The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1927, Page 50

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

50

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

————eeeeeeeeeooeoeaeas=~<~_— ooo

Good Friday.

Quake, O Earth! Rocks, split in pieces!
Shine not on this scene, O Sun!
Men, in sorrow hide your faces!
For your sin this deed was done.
After scourging, pain, and sorrow
All the night and on the morrow
Crucified, He bows His head,
All His holy blood is shed, —
Jesus, Prince of Life, is dead! :|

What great burden hast Thou carried,
What love shown to me, my God,

Till Thou in the grave wast buried!
How shall I repay Thee, Lord?

I will thank Thee for salvation,

Tell of Thy humiliation,
Of Thy blood and bitter pain.
Let it not be shed in vain;
Heav’nly life let me obtain. :|

Kappa, Ind. R. KrerzMann.

Reclaiming Christ’s Heritage.

XXVI.
The Mormons.

It is now a little over one hundred years ago that
Joseph Smith, Jr., claimed to have found the golden
plates, later translated into the Book of Mormon.
The discovery was made near Palmyra, N. Y. This
was the beginning of the’ Mormon “Church.” The
aggressiveness of the Mormons, the Mohammedans
of America, was never more in evidence than to-day.
Never did the Latter-day Saints, as they call them-
selves, put forth greater efforts, not only to hold
what they have, but to expand. Under the adminis-
tration of their president and under the direction
of so-called special missionary presidents they have
in recent years been exceedingly active.

The Mormons number more than 450,000 mem- .

bers in the United States and 50,000 in other lands.
“They have four temples in Utah, one in the Cana-
dian province of Alberta, one in Hawaii, and one in
Arizona. There are 80,000 Mormons in Idaho and
15,000 in each of the States of Arizona and Wyo-
ming. Jn a single year their tithings exceed a
quarter million dollars.
_ There are two main divisions of the Mormons,
' the so-called Reorganized Church, with its head-
quarters at Independence, Mo., and the Organized
Church, generally known as the Utah Church, with
headquarters at Salt Lake City. Mormon missionary
' propaganda centers mostly in the Utah Church and
is well organized and far-reaching, stretching out

into many parts of the United States as well as
into Europe and Asia. Especially has it grown in
influence in the southern counties of Idaho. One-
third of the population of southern Idaho is
Mormon. In this part of Idaho, as in Utah, the
Mormons are in possession of the community appeal.
Like the Mohammedans, the Mormons give their
members many privileges as to their living, and this
attracts not a few young people to them.

Mormon Teachings in Brief.

Mormonism is in no way Christian. While it
claims to accept the Bible as a part of God’s reve-
lation to man, it in reality rejects it and places in its
stead the Bool: of Mormon, a spurious discovery of
Joseph Smith, and later revelations. It teaches that
God is only an exalted man, who once was as we are
now. In fact, it teaches that Adam is god, the
Creator of the world, and the only god with whom
we have to do, and that Jesus Christ is Adam’s son
by natural generation. ‘They’ blasphemously say
that Jesus was married at Cana to the Marys and
Martha and that He had natural children by them
in this polygamous marriage. Besides Adam, the
“Supreme God,” the Mormons accept a plurality of
gods and assert that these became gods after they ,
had been men. Being men, they became gods by
practising plural marriage and the other Mormon -
principles. Mormonism teaches that God is a polyg-
amist, the natural father of intelligent beings in
heaven, earth, and hell; that angels, men, and devils
are all His offspring by natural generation and
birth. Mormons hold the principle of polygamy to
be as eternal as God Himself and believe the doctrine
to be sacred and fundamental. While many Mor-
mons may not practise polygamy because of the law
against it, this is only a suspension of the practise
and not a repudiation of the doctrine. The fall of
man, in Mormon eyes, is a thing to boast of; ac-
cording to their views, Adam’s fall was the begin-
ning of his real happiness. Of course, the Mormon
doctrine of salvation is not Christian. Salvation,
with the Mormons, depends upon a person’s accept-
ing Joseph Smith and his books as the ground of
salvation. Christ, they say, was not our Substitute,
He did not atone for our sins, and therefore not
faith in Christ justifies before God, but man’s own
works. We could add much more to this, but what
we have said is enough to show that the so-called
Church of the Latter-day Saints is a heathen organi-
zation and that we can do nothing more God-pleasing
than to use every opportunity to lead the benighted
members of this organization to Jesus Christ.