The Truth About Mormonism
Mormonism got started primarily by criticizing and attacking Christendom, while seeking to gain converts from out of Christendom. It was Joseph Smith (Mormonism's founder) who instigated such an approach by declaring that the so-called “Christianity” of his day (early 1830s) was COMPLETELY apostate—according to Joseph Smith, they had:
• a wrong concept of God,
• a mangled/perverted Bible,
• a skewed understanding of Jesus,
• a faulty idea of salvation, and
• all their ministers were corrupt.
This is why Mormonism began as the “restored” Christianity—i.e., the true Christianity that had been lost. Early Mormons, including its leaders, sought very hard to distance Mormonism from Christendom/Christianity by attacking it mercilessly.
Only in the recent era, starting post-1890 or so, and especially after 1978-ish, the Mormon church has been seeking to blend into society as just another “Christian” denomination by use of what appears on the surface at least to be misleading statements, unclear language, and undefined terminology.
Nevertheless, if you look hard enough through all the PR, Mormonism still teaches most rigidly that Christendom-Christians don’t have the correct concept of God at all! Christians of Christendom (i.e., not Mormons) allegedly:
1. believe in a false god we worship “in vain,”
2. follow “precepts of men” and
3. are disconnected from the “real God.”
(see Inside Today’s Mormonism, p. 255)
Here's an enlightening quote about not only RCs, but Protestants as well. It's from 1984:
"Of historical and theological significance is the fact that in Paul’s prophecy [2 Thess. 2:1–12] the church structure survives. But God is not at its head, making that church—following the appearance in it of Satan—no longer the church of God. . . . To say that Satan sits in the place of God in Christianity after the time of the Apostles is not to say that all that is in it is satanic. . . . Still, “the power of God unto salvation” (Rom. 1:16) is absent from all but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which the Lord himself has proclaimed to be “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth” (D&C 1:30).
(Kent P. Jackson, "Early Signs of the Apostasy," Ensign, Dec. 1984, pp. 8-9).
I suppose we should all be grateful that not "ALL THAT IS IN" Christendom is satanic, despite the fact that it's not really the church of God at all, but has Satan actually sitting in the place of God. (Read w/ just a hint of sarcasm). It seems to me that we need to stop looking at Mormons as the persecuted ones in our current era, which is a notion that Mormons are consistently seeking to advance—i.e., they are being attacked/persecuted by Christians who seek to point out where the LDS Church diverges significantly from historic Christianity.
The truth is that both the Roman Catholics AND Protestants—since 1830 and the founding of the LDS Church—have been in a DEFENSE mode against relentless attacks by Mormons. I just want to keep things straight here. One of the most offensive, disingenuous, and IMHO, deceptive things I hear Mormons saying ad nauseum—i.e., they are being attacked while they criticize no one else and just preach Jesus. That is simply untrue.
