Please clarify Mormon exaltation

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nd_smc_02

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I have loosely been following previous threads to answer some of my questions about Mormonism, but it is sometimes hard to keep up with all of the posts unless you stay right on top of it. If this has already been answered, I apologize.

I am a Catholic who has Mormon friends, and I wish to be informed when we discuss our religions with each other. I am finding so many contradictions in Mormon beliefs and so I would like some clarification.

The following quote is from the LDS website:
“Through Jesus Christ, Heavenly Father has provided a way for all people to become like Him **and return to live with Him forever”. **
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So according to Mormon beliefs, man can become a god. I was under the understanding that Mormons believed that when a man became god through exaltation, he was ruler of his own universe or planet. Therefore, he would not be living with “Heavenly Father” in the afterlife, but instead would live separately on another planet that he would rule.
So which is it??? Living with god in the afterlife or not? …This is very confusing.
 
nd_smc_02 said:
I have loosely been following previous threads to answer some of my questions about Mormonism, but it is sometimes hard to keep up with all of the posts unless you stay right on top of it. If this has already been answered, I apologize.
I am a Catholic who has Mormon friends, and I wish to be informed when we discuss our religions with each other. I am finding so many contradictions in Mormon beliefs and so I would like some clarification.

The following quote is from the LDS website:

So according to Mormon beliefs, man can become a god. I was under the understanding that Mormons believed that when a man became god through exaltation, he was ruler of his own universe or planet. Therefore, he would not be living with “Heavenly Father” in the afterlife, but instead would live separately on another planet that he would rule.
So which is it??? Living with god in the afterlife or not? …This is very confusing.
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Check the top of the thread, there are a few postings addressing this topic.

Specifically: Mormons believe that everyone becomes a ‘god’ and that our God was once a man who ‘eternally progressed’ to become a ‘god.’

Also, that Satan and Jesus are brothers and sons of this god.

Mormons are NOT considered Christian by the Catholic Church and by every mainstream Protestant denomination (Presbytarian, Methodist, AME, Episcopalian, Lutheran, et cetera).

Mormons consider themselves to be the one true church and prove it by claiming everyone else is wrong!}. They do this by asserting claims which cannot be proven.

Go to any thread with ‘Mormon’ in the title and hang on for a wild ride in trying to understand what exactly Zerinus, wussup, alma, rmcmullan, chasjohn, and other mormons are trying to say.

Pax Christi
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Your perplexity is justified. I have been a Mormon for over 20 years. Push Mormon doctrine ever so slightly and it creeks. God is just one of many. Many are of equal status and many are greater than our God. Who do you worship ? YOUR IMMEDIATE gOD OR THE gOD ABOVE HIM ? Families are forever say the Mormons. But if your children become Gods, then they will be off elewhere on another world. Where is the unity here.
 
It is confusing because depending on which mormon you speak with, you’ll get a different answer.

When I was a mormon, I was taught absolutely that mormon men can become gods. If God judges them righteous enough they can “progress” to godhood.

It helps to understand mormon wording. Often this is worded as “eternal progression”. Last I read the info at lds.org, there was a lot of wording around eternal progression but not much explanation of what mormons mean by this term.

A man who becomes god is forever married to the woman (or women as the case may be) that is married to here, now, in this life. This couple (and sister-wives if any) will spend eternity making spirit babies (mormon term: eternal increase). The man would be a god over his own world, where he would create humans for those spirit children to inhabit as souls.

When I was taught this, it was a promise to any man who lived a perfect mormon life.

Times change, and so does the mormon church. Lately I hear some mormons saying very few extraordinary men will reach this exalted state. So, I guess it isn’t a blanket promise any longer.
 
If you are confused by that teaching, are you also confused with Rev 1:6?
6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
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Or Rev 5:10?
10 And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.
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DO you know what it means or only that it couldn’t possibly support the Mormon teaching?
 
rmcmullan said:
If you are confused by that teaching, are you also confused with Rev 1:6?

Or Rev 5:10?

DO you know what it means or only that it couldn’t possibly support the Mormon teaching?
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Catholics agree with this teaching. It has nothing to do with the heresy of Mormonism.

Every baptized Christian holds the “common priesthood of the baptized”. We are kings and priests to God through our savior Jesus Christ, who holds the only true priesthood. Any priesthood held by any man is merely a sharing in the one priesthood of Jesus Christ.

God love you,
Paul

Paul
 
Being a “king and priest to God” does not mean “become a god and rule your own planet with your goddess wives and have billions of spirit children to worship you”.

Paul
 
rmcmullan said:
If you are confused by that teaching, are you also confused with Rev 1:6?
Or Rev 5:10?
DO you know what it means or only that it couldn’t possibly support the Mormon teaching?
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Many thanks for your reply. I need to explain something that might clarify my intentions. I have been a Mormon for over 20 years, and in high positions. Coming out of the LDS church is very painful and very emotional. My reaction - and I in no way mean to make light of the word or the terrible sin - is like being raped. There is such a terrible feeling of violation of my trust and my emotions. To find that the god who I trusted for over 2 decades was in fact fooling me. I say “god” because I do not believe this just to be a foolish religion made by men. There is more to it than that.

So, I do not take anything to do with religion on face value, on the Mormon “feeling”. As a mormon missionary I practised this. As soon as an investigator seemed to feel something different, it was to be labelled the “witness of the Holy Spirit” bearing truth to the things that were being taught.

Now in the scriptures that you quote above, there is another Mormon trait that I have seen throught my membership in the church. That is looking at something superficially and taking things out of context. So, “other sheep have I” refers to the Lamanites and Nephites in America. “Stick of Joseph and Judah” refers to the Book of Mormon and the Bible respectively. “Voce from the dust” refers to the Book of Mormon being buried in the ground. To someone as I was who was not grounded in the scriptures, these explanations seemed very plausible and sensible. You have nothing to contradict them or explain them.

As I journey into Catholicism, I question each teaching and ask for scriptures that back it up and explanations from the Church Fathers. I want to know truth, and the Holy Spirit does also confirm these things, now that I know how to discern the Holy Spirit from other spirits or from my own emotions.

So no. I will not contradict these scriptures that you mention simple to avoid agreeing with something that the LDS believe in. Truth cuts across all boundaries and it should be the search for truth that we search for, not something that confirms our beliefs or contradicts someones elses. Now this is exactly what I was discouraged from doing in the LDS church. Just look at the complete absence of teaching from the Church Fathers in LDS sacrament meeting or lesson books. Sainthood apparently started for LDS with the crossing of the plains into Utah (Deseret).

As a Mormon I grasped hold of signle words and took them to confirm what I was being taught, without sometimes even reading the full verse, certainly not the verse in context of the chapter or book or Bible as a whole. So Hebres when it talks of “the priesthood of Melchisedek” immediately is taken out of context by Mormons and becomes an indisputable confirmation of the LDS concept of priesthood. “There you go, the Bible says Melchisedek Priesthood, can you tell me what church in the world has a Melchisedek priesthood. Let me tell you, the LDS church”. Or so would go the conversation with an invesitgator. This is what I believe you are doing with these scriptures - taking them out of context and latching hold onto individual words.

But, I am nonethless grateful to you for your challenge. Truth is what I seek, and it appears to be here in the teachings of the Catholic Church.

God bless you my brother or sister.

Hal.
 
Prince Hal: So long as we’re doing introductions, I was formerly Catholic. I like Catholics a lot and feel very much indebted to the good men and women (nuns!) who taught me about Christ wile I was young. And for the Catholic church too. I think they’re great. I also served an (LDS) mission when I was a younger, having been baptised in my early 20’s.

You make it hard to discuss this topic. You tell me that you can’t trust the scriptures and you can’t trust the testimony of the Holy Ghost (which is called feelings on this board). That doesn’t leave much to go by. You must know D&C 9–you study it out and pray for confirmation. That’s the rule I go by. That’s what lead me to the LDS church.

Paul Dupree: Seriously, think about what it might mean to be a king and priest to the Most High God. If you’re pretty sure it’s not the LDS interpretation (sensationalized by its critics), what does it mean?
 
Rmcmullen, thank you for your comment, but I did not say that. Let me clarify. I trust both the scriptures (the Bible) and the Holy Spirit. But I do not trust SOME Mormon interpretations of the scripture. Nor do I label every feeling during a religious conversation as being the Holy Spirit. If I say that by the Holy Spirit I have a witness that Mormonism is false (which I do) and you say by the same spirit that it is true, then one of us must wrong. So what I do is to take the spirit and scripture in context, along with my own commonsense and I have my answer and direction. I strive to live close to the Holy Spirit. Sir, you must be accurate in your posts and not set up false arguments. My caution with religion may not be to everyone’s liking but I have been badly burned by Mormonism. Now + lstudy things out in my mindL and then I ask God if they are true. But that truth will not contradict His word in the Bible.

God bless you in your journey.

HHal.
 
Prince_Hal said:
If I say that by the Holy Spirit I have a witness that Mormonism is false (which I do) and you say by the same spirit that it is true, then one of us must wrong.
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Sorry, you’re not the first one here to bear an anti-testimony. I predict you’ll be happy posting to this board, it’s made up of a lot of like minded people.

I suppose no one seriously wants to discuss the scriptures I presented anymore than some one firmly opposed to Mormon temple work wants to discuss 1 Cor 15:29. If they support any LDS teaching, then they’re taken out of context or misrepresented. If your conscience constrains you to believe it to be so, then you can’t be trusted to act on emotion. You can’t act on the two of them together because they lead different people to different conclusions and how can that be any source of truth?

If you want to base you religion on what you read in the Bible, you probably would be better off as a Protestant, that’s their claim. Of course there are many variations and Calvin and Luther introduced a lot of their own ideas. Read Romans over and see if you belive in the Once Save Always Saved philosophy. There’s lots of threads on it (here at the Catholic forums) to help expose the different faucets and ramifications of such a teaching. After you’ve read and studied it out in your mind, then pray about it. Or maybe you’re ready just to accept the Catholic teaching on the authority of the Catholic church?
 
I’ve read Romans over and over (in the KJV, NIV, TNIV, RSV, NRSV, and the NAB). The only thing I haven’t done is learn to read Greek and consult the most ancient manuscripts themselves. But I don’t have time or resources for that. I agree that Romans does not confirm the salvation by justification doctrine. But it does confirm the catholic doctrine of original sin. Quite clearly. I too was burned by mormonism, having lived a life of faithful LDS practice, including seminary, an honorable mission and temple marriage, constant prayer sincerly and honestly seeking a testimony - but never to obtain one and to then be condemned as insincere or lacking in faith or sinful. Long study and prayer, based soley on careful and prayerful review of the New Testament and Church Fathers, using translations of the most ancient and reliable manuscripts, has convinced me the early church was catholic, not proto-mormon. There is zero evidence of a Total Apostasy. Add to this the fact that the official history of the LDS church presented in the correlated, approved lesson manuals is contradicted by the surviving original documents from the period of the church’s founding. The rational decision was to base my faith on the evidence and not to base my faith on feelings and non-evidence. There are no proofs, only degrees of evidence on which to base a rational faith. And the weight of the evidence lies with catholicism. The evidence for mormonism is sparse, which is why prayer and a search for confirming feelings is paramount in the LDS church. I wish to have a facts-based faith, not faith in spite of facts buttressed only by feelings. For this reason, I am now halfway through RCIA and am on schedule to be received into the Catholic Church this coming Easter.

NewSeeker
 
NewSeeker said:
I am now halfway through RCIA and am on schedule to be received into the Catholic Church this coming Easter.

NewSeeker
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Hey NewSeeker, I am also a former mormon, halfway through RCIA and waiting patiently for Easter Vigil.

🙂
 
Sorry…i was typing to fast. At the beginning of my post I should have said “I agree that Romans does not confirm the salvation by faith alone doctrine.” I said salvation by justification. I just wanted to clarify my meaning.

NewSeeker
 
rmcmullan said:
I suppose no one seriously wants to discuss the scriptures I presented anymore than some one firmly opposed to Mormon temple work wants to discuss 1 Cor 15:29.
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In Alma 34:35, 36 we read: “For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he does seal you his. Therefore, the spirit of the Lord has withdrawn from you and hath no place in you; the power of the devil is over you, and this is the final state of the wicked.”

This is a **Flat-Out Contradiction **of baptising the dead

In other words, those who die as non-Mormons go to hell, period. There’s no suggestion of a later, vicarious admission into the Mormon Church.

We see present-day Mormon doctrine also contradicted in 2 Nephi 9:15: “And it shall come to pass that when all men shall have passed from this first death unto life, insomuch as they have become immortal, they must appear before the judgment seat of the Holy One of Israel, and then cometh the judgment and then must they be judged according to the holy judgment of God. For the Lord God hath spoken it, and it is his eternal word, which cannot pass away, that they who are righteous shall be righteous still, and they who are filthy shall be filthy still; wherefore, they who are filthy…shall go away into everlasting fire, prepared for them; and their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever and has no end.”

. . . but this is off topic so it deserves a seperate thread.

Peace,

Ryan 🙂
 
Huh? Can I believe what I am seeing? You are appealing to scriptures that you neither believe or understand in order to refute a biblical scripture?

Any you are right about one thing, it is off topic. Maybe you can find something in the *Book of Mormon *to refute the quotes from Revelations?
 
ryanoneil said:
In Alma 34:35, 36 we read: “For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he does seal you his. Therefore, the spirit of the Lord has withdrawn from you and hath no place in you; the power of the devil is over you, and this is the final state of the wicked.”

This is a **Flat-Out Contradiction **of baptising the dead

In other words, those who die as non-Mormons go to hell, period. There’s no suggestion of a later, vicarious admission into the Mormon Church.
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That is not so. That refers to those who have had the opportunity to have the gospel preached to them, by those authorized from God to do so, and have had the Holy Ghost witness to them of its truth, and willfully rejected it in this life, without ever repenting of it. It does not refer to those who have never had the message of the restored gospel preached to them, accompanied by the the testimony of the Holy Ghost.

zerinus
 
rmcmullan said:
Huh? Can I believe what I am seeing? You are appealing to scriptures that you neither believe or understand in order to refute a biblical scripture?

Any you are right about one thing, it is off topic. Maybe you can find something in the *Book of Mormon *to refute the quotes from Revelations?
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Your correct that I don’t understand the Mormon scripture. But, when comparing them with zerinus’ post it appears that baptism of the dead developed post-Joseph Smith and is quite unlike what Joseph Smith first taught.

Perhaps I’m wrong about this as well. The only reason I brought any of this up is because just as I don’t understand your scripture, you don’t understand what is being said in 1 Cor 15:29. Paul is refering to quasi-Christian groups which practiced variations of orthodox Christian doctrines. (baptism for the dead)

Paul wasn’t referring to orthodox Christians baptizing the dead. There’s no other scriptural reference to it, and none of the Church Fathers discuss it in any of their writings. There is simply no evidence indicating that the early Christian Church practiced baptism for the dead.

The only reason Paul is bringing up this fringe group is to stress that our bodies will be resurrected at the end of time.

Peace,

Ryan 🙂
 
rmcmullan said:
Maybe you can find something in the *Book of Mormon *to refute the quotes from Revelations?
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I could try to find something in the Book of Mormon to refute your quotes from Revelation. BUT, I’m sure I’d be taking the BoM verses out of context just as you are taking the Revelation verses out of context.

PaulDupre has already adressed the Revelation verses adequately.

Peace,

Ryan 🙂
 
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