Was Jesus A Mormon?

"For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father" (Jn. 5:22).

In an 1859 sermon, Brigham Young claimed:

"No man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter into the celestial kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith" 
(Journal of Discourses, Vol. 7 p.. 289.)

Every man and woman, he said, must have Joseph Smith’s “certificate” as a “passport” into the presence of God and Christ (Journal of Discourses, 7:289).

Now, to be fair, modern Mormons (self-labeled Latter Day Saints or LDS) say the Journal of Discourses is not, by itself, an authoritative source of doctrine.

So what do the authoritative, Mormon scriptures say?

The keys of the kingdom given to Joseph Smith “shall never be taken from you...neither in the world to come” (Doctrine and Covenants 90:3).

So Smith retains kingdom keys after death. And his successor, Brigham Young said entrance into heaven requires Joseph Smith's consent. Anyone familiar with Scripture might be scratching their head, but before we get there, notice something from the Book of Mormon:

“The keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel; and he employeth no servant there” (2 Nephi 9:41).

Did you catch that? THE keeper of the gate — the Holy One and no servant is there. I guess someone forgot to tell Brigham Young.

Critically, the New Testament is no kinder to the claim. God has given all judgment to His Son, Jesus Christ (Jn. 5:22–23), and He is the “one mediator also between God and men..." (1 Tim. 2:5). Salvation is found in His Name alone (Acts 4:12).

That all seems pretty cut and dry to me. Yet Mormonism begins with the claim that Joseph Smith restored truths and authority that Christianity had lost — that...

“...a restoration, not a reformation, was required” (Preach My Gospel, Lesson 1).

But where did Jesus give Joseph Smith that authority?

And it's just as important to ask, "What, exactly, did Smith restore?

Let's start with the nature of God. Doctrine and Covenants says:

“The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also…” (D&C 130:22).

Strange. Notice the claim is not simply that Jesus took on flesh. Scripture already teaches that (1 Jn. 4:2). Smith declared the Father Himself has a tangible body of flesh and bones.

As I recall, Jesus said something quite different: “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (Jn. 4:24). Then later: “…a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Lk. 24:39).

Do you think Jesus had some expertise on the subject?

“No one has seen God at any time; God the only Son, who is in the arms of the Father, He has explained Him” (Jn. 1:18).

Whose revelation are we restoring again?

In his famous King Follett discourse on April 7th, 1844, Smith announced:

“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man.”

Tell me, how does that align with passages like:

“Before Me there was no God formed, And there will be none after Me” (Is. 43:10).

Hard to misconstrue that, wouldn't you say?

No God before Him.


No God after Him.

Okay, how about this one?

“Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God” (Ps. 90:2).

Where exactly does “from everlasting to everlasting” leave room for “once a man, later a God”?

Mormons still push that doctrine today — that God “was once as one of us,” and human beings may progress to be God like Him. It gets weirder, but I'll leave further investigation to you.

We're just scratching the surface here and, clearly, Smith did not produce an apostolic teaching that had been lost. Rather he did introduced a doctrine that contradicts what the Bible teaches.

Could it be that Joseph Smith did not restore some lost truth about the nature of God? Could it be that he replaced Him with something else?

Paul warned about exactly this sort of exchange: men “exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man” (Rom. 1:23).

It seems to me, taking the eternal God of Scripture and turning Him into an "exalted man" is not restoration. It is perversion.

Smith did not only claimed to restore lost doctrine. He claimed the ability to recover lost revelation.

The heading still printed over the Book of Abraham says: “Translated from the Papyrus, by Joseph Smith,” then describes the book as "a Translation of some ancient Records” containing “the writings of Abraham…written by his own hand, upon papyrus” (The Pearl of Great Price).

Fortunately, we can test that claim — and we should (1 Jn. 4:1). Unfortunately, for Smith, some of his Egyptian papyri still exist. So what happens when people who can actually read Egyptian...er...read them?

The LDS Church’s own Gospel Topics Essays (2016) admits that “none of the characters” on the surviving fragments mention Abraham or the events in the Book of Abraham. It further acknowledges that LDS and non-LDS Egyptologists agree that the characters do not match Joseph Smith’s translation. Rather, the fragments are portions of ordinary Egyptian funerary texts. Uh oh. I don't know about you, but that admission skedaddles past faux pas for me. It feels like a charlatan accidentally showing his hand.

Now, since the LDS Church can't deny this, it offers possible explanations:

Perhaps the Book of Abraham came from portions of the papyri that no longer survive.

Or perhaps the papyri merely served as a “catalyst”—something that prompted Joseph to receive revelation about Abraham rather than actually translate the words before him.

Just so we're clear. Smith himself called it a translation, but the surviving papyrus does not actually translate into what he said it did, so, like, you know, the “real” papyrus must be missing or something...

Might I offer another explanation? Maybe what Smith claimed simply wasn’t true.

I’d like to apply an ancient standard, but one that still holds up incredibly well:

If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed (Deut. 18:22).

We have the Egyptian.
 We can read the Egyptian.
 And it does not say what Smith claimed.

So none of it actually happened.

It gets worse. Smith and his associates made their own guide explaining what Egyptian symbols supposedly meant in English. There’s just one problem: we can read Egyptian now. By 1835 Egyptian was becoming a decipherable language, not an unknowable mystical script thanks to Jean-François Champollion's work on the Rossetta Stone.

Smith nevertheless boldly claimed to translate Egyptian by divine power, produced his own Egyptian-language materials, which didn't come within a hundred miles of the language scholars can actually read. Ironically, he chose a language that, only a generation earlier, would have been effectively impossible for outsiders to check. Unfortunately for his claims, the cipher to understanding hieroglyphs had just been cracked within the same decade.

At any rate this is just a small glimpse into the dude asking people to trust him about the identity of God, the nature of Christ, and the destiny of their souls.

Surely we are allowed to check his work.


We did. He failed.

Undeterred, Joseph Smith’s revelations did not stop with ancient papyri.

In an astonishing turn of events, he received a "revelation from God" that authorized that simultaneously authorized forming his own harem, narrowed his wife's choices, and sanctified every lust he wanted to pursue.

It's no secret that Smith entered plural marriages with numerous women, Mormons acknowledge as much and, a smaller group of "fundamentalists" still practice it. In Smith's case, some of the women were already married to other men. His youngest plural wife, Helen Mar Kimball, was "sealed" to him several months before her fifteenth birthday. Funny how often the prophet’s revelations seem to cost everybody else something.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: A leader claims unique access to divine authority. Accountability flows upward toward him. Then the supposed divine mandate begins to justify privileges ordinary followers do not possess: greater control, greater material benefit, and exclusive sexual access.

Mormons are careful to note that not every "sealing" can be shown to have involved sexual relations (“Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo,” Gospel Topics Essays, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). Glad we cleared that up.

Read Doctrine and Covenants 132 and you'll find the revelation Joseph Smith produced concerning plural marriage.

Emma Smith is told to...

“...receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph” (D&C 132:52).

She, however, is commanded to cleave to Joseph “and to none else.” If she refuses, the revelation says, “she shall be destroyed” (D&C 132:54). Then Emma is instructed to “forgive my servant Joseph his trespasses” (D&C 132:56).

Let me get this straight:

Joseph may receive additional women.

Emma must remain exclusively Joseph’s.

Emma must accept the women given to Joseph.

Emma must forgive Joseph.

And if Emma refuses the arrangement, Emma is the one threatened with destruction.

Got it? Good.

And this is not merely an embarrassing episode Mormonism has discarded. Doctrine and Covenants 132 remains LDS scripture.

Sadly, even the Church’s own historical essay acknowledges that Emma probably did not know about all of Joseph’s "sealings" and explains that, when she refused to receive the law, Joseph was permitted to marry additional wives without her consent (“Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo,” Gospel Topics Essays).

By the time he dictated D&C 132, he had already entered numerous secret plural marriages. The LDS Church’s own historical project acknowledges that most of thirteen marriages contracted in early 1843 occurred without Emma’s knowledge.

Two women Joseph had already secretly married were later “married” to him again in Emma’s presence—as though the first ceremonies had never happened.

Then came a revelation commanding Emma to accept Joseph’s additional wives.

But Joseph claimed this was not something new. It was another, say it with me now, restoration.

Doctrine and Covenants 132 says God commanded Abraham to take Hagar and that Sarah gave Hagar to him because “this was the law” (D&C 132:34–35).

However, if you read Genesis 16, God never gives Abraham that command. Sarah does.

“Please go in to my maid; perhaps I will obtain children through her.”

Abraham listened to Sarah, took Hagar, and the household almost immediately descended into jealousy and misery (Gen. 16:2–6).

Joseph says God commanded it.

Genesis says Sarah proposed it.

Apparently "restoring" ancient revelation was shorthand for rewriting the original.

Remember when Jesus was asked about marriage? He did not send His hearers to Abraham’s concubines. He went all the way back to the beginning:

“A man shall…be joined to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh” (Matt. 19:5; Gen. 2:24).

One man. One woman. Two become one.

Paul sounds conspicuously un-Mormon too: “each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband” (1 Cor. 7:2).

Again we're left asking, "What exactly did Smith restore?"

If “restoration” contradicts Genesis, Christ’s appeal to creation, and conveniently authorizes the prophet’s own plural marriages while threatening his reluctant wife—shouldn't that be a red flag? Or flags?

Once a man assumes the authority to revise what Scripture says about God, marriage, revelation, and salvation, the obvious question is what he did with Christ Himself.

And here Mormonism does not merely add details about Jesus. It presents a fundamentally different account of who He is.

Mormons believe and teach that Jesus was “the firstborn of the spirit children of our Heavenly Father.” It also teaches that Satan was a spirit child of Heavenly Father who rebelled against God (Gospel Principles, ch. 3).

To be clear, Mormonism does not teach that Jesus and Satan are morally equivalent, but it places Jesus and Satan within the same premortal family of spirit offspring. Jesus is the firstborn. Satan is another spirit son who rebelled.

That is not how the apostles introduce Christ.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn. 1:1).

There's no ambiguity:

“All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (Jn. 1:3).

All things.

Paul says the same:

“For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible…all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things” (Col. 1:16–17).

If everything that came into being came into being through Christ, then Christ does not belong in the category of beings who came into existence. He is on the other side of the line. Creator. Not creature.

Mormonism blurs that line by placing Christ within a heavenly genealogy of spirit children. Scripture does not.

Hebrews is equally clear. The Son is “the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature,” the One through whom God “made the world” (Heb. 1:2–3). Angels are commanded to worship Him (Heb. 1:6).

Christ is not merely the eldest member of a vast premortal family.

He is the eternal Son through whom the universe came into being.

Just as troubling are statements from early Mormon leadership concerning Christ’s birth. Brigham Young taught:

“The birth of the Savior was as natural as are the births of our children; it was the result of natural action…He was begotten of his Father, as we were of our fathers” (Journal of Discourses, 8:115).

The New Testament says:

“Before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 1:18). And the angel explained: “That which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit,” fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy (Matt. 1:20; Is. 7:14)

To be fair, today's LDS publications affirm the virgin birth, but that only makes Brigham Young’s language harder to explain. Smith and his early successors did not merely supply a few missing details about the Jesus of the New Testament, they placed Him inside a different history and creation.

Paul warned that people could preach “another Jesus” (2 Cor. 11:4). Using the name Jesus never guarantees that the Jesus being preached is the One the apostles preached.

Mormonism asks us to believe that Christians lost essential truth and authority, that Christ’s church fell away, and that Joseph Smith was chosen to restore what had been lost. That's an extraordinary claim. And extraordinary claims deserve examination. So I invite you to examine them.

Joseph Smith seized authority that Scripture gives to Christ. In May of 1844, He boasted that...

“I have more to boast of than ever any man had…Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I.”

Personally, I think that statement may tell us more about Joseph Smith than anything else he ever said.

Christ “emptied Himself” and took the form of a servant and became obedient to the point of death, not for His own sake, but for ours (Phil. 2:7).

Who could possibly boast of "doing more"? Apparently Joseph Smith.

Christ said, “All authority has been given to Me” (Matt. 28:18).

Who could possibly claim more authority? Joseph Smith.

Who does Scripture place at the center of salvation?

God has given judgment to the Son (Jn. 5:22–23).

There is “one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). “There is salvation in no one else” (Acts 4:12).

Where in Scripture did Jesus ever authorize Joseph Smith to occupy any necessary place between sinners and their eternal destiny?

Where did Christ say entrance into heaven would require Joseph’s consent?

And why should anyone believe Joseph’s claim to such authority?

This man had the audacity to tell his followers that the Book of Mormon was...

“the most correct of any book on earth,” the “keystone” of their religion, and that a man would “get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book” (History of the Church, 4:461).

Really? ANY other book? You couldn't think of one?

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

A man claims God sent him to restore Christianity, then proceeds to contradict the prophets and apostles of the New Testament, produce “translations” that do not translate, acquire wives in secret, issue revelations conveniently sanctioning those marriages, and assume and boast about extraordinary authority for himself.

How can anyone call Mormonism a “restoration” with a straight face?

At what point are we allowed to use the words Scripture uses?

False prophet.

Jesus warned that such men would come (Matt. 7:15). John commanded Christians to “test the spirits” because “many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 Jn. 4:1). Paul went further: even if “an angel from heaven” preached another gospel, reject him (Gal. 1:8). So Moroni settles nothing.

We have to be honest about what this “restoration” is — a lie.

Smith’s claims must still be tested against what Christ and His apostles had already revealed.

They do not pass the test.


The Bible did not need Joseph Smith to repair it.

Christ did not need Joseph Smith to restore His church.

Your loyalty may be sincere. Your family may be sincere. The missionaries at your door may be sincere. But sincerity cannot turn error into truth.

No an, including Joseph Smith, gets to stand between you and the Savior who already said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (Jn. 14:6).

So strip away the family tradition. Strip away the institution. Strip away Smith’s claims about himself. Put him beside Jesus Christ.

Then answer the question Mormonism would rather you never seriously ask:

Was Jesus a Mormon?