Meeting With the Mormons, Some Impressions

I just finished the last of four or five meetings with the Mormons. Here are some of my thoughts from our conversations:

1. From the beginning, I tried to take charge of the meetings. I was not interested in hearing a pre-packaged message or being led through a series of questions that they had been trained to ask. From the outset, I set the amount of time I was willing to meet with them, and I asked the questions. The advantage to this approach was that it put us on equal footing. I was not in the position of being asked questions whose answers and scripture citations they had been diligently trained to know. They were being put on the spot, and I got more natural conversation.

2. I received and talked to them courteously. I asked them questions about themselves and tried to learn about the mechanics of what a Mormon missionary does. If you do a quick search on the internet, it won’t take long before you find someone talking about how annoying the Mormons/Jehovah’s Witnesses are and how someone relished slamming the door in their faces. What gives anyone the right, however, to treat another human being with rudeness, regardless of how obtrusive or annoying his missionary efforts may be? Doesn’t the gospel teach us to treat others with kindness? Doesn’t it tell us that Mormons, too, are in need of the love and forgiveness of Christ?

3. I focused at first on the Book of Mormon. My plan was to read it book by book and raise my objections. So I started with 1 Nephi and was struck by its total inauthenticity. I objected to the Mormons about the strangeness that a book written (or “translated”) in the 1800’s would use the Old English of the King James Version; that it failed at capturing that Old English; and that some of the names (“Sam”) did not exactly seem Hebrew. The main point that I pushed again and again was that the Book of Mormon was given to the LDS by a single man. No one else read the plates. The Bible, on the other hand, was definitely written by different authors, and there were multiple witnesses to the event of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Ultimately, however, I did not have time to read the Book of Mormon and bring a point-by-point objection.

4. I pushed the Mormons to tell me just how the gospel or the church was corrupted from the time immediately after the apostles to the coming of Joseph Smith. I asked them to tell me how the Mormon church was different in doctrine from my own. Over and over, I heard, “We believe basically the same thing.” I queried them about God being a human at one time, about Jesus and Lucifer being brothers, and about the possibility of becoming a god of one’s own universe in the afterlife. They down-played these as things that are unclear or things that some Mormons believe and others do not. I got the impression that they were not being straight up with me, as if the goal was to convince me that Mormonism and orthodox Christianity are basically the same.

5. I tried to speak the gospel and say clearly what I believe it means.

I am praying for these guys, hoping that God will use something out of what was said for good. Ultimately, we agreed that there was no chance of progress and we parted ways amicably.

What are your experiences with the Mormons?

Is there such a thing as a Christian Sabbath?

The Westminster Confession of Faith says this about the Sabbath:

[God] has particularly appointed one day in seven, for a Sabbath, to be kept holy unto him: which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week: and, from the resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week, which, in Scripture, is called the Lord’s Day, and is to be continued to the end of the world, as the Christian Sabbath. (WCF 21.17)

What I want to examine in this post is the scriptural basis for stating that the Sabbath was moved from Saturday to Sunday. The WCF cites the following verses:

¹Now about the collection for God’s people: Do what I told the Galatian churches to do. ²On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made. (1 Corinthians 16:1-2)

⁷On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. (Acts 20:7)

¹⁰On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet… (Revelation 1:10)

These passages do indeed indicate that the churches in Galatia, Corinth, and Ephesus were worshipping on the first day of the week, but that is all. They say nothing about the Sabbath itself being moved. It seems strange to me that the WCF can make so bold a claim based on such scanty, non-conclusive evidence. To be sure, they have ample evidence in the Old Testament that the Sabbath is a perpetual ordinance:

¹⁶ The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant. ¹⁷ It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he abstained from work and rested.’ (Exodus 31:16-17)

Does the above reference apply to Christians, however? Or just to Israelites? And is “forever” to be taken literally, or simply to mean that this is an ordinance that all Israelite generations are to observe?

The references to the Old Testament are the strongest points of the WCF, in my opinion. The Sabbath is indeed a creation ordinance, and it is found in the ten commandments. However, I find it utterly unconvincing that the New Testament teaches that the Sabbath was moved to Sunday. The New Testament has a great deal to say about whether circumcision and the other ceremonial ordinances of the Law still apply, and the answer is an emphatic no. Is the Sabbath included in these Old Testament observances that no longer apply? The following passage from Colossians 2 seems to be saying that very thing:

¹³When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, ¹⁴having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. ¹⁶Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. ¹⁷These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. (Emphases are mine.)

When the conflict over the observation of the Law came to a head, the church in Jerusalem rendered the following judgment:

²⁸It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: ²⁹You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.” (Acts 15:28-29)

Notice they did not require them to observe the Sabbath. It is true that they do not mention a lot of things from the Law (like murder, theft, etc.), which are obviously still applicable, so perhaps this is not a valid point. I would think, however, that the observance of the Sabbath would have been one of those things that were foreign to Gentile converts and that the proponents of the Law were requiring them to observe.

In conclusion, it seems far from certain that the Lord’s Day is synonomous to the Sabbath. In fact, the Colossians passage seems to indicate that its observance is optional, but I am not a theologian. Care to add your two cents?

A question for Old Earth Creationists who reject evolution…

Why do you accept an old earth and not evolution? Is it for scriptural reasons? Scientific objections?