Mormon Terminology – Immortal

31 January

John 3:13; “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.”

immortal Immortality; “A state of endless life beyond the power of death, which is obtained following the Resurrection. All mortal souls will eventually become immortal through the power of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

 

 

1 Timothy 1:17; “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible,  the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

Today we’re seeing a classic example of how cults will take one verse, or in this case one word, and build an entire doctrine of it.

The LDS Church has gone out of its way to confound, confuse, and contaminate the minds of its members. This is one of the subjects in Mormonism that’s the epitome of a notorious Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit trail. That said, we’re limiting ourselves to two subject matters for this article, both of which are heavily shortened versions of all the resources pertaining to them.

Immortality and eternal.

The Bible uses the word ‘immortal’ only one time. Furthermore, God describes Himself as the only one that’s immortal.

The transliteration for the word ‘immortal’ is ‘aphthartos’. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance defines ‘immortal’ as ‘not (in-, un-) corruptible, immortal’. In addition to Strong’s, the definition in dictionary.com defines ‘immortal’ as ‘not mortal; not liable or subject to death; undying’. [emp. mine.]

So our question is this –

When I saw that definition, I immediately thought of the Mormon ‘pre-existence’ which says that mankind lived with God eternally before coming to earth. If ‘immortal’ means something isn’t subject to death, why do Mormons believe they’re immortal?

Once they come to earth, they’re subject to death, so how can they be immortal?

While visiting their website searching for my answer, I saw a headline reading –

Plan of Salvation; “We are eternal beings. We lived as spirits before we were born and we will continue to live after we die.”

That obviously puts part of my question to rest, however, Mormonism being what it is always offers more to their stories.

A revealing explanation of why they believe they’re immortal is found in a book written by Brent L. Top, a BYU Professor. Here’s his explanation of why they believe they’re immortal. From our resource in Mormon Quotes –

Pre-existence, Spirits had No Beginning

Life Before, p. 42-43; “Applying this same concept to the eternal nature of man, Elder Penrose went on to say that “the individual, the organized person may have had a beginning, but that spirit of which and by which they [were] organized never had a beginning….The primal particles never had a beginning. They have been organized in different shapes [as individual entities]; the organism [individual spirit] had a beginning, but the elements or atoms of which it is composed never had….The elementary parts of matter as well as of spirit, using ordinary terms, never had a beginning.”” – Brent Top

So there you have it, now you know. Immortal and eternal are typically synonymous in Mormonism. Whereas in biblical terms, they’re not always this way, unless you’re referring to God. Man’s spirits aren’t part of a system of atoms having always existed. This sounds more like Darwinism, and evolution, than it does Christianity.

As Christians, our spirits started on their eternal ‘voyage’ if you will, once we became saved, and began living our lives in Him. That does not mean we’re immortal.

Immortal means you’re uncreated just like Jesus, who in fact, is God.

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