Heart of the Matter Broadcast

Live from Salt Lake City, Utah. This is Heart of the Matter where we do all we can to worship God in Spirit and in truth. I’m your host, Shawn McCraney. Let’s pray.

Show 23
June 4th, 2019

Financial Support for the Ministry

Alright, if you are in a position, able, willing, and led, we could use some financial support. Only if you are in a position, able, willing, and led. We know that there are a ton of really good causes to get behind in this world. Ours is a specialty cause that is aimed at long-term overall change of Christianity and the approaches to it. So you MUST be led of Him to help us – and able. But if you are, we could use it. And you can go to our website at HOTM.FAITH to do it.

Other ministries which we support include: Talkingtomormons, Exmormonfiles.org and checkmychurch. All of them are aimed at helping people discover the truth about Mormonism and/or organized religion that can be trusted. Check them out on our website at HOTM.faith!

Upcoming Interview and TVAR Update

So next week we are going to be interviewing the two millennials from Zelph on the Shelf – Tanner and Samantha – a two-hour special. Ought to be fun as these two former LDS people go after Mormonism big time – I look forward to hearing the what’s and why’s of their lives. That’s next Tuesday, June 11th, here on Heart of the Matter.

And update on the TVAR! I just received the copyright certificate and am working through the Gospel of Matthew as we speak. It is going to be a very unique volume that will serve as a tremendous resource for New Testament students everywhere. Those of you who are supporting this we really really appreciate it. And by the way, just to be transparent, last year this ministry took in

$________________________ for the year.
$________________ went to rent and utilities.
$________________ went to other costs and expenses
$________________ went to purchases.
$_______________ went to payroll other than myself and

I was paid $__________________ for writing, hosting CAT and HEART of the Matter every week, writing and presenting two verse by verse sermons every week, meeting with folks and giving them biblical advice, creating the TVAR and sending out materials. I spend no less than 60 hours a week on the ministry and that works out to

$________ an hour. Not in this for money or to build an empire. In this to liberate people with biblical truth and emancipate them from the bondage of religion through direct total freedom in Christ.

McKenna Denson Discussion

Got some interesting responses to the whole McKenna Denson affair since we aired last week. Many, in fact, the vast majority of the responses were supportive of the two five-letter word approach to her situation – that of Truth first and Mercy to follow. But a few were upset with me because when I did not think all of her claims were reliable amidst our interview, I should have called her out.

I explained last week that our approach is to let people tell their story and let the audience decide what is true and what is not, but aside from this, let me also ask: What do you suppose would have been the general response if I had taken McKenna at that time and challenged her stories of being raped by four or five different men? Don’t they call this victim shaming today? And then being charged with victim shaming we would lose the ability to interview more people down the line! So I personally reject the idea that I had the responsibility to challenge McKenna on points I found questionable.

And this is important – this is the way of our age, folks. Bring all people to the forefront of the stage, talk with them, ask them probing questions about themselves and their lives, and LET the truth come out in the gaps, and over time. The general public is smart and can and will read between the lines. God bless all who are involved in that mess and help McKenna’s victims experience His mercy and love.

Okay . . .

Kwaku El and I have been in discussion on sitting down and taking our time on four topics yet to be determined. We want to do this before a live audience, with a Q and A, and record it for your viewing and listening pleasure with each topic being fleshed out over an hour period of time. I want to call these talks:

SHAWNTALKWAKU

After the term “Chatauqua,” which was a popular adult education movement in the Late 19th and early 20th Century. Look for that to

Upcoming Events and Speaking Engagements

Remember, the Sunstone Symposium will take place in Salt Lake City from July 31st to August 4th. I will be speaking on Thursday, August 1st, in Room 200 C from 3:45 to 4:45, presentation 163. Go to www.sunstonemagazine.com to register. Then, on September 7th, I will be in London speaking at the Sunstone Symposium there. If you live in or around the British Isles, go online to register. The title of my speeches is, “Smith, Smith, Smithereens!”

Personal Journey in Faith

All right then. It’s June of 2019. I want to do something that I had not planned, but I think it's timely and important. You all know the history of the ministry, but I am going to take a quick minute to take you through it as a base for what I am going to say. I came to know the Lord by the baptism of His Spirit through faith in 1997 on a Southern California roadside. Prior to that, I was an active unregenerated Latter-Day Saint who struggled with getting answers to the questions of life.

I wrote this book titled Born-Again Mormon, enrolled in the Calvary Chapel School of Ministry, and in the last year was invited to come to Utah and host a live call-in program on a full power television station here in Salt Lake City. With the exception of a family matter and a power outage, we never missed a weekly broadcast, for nearly seven years. Our aim was NOT to try and reach the active faithful LDS, but to get at those Mormons who were members of the church, but liked to drink coffee or tea or alcohol, or were inactive, or were just without any connection to it except for membership alone. That is why we created the set that we created, and I changed my hair and beard like I did. To try and speak to the non-conventional LDS people.

And we did. Thousands of them – tens of thousands, to be frank. It was a blessing, it was hard, it was fun, it was discouraging, and it was very fruitful. So fruitful, many people even today wish we would return to that focus.

Shifting Focus to Evangelicalism

In January of 2013, we changed our focus and fixated on the idiocies of American Evangelicalism. This started off by looking at services, money and materialism, healings and miracles, and the lack of contextual teaching of the word. During that time, I was literally led (through the introduction of a couple of books that I typically would never read or consider) to reinspect my beliefs on a couple of doctrinal points.

Reexamining Doctrinal Beliefs

The first was when I was given a book called God’s Sacred Secret written by a man named Darrel Scott in Colorado. That name might sound familiar to you as Darrel is the Christian father of a daughter who went to high school in Colorado – called Columbine – and Darrel’s daughter Rachel was the first student to be shot (four times) and killed while sitting on the lawn eating lunch with a friend. Darryl is a former pastor, and in this book, God’s Sacred Secret, he opened up the scriptures and exposed the fact that hell is not eternal. His sister-in-law passed the book on to me, and I could not refute the central message. I embraced this NOT because a book said it, but because Darrel used the Bible to prove it, and began to tell people here in Utah about the position. This did not go well.

Around that time, I was given another book – from an unknown source who mailed it to me from Canada. This is it – it's called, Christianity’s Greatest Dilemma by a pastor named Glenn Hill, who we have since had on the show. This book (and again, I rarely read books sent to me so please don’t send me more), but this book challenged me on a fundamental tenant of modern Evangelicalism – especially at Calvary Chapels, where I studied. The principle of the book was Jesus has already returned, as promised not only by him, but by all the apostles whose writings are found in the New Testament.

I went after this one – this COULD not be! No way. We are headed toward the end of this godforsaken world, and Jesus is coming to wipe it out.

(Beat) But the more I challenged it by the Bible, the more convinced I became that this second fringe belief was superior to the former one.

A Journey of Rediscovery

I held – that Jesus was coming back in our future. He’s not. And when I came to see this clearly, and brought people in like Don Preston (due to Wendy’s influence) the departures really started flowing. But it was all necessary – because in order to teach the truth and reach people with the truth as a means to set them free, I had to know the truth – as brutal as it was to watch people I loved and cared about go.

While I was having some of my certainties eroding under my feet I continued to see, in the word as I scoured it for insights on hell and eschatology, passages that refuted the sacred cow of modern Evangelicalism – the Holy Trinity. I would hit on these passages like a shark biting off pieces of bait, but refused to get hooked. Until, like the other subjects, the overwhelming evidence FROM THE BIBLE shut the traditions of man down, and kicked them to the curb.

Understanding the Trinity and Moving Forward

Understand, I believe that Jesus was God with us, and I believe that part of God was His Word. I also believe that the Holy Spirit is God with us – and that spirit is God’s spirit. But I reject the three person, co-eternal, co-equal, the three-leaf clover that makes the one God is supported in a contextual way. I don’t reject Trinitarians, I just reject this creed as it stands. And I admit that I could be wrong in my assessment.

Of course, this was the nail in my reputation as an evangelical and at that point we were left on our own with only a few supporters. It was only then, in the face of a 85 to 95% abandonment that I came to understand the biblical narrative, for in the absence of men and their traditions the Spirit revealed the message and meaning of the written word, and I was able to see that the Kingdom of God has been established on heaven, it abides in the hearts of believers, it is not material or lead by men and their religions. The point is I had to relearn all I thought I knew – and it took this journey to get me there.

I am convinced that there is a reason for this as I join my voice and heart to others who have come to the same conclusions – that brick and mortar religion is, and will be, a thing of the past, that God is calling to all by and through His spirit to have a direct relationship with him, and that this way is much, much better in the long run as the Holy Spirit will reign in the hearts of all who are His.

Refocusing on Mormonism

In light of these last seven years of retraining that I have received from others and the Spirit, I want to announce that come August 6th of this year, we are returning our focusing solely on Mormonism, or what is presently being called by some, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Where our first seven years were to the inactives and wanderers of Mormonism, our focus (come August) will be on the active, faithful, sold-out members of the faith to help them understand not only the uniqueness of Mormon doctrines and practice (relative to sound biblical exegesis) but also, but also to help them see those things that are not as far out of whack as the Evangelical nutjobs say.

We will be changing our stage, the format, will return to spots, graphics, LDS guests, on the street interviews, current events, and a new introduction. It is my hope to get back to taking calls but not to fight but to listen and respond – if this is possible.

Our focus has long been on the LDS Church – every thing about it. When I look around at the outreaches to them I find myself overly pleased with ministries like TalkingtoMormons and ExMormonfiles but I am filled with dread at the outreaches that are based in false eschatology, bad doctrine like five point Calvinism, and the constant threat of eternal hell for our LDS family and friends.

I think I’m finally ready to come and reason together with the LDS people as a means to help them see the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ once delivered, the beauty and import of the cross, and the freedom that is there for those who are willing to question the man-made elements of religion they have once allowed in their lives.

Tell your friends. Share the news.

Introduction

on social media. Let’s open the dialogue back up – but this time, I will come better prepared and hopefully much more patient, longsuffering and kind then I was in the past.

HOTM Redux

So get ready for . . . HOTM Redux – August 6th 2019.

Upcoming Special

We will see you next week for our two hour special with Tanner and Samantha of Zelph on the Shelf fame – here on Heart of the Matter.