Is It True?: "Mormons Believe the Same Things as Christians"

Many Mormon missionaries will say the line, “We believe the same thing as you,” when talking to evangelical Christians. What they fail to realize is that their leaders in the past have said they don’t hold the same beliefs as a majority of professing Evangelical Christians today. They often forget the fact that their religion started by not believing the same thing! The differences between Mormons and Christians goes all the way back to Mormonism's inception.

Some missionaries may ask you to not use the term, “Mormon” when referring to those who are Latter-day Saints. They may ask you to say, “Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”. At least to me, this is a mouthful. Offer the option of wanting to have smoother conversation and you are in no way trying to offend them with any other title; but if it is more convenient, ask if they’ll allow you to use other terms for the sake of better conversation. I grew up with the terms “Mormon” and “LDS”. Up until recently, there was no problem using these terms. In an attempt to further blur the distinction between Mormonism and Christianity, the LDS Church has encouraged its members to not be okay with the term “Mormon”.

Mormonism was started by Joseph Smith when he was 14 in 1820. Smith didn’t know which denomination to join because there were so many. He read and took James 1:5 out of context and decided to pray that prayer to God.

He went into some garden-like area in New York, prayed and “offer[ed] up the desires of [his] heart to God.” While doing this he says he was bound by the tongue, could not move, and many other things that many would call a demonic experience, but that’s not important right now.

After this, apparently Heavenly Father and Jesus appeared to him as “two Personages,” aka bodily form (The Father having a body is a BIG difference). But, what’s most important is what Jesus SAID to Joseph.

Jesus supposedly said this about the Christian churches at the time:

“Join none of them, for they were all wrong… all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt… they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.”

By Smith’s own admission, and with this story being in the LDS scriptures (Pearl of Great Price), it is clear to see that Mormonism was STARTED in order to BE DIFFERENT.

(These quotes are from the 1838 First Vision Account Written by Joseph Smith.

Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith-History 1:15-20)

If it were true that Latter-day Saints believed the same thing as evangelical Christians, why would they count the baptism of someone who was baptized under any other authority than their church as invalid, even claiming "unless they are ordained and authorized of God; for nothing will save a man but a legal administrator; for none others will be acknowledged either by God or angels,"? (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith [1976], 274).

For more information on this point, look at 10 Reasons Why the Jesus of Mormonism is Not the Same as the Jesus of the Bible at mrm.org