Doctrinal Comparisons of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Modern Evangelicals and other "Mainstream Christians" have many apologists among their ranks. For millennia they have defended the church against heretics, agnostics, and atheists. Biblical apologists, however, devised new tactics when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Joseph Smith came on the scene in the 1820s.  The main goal of these “mainstream Christian”apologists is to discredit Joseph Smith in any way they can. The earliest apologists defended basic belief in God and Christianity against agnostics and atheists to divert their attacks in order to protect the church against claims and allegations that might destroy the faith of the weaker believers.  As the Christian faith aged along, heresies also developed within the ranks of those claiming authority or scholarship, and likewise had to be rooted out.  It has been some 200 years now since Joseph Smith made his first claims as a young man proclaimed to have seen the Father and the Son in a vision. ...

After almost 50 years as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I am still amazed at the depth and simplicity of the doctrines of the Church. The Church is not a new religion. It is the establishment and organizing of the ongoing expansion of the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. With The Church of Jesus Christ again established on the earth in 1830, and the bringing forth of the Book of Mormon, the restoration of the fulfillment of prophecy and the latter-day works of Jesus Christ proceeding his second coming commenced. It is a restoration of God’s authority to prophet servants on earth.  Men and women were chosen before they were born. (Jeremiah 1:15).  They were chosen to stand as “watchmen on the tower” and organize the kingdom among all the people of the earth.   With this authority and direct connection with the God of Heaven, we now have a greater understanding than ever before of the wonders of eternity and the mysteries of an...

How is Love an Attribute of God's Perfect Nature?    We may have heard it said by some that God is Love. Such is the venacular for describing God in the modern Christian world.     What does it mean to call God our Father and why does he love us?     As many have undoubtedly pondered these questions, many different philosophies have arisen in the communities of Christendom and other thought avenues.  My personal viewpoint tells me that love begins with a relationship where creative powers come are considered.  Where do we see the most influential and powerful demonstration of love? It is in our families.  What drives and connects us in intimate ways that cause service and sacrifice to result from an inner desire to do them with selfish motives utterly absent.  That is not to say in the normal course of developing a relationship we are not often selfish, so it goes to say that acknowledging our weakness and being in a place to o...

Joseph Smith was rejected and criticized by his contemporaries because of his unrelenting testimony that he saw God, and for his claim that he had been called by God to restore authority to administer the fullness of the Gospel in preparation for the return of Jesus Christ to the earth.   The splintered condition of Christendom eventually resulted in clerics and professors of religion that would not nor could it support the idea of a single true church because of the many factions.  Jesus Christ presided over a single organization when he and his apostles were presiding over it on earth why would it be differnt today and why do the modeern scholars and clerby dismiss the concept of order in the Kingdom of God. These ministers and "men of the cloth or collar" at some point started their preaching careers viewing the gospel according to their own dictums and basic theology of seminary-taught Bible scholarship.  They also conceived a non-biblical "church of all true bel...

I have had many conversations with other Christian believers who disagree with Latter-day Saint teachings.  Some of them are actively defending their faith by denigrating my faith by spreading misinformation or inaccurate representations of the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have found that while they promote their version of our doctrines they don't really understand the implications of their own. One of the great mysteries of life contemplated by contemplative people is where did God come from?  Modern Christianity has professed a state of ignorance for about 2000 years. Their position is that God just is and that there is no reason to think about it.  It is as if the biblical narrative and canon came and a God must be worked into it. The scholars and theologians that eventually took over Christian thought and seminary instruction of the clergy after Jesus and his apostles were killed disavowed Latter-day Saint theology.  They ...

Many modern Christian teachers and theologians claim a doctrine of salvation by grace that disregards any effort on the part of the person to be saved.  The discussion often involves the concept of faith without works being dead and yet any works that do happen to come about as a result of our faith have no bearing on our salvation.   Latter-day Saints do hold to doctrines of grace.  There is no action or series of actions we can perform on our own that will save us from our sins without the atonement of Jesus Christ. Salvation is therefore only by his grace and its accompanying virtue of mercy. The acts of making and keeping covenants with ordinances to confirm them are gifts of God's love. Faith in Jesus Christ saves us. Our willingness to enter into a covenant relationship with the Father and the Son is the evidence of our faith. If God tells us, or even commands us to do something, what is the effect? Consider the following example. We have been given an abundanc...