Heart of the Matter Live Broadcast

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.! I'm Shawn McCraneyFounder of TGNN and developer of the fulfilled perspective—calling people to faith outside of religion., your host.

Upcoming Events

Hey Boise Idaho viewers! We’re coming out to your neck of the woods! February 3rd and 4th – that’s a Sunday and a Monday. On Sunday, February 3rd, we’ll be at the KCLP open house in Nampa. Then on Monday, February 4th, we’ll be at the Denny’s in Nampa, Idaho. We’ll be there from 6pm to 8pm. So come on out and join us – Christians, fans of the show, LDS – I’d love to meet you face to face.

I'd like to take a minute and thank all of you who support our ministry. So many of you volunteer time and talents, offer up prayers on our behalf, send us pertinent articles, and support us financially. We thank you from the bottom of our heart for anything and everything you do to help us reach people – primarily LDS people – with the life-changing message of a relationship with Jesus over an allegiance to a religion.

Secret Temple Name Discussion

On a recent show, we had a caller ask me to reveal my secret temple name. This is a name that LDS temple goers receive and are placed under oaths and obligations to never reveal. Men know their wife’s secret name as they are the ones who lead her through the veil at their wedding, but the wife does not know the husband's.

The caller said something to the effect that if I was so against the Church, I should have no problem revealing my secret temple name. Then he asked me what it was. I’ve received a number of emails on my response, some not fully understanding my reticence to say the name on the air and some even believing that I was afraid to do it because I either “still believe in the church” or I am afraid of what will “happen” to me if I did.

I have no fear of anyone or anything in or from the LDS Church. I am not afraid to reveal my secret name to anyone within the confines of decorum. The caller's request that I reveal my name on the show was a lose-lose proposition for our ministry – and he knew it. If I revealed my name, I might appease the curiosity of a number of disaffected members and make most of the Christian viewers rejoice but I would at the same time have insulted the audience we seek to primarily engage – searching Latter-day Saints.

Even the most jaded LDS, because of temple indoctrination, have trouble speaking of the things they promised they would not speak about. My sharing this name on the air would have been akin to spitting on the flag in front of a Marine, wearing a burka as a Halloween costume, or – as I said on the show – pulling a yamaka off my head and tearing it up. I hope this clears the issue up.

Reasons for Leaving Mormonism

When people grow up believing whole-heartedly in a religion or idea, and somebody they know or maybe even appreciate turns from that religion or idea, those believing people often resort to conjuring up some reason to justify the person who has left. In their mind, it couldn’t be the institution or their ideology, so therefore, it has to be the person or a circumstance that led the person to leave.

Weekly, I receive emails from well-intentioned LDS people telling me they are sure I had been offended by somebody as a member, or that I was bitter, or angry, or hiding some diabolical sins, and this is my reason for leaving the Church and for attacking it as I do. Lately, there is a rumor afoot that I was never really LDS, because if I had been, I never could have left it. There have been claims that I never held the positions I’ve claimed to hold nor was I ever able to really understand Mormonism because of my secret sinful activities.

All of these things are simply coping mechanisms for people who seek to believe in the Church in light of my criticisms of it. Listen, I was an active, believing LDS member of the Church. And where I doubted, I strived to believe. I did not leave because I was offended by a member or members. I was not frustrated due to lack of leadership roles. I left Mormonism for three specific reasons:

Leaving Mormonism

I was a sinner, and realized that no matter what I did or tried, I could not be reconciled to God through the demands, doctrines, or practices of Mormonism. Secondly, I left Mormonism because I came to understand its doctrines – and how “anti” the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ they were. Finally, and this is most important, I left Mormonism because I came to have a living relationship with God through His Son, which opened my eyes, freed my soul, and gave me new life. In summary, I left Mormonism – and call it on the carpet – because I discovered Jesus. Pure and simple.

Biblical Warnings on Fables

2nd Timothy 4:3-4 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

Titus 1:14 Don’t give heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth.

Fables, myths and fairytales are often presented to entertain and tantalize the undisciplined mind. Sometimes fables are created to help people cope with the brutalities of the truth.

When I was eight or nine years old I was scheduled to have my tonsils out. Instead of telling me the doctor goes down my throat with a pair of razor sharp scissors or a scalpel to cut the things out of the sides of my throat, she created a fable as a means to help me cope with the event and provide peace and assurance. Maybe – maybe – some myth-making is acceptable when speaking to children about uncomfortable events or situations. Storks, Santa’s, and tooth-fairies are something we all outgrow, but when it comes to God and His Word there is nothing more pathetic than grown men and women who would rather believe in a lie to comfort them than face the hard Truths of God.

Heretical Beliefs

Two biblical facts Joseph Smith found untenable and worthy of revision were the idea that human existence begins in the womb and that we all begin life in this fallen world as creatures. The idea that God formed us from the dust of the earth and breathed the beginning of life into human beings was preposterous to Joseph, and borrowing from heretical Greek philosophy, he gave the Mormons a fable called pre-existence. Boyd K Packer, one of the LDS twelve apostles said: “The idea that mortal birth is the beginning is preposterous. There is no way to explain life if you believe that.” Hence, the fable.

A second biblical fact Joseph disliked was the idea that all human beings – at birth – are merely God’s creatures – similar to animals but with opposable thumbs and an ability to reason; and that it is only through faith on His Son that any and every human creature becomes a child of God. In the face of this biblical teaching, Joseph taught that we are born children of God, rightful heirs to Him and His throne – if we earn it. Supporting this fable, stories, paintings, and songs have been composed within Mormonism. Plan of Salvation charts are drawn to teach little children about their pre-existent state as children of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. One of the most beloved LDS hymns stands in direct opposition to biblical truth.

Where a biblical song might say:

I am a creature of God
Sinful, dumb and wild
And in the state I will remain
Till I become His child . . .

The LDS sing:

I am a child of God.
And He has sent me here.
Has given me an earthly home.
With parents kind and dear.

Lead me, guide me, walk beside me
Help me find the way.
Teach me all that I MUST DO
To live with him one day.

It is vitally important in the search for God that we make a concerted effort to separate and distinguish between truth and error, facts and fables, doctrines of Jesus Christ and the imaginations of men. Of fables, Paul warns in 2nd Timothy. The heathen religions have always abounded with fictions and fables. Even the Jewish teachers were renowned for the number of fables which they had introduced into their beliefs.

Speaking to the faithful Christians of his day, the apostle Peter wrote prior to his deathSeparation from God—now overcome. Physical death remains, but it no longer separates us from life with God.:

2nd Peter 1:16 ¶ For we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of

Understanding Fables in Faith

His majesty. Cunningly devised fables can sprout, take root, and flourish in a body of believers quickly. They often make sense – sometimes they are even inviting than the truths of the Word – which have always been considered foolishness to the wise of the world. The ONLY effective deterrent to controlling and eliminating fables is an effective and liberal understanding of the Word of God. Correctly and contextually understood, the Word exposes fables and the commandments of men. The farther away a person walks from the Word, the closer they are to embracing fables.

This fable of a pre-existence is so forcefully and repetitively presented to the LDS that people who leave Mormonism typically have the most difficult time letting it go. Admittedly, when it is placed before you as part of a grand fairytale-ish theme, the idea makes some sense to the carnal mind. Who wouldn’t want to believe that they have existed forever as spirits, with Jesus as their spiritual brother in the life before? Who wouldn’t want to embrace as truth this fictional heavenly heritage?

The Impact of Stories on Belief

Histories can play a powerful role in establishing a person in life, in giving them a world view, and in grounding them with purpose. STORY OF MARK (in the SOM) . . . Grew up hearing stories of his families ties to French aristocracy. Castles, valour, wealth and power were his heritage. Then one day in his early twenties he learned that he was adopted. And that his parents were actually some messed up people from Chicago. The fairy tale died for Mark, and he was left without a history, without moorings, and without a name. (beat) The beautiful thing was this was exactly where he needed to be because after a season of rebellion, Mark came to know the Lord, and His real Father through adoption by faith.

When I was a teenager, an LDS man wrote a play called Saturday’s Warrior. It was based entirely on the make-believe fable of the LDS plan of salvation. It was creative, musical, and reassured everyone who saw it that they did, in fact, come from this mythical pre-existent place. The Osmond’s produced an album one year called The Plan (through Kolob records, by the way.) I remember to this day the first line of one of the first songs: “Before the beginning We were winning . . .” Lines that support the notion that we came from a place before this life where we lived with our heavenly parents, then came to earth as their children.

Scriptural Interpretations in LDS Doctrine

Dallin Oaks

Encyclopedia of Mormonism

George Q. Cannon

Bruce R. McConkie

There are four or five main passages – literally interpreted and selectively chosen from the body of the Word – which the LDS and their missionaries use to “prove” that the fable of a pre-existence is true.

Job 38:7
Ecclesiastes 12:7
Romans 8:16
John 9:2-16
Jeremiah 1:5

Let’s take these one by one and address them.

Examination of Scriptural Passages

Job 38:4-7

Job 38:4 ¶ Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
5. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;
7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

When the entire drama and trial of Job is nearing its conclusion, God steps in and speaks with Job, asking him some probing questions. Let’s read. (Explain LDS view)

The Lord asks Job where he was when all this happened. Meaning, Job, you weren’t even around! Therefore, the morning stars and all the sons of God must refer to angelic creations and the hosts of heaven which were along the first order of God’s creations, but were not necessarily His best. The Chaldee version of Job reads “All the troops of angels" instead of the Sons of God. When Genesis 1:1 read: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" we do not know what the heavens included, but we do know, relative to the rest of the Word, that MAN was not there.

Ecclesiastes 12:7 says:
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

You see, the LDS missionaries will say to the unsuspecting and untrained, “the Bible even says the spirit will return to God who gave it.” “Whoa,” the investigator says, “I must have existed in the spirit world before this life.” Looking back to Genesis, which is where Christians gain their understanding of where men and women originated, we know that God breathed into Adam, and by and through this breath of God,

The Differentiation of Human and Animal Spirits

Adam – and the rest of humanity – became living souls. This breath, this HARUACH in the Hebrew, was from God and was God’s. This breath or spirit is another way human beings are differentiated from animals. Animals are bi-partite – they have a soul and a body. But human beings are tri-partite – three in one – body, soul, and spirit – and associate with God through the spirit God breathed into them at the start.

Zechariah 12:1
The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.

Job 27:3
All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils.

The spirit God placed within man will either depart from this life unregenerated – unchanged – NOT BORN-AGAIN – and it will go to hell, OR it will have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ and will return to God who gave it cleansed and acceptable.

Romans 8:16-17
The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

Belief in Jesus and Becoming God's Children

Is a perfect example of the LDS taking a single passage or set of passages and using them to prove one of their fables. It reads: There could be no more true passage of scripture in the Bible when it is applied to believers who have come to know Jesus through their spirits. But what does the Bible say about the condition of men and women who have NOT experienced Jesus by faith?

Job 25:6
How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm?

Isaiah 40:7
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.

Isaiah 64:6
But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

The Spirit of Adoption

And what does the Bible say about us being God’s children? How does it happen? By birth and right or by conversion and faith?

John 1:12
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.

Romans 8:15
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

Galatians 3:26
For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

John the beloved makes it perfectly clear that all of us here on earth are NOT – NOT – the children of God.

1st John 3:1
Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

Jeremiah 1:5
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Can I re-read this with some different emphasis on some different syllables? BEFORE I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee, and before thou camest out of the womb, I sanctified thee and I ordained thee a prophet. The “I’s” refer to His foreknowledge and His omniscience, the “these” are directly tied to the belly and the womb.

The very fact that LDS misapply this passage illustrates their misunderstanding of the omniscience of God. God knows all things beginning to end, so of course He knows what Jeremiah would do and be, and of course He sanctified him in this work! This passage speaks to the eternality and power of GOD, NOT the eternality and existence of Jeremiah.

Which leads us to the last passages of the favorite passages the LDS use to support the fable of pre-existence – John 9. It reads:

John 9:1-3
And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sinMissing the mark of faith and love—no punishment, just lost growth or peace., this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?

The LDS believe that this passage proves that we lived in a pre-existent state before this life because how could the man born blind have sinned if he didn’t live before. A little historicity and study explains this.

The Concept of Pre-existence in Religious Teachings

First of all, the fable of a pre-existent state for man has been around long before Joseph ever incorporated it into his teachings. The Pythagoreans believed the souls of men were sent into other bodies for the punishment of some sin which they had committed in a pre-existent state. Interestingly enough, the LDS claim Christianity was warped by the infiltration of Hellenistic ideas and yet here Joseph embraced one of the biggest beliefs of the Greeks found throughout their mythology.

So the disciples question to the Lord –

“Did this man sin in a pre-existent state, that he is punished in this body with blindness? Or, did his parents commit some sin, for which they are thus plagued in their offspring?

Most of the Asiatic nations have believed in the doctrine known as transmigration. The Hindoos believe that the most of their misfortunes arise out of the sins of a former birth; and, in moments of grief may break out into exclamations like: "Ah! in a former birth how many sins must I have committed, that I am thus afflicted!"

Even some of the Jewish rabbins have had the same belief from the very remotest antiquity. Origen cites an apocryphal book of the Hebrews, the patriarch Jacob saying: “I am an angel of God; one of the first order of spirits. Men call me Jacob, but my true name, which God has given me, is Israel:” Many of the Jewish doctors have believed that the souls of Adam, Abraham, and Phineas, have successively animated the great men of their nation. Philo says that the air is full of spirits, and that some join themselves to bodies; and that others have an aversion from such a union.

Jewish and Early Christian Beliefs

Josephus (Ant. b. xvii. c. 1, s. 3, and War, b. ii. c. 8, s. 14,) say the Pharisees believed that the souls of those only who were pious were permitted to reanimate human bodies, and this was rather by way of reward than punishment; and that the souls of the vicious are put into eternal prisons, where they are continually tormented, and out of which they can never escape.

Finally, Lightfoot taught that some of the rabbis believed that it was possible for an infant to sin in the womb, and to be punished with some bodily infirmity in consequence. Jesus, in His simple and effective way, clears the whole matter up by saying: Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

The Teachings of the Word

In conclusion, what does the WORD say? It says plainly and clearly that we are beings created out of the dust of the earth – star dust as my friend Ken would say – and animated by the breath of God. It states clearly that there is only one pre-existent being to ever walk the earth – and His name was Yeshua, the Messiah. John the Baptist said of Jesus: “He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all.” Only Jesus existed with the Father, and only Jesus came forth to us to bear witness of who God is. Speaking to the Jews, Jesus said: “Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.” Realizing from where Jesus had come, the apostles looked on Him and claimed: “Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God.”

By embracing the fable of a pre-existence, the LDS not only are teaching something untrue, they are teaching that all of us share in a heavenly heritage – just like Jesus. Paul makes clear the distinction between earthy things like ourselves, and heavenly things like the Lord Jesus in 1st Corinthians 15:47.

Speaking of Adam, Paul wrote:

47 The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.

48 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

The doctrine of a pre-existence is misleading, mythological, and leads to people accepting a fairy tale gospel from the minds of men while ignoring the saving truths that come with knowledge of God’s written Word.

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