My first impression of Mormonism was made while following the music groups the Osmond Brothers and Donny and Marie when I was a kid. They appeared to be very nice people with family values and a clean-cut appearance. This gave me a positive view of their faith.

Recently I bought the Osmond album “The Plan” which I hadn’t listened to since the ’70s. Now listening to it as an adult and a Christian, I was saddened by the lyrics of one song that said “Are you up there?” and “Do you really care?” talking about God. Why would they sing a song like this? I wondered.  Mormons claim to be Christians. The church is known formally as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) after all.

Then I went on a trip out west via Amtrak from Denver to Yosemite National Park. My sister and I stopped at Salt Lake City, Utah on the way. This is where the Mormons settled after their founding in the middle 1800s. There was signs of the LDS everywhere. I toured the Church History Museum which introduced me to their beliefs. A short video showed Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, when he received his first “vision” when he was a teenager in 1820. He went alone into the woods to ask God which was the right church to join- the Methodist, Presbyterian, or Baptist Church. The he supposedly saw two “personages”(his word)that were bright and glorious floating in the air above him. Smith says that one figure was God the Father who pointed to the other figure, who was Jesus, and said, “This is my Beloved Son. Hear Him!” These could have been demonic spirits because 2 Cor. 11:14 says that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. When Smith asked the “Father” which church was the correct one to join, the “Father” said that they were all wrong and that “All their creeds (statements or beliefs) were an abomination in my sight; that those professors were all corrupt.”

Since these churches’ creeds are based on the Christian Bible, this “personage” ironically contradicts himself by making other statements that almost quote the Bible verbatim within the same vision. Mark 9: 7 states “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.” Also, the “Father” in the vision said “They draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; they teach for doctrines the commandments of men.” This is very similar to Isaiah 29:13 which Jesus also quotes in the New Testament. Satan is familiar with scripture and uses it for his own twisted purposes.

Satan could have been the author of this vision because the history of Joseph Smith and his family shows that they were under demonic influence. Per the H.I.S. Ministries International (HMI) website, they were involved in occult practices and used folk magic. For instance, Joseph and his father used seer stones to search for buried treasure. The next exhibit in the museum depicted the 2nd vision Smith supposedly had in 1823. An angel named Moroni, a resurrected being who died in NY 1400 years earlier according to Smith, appeared to him and told Smith that he was chosen by God to translate a book of gold tablets written in “reformed Egyptian” that he, Moroni, had hidden under a nearby hill. The book was written by Mormon, Moroni’s father. But first Smith was to meet once a year at this hill with Moroni, specifically on 9/22, a day that was known to have occult significance in writings Smith might have read, until God wanted it translated to reveal “the fulness of the everlasting Gospel as delivered by the savior,” according to God.

According to the book “Mormonism Unmasked” by R. Philip Robert, Smith was finally allowed to take the tablets in 1827 along with two stones called the Urim and Thummim that were to be used to translate the writing into English. These stones were seer stones. Per Wikipedia, using seer stones in America in the 1800s was a form of divination where one would look into a hole in the stone to acquire supernatural knowledge. Seeing these stones depicted in the museum, as well as references to having an Aaronic Priesthood, an Abrahamic Priesthood and a Melchizedek Priesthood ,whose names are all from the old testament, as part of their faith, I was confused as to how this could be a new revelation of the gospel of Jesus.

The Urim and Thummim were used by the priest in the old testament to receive messages from God. But Jesus ushered in a new covenant in the new testament that canceled this process  by becoming the high priest who receives messages from Father God and gives them to his believers through the Holy Spirit. Satan would have put these stones in the vision because he made them into seer stones that he used to communicate his false revelations to people like Smith who practiced the occult and magic. By 1829, the supposed translation from the gold book to what would become known as the Book of Mormon was finally finished. So what happened to the book of gold tablets? Smith says that he gave it back to Moroni per the angel’s direction and it disappeared with him. How convenient! No one else could see that it was a real book or try to translate it for themselves since scholars were beginning to learn how to translate Egyptian texts at the time.

Part 2 next week.