One-Minute Answers by Stephen R. Gibson

Modern detractors are in error when they accuse us of worshiping a Jesus different than the one found in the Bible. Without question, we teach the same Jesus as taught in the Bible. Perhaps there are those who teach a counterfeit Jesus and a counterfeit plan of salvation, but it isn't the Latter-day Saints.

Let us examine what we can learn about the "real" Jesus from the Bible. Jesus Christ created the heavens and the earth (Col. 1:16) under the direction of God the Father (Heb. 1:1-3). Jesus lived with the Father before this earth life and prayed to his Father that he might return and have the same glory with the Father that he had before the world was (John 17:5). Jesus was foreordained from before the foundation of the world to be the Redeemer of the world (I Peter 1:20). Jesus was and is the first born in the spirit world (Col. 1:15), the only begotten son of God in the flesh, and the first individual to be resurrected (Col. 1:15).

Jesus was born of Mary after the Holy Ghost came upon her and she was overshadowed by the power of the Highest (Luke 1:35). He was thus called the Son of God, the Only Begotten Son.

Our Savior prayed to the Father with these words, "Our Father which art in heaven" (Matt. 6:9-13). Earlier at His baptism and later on the Mount of Transfiguration, our Heavenly Father's voice, coming from Heaven, testified that Christ was His Beloved Son (Matt. 3:16- 17, Matt. 17:5).

The Jesus of the Bible taught in the temple. The only record we have of our Savior being truly angry and filled with indignation during his mortal life was when the money changers made "his Father's house a house of merchandise" (John 2:14-17).

In the Sermon on the Mount he counseled that we should let our alms be in secret, and promised that our Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward us openly (Matt. 6:4).

Jesus taught that we have to be righteous to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 5:20), So that when He comes again "we shall be like him" (1 John 3:2).

If we want to have eternal life we must "keep the commandments" (Matt. 5:48), he born of the water and the spirit (John 3:5), and endure to the end to be saved (Matt. 24:13).

Jesus established a church and loved it and gave Himself for it (Eph. 5:25). He prayed that we might all be one in the same way as He and His Father are one (John 17:23). While in the Garden of Gethsemane He subordinated His will to the Father's when he prayed, "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done," (Luke 22:42). It was there that he shed "great drops of blood falling down to the ground" (Luke 22:44).

Later, Jesus, who said His Father "is greater than I" (John 14:28), carried His own cross and died on Calvary for you and me.

Jesus did "nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise," (John 5:19). Jesus did as the Father commanded him to do and say (John 12:49).

He rose from the dead on the third day. He appeared unto upwards of five hundred people (I Cor. 15:4-8). His resurrected body was a physical body. He ate with his Apostles after he was resurrected (Luke 24:39-43).

Jesus gave a free gift, even his atonement to all mankind so that in "Christ all shall be made alive," (I Cor. 15:22). Through His grace, there will be a resurrection of the just and the unjust and the books will be opened and every man will be judged "according to their works," (Rev. 20:12, 13).

This Jesus, we as Latter-day Saints believe, is a distinct, separate personage from the Father and was seen standing on the right hand of the Father (Acts 7:55).

Jesus will come again. It will be the same Jesus (Acts 1:11), with his same immortal, resurrected body. "One shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends" (Zech. 13:6).

Another Jesus? There is no salvation in any other Jesus than the one clearly taught in the above Biblical references. This is the Jesus that we, as Latter-day Saints, believe in. Latter-day Saints agree with Paul in Galatians. If someone teaches a Jesus who saves a sinner without his doing the will of his Father which is in heaven (Matt. 7:21), a Jesus who requires no righteousness, no sacrifice, and no baptism for the remission of our sins, a Jesus who is not now a resurrected being, possessing a glorious physical, tangible body, a Jesus who does not appear today to men and women, a Jesus who will not send mighty angels to the earth, a Jesus who will not open the heavens for his children today as he did anciently, then truly the preacher of this false Christ should be "accursed."