What if Mormons are right and Catholics and Protestants wrong?

Eamonn McCann, an Irish writer, writes in the Belfast Telegraph in August 2008, concerning the Catholic response to The Church of Jesus Christ’s of Latter Day Saints’ doctrine of baptism for the dead. The LDS Church has sought the baptism and other records owned by the Catholic Church to use in doing this vicarious work. This practice and discussion has drawn a wave of comments from Catholics and non-Catholics alike. In the article, McCann postulates that baptising babies makes less sense than baptising the dead. Indeeed, the baby is oblivious to the ordinance and requires an adult to act as mouth accepting the ordinance and making lifetime commitments in his stead. The infant has a lifetime to  learn about the complex belief system and then make up his mind as to whether he believes it or not and wishes to continue as a Catholic. The dead however are in a far different situation. I think the reader will find this an interesting article.

What Is “The Body of Christ,” or Christ’s Universal Church?

This is an interesting question. It has been understood by many to mean the collection of all Christian churches. The only “true” Church of Jesus Christ is one who has His authority.. the authority which HE gave to the Church HE established.. the Church HE built “on the foundation of apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone.” (Eph 2:20) His Church is often referred to in scripture as the Body of Christ. The Church of Jesus Christ is very clearly, according to the Bible, and Early Christian History, a formal organization, composed of a living Body of believers. These believers had specific roles and responsibilities within the Church organization, all of which were equally important, as Paul reiterates in Rom. 12:5 when he quite correctly says, “So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” Elsewhere, Paul reinforces this concept, and documents the various offices and duties within the formal Church organization that Christ founded:

“And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: That we [henceforth] be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, [and] cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;” (Eph 4:11-14)

Modern Christianity resembles the group of children described above.  They have been tossed to and fro, are confused about authentic Christian doctrine, are all too often ill-mannered and misbehave in many instances. It is appropriate to say they resemble those who have been“carried about with every wind of doctrine”, to the point where they do not undersstand what the Bible actually says.

Today there are 2,000 or so different Christian denominations and dozens of versions of The Bible, all different, yet claiming to be the inerrant word of God. Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why engages  this subject on a level everyone can understand. Ehrman, the chairman of the religious studies department at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, says the modern bible is a product of centuries of  mistakes and intentional alterations. Readers are encouraged to read this work.

The LDS church, on the other hand, is the true Body of Christ. Christ is the head. He guides the body, which is composed of many integral parts, as Paul taught. With Christ as it’s head, it can do anything which is ready evident by the fact that it is sweeping the earth. Without Christ, without His authority, without His guidance, without the Body that  He alone established, none of any of the myriad of illinformed bodies will ever bear the fruits of true Christianity.

Even as the essence of a living body is diversity, nobody would work too well without a brain. If it were all simply hundreds of different and discrete parts, without any divine direction, none would function together in any kind of accord. A hand looks radically different from a liver, yet both are part of the same body and can function together if a brain exists to direct them. Historic Christianity is a body without a brain.

This is historic Christianity. For example, a Baptist church looks different from a Methodist Church. They differ in core doctrine, such as soteriology. The Baptist is Calvinistic and the Methodist Arminian. They both believe in Jesus Christ, but yet are not unified in the “One Faith” that Paul taught was a prerequisite for the “Body of Christ”. To  claim that they both have the same “DNA code, the Holy Spirit would be to make God a liar. They function under the delusion that Jesus Christ is their head, when they deny that a head even exists. There is no divine head of the modern historic Christian church. Only Jesus is the head of His Church.  His formally organized Church that is built on the foundation of apostles and prophets, whose coming Martin Luther, John Wesley, Roger Williams, and many, many others have been waiting for throughout the centuries.

The coments above are taken liberally from www.fairlds.org – often verbatim or edited insignificantly.

Note: I found this article on the FairLDS.com website. I edited some of the descriptive words to make it less pugnacious than what the original author presented. But the sum and substance of the message resonated with me. It says some things that I believe are significant and are worth repeating. The origianl author said them in an artful and comprehensive manner although in a different style than I would have used – hence the editing. No atribution was included.

Is Mormonism A Cult?

Anti-Mormons and Evangelicals don’t like Mormons much and have even re-defined the word cult to fit their own bias. But the definitive arbitor of the mother tongue, The Oxford Englsih Dictionary, says a cult is “• noun 1 a system of religious worship directed towards a particular figure or object. 2 a small religious group regarded as strange or as imposing excessive control over members. 3 something popular or fashionable among a particular section of society. ” http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/cult?view=uk

None of those defintions fit The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints but that hasn’t stopped the anti-Mormons from making up their own version and using it like a club with which to bash Mormons. Now before all the anti-Mormons swell up with indignation and claim that one of the defintions, strange, fits Mormons, I would like to ask acccording to who? Just how strange are Mormons? In what way? You may take exception to some of our doctrine or maybe our history but those are a long way from strange when you consider what a genuine cult is. Parsing a word or two and then claiming it is enough to brand the group in its entirety is taking the defintion out of context. You will be hard pressed to find anything genuinely strange about Mormons. In fact, there may be no other denomination that fits All-American better.