What Do Mormons Believe? – Page 35 – "We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost."

Become as Little Children

I’d like to share a personal experience with you all today. I was recently doing a Family Home Evening Lesson on prayer. For those who aren’t already familiar, let me explain the concept. Family Home Evening is traditionally held Monday nights, every week. It is a time in which families sing hymns, read scriptures, have a lesson, an activity, and of course, pray together. It is a beautiful melding of family bonding time and teaching important gospel truths, sharing testimonies with the people who matter most in your life. I love Family Home Evenings.

Anyway, so in this particular Family Home Evening lesson we read the scripture Alma 33:11 which describes praying in faith through one’s afflictions. I asked my children if they knew what the word “affliction” meant and explained to them that it is something difficult: when something hard happens in life and we maybe don’t know what to do or how to get through that experience and I told them it is important to pray to make it through these times of difficulty. My four year old son has been playing a video game with my husband and when I talked about afflictions, he immediately drew a corollary to this game. They’d stopped playing last time at a point in which the characters were stuck on one side of a large crack in the ground and my son commented that he just didn’t know what they were going to do about it or how they would get their guys around or over this big hole in the earth. When he said the closing prayer that night, he asked Heavenly Father to help them to find a way to get around that big crack in the ground in their game.

Maybe it’s one of those “you had to be there moments”, but this touched my heart and I know my children and I were both taught that night by the Holy Ghost. My eyes got a little misty as the scripture Mosaiah 3:19 came to my mind elijahwsaviorpic and I marveled at the simplicity and depth of my son’s faith. I know that he believes and accepts what I’m teaching him. I know that he loves his Redeemer, Jesus Christ. My son was taking my lesson to heart and applying it to his sphere of understanding. Would that we all prayed with such faith! Would that we never doubted that our omnipotent Father in Heaven cares about us and whatever we may be experiencing. I know this to be true. Jesus is the Christ, he suffered for your sins, died for you and was resurrected again because of that great love that our Father has for each and every one of us. Just as my son prayed for help to get through what he truly saw as a difficulty in his world, we can pray for any difficulty in our world and I know our prayers will be answered.

Why Did Jesus Die For Our Sins?

Q. Why did Jesus die for our sins? What would have happened if he hadn’t?

I was thinking about this question early this morning from 3:30 till 5:00 as my toddler was throwing a massive fit. For some reason, he had decided that sleeping in his crib for the rest of the night was not going to work for him. He didn’t like sleeping in the portable crib either (but his baby sister liked that better–he was out of the room they share). My prevailing thought was the importance of law, as a parent, to prevent chaos from ruling the house. (Bear with me, this will all tie together shortly. )

sometimes lazy, always tired.

See, we have rules, as parents. Many of them we make up: you need to sleep in your own bed, you need to finish all of your food if you want dessert, you cannot hit anything but the floor, etc. Some of them are imposed by other people: you have to be buckled in your car seat when we are moving, you can’t take that candy from the store without paying for it, and so on. Because we are imperfect, lazy or tired, all parents choose to disregard the laws once in a while. “Fine, just get into bed with me and Daddy”, thinking that just for tonight, that will work. But of course, it isn’t just for tonight– it is now expected every night. “He’s starving–just give him Chex for dinner tonight”, but for weeks thereafter, when it is time for dinner, the toddler refuses to eat anything but Chex (or Goldfish crackers). When we disregard these laws, we lose the structure of our family society and everything can come unglued. Chaos reigns. Once you take a kid out of their carseat while driving they suddenly understand that what they thought was impossible is now possible. Same with Chex for dinner. Same with sleeping with Mom and Dad. There are no more rules and I can do whatever I want! It is a very dangerous place to be.

Luckily, our Heavenly Father has laws and He never deviates from them. Some of them He has created (the 10 commandments, for example) and some of them are just natural laws that He honors (gravity, rotation of planets, etc.). The law that applies to this question is the law of justice. Essentially, if you do wickedly, you will be punished and you are no longer worthy to return to live with God. If you do well, you will be rewarded. Unfortunately, every single one of us has done wickedly, and we cannot return to live with God–our righteous works don’t cancel out our sins, I think they are on separate balance sheets, as it were. So that is justice. It doesn’t help us at all, but it keeps the universe running smoothly. And God needs to honor justice fully in order to prevent chaos from reigning. As soon as He lets just one person in, with just the tiniest sin (like maybe, Moses or Abraham), there is going to be a big line of people demanding to get in too. They didn’t sin that much. They aren’t that wicked. Its a slippery slope.

God is an excellent parent, though. He can honor all of the demands of justice and still get us back to Him. His more excellent way is accomplished through Jesus Christ, who offers us mercy. When Christ came to earth, he was the only person in the history of this earth to ever live a perfect life. No evil thoughts, no evil actions, not even any selfish motivations. He lived perfectly. Before he died, Justice could have looked Him over and said, “Come on back in. You’re clean”. But Jesus didn’t just go back to Heaven after His perfect life–instead, He allowed himself to suffer for every person on this earth and every sin that they had ever committed. He died on the cross between two criminals after allowing himself to be beaten, scorned, mocked, spit upon, tried and convicted all by people like you and I. Regular justice-breakers. Betrayed and condemned And in this way, Christ broke the law of Justice–but He broke it the opposite way that we break it. He broke it toward himself–He owned it. He should not have died and suffered for us in that way–that was not just. The atonement of Jesus Christ (this suffering and dying in order to reconcile us with God) was merciful and motivated entirely by love. Christ’s mercy can satisfy the demands of justice and still get us back to Heaven.

So, to answer your question: Jesus died for our sins to get us around the impassible heights of justice. If we ally ourselves with Him, He will vouch for us and His mercy carries us over the demands of justice back to our Father in Heaven. He is the only one who can do that. We can’t do it–we are imperfect. Heavenly Father can’t do it, He needs to honor justice (though He is, of course, carefully helping us find our faith in Christ so that we can come back to Him). Without Christ, we are subject to endless death and hell (an eternity without God).

For more information on this fundamental topic, see:

Doctrine and Covenants 45

This priesthood lesson

And this talk

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ

The topic of the second coming of Jesus Christ is and has been of interest to Christians since He ascended into heaven. The apostles saw Him leave and received a promise. “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:9-11) After 1,975 years, are we in those last days? This is a lengthy subject, one that I cannot cover definitively here, but I’d like to cover the basics, the principles and major events that will lead up to Christ’s return.

Prior to the second coming, the world must be prepared thoroughly according to the Lord’s standards. He has dictated that His gospel and all revelation must be restored to the earth through angels (Rev. 14:6, Acts 3:21) and preached to the entire world (Matthew 24:14). The dispensation of the fullness of times (Eph. 1:10) opened with a heavenly visitation of the Father and the Son to a boy in 1820 (Read here for details). That boy, Joseph Smith, was called to be a prophet to God’s children on earth so that we could catch a glimpse of the mind of God and be prepared for what is to happen (Amos 3:7). Through Joseph Smith, the Lord restored His priesthood keys by sending His angels, including the prophet Elijah (Mal. 4:5-6; D&C 110:13-16)and built up His church again on the earth, which will never be destroyed (Dan. 2:44-45).

With an increase of goodness, knowledge, and light on the earth, Satan has increased his efforts in equal measure. Christ warned His apostles,

“Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: … and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. … Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you … And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” (Matthew 24:4-13)

This grim prophecy refers to our time. Evil in the world is bound to increase up until Christ comes. But as He said, “He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” We needn’t fear what the world may do or whatever may happen, if we are faithful to the Lord, we will be spiritually safe.

There are many, many other signs given, particularly those written in the book of Revelation. The moon shall be red as blood, the sun will be blackened, the stars will fall from heaven, the earth will reel like a drunkard, the waters will be poisoned, and gigantic hail will fall from the sky. There will be death, fire, war, destruction and likely much more (lengthier lists of canonical, apocryphal, and anecdotal signs exist. Lists and articles can be found here and here). It will all lead up to what is described as the great and terrible day of the Lord; great for those who anticipated and prepared for it and terrible for the unprepared and unworthy.

The greatest events for the righteous will occur during that time. The saints of God and the 12 tribes of Israel will be gathered together spiritually (Isaiah 52:8) and physically. The Lord will then bring again Zion, the New Jerusalem, down from heaven (Rev. 21:2; Moses 7:62-63). This New Jerusalem is distinct from the old one and both will exist as places where Christ’s people will live.

The forces of evil will also gather to fight against Jerusalem and Zion. When the Jews in Jerusalem are overpowered, they will flee and find refuge at the Mount of Olives, upon which Christ will set foot and it will divide in two (Zech. 14:4). When they see Him, they will ask Him, “What are these wounds in thine hands?” to which He will answer, “Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.” (Zech. 13:6) They will come to know that Jesus is their long awaited Messiah and will be forgiven. Christ will fight their battles and will soon publicly show Himself to the entire world in all His glory dressed in red robes (Isaiah 63:1). Once the forces of evil have been defeated and Satan bound (Rev. 20:2), Christ will reign personally on the earth in some kind of divine government based in Jerusalem and Zion (Micah 4:2) for a thousand years.

As interesting as all this may be, it seems to have little application to the daily life of a Christian. How it all connects to the individual, however, is in Christ’s statement, “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” (Matt. 24:44) We do not know when the end will be nor do we know when our individual lives will end. It is our responsibility to be ready for either eventuality so that He doesn’t find us unprepared to meet Him. But don’t take my understanding of the sign of the times just as it is. Study it our for yourself and pray to God for understanding. Read scriptures in the Old and New Testaments and compare them for a broader view. As you begin to see fulfillment of prophecy, let it add to your faith in Christ to better endure to up and coming trials.

A FAIR Perspective on Critical Claims

Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who don’t like us Mormons.

I can understand why. We aren’t like most break-off sects, based on our peculiar interpretation of scripture. People are more or less comfortable with these groups. After all, if Martin Luther said something you don’t agree with, you can rest assured that his foundation is firmly rooted in the Bible. He might be mistaken on some things, but by and large he agrees with mainline protestantism. He never claimed to be a prophet.

But Mormons are new and different. It’s all or nothing. It can’t be swallowed half-way.

Joseph Smith described in detail a visitation from God the Father and Jesus Christ. Either Joseph Smith was honest about his first encounter with God or he lied about it. He was visited frequently by angels or he wasn’t visited at all. He was a prophet or a hoaxer. If one is not Mormon and will not be baptized, “Joseph Smith was a fraud” is the stance one is required to take. The middle ground is removed.

This polarization has energized detractors to produce mountains of criticism to discredit Mormonism, which if seen by itself makes our religion look plain silly, or worse. The criticisms range from sophomoric name-calling and laughably-inconsistent retelling of our beliefs to historical documentation and intellectual DNA analysis. Most of this is aimed not at Mormons (these kinds of attacks rarely have the gravitas to significantly shake LDS faith), but primarily at potential investigators of Mormonism. They are designed to damage the Church’s reputation enough that you’ll dismiss anything we might offer.

The criticism, in turn, has prompted Latter-day Saints for years to rebut the arguments and point out evidences in our favor. This rebuttal in defense of faith is called apologetics from the Greek apologia, meaning “defense.”

The leading body defending Mormon doctrine from critical arguments is the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR). It is an independent, non-profit group of Latter-day Saints dedicated to “providing well-documented answers to criticisms of LDS (Mormon) doctrine, belief and practice.” They have a website and a wiki full of every piece of anti-Mormon material you could ask for and a confident, clear response to each.

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A few weeks ago I attended their annual conference in Sandy, UT. They had speakers from a variety of professional backgrounds. A lawyer-economist spoke on the failed Kirtland Safety Society, a banking endeavor that Joseph Smith initiated (and according to critics, caused to fail in order to steal parishioners’ money). A physicist (a former member of the federal government’s — and no, this isn’t a joke — Dark Energy Task Force) gave a lecture on Joseph’s cosmology compared with a modern physics account of the creation of the universe. There were talks with titles like, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Plural Marriage (but were afraid to ask),” “Haplogroup X in Light of Recent Book of Mormon Claims,” and “Joseph the Seer, or Why Joseph Translated with a Rock in His Hat.” I came away impressed with their professionalism and their ability to make the topics accessible, interesting, and relevant.

Dr. Daniel C. Peterson, the face of modern Mormon intellectualism

My favorite FAIR contributor is a professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic named Daniel C. Peterson. I became a fan through watching his FAIR presentations on YouTube. (Click here to see Dr. Peterson’s review of Christopher Hitchens’ infamous book god is Not Great).

Members of FAIR look into the criticisms in their spare time and on their own dime; the Church doesn’t fund their research. There are important reasons for that. One of the key reasons is that Father has a different method for teaching us, which the Church favors. It doesn’t require advanced degrees or superior reasoning capacity, and the objective isn’t merely knowledge. The objective is goodness, even Godliness. He created this whole world as a sort of school. A proving ground. What is required is a humble heart and a will to follow Jesus Christ. Learning how to pray is much more vital to this kind of education than writing a thesis.

So, if you are investigating the Church, and you’ve been bombarded with defamatory information in anti-Mormon pamphlets or movies, first go to God. You can learn a lot through prayerful revelation. This should be your first step. Always. If it still bothers you, poke around FAIR’s website. They’ve heard it all. You may find peace in knowing that when you don’t have all the answers, some smart, faith-filled people have blazed the trail ahead of you. It certainly helps me.

Do Mormons ever have questions about what they believe?

In the course of my journey as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, there have been numerous times where I have questions come up that challenge my faith. I can’t speak for all Mormons, but I would assume that we all go through these cycles from time to time. I picked this topic to write about, because I want others who are not of our faith to know that I do have questions and from time to time finding answers to these questions causes spiritual turmoil. However, it is during these times that I grow the most spiritually.

The foundation of my belief is rooted in Joseph Smith’s testimony that he was in fact visited by God the Father and Jesus Christ. This visit came in response to Joseph’s prayer to know which church he should join. They gave him specific instructions — he was to join none of the churches, because none of them were right (Joseph Smith History 1:1-20). What followed next in Joseph’s life is phenomenal: through him Jesus Christ re-established his Church, the Book of Mormon was translated, the authority to act and perform ordinances in God’s name was given to man again, and the list could go on. I will always remember the day that the truthfulness of this man’s testimony was written upon my heart by the Holy Ghost. I feel much the same as Joseph did: I know it and I know that God knows it and I cannot deny it (JS-H 1:25).

However, even though I know Joseph Smith’s story to be true, from time to time, something will come up that causes me to wonder. For example, polygamy, or how the priesthood was distributed prior to 1978. These challenges of faith, no matter how big or small, cause me to reflect and evaluate. Sometimes, they cause me to think, “how could God’s prophet do this, or say that?” I learned a long time ago that there is a reason; however, in these times I have yet to discover the puzzle piece that makes the picture complete. Often I have to go back to the basics that I know to be undeniably true–that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that he did in fact translate the Book of Mormon. In other instances, I have to sit down and think about other confirmations that I have received from the Holy Ghost about a particular piece of doctrine, whether it is prayer, fasting, scripture study, marriage, or the priesthood for a few examples. As I do this and ponder my question throughout the day or weeks, eventually someone will say something, or I will have a thought that comes to me, always accompanied by another confirmation through the Holy Ghost. Then I can clearly see what I was missing.

These experiences strengthen my faith and further buttress my basic testimony of God. In this way I have been able to move from truth to truth and from grace to grace, learning about God and the grand plan that He has designed for our eternal happiness. I am grateful that there is a God and that He loves me perfectly (as He does all of us), even if that means that from time to time I have to struggle in my faith, because it helps me to grow stronger.