Now obviously we are human and our perception & understanding of God is going to be very limited – BUT God regularly warns us to avoid idolatry, something easy for us to fall into. If we worship God and our understanding is limited but not greatly erroneous, He receives our worship, leads us in grace and truth, opens His word to us, etc. And our understanding of Who God Is grows.

But what if we worship God and our concept of God is at odds with what God says about Himself? Is that still building a saving relationship?

I hope so – but I don’t know for sure. I have a lot of Mormon friends (and some family members, too) and I pray that they are saved by the blood of Jesus, just as I am. I pray that our varied conceptions of Who God Is and Who Jesus Is and what He did are not so different as to lead someone into damnation– but I don’t know that for sure and I’m not comfortable saying, “It doesn’t matter if you believe that Jesus who died on the cross is the spirit-brother of Lucifer and his blood covers the sin of Adam; it doesn’t matter if you believe God was once a man as you are a man.”

Maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe that all falls within God’s “acceptable human ignorance” range – but when I see specific and direct conflicts with scripture, both Hebrew and Christian scriptures, I get nervous.

I’ve had friends observe that many LDS outside Utah and other heavily Mormon areas may not know their own theology and may not know how much it differs from normative Christianity.

I have a friend who grew up Mormon, attended BYU, and in the course of a conversation admitted that she’d never read the Bible and sort of felt that BYU and the (LDS) church had discouraged them from reading the Bible & wanted them to focus on specifically Mormon scriptures. Out of curiosity she started reading the Bible and became convinced that these are indeed two difference religions and she ultimately left the LDS and joined an orthodox (little “o”!) Christian church.

All I did was point her at the Bible and encourage her to read it and see what God says in it.

My question remains, however: if you believe that you have scriptures and understanding of the faith which is so superior as to require separating yourself from the mainstream churches and keep folks who haven’t been baptized in your particular form of faith from even entering your temples, then WHY would you want to be known by the same generic name? WHY wouldn’t you witness to normative Christians and try to bring us into a right understanding of God, Jesus and salvation?

HAPPILY I have no input (zero, zilch, none) into who is saved and who is not – that is ENTIRELY God’s prerogative and I trust Him. But I also know Jesus warns us to enter by the narrow gate and wide is the way which leads to destruction; I don’t define the narrow gate but look to the Bible to show me its dimensions.