The CROSS vs. the LDS

One of the most obvious external differences between Bible believing churches and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS aka Mormons), is the presence and/or absence of the cross.

Every doctrinal point of the LDS differs in one way or another with biblical doctrine or practice. Their views on the cross are no different.

While I believe there are often great differences between “official” Mormon doctrine and the heart-felt beliefs that many LDS members privately maintain, when it comes to how the general LDS populace view the cross, most faithful members of the LDS church miss the meaning of it (the cross) completely.

The basic differences between the way Mormons and Christians see the cross perfectly illustrate how vastly different Mormonism is from biblical Christianity.

We live in a world of symbols. Some are internationally recognized, others are locally significant.

Symbols evoke deep-felt emotions within human beings. They encapsulate epics of time and moments of history and have the ability to articulate (with a single icon) volumes – what an entire library cannot do – in books.

Icons and symbols serve to remind people of their allegiance to a cause or a group and can be pregnant with deep and multifaceted meaning.

Think of the Star of David and what it means to the Jewish people...

or the Peace sign and what it means to people.

 

God created man with the ability to relate strongly to icons and symbols, and before the foundations of the world, the import of the cross was known to our Omnipotent, Omniscient Creator.

To Christians, the cross is symbolically central to the single, most important event in their existence. Yet there are a few common misunderstandings that occur when it comes to this universal symbol.

I think it’s important to know first that the cross is NOT a man-made icon. It is not like the swastika symbol... 

or black and white Yin-Yang symbol.  

 The cross was prophetically foretold in Scripture prior to its becoming a symbol. (Ex. 12:3-6; Psalm 22; Ps. 69:8, 9, 21; Isaiah 53)

"And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?  for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread."
"And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died."
"Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.  And Moses prayed for the people."
"And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live."  [Sounds like John 3:16, doesn't it?]
"And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived."  Numbers 21:5-9

In these verses God illustrates the beautiful story of the cross.  Instead of taking away the serpents in answer to their prayer, God provided a remedy in the form of a serpent.  Just as God did not take away the penalty of sin [death] when Adam sinned, God provided a remedy in Jesus Christ who died on the cross in our place to pay for our sins.

A Serpent was the reminder and emblem of the curse.  It was through the Serpent [Satan] that Adam and Eve were seduced and brought under the curse of God.  On the cross, Jesus Christ was made a curse for us.  Galatians 3:13 says, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us."

A POLE- The pole speaks of the cross.  As the serpent was lifted up on the pole, so Christ was lifted up on a cross.   "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die (John 12:32,33)."  God told Moses to make a fiery serpent of brass, fix it on a pole, and invite the bitten Israelites to look on it and they should live.  It is obvious that Moses was preaching to them the GOSPEL OF HIS GRACE.

We remember that when Jesus was crucified, the Jews not wanting Him to hang there over night, because of the Passover, asked that His legs be broken to hasten His death. When the Roman soldiers got to Him they found that he was already dead, fulfilling prophecy that there was to be no bone broken in His body. (John 19:31-36; Exodus 12:46; Numbers 9:12)

Another picture of Christ’s fulfillment on this occasion can be found in Deut 21:23; 

The body must not remain hanging from the tree overnight. You must bury the body that same day, for anyone who is hung is cursed in the sight of God. In this way, you will prevent the defilement of the land the LORD your God is giving you as your special possession.

Generally speaking, in Scripture, the cross represents two very different, yet inter-connected things:

First, it is most often seen as an instrument of torture. This is the “material” meaning. This understanding of the cross is where it begins and ends with many people, particularly with the Mormons. They only see the cross as a barbaric fixture upon which Jesus suffered the brutality of His physical death. In a very simplistic way, Mel Gibson’s portrayal of the Passion of the Christ could be seen as a cinematic representation of the cross as an instrument of physical death.

Mormons see the cross in a very limited way—only as an instrument of death. It makes sense to them logically as they have an intellectual understanding of His death and sacrifice, but no personal or biblical understanding as born again, regenerate Christians do. In other words, they have no understanding of what Jesus did on the cross for them personally and spiritually.

How does one go from viewing the cross only as an instrument of death, (which is humanisticly insipid to most Mormons) to then view the cross as a symbol of honor, adoration and eternal appreciation? It happens when people get a clear understanding of the doctrine of the cross.

Biblically, the cross of Christ is represented in three distinct ways: Materially, metaphysically, and metonymically.

The material cross is the object that Christ physically died upon. It is believed that Jesus died upon what the Greeks call a Tau, that’s the capitol “T” of the Greek language. It has no top above it and most scholars believe this is the type of cross Christ died upon. (Also known as Saint Anthony’s cross)

 

Left, victim carrying crossbar (patibulum) to site of upright post (stipes). Center Low Tau cross (crux commissa), commonly used by Romans at time of Christ. Upper right, Rendition of Jesus' titulus with name and crime Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. Lower right possible methods for attaching titles to Tau cross (left) and Latin cross (right). http://www.frugalsites.net/jesus/crucifixion.htm

 The Latin cross, or lower case cross most common among Christians today, is depicted in religious art but is not thought to be what Jesus was actually hung upon.

 The material cross is very important to the church in Rome, but does not hold that prominent a place to many Protestant believers around the world. To Catholics, the material cross is often seen with a figure of Christ attached to it. This is known most often as a crucifix. 

While Christians do embrace, honor and revere His physical suffering on the material cross, it is only part of what the icon/symbol of the cross represents.

The metaphorical cross of Christ also plays an important role in biblical Christianity. It represents Christian affliction. According to Scripture, it is metaphorically assigned to everyone who believes.

And He was saying to them all, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. Luke 9:23

We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. Romans 6:6

It’s hard to let the old man be crucified on an icon that is unimportant. We see from the passages above and others like it, that the cross is far more than just an instrument of death the Romans used to kill the physical body of Jesus. It has a metaphorical application for those who chose to follow Christ. With this metaphorical significance, the Holy Spirit utilizes a God-given icon to remind every Christian that we too ought to be crucified with our King, and to take up our cross daily and follow Him in our Christian walk.

The LDS are so myopically focused on the cross being an instrument of death that they errantly, arrogantly and even ignorantly demean it. Consider what LDS science fiction writer Orson Scott Card said about the cross published in the Mormon Meridian magazine in reference to Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of the Christ”. 

“…I don't believe that the manner of Jesus' death had anything to do with either the atonement or the resurrection. That's why we Mormons don't use the symbol of the cross on our churches -- to us; crucifixion was merely the method that the Romans used to execute those of whom they wanted to make a public example. Had the death been by lethal injection, the effect on our salvation would have been the same. I believe that Christ's real suffering was the anguish he felt as he bore the horror of complete spiritual separation from God -- taking upon himself to an infinite degree the torment that is the natural spiritual consequence of sin. The remorse and despair we feel (or will feel) to varying degrees because of our disobedience to or rejection of God, he felt so utterly that we cannot imagine it. In this context, what was done to his body was almost a distraction. Many people have borne as much." http://mrm.org/passion-of-the-christ

I can’t really blame Orson Card for his ignorance, this is the twisted teaching he has been taught his entire life by the LDS church. 

Another twisted teaching Mormons are taught is the notion that it was in the garden of Gethsemane where the true atonement of Jesus Christ took place and not the cross. For many LDS, the main event took place in the first 15 minutes of the film when Christ is seen praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is in the Garden that Mormon leaders have said the atonement took place.

"It was in Gethsemane that Jesus took on Himself the sins of the world, in Gethsemane that His pain was equivalent to the cumulative burden of all men, in Gethsemane that He descended below all things so that all could repent and come to Him" (Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, pg.15).

And BYU professor Robert J. Mathews wrote in his book A Bible! A Bible!  “It was in Gethsemane at the slopes of the Mt. of Olives that Jesus made His perfect atonement by the shedding of blood, more so than on the cross.”

Nowhere in the Bible is the garden of Gethsemane noted as a place of shame or atonement or a place where the suffering for sin took place! The fact that Jesus “sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” in the garden while contemplating what He was about to do is recorded in Luke 22:24. What the LDS say about the garden, however, is simply another form of Mormon “twistianity”. Accept enough of these twists and before you know it, you are on the opposite side of Christianity and the good news of the gospel. 

LDS prophet Gordon B. Hinckley added to this LDS distancing of itself to the cross when he said in April 2005, “For the LDS, the cross is the symbol of a dying Christ, while our message is a declaration of the living Christ”. (For more, see “Why no Crosses” by MRM)

All of these LDS twists take the single, most important view of the cross and what it fully represents to mankind spiritually and reduces it to a common, meaningless form of Roman capital punishment. 

The metonymical cross

The third way the Bible represents the importance of the cross is metonymically. This way of viewing the cross is completely lost to the LDS and it is perhaps the most important aspect of the cross.

A metonymy is a figure of speech which one word or phrase is substituted for another. For instance, "Washington", as the capital of the United States, can be used as a metonym (an instance of metonymy) for the United States government. Metonymy may also be instructively contrasted with metaphor. Both figures involve the substitution of one term for another. In metaphor, this substitution is based on similarity, whereas, in metonymy, the substitution is based on contiguity.

When we say “the power of the sword” we use “sword” metonymically to represent military might.

The metonymical view of the cross is probably the most important view as it becomes the icon for the gospel, and what Jesus accomplished upon the cross to appropriate salvation for “whosoever will” (John 3:16). 

Metonymically, the cross is the Work of Christ. It is His shed blood. It is our hope in Him, it’s the miracle of the resurrection, it’s our justification, it’s our sanctification, it’s His entire life’s work concentrated into one single iconographic article to which we all see and relate. It is emblematical of our eternal life and the Bible tells us so.

In my opinion, all references to the cross are important, but this metonymical association really touches on the present-day significance the cross has to born again Christians. And as mentioned, it is this most important aspect that the LDS miss entirely. 

Under the guise of restoring the early church back to the earth, Joseph Smith took full theological license to twist a number of core biblical beliefs and labeled these twists as part of his imaginative restoration. Such twists have helped remove the metaphorical and metonymical applications of the cross from the Mormon mind, leaving it (the cross) only to errantly be identified as a Roman instrument of death.

What has the LDS church replaced the cross with? They have graven images of mythical golden angels topping their temples of worship and phallic-like structures that point to the deification of man. 

Notice the metonymical sense of the following verses:

For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. 1 Corinthians 1:17-18

The power of the cross is metonymically used as the power of God and the LDS refuse it.

The Apostle Paul refers to the offense of the cross.

And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? Then is the offence of the cross ceased. Galatians 5:11

The LDS are offended by the cross. Is the cross of Christ an offense to you? Or, is it a symbol of joy, peace, victory over sin and symbolic of God’s great love and grace to you as His creation?

"Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin." Romans 6:4

How you view the cross is dependent on whether you’ve been spiritually born again or not, and if you truly understand Jesus. Those who have not been born again by God will almost always view the cross in errant ways; even as a graphic offence. As seen in Galatians 6:12-14, Paul writes of Christians metonymically suffering persecution for the cross of Christ.

Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. Not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh. May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. Galatians 6:12-15

Paul didn’t glory or boast about anything in the garden (of Gethsemane), or temples, or ordinances, or baptisms, or his Christian walk, or anything except only in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Mormons say “NO!” to the cross, and they call themselves Christian?

The cross unifies sinful man to a holy God.

Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death. Ephesians 2:16 NLT

By His death on the cross, we are reconciled in one body through the expiation of sin. He slays the hatred of all people from the cross and Jesus annulled all ceremonial laws.

Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Philippians 2:8

Why is the above verse important? Because death on the cross was public and humiliating. The humiliation that even our Creator was willing to face on our behalf. We too are asked to be humble in the face of trials that we endure as we pick up our cross and die to self.

The humility of the cross is something the LDS church wants no part of!

It was planed and highly purposeful in the mind of God from the beginning of all things. Fashioned as a man, Jesus allowed Himself to be humiliated, despised and ridiculed, dying the most horrific death on a accursed cross, lifted up for all to see and the LDS reject this.

Jesus didn’t suffer for sin and sickness in private in the garden of Gethsemane or by lethal injection!

God the Father had Him out in the public eye suffering for the sins of the world in the most humiliating of circumstances.

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2

On the cross Jesus was shamed and brought to the lowest of low, hung on a tree publically with common criminals, spit upon, mistreated, ridiculed publically and for what?

Orson Scott Card and other LDS leaders say this had no bearing on the true atonement? Unbelievable the lies some people will accept. (John 3:19-21)

What a ploy used by the LDS church to get people, well-meaning people, to take their eyes off the very place where they can be reconciled unto God. And have them instead, look up to golden angels blowing trumpets and walk in their temples believing they are purifying themselves. 

Again, Mormons claim that the blood (of Christ for atonement) was shed in the garden of Gethsemane, but Colossians 1:20 is a direct contradiction to this blood suffering in the garden teaching by the LDS.

Through the Son, God also reconciled all things to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, thereby making peace through the blood of his cross. Colossians 1:20

We are reconciled (to God) by the blood of the cross NOT the blood of the garden!

What happened on the cross altered, fulfilled, completed, atoned, connected, and made complete what God had intended from the beginning!

"For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." 1 Corinthians 2:2

Jesus gave His life on the cross of Calvary for you!