N.B. There are a lot of false ideas about my religion that have spread. As a member of this church, I know what is true and not about us so please read the entire Take with a fresh mind before questioning anything. Thank you!
You may have seen the Award Winning Broadway Musical The Book of Mormon (which has nothing to do with our beliefs, I am afraid), you may have had missionaries knock on your door, you may have been driving and went past one of our temples. Who are we? Read on!
Interesting Facts:
Mormons are Christians who are actually called “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints”
We have temples, just like the ones in the scriptures. Couples go to be married there forever and ever. What happens inside the temple is valid in heaven. Imagine it is an embassy for heaven. There are over 180 temples all over the world and several being built.
We believe in The Book of Mormon as another testament of Jesus Christ besides the Bible. More about that below.
We believe our bodies are sacred and must be treated with respect. We do not drink, smoke, do drugs, or do anything to harm our body or the bodies of others. We should keep healthy and look after ourselves to say thank you to God. Imagine someone gives you a beautiful car as present. How are you going to treat that car?
We believe marriage and family is sacred. We believe the ability to create children and for a man and a woman to come closer through intimacy is a gift and responsibility from God and we should save that power for a man and woman who are married and committed to each other.
We believe families can be together for ever.
We have a prophet, and apostles just like the ones in the scriptures. You can hear the prophet speak in this video here:
We believe in serving and helping others, we have many organisations inside of our church designed to help people in need. Because of how spread out we are, we are usually some of the first to help in a disaster.
We are not just found in the US! We have a presence in most countries. Mormonism is the 2nd biggest religion in Tonga and Niue. We have an overwhelming amount in Mexico and Brazil. In total, we have around 16,000,000 members worldwide. We almost can not keep up with our growth in Africa.
Being a Mormon is fun! You would not believe the amazing organised activities we have that enable us to try new things, make new friends, etc. My friends and I are all meeting people from all over the country and I swear one or two of them get married or engaged every week.
Worthy Mormon men are given power from God called the Priesthood. This enables them to help and bless lives in behalf of Jesus. I have heard amazing stories about this and have seen the influence of this power in my life.
We are all responsible for our own sins, but through us trying our hardest and repenting from doing wrong, the grace of God makes up the difference. Imagine a little girl who wants a bike and asks her parents for one. They tell her to save up. The child works like crazy and only makes a tiny bit. The parents love her and know she has worked as hard as she can and they want her to have the bike.
They tell her that if she gives them the money she gives them a hug, they will pay for the rest. Likewise, God will help us get to heaven if we do our best.
Mormons are the only Christians who like the Muslims, believe in the story of Abraham and the priest that tried to sacrifice him. (At least they include the story in their canon)
We believe in baptism by immersion, and people who are baptised are given the gift of the Holy Spirit to be will them as a companion.
We believe we should go to church every Sunday to renew our baptismal covenants and learn to improve ourselves at the classes there.
Mormons are generally very musical! We have along with many traditional hymns, loads of our own which are very beautiful and draw a lot of us into the musical world. We even have our own choir! The Mormon Tabernacle.
Mormons send missionaries out all over the world. We believe it is our responsibility to share the gospel with God’s children and this is an act of love.
How did that all start?
The process of our religion started in 1820 when a young boy called Joseph Smith who lived in America prayed to God to know which Christian denomination was true. He had read in the book of James, "If any of you lack wisdom, ask of god who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not" after he had attended many of the churches out there. He went into the woods and prayed. God and Jesus appeared to him standing side by side and Jesus told him that none of them were true, that his true church when he was on the earth had gone apostate. In the years following, many miracles happened and Joseph was led to some ancient records that were writings of the prophets who had moved to the Americas hundreds of years before Christ and all of the things that happened there, wars, missionary work, Christ appearing to them after his death. Joseph translated these records into what we call the Book of Mormon. He became the first modern prophet and we have continued to have a prophet down to this day. We firmly believe in the Bible, the Book of Mormon makes us love the Bible more and clarifies its teachings. There are some practises in the bible that no other church do but us.
Why do you have about 16,000,000 members worldwide? That story sounds far fetched.
This is a question I would ask, that story sounds like something someone would make up. People are not that stupid to just blindly accept this and join. How do they know? They ask God! There is an invitation in the back of the Book of Mormon that tells us to ask God if it is true and if we really want to know, he will send us his spirit to tell us it is true. He does, he did it for me. So many people you would not expect ever to join have because they did this.
If God would communicate with people in the Bible, what makes them so special that they can have revelation and we can't? God loves all of his children. We believe that God loves us so much that he wants us to come to him and be blessed by him. He wants us to be happy more than anything else. He wants us to live with him so we can feel his love forever.
What do you believe about pre-earth life and life after death?
We believe we lived with God as spirits before we were born. He came up with a plan to help us progress to his level of glory. He would send us down to earth as mortals for us to be tested to see how righteous we could be. The only problem was, since we are mortal, we are going to make mistakes and sinful people can not live with God. Someone would have to go down and take the punishment for all the evil that took place on the earth. Jesus was chosen, he loved us so much, he could not bear to think of us not living with him and being happy. We believe Satan, the Devil, wanted to be chosen to come down and force us to be good. He did not understand that it was all about us making our own decisions. He was angry and started a war where a third of God's children turned against the plan. He is angry and tries to lie to us and lead us away from God because he can not progress, he is damned. So, that explains the after life as well. We believe that we will be sent to a place appropriate to how we behaved on earth and we will be judged with mercy depending on the sincerity of our efforts.
Any other questions, just ask!
Find out more here: https://www.lds.org/?lang=eng
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