Regarding Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally

After being invited by Moody Radio Chicago to be a guest on their morning show, one call-in listener said that her husband has questions about the theology of Glenn Beck, especially as manifested in his Restoring Honor Rally in August 2010.

I would like to specifically document some of the issues that Beck himself introduced when he spoke at the rally. I don’t want to try to tackle his theology as a whole, just the subjects he himself chose to emphasize.

I invite readers to go to CSpan and to listen to the entire rally, especially what Beck said.

Each individual speaker’s transcript and video can be selected from a menu on this page, or you can play the whole rally.

Here are some issues that Glenn Beck introduced, with references as much as possible from the official LDS.org site:

1) One of his first comments as Beck welcomed the crowd was something he said that happened 5,000 years ago, the exodus of the chosen people of God from Egypt, led by Moses who had only a stick in his hand. In the next couple of sentences, Beck said, “At the same time, on this side, this land, another group gathered listening to God.” This is an overt reference to the teachings in the Book of Mormon that Jews migrated to the Western Hemisphere during Old Testament times, and that they continued to worship the God of the Jews here in the Americas. Here is a the official LDS teaching on this.  Beck followed up his comment by introducing two people descended from the Native Americans who greeted the Mayflower.

2)  There are many questions about why Mormons who are US citizens are so patriotic. While I don’t want to downplay their feelings of pride in their country or other emotional factors, the LDS church has specific teachings about the government and people of the United States. Here are a few of those teachings:

a.  The Garden of Eden was in Jackson County Missouri and not in the Eastern Hemisphere.

b. The Book of Mormon, specifically in 1 Nephi chapter 13, identifies Columbus as having been led to the New World under the direction of God.- See especially verses 11-20.

c. Mormons regard the writers of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution as inspired of God, and the documents themselves as Scripture.

(They believe that these people who wrote these documents were “very choice spirits in the pre-existence” and have become Mormons by accepting baptisms done for them in proxy in LDS temples.) Listen carefully to what Beck called them: “sacred scriptures of our country.”

3)  While Beck acknowledged that there were theological differences between himself and many of the clergy and attendees at the rally, Beck forcefully set forth a challenge: “Find out who God really is.”  Considering that he was backed by clergy, and attending a crowd which we might assume to be largely Christian, some people might believe he was merely calling for a deeper reading of the Bible and a closer relationship through knowledge of who the God of the Bible really is.  However, Beck’s follow up statement indicates that finding out who God really is would be a disturbing discovery and that it would force a time of choice in the individual mind. That would be a disturbing concept indeed, if we came to the conclusion of who Beck would say “God really is.”

The God of Mormonism is three separate beings, two of whom have physical, flesh and bone bodies (the Father and the Christ.) God the Father, as taught by standard LDS doctrine, is a former man who lived, died, and was resurrected on another planet by a god he served (one of many gods.)

Beck himself as a faithful Mormon must believe that he will become a god after death.

Christians, I ask you:  Do you believe the identity of God is important?  Do you believe that God the Father was once a man, and has a body of flesh and bones? Do you believe the Bible teaches that you can and should become a god?

Please read Isaiah 43, 44, 45, 46 to see what the Bible says about these issues.

There is much, much more information and abundant documentation in my book.

For more information, see The Mormon Mirage 3rd Edition:  A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today(Zondervan, 2009). Also available as an audiobook and as an expanded-text E-book for Nook, Kindle and other reading devices.