Case 11 · Polemic · The class
Mormonism
The Great Apostasy, the nature of God, the Book of Abraham papyri, and revelations later reversed.
9 claims · 22 exhibits · 21 objections answered
What this case argues
- The Great Apostasy the Restoration requires did not happen: the earliest Christian sources show continuity on the core doctrines, and the teachings said to have been lost are absent from them rather than suppressed.
- Latter-day Saint scripture teaches that the Father has a body and that the faithful may become gods, while Isaiah’s God says there was no God formed before him and none after him: the two pictures of God cannot both be true.
- The New Testament describes Jesus as the one through whom all things were created and applies to him language the Old Testament used for God alone.
- Plural marriage was taught as a revealed commandment required for exaltation, then ended under federal pressure in 1890 and 1904, while Doctrine and Covenants 132 stays canonized: a revelation reversed by revelation.
- For more than a century prophets taught that God barred Black members from the priesthood and the temple, and the church now disavows the reasons given but not the restriction, which leaves the question of prophetic fallibility open.
- The claim that “plain and precious things” were removed from the Bible has no manuscript support: the New Testament text is well preserved, and the Joseph Smith Translation’s changes match no known copy.
- The Book of Abraham was translated from Egyptian papyri that still survive, and Egyptologists read them as ordinary funerary texts, not the words of Abraham.
- The Book of Mormon is presented as the history of real civilizations in the Americas, but archaeology and genetics have not found the world it describes.
- Joseph Smith left several different accounts of his First Vision, and the differences are significant enough that the church addresses them directly.
We're raising funds to produce the animated class for this case. The written case is complete and free to read now.