Above is a video recently put out by the Mormon Church, with a number of good looking individuals with nice music in the background talking about how through their feelings inside them, the Holy Ghost regularly reassures them that everything is ok, and that the gospel, meaning the Mormon Church is true.
This idea finds its place in the Book of Mormon in a section refferred to as Moroni’s Promise.
Moroni 10:3-5
3 Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how amerciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and bponder it in your chearts.
4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would aask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not btrue; and if ye shall ask with a csincere heart, with dreal intent, having efaith in Christ, he will fmanifest the gtruth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
5 And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may aknow the btruth of all things.
Whenever you speak to Mormon Missionaries ultimately their goal is to get you to read some or all of the book of Mormon, but particularly this passage and get you to pray and ask God if its true, their hope is that some kind of warm feeling will come inside you at this point. They will seek to say things in a certain way, and almost create a warm atmosphere as they do this they will ask you how you feel about what they are saying.
In the 4 part interview I put up recently from Mormon Stories, the ex CES teacher said that teachers would ask him for his most emotionally dramatic stories, so that they could create this feeling of truth confirmation in their meetings. I went to a local fireside meeting which is an LDS kind of visitors meeting, and before the lady even spoke her husband handed her tissues for when she inevitably burst into tears through the talk about how true the church is. The LDS church is all about making you feel its good and not worry so much about the more troublesome things they believe. I heard a phrase “people join the Mormon Church because of what they feel, and leave because of what they know.”
Most if not all Mormon members basis for believing what they believe is found in this internal witness or a testimony, this feeling that tells them what they believe is true. I have spoke to Mormon Missionaries about issues such as racism and had them say I know Joseph Smith wasnt a racist because I have had it confirmed to me.
However this is a massive problem for 3 reasons.
1, You must pray with a sincere heart.
2, This leads to problems of consistency.
3, It goes against the bibles teaching on measuring truth and ignores biblical teaching on listening to the Spirit.
So the first point as I underlined in the Book of Mormon Passage is you have to pray with all sincerity, whats wrong with that? Well what happens if you pray and you feel your sincere and you dont get an answer, or you feel you get an answer saying its false. You tell this to the Mormon Missionary, of your parent, your bishop and what do they say…… Go back and pray with more sincerity. Simple as that and the cycle will go on until you leave or get the answer, so its not surprising that answer comes. A friend of mine in recent discussion with a Mormon Missionary had the missionary confide in him that he prayed around 150 times before he got the answer, its a circular trap.
Secondly this has led to massive problems of consistency, there are around 300 groups that have come into existence as a result of the Mormon Church, all claiming to be the correct Mormon Church. While in Utah I spoke to a member of the fundamentalist LDS Church and he was adamant that his internal witness was the correct one.
This idea of feelings is simply to create a basis of belief so that any issues that arise later will be easily ignored as this initial feeling is there to take away any bad feeling or discomfort they might create.
Bill Mckeever at http://www.mrm.org/feelings says this:
Mormons often tell me how they “feel” that Mormonism is right; however, as a Christian I can respond with equal assurance that I “feel” my faith is right. But does that make it right? I recently read the story of a new convert who said, “Until the very second that I made my declaration, I wasn’t entirely convinced that it was what I wanted to do. Would I wake up one day and want to change my mind? Would I feel like I had made a huge mistake? But already I feel as if my life has been transformed. I don’t know how to describe it, but the moment I said those words, my heart filled with joy and love and it took about four days for me to come back down off the ceiling.” Though this sounds very familiar to statements I’ve heard from both Mormons and Christians, it was actually a comment made by a woman who had recently recited the Shahada, a Muslim testimony that simply states, “La ilaha il Allah, Muhammad-ur-Rasool-Allah.” Translated this phrase says, “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.” (“Why I took the hijab,” The Guardian, June 20, 2002). What does this prove? Well, when it comes to establishing what is true, it proves absolutely nothing. It is just one opinion among millions.
Which leads onto my 3rd point that the bible gives us a different basis to measure truth. I said to a Mormon Missionary once what if I told you superman was God how would you know I am wrong? Mostly they have said they would search the scriptures however some have said they would pray about it.
In Acts 17:11 we see Paul bringing something new in terms of teaching to the bereans, the bible describes them as noble. Their response was that they searched the scriptures. This is the measure for truth, Christians if your sat with Mormon Missionarys and they ask you to pray about what they are saying tell them lets look at the bible first.
But am I saying that all interaction with the Spirit is wrong? That would be a sad thing to do, to ignore a third member of the Godhead or simply say He is unrealiable, this is not the case, however you need to be aware of the reality of your human condition when you do this.
In the bible in Jeremiah 17:9 it says The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
Our hearts and emotions can deceieve us in all sorts of ways, this is why we have scripture as that basis to measure truth, and that is a noble way to look at it. All personal feelings or “revelations” must be judged against that which you know for sure God has said.
Hebrews 5:12-14 says For though [a]by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the [b]elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. 13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.
It takes practice to discern what is good and evil, this and it does not come from getting a warm feeling in your tummy when two Mormon Missionaries tell you its true. This practice involves reading the word of God, the bible and allowing God to speak to you through that and whatever other means He will. Why not ask God to reveal to you what is true, rather than just pin it down to a yes or no answer about one thing, that for some takes over a hundred prayers just to get a feeling.
For Christians this is a message to you pleading that when you get a knock on the door from Mormons share the truth of the gospel with them.
And to Mormons I would never expect anyone to walk away because of what I have said, however look under the surface, there is so much of Mormon History and belief that you will never hear if all you do is blindly follow the prophet. Look at some of the sites linked to on the right or leave a comment to start this journey.
I disagree.
thought you might
“Feelings” alone are indeed a poor test of truth. But the same accusation might be flung back at fundamentalist (or even Baptist) conservative Christians, who have get a “feeling” of the Lord and are “moved” to go up to the front of the church to be “saved.” Have you ever attended a black church? Emotionalism takes the place of thinking in those places, too. Mormons (and I’m not one) do indeed ask one to get that “feeling” but after praying and reading the Book of Mormon. That, at least, requires some thinking and devotion before leaping into things, rather than the “altar call” after a heated and emotional “holy ghost-filled” service.
Hi Stephen you raise a massively fair point there, i actually meant to say something like that in the post but forgot. I have spoke to many Christians whose basis of faith is very largely a form of internal witness, i think the difference is, its not a widespread thing that all do, its more down to the individual, whereas the premise of Mormonism is, pray about the book of mormon and follow the feelings, as long as they says its true.
The thinking and devotion thing varies, many Missionaries are under so much pressure to get baptisms that the slightest glimmer of a warm feeling from an investogator will be met with the response of your ready off you go.
This leads to a mass of people joining the Mormon Church and then quickly leaving because they really had no idea what they were getting themselves into in the first place, I think your point may stand for people brought up in the LDS church, however when it comes to converts i think your point will be very hit and miss in its reality.
How true Bobby, the missionaries try to baptise you asap, you don’t know what you get into when you join the LDS Church, it’s all secret, it’s only after a couple of years you find what their beliefs really are. Sadly the Mormons are picking up the unpaid bills of the evangelical Church,
Your grammar, and more importantly, your logic, reasoning and understanding are appalling.
Fantastic thats the closest I have come to hatemail this far, simply I love you and please whenever your ready to look at the issues I am presenting, Ill be right here.
Sorry Bobby my comment was not directed at you but the other guy previously.
Thank you so much, I was saying that in some ways the LDs people are far better than evangelical CHristians but then again, you are too stupid to see what I was saying. By the way I have dyslexia.
A fantastic and well-delivered argument. Great work, supercristie.
Years ago, in my youth, I took a job selling a certain brand of vacuum cleaners.
(I wont put the name of the brand up on a public board, but most people know about the cleaner that is only sold by pushy telephone sales people blagging their way into having you agree to have a rep visit you in your home. Once he is in you wont get rid of him until you agree to a five year payment plan for a large bulky and inefficient cleaner. Yup that’s the one.)
Now our training manager was a former Mormon mission president and he gave us all photocopied pages from the Latter Day Saints Missionary training manual. He had thoughtfully crossed out every mention of Church, God or the BOM and replaced it with the word ****Cleaner.
He quite rightly pointed out the missionary training manual was the best high pressure selling manual in existence. It is the product of a combined ongoing project by the psychology and marketing faculties of BYU (Brigham Young University).
Missionaries are taught to manipulate and coerce investigators into an ongoing programme of sales seminars. The aim of each seminar is to elicit from the prospective converts a promise. (it is always better if there are two or more investigators at a time, they will reinforce one another’s commitment and help resolve one another’s doubts.)
Each Promise to do something is accompanied by the commitment to have the next ‘lesson’ in order to discuss how it is going. A firm appointment for this next meeting will be made before the end of the visit. The session will then end with a prayer, which reaffirms the promise to do whatever it is to God and the further promise to continue to pray about the said promise.
Since investigators are obviously going to be some kind of believer, this places them in their own minds in the position of being under an oath.
Each of the five lessons will be accompanied by a greater and greater commitment and promise each accompanied by a promise to God to further pray about it, which if all goes well will be culminated with the promise to be baptised.
Investigators are usually carried along by the mix of company, care, attention and a feeling of belonging, combined with as they see it an obligation to keep a sacred oath to God.
Typically after the second lesson, you will invite the investigator to start attending the church on a Sunday.
This itself is usually surprising, since going to Church at a Mormon church is not such a simple matter.
· There is typically a service (1 hour)
· followed by Sunday School (1 hour)
· followed by Priesthood for the men and Relief Society for the women (nursery for the young children) (Another hour).
· Then there is typically another half hour socialising before you are made comfortable enough to feel you can leave.
During this last socialising section the missionaries will introduce you to another family or individual who will ‘Friendship’ you. Friendshiping will lead to an invitation to visit the home of the Mormon family where more unofficial lessons and testimonies will be given to you. It is also not uncommon for missionaries to happen to call in, during these friendshipping sessions.
Very quickly, you begin to make the church the centre of the investigators life and social circle, to such an extent that they feel they belong and are comfortable as a Mormon. The final stage is simply to tell the investigator that this feeling of belonging is a testament of the Holy Spirit as to the ‘correctness’ of the Church.
Once hooked the new member will be baptised and receive weekly top ups of communality by ‘Home Visits’ from other Mormons, ‘Home Teaching’ from missionaries and the chance to ‘Friendship’ new investigators of their own. This is of course as well as the regular compulsory church attendance, and frequent church socials and the chance to become a home teacher of home visitor yourself.
Compared to this comfortable life of belonging and constant reassurance combined with the psychological impact of Tithing and the constant striving for promotion within the church and temple structure leads to institutionalism.
Mormonism is thrust upon the investigator and convert as a complete lifestyle, not just a religion.
Leaving the church, even when you have honest doubts becomes something to be feared, as does the profane world outside of Mormonism.
This is why Mormonism is dangerous, insidious and something to be warned against.
We must all be careful, ‘for we dont know all things’ Its only God who judges the children of men.
Its true the bible has told us to test the spirits whether they are from God. But God is still the ultimate judge. We all need to think about ourselves and our love ones and how best to serve the Lord, worship Him in truth and in spirit. Let us all leave the rest to God the Almighty for the last day we will all appear to the father to give account of our lives on this earth, Trully this earth is a testing ground for all of us. Keep thinking of this….
“We must all be careful, ‘for we dont know all things’ “
Perhaps we are not supposed to
“For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.”
-Ecclesiastes 1:18
on the other hand
“He who gets wisdom loves his own soul; he who cherishes understanding prospers.”
-Proverbs 19:8
Confusing isn’t it.
“Its only God who judges the children of men.”
The Mormon disagree they say it is a panel of God Jesus and Joseph Smith who will judge every soul.
Its true the bible has told us to test the spirits whether they are from God.
“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, BUT TEST THE SPIRITS, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.” (1 John 4:1-4)
Yes but since the Bible also tells us the devil is
“the father of lies (John 8:44)”
This does not seem a very conclusive or trustworthy test.
“But God is still the ultimate judge. We all need to think about ourselves and our love ones and how best to serve the Lord, worship Him in truth and in spirit. Let us all leave the rest to God the Almighty for the last day we will all appear to the father to give account of our lives on this earth, Trully this earth is a testing ground for all of us. “
Ah but remember the Parable of the Talents
“25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered, ‘Evil and lazy slave! So you knew that I harvest where I didn’t sow and gather where I didn’t scatter? 27 Then you should have deposited my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received my money back with interest! 28 Therefore take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten. 29 For the one who has will be given more, and he will have more than enough. But the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. 30 And throw that worthless slave into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’” (Matthew 25:25-30).
“Keep thinking of this….”
Yup do that