Contradictions with the Bible

The LDS Church teaches that God the Father was once a mortal man who progressed to godhood. Fifth LDS President Lorenzo Snow summarized this in his famous couplet: "As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be." Joseph Smith taught the same in his 1844 King Follett Discourse, declaring: "God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man."

Yet the Book of Mormon itself teaches the exact opposite. If God is "unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity," He could never have been a mere man who later became God. Joseph Smith published these words in 1830, then directly contradicted them fourteen years later when he declared, "We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea."

The Bible is equally clear that God has always been God and has never been a man.

LDS theology teaches that there are innumerable gods throughout the universe and that faithful Latter-day Saints can themselves become gods. Joseph Smith declared in his King Follett Discourse: "you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves ... the same as all Gods have done before you." Brigham Young taught: "The Lord created you and me for the purpose of becoming Gods like Himself."

Yet the Book of Mormon itself teaches a clearly monotheistic view of God. The testimony of the Three Witnesses at the front of the Book of Mormon concludes with an affirmation of one God. Multiple passages throughout the Book of Mormon reinforce this teaching.

The Bible is emphatic that there is one God and no others exist beside Him.

The Book of Mormon teaches that the disobedience of Adam and Eve in eating the forbidden fruit was necessary so that they could have children and bring joy to mankind (2 Nephi 2:22-25). This teaching implies that Adam and Eve, though they "transgressed" God's command, did not truly sin but actually did something noble and necessary.

The Bible teaches the opposite. Adam's act of eating the forbidden fruit was sin, not a praiseworthy "transgression." Through that one act of disobedience, sin and death entered the world and passed upon all of humanity. The curse resulting from the fall increased Eve's pain in childbearing, which indicates she could have borne children before the fall (Genesis 3:16). God had already commanded Adam and Eve to "be fruitful, and multiply" before the fall (Genesis 1:28), demonstrating they did not need to sin in order to have children.

The Book of Mormon states: "we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do" (2 Nephi 25:23). The traditional LDS interpretation of this statement is that human effort and good works are required conditions of salvation alongside God's grace. In LDS theology, salvation (specifically exaltation to the highest degree of the celestial kingdom) requires faith, repentance, baptism by proper authority, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, temple ordinances including the endowment and celestial marriage, and ongoing obedience to the commandments.

The Bible teaches a fundamentally different message. Salvation is entirely a gift of God's grace, received through faith alone. Good works are the fruit of salvation, not the root of it. A person who has truly been saved will produce good works as evidence of their new nature in Christ, but those works contribute nothing to earning or maintaining their salvation.

The Book of Mormon identifies Jesus as both "the Father and the Son" in multiple places (Mosiah 15:1-5; Mormon 9:12; Ether 3:14), and in many other passages identifies Jesus as "the Father." This confuses the clear biblical distinction between God the Father and God the Son, who are presented throughout the Bible as two distinct persons.

Interestingly, this teaching in the Book of Mormon also contradicts what the LDS Church teaches today. Modern LDS doctrine holds that the Father and the Son are two completely separate and distinct beings with separate physical bodies of flesh and bone. The Book of Mormon's identification of Jesus as "the Father and the Son" more closely resembles the ancient heresy of modalism (the idea that God manifests as different "modes" rather than being three distinct persons), which the LDS Church itself rejects.

The Book of Mormon claims that the Nephites faithfully observed the Law of Moses in all things (2 Nephi 5:10; 25:24). Yet neither the Nephites nor the Lamanites had men descended from the tribe of Levi, since Nephi and his brothers came from the tribe of Manasseh (Alma 10:3). Under the Mosaic Law, only men from the tribe of Levi were authorized to serve as priests (Numbers 1:47-53; 3:9-12; 8:6-26).

The Book of Mormon simply ignores this fatal problem. It mentions priests frequently throughout the narrative but never addresses the fact that none of them had the tribal lineage required by the very law they claimed to follow. The book of Hebrews in the Bible makes clear that this tribal requirement was essential to the priesthood: "For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood" (Hebrews 7:14).

The Bible consistently acknowledges only one temple for Israelite worship (Deuteronomy 12:2-14; 16:2-7), specifically the one located in Jerusalem (1 Kings 8:44, 48; 11:32, 36; 2 Chronicles 7:12, 16). The entire sacrificial system was centered on this one temple, and the tribes of Israel were required to travel to Jerusalem for the annual feasts.

The Book of Mormon, however, describes multiple temples in various locations throughout the land (Alma 16:13; 23:2; 26:29; Helaman 3:9, 14). If the Nephites were truly faithful Israelites who observed the Law of Moses as they claimed, they would have known that God designated only one place for His temple. The building of multiple temples contradicts the clear teaching of the Law they professed to follow.