Christanity

Christianity

Joseph Smith

What is it that inspires professors of Christianity generally with a hope of salvation? It is that smooth, sophisticated influence of the devil, by which he deceives the whole world.

Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 270

…all the priests who adhere to the sectarian religions of the day with all their followers, without one exception, receive their portion with the devil and his angels.”

Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. , The Elders Journal, v. 1, no. 4, p. 60

Brigham Young

With a regard to true theology, a more ignorant people never lived than the present so-called Christian world.

Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 8, p. 199

The Christian world, so-called, are heathens as to the knowledge of the salvation of God.

Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 8, p. 171

…the time came when Paganism was engrafted into Christianity, and at last Christianity was converted into Paganism rather than converting the Pagans. And subsequently the Priesthood was taken from among men, this authority was re-called into the heavens, and the world was left without the Priesthood—without the power of God—without the Church and Kingdom of God.

Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 22, p. 44

Brother Taylor has just said that the religions of the day were hatched in hell. The eggs were laid in hell, hatched on its borders, and then kicked on to the earth.

Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 6, p. 176

We may very properly say that the sectarian world do not know anything correctly, so far as pertains to salvation. Ask them where heaven is?- where they are going to when they die?-where Paradise is! -and there is not a priest in the world that can answer your questions. Ask them what kind of a being our Heavenly Father is, and they cannot tell you so much as Balaam’s ass told him. They are more ignorant than children.

Brigham Young,Journal of Discourses, v. 5, p. 229

John Taylor

Christianity…is a perfect pack of nonsense…the devil could not invent a better engine to spread his work than the Christianity of the nineteenth century.

Prophet John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, v. 6, p. 167

Where shall we look for the true order or authority of God? It cannot be found in any nation of Christendom.

Prophet John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, v. 10, p. 127

What! Are Christians ignorant? Yes, as ignorant of the things of God as the brute beast.

Prophet John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, v. 13, p. 225

What does the Christian world know about God? Nothing… Why so far as the things of God are concerned, they are the veriest fools; they know neither God nor the things of God.”

Prophet John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, v. 13, p. 225

Heber C. Kimball

Christians—those poor, miserable priests brother Brigham was speaking about—some of them are the biggest whoremasters there are on the earth, and at the same time preaching righteousness to the children of men. The poor devils, they could not get up here and preach an oral discourse, to save themselves from hell; they are preaching their fathers’ sermons —preaching sermons that were written a hundred years before they were born. …You may get a Methodist priest to pour water on you, or sprinkle it on you, and baptize you face foremost, or lay you down the other way, and whatever mode you please, and you will be damned with your priest.

Apostle Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, v. 5, p. 89

Orson Pratt

Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the ‘whore of Babylon’ whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. Any person who shall be so corrupt as to receive a holy ordinance of the Gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent.

Apostle Orson Pratt, The Seer, p. 255

But as there has been no Christian Church on the earth for a great many centuries past, until the present century, the people have lost sight of the pattern that God has given according to which the Christian Church should be established, and they have denominated a great variety of Christian Churches…But there has been a long apostasy, during which the nations have been cursed with apostate churches in great abundance.

Apostle Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, v. 18, p. 172

This great apostacy commenced about the close of the first century of the Christian era, and it has been waxing worse and worse from then until now. A short time after the death of the last of the Apostles, the Christian Church, what few of them remained, were persecuted from mountain to mountain, from den to den, from one cave of the earth to another, and from nation to nation until they were entirely exterminated and rooted out of the earth. Well, what was left? An apostate Christianity, a Christianity without revelators, without any voice of God, without any Prophets to unfold the future, without visions, without any communications from the heavens.

Apostle Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, v. 18, p. 44

This class of men, calling themselves Christian, uniting with the various forms of the pagan religion, adopting many of their ceremonies and institutions, became very popular, and finally some of the pagans embraced Christianity and were placed, as it were, upon the throne, and what they termed Christianity became very popular indeed. How long has this order of things existed, this dreadful apostacy, this class of people that pronounced themselves Zion, or Christians, without any of the characteristics of Zion? It has existed for some sixteen or seventeen centuries. It has spread itself and grown and gone into the four quarters of the earth. It is the great ecclesiastical power that is spoken of by the revelator John, and called by him the most corrupt and most wicked of all the powers of the earth, under the name of spiritual Babylon, or in other words Babel, which signifies confusion. This great and corrupt power is also represented by John as presenting a golden cup to the nations, full of all manner of filthiness and abominations.

Apostle Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, v. 14, p. 346

But as there has been no Christian Church on the earth for a great many centuries past, until the present century, the people have lost sight of the pattern that God has given according to which the Christian Church should be established, and they have denominated a great variety of people Christian Churches, because they profess to be. They say, “We have built chapels unto the name of the Lord; we call our Churches Christian Churches, they are called the Church of Christ, St. John’s Church, St. Paul’s Church, St. Peter’s Church, and after others of the ancient Apostles;” and one who had never studied the pattern which God has given of the Christian Church would almost really believe that they are Christian Churches. But there has been a long apostacy, during which the nations have been cursed with apostate churches in great abundance, and they are represented in the revelations of St. John as a woman sitting upon a scarlet colored beast, having a golden cup in her hand, full of filthiness and abominations, full of the wine of the wrath of her fornication; that in her forehead there was a name written—”Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots.” This kind of a church has existed in great abundance, for as John the Revelator says, she was to have her dominion upon many waters, and she was to make all nations drunken with the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

Apostle Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, v. 18, p. 172

Q. After the Church of Christ fled from earth to heaven, what was left? A. A set of wicked Apostates, murderers, and idolaters, who, after having made war with the saints, and overcome them, and destroyed them out of the earth, were left to follow the wicked imaginations of their own corrupt hearts, and to build up churches by human authority, and to follow after the cunning craftiness of uninspired men; having no Apostle, Prophet, or Revelator to inquire of God for them: and thus, because of wickedness, the Church, and Priesthood, and gifts, and ordinances and blessings of the everlasting Gospel, were taken from the earth, and reserved in heaven until the fulness of times, when it was predicted that they should again be restored among men to continue until the end should come.

Apostle Orson Pratt, The Seer, Chapter 16, p. 205

George Q. Cannon

And to-day, those who are inciting mobs against this people; those who go to Congress, and incite persecutions against us; those who fulminate threats and frame petitions; those who meet together in conventions; those who gather together in conferences, are those who belong to this ‘mother of abominations,’ this ‘whore of all the earth,’ and it is through the influence of that accursed whore, that they gather together and marshal their forces in every land against the Latter-day Saints, the Church of the living God.8.

George Q. Cannon, “PREDICTIONS IN THE BOOK OF MORMON, etc.,” (April 6, 1884) Journal of Discourses 25:12