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The Church of Latter Day Saints: Born from the Occult?

The Mormon church has always fascinated me because of their odd beliefs. For those who aren’t aware, the Church of Latter Day Saints was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830. The beliefs are based upon two main documents: the Book of Mormon and the Doctrines and Covenants (D&C). Mormons would also say they accept the Bible, however much of the Book of Mormon and D&C contradicts the Bible and they always accept these two at the Bible’s expense.

The Beginning of Mormonism
To understand anything about the Church of Latter Day Saints, you must start at the beginning (which is true of almost any church). In the beginning was Joseph Smith:

The Book of Mormon relates the history of a group of Hebrews who migrated from Jerusalem to America about 600 BCE, led by a prophet, Lehi. They eventually split into two groups. One group, the Lamanites, forgot their beliefs and were the ancestors of the American Indians. The other group, the Nephites, developed culturally and built great cities but were eventually destroyed by the Lamanites about 400 CE. Before this occurred, however, Jesus had appeared and taught the Nephites (after his ASCENSION). The history and teachings were abridged and written on golden plates by the prophet Mormon. His son, Moroni, made additions and buried the plates in the ground, where they remained about 1,400 years, until Moroni, a resurrected being or ANGEL, delivered them to Joseph Smith, subsequently Smith returned them to Moroni.
- - from Encyclopedia of World Religions

The short story is that the angel Moroni gave Joseph Smith some golden tablets written in a language similar to Egyptian. Moroni also gave Joseph some special glasses to read the tablets. So he translated them into the Book of Mormon and created the Church of Latter Day Saints.

The Occult and Joseph Smith
So where does the occult come into play? Actually very early. Joseph Smith was involved in occultist practices from a young age:

The line separating religion from superstition can be indistinct, and this was especially true during the theological chaos of the Second Great Awakening, in which Joseph came of age. The future prophet’s spiritual curiosity moved him to explore far and wide on both sides of that blurry line, including an extended foray into the necromantic arts. More specifically, he devoted much time and energy to attempting to divine the location of buried treasure by means of black magic and crystal gazing, activities he learned from his father. Several years later he would renounce his dabbling in the occult, but Joseph’s flirtation with folk magic as a young man had a direct and unmistakable bearing on the religion he would soon usher forth.
- - Jon Krakauer Under the Banner of Heaven

In fact, Joseph Smith even went to trial (People of the State of New York vs. Joseph Smith) when a man who employed him to find some silver wasn’t happy with the results.

The Occult and the Church of Latter Day Saints
The story goes that Joseph Smith was visited by the angel Moroni one night who told him about the golden plates. However the angel also told Joseph that he could not have the plates yet. When Joseph went to retrieve them the next day, they disappeared. This is where some more of the occult creeps into the story: three years later Joseph Smith learned by looking into his “peep stones” that he had to marry a girl named Emma Hale before Moroni would give the plates back to him.

In the end, Joseph did get the plates back along with some magical glasses that enabled him to read the “reformed Egyptian” writing. He translated the book to a neighbor, but unfortunately the neighbor’s wife burned it when she heard the story from Joseph Smith. Since the plates had already been returned to Moroni, Joseph had to plead with him to get them back. Eventually Moroni gave them back, but did not give Joseph the magic glasses. So instead:

Joseph relied instead on his favorite peep stone [to translate the book]: a chocolate-colored, egg-shaped rock that he had discovered twenty-four feet underground, in the company of Sally Chase’s father, while digging a well in 1822.
Day after day, utilizing a technique he had learned from Sally, Joseph would place the magic rock in an upturned hat, bury his face in it with the stack of gold plates sitting nearby, and dictate the lines of scripture that appeared to him out of the blackness.
- - Jon Krakauer Under the Banner of Heaven

And thus, through the occult, the Book of Mormon was written.

But is Mormonism True?
The Church of Latter Day Saints is growing rapidly. The Mormons have thousands upon thousands of missionaries throughout the world converting others to their religion. And people are converting despite the evidence that Mormonism is not true:

As history, moreover, The Book of Mormon is riddled with egregious anachronisms and irreconcilable inconsistencies. For instance, it makes many references to horses and wheeled carts, neither of which existed in the Western Hemisphere during the pre-Columbian era. It inserts such inventions as steel and the seven-day week into ancient history long before such things were in fact invented. Modern DNA analysis has consistently demonstrated that American Indians are not descendants of any Hebraic race, as the Lamanites were purported to be. Mark Twain famously ridiculed The Book of Mormon’s tedious, quasi-biblical prose as “chloroform in print,” observing that the phrase “and it came to pass” is used more than two thousand times.

The Church of Latter Day Saints is not Christian and not true using almost any metric of truth. We have an obligation to inform those around us so they are not pulled into this cult, which began with a charismatic leader dabbling in the occult and is now growing faster than most of the religions in the world.

I’ll be writing more on Mormonism in the coming weeks, since I think it’s important to address the problems and errors of the LDS church. However for more information you can also read Jon Krakauer’s excellent book Under the Banner of Heaven, which focuses on a murder but in the process analyzes the entire history of Mormonism with insight and honesty.

God bless,
Jay

Posted by Jay at May 24, 2006 8:28 AM | TrackBack