One Simple Way the Bible Answers if Mormonism is True

Why does it matter to me if Mormonism is true? 

Because I’ve had Mormons tell me that they are Christians. I was shocked. Everything I knew about Mormonism was that they were not a form of Christianity.

I needed to learn the truth for myself if Mormonism is true because I want to represent God as best as I am able and glorify Him. While I felt confident that Mormons, or Latter Day Saints, are not truly a denomination of Christianity, I wanted to be able to explain my opinions clearly and defend my position rationally. 

And I learned the Mormon claim of being Christian could not be farther from the truth.  

Additionally, Christians above all groups need to be about truth.

Either what we believe is true or it’s meaningless, and we should be pitied.

So Christians should want to know if Mormonism is true.

Because if Mormonism is true, we should follow it. And if it’s not true, we don’t want anyone else to follow it. (h/t Mike Winger, theBibleThinker.org)

* WATCH* Great video on Mormonism from the Contending for the Faith Conference.

So we look into the claims of other religions out of love.

We desire above all things for everyone to come to a saving knowledge of Christ. And we pursue the truth from the perspective of reaching out to those who are not yet saved.

More than just finding answers for myself, I wanted to clarify the issues for other Christians as well.

As busy moms, we don’t always have time to research everything for ourselves. I’m still learning myself, but if my writing can help other women know what we believe and why we believe it, then I want to take what I’ve learned and make it more easily accessible.  

Before we can discuss if Mormonism is true, we need to have a common definition of truth.

What is Truth? 

In our current culture, the word truth is often prefaced with your or my, implying a truth that is personal to a single person. And there are truths that are personal: individual preferences and experiences are uniquely true for each person.

However, internal truth is not the same as external, objective truth, which is true whether someone believes it or not. 

For the purpose of this type of discussion, we want to use truth to mean what is in fact objectively true to reality, independent of personal emotions or beliefs. 

Feelings can’t replace facts in a conversation about truth.

Feelings are God given indicators to us of the condition of our hearts, but should not be the dictators that govern our actions or reason.

The reason for using an objective standard is that both Christians and Mormons can have powerful testimonies of how their lives have changed as a result of their faith. Both can have strong feelings and emotions surrounding their beliefs, but feelings are not facts.

So, opinions have a place, but that does not make them objectively true.

I’m not discounting that God might use emotions or feelings to convict or inspire us, but if we use feelings as a standard, then we have no standard because each person becomes a truth unto himself.

One reason we need to be careful about defining our terms is that people can use the same word, but mean wildly different things. 

Most Christians don’t have a deep understanding of the differences between Mormon beliefs and Christian beliefs. I know I didn’t when I started my apologetics journey. And I’m still learning.

Mormons use many of the same terms as Christians and often claim to be a sect of Christianity. However, Mormon terms don’t always have the same meaning as mainstream Christians would use them.

I found an example of our differing definitions in the Mormon Articles of Faith about the accuracy of the Bible. 

So can the Bible show us if Mormonism is true?

Careful study of the Bible can be one way we can determine if Mormonism has credible truth claims. 

Wait, don’t you have to prove the Bible is true to do that?

No, for the purpose of this discussion, we don’t have to prove the Bible is the inerrant word of God. We just have to demonstrate the accuracy of our copy of the text by a secular standard. 

We start by asking, Do Mormon beliefs about the Bible include doctrines that are demonstrably false?

On a cursory reading, some of their doctrines sound very similar to what any doctrinally sound Christian church might teach.

But we need to investigate what those doctrines really teach, especially their teachings about the Bible.

Mormons Believe the Christian Bible is not accurate.

From the Mormon Articles of Faith:

8 We believe the ^aBible to be the ^bword of God as far as it is translated ^ccorrectly; we also believe the ^dBook of Mormon to be the word of God.

Most Christians would agree with the first half of this statement. Yet, most of us don’t understand that Mormons believe the modern Christian Bible was corrupted over time and no longer is the accurate Word of God.

“However, they do not believe the Bible, as it is currently available, is without error.”

“As the Bible was compiled, organized, translated, and transcribed, many errors entered the text.”

However, their timeline of the Scriptures begins in 1611, which is problematic for an ancient book. A Christian timeline of the Scriptures starts about three thousand years earlier with the writing of Job and Genesis.

Why does their timeline begin with the 1611 King James Version?

Because that is what Joseph Smith knew. He would not have had easy access to the actual original texts. This alone should call into question his credibility from a secular understanding of textual study. 

So how we can use the Bible to objectively consider if Mormonism is true?

Christian textual scholars have verified the text of the Bible through in-depth textual criticism, carefully weeding out scribal errors (handwritten typos). Meaning that we can verify if the copy we have of the Bible today is the same as the earliest versions. 

Scholars use ancient copies of the text, writings from early Jews and Christians, and most recently, preserved ancient copies of the Bible like the Dead Sea Scrolls. They compare copies to ascertain which are most accurate. 

Here is a brief and fun video explaining how historians find the original message from textual variants.

We know beyond any reasonable doubt that today’s Bible is the same as originally written.

Furthermore, by using this scholarship, we can compare Joseph Smith’s version of the Bible with the original.

First, Smith did not translate the Bible. He used the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible and made inspired corrections using visions he claimed to receive via a seer stone in his hat.

“Joseph’s translation was not carried out in the traditional sense. He didn’t consult Greek and Hebrew texts or use lexicons to create a new English version. Rather, he used the King James Version of the Bible as his starting point and made additions and changes as he was directed by the Holy Ghost.”

Could God inspire someone to make corrections to a corrupted copy of His Holy Word?

If such a corruption occurred, God could do such a thing. 

But, using the verifiable version of the Bible as our source document, God’s character and revelations does not suggest He would.

Because He would never require any use of a seer stone, a form of divination. The Bible calls divination an abomination. 

God is unchangeable. There is no shadow within Him. He would not change His Word from the original to mean something different now.

Numbers 23:19 ESV  God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?

When we have verifiable copies of the text, we can not justify a belief that the Joseph Smith Translation (JST) corrects errors in the original. 

What if the Mormon belief is that the Word of God was corrupted before the earliest copies we have?

There would be no way to assess his assertion. Such a claim would hinge on simply the word of one person who was not born until thousands of years after all of the events in the Bible occurred, replacing the testimonies of participants and witnesses of events. No documents nor archaeological evidence support his revisions either. 

This would be faulty historical research even in a purely secular, or non-religious, context. 

The structure and authorship of the Bible are not dependent on the claims of any one person. 

God didn’t reveal the Bible to humanity in a way that hinges on one person. The message of the Bible is incredibly unified over a period of approximately 1500 years written by about 40 different authors.

God would not write the Bible using many different authors, time periods, styles, perspectives and then have only one person responsible for correcting it. This is not consistent with the character of the God of the Bible. 

We can know if Mormonism is true by studying the character of God in the Bible.

Additionally, scholarly teams are responsible for the most trusted human translations of the Bible so that no one person’s biases would affect an accurate translation.

Often, the least reliable versions of the Bible are ones an individual has translated without any oversight or advisors. Individual biases or agendas too easily affect the accuracy of a translation.

False scriptures generally benefit the individual who is revealing or translating them.

When we see divine revelation in the Bible, it doesn’t reveal secret statements that elevate the prophets. More often the prophets were called to live lives of suffering in obedience, like Hosea.

But Joseph Smith added verses to his version to improve his credibility among his followers.

One especially clear example is in Genesis 50. Smith completely changes verses from the KJV then adds twelve verses that are found in no ancient version of the text.

“33 And that seer will I bless, and they that seek to destroy him shall be confounded; for this promise I give unto you; for I will remember you from generation to generation; and his name shall be called Joseph, and it shall be after the name of his father; and he shall be like unto you; for the thing which the Lord shall bring forth by his hand shall bring my people unto salvation.”

No ancient copies or extraBiblical writings confirm this version of Genesis.

Without any external support, we have to question all of his supposed corrections to the Bible.

Additionally, Biblical revelation doesn’t reveal exceptions to morality.

While some ceremonial laws expired due to the New Covenant, no moral laws changed. In fact, Christ’s clarification of those moral laws made them more inclusive. Angry thoughts are the equivalent of murder. Lust is the equivalent of adultery. 

But Joseph Smith had revelations which contradicted Biblical morality in some of his other books that the Mormons consider scripture. (These books have many credibility issues.) 

This revelation makes polygamous marriage a requirement to enter heaven. 

First, the only requirement to enter heaven is genuine belief in Christ. 

Secondly, the Biblical definition of marriage was one man, one woman for one lifetime. There were cultural guidelines that allowed to second wives in order to perpetuate a genetic line or to provide a home for a widowed woman, but the Bible never encourages polygamy.

In fact, if you read carefully, every example of polygamy in the Bible has negative consequences.

And the Bible certainly never would condone blatant racism, one revelation regarding polygamy instructed Mormons to take Native American wives so their children will become white even if they were already married. (Marquardt, H. Michael (1999), The Joseph Smith Revelations: Text and Commentary,Signature Books, ISBN 978-1-56085-126-4.)

Historical accounts show Joseph Smith married as many as 40 women. Many of these women were already married. At least one was 14 years old. While we cannot verify that he was intimate with all of them, he was caught in the act at least once.

His polygamy was the source of great pain to his first wife and very immorally handled. 

Such immoral and self-serving revelations by Joseph Smith must call into question ALL of his supposed revelations. 

So what about the polygamy? The Mormon Church has denounced polygamy now.

Joseph Smith’s initial declaration of polygamy clearly states it is an everlasting covenant.

Denouncing it makes it false as well because then it wasn’t everlasting. 

We have to conclude the Mormon version of the Bible is the corruption.

But do any of their arguments carry weight? Not any that I’ve found to this point. 

One argument Mormons make against the Bible is that the variants in translations means there is disparity in the original.

This argument isn’t logically sound. 

Translating text from one language to another is not objective. People write with unique style and artistry. Different ways of translating the same passage does not mean the original is flawed, especially translating from dead, ancient languages into a very dynamic language like English.

During college, a professor asked us to translate a portion of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from middle English to modern English while keeping the rhyme scheme and tone of the original. None of the translations from our class were identical. That doesn’t mean the version of the original we were using was flawed. We chose different synonyms or phrasing to transmit the same ideas. While I got an A, it was harder than you might think. I definitely have a better appreciation for translators.

A similar claim is that the Bible is not accurate because it references missing books.

Just because we have references to books that did not survive the ravages of time, does not mean we have a corrupt copy. It may be incomplete, but this goes back to the incredibly unified message of the Bible over a period of approximately 1500 years with 40+/- authors.

It doesn’t follow logically that missing books would differ significantly from the consistent message that already is without contradiction.

But even if those books would have added information that change some minor Christian understandings or theological points, the core doctrines of God’s redemptive plan through Christ would not change.

And Mormons believe some very different things from Christians about the nature of God, Jesus, Satan, and Salvation. I may address those in a future post, but this video addresses crucial information in determining if Mormonism is true. 

I hope this post helps clarify how the Bible itself can answer our question if Mormonism is true.

While this is not a definitive work on the subject. These simple arguments are enough to demonstrate the lack of credibility of Mormon beliefs and is one way the Bible demonstrates that Mormonism cannot be true. 

Sources

“Articles of Faith.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 26 June 2020. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/a-of-f/1?lang=eng

“Bible, Inerracy of.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 26 June 2020. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/bible-inerrancy-of?lang=eng

Goodstein, Laurie. “It’s Official: Mormon Founder had up to Forty Wives.” The New York Times. 10 November 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/us/its-official-mormon-founder-had-up-to-40-wives.html

“History of the Scriptures.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 26 June 2020. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/about-the-scriptures/history?lang=eng

“Origin of Latter Day Saint polygamy.” Wikipedia. 26 June 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_Latter_Day_Saint_polygamy

Maki, Elizabeth. “Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 26 June 2020. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/revelations-in-context/joseph-smiths-bible-translation?lang=eng

McDowell, Sean. “What are the Key Differences Between Mormonism and Christianity?” Biola Magazine. Summer 2012. http://magazine.biola.edu/article/12-summer/what-are-the-key-differences-between-mormonism-and/

Miller, Dave Phd. “3 Good Reasons to Believe the Bible Has Not Been Corrupted.” Apologetics Press. 2015. http://www.apologeticspress.org/HTHPubPage.aspx?cid=5196

“Mormonism: Contending for the Faith Conference.” Mike Winger. 25 May 2020. https://youtu.be/A0Pkt9BCcxk

“Revelation, 12 July 1843.” The Joseph Smith Papers. 26 June 2020. https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-12-july-1843-dc-132/1

“Top Ten Fallacies of Mormonism: #3 Translation Method of the Book of Mormon.” FlackerMan. 8 May 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEercVa-fQI

“Who Wrote the Bible?” Bible Info. 26 June 2020. https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/questions/who-wrote-the-bible