Without a doubt the two subjects which generate the most mail here at Apprising Ministries would Joel Osteen and the Mormon Church, in that order, with emerging church pastor Rob Bell a distant third. Imagine the response then as I write about both subjects in Joel Osteen: Mitt Romney and Mormons are Christians.

Now should Rob Bell, a leader in the Emergent Church, also give his blessing that the Mormon Church is Christian—as did Joel Osteen—we just might end up exceeding our bandwidth at AM in email alone!

Someone/organization calling themselves “Mormons Are Christians” just sent us a rather lengthy article via email entitled Why Denigrate a Church Base on First Century Christianity? This was likely intended as some sort of response to Mormon Church Is Now Christian where I talk about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka the Mormons) and how it was the Mormon Church who attacked the Christian Church in the first place.

When we who are genuine Christians dialogue with people trapped in the non-Christian cult of the Mormon Church the single most important area of discussion we should keep them on is the Person of Jesus Christ. In a prayerful attempt at illustrating this, below is a my reply to “Mormons Are Christians”:

Hello MAC,

Thank you for contacting Apprising Ministries. As one who has studied Church history and Comparative Religion for over 20 years I am well qualified to tell you that the article that appears below this email has a number of serious inaccuracies. Not the least of which pertains to Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

You say: The Deity of Jesus Christ

Mormons hold firmly to the deity of Christ. For members of the Church of Jesus Christ (LDS), Jesus is not only the Son of God but also God the Son. Evangelical pollster George Barna found in 2001 that while only 33 percent of American Catholics, Lutherans, and Methodists (28 percent of Episcopalians) agreed that Jesus was “without sin”, 70 percent of Mormons believe Jesus was sinless. http://www.adherents.com/misc/BarnaPoll.html

The more accurate first sentence would be “Mormons hold firmly to [a type of] deity of Christ.” Next we need to amend sentence two as follows: “For members of the Church of Jesus Christ (LDS), Jesus is not only the Son of God but also God the Son [as they define these terms, but not as the historic orthodox Christian Church defines them].” The rest of the paragraph means nothing in a theological discussion.

My article referenced directly below clearly shows the Mormon Church does not believe in the eternality of God the Son, Jesus the Christ, because in Mormon theology Jesus is the spirit child born first to Heavenly Father. As such He cannot be eternal because eternal means “without a beginning and without end.”

MORMON CHURCH: DEITY OF CHRIST

And if one does not believe in the Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the eternal Word – God Who became flesh and dwelled among us as the God-Man – as revealed in the Bible, they are not Christian no matter what other theology they may have correct.

For the real Christ’s honor I labor,

Pastor Ken Silva

See also:

JOEL OSTEEN HELPING MORMONS BECOME A BETTER YOU

MORMON CHURCH: JESUS LITERALLY GOD’S CHILD

JOEL OSTEEN: ONCE UPON A TIME…