The Handbook / LDS
Conversations with Mormon friends.
Jesus promised that the gates of Hades would not prevail against his church and that he would be with his people to the end of the age. The New Testament warns of false teachers and a falling away, but never of a total loss of truth and authority. The writings of the earliest Christians after the apostles show the same gospel continuing: Jesus as Lord and God, his atoning death and resurrection, and baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus himself holds an unending priesthood, so it could not be lost.
The Book of Mormon presents itself as real history: large nations, cities, wars, metals, crops and animals in the ancient Americas over a thousand years. Christians are glad to have faith tested by history, as Luke and Paul invite. But after nearly two centuries of searching, no Book of Mormon city, person, inscription or language has been identified, and several items it describes are not found in the pre-Columbian Americas. The Bible's world, by contrast, is full of verified places, rulers and peoples.
Scripture does hold out a glorious destiny: believers will be adopted as God's children, share in his life, and be made like Christ in holiness. But the Bible draws a permanent line between the Creator and his creatures. God says that no god was formed before him and none will be after him, that he is God from everlasting and is not a man. Christians will share God's glory by grace forever, but they will never become additional gods. There is one God, and we will worship him forever.
Many Latter-day Saints sincerely love Jesus and live admirable lives, and that should be honored. But the question is not about sincerity or morals. It is whether Latter-day Saint teaching about God and Christ is the same as the faith the apostles handed down. On central points, such as whether there is one eternal God, whether God was once a man, and whether the Son is eternally God, it differs, and the Church itself says it rejects the historic creeds. So the honest answer is that Latter-day Saints follow a different account of Jesus than historic Christianity confesses.
Christians agree that God can speak, and the question is not whether he may give revelation but whether this book is from him. Scripture tells us how to test any new message: does it agree with what God has already revealed? The apostles taught that the faith was delivered once for all and that God's final word is his Son. The Book of Mormon is tied to a wider restoration that teaches a different God and a different way of salvation, so it cannot be a further testament to the same gospel.
