A year ago I would never have dreamed of writing you like this. For as long as I can remember, I believed ours was a relationship that would last literally forever. I feared and respected you. I defended and stood up for all of you with a zeal Paul the Apostle would envy. I did all I could to impress you so that I could gain your hard-won acceptance. I wanted to be just like you. You promised me I could. Things have changed now. I see us in a bright, new Light. Let me explain how I found out about the Truth of our relationship...

I was brought up in a strict but loving Mormon family. I obeyed all the rules and spent a lot of time with my family at home and with my friends at our ward. There was a feeling of camaraderie in our church which is found in few places. It offered me comfort and support which I accepted unhesistatingly. Most of what I believed was taught me from the time I was a small child and, as a result, I knew my stuff well. In my two years of mission work I brought many souls into your kingdom and was able, with ease, to silence many of the doubters of the Mormon faith, including many "born-again Christians" (who, despite their sincerity, are too often poor defenders of their faith).

As a result of my learning, I won nearly every religious argument I had. Admittedly, sometimes my zeal led me to compromise or conveniently forget certain doctrine which might have seemed "embarassing" (I wonder if people in all faiths might sometimes be guilty of this"). But those were some of the means that I was prepared to use in order to win souls for you. My victory-at-all-costs mentality accomplished a lot for your cause and gave my life a sort of day-by-day meaning and purpose.

Something about the Mormon faith that was truly exhilirating for me was the prospect of becoming a God. I was looking forward to having my own planet and creating my own spirit children through the countless wives who would eternally attend to me. After all, it was our great Mormon prophet Joseph Smith who said, "In the beginning the head of the Gods called a council of the Gods; and they came together and concocted a plan to create the world and people it."[1] And one of our sacred books, The Pearl of Great Price, finished that thought with, "and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth."[2] I read elsewhere, with a childlike fervor, the words of Prophet Smith, "You have got to learn to be Gods yourselves; to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done; by going from a small degree to another, from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you are able to sit in glory as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power . . ."[3] The great Mormon prophet, Brigham Young, said in his terse, authoritative fashion, "Gods exist and we had better strive to be prepared to be one with them."[4] But I thought Prophet Lorenzo Snow summed it up best with, "As man is, God once was: as God is, man may become."[5] What words of hope you inspired all of them to write!

So there it was. Your great prophets and your holy books all said it was so. It must be true. I could become like "Heavenly Father," the God of this planet, and rule someday over my own world—rule with all the other Gods of this Universe.

I wanted to know all there was to know of our future deification. So I dug through all our writings in search of more of this treasure. What I unearthed, however, was no buried treasure; but, to my utter surprise (and horror), a decaying body marred with wounds of lies and deceit.

It was Doctrine and Covenants 27:5 that signalled the Beginning of the End. In this "revelation" to Joseph Smith he writes that The Book of Mormon is "the fulness of the everlasting gospel." Therefore, I thought, everything important to our faith was right there in that book. Nothing need be added. But then it dawned on me that none of the references to your once being men were in the Book of Mormon. It’s never even mentioned there! Nor does the book ever mention that we can become Gods. Weren’t they important doctrine?, I thought. If that wasn’t gospel, what was? Once the Door of Inquiry was opened, however, it would not close; and I realized then that many key doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are nowhere mentioned in that book! There is no mention of temple ceremonies or of our pre-mortal existence. The Word of Wisdom is missing and so is baptism for the dead. Yet as confused as I was at these revelations, they were utterly trivial in light of other discoveries that were soon to follow.

While reading the Bible (a book which, to be honest, I spent little time in), I discovered passages in the book of Isaiah which physically sickened me: "Saith the Lord, I am He: before me was there no God formed, neither shall there be after me.", [6] And "Thus saith the Lord, I am the First, and I am the Last; and beside me there is no God." [7] Again, "I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me."[8] Even in other books of the Bible, in the Old Testament and the New, the message was clear, "the Lord, He is God; there is none beside Him,"[9] and again "For there is one God"...[10]

One God?! There were and are and are to be no others? I tried to comfort myself with the thought that perhaps these were just the parts of the Bible that the Church had referred to as those which had been incorrectly translated.

But the coup de grâce, the death blow, came when I read in the Book of Mormon—your "fulness of the everlasting Gospel"—a conversation between Amulek and Zeezrom. Zeezrom is questioning Amulek who shall "say nothing which is contrary to the Spirit of the Lord"[11]:

And Zeezrom said unto him: Thou sayest there is a true and living God?
And Amulek said: Yea, there is a true and living God.
Now Zeezrom said: Is there more than one God?
And he answered, No.

There are few times in a person’s life which are more frightening than being confronted with the possibility that all you believe in, all you have stood up for, all the reasons for your hopes and dreams are untrue. My soul was shaken to its foundations. This was no trivial matter. This involved the fundamental question of who God is. How could one book say there were many Gods, but another claim only one God? How can infinity equal one? Do you expect us to believe nonsense? Someone was mistaken—or lying.

I hoped maybe I was the one mistaken. I prayed to you with all sincerity. I needed help and I wanted the Truth. I was hoping for a comforting burning in my bosom (you had given me that before) and for an answer something like, "Don’t worry about that now, someday you will understand." But my call to you was intercepted by Someone else. And I got a completely unanticipated answer. This One told me (in a way I still can’t fully understand or explain), "Don’t be afraid. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened." And it was then, unexpectedly and for the first time ever, that I experienced something which I can only call a "peace that passes understanding." And it was then, also, that in obedience I began to seek; and I found. I eagerly began knocking; and the doors were opened wide.

I read The Book of Mormon from cover to cover; only not now to memorize, but to analyze, and I discovered much. I wrote before that your "prophets," Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, wrote quite clearly and confidently that all of you up there were once as we are now: mortal men. You had become Gods. You are "eternally progressing." Yet The Book of Mormon says in Mormon 9:9, "For do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in Him there is no variableness neither shadow of changing?" Mormon 9:19 adds, "And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God . . ." Also, in Moroni 8:18, "For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity." And the Bible consistently shows a God who is One, with "Whom there is no variableness."

Then what is it to be, dear gods? One or many? Always changing and progressing or "the same yesterday, today, and forever"? If Joseph Smith was right, that you were once mere men, that all gods were once men, then, if we go back far enough, it follows that the first being in all the Universe was not a God but a man! You are asking me to believe nonsense. I will not.

You are all gods; that is true. But you are false gods. And the one who is your Master is the one whom Jesus of the Bible calls "the prince of this world." Your "Father Below" hasn’t changed his style much, either. The lie you sold me on is the same one he deceived Eve with in the Garden. "And you will be like God," he said. He was lying then. He lies now. He is the Father of Lies. And I see his arrogance and the fate of all those who fall into his deceit in the words of Isaiah [12]:

How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!
You said in your heart, "I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of the assembly,
on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High."
But you are brought down to the grave,
to the depths of the pit.

We are finished, O gods; it is over. I have a new lover — Love Himself. And He has revealed Himself to me through some love letters I have always had (God forgive me) at arms length—the Bible. (Another master stroke on your part; mixing books of lies with the Book of Truth.) I have discovered the One True God: not the gods of Mormonism, but the Biblical God; not the Mormon Jesus, but the Blessed Incarnate God, Jesus, by whose blood alone we are saved. To Him be honor and glory forever! You are the Lie; He is the Truth. You seek to blind us; He wants to give us sight. You want to consume my soul; He wants to set it free.

I must now try, with His help, to rescue those I have helped entangle in your web. I still love my family and my Mormon friends dearly. But they must know that I have rejected the Mormon faith and have embraced the Living God. They must see you exposed for who you really are. They must be told of the love and hope and forgiveness that awaits them from the Biblical Jesus, the one who calls Himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I know I risk total ostracism from all of them—I have already felt the Chill. But I will continue to choose the "road less travelled" so that one day I may meet, face-to-face, the Faithful Bridegroom.

No Longer Yours,

A New Child in Christ

Sword & Spirit Ministries
P.O. Box 712 • Murrieta, CA 92564

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