Where we differ from Latter-day Saints

The New Testament knows only one Melchizedek priest: Christ. The old priests “were not suffered to continue by reason of death: But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood” (Hebrews 7:23–24). It does not pass to successors. The Aaronic priesthood ended with the Law: “the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law” (Hebrews 7:12). Every believer is now “an holy priesthood” (1 Peter 2:5). Your Church’s own history page says of the Melchizedek restoration: ‘It is impossible to precisely date this heavenly manifestation from existing sources.’

Read the full case: Our representative, and our way inIf they reply: Amos 3:7: we need a living prophet

Amos spoke of God’s dealings with Israel before Christ. Hebrews says those days of “sundry times and … divers manners” have given way to God speaking “by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2), and Jude speaks of “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 1:3): once, finished. A prophet is tested by his record: “if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken” (Deuteronomy 18:22).

Read the full case: The written word now does what the signs didIf they reply: The temple in Missouri will still be built

Jesus read from a copy of Isaiah in the synagogue and called it Scripture fulfilled (Luke 4:17–21). Timothy learned “the holy scriptures” from a copy his mother owned, and they were “able to make thee wise unto salvation” (2 Timothy 3:15). Copies were enough. And if the Bible was corrupted, the Book of Mormon cannot be the fix: it reproduces long passages of the King James Version of Isaiah and Matthew almost word for word, 1611 translators’ wording included.

Read the full case: Given by inspiration of GodIf they reply: Revelation 14:6 foretells an angel bringing the gospel

Paul’s test is the message, not the messenger: is it the gospel “which we have preached” (Galatians 1:8)? Revelation’s angel carries “the everlasting gospel” (Revelation 14:6), the same one that always was, not a restored one. And the message that came through Joseph Smith includes things Paul never preached: that God was once a man, that men become gods, that marriage in a temple is needed for exaltation, and baptism for the dead. Measured by Paul’s test, it is “any other gospel” (Galatians 1:8).

Read the full case: Jesus and the apostles appealed to what was writtenIf they reply: As man now is, God once wasIf they reply: Paul mentions baptism for the dead

A feeling cannot be the test, because people pray sincerely and get opposite answers. “The heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9). Scripture gives an outward test: “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20). The Bereans tested Paul by searching “the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11), not by asking for a burning in the bosom.

Read the full case: Signs alone prove nothing

Scripture says the opposite on both halves. God was never a man: “I am God, and not man” (Hosea 11:9); “from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God” (Psalm 90:2). And no one will become a god beside him: “before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me” (Isaiah 43:10); “I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God” (Isaiah 44:6). Note “after me”. Isaiah rules out future gods as firmly as past ones.

Read the full case: The one God of Israel is the Father

God knowing Jeremiah is not Jeremiah existing. God “calleth those things which be not as though they were” (Romans 4:17). Paul says Jacob and Esau were “not yet born, neither having done any good or evil” when God chose between them (Romans 9:11). No pre-mortal life, no pre-mortal choices. Man’s beginning is plain: “dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:19).

Read the full case: God speaks of what is not yet as though it were

Scripture says the dead are silent: “there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave” (Ecclesiastes 9:10); “in death there is no remembrance of thee” (Psalm 6:5). Peter says when the preaching happened: to those “which sometime were disobedient … in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing” (1 Peter 3:20). They heard it while alive. And there is no second chance: “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

Read the full case: The dead know not any thingIf they reply: Paul mentions baptism for the dead

Paul says ‘they’, not ‘we’: “what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all?” (1 Corinthians 15:29). He argues for the resurrection; he commands nothing. Every baptism in the New Testament is of a living person who heard and believed: “when they believed Philip preaching … they were baptized” (Acts 8:12); “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16). No one can believe for another: “the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father” (Ezekiel 18:20).

Read the full case: Believe, then be baptisedIf they reply: Marriage sealed in the temple lasts for eternity

Jesus answered this directly: “in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven” (Matthew 22:30). Marriage is for this life: a wife “is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth” (Romans 7:2). What the faithful inherit depends on faith and baptism into Christ: “if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29). Not a ceremony behind a door most believers may not enter.

Read the full case: Into Christ, heirs of the promise

Your own scriptures disagree with each other. The Book of Mormon says: ‘David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord’ (Jacob 2:24). Doctrine and Covenants 132 says: ‘David’s wives and concubines were given unto him of me … and in none of these things did he sin against me save in the case of Uriah’ (132:39). Both cannot be from God. Jesus took marriage back to the beginning: “they twain shall be one flesh” (Matthew 19:5), and an elder was to be “the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2).

Read the full case: The same test applies to usIf they reply: The priesthood ban was a policy of its time

We welcome the disavowal. But the ban was not one man’s mistake. It was upheld by every President for 126 years, under the promise that the Lord would never permit the President to lead the Church astray. The apostles had settled it in the first century: “God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34). A church led by living prophets took until 1978 to learn what Peter learned at Cornelius’s door.

Read the full case: The same test applies to usIf they reply: The Lord will never let the President lead the Church astray

The revelation set a time limit: ‘this generation shall not all pass away until an house shall be built unto the Lord’ (Doctrine and Covenants 84:5, given in 1832). That generation has passed. The Church’s own manual says, ‘Neither the city of New Jerusalem nor the temple was built at that time.’ Moses gave the test: “if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken” (Deuteronomy 18:22).

Read the full case: God proves his word by prophecyIf they reply: Amos 3:7: we need a living prophet