Personal Faith Journey
I started life as a member of the LDS or Mormon church. This was the religion of my youth and life up until I was forty years of age. I have always sought God – except for a period of nihilism – and even as a Mormon wanted to know Him and who Jesus was. I found a semblance of God, a religious approach to Him, within Mormonism and believed that what they taught was the truth with a capital T. I served a full-time mission, got married in an LDS temple, and accepted leadership and teaching roles in the Mormon church. I recently hosted a debate between two groups represented – the LDS Church and an ex-LDS member. I related directly with all the participants having sat where both sides were sitting.
I was once young, wide-eyed, and full of testimony for the Mormon church as the boys from Midnight Mormon were. Then I became like RFM, the host of Radio Free Mormon, full of evidence (and some anger) for the fraud I spent so much time endorsing. The space between these two groups was filled with seventeen years of seeking. Active daily searching for truth. When I came out of Mormonism (spiritually and emotionally) in 1997 I was angry at the church and the deceptions I was allowed to (and led to) embrace. These deceptions were illuminated by the introduction of the real mccoy (Jesus) directly into my life through a roadside experience in 1997. From there I embarked upon a journey on a road that literally unfolded before me with every step I took forward in faith.
Comparing Mormonism and Christianity
You know we have a weekly live call-in television show where we compared and contrasted Mormonism with biblical Christianity. You know we were popular and had great success for seven years. And you know that once I discovered where exiting Mormons were headed once they left the church, we changed our focus. For where I was once aghast by the religious deceptions in Mormonism, I was frankly more aghast by the ever-present manipulations I started to see in modern Christianity. These unfolded before me slowly. Manipulations for getting money and men pandering to a false religious authority came first. I also noticed that a number of so-called Evangelicals I found in my path were fuglier and meaner than many of the Mormons I had known.
These things quietly opened and unfolded within me as I walked. Without trying, I was then exposed to new insights on long-held doctrinal traditions. These came in the form of books that were sent to me and challenged me to look more closely at all I had assumed to be true in the faith.
Rethinking Doctrinal Traditions
The first pillar to fall was afterlife punishment. Through the eyes and minds of some devout followers of Christ, I was able to dive into what the scripture actually said about hell and not what men have long said about it. And my eyes opened. From there, because I was so unmoored by how wrong I had been about hell, I wondered, “what else have I gotten wrong.” Now at this point many people suggest that I have not allowed myself to see the myth and failure of all metaphysical beliefs, and that if I were truly dedicated to discovering truth I would have gotten to the end of the road and become an atheist.
To this, I refer back to my years searching for truth as a Mormon, and how I did get to the point of rejecting all metaphysical experience and fully embraced reason to the point of being nihilistic, I experienced a roadside conversion that forever altered my life spiritually (and outside of doctrine and religious practice). What this did for me was it allowed me to know for myself that God is there and His Son was legit and that was my basis for believing – not doctrine, or practice, or the beliefs and traditions of Man.
Anyway, back to the unraveling of traditions using the Bible. And this is super important for me to have you understand.
Understanding Beliefs through Scripture
EVER, since coming to Christ, EVER allowed a belief or position into my world that could not be sustained and supported by a reasonable, contextual view of the Bible. Additionally, I do not call myself anything but a teacher of the Word – I am not a prophet, an apostle, not a seer or visionary or anything of the sort. All I am is a fallible teacher who proposes views in the name and cause of Christ. And so I came to see the traditions of hell as failing. And once that was proven to me, again by and through the Words of the Bible and the Spirit, I knew I had to revisit other themes. And I took a look at the make-up of God – specifically, the Trinity. This brought the hounds. And we had a show where pastors in the community committed to the tradition voiced their disapproval of me and my person – more than they had in the past because through it all I’ve never been a favorite of the pastoral elite.
Examining the Trinity and Eschatology
More than this, my stance on the Trinity, which by the way is overblown in large part because of my own words, opened the flood gates from a specific group of zealous brothers and sisters – the Reformed (also called the Calvinists). And the rift between us has only grown wider. Where I do believe that these types mean well, and I do not question their allegiance to God, I learned from these engagements a universal truth, at least in most cases and in my opinion, and that is people become what they worship. If you worship snakes you will embody the characteristics in mind at least, of snakes. If you worship a kind, loving benevolent God of eternal patience and longsuffering, you will in all likelihood follow suit. And in the case of our Reformed siblings, I learned that their hearts, generally speaking again, are no different than the God they worship as true. From there a new door opened to me that I had long tried to avoid – seriously – and that was eschatology.
Personal Journey with Eschatology
If you go back to our earlier television shows you will hear me say over and over, “my weak spot is eschatology.” And/or, “I know very little about eschatology” (or the study of end times). The reasons I knew very little about it are three: In my forty years as a Mormon eschatology was never really taught. I trained under Chuck Smith who adamantly taught from a pretrib eschatological position and I trusted him and his views on this, and it was way too confusing to me, and I just didn’t have the inner drive to try and understand it. But in our verse by verse study through the Bible we came to Revelation. And I was debating, like many pastors, on whether to even teach it or not.
It was here that Wendy who has been with the ministry for years pushed me to do it. And for me, if I was going to teach the Word I had better represent what it said to the best of my limited abilities. It so happened that I was sent a book prior from someone in Canada which was written by a pastor in South Carolina. It is called, Christianity’s Greatest Dilemma written by Pastor Glenn Hill. For some reason I read it and the premise is, “Jesus has either come back to His own in that day, or Jesus (and His apostles) were wrong in what they taught.” The book was simple but convincing. I challenged it. Tested it. And then decided to give it the ultimate test by teaching through the Book of Revelation, verse by verse – which I did. And the series is available to you online if you dare.
Revisiting Revelation
But I didn’t stop there. We are creating a new version of the Apostolic Record (what people wrongly call the New Testament) and I decided to get Revelation out of the way. So we embarked on going through every word of Revelation and to footnote and explain it through the fulfilled view of scripture (meaning a view that says, Jesus and the apostles were not wrong and He did come back to His own when He said He would – in that day.) And when everything was said and done, and I stepped back and looked at all that God had promised to do AND COMPLETE in that DAY, and then I looked at the sordid histories of all organized religions.
God and His Eternal Love
I examined all of their doctrines and traditions and practices and false authority, I was able to finally see clearly the following: God was, is, and always will be love. With that love, He created all things and gave Man freewill choice to obey Him or not. Man chose to not. And God then elected a Nation out of all nations, and through them provided the law, the scripture, and the Messiah. And God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believed on Him would have eternal life. His Son overcame all of the effects of the Fall including sin, death, hell, and Satan and the age of material religion wrapped up once and for all at the return of His Son with reward (for his bride) and judgment (for his brethren). After that time, we enter into the age where God relates to all who are His and part of His eternally increasing Kingdom inwardly.
Reconciliation and a New Era
The end result of all God has done? Reconciliation of the world – believer and not. The end of Objective, Man-driven religion. And the installation of Subjective relationships all are invited to have through the finished work of Jesus Christ our Lord, Savior, and King.
Institutional Allegiance and True Christianity
If you love church-going – no problem. If you need the institution to sustain you and your family, have at it. From what I can now see, institutional allegiance does not make or break the true Christian – no matter what they are about or teach. To non-Christians, the institution can have a profound effect on the individual, but to true Christians, those whom God Himself has written upon their minds and heart, nothing external can truly interfere with what they possess.
So we call to true Christian – or to those seeking to live by what God has for them personally. And we invite you to join us in the future to form a liberty-based collective in Christ. If you are interested in participating in a gathering of souls emancipated from all spiritual interferences and to be supported in your individual walk with Him via fellowship AND information – send us an email with just your name and state or country of residence. We will let you know the details later so you can make an informed choice then.
