What do Latter-day Saints believe?

Answer 1

Mormons believe:

1. The Almighty God created our spirits and is thus our Eternal Father. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. The Holy Spirit teaches us and guides us and witnesses of God and Jesus.
2. The purpose of life is to learn good from evil, learn to love God and our spirit brothers and sisters (all mankind), repent of our sins, and to thus demonstrate our faithfulness to God by becoming more like He is in this life (by gaining in knowledge and power and goodness through faith).
3. The good news (the Gospel of Jesus Christ) is that these purposes are possible because Jesus Christ overcame death and sin through His glorious and infinite atonement, which allow us to have immortality and gain eternal life by knowing God and becoming like Him through faith and repentance. Jesus died on the cross that we might live.
4. The first principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ are 1 - Faith, 2 - Repentance, 3 - Baptism by immersion, and 4 - Receiving the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands.
5. The Gospel and Priesthood (authority to act in God’s name) were lost sometime after the last of the early Apostles were killed and faith gradually dwindled and many important truths about God and Jesus were misinterpreted and lost, leading to the Dark Ages.
6. God called a 14-year old boy named Joseph Smith to be the prophet of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ after Joseph prayed at age 14 to know which church was true. God the Father and His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, appeared to Joseph in a vision in 1820 in Palmyra, New York.
7. An angel named Moroni (son of an ancient American prophet named Mormon) appeared to Joseph Smith in 1823 (at age 17) and began to teach him of his role in what Mormons call “The Restoration.”
8. In 1827, the angel Moroni showed Joseph where he (Moroni) had buried “plates of gold” and other objects that Joseph was to use to aid in the translation of the plates, into what is called The Book of Mormon, named after Moroni’s father who edited the writings of ancient American prophets and consolidated those writings on the plates. Joseph was not the only person to see the golden plates - God authorized him to show them to 11 other men designated as “witnesses,” who signed affadavits. Not one of the 11 ever recanted their testimony, even though a number of them split with Joseph Smith.
9. The Priesthood was also restored when John the Baptist appeared to Joseph and his volunteer scribe, a school teacher named Oliver Cowdery, and laid his hands on their head on May 15, 1829 to ordain them to the Lesser Priesthood, or the Aaronic Priesthood. A month or so later, Jesus’s apostles, Peter, James, and John also appeared to Joseph and Oliver to ordain them to the Higher Priesthood, or the Melchizedek Priesthood.
10. The Book of Mormon was published and the Church of Jesus Christ was organized in 1830. From that time until today, The Book of Mormon has been instrumental in gathering those who heed the admonition contained within to pray about its truthfulness and receive the promised witness from God.
11. Joseph Smith went on to form the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the ancient church was organized, with apostles and prophets, evangelists/missionaries/patriarchs, pastors/bishops, and teachers. See Ephesians 4:11–13.
12. One of the important aspects of the latter-day church is a belief in continuing revelation, new scripture, and the power of the Holy Ghost in maintaining doctrinal unity within the church.
13. As stated in the 13th article of faith, Mormons believe, and I quote: “in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.”

Dave Whittle

Answer 2

I’d be glad to. In a nutshell, I believe the most important tenets of the religion taught by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are these:

God is love. We are spirit children of God.

God sends His spirit children to earth to gain a body, learn to have faith, and have the kinds of personal experience with good and evil that is only possible in a fallen state - without God.

God gives us the freedom to believe as we choose, but urges us to choose righteousness and good, and rewards our faith in Him and the prophets He sends with His Divine Truths with enlightenment, peace of mind, grace, more faith, and love.

The ultimate destination of our path is eternal life, or life with God.

The strait and narrow covenant path we are to follow was taught and shown to us by Jesus of Nazareth, the literal Son of God, born to a human Mary.

That covenant path is through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which includes the First Four Principles and Ordinances of the Gospel:

1. faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
2. repentance or constant change and improvement in our thinking, speaking, and actions until we perfect ourselves in some future life,
3. baptism by immersion as a symbolic ordinance by which we enter into covenant with God to love Him and love our neighbors and gain from Jesus a remission of our sins through the atonement He wrought, and
4. receiving the Holy Spirit and living by its light as we endure to the end of this life in the cyclical remembrance of these 4 steps weekly as we partake of the sacrament and renew our covenants with God.

Jesus died for us that the figurative gate to the figurative path described above is open to us. He endured the sufferings of and took upon Himself the punishment for all of the sins and wickedness of the world in an infinite atonement in the Garden of Gethsemane during which he literally sweat blood from the unimaginable sufferings He endured. He also endured false accusations and all of the scorn of the world as described in Isaiah 53 and was crucified and gave up His life on the cross.

On the third day (Sunday) after His Friday death, His body was raised from the tomb in which it had been laid, and he appeared to hundreds and told them to bear witness to all of the world that he had been raised from the dead and lives again.

As a result, all of us - every child of God who ever lived - will be resurrected and gain immortality. Eternal life - life with God and Jesus - is for those who come to know the God of perfect love through adherence to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Many of these truths - which can be found in the Bible - were lost after the Apostles were killed and no longer on earth available to lead the Church of Jesus Christ.

One spring morning in 1820, a young man of age 14 went to the woods to pray and ask God in faith which church he should join. He was told in a vision by Jesus that he should join none of them, and that God had a work for him to do.

Over the next ten years of his young life, the Prophet Joseph Smith and many of those around him who were similarly called of God experienced many miracles, including the translation of golden plates delivered to Joseph by an angel into what we can now read and study as the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon stands as a second witness with the Bible that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and our Savior and that He has called modern prophets and apostles in these last days to establish His True Church to support us and give us inspired guidance regularly to keep us united as we follow the covenant path in preparation for that day when all wickedness is destroyed and Jesus will come again in glory to reign in peace upon the earth for a thousand years until the glorious day of resurrection and judgment.

Dave Whittle