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One of the distinctive beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the idea of a preexistence—that we lived with God before we were born. Truthfully, this was one of the ideas that initially attracted me to the LDS Church when I first looked into it. I loved the idea that we…
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The opening words of Scripture are striking in their simplicity: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” There is no preface, no genealogy, no scene-setting. Only one protagonist appears on the stage: God. God stands alone. God creates with his word. God says, and it is. The elements instantly obey their Creator.…
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(The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise by Benjamin West) The Fall of mankind is one of the most pivotal events in Biblical history. How we interpret that event shapes everything: how we see the world, understand sin, grasp the purpose of the atonement, and recognize our need for reconciliation with God. Latter-Day Saints…
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A common claim I hear is that the LDS Church simply “adds more truth,” while evangelism to Latter-day Saints by Christians supposedly “takes things away” or diminishes people’s faith. Well-meaning Latter-day Saints who make this claim are often echoing the words of former President Gordon B. Hinckley: “We do not argue with other churches. We…
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On January 1st, millions of Christians around the world began their annual Bible reading plans with Genesis 1. This year, Latter-day Saints also began their Old Testament study as part of the Come, Follow Me curriculum—but they didn’t start with Genesis. Instead, they began with Moses 1 and Abraham 3, chapters drawn from purported revelations…
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At the end of November, the LDS Newsroom announced that the Church had given a $50,000 dollar donation to a BAPS, a Hindu denomination, to support their opening of a temple in Kearns Utah. LDS Church leaders spoke and “expressed continued support for the Hindu faith.” Leaders posed for pictures in front of an altar…
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Joseph Smith’s “translation” of the Bible was intended as a response to a problem he believed he had identified: that “many important points touching the salvation of man had been taken from the Bible, or lost before it was compiled.” But in his translation efforts, did Joseph Smith restore and clarify lost truths—or did he…
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When we think of Christmas, we imagine a silent night, not a battlefield. But in addition to bucolic fields and shepherds, perhaps one image that should come to mind when we imagine Christmas is the Battle of D-Day, when American (and other Allied) soldiers began to take Europe back from Nazi control. (I know that…
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There’s a well-known (though perhaps apocryphal) story about C.S. Lewis and the distinctiveness of Christianity: During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world debated what, if any, belief was truly unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had their own versions of gods appearing in human…
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Yesterday the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints put out a new policy that for the first time seems to expressly endorse the use of alternative translations other than the King James Version and even provides a list of translations the Church views favorably, including the ESV and NIV. This is framed as a…