RePost: The Latter-day Heretics or The Point Group

"For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”  
         -- The KING    (Matthew 12.37)

One fine Lordsday, a few years ago, when my family and I were on our merry way to worship, we passed by our friendly, neighborhood Mormon...er...building as we always did going to worship.  This time though, my oldest daughter Esther (who was six at the time) inquired as to why and what all those folks were doing milling around the mentioned building on the Lordsday.  I responded lamely (with a coy little grin aimed at my wife), "Well, Esther, they're a group of people that have a fine little club and they like to meet on this day."  Silence.  Then Esther responded, "Dad, it kinda looks like a church building but what's that big point on top of their building for?  Are they a point group?" 

      "Yes, exactly.", I thought  They are just a  point group and are unequivocally not a church in any fashion or form and -- it must be said -- never have been.  And ever since that enlightened day we in the Corey Ankeny family have fondly referred to the LDS as the Point Group, and we haven't taken our hands off that moniker-plow and looked back ever since.   

                     

      Now, Esther was exactly right in her innocent assessment of the Mormons, and it took her saying what she did to really drive this point home to me those many years ago.  When it came to calling the LDS a "church", I really had to ask myself,  "Why do I capitulate to the tyranny of man's opinion on this point?  I know, and have known this to be a ridiculous, unbiblical concept.  So, who am I really afraid of offending here? God or man?"  

   Enough, I thought. Gone is the sacred name ekklesia in connection to Mormons in my vocabulary.  They're the Point Group and not a church.  They're Latter-day heretics (well, really, New Creation heretics, the latter-days were at the end of the Jewish aeon, or in other words, the Mosaic Old Covenant) and not a church.  They're Mormons, followers of the Book of Mormon and are flat-out not part of Christ's Congregation.  Do we want them to be?  Yes! a thousand times Yes! but they must start where everyone else starts: at repentance and turning to the one God -- Father, Son, Holy Spirit -- revealed in the Scriptures.  

     Simply stated, we as Jesus' Bride absolutely must begin to cease the dreadful habit of referring to the LDS as a church or part of the Congretion in any manner whatsoever.  They are not, and to continue to say that they are is to speak falsely about who Jesus is and who the triune God is and who the real saints truly are.  There is mucho loto (a wee bit of spanglish there for ya) riding on this one word "church", and to continue to mumble, shrug and desire to stay "neutral" on the issue is -- I'm guessing -- likely not gonna fly with the President of Presidents (that's Jesus). 

     Why, that is, is because the Earth is Messiah's and He has given it to His Bride as Her house to care for until He returns (see Proverbs 31 for the blueprint to accomplish all of that task), and we are called, among many other duties, to herald accurately the Good News into every room, bathroom and hallway of it.  We are called to be the teachers -- the disciplers -- to the nations just like our Master was to the apostles, and to say to the watching, unbelieving world that we are brothers and sisters united in Christ with the Mormons is not only false but it is being unfaithful to the message we were given to clearly communicate to the enemies of the Kingdom of the Son of Man (i.e. the Earth; see Matt. 28:18, then go to Daniel 7:13-14, then Acts 1:9).  And, in the final analysis, it is the most unmerciful, unloving act we can do to a Mormon!  Speaking the TRUTH in love does not mean compromise for the sake of faux peace.

This isn't a mere trifle, and words -- as James tells us -- usually are not.  In this case, not at all.

Reposted from January 2011