The Greatest Love of All: Introduction to Mormonism Series; Sermon 2

[Doc Thomas]

Minister Gerald A. “Doc” Thomas, Westside Baptist Church

“Everybody searching for a hero. People need someone to look up to. I never found anyone to fulfill my needs; A lonely place to be, So I learned to depend on me. I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows; If I fail, if I succeed; At least I live as I believe, No matter what they take from me; They can't take away my dignity. Because the greatest love of all, Is happening to me, I found the greatest love of all; Inside of me. The greatest love of all; Is easy to achieve; Learning to love yourself, It is the greatest love of all.” In the truest spirit of this song, President Joseph Fielding Smith (LDS President early 1970's) stated: "Mormonism must stand or fall on the story of Joseph Smith. He was either a Prophet of God, divinely called, properly appointed and commissioned or he was one of the biggest frauds this world has ever seen. There is no middle ground. If Joseph was a deceiver, who willfully attempted to mislead people, then he should be exposed, his claims should be refuted, and his doctrines shown to be false..." ("Doctrines of Salvation," vol. 1 pages 188-189.) That great preacher of Sovereign grace, the Apostle Paul stated it this way: “We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know.”--1 Corinthians 8:1-2. Apostle Paul also stated: “Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.”--1 Cor 3:18-19.


Let us pray:


My question now is this: “Is JFS a prophet, explaining how Joseph Smith is going to be exposed or is he just another C.S. Lewis lover, trying to sound educated, when in fact, he is exposing the Mormon folly for all to hear and witness?” C.S. Lewis explains it this way: "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him (Jesus): 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the son of God: or else a madman or something worse." Then Lewis adds: "You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

No matter how Mormons attempt to strip away the Deity of Christ; they cannot. They will not say that Christ is God but they may say He is “God-like.” Christ is absolutely equal with the Father in His person & in His work. Christ is undiminished deity.

Philippians 2:5-11 states: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Today, I hope to prove JFS is correct, insofar as that Joseph Smith was a deceiver and he willfully attempted to mislead people. Also, as JFS stated, I will now exposed him, refute his claims, and show that his doctrines are indeed, false..." “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”--1 Corinthians 1:18. We're always searching for the true religion or answers to our questions when we're part of the world system, then Christ finds us in our despair, our anger, our hostility, our lusts, and then take us, as vile as we are, and conforms us to His image. We cannot fall prey to people like Joseph Smith and his philosophy of deception. We as true believers must believe that Christianity will stand or fall on the belief of the life, death, resurrection and return of the Man, Jesus the Christ. “Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”--Acts 17:30-31.

The Mormons are like the “Epicureans” in Paul's time; materialist and atheists. Mormons would say that they are not atheists because they believe in God; but do they? They believe that the Heavenly Father was once a man like them that went through the ranks and attained godhood. However; they can't explain where the so-called “first god” came from.

We, as Christians, can emphatically answer this question. We know that God is not a created being; He did not need to be made, for He was always there. He exists forever and He is always the same. He does not grow older. He does not gain new powers nor lose those that He once had. He does not mature or develop. He does not get stronger, or weaker, or wiser, as time goes by already perfect and being perfect, He cannot change for the worse. Jesus addressed the Sanhedrin this way: “Then the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” Then they took up stones to throw at Him; but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.”--John 8:57-59. Jesus was God in Abraham's day, at the temple teaching, when Joseph Smith was alive, today, and will always be.....God. John had previously stated in John 1:1-3: “In the beginning was the Word, & the Word was with God, & the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, & without Him nothing was made that was made.”
The word “was” here in the Greek, is HEN, the imperfect tense that stresses continual existence in past time. John indicates that however far back one goes, the Word (Jesus) was continuously existing. We understand also that God is the first and the last and that there is no other God. “I am the LORD, and there is no other; There is no God besides Me. I will gird you, though you have not known Me.”--Isaiah 45:5. If we're asked how one can know God, we can at once produce the right formula: that we come to know God through Jesus Christ, the Lord, in virtue of His Cross and mediation, on the basis of His Word of promise, by the power of the Holy Spirit, via a personal exercise of faith. We must know that Jesus is the perfect representative of God as indicated by Paul: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”--Colossians 1:15.

The Epicureans taught that the real aim of existence is pleasure; that pleasure is the only good and pain is the only evil; that virtue is to be sought only because its yields the most enjoyment; that man should be free himself from all belief in the gods or immortality of the soul; that the universe was not created but resulted from a chance “concourse of atoms”; that since there is no future life and no judgment, “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow, we die.” It's certainly frightening to see just how closely related Mormonism is to the Epicureans and their beliefs.

It would be illuminating to learn how far Hinduism is pantheistic, how far Mohammedanism is fatalistic and how far certain popular religious “fads” of today, practically deny the personality of God and identify the human and the divine. Mormonism is just that kind of religious belief system. Therefore, we must remember the couplet from sermon one of this series: “As man now is, God once was; As God is, man may be.” How could God be holy, Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Omniscient and just be merely, a glorified human.

It is the Cross where the God-Man, Jesus Christ, traded places with the sinners He redeemed, exchanging His perfect righteousness for their sin, condemnation and death. “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. “--2 Corinthians 5:21. We must understand that at the heart of the Gospel message stands the Cross; not our expectations, not our dignity, not following our family traditions, nor people bent on self-exaltation and pride.

The song above depicts the way I perceive the Mormon leadership and their founding fathers believe. They believe in themselves that they will become gods and ascend into the Celestial Kingdom and pass by the angels and be exalted above all. So it is fair to say that the Mormon god is very human. In their unique teaching, rooted in their unique concept of God, they mention that God was once a man who progressed to godhood. Again, remember the couplet from sermon one of this series: “As man now is, God once was; As God is, man may be.”

In the mind of Mormon leadership, there's really nothing godly about Christ. They believe & have stated in a matter-of-fact manner that Jesus is no different than us....what a poisonous doctrine to preach! The Bible explains Jesus in this manner: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.”--Colossians 1:15-20. If Mormons keep believing and teaching that Christ is an exalted man, there will be no hope for those millions of followers that they have. Their hope is in themselves and what they do and our hope is in Christ!

Joseph Smith, quoted in the Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ & His Apostles on page 325, the following: “God Himself was once as we are now and is an exalted man....We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea....God Himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did and I will show it from the Bible.” When you have your own translation (JST), you can say things any way you'd like to. Matthew 15:12-14 puts it this way: “Then His disciples came and said to Him, “Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?” But He answered and said, “Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch.”

When will we be patient enough speak to these blind ones so that they will see the error of their ways and their beliefs. Again, Whitney Houston hit the nail on the head when she sang: “At least I live as I believe, No matter what they take from me; They can't take away my dignity.” No matter how angry or violent you may become, the Mormon will still believe what they have been taught throughout their generations and your words will feed into their martyrdom belief system. Remember, they believe that they're the “True Church” & have “Restored the faulty Gospel” that Christ left behind.

Christians must realize that the church, the “True Church” is built on the solid foundation, “The Rock,” Jesus Christ. In Matthew 16:17-19, it states: “Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

The Jewish men in Jesus' days on earth, were steeped in Old Testament Scripture, recognized the rock as a symbol of God. “He is the Rock. His work is perfect.”--Deuteronomy 32:4. The Lord is my Rock, and my Fortress.”--Psalm 18:2. Jesus Christ is the foundation rock on which the church is built as stated in Psalm 118:22-23: “The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone. This was the LORD’s doing; It is marvelous in our eyes.”
Since this is the Word of God and His Word is infallible, inerrant, God-breathed, and never changes, why would the church need restoring? The foundation is rock-solid therefore, unmovable, unshakable, permanent! Joseph Smith could not have received revelation from God to restore something that didn't need to be repaired especially since it was build upon God, The Son. Therefore, it is also fair to say that since the entire Gospel points to Jesus, the Christ, it doesn't need another testament, the BOM, D&C, Pearl of Great Price, The LDS Gospel of Light, Gospel Principles or any other man-made product, to support what has already been said by Jesus, the Apostles, and the Prophets!

Let's stop relying on what man says and read what God says! Man's words are always evil but God's Word is always perfect, true, and will NEVER return void! I encourage each of you to continue to study His Word, pray without ceasing, and gird up for the battles which are to come. All is finished; Jesus paid it all and all to Him I owe; victory is in Him. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

Let us pray