I am enjoying a vacation with my family in snowy Utah. While here, we took a daytrip to the Mormon Temple. It is a massive structure in the center of downtown Salt Lake City. In fact, it is surrounded by buildings that belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. There are visitor centers where you can learn more about their religion. Music is playing softly in the background. A narrator’s voice comes on and reads some Bible verses. And ready to greet you at every turn are friendly Mormon missionaries with their ties and nametags.
Over lunch, my wife Christa and I were discussing how weird it is to have a specific place that is the center of your religion. This seems so different from Christianity. (Note: We saw many disturbing things about Mormonism that were different from Christianity. Like the statue claiming that John the Baptist had appeared to Joseph Smith so he could forgive sins through baptism. Or the fact that they have a prophet and apostles who are giving them new revelation in their 21,000 seat conference center.) But while talking we realized that many religions have “temples” or hubs in specific locations. The Jews are still very much focused on the temple in Jerusalem. The Muslims are all required to make their pilgrimage to Mecca. Even the Roman Catholics have the Vatican. Where is the Christian temple or are we distinct in that we don’t have one?
Later this evening, I was reading our high school Scripture of the Day in
Jesus and the Woman of Samaria
4:1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. 36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
43 After the two days he departed for Galilee. 44 (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) 45 So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast.
Jesus Heals an Official’s Son
46 So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. 51 As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” 53 The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household. 54 This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee. (ESV)
. The woman at the well asks Jesus a question along these same lines. Should God be worshiped on a mountain in Samaria or at the temple in Jerusalem?
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He goes on to say:
23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (ESV) -
Jesus tells the woman we are now in an age where worship doesn’t center around a physical location. Worship is spiritual. It can be done in any place at any time by the true worshipers as long as they come to God in spirit and truth. What a radical concept this is for most of the world’s religious people who view their worship in relation to a specific place!
When it comes to Christianity our temple isn’t here or there. It’s everywhere! All over the world, wherever there is a Christian, there is a temple to our God!
16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. (ESV) -
Think about how many temples we have just at Compass Bible Church! There are thousands of us all over Orange County worshiping God from our hearts! And wherever we are (at work, school or the neighborhood sports park) we are showing those around us what a temple of our God looks like. This caused Christa and me to consider how glorious most of us Christians really make him look…
The Mormons are going all out for a lie. They are putting their best foot forward at Temple Square in Utah. What are we doing to display the true glories of our God? To all of my fellow temples, let’s represent!
(I was challenged and encouraged by talking about this with Christa today. Leave a comment below and join in the conversation!)
I can understand the Jews, we just have a fundamental disagreement on who Jesus is. They don’t distort the teachings of the old testament (although they don’t quite understand them either) but the Mormons get me a little more upset. I often wonder why and it comes down to the distortion that they bring to the world. It is not just another religion it is a distortion of the truth and that really bugs me. And you are right, if we are temples, the world needs to see us as that in our daily lives. To quote John Piper, “we need to seek Holiness over healing, Purity over power and the Word of God over signs and wonders” — May the world see us and representatives of Christ in this world
Thanks Pastor Bobby!! I hadn’t thought about the fact that these other religions you mention, as well as most other religions, all have a specific place that it is holy. God is sooooo much bigger than a place! He is omnipresent!! And He indwells those He chooses so that they carry Him about in the holy temple of their body. This goes hand-in-hand with His omnipresence! Thank you for pointing out this huge difference. The more I ponder Him and His attributes and His ways, the more He blows me away!!! Surely He is the One True Living God, The Only God. Our holy, awesome, majestic, divine, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent Lord God Almighty!
Its cool that Jesus predicts the future and tells the woman at the well that people will not have to go to a temple to worship anymore. We can worship anywhere because we are God’s temple. This makes me want to honor the Lord by taking good care of the temple he has put in me. Thank you pastor bobby!
Thanks Pastor Bobby for your insights. It is really amazing how much energy goes into the temples of religions to the exclusion of completely missing the message of Christ crucified. I will be sure to pass your blog onto Nathan as he will be heading up to Utah in the spring with his Bible class to represent Christ with his temple. I pray that you and Christa have a wonderful time and are able to have some convicting conversations with the people of the temple.
The mormon religion can be taken down very easily. They say that they believe in the Bible and in the Book of mormon. But if you read the book or at least the beginning of the book of first John it describes anti-christs, and how there will be multiple. Also Galations 1:8 it talks about:
8But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.
9As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.
Also in Revilations 22 it says this:
For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; 19and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
The Mormons say they believe the Bible but at the same time they say that they believe that in these versus that God lied and he was changing his mind when he sent Joesph Smith. THese versus will leave the Mormons with nothing to say, and if they say they believe the Bible than they can not believe Joesph Smith. Jesus also said that we can only serve one master. So the mormons are trying to serve two masters when they can only serve one. It does not take a PHD, or a Masters degree to be able to defend the Christian faith, all it takes is prayer that God will open and show you what to read and that he will be with you. If you have to truth or the Bible on your side than it does not matter how fancy of a talker a Mormon, or a Muslim is, if they do not have truth, and do not have evidance, and most of all if they do not have logic than they in return have nothing to stand on. A couple of weeks ago I wittnessed to a Muslim who had a degree in his religion and was ready to prove to me that he was right. I witnessed to him by not screaming at him that he was wrong and the Jesus died on the cross and that is final, and then walk away. I simply asked him why a God who he claimed to be Lord, perfect, and almighty would lie about a book that he wrote and send these versus in then, (the versus are above in the previous reading) and then come down tell a prophet that had no scripture telling of his coming that the Bible is wrong and that God made a mistake and here is his real book the Quran. It simply does not have any logic to it. So in a since you can compare the Mormons and the Muslims are very similar. THey both claim that God made a mistake writing the Bible and that a prophet that had no profeses directed toward him came and wrote the real Gods book. THis is all just something to think about. There is no reason to get into a my religion is better than your religion. Just simpily show them these versus and ask them questions. If you think that this is not an effective method, take this advice. When I spoke to the Muslim in the beginning he told me he believes in the Quran on his life; By the end of our conversation he told he that he does not know if it is true or not and just that he hopes that God will have mercy on him. When I left I truely believe that God is working in his heart, and that God had me talk to that man and his friends on perpose, and that one day, just maybe that man may pass on what I shared with him. THat one day he will share the Good news with his Muslim friends just like the sheperds went out after they recieved the news from the Angels and told every one they knew. So at the end of the day we need to remember that the Mormons might have ties and smiles. But they are just as bad and just as lost as the taliban, and it is our job to go out and tell the truth, to tell of the real good news.
thanks PB excellent application of comparing and contrasting temples.
I don’t see why the Mormans are more active about their faith than we are when we are worshiping the GOD who created everything. People at my school claim to be CHRISTians and then go off and say the F word, then when you see a mormon they refuse to say anything in the slightest that sounds like a bad word…. well not all of them. I think I need to step it up in representing CHRIST.
What a great feeling that we have 100% access to God right where we are! No need for some structure. My daily prayer is that this temple will put her “best foot forward” for our Lord and Savior! Thank you for the reminder Pastor Bobby!
You make such a good point here Pastor Bobby! The Mormons who living for a lie, are more determined to tell other people about Mormonism and share what they think is the truth than many Christians. As Christians, we are living for absolute truth, so how much more determined should we be to share the Gospel with other people and talk about our LORD Jesus Christ! And since we are God’s temples, we should be constantly striving for absolute holiness to show other people how great God is. This has really encouraged me to bring up God whenever I possibly can, not missing great opportunities, as well as striving to lead a life that is free of sin. Yes, I will not become perfect, but I can sure strive for perfection, and with God’s strength at my side, come close!
We need to be temples of the truth, which starts by permeating ourselves with the truth. It needs to become part of who we are so that we can be truly effective for Christ. It starts at home and fans out from there.
“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.” Deut 6:6-8
“”Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children—how on the day that you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, the LORD said to me, ‘Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so.’ And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom.” Deut 4:9-11
“And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”" Mt 28:18-20
“And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”" Is 6:8
Indeed. Here am I! Send me.
This is really something great to consider. Now that I think about it, there are sacred places for almost every major world religion, except Christianity. We are supposed to be temples ourselves – and yet, it seems like most Mormons are setting even better examples than Christians on their behavior. Ever heard the saying “I can’t, I’m Mormon”? Most of that comes from the fact that Mormons act “set apart” the way that Christian should be acting! As a temple of the Lord, it’s a great reminder for me to be on my best behavior.
Thanks for the blog Bobby! Hope your vacation is going well.
Thanks Pastor Bobby for reminding us that we( believers) are the temple of the Holy Spirit that dwells in us.
Over the years I have had countless conversations with Mormons and it the past few years I see that they only carry the Book of Mormon with them. This generation of Mormons dont carry the Bible nor do they know it per se. I was very surprised a few weeks ago in my encounter with them as they are so dependent on their Book of Mormon and I the Bible. In the end, I challenged them only with the Bible…and to read it through( like we have been doing this year) and to ask God to reveal Himself to them. I think they were a little taken back that they had nothing from the Bible to share only the Book of Mormon so their witnessing brought no real discussion except what I chose to share from the Bible. God used that time greatly , but do you know why they have gotten away from carrying the Bible? They dont even know it and I am wondering if they are teaching them the Bible in their seminary to the younger generation?
I think though they are greatly indoctrinated in their cult its actually easier in this generation to make them understand that we as Bible Believing Christians stand firmly on His Word alone and nothing else. Of course its God who will open their eyes and illuminate them if it is His will to do so and then they will know and love Him and His Word. It is a narrow gate…only few will find it.
Excellent question for us all to ask PB: how are we representing God? Let’s all get on our knees thanking Him, asking for forgiveness and guidance to bring Him glory by our thoughts and actions today!
Awesome blog pastor Bobby! This is absolutely right! Its amazing to think that I can be anywhere and talk to God, I don’t need anyone or any specific place to do it for me! What a blessing that was to me when God saved me after being a mormon for almost 8 years! No more burdens laid upon me like the Pharisees did to the people, I am free in Christ and desire to live for him and sin less, not out of fear of losing people or looking down upon. Not only are we saved from our sins and don’t have to earn salvation but Christ through his death has restored our relationship with God that was lost when we were living in our sinful ways!
I pray that through your ministry more will be saved and brought out of the lie I myself was in!!!