Featured Can Mormons be saved?

Let me begin with this disclaimer. I have thoroughly researched the life of Joseph Smith and consider him and his Book of Mormon a fraud. But as evangelicals, our attitude towards other churches that we deem heretical has serious consequences for the quality of our grasp of God's grace. Consider the millions of Mormon seekers who have read Moroni 10:4 in the Book of Mormon, then prayed fervently with a open heart, and received the great peace of an inner assurance that the Book of Mormon is true:

" And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost."

Do we evangelicals not urge seekers to pray a similar prayer about the Gospel and the truth of Scripture? How can we without prejudice insist that the inner witness of the Gospel seeker is reliable in a way that inner witness of the Mormon seeker is not? Of course, we can dismiss their inner assurance as demonic deception. But cults might dismiss our inner assurance in the same way. So should we conclude that this sort of prayer request for truth confirmation is simply a poor basis for faith? What do you think?

This thread discusses a series of events involving myself, other evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons, and I think readers might find it interesting to see how they react to these events.

(1) A few years ago, when I was still a Methodist pastor, the local Mormon bishop came to my office in tears. He said there were rumors flying that our church bell choir had performed at his Mormon church (within eyesight of our parking lot). The rumor was false, but Christians from other churches were attacking our spirituality for agreeing to perform in a Mormon church. The Mormon bishop apologized for the false slander. As he was turning to leave, this is what I said to him: "OK, so our bell choir didn't perform in your church. But if you want it to perform, they have my blessing to do so, and if other Christians want to condemn us for allowing this, I will wear their condemnation as a badge of honor. We simply must learn to disagree agreeably."

How would you have reacted to the bishop? Stay tuned for the chain of events that followed.

 

But why do they need to leave the Mormon church to be saved? Mormons already believe they are saved by grace through faith in Christ's finished atonement.

 

(2) Our local ministerial association became embroiled in a debate over whether opposition to same-sex marriage should be a requirement for membership. Our more liberal members (UCC and Evangelical Lutheran) embrace same-sex marriage and would be barred from membership as a result. Though the Catholics and I oppose same-sex marriage, we opposed excluding association members on this basis. I arguedd that the Church needs at least one organization in which clergy of all denominations can fellowship, seek common ground, and cooperate on joint ministry ventures of compassion, while learning to disagree agreeably.

To solve this dispute, we changed our meeting format for a few months to share our life stories and personal testimonies and in general to get to know each other better. This dispute hit the newspapers and contingents of Baptists insisted on coming to our meetings to protest any effort at allowing the liberals to be members. But even our fundamentalist pastors demanded that these interlopers leave our meeting on the grounds that our sharing was intimate and personal and that they were unlovingly violating our privacy! The upshot of all these meetings was that no anti-same-sex marriage plank was included in our ministerial association charter.

At the same time, I encouraged the Mormons to apply for membership, but our ministerial association is overwhelmingly fundamentalist and initially balked at my proposal. But a Mormon initiatiative helped change their reticence. My next planned post will describe what the Mormons did to change our minds. Stay tuned for that post. [But for now I'm going on vacation and will not be posting for a while.]

 

(3) The Mormons hosted a night of talks and personal testimonies on the Gospel, the Bible, and Mormonism. The event drew a large crowd, including many from my church. But the only clergy I saw there were myself (a Methodist) and the Catholic priest. The event reminded me of an old-fashioned evangelical camp meeting. Mormons testified to how Christ had changed their lives by the power of His Holy Spirit. There were testimonies of divine healing and miracles of divine intervention in life-threatening situations. Most importantly, they affirmed their belief in the Bible as God's Word and in the finished atonement of Christ on the cross as the way of salvation accessible by grace though faith. It was a grace-soaked service. The conventional Christian visitors were truly blessed and inspired.

Now I knew they were tailored their presentations to appeal to evangelicals and were suppressing their controversial claims based on the Book of Mormon. As I said, I consider most of those claims silly, false, and fraudulent. But Christ doesn't save us for adherence to a correct body of doctrines. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ's atoning death on the cross. Baptists or other Christians who presume to sit in haughty judgment of their eternal fate are the ones who have no clue as to the range and limits of God's grace. As Billy Graham used to say about situations like this, "Let God be the
Judge."

The Mormons were so grateful for the massive and sympathetic turn-out that they offered to participate in an interdenominational Q and A session at my church in which their doctrinal belief system could be critiqued. Now, as an ex-theology professor who loves a good debate, I had them where I want them, right? Wrong! After prayerful consideration, I nixed the idea because I knew the Mormon haters would be out for blood in force and I needed to protect my brothers in Christ from unkind attacks.. In any case, you can't argue people into the kingdom of God. The good news is that I gave a report about this explanatory meeting at the Mormon church and the Mormons are now members in good standing of our ministerial association. Praise God!

.[Now I'm off on my vacation and will resume posting here in about 10 days.]