
Scripture is clear that Jesus is not a created being. John 1 calls Him the Word through whom all things were made. Colossians 1 credits Him with being the source and goal of creation and recognizes His role in upholding the creation. This exalted role is completely inconsistent with a mere creature, even the greatest creature God generated, as Mormonism teaches about Jesus.
3. Mormonism Has An Infinite Hierarchy Of gods.
As a created being, the LDS Jesus is not part of the Trinity but a separate god who was created by another god who was himself created by another god. This makes Mormonism a henotheistic religion with an unlimited potential number of gods! Scripture is clear that God is the only God, and there is no one like Him (Deuteronomy 33:26; 1 Samuel 21:9; 1 Chronicles 17:20; Jeremiah 10:6). And Colossians 1, Hebrews 1, and John 1 all clearly identify Jesus as the God who created everything, physical or spiritual.
4. Mormonism has a gospel of works.
The LDS Jesus basically makes up the gap after you have done your best to obey the “first principles and ordinances of the gospel.” To spend eternity in the presence of the Father and the Son you must faithfully live all the doctrine, principles, laws, ordinances, and covenants of the restored gospel. The LDS gospel is not good news of resting in Christ, it’s a call to work to enjoy the fullness of God’s glory in the highest level of heaven. While they believe almost everyone will receive salvation to one of the three levels of heaven, works are necessary to be exalted to the higher levels. Have you ever seen Mormon missionaries going door to door in pairs? That’s because they think their exaltation rides on it.
The Bible is clear that “by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). In another place, Paul says that “a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Jesus Christ . . . since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified” (Galatians 2:16).
5. Mormonism’s prophets preach a different Jesus.
Their own prophet Gordon B. Hinckley said they serve a different Jesus than Christians: “The traditional Christ of whom they [evangelical Christians] speak is not the Christ of whom I speak. For the Christ of whom I speak has been revealed in this the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times. He together with His Father, appeared to the boy Joseph Smith in the year 1820, and when Joseph left the grove that day, he knew more of the nature of God than all the learned ministers of the gospel of the ages.”
So if you believe that President Clinton is a 6’4″ Asian man who won a Nobel Prize in Physics, then you can believe that the Mormon Jesus is the Jesus of the Bible. God’s only reliable revelation to us, the Bible, teaches that “everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:23). Getting Jesus right really matters.
