Sunday, September 2, 2007

Church Visits and Mormons

Today is Sunday and we went to a Calvary Chapel Church in Whitefish, MT. It was a great time to be with other believers and to just worship with them. Their pastor loves the Lord and is energetic and sincere. I haven’t always written about where we visit because sometimes we just don’t sense the Spirit of God. In some of the churches it seems the people just come in and go through their ritual of “worship” which is really nothing more than a habit or duty. There are times when virtually no one speaks to us and we wonder what an unbeliever would feel like if they attended there. It makes us take a look at ourselves and think of how we treat visitors at our home church. I really believe that visitors are made to feel welcome at Grace Community Church in Goshen. I think a few of the things that we do well is to not judge others. We are all a mess and have all sinned against God. At Grace, we haven’t gotten pompous or pious and we are real people.

I had an interesting experience a week or so ago. I have this little quip that I use on waitresses when I’m feeling ornery. It goes like, “This is my first wife Kim”. It is just a way to say that this is my wife. The other day a girl looked at me a little funny after my comment and it hit me – Montana has a lot of Mormons. I’ll bet she thinks I’m Mormon (the statement around here would probably imply I have more wives). OOPS! When with the Garber’s, they mentioned that there are some Mormons here. They gave us a DVD to watch that their church had shown. It is quite interesting. There are basically two groups of Mormons – the mainline and the fundamentalist.

Joseph Smith started the Mormon movement when he wrote the Book of Mormon. Both groups believe him to be at least a prophet of God. Both see his writings as the foundation of the Mormon Church. Another forefather of the church is Brigham Young. Here’s the deal. They both taught and practiced polygamy. Joseph Smith was even married to other married women in Illinois. They both made it clear that to be a Mormon you need to have multiple wives. Here’s the difference between the fundamentalist and the mainline church.

The mainline Mormons have taken out the wording that demands polygamy in the writings of Smith and Young. Smith and Young said that a man could not be Mormon without multiple wives and now the leaders of the Mormon Church do not have multiple wives. According to the very founders of their faith, they are in serious error and won’t see heaven (a planet where they go to populate when they die with their earthly wives). Yes, the goal for a good Mormon wife is to be eternally pregnant. Oh, by the way they believe Jesus not only was married to multiple wives, but fathered many children here on earth.

The fundamentalist denounce the mainline in that they have changed the doctrine of the founders of the faith and these people practice polygamy. The man marries one wife and then the leaders in his church tell him who he will marry next – with less than 24 hours notice. Forty to sixty year old men have been married to a girl as young as 14 to 18 years old. I’ve talked with Mormons about these things and their answer usually is, well it’s not like that in our church. I don’t think most of them even know what they really believe. Chuck and Mary gave us a really good DVD to watch that explains this. It is put out by a church that witnesses to Mormons and leads them to Christ. You can watch the video online and I would strongly recommend it. It is called Living Hope Ministries and their web page is: http://www.lhvm.org/. There are several DVD’s and I plan on purchasing the set. The one we watched is “Lifting the Veil of Polygamy. The stories are told by the people who came out of the Mormon Church and have found salvation and freedom in Jesus Christ. They tell of the jealousy among wives and how unnatural it is to share a husband. They tell of men that have so many children that they don’t even know all their names. They tell of boys growing up and not having a male figure in their lives. Chuck and Mary said that the men support their first wife and then have a ceremony to marry additional wives and don’t do any legal work so as not to get in trouble with the government. The additional wives draw welfare and live off the government. They said that one county arrested and prosecuted the men and the financial strain of supporting all their wives and families bankrupted the county.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We had another successful MDA/ABATE Ride; Ben arrive at our house Sunday morning 4:45 AM!!! Yes, he's always on time!!! They raised over $104,000. for MDA; pretty good for a bunch of bikers, right? Talked to a vendor Sunday that asked me to tell you "hi" they were selling a tool that made clamps; said you had bought one from them. They have been full-time RV'ers for 5 years. And say they NEVER want a house again. How are you feeling about it? Do you miss mowing your yard yet? Phil thinks it would be great but I'm not sure yet, I love home. God gives me so many opportunities and divine appointments - life is exciting. Marlene B.