Glenn Beck was recently interviewed on the Michael Malice show where Malice asked Beck about his conversion to Mormonism. Malice asked him if there were any times where “hardcore Christians” ever confronted him about his Mormonism and him being in a cult. Beck then recounted a time where he was with Billy Graham and he was telling Malice about his conversion.

I was with Billy Graham at his house…it was his organization that had Mormons as a demon cult. I went to visit him and somebody else was there with us who was friends with him on the first time we met. And he said “so tell me about your relationship with Christ and with God.” And I started saying something and the person said “wait wait wait, remember Billy, he’s a Mormon.” And he just turned and looked at him and then he turned and looked at me and he said, “you were saying?” And I told him and at the end, he was crying and I was crying, and he looked at the other guy and said, “he sure sounds Christian to me.”

In a nutshell, some of the heretical beliefs of Mormonism that place them outside the realm of true Christianity and into the realm of cult include:

• The Book of Mormon is not only considered Scripture, but authoritative over the real Scriptures.
• That Jesus and Satan are “spirit brothers” and that both are created beings. They deny the eternal deity of Christ.
• That God the Father was originally a man, created, who had eternal sex with Mary to create Jesus. They believe in an eternal heirarchy of Gods and that our God is not the original nor is He the only God.
• They believe that good Mormons become Gods just like God the Father and Jesus.
• They believe there is a mother god.
• They deny the biblical doctrine of the Trinity and believe that God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are three separate gods.
• They believe in multiple levels of Heaven.
• They believe that Joseph Smith was a true prophet who came to restore the Christian faith and of whom there would be no salvation without him.
• They believe that our spirits pre-existed in Heaven before we were born in our physical bodies.
• They deny salvation by grace alone through faith alone and requires works of the law. (HT: Carm.org)

Let’s be clear, these beliefs are rank heresy and to hold to any of these would place someone outside the possibility of salvation. Yet, despite these heretical beliefs that Beck has repeatedly acknowledged over the years that he affirms and holds to, Billy Graham decided to affirm Beck as a true Christian and, according to Beck, Graham decided to remove Mormonism from the list of cults that his ministry labeled.

Just because we agree with someone politically is not a good reason to set aside doctrinal differences. If Billy Graham truly loved Glenn Beck, he would not have allowed him to walk away believing that he thought he was a true Christian. This is very similar to the time that Billy Graham said one didn’t actually need to know the name of Christ to be saved when talking to heretic, Robert Schuller. Billy Graham is a false teacher.