If he is worthy to go out into the temple and there receive the sacred ordinances and
covenants and keep them, he can eventually grow into becoming a god himself.
You have got to learn how to be gods yourselves.
The Mormon Church teaches, and most Mormons don't know this, that there's multiple gods.
Now this is the founder of their religion.
He said the same as all the gods that have done before you.
The first thing that Eve was beguiled with was this idea that she could become god.
Remember how the devil said, you shall be as gods?
Satan literally told Eve, he says, if you eat of this fruit, your eyes will be opened
and you'll be as gods.
Here's what one of their presidents said, the fifth president, Lorenzo Snow, he said,
as man now is, God once was.
So he's saying that God at one point was a sinner that had to work for his salvation,
that had to be good enough and keep the commandments to be able to inherit everlasting life.
He says as God now is, man may be.
So they're teaching that man can literally become god.
They have these missionaries that go door to door, young guys roughly our age, but they
don't even know half the time that man can become god.
That's what their religion is saying.
Bible says, if there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams and giveth thee a sign
or a wonder, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, let us go after other gods, which thou hast
not known and let us serve them.
So what are we supposed to do in this situation?
It says thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet or of that dreamer of dreams.
So if somebody comes along and the Bible says that they said, let us go after other gods,
plural, the Bible's very powerful.
It actually predicted that a religion would come along and say that there's multiple gods.
In fact, all pagans have always believed, most pagans have always believed that there's
multiple gods.
We gotta be aware of this and we need to help Mormons do an internal critique.
When they come knocking on your door and it will happen, you need to be prepared to give
an answer of the reason of the hope that's within you, the Bible says.
Before me, there was no god formed.
So what they believe is that Elohim, God the Father, was conceived somewhere in time and
that he was conceived with a goddess wife and that they conceived the human population
that we see on earth.
And what they believe is that if you become good enough and you follow enough of the commandments,
that eventually you will become God the Father.
The Bible says, beside me there is no savior, before me there was no god formed.
If we move on here, let's talk about salvation.
If you believe salvation is by grace through faith, say amen.
Amen.
If you believe, as independent fundamental Baptist, that the Bible teaches that once
saved always saved, that you're saved by the grace of God, that you can't lose your salvation.
It says here in their book, their Book of Mormon, it says, for we know that it is by
grace that we are saved after all we can do.
You twist the definition of grace and say, well, it's by works that we're saved.
You gotta, you're saved by grace, but it's after all you've done.
That's not grace.
Grace is defined as unmerited favor.
Did you guys know that rat poison only contains 1% poison?
It's 99% food.
Let me tell you something.
If it was by grace through faith after all that we could do, do you know how proud we
would be?
Think about it.
I could be so arrogant and say, well, I'm going to heaven because I have endured.
I've kept my salvation.
I've kept the commandments.
And you're gonna find that every other false religion, every other cult out there will
teach that you can lose your salvation, every single one of them.
We are really the only group that holds to a faith that says that once you're saved,
you're saved eternally, that it's an everlasting covenant.
This should be something that's not disputed in Christianity.
Look, if you couldn't earn your salvation by good works, what makes you think you could
lose it by bad works?
I was talking to a guy recently after I had preached a salvation message about faith alone
in Jesus that can save a soul.
He came up to me and he says, well, I'm just glad that I have the power to keep my salvation.
Well, number one, it's not your salvation, it's the salvation of the Lord.
Number one, my salvation, it's of God.
Number one, and the Bible says that the Lord, we are kept by the power of who?
Of God.
The Bible says we have been born again of incorruptible seed by the word of God which
liveth and abideth forever.
The Bible tells us that we are born and we cannot be unborn.
Think of how illogical it is to say you can lose your salvation, but one of the common
denominators you're gonna find is with the Mormons and Jehovah's Witness, Muslims, Hindus,
they all preach the same thing.
They all say you can lose your salvation, every single one of them.
They're not trusting Jesus, they're trusting a false religion, they believe that it's by
works that were saved.
And the Mormon church will tell you that Judas lost his salvation.
This is one of their most popular doctrines that they believe in.
But Jesus answered them and said, have not I chosen you 12 and one of you is a what?
A devil.
So this is at the beginning of Jesus' ministry.
So was Judas ever saved to begin with?
If Jesus at the beginning of the ministry is saying, have not I chosen you 12 and one
of you is a devil?
So he's saying that Judas was never saved.
But if you talk to Mormons, they'll say Judas is a great example of someone who fell away
and lost their salvation.
They say the offering of salvation is effectual as we exercise faith.
Is salvation an exercise?
And trust in him, repent of our sins and are baptized by immersion.
So they're teaching, the Pentecostal church teaches baptismal regeneration, that you have
to be baptized to be saved.
But what did Paul say?
He says for Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel.
So is baptism part of the gospel?
Was baptism part of salvation?
If the greatest soul winner of all time said, Jesus didn't want me to, he didn't send me
to baptize.
He sent me to preach the gospel.
But you're going to say baptism is part of the gospel?
Now this is a verse they take out of context.
If you talk to a Mormon, the first verse they're going to go to is Acts 2 38, where it says
be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.
And they'll say, see, there's the proof in the King James Bible that to go to heaven,
you have to be baptized for the remission of sins.
Well, wait a second.
What if I said you're going to jail for stealing?
That means you're going to jail because of stealing.
What if I say be baptized for the remission of sins?
What is it saying?
Be baptized because of the remission of sins.
Mormons practice something known as baptism for dead people.
And they will teach that if you had a scoffer family member that didn't believe in Jesus
or didn't believe in the Bible, that you can be baptized on their behalf so that they can
go to heaven.
Because remember, they use that verse to say you got to be baptized to be saved.
So they're saying, well, you can just be baptized for other people.
And they have temples everywhere.
They convince people of this.
A lot of people, a lot of skeptics say, Matt, it's so funny that you believe in the devil.
That's so funny to me, Matt.
Yes, I absolutely do believe in Satan.
And because of the fact that some people are so manipulated and so tricked, that means
that somebody is deceiving someone.
Satan is a real entity.
The fact that people are so manipulated and so tricked is the proof that Satan exists.
This is a sad verse, but it's the truth.
Bible says, as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this, the judgment.
Once you're dead, you're dead.
Once you're dead, you cannot be saved if you died in an unsaved state.
But they will say, let's be baptized for these people.
No, the Bible says it's appointed unto men once to die.
And what's immediately after that?
The judgment, not the baptism that could save them from their sins.
Otherwise, this verse wouldn't say this.
After you die, if you die without Jesus Christ as your personal savior, the Bible says that
after this is the judgment.
They say everything that testifies of Jesus's divine birth, his goodness, his transforming
power and his lowercase G, godhood, we embrace enthusiastically.
One of the things you're going to notice about all false religions is you're knocking doors
and you're soul winning to try to help the mission of Heritage Baptist Church to reach
the town of DeWitt, you're going to find that every false religion attacks the deity
of Christ.
Every false religion says, well, he's just a god, lowercase G.
But if that's the case, if all of us are just beings that are going to slowly become God
as we work for our salvation, that means Jesus would have had to have been a sinner.
God would have had to have been a sinner.
But the Bible says that Jesus did no sin.
Neither was guile found in his mouth.
It doesn't say he sinned in his past life before he worked his way to heaven.
No, it says that he did no sin and was crucified on our behalf and he had to be perfect in
order to be able to take away the sins of sinful men like you and I and women, mankind,
humanity.
Freeth made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him.
Jesus knew no sin.
But if you talk to them, they will say Jesus was a sinner in his past life.
The Bible contradicts this.
Bible says in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.
That's a King James Bible that we read.
In the New World Translation, the Jehovah's Witness Bible, it says in the beginning was
the word and the word was with God and the word was a god.
Again, every other false religion is going to tell you that Jesus Christ is just a god,
just a good man.
No, he is the God.
In the Mormon Bible and Joseph Smith's translation there, it says in the beginning was the gospel
preached through the son and the son was with God and the son was of God.
So again, they're taking away from the deity of Christ.
They're saying he's just of God.
He's not God.
The second man of Mormonism, Brigham Young, said this.
He said, the only men who become gods, even the sons of God, are those who enter into
polygamy.
But what does the Bible tell us?
If you're going to be a pastor, the Bible says the bishop then must be blameless, the
husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach.
Adam didn't have Eve and Sandy and Katie and Grace.
Who did Adam have?
One woman.
God created one man for one woman for one lifetime.
But Brigham Young had over 50 wives.
These are the people that the Mormon Church reveres as, these guys are prophets.
Joseph Smith had around 40 wives.
You can't even make this stuff up.
I was telling my wife the other day, it's almost like if you get up and say something
wild enough, loony enough, you're going to get a huge following, because people just
tend to go along with that.
Look at our culture today.
What are they telling the kids in school?
There's more than two genders.
Talk about loony, but it's popular.
And then you get a little bit, you talk some rationality as a Christian, because we believe,
let us reason together, saith the Lord.
We believe in science and rationality, and we come along and say, no, I don't think we
evolved from sponges, SpongeBob SquarePants.
I think we descended from God, and people start laughing at you like you're crazy.
They look at you like you have a third eye.
Everything has gone so upside down in our culture, and it's a lot of times because of
false religions like this, burning in the bosom.
Who's ever heard of this before?
It's a very common doctrine.
The Mormons, when they come to your door, they'll knock on the door, show you the Book
of Mormon, and they'll say, all right, can we have a word of prayer?
And of course, most people are going to say yes.
And they'll say, now God is going to do something for you.
God is going to make you have this burning sensation in your bosom that's going to tell
you that the Book of Mormon is true.
Do we trust our heart?
What does the Bible say about a man's heart?
The Bible says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
Who can know it?
Look, what's the test of Scripture?
Not that we have a feeling, not that we roll around on the floor and bark like dogs.
It's that we receive the word with all readiness of mind and did what?
They searched the Scriptures daily whether those things were so.
They didn't look for that burning sensation in the bosom to see if this is true.
And they'll even tell you, God will tell you that it's true.
Just pray to God.
He'll tell you it's true.
Look, you can convince yourself of anything doing that.
It must be true.
Lord, it must be true.
Oh, it is true.
It's a psychological manipulation.
Now, they believe in kind of like a hocus pocus holy garment that you wear.
This is mainstream Mormon theology.
It's a magical garment, so they believe in magic, that will protect you from bad things.
But I decided to Google Masonic symbols because you look at the symbolism here.
They have Masonic symbols on their holy underwear or undergarments.
And that's what they call it, you know, holy, you know, all right, SpongeBob, let's go.
All right, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal.
So look, this holy garment is not going to protect you.
They say it protects you from evil.
But look, that's just superstition.
Bible says the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the
pulling down of strongholds.
Let's talk a little bit about how Mormonism was founded and what everybody should know
about it.
First, let's read this.
It says, I, as a member of the LDS, Latter-day Saints, am somewhat active in what is called
the New Age movement, consisting of things like crystal gazing, channeling, pyramid power,
and so forth.
Joseph Smith, when he founded Mormonism in the early 1800s, an angel appeared to him,
an angel named Moroni, and Moroni told him about these golden plates.
And in order to transcribe these golden plates, Joseph had to use what's known as a seer stone.
Have you ever heard of that, down at your local psychic?
A seer stone.
He used a seer stone to literally look at these golden plates and translate them.
And that's how they got another testament of Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon.
That's how the Book of Mormon came about, was literally by fortune telling, sooth saying.
What does the Bible say?
There shall not be found among you anyone that maketh his son or daughter to pass through
the fire, or that uses divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or
a charmer, or a consultor with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.
And in Mormonism, when you're getting baptized for your dead ancestors, literally they'll
go through the charts of their ancestry and figure out who they got to get baptized for.
As they're going through, they talk about how there's channeling and how people will
appear to you in a ghost-like form.
This is very satanic.
There's a lot of other things I would say, but I don't even feel like it's appropriate
to get into from the pulpit.
But it's so satanic, they will say that your loved ones will come back and tell you, I've
been saved now because you got baptized for me.
I've been born again.
The angel Moroni told Joseph Smith that the church has become apostate, of course, because
this is what all cults say, that we've lost our revelation, we have to have something
new.
The Bible says there's nothing new under the sun.
The Bible trumps this false religion, and it says there's a new revelation contained
in these golden tablets.
So he transcribed the tablets using mysticism, magic.
But the most common objection that I get, literally, and I've had this objection so
many times when talking to Mormons, they'll say, but Matt, an angel appeared to Joseph.
It was an angel sent from heaven.
But though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which
we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.
Joseph Smith was not seeing an angel from heaven, but even if he was, if it contradicts
the word of God, the Bible says that he's to be accursed.
And just to prove that Joseph Smith was loony, he's not somebody that you should follow,
he believed that there were inhabitants on the moon, that there were literal humanoids
on the moon.
This is like something off of Battlestar Galactica.
It's literally a science fiction belief.
He said that there were people like Quakers on the moon that were all over six foot tall,
and they lived to be a thousand years old.
Well, guess what?
We can take a telescope, we can look up to the moon, we can see the craters on it, we
can see there's no civilization on the moon.
And just so you know, Brigham Young taught that there were people living on the sun.
That's even more ludicrous.
He said that the sun was inhabited.
These guys were crazy, almost as crazy as saying there's more than two genders and all
these fake scientist celebrities on TV that you see promoting this to our kids.
Hitler always used to say, if you tell a lie big enough, loud enough, and often enough,
people will believe it.
It's the proof that Satan exists.
In 1826, Joseph Smith was arrested and convicted, oh surprise, surprise, for pretending to find
buried treasure with that seer stone.
You know the stone he used to translate the tablets into their new scripture?
Brigham Young said this, he said, shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African
race, if the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed
of Cain, the penalty under the law of God is death on the spot.
So he's saying if you marry a black person, if you're a white person and you marry a black
person, that you are going to be put to death.
He even went on to say, and your kids, your kids will be put to death.
What does the Bible say though?
Bible says, and if made of one blood, all the nations of men for to dwell on the face
of the earth were all of one blood.
It's not that the Mormon Church believes in evolution by natural selection, Darwinism,
that we descended from rats, that we descended from fish, and that we descended from primates
out of Africa.
Of course most people today believe this, but let me tell you, that's why they're racist
because they're saying that we evolved from different primates.
Well the Bible tells us that we all came from two ancestors.
Two people conceived all of mankind.
Somebody was mocking me recently.
This guy believes, this Matt Powell, he believes that all the humans in the world descended
from two people.
Look, they think everybody descended from fish, rocks, and of course, he went on to
say, this guy said, I don't know how you can believe in a virgin birth.
That's just wild.
Look, they think rocks conceived, right?
Non-life.
That's even more wild.
On at least three occasions, Brigham Young taught publicly that the punishment for black
and white interracial marriages was death, the killing, et cetera, I'm going to move
on here, and this is the last subject.
In the Mormon Church, they believe in what's known, and not all of them, but in the historical
Mormon Church, they taught this, and the Mormon fundamentalists today still believe it and
practice it.
They practice what's known as blood atonement, human blood atonement, where if you are not
good enough to enter into heaven, that you are to be killed.
And the sad thing is that one of their leaders here said, there are some serious sins for
which the cleansing of Christ does not operate.
Blood of Christ wasn't good enough, according to the Mormons.
We hear about limited atonement from other people as well.
That's not true.
The Bible says He died not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world.
It says in the law of God is that men must have their own bloodshed to atone for their
sins.
So there's certain sins that the blood of Christ in Mormonism cannot fix.
Well, wait a minute.
His blood was perfect.
You're saying that your blood is better than Christ's blood if you think your blood is
going to atone for your sins when you're a sinner.
And Jesus is perfect.
How sad that they're being taught that they can atone for their own sins by suicide.
A lot of people in Mormonism have committed suicide because of this.
The Bible says in Jesus, Jesus is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also
for the sins of the whole world.
Every single sin, every single wrong thought, every single wrong deed was laid on the back
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Every single wrong action that anybody will have ever committed was laid on Him.
The Bible says all we like sheep have gone astray.
We have turned everyone to His own way and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us
all.
Jesus loved us all so much that He decided to leave Heaven's glory when He didn't have
to and take our place on an old rugged cross and die for us when we deserved death and
hell.
No man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter into the celestial kingdom of God
without the consent of Joseph Smith.
They believe that in order to go to Heaven, Joseph Smith has to approve.
But what does the Bible say?
There is one God.
There's not multiple gods.
There's one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
Jesus is the mediator, not Jesus Brigham Young, Joseph Smith and go down the line of the Board
of Elders.
There's one man who is the mediator between God and men and that's Jesus.
He's the only one that can take your soul, our sorry souls that were lost in sin and
can transform them and make them perfect in the sight of God the Father.
Jesus said this, He says, I am the door, not Joseph Smith, not Mohammed, not Buddha, not
all religions.
Jesus says, I am the door.
By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.
Let me tell you something, we have an assurance of salvation because of what Jesus did, not
because of what we do, not because I've turned over a new leaf, given up all my sins.
No, I don't change to come to the cross, I go to the cross to be changed.
You don't clean a fish before you catch it.
You don't turn over a new leaf to be saved.
But the Mormon Church is telling people, turn over a new leaf, give up all your sins.
I believe you should give up your sins, but that's not going to get you to heaven.
Only by the blood of Jesus Christ, and this is the very last thing I want to mention,
Utah statistics.
Utah is the capital of Mormonism, the capital state, 70% of Utah is Mormon, roughly.
They lead the USA in bankruptcy, stock fraud, divorce, and suicide.
But in the outside they appear so wonderful, like they're so happy, they got everything
going for them.
Look, if you don't have Christ, you don't have anything going for you.
If you don't have Jesus, you're in a very sad, sad state.
Proud and arrogant people.
They will always say, I got to keep my own salvation, I got to do it myself, I got to
keep the faith to go to heaven.
Jesus kept the faith, he endured the cross, he despised the shame, he's the one sat down
at the right hand of the throne of God.
But I fear less by any means as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, telling
Eve she could become God.
So your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
So it's a simple message that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal
life.