I’ve lived in Park City, Utah, for almost 16 years, and I still remember the first time I heard that unexpected knock on the door. When I opened it, standing before me were two young men (nowadays, it could be men or women) dressed in the official uniform of a Mormon missionary: crisp white dress shirts, dark pants, ties, and the easily identifiable black name tag that reads “Elder Smith.”
Behind their question, “Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?” lies a religious system whose definitions of God, salvation, and human destiny fundamentally differ from the Christian worldview.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sends out more than 70,000 missionaries annually, so it’s likely you’ve received a similar knock on your door, or at least seen LDS missionaries in your community. In this article, I hope to present a brief introduction to the LDS faith and highlight three important areas where their beliefs diverge from the Reformed understanding of the Christian faith.
The Origin Story
The LDS church’s complicated and controversial origin story began during the period of religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening. In upstate New York, a teenage boy named Joseph Smith Jr., prayed in the “Sacred Grove” near his childhood home in Palmyra. According to Smith’s personal testimony, during this time of prayer he experienced a vision of two “personages”—Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. They were there to give him a personal message.
Joseph was confused by all the different Christian denominations and unsure which specific branch of the church he should join. Jesus’ response was that Joseph should not join any of the churches for they “were all wrong; … all their creeds were an abomination in his sight” (The Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith – History 1:19). Smith’s various accounts of this supernatural revelation became the foundation for the LDS church’s claim that Christ’s original Church had collapsed into a “Great Apostasy,” compelling God to anoint Joseph Smith as the latter-day prophet who would resurrect the “only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:30).
This “First Vision” proved to be the start of a pattern in Joseph’s life, becoming what Alexander Baugh described as an “almost commonplace experience.”
In September 1823, Smith received another vision, this time from an angel named Moroni. According to Smith, this angelic being directed him to a set of ancient golden plates which were inscribed with Reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics. Smith claimed this text was the source material used to translate the Book of Mormon, and once Smith finished the work in 1829, the golden plates were returned to Moroni and taken to heaven for safekeeping.
This new “holy book” became the primary text of the Mormon “Quad” – the Bible in the King James Version, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price. Mormons consider these sacred scriptures to be equally divine revelations restoring “lost truths” to Christianity.
Outside of its origin story and an appearance of the resurrected Jesus in the Americas, the Book of Mormon itself is not particularly controversial in its theological content. It is primarily the story of two Israelite tribes (Nephites and Lamanites) who are guided by God to leave Jerusalem and travel to America around 600 B.C., only to eventually destroy each other in a battle in the 5th century.
Because the LDS church claims that the Book of Mormon was revealed supernaturally by God to Smith, it opens the door to ongoing authoritative revelation in the LDS church. This LDS doctrine stands in stark contrast to the Westminster Confession, which clearly teaches that everything we need to know in order to glorify God, experience salvation, and live a life worthy of that which we have been called is found in the Scriptures and “nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men” (WCF 1.6).
For Christians, the primary objection is not so much what the Book of Mormon contains, but rather that it exists at all. The doctrine of continuing revelation through a living prophet – whom the LDS church describes as the “only person on the earth who receives revelation to guide the entire Church” (the LDS church) – has led to significant departures from historical Christian positions on the nature of God, the way of salvation, and humanity’s ultimate destiny.
The Nature of God
When tracing the evolution of Mormon theology across Joseph Smith’s life and the ever-evolving Mormon canon of scripture, one observes a rapid progression from Smith’s relatively conventional Protestant-like monotheism in the early Book of Mormon to his radical claims in the King Follett Discourse, Smith’s last sermon before his death. The official teaching of the LDS church makes a radical departure from the traditional Christian view of the nature of God.
The LDS church rejects the biblical understanding of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. While our Shorter Catechism teaches, “There are three persons in the Godhead; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory” (Q. 6,), the LDS church views the Godhead as three separate beings united only in purpose (Articles of Faith 1842).
Studying the official teachings of the church makes it clear that the Mormon conception of God isn’t just a semantic difference but a fundamental redefinition of who God is at an ontological level. Joseph Smith taught that “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:22, published 1835). This materialistic view of God’s nature clearly contradicts Scripture and our Confession’s teaching that “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth” (WSC Q.4).
The Bible presents us with a self-existent, holy, transcendent God; Mormon theology reduces him to a mortal man who simply moved through a spiritual process ultimately arriving at godhood. And he isn’t the only one. The official teaching of the church is that there have been an infinite number of gods each ruling over their own world. Over time this idea was developed even further as leaders taught that God the Father has a wife, often referred to as “Heavenly Mother,” and that all human beings “are beloved spirit children of heavenly parents.”
The Way of Salvation
This warped view of God inevitably leads to a second mistake when it comes to the way of salvation. Reformed Theology sees salvation within the covenantal context of Scripture, where God’s glory and our good are inextricably tied together, and salvation and all of its attendant benefits are from first to last a work of God’s grace
By contrast, LDS teaching flips the script entirely. We are told in 2 Nephi that “it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.” While it may sound similar, this is a fundamentally different understanding of salvation. In Mormonism, salvation isn’t a gift freely given; it’s a tag team effort between me and Jesus. I do all I can do, straining every spiritual muscle, and then when I am completely spent, I tag Jesus in, and he gets me home. This approach always leaves us with a nagging question: Have I really done all I can do?
Dallas Willard is correct when he says “‘Spirituality’ wrongly understood or pursued is a major source of human misery and rebellion against God. ” In the end, the Mormon path of salvation ultimately offers only despair and spiritual exhaustion – a life where you are always climbing, but never certain if you have ascended high enough for grace to kick in.
Humanity’s Ultimate Destiny
This distortion of salvation isn’t a bug; it’s a feature of the Mormon gospel, and what is at stake is nothing short of God’s glory. If the LDS Heavenly Father is real, then he has demonstrated that salvation can be achieved by efforts of self-salvation, and he disproves Scripture’s declaration that salvation belongs to the Lord. These are not just different paths to salvation; they’re different destinations.
In the LDS understanding of salvation, the ultimate goal for me, then, is to follow in Heavenly Father’s footsteps and seek to become a God myself. If the Mormon gospel were true, this path would be the ultimate aspiration for every single human being. In the biblical view, I’m a recipient of God’s grace in order that I might glorify God. In the Mormon view, I’m using grace on my way to becoming God. An LDS answer to the catechism’s first question, “What is the chief end of man?” might be: “The chief end of man is to keep the commandments so that one day I might enjoy being God.”
Hopefully, you can now see that the seemingly innocent knock on the door is anything but a friendly visit. While I have great respect for the sacrifice these young men and women make, the sad truth is they have been spiritually deceived and are now being used by the LDS church to spread a false gospel. If LDS missionaries do come to your doorstep, be kind to them and show them biblical hospitality as you pray for their eyes to be opened to the truth. Like them, we, too, were once dead in our trespasses and would have remained so were it not for God’s grace.
There are approximately 2.2 million self-professed Latter-day Saints in Utah, but only seven PCA churches. For those of us who live and minister in Utah, it is a literal desert and a spiritual wasteland. It often feels like we are fighting impossible odds. Please pray that the Spirit of the Living God would bring light to those walking in darkness, that more gospel churches would be planted throughout the state, and that hearts hardened by generations of false teaching would be softened toward the message of the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few; pray that the Lord of the harvest would glorify his name by sending more laborers to join us in this incredibly unique and challenging mission field.
Robby Plemmons serves as pastor of CrossPoint Presbyterian Church in Park City, Utah.