Yesterday, I wrote a post noting that while the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land was calling Mormonism “the fourth Abrahamic faith” in explaining his willingness to work with Glenn Beck, other SBC leaders were decrying Beck’s revival rally as a “scandal” and Mormonism as a “cult.”
Shortly thereafter, Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Tweeted that he would be appearing on The Janet Mefferd Show to talk about the issue of Evangelicals joining with Beck in seeking revival. I missed the first part, but I managed to record the second segment in which the two discussed just how dangerous and outrageous it is for Christians to partner with a Mormon like Beck in calling for spiritual renewal:
This turn toward spiritual renewal is just out of the blue and [Beck] obviously feels that he has some divine destiny here in terms of him talking about this, God told him to do this, this is a divine moment. Well, again do Christians understand what he is talking about there? When he’s referring to God? And you’re talking about someone who clearly identifies with Mormonism and was a convert to Mormonism? There is something very strange going on here and I don’t understand the disconnect on the part of Christians.
You know, when you look at this Janet, for instance when you hear Glenn Beck, much of what he has to say on economics and politics makes a great deal of sense to us. And I’ll tell you, he really gains a lot of points and deserves credit for identifying many really horrible and very dangerous liberal ideas. But just to debunk liberal ideas does not give you then the authority to be taken at your word, or at just your media presence, to be speaking truth when then you talk about the Gospel. That’s where he just have to be mature Christians to say “let’s look at the Scripture, let’s look at what is being said here. We have a problem.”
You know, [Beck’s Mormonism] actually comes out at times in his conversations such as when he talks about Native Americans and their language being rooted in ancient Biblical Hebrew. You know, there are a lot of Christians who listen to that and go “well that sounds interesting.” Well, it’s not interesting; it’s wrong. It’s right out of the Book of Mormon. You also have other things going on here, far more important than Jesus visiting the Native Americans and that has to do with what the meaning of the cross was and exactly who God is. How many American Christians who are watching that and resonating with the call to spiritual revival know that the man who is up there speaking, using words about God, and Gospel and all the rest believes that there was a male and female deity? That the Godhead is a reproductive pair? That eventually we will be divine ourselves if indeed we follow the path of righteousness? What you have here is a complete confusion of the Gospel … Christians have to understand: it is Jesus Christ who is the Alpha and the Omega. There is no successor. There is no completion. There is no new book we’re waiting for.
This is just an edited excerpt of the discussion – if you want to listen to the entire segment, you can do so here:
