Let’s talk about Christianity and Jesus Christ as pertaining to the LDS church, or the Mormons.
Many people question if Mormons are in fact Christians. Some Christian denominations claim that Mormons are not Christians because Mormons believe that one must be saved through grace and works instead of just by grace alone, and then a few other differences in doctrine as well. But if you ever want to see a Mormon get instantly sad, tell him or her that he or she is not a Christian. And the reason that Mormons are saddened by that claim is because the LDS church and the lives of the people who belong to the church are centered around Jesus Christ and trying to become more like him.
In fact it’s no coincidence that the full name of the church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. And many people don’t know this, but the full title of the Book of Mormon, not the musical, the actual book, is the Book of Mormon, another testament of Jesus Christ.
What Mormons Believe about Jesus Christ
Mormons worship Jesus Christ. And here are some things that we believe about him.
- Mormons believe that Jesus Christ is the literal Son of God who died on the cross and on the third day was resurrected.
- There is only one Messiah, one Savior, one only Begotten Son, and that is Jesus Christ.
- Jesus Christ lived a perfect life and because of that he is the only one qualified to pay for all of the sins of humanity.
- He loved us so much that he was willing to endure the full weight of all our sins and pay the most horrible price to save us.
- What Christ accomplished for all of mankind is the single most important event across all history.
- He knows each of us individually by name and desires us to return to live again with him someday.
- Mormons believe Jesus Christ will return again to usher in the millennium.
If the label Christian refers to a religious denomination that adheres to and believes in specific doctrine as outlined by those who are in more commonly known Christian faiths, then I suppose the differences in Mormon beliefs may disqualify them of the Christian label in some people’s eyes. But if being Christian means you are a follower and a worshiper of Jesus Christ, making him even the center of your life, then I would hope that the lives of the Mormons you know is a testament that Mormons indeed are Christians.
Do Mormons believe Jesus and Satan are brothers?
Jesus and Satan are brothers. Now this is a perfect example of a topic where critics of Mormonism have taken actual Mormon doctrine but then they’ve left out very important details so that it misrepresents what Mormons actually believe. It’s like for instance if you were to be interviewed by a newspaper reporter and then they end up using only seven words out of your hour long interview. You would probably feel a little under or misrepresented and the same case goes for this topic of Jesus and Satan being brothers.
So allow me to start from the very beginning and it’s a lot to digest so you don’t have to agree with what Mormons believe but I do want to clarify what that truth actually is.
So taking it back to the very beginning, Mormons believe that before we were born on this earth all people who were ever created by God lived with God in heaven and we were there as spirits only. We didn’t actually have physical bodies that you can touch. Those didn’t come until we were born on this earth and that’s one of the reasons that we’re born on this earth in addition to many other reasons. But going back to that pre-earth life if you will, we lived with God because he was our literal heavenly Father. He created us and because we all shared the same Father as spirits we were all spiritual siblings so all of us are related spiritually according to Mormonism.
The very first spirit ever born Mormons believe was Jesus Christ. You may have heard of him. He had quite the impact here for mankind and from the moment he was born a spirit he was perfect and he had this selfless desire to do whatever our heavenly Father wanted him to do which included coming to earth being the savior of mankind, atoning for our sins and sacrificing himself all for the benefit of mankind. Now after Jesus was born a bajillion other spirits were born including me and you and Pocahontas and like people from history George Washington, Genghis Khan, I don’t know. I picked him. Anyway, lots of spirits born after the Savior. And in the midst of all of these spirits was one being by the name of Satan or Lucifer, also known as the Devil. You’ve probably heard of him as well.
And whereas Jesus was a very selfless spirit who wanted to do the will of Heavenly Father, Satan was quite the opposite. In fact, he devised a plan that would require all of us to come to earth. He would take away the freedom to choose, force us to live a certain way, and then he wanted a glory for himself. But he was so convincing and cunning in his reasoning that he ended up with a lot of followers. And eventually this big disagreement happened and Satan and his followers were cast out of heaven by God. Now, this is actually a very sad time, we believe, for all of us because his followers, were people that we probably knew. And the consequence of being cast out of heaven by God meant that this group of spirits would not be born to earth. They would not receive a physical body and they would not end up being exalted in the end. So it was a really tragic story for them because they chose to follow Satan. Whereas everybody who chose to follow God and Jesus ended up coming to earth. And because Satan and his followers have this fate, it is now their mission to make everybody on earth as miserable as they are by creating pain and plagues and causing people to sin and destroy their lives and the lives of people around them. And they’re good at it in a lot of ways.
And so Mormons don’t believe it’s just Satan out there tempting everybody, but it’s also Satan and his followers. But back to the main subject, Jesus and Satan are brothers. So the technical truth is, yes, Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are spiritual siblings. But what they tend to leave out is that Mormons believe that everybody is a spiritual sibling. And so Jesus and Satan are brothers by default. They tend to leave out that detail and they just say, Jesus and Satan are brothers. And they make it sound like that’s the only, uh, brothership that exists when really it’s all of us. You could even say that Satan and I are brother and sister.
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