September 15 — 4 Reasons to Reject LDS Restoration Claims. There are a number of reasons faithful members of the LDS Church should question Joseph Smith’s first vision. His so-called chance meeting with God, and Jesus in human form while praying in the ‘sacred grove’ raises many questions. Today we’re looking at a few of those.
By no means is this an exhaustive look at Mormonism. The topics listed simply come from questions/comments on our FB page, and LAM blogs.
In all sincerity, we pray Mormons will think about the following contradictions and reject what their church is doing…
Reason to Reject #1 — LDS Hymns
If you’re LDS have you ever wondered why the Church’s Hymnal contains more than two dozen songs traditionally used by the body of Christ? If all of the churches were wrong as Smith claimed, why would the LDS Church sing songs from their hymnals? See a few examples below.
Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory Of The Coming Of The Lord #60
All Creatures Of Our God And King #62
Glory To God On High #67
A Mighty Fortress Is Our God #68
How Firm a Foundation #85
How Great Thou Art #86
I Need Thee Every Hour #98
Rock of Ages #111
Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow #242
Onward Christian Soldiers #246
Reason to Reject #2 — Church Structure
When the Church says they’re set up with the same system, they’re lying. See Articles of Faith 1:6. The LDS Church and the early church aren’t similar at all. The early church never had a pyramid system of offices running the show like the LDS Church. There were no patriarchs, stake presidents, high priests, or any priesthood offices. The roles of deacon and teacher operated much differently than in the early church.
A good example of this is found in the LDS Gospel Principles Manual, p. 88, describing how a 12 year old boy holds the Aaronic Priesthood which also entitles him to hold the position of teacher. A twelve year old teacher. Imagine that for a moment…
Needless to say, the Bible explicitly states the Aaronic Priesthood was operational only through the time of Moses, and it ended with the advent of Christ. The term ‘after the order of Melchizedek’ found in the book of Hebrews (chapters 5 – 9), is an expression meaning the foreshadowing of an eternal high priesthood held solely by Jesus. Again, this was never part of the early church structure.
Each New Testament congregation was a church, making each church a member of the body of Christ, which is known as Christianity. Furthermore, upon the death of the last living apostle, that office ceased to exist. A good resource for this is the book ‘The Search for the Twelve Apostles’ by William Steuart McBernie.
Reason to Reject #3 — The early church was a colossal fail, and went into obscurity; D&C 1:30.
“And also those to whom these commandments were given, might have power to lay the foundation of this church, and to bring it forth out of obscurity and out of darkness, the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth…—”
You can read more about this in our post the other day, LDS: The Gates of Hell Prevailed. It’s clearly obvious the body of Christ is still in existence, and operational in the 21st century.
Reason to Reject #4 — 3 Nephites Still Roam the Earth
3 Nephi 28:40 “…they were to remain until the judgment day of Christ…”
According to 3rd Nephi, Jesus granted the desires of 3 Nephite’s hearts to come true. Their request? To never die. We looked at this awhile back in a witnessing tip of the day. How could there be an apostasy if there were still believers roaming around?
In addition to the theory above, we have to ask about D&C 7 where God tells a story of the apostle John never dying as well as the Nephites. Now we’re up to four people who could’ve/should’ve been spreading the gospel…oh what a tangled web we weave…
We pray members of the Church evaluate the simple examples posted here, and turn to the Jesus of the Bible and not the contradictions of their church!
With Love in Christ;
Michelle
Those are some pretty doggone good reasons!!
Thanks! I forced myself to stop at 4. Maybe I could talk you into listing more?! 🙂
I’d say a big reason to reject restoration claims is the Book of Mormon itself. Something translated with God’s help wouldn’t need almost 4,000 changes! And what sort of god would demand a man be polygamist to be saved or say that black people are children of Satan?