For feelings come and feelings go,
And feelings are deceiving.
My warrant is the Word of God:
Naught else is worth believing.
Though all my heart should feel condemned
For want of some sweet token,
There is One greater than my heart
Whose Word cannot be broken.
I'll trust in God's unchanging Word
Till soul and body sever:
For, though all things shall pass away,
His Word shall stand forever.— Martin Luther
I Hear Him by Teaching the Gospel and Following the Spirit (Elder
Soares)
In the last article I showed that what the Mormon’s call ‘The Gospel’, is not the Biblical Gospel. Rather theirs is a gospel that is impossible to follow and powerless to save.
Therefore, though Elder Soares claims to hear from God
through the teaching of the Latter-day Saint gospel, it can be said with
certainty that it is not the God of the Bible that he is hearing from.
When considering how they hear from God, Mormons are
often driven by their feelings. Elder Soares recalls a time when he felt God
was speaking to him:
I remember an
experience when I served as mission president. I had prepared a speech for the missionaries
in a zone conference that I thought was very good. I was completely prepared,
and in the morning, I started to have a doubtful feeling—as if I heard the
Lord’s voice saying, “This is not what your missionaries need.”
I too have had times where I have had impressions
that something was not quite right. I may have sometimes believed that it was a
prompting of the Spirit, that God was directing me to take another course of
action, and there is nothing wrong with this. But how would I know whether it
was from God or not? The Bible exhorts us to ‘test all things’ and so I would measure
the feeling I have against known truth – namely God’s Word. Does what I am
feeling contradict or contravene God’s revealed will?
BOUND BY THE WORD
As a Bible believing Christian, I am bound to the
Word of God, but not so the Mormon. What Elder Soares says next convinces me
that, whatever he was feeling, it was not a prompting of the Holy Spirit. He says:
I knelt and
prayed, and then the Lord directed me to section 33 of the Doctrine and
Covenants, which is a revelation given to the Prophet Joseph Smith for two men
who were called to preach the gospel. I changed the speech completely, and it
met the exact needs the missionaries had on that occasion. I remember that the
feeling of peace that came to my heart was so strong, confirming in my mind and
my heart that this was what the missionaries needed to learn on that day. That
decision to listen to the Lord changed the direction of our mission, changed
the missionaries’ vision, and changed the way we carried out the work.
Most, if not all, Mormons will have no problem
reading what Elder Soares says and responding with a hearty ‘amen’. This is because
they believe that God has, and does, speak to them outside of the Bible. In
this case the Elder believes he was led to read some extra-biblical revelation
which was given to the Prophet Joseph Smith and recorded in Doctrine and Covenants.
Now why do I have a problem with that? Simply put, it
is because I believe that the Bible alone is God’s Word. I do not believe that
Doctrine and Covenants is the Word of God and I do not believe Joseph Smith
received any revelation from God.
ADDING and TAKING AWAY
Every word of God
proves true; he is a shield to
those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a
liar.
Proverbs 30:5-6
The Mormon notion that God has given them extra revelation
facilitates all kind of beliefs and practices contrary to historic Christian
truth. This leads them to add, or take away, from Biblical truth which then places
them outside of Christian orthodoxy.
When Elder Soares claims that he hears from God through
his reading of the Book of Mormon or Doctrine and Covenants or The Pearl of
Great Price, he does so because he has become convinced that The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only true church on the earth today
and that Joseph Smith was the Prophet of the Restoration.
But how did he come to believe these so-called truths?
Because he felt it.
FEELINGS, NOTHING MORE THAN
FEELINGS
Elder Soares says that: ‘The Lord gives me a
warm, unmistakable feeling in my whole body when something is correct.’
Friends, I don’t know about you, but I can say
without hesitation that if I believed that truth was always evidenced by a warm
feeling in my body, I would be in a lot of trouble!
Do we determine truth by a warm feeling in our
bodies? Of course not. We know what is true and right and proper by testing it
against God’s Word.
All Scripture is
breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction,
and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be
complete, equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17
What I feel is of little importance.
Truth is what God says is truth and where do we find that truth, in God’s Word.
Elder Soares continues:
The process with me is step by
step. First, I must do my part. When I’m going in the wrong direction, I feel
confused and lost. But when I allow my mind to reflect, the Lord starts to
enlighten my mind, and the ideas start to come with more clarity.
What does he mean by ‘First, I must do my part.’?
I would suggest from the whole tenor of the article, that in order to be sure
you are hearing from God, you must first align yourself to ‘Mormon truth’. That
means acknowledging and affirming, amongst other things, the following:
That you have a testimony of the Restoration
of the gospel of Jesus Christ?
That you
sustain the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the
prophet, seer, and revelator and as the only person on the earth authorized to
exercise all priesthood keys? Do you sustain the members of the First
Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as prophets, seers, and
revelators? Do you sustain the other General Authorities and local leaders of
the Church?[1]
Believing these things constitutes a Mormon ‘playing
his part’ and to deny these leads to a person being ‘confused, lost and
going in the wrong direction’.
How do Mormons know these things are true – well,
like Elder Soares, they should have a warm unmistakable feeling in their
bodies.
As human beings we are full of all kinds of
feelings, but those feelings should not always determine our path and certainly
not our truth. Rather we need to trust in the one who said he was the Way, the
Truth and the Life.[2] As
we do so, let us heed the words of Charles Spurgeon:
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