I just recently watched the mini-series Under the Banner of Heaven. It wasn’t very complementary to the Mormon church. But it did get me to thinking, mainly about Joseph Smith.

I’m not going to take this time to deconstruct the man or speculate his sanity and morality. Instead, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume what he claimed happened did indeed happen. Let’s say he was visited by a supernatural being named Moroni, and he did find engraved plates with the Book of Mormon, and translated it through the “peep stone,” and had several other revelations. Let’s say all of this happened, I still have one problem with this, Smith never tested the spirit Moroni as John instructed all Christian to do in the fourth chapter of his epistle. Smith forgot, or never knew, Paul’s warning in II Corinthians 11 that Satan can appear as an angel of light. Had Smith tested Moroni he probably wouldn’t have followed his direction.

The way to test a spirit is by knowing the Bible well enough to know when some one’s commands or revelations contradicts it. We must also know it well enough to know when it’s being misquoted as what Satan did when he tempted Jesus.

However, this isn’t just Joseph Smith’s error it’s an error Christians are making today.

There was a scene where the detective Jeb Pyre, who was a Mormon, was talking to Allan Lafferty, who had left the Mormon faith. Allan told Jeb that he had come to believe that too often people claimed revelation as an excuse to do the wrong they wanted to do all along.

When I heard that I had to say “Amen.” I’ve heard Christians say they prayed for God to direct them, and He directed them to purchase the new and fancy car they were driving. Funny thing, it was the car they always wanted. Maybe God would be happier if he drove a Honda Civic instead of a Bentley. That way the money saved would have helped the poor or helped a missionary spread the Gospel. Better still, the man wouldn’t have to work eighty hours a week to make the payments. He could work forty hours and use his spare time to pray, study the Bible, and be a husband to his wife and a father to his children, rather than just the guy who pays the bills and sleeps at the house.

#Joesph Smith, #Maroni, #Test Spirts, #Under the Banner of Heaven