Recently, I have been talking with some of the folks in our church about the Mormon (Later Day Saints) religion. Some of their missionaries have been coming to visit and these visits have promoted some good conversations about the Christian vs. the Mormon faith. This is an old-school video/cartoon I have seen several times over the past 20 years (I still have a VHS copy in my library). Thanks to the folks over at The Plow, I found out part of the video is now on YouTube. So for all my friends with questions about the Mormon Jesus, salvation or becoming gods, here is a video sure to add some fuel to the fire.
Your comments, corrections or additions to the content are welcome. Oh, and if you want to dispute or offer correction to any specifics within the video, please include your resource for that disagreement; not just an opinion.
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Hi, As an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I would like to encourage that if you truly want to understand what Mormon’s believe you will engage in a conversation with actual, faithful, practicing Mormons and study official doctrine directly from the source.
If I wanted to know what your church teaches and what you believe, I certainly would owe you the respect of asking you, and I would owe myself the intellectual freedom to find out for myself and not let someone else give me a redaction.
There are some wonderful online resources as well. Mormon.org and LDS.org are official sites of the LDS church. I encourage you to spend some time there. Going directly to the source for your information guarantees accuracy. Then you can make your own decisions and come to your own conclusions. Anyone who is not a member of our church, or not a practicing member is naturally going to have a bias and will therefore distort the facts either willingly or unwittingly.
Thus, Regarding this movie clip, all I can say is one should consider the source. Who wrote the script? Where are they getting their information? What was their objective in creating this? Is this an accurate and respectful treatment of LDS belief?
This movie was not distributed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is an “interesting” attempt at explaining what Mormon’s believe by mixing up so much fact and fiction together it would take me too long to go through each line of script. The narrator uses a mocking and condescending voice. The constant use of “Mormon Jesus” is also quite offensive. We revere Jesus Christ as the Savior and Redeemer of the entire world. There is only one Jesus Christ. We certainly don’t have our own separate Jesus. Our church bears his name. We revere him, and worship him. Jesus does not ever deserve to be mocked and degraded in any manner, and this movie’s treatment does so. Based on this alone, the movie should be offensive to all Christians. There are many many falsehoods and distortions of LDS doctrine in this clip.
Therefore, I direct you back to official sources. Please feel free to email me any specific questions direct at mormonsoprano at gmail dot com. I am more than happy to answer them all in a respectful dialog! I encourage you to visit mormon.org. You can browse all of the wonderful information there, and engage in a live chat with a representative. Please ask us your questions. Take the opportunity to meet with our missionaries. You will find that they are sincere, good and devoted individuals. Take the opportunity to read a free copy of the Book of Mormon, or at least some official literature. Then you can formulate your own observations of our beliefs. Thank you, and God Bless!
Joseph Smith, when he founded the Mormon religion, did so based on the premise that all other churches did not have the true Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Joseph Smith would disagree with you that we worship the same Jesus.
Christians do not believe that God the Father was once a man like us.
Christians do not believe that we will become God’s.
Christians and Mormons use many of the same words like “salvation” but we define them very differently.
I am not interested in debating these points. Simple research will tell you that they are facts beyond debate. You worship a different Jesus than the one revealed in Scripture.
As far as I know, the majority of the facts in this video are accurate. However, as I said in my post, if you or anyone knows of SPECIFIC errors in the cartoon and can document them with SPECIFIC sources, I am interested.
I have outlined some of the Mormon history here.
Joe,
I found this post to be quite offensive, disrespectful and inaccurate. I am aware that you didn’t create this video, but I think that as someone who has influence over a large number of people and their beliefs you have the responsibility to be careful what you share. As a former Mormon I can tell you that a lot of the video is not in line with what is taught in the LDS church. While I disagree with their beliefs, I think that it is important to deal with the actual discrepancies rather than to try to scare people with half truths or totally mislead statements. It may be disputable that some things are old doctrine that was taught amongst followers of this faith long ago, but if we are trying to discuss what Mormons believe, we have to share what they teach and believe with honesty and current facts. There are many Christians that believe false doctrine as well, but that doesn’t mean that our faith teaches it and that we believe it. I think that Mormons deserve to be given the same respect. I found the video to be like a horrible negative political add that stretched things and put a negative spin on their beliefs. It’s one thing to be knowledgeable and informed, but this video was done in a demeaning tone and I honestly felt that it wasn’t very Christian. I feel that often Christians are strange in our way of sharing God’s unconditional love. We send the message that if you won’t accept God’s unconditional love the way I share it with you, then I will treat you in a hateful way. By doing so we put conditions on the love we are sharing. It doesn’t actually change the fact that God’s love isn’t conditional, but it is part of the reason that people have a mixed up view of God and his love. Remember that we are speaking to people outside of our beliefs as well as those that agree with us, and please be aware of the message you are sending those people. God and His truth can stand on His own feet without help. The Holy Spirit should be allowed to do his job, and I am often guilty of forgetting that myself.
As for the major things in the video that “got my goat”:
• The black skin being those that were neutral is something that is untrue. Mormons believe that this was a Cain and Abel situation where he and his descendants were punished for his sin. The other statements are true in that section. I was taught as a child about a war in heaven between Jesus and Lucifer and that he and his followers were not given physical bodies and are now demons.
• The physical relationship between God and Mary creating the conception of Jesus is misrepresented. There are a few Mormons who think that this was the case, but it is not widely believed and not taught by the Mormon church. When I checked up on this one I found that there have been a couple of Institute teachers that had stated it in this way (Institute being college type classes that you take about doctrine), but their church does not teach it and it would not be fair to take the statements of a couple people to mean that an entire church believes it. This information would be from both my parents who have taken those classes and said that people challenged that statement.
• “Joseph Smith shedding his blood as a martyr so that we too may become Gods.” I have never heard that absurdity in my life and after leaving the Mormon church I have heard some interesting things about Mormons. That is just a false statement and is not true.
My source for all of this would be myself and my parents, one is a former Mormon and the other is currently a member. As for documentation, it is harder to prove what a person does not believe than what they do believe. I don’t have the time to go to their websites to find links to the actual beliefs, but I did give a couple specific examples from the video for you.
Thanks Amberlyn, for the first hand accounts and corrections based on your upbringing in the Mormon church. As I said below the video,
“Your comments, corrections or additions to the content are welcome. Oh, and if you want to dispute or offer correction to any specifics within the video, please include your resource for that disagreement; not just an opinion.”
My reason for posting this was because it was something I remember seeing when I was younger, but a lot of the info seem wild and unconfirmed (for example, have I never read anything in Mormon literature about God being from the planet Kolan), so I have no idea where some of the claims come from.
Like you say, and what seems to be confirmed by the first post from mormon soprano, the video seems to be a combination of taking some very old teachings, adding those to some teaching that represent a minority within the LDS, and mixing them with some made up stuff.
I am still hoping that someone can offer some citations that either confirm or correct the details of the video. It was very popular in Christian circles many years ago, and if this video is offensive to even former Mormons, like yourself, than that is not good.
Anyway, I appreciate your point by point explanation of things you found to be inaccurate and/or offensive. If more comes to mind, please let me know.
Thanks for the clarification. The way it was written gave me the impression that you agreed with the video and were sharing it as a response to the questions you had been getting from people.
Yeah, I try my best to be clear, but obviously that does always happen.
My biggest goal was just to start some conversation, but unfortunately I did not realize some of the video was so radically wrong or that it could be so offensive.
My apologies, and thanks for your comments to help bring clarity sister.