About Jesus Christ
Mormonism (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) - Is it Christian? (page 2)
Mormonism says: Jesus and Satan, like the rest of us, were spirit brothers and sons of God before the spirit of Jesus was given a body by Mary in Bethlehem. The Mormon “Book of Moses” presents Satan and Jesus as contending for the privilege of taking a body of flesh in order to become the redeemer, with Jesus winning the contest. [See Joseph Smith, Pearl of Great Price, Book of Moses 4:1-4.]
Mormonism also teaches that Jesus was the physical son of God the Father and Mary, and that there is nothing in His life more than what is attainable by anyone else.
When the Virgin Mary conceived the child Jesus… he was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. And who is his Father? He is the first of the human family. …Jesus our elder brother, was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the garden of Eden.
—Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 1:50-51, as cited in Gordon H. Fraser, Is Mormonism Christian? (Chicago: Moody, 1955), p. 58.His humanity is to be recognized as real and ordinary …whatever happened to him may happen to any one of us. …The divinity of Jesus, and the divinity of all other noble and stately souls, in so far as they, too, have been influenced by a spark of Deity - can be recognized as manifestations of the Divine.
—Parley P. Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1883) (emphasis added).
The Bible says: Jesus Christ has existed eternally as God the second Person of the Trinity, and then took on a human nature at His birth in Bethlehem. Since then He exists eternally as one Person with both divine and human natures.
