By Sharon Lindbloom
18 August 2016

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Today, August 18^th (8/18), is “We Agree with Moroni 8:18” Day. Every year since 2011 “We Agree with Moroni 8:18” Day has been promoted by Christians on social media as a day of focused outreach to Mormons using (you guessed it) Moroni 8:18 from the Book of Mormon:

“God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity.”

This passage from the Book of Mormon has a biblical parallel:

“Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” (Psalm 90:2)

Therefore, Christians agree with this idea expressed in the Book of Mormon. The one true God has always been God – from all eternity to all eternity; from everlasting to everlasting.

But modern day Mormonism does not agree with Moroni 8:18 or Psalm 90:2. While professing to believe both the Bible and the Book of Mormon, Mormonism actually espouses something quite different about God.

In 1830 Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of Mormonism, published the Moroni 8:18 declaration that God was “unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity,” claiming to have received this information by revelation from God Himself. Fourteen years later this same prophet told his congregation,

“I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity, I will refute that idea, and will take away and do away the vail, so that you may see.” (King Follet Discourse, April 7, 1844)

In 1830 Joseph Smith (via the Book of Mormon) taught that God was an unchangeable being, unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity. Then in 1844 he refuted that idea, teaching instead that God was not always God, but had to become God. The prophet went on to explain,

“These are incomprehensible ideas to some; but they are simple. It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the character of God and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that he was once a man like us; yea, that God himself the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did; …

“Here, then, is eternal life–to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, – namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one, – from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you attain to the resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings and to sit in glory, as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power.”

Joseph Smith refuted Moroni 8:18. In other words, he sought to prove that the “unchangeable” God that Mormons believed in, the God who was “God from all eternity,” was in fact not “unchangeable from all eternity to all eternity.” And by insisting that this post-Book of Mormon doctrine of God was true, he disproved (refuted) the Book of Mormon itself.

Christians strongly disagree with Mormonism and view it as a non-Christian religion, yet we agree with Moroni 8:18 insofar as it agrees with the Bible. But Mormonism, the religion that professes the Book of Mormon as scripture, disregards this verse and promotes a different god.

The Bible says,

“And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)

Knowing the only true God is crucial. If Mormons hope for a blessed eternal life, they must know the only true God. They must embrace the truth of the unchangeable, eternal God taught in Moroni 8:18 and Psalm 90:2.

Today, August 18^th (8/18), please join us in agreeing with Moroni 8:18 and Psalm 90:2.

May you know the only true God – the God who was and is and is to come (Revelation 4:8).