So clever that only Satan could have thought it up

Ross Kaminsky in The American Spectator's website:

Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, made news last week when referring to Mormonism as a cult while introducing Texas Governor Rick Perry to the Values Voters Summit.

In the past couple of days, Jeffress is doing anything but backing away from his comments, saying on Sunday that "Part of a pastor's job is to warn his people and others about false religions. Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Mormonism are all false religions. And I stand by those statements."

My views on these various religions aside, this sort of rhetoric is distinctly unhelpful in reaching the goal that a majority of Americans now share: ending the Obama administration after one term.

The "mainstream" media are already foaming at the mouth over Jeffress's remarks, using them to reinforce their journalism school-learned bias against Republicans as small-minded bible thumpers, or perhaps, to coin a phrase, as people bitterly clinging to religion.

If Mr. Kaminsky gets his way Satan will have won a victory of incalculable magnitude.  He will have literally guaranteed that no Christian can be elected president of the United States.

If the mainstream media's (and Ross Kaminsky's) attempt to force GOP candidates to prove their worthiness for office by affirming that a non-Christian cult is a legitimate Christian denomination it will have the same effect as making candidates deny the deity of Christ, his bodily resurrection and his future return.  All indispensable bedrock doctrines of true saving Christian faith.

Mormons do not believe that God is eternal.   They believe that he was born a mortal human in the distant past on a distant planet (a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away) and that he earned his godhood by perfect obedience to the Mormon religion.  They believe that upon his death he was judged worthy and elevated to godhood and that he then called out the name of all his wives who then were elevated to the status of goddesshood.  That he then formed his own heaven and earth (our earth) out of already existing materials and began populating his heaven by having sex with his goddess wives, who became pregnant and gave birth to babies who had only spirit bodies.  The first of his spirit children was Jesus and the second was Lucifer.  They call this life in spirit form before getting a body "the preexistence".  

After a goodly number of spirit children were created the Mormon god called a counsel and asked his offspring to bring plans to the table on how he was to govern the world he was preparing to populate.  Lucifer proposed a plan to force all humans to believe and obey their heavenly father and Jesus proposed allowing men to possess free will.

The Mormon god chose Jesus' plan and in anger Lucifer defied his father and drew one third of the spirit children with him into his rebellion.  They became Satan and the demons and they attempted to overthrow Elohim (the Mormon god's proper name).  Some spirit children fought bravely in support of their father and some were cowardly and did not take part in the fighting.

The Mormon god then created Adam and Eve and ordered them to be fruitful and multiply in order to create physical bodies for his spirit children to incarnate into.  The reason Mormons are instructed to have large families is to create more bodies for the spirits in the preexistence. Those spirit children who fought bravely in the battle for heaven in the preexistence were rewarded by being born with skin that was "white and delightsome" while those who had displeased god would have a "skin of blackness".

"And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, and they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them."

       From the Book of Mormon - 2 Nephi 5:21

It should be pointed out here that all this has happened before and all this will happen again (just like in Battlestar Galactica).  This happened on Elohim's home planet and on the planet of the god who created Elohim's planet.  It is happening on countless planets across the universe at this very minute.

On each of these planets a Jesus will be born and go to the cross in order to begin the work that a future Joseph Smith will finish when he is called by the god of that world to become the prophet of the Mormon religion.  And on each of those planets some number of men will be perfectly faithful to the demands of Mormonism and will earn their own godhood.  They will the create their own planets and the whole process will start over and so on into eternity (each cycle is called a "heavenly round").

I could go into more details but you get the point.  There is simply no way that this is compatible with biblical Christianity and forcing presidential candidates to say that it is will do nothing more than exclude believing Christians from the presidency.

Of course this is a free country and anyone may believe anything he pleases.  I am also aware that we are electing a national political leader not a national Sunday school teacher.  And I am aware of Heinlein's dictum that "one man's religion is another man's belly laugh". 

I have no objection to a Mormon as president - as long as he is a genuine constitutional conservative who understands that socialized medicine is not just bad for the entire nation when imposed by the federal government but bad for any individual state when imposed by that state's government.  Who understands that the Second Amendment means exactly what is says and who has a clear and consistent record opposing abortion.

None of which can be said about Mitt Romney - BTY.

However I refuse to allow the claim that Mormonism is a legitimate form of Christianity to stand.  It is not.  To make claiming that Mormonism is true Christianity a test of whether someone should be allowed to become president is no different that making a Jew (like Joe Lieberman) affirm that Jesus was the true messiah or making an atheist affirm his belief in an "all-powerful creator god".

Individual Americans have the right to use religion as a basis for their decision on who to vote for if they wish to do so.  We are free to vote only for Southern Baptists or Roman Catholics or Wiccians or atheists or any other faith or non-faith as we see fit.  However we owe it to ourselves to know exactly what we are doing when we do it.

Essential bedrock doctrines of the Mormon faith have no more common ground with biblical Christianity than Hitler does with Netanyahu.  Making a Christian who knows what Christians believe say that Mormons are not a cult is making him deny his faith.

If GOP candidates like Perry or Bachmann buckle under this pressure and affirm that Mormons are Christians then they have denied Christ (1 John 2:19)