LDS Church News, week ending June 20, 1998, p.7; “Am I Christian? Of course I am. I believe in Christ. I talk of Christ. I pray through Christ. I’m trying to follow Him and live His gospel in my life.”
Acts 11:26; “And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.”
The Holman Bible Dictionary defines a Christian as someone who follows Christ. That’s a nice definition, but as we all know we must dig deeper. Which Jesus are we referring to?
In order to answer that question we need to look at His origins. From where did He come? How did He get to the point where He was crucified for our sins? Of course looking into His lineage is of utmost importance, but we have a great clue as to His origins in John 6:38;
“For I came down from heaven…”
When He said those words He was in Capernaum where the townspeople were asking Him where He came from and who He was. As we know this got Him into a fair amount of trouble because no one but God comes to earth from heaven!
And this, I believe, is the crux of the matter when it comes to answering the all important question “which Jesus are you worshiping?” This is what separates the Christian from the Mormon. Jesus being God in the flesh came down from heaven to save sinners, but Mormons believe everyone including you, me, Jesus and the guy down the street were all in heaven before we came here to earth. They also believe the Bible was translated incorrectly so Jesus’ phrase “I came down from heaven” has absolutely no significance to them personally.
Trying to live like Him, praying in His name and speaking of Christ means nothing if you don’t have the real Jesus in your life. Sadly for the Mormon people this is the reality they live in – the Jesus of the Bible is not the Jesus of Mormonism and therefore don’t qualify to be included in the definition of Christian.
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