More Than Coincidence?

Most critics of Mormonism regard Joseph Smith as a fraud who deliberately deceived his followers into joining a church of his own making whose doctrines and rituals were borrowed from Freemasonry and other pagan religions and embellished by his vivid imagination to suit his giant ego. Though partially correct, that explanation fails to account for all of the facts. Careful investigation indicates that Joseph Smith was in touch with a suprahuman source of revelation and power that has been the common inspiration behind all pagan religions down through history. Mormonism's uniqueness is in the fact that it was the first really successful attempt to pass paganism off as Christianity; and it thereby set the pattern for much that is happening on a broad scale today.

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While all this should make all but the most foolish or ignorant investigators run from the missionaries, this foundational error of Mormonism is deeply hidden from sight during the wooing process. Why so? Because Mormonism was founded on the purported visit of two personages of light who brought a different gospel, a different Christ, and a different spirit. The Bible itself identifies these two beings who appeared to Joseph as he fell under the marvelous power that unseen being from another world: They were beings who were the enemies of God.

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whome we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. . . . For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works (2 Corinthians 11:3,4,13-15).

According to Smith's testimony, that of Jesus, and that of the Bible itself, Joseph Smith was visited by Satan masquerading as God and pronouncing his curse upon the Christian church and the creeds of Christendom.