The other day in Mormonism Is A Non-Christian Cult here at Apprising Ministries I reminded you 1 Peter 4:17 judgments sent by Jesus Himself are falling upon His visible church as spiritual darkness grows.

As an example I pointed you to the Christian Post piece Romney Not Cultist, Fuller President Says Cautiously. Therein we’re told Richard Mouw, who in my opinion is an absolutely pitiful example of a Christian leader, continues trying to muddy the waters around the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons).

Sadly, the president of one of the most visible evangelical institutions in the United States is so deluded he seems to be trying to help pave the way for this non-Christian cult to be considered Christian. Unfortunately this is a vivid picture of the timid times we live; a generation of spiritual sissies afraid of their own shadows.

With practicing Mormon Mitt Romney running for president of the United States this religion is in the news once again. You may recall  last time Romney ran that Word Faith heretic Joel Osteen, whom Prophet-Pastor Steven Furtick calls a great man of God, had the following exchange with Chris Wallace:

WALLACE: And what about Mitt Romney? And I’ve got to ask you the question, because it is a question whether it should be or not in this campaign, is a Mormon a true Christian?

OSTEEN: Well, in my mind they are. Mitt Romney has said that he believes in Christ as his savior, and that’s what I believe, so, you know, I’m not the one to judge the little details of it. So I believe they are. (Online source)

Another illustration of where this discussion is going in our pouty postmodern world would be Romney = Cult posted by Todd Rhodes. He begins with a quote from the NY Times piece Prominent Pastor Calls Romney’s Church a Cult by Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Erik Eckholm:

A Texas pastor introduced Rick Perry at a major conference of Christian conservatives here on Friday as “a genuine follower of Jesus Christ” and then walked outside and attacked Mitt Romney’s religion, calling the Mormon Church a cult and stating that Mr. Romney “is not a Christian.”… (Online source)

The spin by Oppel and Eckholm is that pastor Robert Jeffress attacked the Mormon Church. However, I’m going to show you that it was the LDS Church who initiated the attack upon the Christian faith; so Jeffress is merely stating a fact. Rhodes then includes this quote from the NY Times article:

The Perry campaign sought to put some distance between Mr. Perry and Mr. Jeffress, stating that the governor “does not believe Mormonism is a cult” and that Mr. Jeffress was chosen to speak by the organizers of the event, the Values Voter Summit, which was put on by the Family Research Council, the American Family Association and other evangelical Christian groups. (Online source)

If Rick Perry “does not believe Mormonism is a cult” then his view is not consistent with that of “a genuine follower of Jesus Christ.” Rhodes, who works closely with the ostensibly evangelical Leadership Network then asks a series of questions:

OK… what do you think of this? Do most of us (and maybe I’m speaking out of turn here) view Mormonism as a
cult? Was Jeffress right to call it that publicly?

Was Jeffress right to say that Romney is not a Christian? Even if that’s what he thinks (and even if I might agree with him)… should he have said it?

It certainly wasn’t the politically correct thing to say. So… my question to you… should he have said that? (Online source)

Let’s assume Rhodes is trying to stimulate discussion because the answers are obvious to those of us who know what Mormonism is, and how it started. It’s beyond question that it is a non-Christian cult. Whatever else pastor Jeffress may believe, or have said, here he gave a good public witness for the Christian.

He was right to call Romney’s church a cult; and he was correct to let Romney know that as a practicing Mormon he is not a Christian. The Christian isn’t left here on this earth to say the politically correct thing; we are here with:

the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
(2 Corinthians 5:18-21)

Due to a plethora of women in men’s pants in evangelical leadership it’s largely been lost that when we confront error in the Church, or criticize other religions, we are simply following the example of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Master never shied away from confronting the false doctrine of the Pharisees:

 “So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” (Matthew 15:6-9)

Jesus Christ, pure self-sacrificing love in human flesh, often expressed the righteous indignation of a Holy God. In fact, this pattern of confronting false doctrine continued on with the early Church as Luke the historian tells us in his book of Acts. Space only permits me to share a couple of examples.

In Acts chapter 13, as was his custom, Paul proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews (v. 5); in this case he did so with Barnabas and John Mark, the author of the Gospel of Mark. God the Holy Spirit tells us:

You’ll see that Paul then had strong words of rebuke for Elymas; he didn’t worry about being politically correct or try to call him brother. We’re told that the Apostle:

Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, “You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?” (Acts 13:9-10)

As you can see, God the Holy Spirit takes the defense of the Gospel seriously, and so should we. Later in Acts we read:

But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”

And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. (Acts 15:1-2)

This doesn’t sound like they believed they needed to arrange time to have extended dialogues with such as these. They didn’t join hands with these heretics and pray to see if they could work out their respective views about the Gospel of Jesus Christ together. And this historical example is preserved by God Himself.

I’ve gone into such depth regarding this unpleasant area of the Christian faith in hopes to bring balance to a Christianity which is striving for harmony with the world system, e.g. through the Seeker Driven dupes and the Emergent Church, instead of being willing to confront the evil so rampant in our society.

Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God (James 4:4)? The true servant of Christ Jesus must come to understand that non-Christian cultists and people of the world don’t need the Church to keep telling them the good points they have. They’re already doing that themselves.

It’s called self-ishness—sin. The world is in desperate need of real answers to real problems. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Answer, and God has the solutions to those problems in His Holy Bible. Or, don’t we even have the backbone to believe this anymore? We must share this absolute truth with those who live around us.

The Church must confront error! It must confront the evil schemes of Satan, whom the Bible calls the god of this world (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:4). The Church must be ready to make war because:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)

Yes, we who are Christians do serve the King of kings, the glorious Lord of lords—but our King is at war! And He has entrusted us to bring His Gospel into this world gone mad with sin; and if we don’t do it, it won’t get done! Briefly, it all boils down to this; in 2 Corinthians 11:4 we read:

For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

If we look closely here we can see at least two things. 1) There are other Jesuses, other spirits, and other gospels. And 2) There are many today among these man-centered churches within apostatizing evangelicalism making the same mistake for which the Holy Spirit was rebuking the church at Corinth.

We are not going about the defense and confirmation of the gospel (cf. Philippians 1:7); but instead are accepting false teachings because we don’t test the spirits to see whether they are from God (1 John 4:1) The doomed Church Growth Movement, in a futile attempt not to offend anyone, now offends our Lord.

Jesus commands is to test everything (1 Thessalonians 5:21). In the Spirit I tell you, the time has now come when we must take up the Bible and start testing what those who claim to teach God’s Word are giving us. We need to be like the Bereans:

Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. (Acts 17:11)

Check out for yourself what I am teaching you. If it is not in line with the Word of God, throw it out. But if it is in the will of God–and it most certainly is–then by all means we need to act on it. Now you have the proper understanding of this part of the mission of God’s Church for me to return to Mormonism specifically.

First of all, they have The Book of Mormon, which is proclaimed to be “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” Along the line of Rhodes’ earlier questions, many people won’t speak out about the Mormon Church because of ignorance, and a reluctance to offend their neighbors, or friends and family, who might be involved.

They have a mistaken idea about Christian “love”, thinking that somehow it’s unloving to criticize another person’s faith. And the LDS Church—next to the apostate Church of Rome—is probably the closest counterfeit to Christianity because, as one minister used to put it, “many times they act more like Christians than we do.”

And we are always to approach people with love, but it must be love for our God, for our Savior Jesus Christ, that comes first, and then our love for mankind. As His disciples, we are to love what Jesus loves, but also to hate what He hates. And in the Book of Hebrews God reveals:

But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”
(Hebrews 1:8-9)

In closing this, for now, I’ll show you how all of this relates to the non-Christian cult of Mormonism, which did not even begin until the year 1820. So, this means that for 1,820 years, obviously, the historic orthodox Christian Church said absolutely nothing negative about the Mormon Church for the simple fact that they didn’t even exist!

Then, in 1820–according to the official version of the story (there are 9 different versions)–a 14 year old boy by the name of Joseph Smith says that Jesus Christ appeared to him in person and told him that all of Christianity was “corrupt” and “an abomination,” and that Smith was to “restore the true church” back to the earth.

The following is from the Mormon book of Scripture Pearl of Great Price in Joseph Smith-History 1:19, where Smith says he asked the two “personages” that appeared to him (he says they were God the Father and His Son Jesus) which Christian church he should join. Below is what Joseph Smith testified:

(Online source)

Now I ask you: Who fired the first shot in this war? As anyone can see, it was Joseph Smith, and the Mormon Church! He himself claimed God told him that everything the historic Christian Church had believed for 1800 years was “an abomination” in His sight. And further, we who hold these truths are all corrupt.

This includes the Holy Trinity; the eternal Deity of Jesus Christ; His Virgin Birth; His precious blood shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins; our justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone—all of these Biblical truths are “an abomination” in God’s sight—and all of us are corrupt who hold these doctrines dear.

I’d dare say that this type of rhetoric from the founder of the Mormon Church sounds just a tad bit offensive, wouldn’t you? In addition, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also teaches that God the Father was once a man no different than you or I; and that Satan is the spirit brother of Jesus Christ.

Though they often try and back pedal now, it’s a fact that prophets of the Mormon Church teach that Jesus of Nazareth was conceived on earth through incestuous sex between God the Father and His own child, the Virgin Mary; that the Bible is corrupted and can’t be trusted; as well as man can also become a god.

Not to mention that it’s not right to have a personal relationship with Jesus, nor is it even proper to worship Him. Is that what you believe? Is that what the Bible teaches? Is that even Christianity? Of course it isn’t. Then, for Jesus’ sake, we must tell them! We must defend His Name and His glorious Gospel!

We were Christians first; and we have defined what that means by the inerrant, infallible Word of God, the Bible. And what kind of madness is this where our evangelical leaders are attempting to get into bed with this spiritual harlot? Hasn’t the real Christian Church turned its other cheek long enough!

The Mormon Church uses very deceptive techniques in their advertising, and in their door-to-door approach with their “missionaries” that fool unsuspecting people into thinking that they are Christians, which they decidedly are not. Using a military analogy: We  can’t afford to just sit by as enemy forces advance.

While Satan, the mortal enemy of men’s souls, “bombs” innocent people with lies about the one true living God; His Christ; His Word—the Bible—and His Gospel, we’re just supposed to say nothing? In warfare troops can’t worry about “offending” an enemy or feel it’s “someone else’s” job, or worse yet, say they’re “too busy”?

Spiritual darkness is spreading over the landscape and the church visible must awaken from slumber and begin to once again follow the directive of our great “Commander of all commanders,” Christ Jesus the Lord, in Jude 3 to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints (NKJV).

Let’s mobilize our Lord’s forces and lift up the banner of Jesus Christ of Nazareth—our great God and Savior—for the whole world to see! For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4) Might we give ourselves completely to the Lord that He use us to rescue those lost in the twisted kingdom of the cults.

See also:

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF EVANGELICALS SEEKS COMMON GROUND WITH MORMONISM

THE “JESUS” OF GLENN BECK

THE “GOD” OF GLENN BECK