Transcription
When both of you were sharing your story of being Mormon, it resembled a lot of like the the Muslim faith. There's a prophet. He claims to have this unique revelation that kind of undoes all of the corruption that was from the past, right? And I guess in the Mormon faith, there was a great apostasy which would have had to have happened like right away. Everything went wrong. Like as soon as Christ ascended, everything just went completely wrong. Um, what are some of the similarities that you guys see between Islam and Mormonism?
Yeah. So, that was something that really kind of started drawing me away from Mormonism, its similarities to Islam. Again, Muhammad and Joseph Smith first encounter being so similar. Um, and then Muhammad even, you know, going back to his uncle and saying, "I I'm scared. I I believe I've met a demonic presence." And he thought he was possessed. Yeah. And his uncle kind of talks him into going back and trying to meet this this presence, this angel and kind of talks him into, you know, his uncle talks him into it. Um, and then the second time Muhammad meets Gabriel, you know, he kind of just fully submits. Gabriel kind of forces himself on Muhammad. Um, and so they're both Muhammad and Joseph Smith are both claiming that they are kind of the fulfillments of of the message of Christ, so to speak, and that they are the new prophets. I guess they are the new message from God, Muhammad and Joseph Smith. Um, and they but what they both do is that they both change the nature of who Jesus Christ is. In Islam, Jesus Christ becomes a prophet. Um, and what happens is that on his way to be crucified for our sins to die for us, Allah comes and saves Jesus and replaces him with someone that looks like Jesus. So he deceives the whole world into thinking Jesus was crucified. But Allah would never allow a prophet of his to be so humiliated. And so what that does now that takes our salvation from us. Without the cross, we are not saved. And so in Mormonism, they again, they changed the nature of Christ, who Jesus Christ is. So he no longer is co-eternal with the father, though they will speak this language. Um, but in the same time, I'm co-eternal with the father. Um, and so it has a completely different meaning to them. And so what Jesus Christ is now a literal son of the father, a created being so to speak, a lesser God than the father. And so which is not Christianity. Jesus Christ is fully God, fully man. God has told us from the beginning he does not share his glory with anyone. He is the only God. And Jesus Christ comes to us and we see the Son of Man being worshiped. And Jesus, that's Jesus the Son of Man being worshiped. He is God. And so I mean, really, you got to take this Jesus from history and you have to, I like to say, you got to there's three L's. Jesus is one of three L's. He is either a lunatic, a liar, or he is the Lord. He is the Lord of Lords, right? And so the similarities within Islam and Mormonism is that they both change the nature of who Jesus Christ is and by doing so take away your salvation, your Christian salvation.
So, and there's much more, you know, Drew can speak. I think there's some major theological differences that we'll get into, but one thing that is interesting is as Eman alluded to, the visit of the angels is very interesting. I'd say that Joseph Smith's visit is very distinctive though compared to Muhammad's because I would say Muhammad's is maybe a little more biblically based than Joseph Smith's because if you look at what Joseph Smith was doing before he claimed to have the visit from the angel Moroni in 1823. By the way, at one point he calls it the angel Nephi. He gets the name was Nephi and then they change it to Moroni because there's some conflicting accounts on who it actually was who visited him. But he was very into the occult. And I think this makes a lot of people who are in the LDS church very uncomfortable. Um, in fact, there's a book that was written, it's called Mormonism and the Magical Worldview. And it was written by a man named D. Michael Quinn, who's now passed away, but he was excommunicated for writing the book because it goes into how Joseph Smith and his father and his brothers were very into treasure digging. And when people hear treasure digging, they think, well, you know, that's just sounds kind of silly, but it sounds pretty innocuous from a spiritual perspective. The problem is is that at that time, treasure digging wasn't just looking for treasure. It was putting your head in a hat, looking at a seer stone, which is what Joseph Smith was chosen to do by his confidants, associates. He believed he had a gift where he could look in a hat, put his head in a hat, look at a seer stone, and the guardians is what they were called, the guardians of the treasure, which were sometimes Indians who had passed on long ago and were guarding the treasure as supernatural entities, they would actually tell him where treasure would be buried. And what's funny is that this what I just described to you, him sticking his head in a hat and looking at a seer stone, it is exactly how he translated the Book of Mormon. And Moroni is the guardian of the treasure because what does Moroni do when he visits Joseph Smith? He takes him to see some gold plates and he gives him possession of very valuable gold plates. In fact, he tells him, "Do not sell these extremely valuable gold plates." And who is Moroni? He's an Indian who lived on that same area and died long ago. And that's what the Book of Mormon is about. It's about the Indians and their history from Israel, which we don't have to get into all that. But so I'd say it's like a very distinctive like background there as far as like the occults, the treasure digging, the channeling, you know, something from the other world.
Um, but the other similarity is polygamy. So polygamy is huge in historical Islam, especially underage polygamy. And then the other thing is military conquest. Um, a lot of people would kind of be surprised to hear that because they know of Muhammad and his military conquest through the Arabian Peninsula. But what they don't realize is that at the time Joseph Smith was killed by a mob. If you back up a little bit on why he was killed by a mob at the time, Nauvoo, Illinois, which is where he established himself and his people as the Mormons, the Nauvoo Legion was the second most powerful military in the United States after the US military. And Joseph Smith made himself commander of the Nauvoo Legion. He made himself mayor of Nauvoo. And he actually had what's called a secret council of 50 where these were his closest followers. It was a secret society of followers and they anointed Joseph Smith prophet, priest and king of the whole earth. And he also in the secret council of 50 talked to his secret society about how they would ally with the Indians against the United States government in order to overthrow the United States government and establish essentially a Mormon theocracy. And when Joseph Smith was killed, he was actually in the process of running for president of the United States. But he didn't make that part of his public platform.
Wait, what year was this? He was killed in 1844. Oh, wow. He didn't make anything I just told you about the secret council of 50. He did not make part of his public platform because he wouldn't have gotten many votes from non-Mormons. But that tells you the kind of aspirations he had from a military conquest standpoint that really can only be compared to a figure like Muhammad. When you're blending the religious with the conquest, you're putting yourself forward as someone who has been prophesied about. That's another parallel. Muhammad says that Jesus mentioned him in the New Testament. Um, well, Joseph Smith actually goes one further and he actually writes himself into Genesis 50. And this is very problematic because what he claims in his Joseph Smith translation of the Bible is that Joseph of Egypt made a prophecy that someone with his same name would come and restore all things. And there's also times where Mormons will look at messianic prophecies and they'll say, "Well, that's fulfilled in Christ, but it's also fulfilled in Joseph Smith." So, they start to really like ruin the whole pattern of typology and prophecy and then fulfillment in Christ and no one else. Um, so I'd say those are just some other parallels between.
But when it comes to theology, um, there again, Muslims have that creator creature distinction. In fact, they have it so firm that they say Allah has no sons, um, in the Quran, whereas Mormons again, they believe that Jesus isn't really anything special because they believe we're all sons of God in the same exact sense that he is. Although they would say he's son of God in the flesh because they believe that heavenly father who's father of all of our spirits physically impregnated Mary and that's how Jesus was born, which goes it's so blasphemous it's so against the scriptures which clearly say it was of the Holy Spirit overshadowing her. Um, I believe Orson Pratt writes on that. Yeah, it's it gets into some very weird things when you're starting to again blend like the material with the spiritual. And that's where I would say there's just major differences between Islam and Mormonism.