Our program tonight is about Satan, about how the LDS view him, his origins and purposes and what the Bible says about him. If the LDS have a distorted view of God, which they do, and if they have a distorted mythical view of Jesus, which they do, it would only make sense that their views and teachings regarding Satan would follow in the same line, which they do. Tonight we’ll investigate the LDS myths about Satan, who they commonly call Lucifer. In order to really grasp the Mormon idea of who Satan is, we have to once again take a brief look at the fanciful idea of what the LDS call a pre-existence. Mormon president, now deceased, Spencer W Kimball wrote in his epic book Teachings of Spencer W Kimball the following “Long before you were born, a program was developed by your creators. The principal personalities in this great drama were a father Elohim, perfect in wisdom, judgment and person, and two sons Lucifer and Jehovah.” Apostle Joseph F Merrill said in the LDS general conference in April of 1949 “According to our understanding and teachings, Satan is a person with a spirit body in the form of that like all other men. He is a spirit brother of ours and of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is our elder brother in the spirit world.”
Latter-day saints believe that every single human being that has lived, is living or will live on this earth, existed in this pre-existent spirit world before coming to earth and getting a physical body. All of these spirits were formed by God and his wife, heavenly mother, or his wives, heavenly mothers, and they were formed out of intelligent spirit matter that has always existed, that even God himself could not create. God and heavenly mother or mothers in this pre-existence state look out and they see these intelligences out there and from those intelligences they together form spirit children and that’s their story. Joseph Smith taught that God the Father gathered these intelligences and created each of us, the spirits that’s within us. He also taught that my spirit, God Heavenly Father and heavenly mother formed out of these intelligences, that it even kind of looks like me. That my spirit looks like Shawn McCraney in his body and that your spirit looks like you in your body. Among these spirit children were some who are at the top of the glory pyramid. These intelligences were of different brightnesses and different glories and at the very top of the highest glory of those intelligences created into a spirit body was certain people. And then they sort of trailed down in glory and gradations as you get to lower and lower castes of people. The brightest of these spiritual formations was Jehovah they say, who they called Jesus, which is absolutely incorrect biblically too. Jesus was Jehovah, but so was the Father and so was the Holy Spirit. The first spirit child born to Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother out of these intelligences was Jesus and the second born was this child called Lucifer. Following Satan’s spiritual construction, our heavenly parents then created the great patriarchs of their ages and the prophets of the ages like Abraham and Joseph Smith and the like. Following them came the leaders of the Mormon Church, following them came the members of the Mormon Church, and then following them came the rest of the inhabitants that would fill up this world. Many LDS leaders, teachers and members have long assumed that black people were at the lowest end of these intelligences, that they were not bright at all compared to what Jesus and Lucifer and the leaders of the church down to the members and the rest of them. At the other end of the scope were the black spirits. When people like Mike Huckabee asked “Isn’t the devil the brother of Jesus in Mormonism?”, the answer to that is yes. Faithful latter-day saints say Jesus is our spirit brother and he is Lucifer’s spirit brother. To the trained Christian ear, this idea is absolutely reprehensible, which is probably why Huckabee brought it up in the first place.
The Bible is manifestly clear that Jesus is an uncreated being, that he was in the beginning before all things because he was God, that he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, and that he had in fact created all things including Satan. Jesus created all things. If you read John 1:1-3 you can see that. To put Jesus Christ our Lord, our God, our Savior, our King in the same class as a fallen angel named Satan, or in the same class as us mere men, is just unconscionable to the regenerated Christian’s mind. Ask yourself this question: “Does the LDS view that Jesus is our spirit brother, same as Lucifer is our spirit brother and we’re all spirit brothers, make you want to worship Jesus and understand and follow him more or does the idea that Jesus was God incarnate and came down to suffer for sin so that we could live with God?” Which one makes you want to honor him and worship Him and follow him more? The Mormon idea or the Christian idea?
After supposedly creating these spirits, the LDS say that God the Father presented a plan and in this plan he told all the spirits who were looking at him, and he had a body and Heavenly Mother had a body, all the spirits said we want to be like you. So Heavenly Father set up gave this plan he said “I’ll make a world and you can go down and you can live in that world and you’ll be tried and tested and if you’re faithful, you can come back and live with me and then you can become a god later. I’ve always wondered how in that plan, when it was presented, we were supposed to be tried and tested when there was no devil to try and test us yet. It was only when Satan or Lucifer rebelled that the trials and tests came. Lucifer, say the Mormons, did not like Heavenly Father’s plan and he came up with his own plan where he would come to earth and he would force all of the spirit children to obey God perfectly and then everybody would return to Heavenly Father, glorified him perfectly because we were forced to obey. As a result of forcing all of God’s children to obey and perfectly return, then he would become glorified Satan, would be more glorified than God. This is their whole story, this is the myth and when you have been taught this from the cradle, this is kind of an enticing fairy tale, gives you a history and it is very interesting. Mormons say that our elder brother Jesus Christ stood up and said “I will go down to the earth and I will offer up myself on behalf of people and if they repent and follow all the Mormons laws and ordinances and rites and rituals and are really good, I will then make up the difference for them and cover for their sins. Heavenly Father rejected Lucifer’s plan and us spirit children divided into two camps – two-thirds of us, all of us who are on earth with bodies went with Heavenly Father’s plan. A third of all the spirit children went with Lucifer’s plan and they were ultimately cast out of heaven, came down to this earth and now they spend their time trying to tempt us and make us fail so we will never be able to return and live with Heavenly Father again. That’s the whole Mormon history of where Lucifer came from.