What Do Mormons Really Believe?: Part VI
Article of Faith #6
This is Part Six of my series on what members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, sometimes called "Mormons", believe. Please remember that though I am an active member of the church, my disclaimer is that I do not claim to provide the official view from the church; I'll leave it to the church to do that (see www.mormon.org).
The intent of these articles is not to attack or demean other faiths or to cause any kind of contention or argument. They are written to simply outline the beliefs of church members in as straightforward a way as possible. I have no intention to convince, trick or deceive anyone. Indeed, this is far from the mind of anyfaithful member of the church. We realize full well that spiritual matters are deeply personal and can only be accessed through study, reflection, and with the aid of the Divine.
The Articles of Faith were written by Joseph Smith Jr., whom church members take to be a prophet and the first leader of the church in our time. They were written to clarify the church's position about many fundamental issues.
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Article of Faith #6
We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and so forth.
The church makes a bold claim regarding this Article of Faith it is simply this: the original church that Jesus organized when He was on the earth has been restored. He restored it Himself, and did it through a prophet named Joseph Smith.
When Jesus was on the earth, he fulfilled the Law of Moses, introduced His teachings to the world, and He organized His church. As part of this organization, He called 12 apostles to bear witness of Him and to testify of Him. After Christ was killed, returned in the flesh, and then ascended to heaven, His apostles, after replacing Judas Iscariot with Matthias, went through the earth preaching His gospel, baptizing many, and continuing the legacy the Jesus left them. His church leaders continued to receive revelation (such as Peter receiving the revelation to take the gospel to the gentiles and John's Revelation) and to lead and guide the church under His leadership.
They worked diligently to try to preserve the teachings Jesus taught them. They sent letters (epistles) to the distant Christian congregations they had started and visited them whenever they could. These epistles make up much of the latter half of the New Testament. These church leaders worked hard to prevent Christ's original doctrine from being corrupted by the many philosophies that ran rampant during that ancient time. These early Christian church leaders, however, faced significant challenges in their efforts to spread the gospel and keep the teachings of Jesus pure and solid. For one thing, the various Christian congregations were spread far apart--they were all over the civilized world at the time. There are many stories of Paul and other apostles, for example, travelling the world to keep things in line. But church leaders found it very difficult to to visit the various congregations across the known world frequently enough to prevent false ideas from taking hold. All this was also in the face of constant persecution, imprisonment, and even martyrdom.
Early leaders of the Church realized that preserving the original Christian church would be impossible. The apostle Paul prophecied, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables" (2 Timothy 4:3-4).
The persecution of the prophets and apostles of Christ's early church eventually lead to their deaths as martyrs. The teachings of Christ dwindled as outside ideas and influences infiltrated His true doctrine. Church members today call this "The Great Apostacy"--a term familiar with many Protestant faiths who maintain the same thing. As well intentioned as many other church leaders of ancient, post-apostle Christianity were, without revelation to God's chosen prophets and apostles, they were left to themselves to preserve Christ's original teachings. These great men succeeded in large part, and Christianity today stands as one of the great belief-systems in the world.
But the Great Apostasy had taken its toll. The priesthood--the authority to act in the name of God--was taken from the earth, and humans were forced to contrive much doctrine through individual scriptural interpretation, debate, and even pure invention rather than through the time-approved and Deity-approved method of revelation, which has always been the way God has conducted His business among men since the beginning of time on this earth (Amos 3:7).
The simple, bold statement of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is this: the original church of Jesus Christ--the church He Himself founded and organized, has been restored. The priesthood is back on the earth. Once more, God speaks through His servants the prophets. Once more, prophets and apostles lead and guide His church.
Church President David O. McKay (1873 - 1970) proclaimed:
"Two great truths must be accepted by mankind if they shall save themselves; first, that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Only Begotten, the very Son of God, whose atoning blood and resurrection save us from physical and spiritual death...; and next, that God has again restored to the earth, in these last days, through the Prophet Joseph, His holy Priesthood with the fullness of the everlasting Gospel, for the salvation of all men on the earth."
(Church member Barry Robet Bickmore has written a very detailed description of the Great Apostasy. I highly encourage you to read it! You can read it by clicking here.)
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Next stop: Article of Faith #7
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Contents to articles:
What Do Mormons Really Believe?: Introduction
Part III (Article of Faith #3)
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Comments: 7
But then so does physics.
and doing it very well, of course