LIVE FROM THE MECCA OF MORMONISM

• SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH

This is Heart of the MatterTGNN’s original show where Shawn McCraney deconstructed religion and developed fulfilled theology., where Mormonism Meets Biblical Christianity, face to face. Show 6 BOM 36 – Harvest A February 7th 2012

And I’m Shawn McCraneyFounder of TGNN and developer of the fulfilled perspective—calling people to faith outside of religion., your host. We praise the True and Living God for allowing us to participate in this ministry. May He be with you (and us) tonight. Heart of the Matter can be seen right now from anywhere in the world via streaming video. You can also go to our archives and watch ANY past program. All of this is available by going to www.hotm.tv

Want to learn the Word of God in an open, non-religious forum? Join us at CAMPUS every Sunday at 10am (which we call Milk) or at 2:30 (which we call Meat). Go to C-A-M-P-U-S.com for more information.

Ex-Files Interview Series

Last Friday night at 8pm the first “Ex-Files” aired here on TV 20. Tune in each week as Bishop Earl interviews a new person who was once LDS but has left for a living relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. If you fit this description go to www.exmormonfiles.tv and sign up. We’ll be in touch. That’s . . . www.exmormonfiles.tv

Now listen, the Ex Files is not a program where people get up and spend their time bagging on the Mormon church. If we were looking at 100% I would say that 20 -25% is about the former Mormon life and 75 to 80% is aimed at sharing what it means to be in a relationship with the Lord and absent from the trappings of religion.

One of the primary points we try and make here on Heart and on the Ex-Files is the difference between a direct personal relationship a person can (and ought to have) with God through His Son and religious allegiance which typically serves to supplant this relationship God desires. It is completely natural (meaning of our human flesh) to put our focus, faith, and even adoration on icons, settings, cultures, and even people – like popes, prophets, pastors, and other flesh. Take a look at this video clip which reflects adoration for icons which, while easy to fall into, is NOT God-pleasing. Pay particular attention to the reaction of the crowd:

God wants ALL of our devotion – from our heart and mind to Him – nothing in between. No honor or worship or adoration to men of flesh or icons of clay. If you find yourself drawn to or attached to something or someone – anything – that is not Him and Him alone, repent, destroy your idols, and go to Him . . . directly.

Mormonism in Media

Want to see what the White House will look like if the United States puts an active Mormon into office?

And the Mormon media blitz continues. It seems there is a new television show coming out called, “I’m Dating a Mormon.” It’s a (supposed) reality show that takes a East Coast girl “of colah” who gets involved with a Mormon guy and the premise is . . . to show what it’s like to date a Mormon guy.

Six years ago we said this day was-a comin. And now it’s here – “Mormonism run a muck.” Want another prediction – it is ONLY gonna get worse – before it gets better.

A Moment from the Word

How about a moment from the Word?

We left off weeks ago in John chapter three talking about Nicodemus and his conversation with Jesus. After more dialogue and instruction for the Lord, Jesus says a very direct and simple statement to the man. It’s found in John 3:16

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

What does this mean? Exactly what Jesus said, that . . .

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” This means believing in Him, the real Him, the incarnate God, in His words and promises, in His

Examination of Faith Through Tragedy

identity, in His methods and modes of salvation, in His person, in Him being who He said He was, and in His promises, like:

I am the way, the truth, and the life, NO Man comes unto the Father but by me.”

“FROM THE WORD” INTRO HERE

Our hearts go out completely to any and all friends and families of the Josh Powell murders. Online, there is some talk (from the Christian side) focusing on the fact that Powell was LDS. The tenor of the talk tends to imply that people who claim Christianity never do such heinous things. I suppose these apologetic bloggers forget that the Bind Torture Kill murder was an active member of his local Christian community. But this isn’t the lesson to be taken from this horrible event. The first point to consider in the Mormon/Christian debate is what is the root cause of such horrible actions?

LDS doctrine teaches that God is the author of the fall and horrible things like the Powell slayings are part of His loving plan of salvation. The Christian manual however clearly states that God never wanted Man to fall into a state of depravity where fathers and husbands would ever do such things. But there are other topics that have come up from this event.

Theological Implications of Actions

Steve R. sent this email to us, asking:

“Was wondering how the LDS explain the families are forever thing since it has been proven that Josh murdered his two sons. In the LDS mind, can Josh and his two boys be together forever?”

It’s really quite a loaded question, Steve, all LDS teachings considered. I mean, for starters, Josh’s murdering is one sinMissing the mark of faith and love—no punishment, just lost growth or peace. the LDS state cannot be forgiven. But at the same time, LDS doctrine teaches that if Josh’s PARENTS are faithful to their temple covenants Josh WILL someday be with them in the celestial kingdom AFTER having paid for his crimes. Then there is the question of whether Josh is still sealed to his missing wife or whether the murders annulled the sealing and if it did, who will then be the eternal companion and father of Josh’s wife and father of his boys. Messy stuff.

Perspectives on Afterlife

But the BIGGEST error I see in all the talk about the Powell MURDERS (I saw a local Mormon owned newscast calling the massacre “The Powell Family Tragedy” earlier. It wasn’t a family tragedy, it was a family massacre) is from the secular purview. Nationally recognized SL Trib religious editor, Peggy Fletcher Stack, member of the LDS church, wrote this article in her Trib Blog on February 6th:

Under Mormon doctrine, will Josh Powell be in hell?

Some horrified observers of Josh Powell's fiery murder of his sons are already proclaiming that Powell is in hell, while his wife and children have landed in heaven. Though understandable, that sentiment seems somewhat presumptuous and premature — even for believers in an afterlife. It is impossible, of course, for any human to make such a judgment, and it isn't 100 percent certain that Susan Powell is dead. And even if the critics are right in their overall assessment of Josh Powell, their vocabulary is slightly off — at least according to the family's faith tradition.

The Powell’s were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and that church has a unique view of heaven and hell. Mormons believe that the dead are “not placed into a monolithic state called heaven,” wrote Larry E. Dahl in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, but are “assigned to different degrees of glory commensurate with the law they have obeyed.” The highest reward is in the Celestial Kingdom, which is reserved for those who “have faith in Jesus Christ, repent of their sins, are baptized by immersion by one having authority, receive the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands,” Dahl wrote, “and endure in righteousness.” Next in order is the Terrestrial Kingdom, which will be the home of the “honorable people of the Earth who received a testimony of Jesus,” he wrote, “but were not sufficiently valiant in that testimony.” The lowest glory is in the Telestial Kingdom, where “liars, sorcerers, whoremongers, and adulterers” — and presumably murderers like Powell — will go. The only real hell, under Mormonism, is where the devil, his angels, and the “sons of perdition” will reside. It is a place without glory, but not many people are bad enough to be there. It is primarily for those who have “sinned against the Holy Ghost,” like Lucifer and the biblical Cain. One has to be fully aware of God and

The Concept of Heaven and the Book of Mormon

His teachings to be consigned to this place.??“Sons of perdition are not merely wicked; they are incorrigibly evil,” Rodney Turner wrote in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. “In sinning against the revelations of the Holy Ghost, they have sinned against the greater light and knowledge of God.”

The good news about the Mormon hereafter is that people are placed in the kingdom where they feel the most comfortable, and, the encyclopedia says, “even the lowest glory surpasses all mortal understanding.”??(And then she concludes) Wherever Josh Powell is, Mormons believe it will be the best place for him.??As for the boys — 7-year-old Charlie and 5-year-old Braden — they automatically qualify for the highest Mormon heaven: the Celestial Kingdom.

May I state the problem with this entire bag of myths?

Some level of Heaven is available to all people – here’s the point – NOT because of their faith in Jesus but because of HOW they lived. The lowest level of HEAVEN, mind you, is a place where the glory, states LDS scholar Rodney Turner “surpasses all mortal understanding” awaits for all who didn’t give a rats rear-end about Jesus Christ.

Let me state this clearly, even if it does not please you: There is one reason people go to heaven – they believe that Jesus is the promised Messiah. And there is one reason people go to hell – they don’t.

All this other stuff is not biblical, not Christian, and not true.

Examination of the Book of Mormon

Well, we’ve tried to exhaustively examine everything that may have contributed to the final production of Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormonion. Tonight we’re ready to pull the bulbous vegetable from the ground. So let’s do it.

At first glance we notice something about it that is unique – it is verbose – meaning it uses many, many, many more words than are necessary. Let me explain why this is important.

The Nature of the Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormonion is supposed to be a story of different sets of people leaving the Holy Land at different periods of time, traveling by different types of boats across the sea, then branching out into large, segmented single-dimensional civilizations. The righteous branches of these civilizations kept records of their religious and the secular histories on . . . metal plates. Got that so far?

And these histories (from these different sets of plates) supposedly covered a period of time from around 2400 BC to around 400 AD – or a period of two thousand eight hundred years! This would amount to one heck of a lot of plates at the end of all those 2800 years . . . wouldn’t it?

At the end of almost three millennia, a Book of Mormonion character named Mormon is said to have taken all these plates (with the exception of some that were abridged by his son Moroni) and abridged them onto the set of golden plates. Now, in the Book of Mormonion itself, Mormon, who is abridging all these plates onto the gold ones actually complains in narrative that there is not enough room on the plates to tell the full story of his people.

Being the WORD OF GOD, like the Bible, you would think the Holy Spirit would have used an economy of words – like He does in the Bible. But the Book of Mormon is one of the most verbose books in print.

Comparisons with Other Literary Works

How verbose? Over 275,000 words long. 275,000 words long! I mean listen to the word count of these books written by men and women (and not God) and their word counts. . .

• Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country: 83,774
• Alice Walker, The Color Purple: 66,556
• Amy Tan, Joy Luck Club: 91,419
• Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities: 135,420
• Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights: 107,945
• Erich Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front: 61,922
• Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises: 67,707
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment: 211,591
• George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four: 88,942
• Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird: 99,121
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin: 166,622
• Henry David Thoreau, Walden: 114,634
• J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye: 73,404
• James Fenimore Cooper, Last of the Mohicans: 145,469
• John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath: 169,481
• John Steinbeck, East of Eden: 225,395
• Joseph Heller, Catch-22: 174,269
• Kurt Vonnegut, Welcome to the Monkey House: 99,560
• Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter: 63,604
• Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray: 78,462
• Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451: 46,118
• William Golding, Lord of the Flies: 59,900

The point is not that the word count of the Book of Mormonion is high, the point is that the gross number of words is wholly unnecessary. Unlike the aforementioned great literary works, where each word is important, the Book of Mormon is padded with trash repetitions. This is the first important element to the Book of Mormonion because it reveals Joseph’s use of jocularity to create what would appear to be an item of importance.

The Book of Mormon: A Critical Evaluation

Had Joseph Smith produced a pamphlet or novella less people would be convinced of its miraculous origins, right? So, lacking content, he produced a verbose and highly repetitious volume, causing some readers to believe that because it is so repetitive it must be from God.

But where the Bible provides the world with a highly insightful, aphoristic, book of bromidic gems, Joseph produced a “padded” books of run-on narratives, repeated phraseology, and nearly word for word borrowings from the Bible (a full 10% of the BOM includes passages from the Bible). In other words, like any con, Joseph took two paragraphs to say what could have been said (by God) in two sentences. “Adding to the padding” (I like that little couplet to describe this aspect of Joseph’s con) are lengthy infusions of prophetic references, the odd use of King’s English (taken from the language the King James Bible was written in) and some lengthy, incomprehensible allegories.

Criticisms and Literary Observations

Mark Twain, speaking of the Book of Mormons, once quipped: “If you take away the line ‘And it came to pass’ you’d have a pamphlet.” I’d add that if you took away all the romantic, political, social, Cambellite themes and nonsensical verbiage you’d have remaining… the book of Isaiah and some of Matthew. According to Book of Mormon critic, David Persuitte, Joseph was attempting to give his book, “impressive proportions,” a gimmick many novice writers employ.

Additional to its verbosity, what lends to seeing the Book of Mormons for what it is – a con –- a person has to look at the first “end product,” and not the versions provided to the world today. Picking up a Book of Mormon today, readers are not privy to how it was first presented to the world. For starters, the first Books of Mormon were written in paragraph form and didn’t come in chapters nor verses. We can say the same thing of the Bible as chapters and then verses were added later, but the BOM was an attempt to counterfeit sacred scripture and Mormon revisionists therefore gave it the appearance of scripture the Holy Bible set forth as an example.

Additionally, Joseph’s translation came from God’s mouth to Joseph’s ear – therefore, the book ought to have come out with relatively few errors and omissions in terms of grammar. But the first edition of the book was not just wordy. It was the product of a cunning folklorist – a fact not seen and heard by today’s modern reader of the book. You see, the Mormon church has taken Joseph’s work and has edited the “most correct book on the face of the earth” by removing and changing nearly 4000 items, changes you would think would not be necessary if it was:

• A translation from God’s mouth to Joseph’s ear, OR
• Changes that would be necessary if sentences would appear to Joseph in the hat and not go away until they were properly recorded, OR
• If it was a literal translation from Golden plates to paper by the “gift and power of God.”

Original Text Versus Modern Edition

In other words, whatever method Joseph used to write the word proves that God was not in on it. If He was, God speaks like a back-wooded hayseed. This is one of the problems with reading the Book of Mormon today. Mormon revisionists have made the original translation appear and read as if it is scripture but if we were to read the original version, the con is more readily seen.

Common errors of Smith’s were obviously run-on sentences (God does NOT speak in run-on sentences) and the unnecessary use of conjunctions like “but, and, and or” in places a folk-magic con would use them… but not God. Reflecting his lack of formal education, Joseph’s first edition also inserted “a” before participles. So, for example, where the modern Book of Mormons reads: “When the Lamanites saw that Moroni was coming against them” Joseph’s first edition reads: “When the Lamanites saw that Moroni was a-coming against them.”

“Yee-haw!” I can hear Joseph shoutin! “Dat ders gonna beez dee most perfekt book on da earf!” Joseph also used “no” in the place where a modern book of Mormon reader sees “any.” So where the modern BOM reads: “And they did not fight against God any more,” the original product Joseph gave the world (from God) read, “And they did not fight against God no more.”

What’s intriguing to me is that one of the evidences LDS apologists have used to discredit my first book, “Born-again Mormon,” was the fact that there were typos and errors in the text.

Analysis of First Edition Book of Mormon

mean they literally have said things like “How can anyone trust the information a guy presents when he can’t even correctly punctuate what he’s presenting?”

None of these LDS critics of mine must have ever seen a first edition BOM. And my first book never claimed to come directly from God. In addition to improper grammar, the first Edition also included slang. Again, this is COMPLETELY acceptable for any first time writer and we might even make allowances if Joseph admitted that he wrote the book by and through his imagination. But this is not his story. He claimed the Book came from God AND that it is the most correct book on the face of the earth. So when we read words in the first edition like “and he was fraid” for “he was afraid,” it might make us smile if it wasn’t such a lie.

Now, the LDS love to say: “How could this young, fourteen year old boy produce such a book?”

Comparative Achievements of Young Prodigies

Before we go to the phones, please hear the following facts: For starters, Joseph Smith was NOT fourteen but twenty four years old when the Book of Mormon was published. “Well, that’s still young,” they say.

Well let’s consider some great artistic achievements of other young people whose works, when placed side by side with the FIRST EDITION of the Book of Mormonion, really do seem to have come from God:

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his first musical compositions at age . . . five.
• Kim Ung-Yong attended university physics courses at age four, and received a Ph.D in physics before age of . . . eleven.
• Michelangelo did "Battle of the Centaurs" and "Madonna of the Stairs" before he was fifteen.
• Gregory R. Smith entered college at age ten and was first nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize at age . . . twelve.
• By the time he was five Brian Greene could multiply 30-digit numbers.
• By ten, Truman Henry Safford could square 18 digit numbers. I can’t square two.
• Song Yoo-geun was a physics prodigy who entered a university at age eight.
• Daniel Tammet was a British autistic who recounted “pi to its 22,514th digit” . . . from memory.
• Tathagat Avatar Tulsi received his undergraduate degree at age ten.
• Sho Yano started college at age nine and graduated summa cum laude at age twelve from Loyola University.
• Frédéric Chopin performed concerts and polonaises by age seven and was a well-known composer by fifteen.
• Bernini did the "Goat Amalthea" at the age of ten.
• Ernest Hemingway was in his early 20's when he wrote The Sun Also Rises.
• The popular Eragon book series was written by Christopher Paolini. He started writing the first book in the series when he was fifteen.
• John Updike had stories published in the New Yorker before he was out of his teens.
• Leonardo da Vinci could write with the one hand and draw with the other simultaneously.
• And the barely literate Wilson Rawls, with virtually no formal education wrote the book, Where the Red Fern Grows in a three week period of time. It has since gone on to become one the most widely read books in this country.

Conclusion

But what makes all of these achievements far more impressive than Joseph’s Book of Mormonion is not so much that they came from prodigies but that they’re genuine achievements produced from legitimate merits and not aimed at convincing people to believe a lie.

With that, let’s open up the phone lines: (801) 973-8820 (801) 973-TV20 First time callers please LDS callers if at all possible

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