April 9, 2025 • 63 mins
Kai Van Leuven discusses how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has increasingly used Christian language and practices, such as "worship service" and "congregation," to align with mainstream Christianity. Historically, the LDS Church rejected traditional Christianity, but recently it has adopted Christian-like terminology and marketing strategies, including search engine optimization (SEO), to boost its online visibility. Despite these efforts, doctrinal differences, especially on views of God and Jesus, keep the LDS Church excluded from major Christian councils.Critics argue the Church’s shift from the Angel Moroni symbol to the cross is more about marketing than spirituality, with some seeing it as disingenuous. This move increased visibility by 25%, but the Church's use of business-like tactics, like rebranding buildings and avoiding core symbols, raises questions about its authenticity. The speaker also reflects on transitioning from Mormonism to Christianity, highlighting the discomfort they felt with the focus on Jesus in Christian services. Over time, they came to appreciate a personal relationship with Jesus and emphasize the importance of salvation through Him.
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Contact us:
Email: jesusformormons@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/kxt1hS692rDMcJi8/
Website: https://jesusformormons.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Does it seem like the last few years the Mormon
Church has hijacked Christianity. You start to hear terms like
worship service, congregation, and changing the angel Moroni to the cross.
Welcome everyone to Jesus for Mormons. I am your host,
(00:24):
Kai Van Luvin, and I am joined by two fellow
co hosts, Damian Tracy and an Alisa. Hi, guys, hey,
all right, we are going to have a really good
episode today and the title of this episode is Hijacking Jesus.
(00:47):
How the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints
hijack's Jesus and some of the tools that they use
in order to do that. I think it's really important
to look at Christianity through the lens of a Mormon.
And we have three ex Mormons here, and I think
(01:09):
it's interesting that the view of Christianity through the Mormon
Church is that Christianity is not united at all, that
Christianity that there's a lot of infighting and that there
isn't a lot of unity. To use the words of
Joseph Smith Junior when he was in the Sacred Grove
(01:33):
and he had the first vision. So this is through
Joseph Smith's history. Hey, for those of you look at this,
I have my God told him in Joseph Smith's History
one nineteen that Joseph was answered that he must join
none of them, meaning none of the Christian churches, for
(01:55):
they were all wrong. And the personage who he later
would say is heavenly Father in Jesus Christ also addressed
me and said that their creeds were an abomination, that
Christianity was an abomination in his sight, and that those
professors were all corrupt. That they draw near to me
(02:17):
with their lips, but their hearts are far from me,
for they teach for the doctrines and commandments of men,
having a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof.
So we have this Joseph Smith's view of Christianity. Right,
there is infighting, that there is tension, and we have
(02:38):
God's view, according to Joseph Smith, of Christianity, that it
is an abomination. But yet so that is the eighteen
twenty Mormon God, and in twenty twenty five, the Mormon
(03:00):
God now wants to be as close to Christianity as
it can possibly be. Opening Yet, so let's talk about
the unity that is within Christianity, the unity that's that's
(03:21):
there in Christianity is actually not as disconnected as you
would think. The narrative from the Mormon Church and from
from really what I remember as a missionary in Saint Louis, Missouri,
was that no one could agree on anything, no points
(03:41):
of doctrine could be agreed upon. In Christianity. What I've
later come to find out is there are huge organizations
that all agree on fundamental core doctrines. The National Council
of Churches in the United States makes up thirty eight denominations.
(04:03):
They have one hundred thousand local congregations and four hundred
million members. They do not allow the Mormon Church into
their council. The Christian Churches together, another group has fifty
denominations ninety eight million Christians, and their goal is to
(04:27):
broaden and expand the fellowship, unity, and witness among the
diverse expressions of Christian traditions in the United States. Again,
another organization that refuses to let Mormons in the World
Council of Churches three hundred and fifty two denominations, even
(04:47):
more broad and over half sorry half a billion with
a be Christians worldwide, and the Global Christian Forum, which
is a unique gathering of Global Churches brings together all
major streams of world Christianity, to which the Mormon Church
(05:10):
is also not included. So I want to ask this
question to my panelists. Is it just that Christianity is
full of a bunch of mean jerks that do not
want to let that have a secret little club. I
(05:31):
feel like I'm starting to sound like Jacob Hansen, just
a little bit in the back of my mouth, has
a little club that wants to exclude the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints from Christianity.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
So I would answer that that's not the case, I
mean or not that there's so many denominations and just
by this graphics that you put up that we are
that Christians are not trying to exclude them just because
we're meanis uh. And that's one of the biggest things
that we were taught as lbs people, because we were
(06:12):
basically say taught like the word creed was given to
us as a child, and it was a it was
a negative connotation. And so when we learn of creeds
and we hear, oh, you believe in this creed, and
these congregations and these denominations have go by the Westminster
Creed or the Creed nice and Creed. Uh. There was
this automatic kind of like, oh, that's abomination. I don't know,
(06:36):
what do you think, Damian?
Speaker 3 (06:38):
So are we a bunch of meanis and jerky? Yeah,
we're all sinners, but that's that's not why we exclude
them from, you know, our Christian circles. It's a it
to me. It's the same thing as asking, well, why
don't we let the Buddhists in, Why don't we accept
Jehovah's witnesses, why don't we accept Islam. It's a completely
(07:01):
different religion, and and Mormonism has been saying how much
up until you know, like from what I've experienced, up
until like the last ten or so years, they've been
very proudly different than other Christians. And then and then
all of a sudden, you know, they're changing their terms
(07:22):
and we aren't. And so now we're kind of now
we now we kind of see this victimhood mentality almost
actually that's been there for a while. But but yeah,
and I.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Want to I want to talk to this a little
bit because oh, this is gonna be maybe a hot
take for some not for me. I believe that Mormonism
is pretty parasitic. It needs Christianity. And that's a fact.
Like if you look at how preach My Gospel is written,
(07:56):
it is written to sow seeds of doubt to Christians
and turn them over. It is a parasitic gospel.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, that's their hand, o hands.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Christianity does not need Mormonism.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
These are not symbiotic relationships that exist between these two
schools of thought. They're actually one needs the other in
order to grow. Look at the growth in membership percentage
wise in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. It is lock
(08:37):
and step with Christianity. And so in order for Mormonism
to grow, they need Christianity. And I think that the
church is starting to realize that more and more as
they as they as they kind of explore, well, should
we muddy the water with Christianity and Mormonism? Should we?
(09:03):
Should we kind of make that uh something that well,
are they Christian? Aren't they Christian? I think that's kind
of a push for them. On a Lisa, I wanted
you to share what you sent over with this slide
here and just kind of share your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, thank you so much. This is an article that
I read and the reason the question is why do
what do some Christians say? Because this is not an
overarching agreement on with Christians, and so the ecmenical councils
are not recognized by nontrinitarian churches such as a Church
of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Do you mind if I do you mind if I
interrupt on a Lisa?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
When you say ecamenical, if I'm even saying that word, right,
what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
So it's like a universal way of saying different churches,
different denominations. So for example, you have the Orthodox or
the Roman Catholic, they belong to an ecumenical council where
we are under the umbrella of this trinitarian God that
we we love and serve. And so that's a council
that's actually not really well known to Mormons because it's
not really taught to us that there's even such councils
(10:14):
that even exist, to be completely honest, So I would
say most LBS people would just be like, what's ecumenical?
It's a pretty well known train of thought in councils
since like hundreds of years, you know, like thousands of year,
a thousand years over a thousand years, and so these
councils came together and they there's several different ones throughout
the world. So like you explain some of the ones
(10:34):
that you went through your list, and so that's what
we're talking about. The one of those pastors here's focusing
on why they're not recognizing quatrinitarian churches. So, but thanks
for the question. So As says that here it says
ecumenical counselors are not recognized by nontrinitarian churches such as
the Church of Jesus Christ, the Latter day Saints Okay,
(10:55):
and other denominations with mute movement chris Is Christadelphians, Jehovah's Witnesses,
Church of God Seventh Day and their descendants Unitarians. They
view the ecamenical councils as a misguided human attempts to
establish doctrine as and as attempts to define dogmas rather
than debate, debate by the debate rather than revelation. So
(11:20):
this is the biggest thing is that when we hear dogma,
we usually have a negative connotation. But there's a lot
of dogma like doctrinal bas like the Catholic Church has
this dogmas and they have them in certain you know,
years and stuff like that. So it's a base of
the doctrine. And so since the most Christians do not
believe in ongoing well I would say Christians don't believe
in ongoing revelation. Uh, this is one of those very
(11:42):
big differences. And so this is a man, this is
a pastor who was trying to bring his other Christian
pastor front say hey, you know what, they're not our enemies. Uh,
they're not our combatants. We should make him partners. And
regarding this, he spoke to a specific LBS apologist and
his name is Robert Mellett. Here on his quote right here,
it says the right hand sidist says to move into
(12:03):
mainstream Christianity. And he's speaking as an LBS person regarding
this article. This but to move into Christian Christianity, of
Christian move into the mainstream of Christianity. But this is
not the case. We are who we are, and we
believe what we believe, and those things will not change.
What we ask those those not of our phases to
allow us self identify, identity, to identify. We have claimed
(12:26):
to be Christians, followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. But
the Christians, but Christians with a difference. We are not Catholics.
And then he went on to explain different denominations. So
this Robert Miller is LDS, and I would say he
holds a my minority view. At this point, this article
was written in twenty twenty two, so I would say
most Christian, most Mormons would say, no, we are just
(12:49):
like Christians. And so he's actually saying, no, let us
self identify as Christians. And there's a good there's a
good quote saying just because you're striving to be like
Jesus doesn't mean you're a christ Because I know there
are several people who I know who have christ like attributes, kindness, generosity,
but they don't believe in the one true Guy, which
is Jesus Christ. And so there's all these things that
(13:11):
can that differentiate, and there's an issue in that. So
why does that matter? Why there's it's just such a
wide range of variety. But we do want to focus
on that the Mormons are not allowed in that ecumenical councils,
just like those Seven day Venice Nutarians. There's a big difference, yeah,
and I.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Want to speak to it and make it. See Ana Lisa,
You're a lot smarter than I am. And I just
want to break it down for people who might be
listening to this and who might say, Okay, maybe I
still think that these councils will call them ecumenical. I
can barely say the word. Counsels are just big meanies.
(13:53):
And what I want to say to those people is
these councils, the way that they be God and the
way that Christians view themselves is completely different than the
way that the Mormon Church views God and the Mormon
Church views its people and their potential and exaltation. And
(14:19):
so when you really put it that way, that's why
there is this barrier. Is it is a doctrinal barrier.
And I wish that me personally, I wish that the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. I threw
it out there so I don't sound like a bigot.
I wish that they would just say, this is who
(14:42):
we are. We believe in this, and this is a
doctrine that you guys don't believe in. Therefore, we don't
want to call ourselves Christian. We have our own brand
and our own flavor of Christianity. Thank you you, But instead,
(15:05):
that is not what they are doing. And I am
a really okay so I'm I'm I'm a nerd. I
like to research things, and I wanted to kind of
get into this idea of the church is completely flushed
with money and hemorrhaging members. And when you have that,
(15:26):
you have a little problem, and you can throw money
at a lot of different things. And one of the
angles of attack for the church has been search engine
optimization SEO. Now, before you kind of roll your eyes
and say, what, oh my gosh, what is this? This
might be technical. What it means is when you go
(15:48):
into Google and you put in a term, there are
there are search options that come up very the very
first one or on the first page. So search engine
optimization is just putting something into Google and getting out
the most relevant topic. It is extremely expensive to have
(16:15):
great search engine optimization. It's no wonder that every time
you search the word Mormon on YouTube, an ad for
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints comes up.
This is a side note. Those ads, in turn fund
(16:38):
the Mormon Stories project, they fund Alyssa Grinfeld, and they
fund even this podcast. If we monetized, which I find
it very very funny that, but SEO is incredibly expensive,
and so they had the leader of SEO on the
(16:59):
Leadleading Saints podcast. Let's bring up this podcast here. Here,
we have a apartment at the Church of Jesus Christ.
So we have this and the church sent a guy,
Paul McCarty to the Leading Saints podcast to talk about
(17:20):
the church's efforts in search engine optimization or just being
findable on the Internet. Most of his thoughts are about
being found on Google, and so I thought it would
be I'm just gonna do a quick intro and then
we're gonna do reactions to this video as we go.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
You guys ready, I'm excited.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
All right, let's do this. Hey, and we held this
back so we could have some immediate reactions. So let's go.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
The communications apartment at the Church of Jesus Christ Celebrity
Saints was kind enough to send Paul McCarty my way
to talk about all things se O, chapels and even recently,
if you maybe noticed, the church chapels have shifted from
being an Angel Moroni icon.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
To just a cross icon.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
We talk about why that was and why that that's needed.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
All right, are are you guys familiar with this with
the church changing from the Angel Morone to the Cross.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Yes, yes, familiar with that. It'll be rich to hear,
I think.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I mean I kind of feel bad for Angel Morona.
I mean, you get facted.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
I mean, yeah, well yeah it's not.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
He's not anymore. I mean I feel like that was
the cool thing.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
So yep, he's he's gotten kicked to the curb.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
All right, So they invited this guy on to really
talk about what the church is doing and why they're
doing it, and I think that's that's kind of where
this first clip is going from. Can I call him
Brother McCarty from Brother McCarty, And so he talks about
(19:14):
what the intentions are, and I think it's interesting to
figure to just kind of have a dialogue on why
search engine optimization is so important in.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
Us when they look for us specifically, was kind of
up in the air, but also when they're not looking
for us specifically, when they're looking for faith or God
or Christianity or whatever, we would like to be in
the conversation and be a consideration for them.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
So he starts off this conversation by saying, we want
people to find us when they are looking for us.
I think that's great. I honestly do. I think, hey,
your brand should be able to be found sometypes Mormon
church near me, they're on vacation, they can find a church.
But he also said when they are not looking for us,
(20:07):
so who would not be looking for them? And they
might want them to look into.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Them, you know, because when I, you know, search for
if I'm out of town in my church for Christian
church near me, what I want to see is a
list of you know, Buddhist temples and you know most
and stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Well, yeah, and I wanted to set the stage in
this podcast about there is this group of Christians that
are united and that all I self identify as Christians
and that are part of a huge body of christ
And now you have this other church that is trying
(20:53):
to come in and say, hey, we're the same as you. Okay,
let's let's continue on.
Speaker 5 (21:00):
So we've approached this local search effort more with the
ladder in mind of.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
The ladder being we want to be found by people
who are not part of our church. I know he's
trying to chime it up and do some word Smith here.
Speaker 5 (21:16):
The exactly what you described. I just I want to
go to church on Sunday and tried to approach our
local search optimization to that broader audience so that we
show up with the other potentially many other options for church.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Okay, on a Lisa, what are your thoughts on that one?
Speaker 2 (21:39):
I mean, like, you know, seeing it from a point
of view of like, it sounds like a business. It
sounds like a very very business approach to Christianity. I
mean i'd laugh at the whatever at the end because
I never ever actually thought, you know, the Jesus at
the Cross is it whatever seem? I think that it shows.
(22:03):
It shows to the lack of honestly respect and understanding
of who Jesus is and the and the reality that
he gave his life at the Cross. It's not so
much like, you know, bring him in. You know, it's
like that I just saw this MLM kind of thing.
You write into your friend's name down how many friends
do you know? And then you know, bring those people in,
(22:23):
and then you work with them, and then they bring
more people in, and it's at this point it's just
too I don't know, I just I find it icky.
I find it business like.
Speaker 6 (22:32):
I find it completely apathetic of really reaching people with
the true masses of the gospel, which they couldn't actually
tell you what the gospel is because it changes all
the time, so I don't know.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
It's icky.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Okay, well, let's let's keep going here, because this is
your guys' first time watching it, so let's let's keep
going on this.
Speaker 5 (22:53):
So they're fifty one at the time.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Fifty. So what he's doing is he's talking about how
the Urch of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, the
Mormon Church, was the only, as he would view it,
Christian church that had its own special symbol. And what
he's taught, what he's going to start talking about is
(23:15):
actually really interesting that he wants to abandon his own
unique brand to do something different.
Speaker 5 (23:27):
Do you want Christian denomination categories? Fifty of them have
a cross, and one of them had a unique.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Logo some angel Moroni characters Moroni think Yeah.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
So as I saw this, I thought, well, okay, you know,
we are a peculiar people. We're different. We feel like
we have a unique message and a unique thing to
bring to the world. So maybe that's good. But the
other thought that came to me, and I felt that
This was a prompting personally.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
A prompting from where.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
Was not only do people not know what this is is,
but maybe there's an actual data effect of having this difference,
and so with and I want.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
To stop it here. Gosh, I feel like I'm turning
into John de Lynn and this is gonna take four hours, but.
Speaker 7 (24:17):
I want to stop it here because he's saying that
people don't understand what who Mormons are and what their
brand is.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
And I think that's really disingenuous, like to say that
people don't know who Mormons are and that is and
and they don't know what that symbol means, what the
angel Moroni is. I don't think that's true.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
I'm wonder if you can even answer what that symbol
actually means scripturally. I mean, it's it's one of those
most one of the more important symbols, and that's why
they have them in the old temples all all in
the old temples, you know, Captain maroone I with his horn.
And so I feel like, like I said, it's so
business like, it's so like even if like like just
(25:14):
own the Mormonism, own that Captain maroon I is calling
you to the temple like, you know, and so I
feel like that's at the same time using the cross.
But he said about I forget what he said, something
about similar about the symbol itself. Well, you have to
think about it from the first century Christians who literally
died by wearing that symbol, and so to be just
(25:35):
so dish flippant about a symbol, it just it gets
me a little upset, to be completely honest, because it's
so disingenuous to the actual real meeting of the cross.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Okay, well, buckle up.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Oh no, I wanted to. I wanted to throw this
thought in there real quick to thinking of it from
a business standpoint, the and he about to go into
the data or whatever. But from a business standpoint, this
sounds like a move that business that's really hurting would make,
(26:12):
you know, because Walmart's not out there trying to look
like Target, you know what I mean, or you know,
or Vice ever like yeah, it's it's you know, you don't,
I don't know. There's a if they were successful, and
they were and they were growing at the rate that
they say they're growing, and you know it, they they
definitely wouldn't be wanting to look different than or or
(26:34):
look I guess the same as everybody else, they'd want
to keep that uniqueness about them shining.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yeah, And I think it's like, I think it's important
for people to know that, Like, at least for me,
Christianity is kind of on fire. Like I'm just gonna
be straight up. I watched the church that I used
to go to go from a thousand people to three
thousand people in two years, like I watched full Revival happen,
(27:04):
like this happens.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
And in.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Growth. I don't want to get too Christianese on it
and talk about revival, but in that growth, you're not
changing your brand. A church that is struggling, a church
that is struggling with identity is gonna say our brand's
not working. Being called Mormon is not working, and we
(27:33):
want to hide behind the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter day Saints. That's important to us. This episode is
not about the rebrand. I have a separate episode that
I want to really hammer in on that. But okay,
let's let's keep going on this.
Speaker 5 (27:51):
One of the leadership we selected a small group of locations.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
So he said this, this is under the direction of
the leader ship of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter day Saints. So imagine the Q fifteen, you know,
first presidency in Eldish Korn kind of making these decisions.
Speaker 5 (28:10):
That we switched from the So the category that has
MORENAI is Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday and we
switched all of we switched about two hundred and fifty
buildings from that to Christian Church as the category.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Which, okay, so they go through and do this, let's
just go ahead and keep keep going through. I think
we're getting a result here.
Speaker 5 (28:31):
Change those to the cross again. That's not why. The
cross is not why we picked it. It's just Christian Church. Yeah,
category the cross.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
The cross is not why.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Oh my gosh, guys like that.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
That's man that's telling me that it's self.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
The Cross of Jesus not it.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Oh my gosh. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
That is hard, Paul. I believe that was a Freudian slip,
but I don't think so much goodness like, and I
think it's important for people who maybe are not Christian
to like talk about this or a Christian the cross
is everything, yes, like it is everything. It's not like, hey,
(29:24):
we can leverage the cross in this way that helps us.
It's literally everything.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
It like hurts my heart to even hear it, Like
it just hurts me, like physically, Like it just hurts
my heart to hear someone talk so flippantly about our
Lord and Savior and what he did at the Cross
for us. I mean, anyways, I'm not gonna say anymore.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
One of my favorite songs is at the Cross. At
the Cross, I surrender my life, am I give all
all to you? Right? That is that is the view
of Christianity. Not well if we click this button over here,
(30:10):
it helps us.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yeah, I mean that's that's the case. You just look
at you know, instead of you know, the Islam and
they have their little symbol to show the Islam you
know temple. I mean, they could just appropriate you know,
Angel Morona, because you know that's more popular in the
States than it is. And it's like, i mean, well
for Native people, they would be more apt to going
(30:34):
to and that. And then you show up and like, hey,
this is a Muslim temple. I've been I've been gypped here.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Yeah yeah, and it's yeah, He's basically saying like it's
it's not about the cross, it's about we want to
look like the cross though like, that's very like, that's
very telling. It's uh, we don't want to actually be
the Cross. We want to like it though, so that
(31:01):
people can, you know, stumble upon us on accident.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah, let's continue on here.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
And what we found was about a twenty five percent
increase in visibility to those locations after about three months.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
He seems pretty happy about a twenty five percent increase.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Okay, you know, Christianity happens to be more popular, weird.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah, all he had to do was leverage the Cross
of Jesus.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Yeah. Imagine, it's so horrible.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
It's so horrible.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
That's all he had to do. People. Okay, wow.
Speaker 5 (31:39):
For generalized Christian search terms. So from that, my analysis
was that we are not we are being hindered being
visible in that category for whatever reason.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Because whatever reason, my good.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
I mean, I'm glad you're like letting us watch this
as it comes along, because this is just like real,
like this.
Speaker 7 (32:05):
Is like.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
The lack of understanding, like looking in the mirror and
you're like or whatever reason.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Oh my gosh, what.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
You are openly rejected by all of Christianity and you
are excited about a twenty five percent bump in activity
on because you were able to be deceptive, okay.
Speaker 5 (32:39):
Of that, and because we now have through this effort
that we're doing all of our buildings instead of Magna
fifth ward or you know, Phoenix fourth ward or whatever
the pins now say the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter day Saints and often in language wherever it may be.
We felt okay, saying, okay, well we don't need the
category to say that again, so we can have the
name of the church, select this other category that increases
(33:02):
our visibility and move forward. And so with that we
we went back to leadership and said, hey, we feel
like this is a good opportunity for us to increase
the exposure and find ability of our chapels. And we
were approved to change all buildings to that, which we
did about a year and a half ago.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
All Right, so upper Leadership is okay with this deceptive practice.
Thanks for letting us know, Paul, we.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Know, weird.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Words.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
I just think, okay, let's continue on in some one
And I think this is they get into a lot
of appropriation, which I am really bothered by. And I
think that's kind of where that the rest of this
video is going.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Like, uh, we're gonna start seeing crosses on our buildings
or anything. It's just that's a data point of life.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
I mean, let's make it to we are a Christian faith.
All other Christian faith.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Well, no, that is a that's something else. But he
just said, like I just want to make sure we're
not going to have the cross actually on the physical premise,
but we will take it to get search search engine
optimization to gain more people to come to our church.
But we're not gonna put it. We're not We're not
gonna be We're gonna be embarrassed of the cross because
(34:23):
we're not gonna put that inappropriate it. But you know,
I mean, wow.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Yeah, we will leverage it, but we will not have
it be you know. And in a way I go
to kind of some fondness that I used to have
of this where you know, they talk like like the
Gordon B. Hinkley when he was on Larry King, they said,
well why don't you wear the cross? And he and
(34:52):
they actually had a really good response. It was our
people are a symbol of our faith. And I'm like, oh,
that's a pretty good you know, I know, he's hot
on the spot. That's kind of Gordon B. Hinkley, right,
and pretty good in media type stuff. This is like different.
This is like we are trying to hijack someone's brand.
We're trying to hijack Christianity, not be be comfortable with
(35:17):
who we are. Let's continue on in the vision is.
Speaker 5 (35:20):
A more of a broader thing. So we're generally trying
to use more common terminology congregation, worship service, not Melchzidic
priest or relief society or whatever, just so people can relate.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
What I can, I can try to replay this clip.
So what he said is we want to try to
use language that people can relate to, like worship service, congregation.
We don't want to use the terms Melkezedic priesthood or
(35:56):
relief society. We just want people to be a to relate. Okay,
I don't know how many times I've gone to the
Mormon Church in my thirty three years and referred to
it as a worship service. Never.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
I never, never.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
As well, Yeah, congregation, I mean that's just kind of
a general term. But not a fan of that, not
a fan of them hiding. Also, I mean, if you're
if you believe that you hold the Melkezdic priestthood and
you have all the keys of administering that priesthood, and
you're saying, well, we're ashamed of that because it won't
(36:39):
result in this twenty five percent bump in activity through Google.
I think that's a I think that's really sad.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
And you know, it's so it's so opposite of what
actual Christian enity is because I'm proud to be a Christian,
and those are things I'm proud to talk about, you
know what I mean, Like, I'm obviously there's some cultural
things that I'm not always proud of, but when like
I don't know, I'm I'm a son of God. I'm
(37:11):
proud of that. I'm trying to think of terms that
like I love the Trinity, you know, like these are
terms that I'm not gonna like try to hide from
like other faiths, I guess or you know, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
It's just it's just.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Strange to me, like why are you why are you
trying to Why is it necessary to hide those like
hide who you are?
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Well, it goes along with the same playbook of Mormonism.
I mean, you don't go to your friend who's like
like a non Mormon at ten years old and to
be like, Oh, by the way, we believe that Adam
and the Garden Invadian is Adam on diamond. Oh and
Heavenly Father has multiple wives or Heavenly Father. We're literally
like the offspring of Heavenly Father. We don't usually like
(37:58):
show that weirdness when as a Mormon. So this goes
along with their their their hiding of the their weirdness.
I don't I want to say weirdness in the most
nicest way, but unique, all right, we uniqueness and it's
and it's and it's an umbrella wanted to be Christian,
but it's not. It's just completely it's it's more having
to do with like Hinduism than Christianity.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
So yeah, all right, let's continue on here.
Speaker 5 (38:25):
The friends of the church are people who are trying
to find their new faith. Give them an experience already
familiar with. You know, we're again peculiar people. We we
function differently. We're not we're we don't we don't build
a chapel and then go gather a flock. We we
gather a flock and then build a chapel. Right, So.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I hate it when people try to act a lot
smarter than they are.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
I'm just yeah, that that was that was that was
That was that moment. That was that moment. I agree
with you. One thing he did say. One thing he
did say, A new faith, a new faith. If they're
Christian and they're Christian based, why would it be new.
It was Christian, but it's not new, and he knows
(39:09):
it's not. It's not the same thing.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Christians don't visit another Christians. Yeah, Christians don't visit another
Christian church and go, oh, this is a new faith. Yeah, no,
they that's not how that works.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
And I actually really I wasn't planning on talking about this,
but I'm just going to be open. I've been to
Baptist Church, I've been to Calvary Chapel. I personally am
a pretty charismatic Assemblies of God person I've been to
right now, I'm a part of a small only in
Hawaii type denomination. All of them are recognized as the
(39:49):
Body of Christ. Right Like, No one would be like, hey,
you used to be a g so now you're now
you're actually starting a new faith journey at the Baptist
church down the road. No one would equate that to
be the same. They will say, hey, these are all
different versions of religious expression. Yeah, but they're all the
(40:14):
same because they have the same God, and we as
Christians have the same relationship to God. And so to
say that I think, and I think as a way
to kind of get out of this, he uses this
little word smithy deal where he says, and I'm going
(40:34):
to try to quote it word for word, he says,
we gather a flock and then build a building, not
build a building and then gather a flock. That is
so not true for Christianity. It's just not true. People
fearlessly go and try to build congregations and meet in
(40:58):
their houses and rent buildings and do all these crazy
things based on faith. They do not have two hundred
and fifty billion dollars to back them up.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
They just feel called by God and they do it.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Not not only that, but this would be something that
I'm I would not say I'm an expert on, but
I actually have been told a few times by people
that that's exactly what they think they're doing with small temples,
like building them where there is no flock.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
You know, well, yeah, either they're totally flushed with cash,
and what do you do? Uh oh, I'm going to
quote Deeter f. Updorf on this one when he talked
about the Petunkum village where he talked about going down
a river and they would set up towns along the
river to look like it was being profitable, but there
(41:59):
was nothing behind them. They were all shanty towns. And
then they would they would go a little further down
the river and set it up, and it was to
create this illusion of growth. He gave that in a
general conference talk. And so I want to fix this quote. Okay,
I'm going to do this for Paul. Paul, I will
(42:20):
fix your quote for you, and.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
It is generous as generous.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yeah, the Mormon Church will build a flock, will lose
a flock, and then sell the building.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
I know you're going away.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
I know that I shouldn't. But for those of you
who know, they're selling a lot of real estate, right, yeah,
so where you know their explosive growth should be coming from.
They are selling a lot of buildings.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
And buying a arm a complexes.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
So you know, yeah, well they gotta they gotta put
it somewhere. Yeah, So let's go ahead and finish off
with our boy brother McCarty and uh and finish this off.
Speaker 5 (43:15):
So we we kind of approach it a little bit different,
utilizing common principles of the way maybe a business might
be wrong when we don't typically operate that way.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Interesting, that was very disingenuous of him. That was the
completely line. I'm surprised he said it with such a
straight face to be completely honest.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Like when you didn't have to he.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Didn't have to even say that, you didn't have to
make you didn't have to make a comparison. But because
you know what, because of it, he knows it's dishonest.
It eats at him. He knows the dishonesty. He had
to say it because you know, you just it's like
if you're even lie, how the closest thing did not
do it? Say the lie?
Speaker 1 (44:01):
You know, that's like motherly guilt coming out of Hona
Lisa right now?
Speaker 2 (44:07):
True?
Speaker 6 (44:10):
So many you got me, you got.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
I just think it's like, we don't run this like
a business, Like we don't pay anyone and ask the
members to clean the building, and you know, still charge
ten percent and have all these assets and holdings. This
is not a business people, Okay.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yeah, And you're right off the time that you spent
at the temple at the chapel cleaning it to have
tax write offs. You know, it's just it's just sad.
It's like it's like I would say, it's like the
closest thing, like if I saved my house, Like you know,
they said, your house is your temple, right, the temple,
your your buys your temple. Your house is a temple.
Well you look at it that way, like me saying, oh, yeah,
(44:55):
so I run my house, but it's not like I
run my business. A completely makes zero sense. Why would
I even put them together? Right?
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, I'm just I'm just very bothered by this Christian
appropriation that's happening in this video where he's saying, you know,
it helps us, so we're gonna do it from a
business perspective. It helps us, and so we are going
to go into chameleon mode. Not that across is important,
(45:30):
but because it helps us. I give that one.
Speaker 7 (45:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Not cool, dude, that is not cool.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
It's like it's like it's like and like liater or
you're like you're like debating whether he's gonna take it,
and you're like death, yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Yeah, and yeah, I just it just bothers me. I
just think it's when I think about what it means
to take the Lord's name in vain.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Yeah, this is.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
This is really really walking a very fine line. And
it's not my job to associate judgment. I mean, I'm
I'm I'm pretty soft guy on those types of things.
But that's just not cool. I mean, that's that's really
not the way it goes. So I brought on Damien
and Damien had something because Damon is a is a
(46:28):
crusader for Jesus, Damien, I'm gonna give you the floor
to talk about something that you saw and you took
action on.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Okay, well I didn't. I didn't think of it as
that big of an action, but once I shared it
in one of our mutual Facebook group, a lot of
people that were like, dude, great job. I got like
all these like a lot of uh, I guess notice
for that, and I'll like, I didn't. But I forget
(47:00):
sometimes that there's a lot of Mormons and x Morns
out there that are just a lot a lot more
shy than I am, I guess, you know, or and
there's and there's some of us that are a lot
more loud mouthed about it. Including US three, but all
it was with this simple Adam. I wish I could
(47:22):
play it for you guys, but it was just the
simple ad that's like it didn't say Mormon. I didn't
say the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Sands
and say LDS, like had no no indications of the
organization or the name of the church or anything like that.
(47:43):
And it was like it was like but it was
still very mormony mormon esque moremonies and in the way
it was worded, I think it even like had advertisements
for like are you a young single adult between the
ages of eighteen and thirty or whatever it was it was,
And I'm like, young single adult? Why say eighteen? Okay,
(48:06):
I've been there before. It's where I found my wife.
I don't know what else it was on there, oh,
if it's the one I'm thinking of. Still, there was
also like a it is gonna sound kind of harsh,
but there's also just like kind of a level of
naivety about how the how the young ladies are speaking.
(48:27):
I can't remember it was the video one that I
commented on or like just a like an advertagment page,
but anyway, and I was like this seems too fake basically,
and so I just I was like, ay, but this
is a Mormon thing, And so I looked. I looked
(48:50):
at the comments and there was one person, Oh, yeah,
there we go. Yeah is that it?
Speaker 1 (48:55):
That's it?
Speaker 3 (48:56):
Weekly social activities with games and food, group scripture studies.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Yeah. So I was able to find this. I just
went on to X Mormon Christians. If you are not
a part of X Mormon Christians, go ahead and get
on that channel. It's run by well and Damien is
one of the admins on there. Yeah, but this is
really what he posted. I'm giving him some time to
(49:25):
kind of look over his his posting and do that.
But if you are not on X Mormon Christians, go
ahead and and and get on there and and it's
really a good group of believers. Sorry for the interjection, Damien.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
No problem. As an admin, I do feel obligated to say,
you do need to be an ex Mormon Christian. So
you do need X Mormon any do you need to
be You need to be a professing Christian. There are
other groups, so I for you know, if you don't
fit into those categories that go over the very similar things.
And i'd be happy to talk to anybody about the
like what group options are are on social media.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
But yeah, from that somewhere, if Fred Anson is so
happy that you are given some plugs.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
That's so true.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
Yeah, that's so truth. Love you, Fred.
Speaker 8 (50:13):
But I think it was I don't know, like even
right now, it kind of kind of like, why did
you have to why did you have to clarify that
you are a Christian church?
Speaker 3 (50:33):
I don't think. I don't think most Christian churches would say, like,
we are a Christian church. I think that would just say, hey,
come visit our church. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong
in that, but.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
It actually says it multiple times on here, so it
says it says Christian church up here, and then it
says followers of Jesus Christ in North Texas. Fred Anson
actually did a bit on this, and I'm gonna include
it in the notes below through his Beggar's Bread. He
(51:05):
did how the church I saw this, Followers of Jesus
Christ in North Texas. They have that the church has
created these groups like all over all over. Yeah, and
and Fred did a great write up on it. And
if you're if you're interested in this, and also if
you're interested in Fred. He did an interview with me
(51:26):
on Jesus for Mormons, if you're interested to find out
more about him. But it says Christian multiple times on here.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
M hmm.
Speaker 3 (51:33):
Okay, and I maybe maybe I heard of this group
or something too, because it was not like a like
a very long thought procester for me, Like it was
like three or two or three things that indicated I'm like, okay,
this has got to be Mormons. So I went and
checked out the comments, and someone asked, what what denomination
(51:58):
of this? And and they are, oh, no, no, I
think they said, is this is this the Mormons or
something like that, and then they and then the group
the followers of the Church of North Pecas, but like responded,
it's the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints,
(52:20):
like clarifying it's not we don't like, we don't like
to be called Mormons. They didn't say that, but it's
the Church of Jesus Christ of latterday Saints. And then
I may and then that's when I, I don't know,
just naturally went in there and made made my comment.
And now I don't know. Now I kind of look
at it as kind of humorous. I don't know, I
don't maybe maybe I shouldn't look at it, maybe because
(52:41):
it seems like a big freaking joke to me. But yeah,
basically went in there and and like I said, a
few different things, like one was just if you're just
so you know, this is this is a very misleading ad.
This is not a Christian church. It's a it's the
(53:03):
Mormon Church. And then it was and they and they,
oh the way go. Thank you for anyone reading this
ad that wants more legitimate info. Here it is one,
this is the ld S a k. A Mormon church.
They left that out to be misleading. Two Mormons are
(53:23):
not Christians. And three, if you'd like to attend a
real Christian church in your area, feel free to message
me and I can help you find a biblically solid church.
So that's great, that's great, baby, Thank you. And there
as far as I know, it's it's still up there.
I don't. I don't think they like tagged me in
(53:44):
any responses or anything.
Speaker 2 (53:46):
So yeah, I feel like that says are here like this,
fill out the forum, we will contact you sign up.
I think that will be the most like like if
you were to get any signing up for anything in
the world, this would be the one you'd progress know.
They will never lose your contact in forming guys, so
you won't be found. You give you a Timbuktu in Antarctica,
(54:08):
they will find you. You know. I should have be like,
beware when you fill out the forum.
Speaker 3 (54:14):
Okidding, that should have been my point number four.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
Right, So I think that that's good, and Damian, I
appreciate your I don't even know if I would call
I guess it is evangelism.
Speaker 3 (54:28):
Right going on online?
Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yeah, yeah, I'm just saying, hey, and I you know,
I think there's something that is built into growing up
in the church and being deceptive and having and saying, well,
I'm not really being deceptive because I am helping push
(54:52):
the church forward. Yeah, therefore it's not really that bad.
Like let's not develop a true and you in relationship
with somebody so that we can give them. Let's let's
do it just so that we can give them a
Book of Mormon or just so that we can invite
them to ture. Right, it's icky, right, Like it's I
(55:14):
just I don't like lead with what you with with
what you believe in. Don't leverage relationships, don't leverage the Cross,
don't conveniently leverage parts of the Bible that don't really
say what you're trying to have it say. But you
can kind of cherry pick and create context around it,
(55:36):
but not pull the true context. And so there's this
there's this idea of Christian appropriation that I think is
really I just think is really sad. Like, go with
your own brand. You believe you have a profit, Let
that profit's track record speak for itself.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
I think that you're speaking something to like that if
they go with their own brand, at some point in time,
they'll have well it's spoken about in Philippians, right, they'll
have to be everything will about every town cup as.
So at some point in time they'll have to come
to the realization that their whole belief system is based
on a lie and it is not based on the
(56:17):
foundation of Jesus Christ. And I mean I think that
that I think they're trying to to avoid all of
that because there are so many people leaving. I mean,
like I just hadn't I just had someone to text
me sixty seven years old left the church, you know,
I mean, people are leaving guys because they know it's
(56:38):
not true. It's not built on any foundation other than
in business. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (56:43):
Yeah, and this is the business move. It's just that's what.
That's it.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yeah, And I think that and I just find it.
I just find it so deceptive and so and just
and just not okay. I mean it used to be
that they had this very unique position, and now they've said, well,
well that unique position kind of the jigs up, right,
And we we've kind of not been able to do that,
(57:11):
you know, not been able to push the church forward
with how we presented it. And so we have to
do something else. And Christianity is who we are going
to create this parasitic relationship with, and we're going to
try to take from that because that's a brand that
(57:32):
people know and and in Christianity, some people have a
bad taste in their mouth of Christianity, but it's a
lot better than a Mormon church, especially especially now. So
I wanted to ask you guys a kind of a
(57:53):
funny question. And we didn't talk about this before, but
you know, it's an interview. Did it make either one
of you uncomfortable going from Mormonism to like mainstream Christianity?
How much Jesus is mentioned in the service, I.
Speaker 3 (58:18):
Go, yeah, maybe maybe. I mean when when I decided
that Jesus was my savior and that I'm following him,
I was immediately on board. But when I was when
I was still Mormon, towards the end of my Mormon days,
I was more agnostic, kind of searching, but still called
(58:40):
myself Mormon. And at that point, yes, like when I
was visiting Christian churches with friends, and even when even
when my friends would come, my Christian friends would come
and read the Bible with me, and like, man, maybe
like it's kind of disrespectful of how often Jesus has
is being brought up, you know, like instead of savior,
(59:05):
and then even with even the name even God, you know,
and at the time completely separating Jesus. Jesus is the Savior,
but God is heavenly Father, and Jesus might be a
little God anyway. So the term God, I think bothered
me a little bit. And the yeah, the name Jesus, Yeah,
(59:29):
it was like not like to the point where it
was like, oh, I need to get out of here,
but it was like, oh, this is kind of a
I don't know, almost like made me flinch a little bit.
On the inside when I heard them being used so
non nonchalantly. Almost Yeah.
Speaker 2 (59:49):
I think for myself, I was there a little bit
of the time, like especially in the first couple of
months of leaving Mormonism to go into a Christian church.
I would say, though over arching, after I accepted Jesus
Christ and when I was in my Christian walk, I
didn't realize how much I needed to hear about Jesus.
I was like, it was something I was yearning for.
(01:00:11):
And that's why he's the living water, He's the true vine,
because I mean I didn't realize what I was. I mean,
I thought I knew him, and I had said that.
I said that several times to family members. I thought
I was Christian. I thought I was a follower of Jesus,
and when I truly understood him in my relationship with
(01:00:31):
my Lord and Savior, it was just you know, Yeah,
this is a perfect example. This is an amazing book
that we'll do a review on with Miss Brandy Bronson,
and she points this out that this is one of
the biggest issues in the LDS church is the lack
of Jesus Christ, and so this is this is a
talk from one of the more famous by U speakers.
(01:00:52):
She said, Jesseph Smith's lecturer. Maybe you guys want I
listened to her her talk, what is so amazing about Grace?
And if you do have a if you have a
chance to get a notepen and a paper, you might
draw a hamster wheel instead of like the notes. Actually,
because it's like they keep on going around in this
actual circle about what this actual what grace is. So
(01:01:14):
that's that's her talk. But this, this quote comes from that.
It says the entire three hour church meeting outside the
center prayer. Sure, we hear a whole lot about our
current or past lbs prophets and apostles, but learning of
Jesus was a hit or miss. Interestingly enough, a b
YU professor named Camillos and Spoke spoke to this very
point during a BYU devotional, claiming that the majority of
(01:01:36):
her students felt similarly about Jesus taking a back seat
or maybe even the even the nosebleeds to other teachings
and figures in the Mormon faith. And you just think
about teachings of the prophets and think of all these things,
when did we really yes, he was like a backseat
to the story of the prophets that we're going through
these things. You know, I can think of like Harold
b Lee and all the things he went through, you know,
(01:01:58):
losing a child and stuff like that. But it was
like he was a subcategory of how he overcame and
how it was like a reciprocal relationship instead of our
Lord Jesus bless him through these all these horrible things. Right, So,
as a Mormon leaving LBS, it is different. It is
(01:02:20):
uncomfortable at times. But what is not uncomfortable when I
think about anything once you accept Jesus Christ, is you
cannot get enough of the true living water of Jesus
like that that I think will be uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
So yeah, amen, Yeah, and I think it's I think
that's a really good way to end this is for
me and for Christians all over the world. Jesus is
not a convenient tool. Jesus is not something that you
(01:02:55):
hijack and that you leverage for a twenty five percent
bump in activity. Jesus is who you give it all to,
every bit of yourself you lay it down at the
cross of Jesus. If you really want to find out
(01:03:16):
more about what that means to give your life to Jesus,
especially if you're coming out of an ex Mormon background.
Please reach out to us at Jesus for Mormons and
we would sorry, that's Jesus for Mormons at gmail dot com.
Reach out to us. We would love to take you
through that path of what that means to find salvation
(01:03:40):
in Jesus. I really appreciate Damien and an A Lisa
coming on and being the evangelists that they are and
love you guys, and we'll see you next time. Yeah,
thank you,
Does it seem like the last few years the Mormon
Church has hijacked Christianity. You start to hear terms like
worship service, congregation, and changing the angel Moroni to the cross.
Welcome everyone to Jesus for Mormons. I am your host,
(00:24):
Kai Van Luvin, and I am joined by two fellow
co hosts, Damian Tracy and an Alisa. Hi, guys, hey,
all right, we are going to have a really good
episode today and the title of this episode is Hijacking Jesus.
(00:47):
How the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints
hijack's Jesus and some of the tools that they use
in order to do that. I think it's really important
to look at Christianity through the lens of a Mormon.
And we have three ex Mormons here, and I think
(01:09):
it's interesting that the view of Christianity through the Mormon
Church is that Christianity is not united at all, that
Christianity that there's a lot of infighting and that there
isn't a lot of unity. To use the words of
Joseph Smith Junior when he was in the Sacred Grove
(01:33):
and he had the first vision. So this is through
Joseph Smith's history. Hey, for those of you look at this,
I have my God told him in Joseph Smith's History
one nineteen that Joseph was answered that he must join
none of them, meaning none of the Christian churches, for
(01:55):
they were all wrong. And the personage who he later
would say is heavenly Father in Jesus Christ also addressed
me and said that their creeds were an abomination, that
Christianity was an abomination in his sight, and that those
professors were all corrupt. That they draw near to me
(02:17):
with their lips, but their hearts are far from me,
for they teach for the doctrines and commandments of men,
having a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof.
So we have this Joseph Smith's view of Christianity. Right,
there is infighting, that there is tension, and we have
(02:38):
God's view, according to Joseph Smith, of Christianity, that it
is an abomination. But yet so that is the eighteen
twenty Mormon God, and in twenty twenty five, the Mormon
(03:00):
God now wants to be as close to Christianity as
it can possibly be. Opening Yet, so let's talk about
the unity that is within Christianity, the unity that's that's
(03:21):
there in Christianity is actually not as disconnected as you
would think. The narrative from the Mormon Church and from
from really what I remember as a missionary in Saint Louis, Missouri,
was that no one could agree on anything, no points
(03:41):
of doctrine could be agreed upon. In Christianity. What I've
later come to find out is there are huge organizations
that all agree on fundamental core doctrines. The National Council
of Churches in the United States makes up thirty eight denominations.
(04:03):
They have one hundred thousand local congregations and four hundred
million members. They do not allow the Mormon Church into
their council. The Christian Churches together, another group has fifty
denominations ninety eight million Christians, and their goal is to
(04:27):
broaden and expand the fellowship, unity, and witness among the
diverse expressions of Christian traditions in the United States. Again,
another organization that refuses to let Mormons in the World
Council of Churches three hundred and fifty two denominations, even
(04:47):
more broad and over half sorry half a billion with
a be Christians worldwide, and the Global Christian Forum, which
is a unique gathering of Global Churches brings together all
major streams of world Christianity, to which the Mormon Church
(05:10):
is also not included. So I want to ask this
question to my panelists. Is it just that Christianity is
full of a bunch of mean jerks that do not
want to let that have a secret little club. I
(05:31):
feel like I'm starting to sound like Jacob Hansen, just
a little bit in the back of my mouth, has
a little club that wants to exclude the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints from Christianity.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
So I would answer that that's not the case, I
mean or not that there's so many denominations and just
by this graphics that you put up that we are
that Christians are not trying to exclude them just because
we're meanis uh. And that's one of the biggest things
that we were taught as lbs people, because we were
(06:12):
basically say taught like the word creed was given to
us as a child, and it was a it was
a negative connotation. And so when we learn of creeds
and we hear, oh, you believe in this creed, and
these congregations and these denominations have go by the Westminster
Creed or the Creed nice and Creed. Uh. There was
this automatic kind of like, oh, that's abomination. I don't know,
(06:36):
what do you think, Damian?
Speaker 3 (06:38):
So are we a bunch of meanis and jerky? Yeah,
we're all sinners, but that's that's not why we exclude
them from, you know, our Christian circles. It's a it
to me. It's the same thing as asking, well, why
don't we let the Buddhists in, Why don't we accept
Jehovah's witnesses, why don't we accept Islam. It's a completely
(07:01):
different religion, and and Mormonism has been saying how much
up until you know, like from what I've experienced, up
until like the last ten or so years, they've been
very proudly different than other Christians. And then and then
all of a sudden, you know, they're changing their terms
(07:22):
and we aren't. And so now we're kind of now
we now we kind of see this victimhood mentality almost
actually that's been there for a while. But but yeah,
and I.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Want to I want to talk to this a little
bit because oh, this is gonna be maybe a hot
take for some not for me. I believe that Mormonism
is pretty parasitic. It needs Christianity. And that's a fact.
Like if you look at how preach My Gospel is written,
(07:56):
it is written to sow seeds of doubt to Christians
and turn them over. It is a parasitic gospel.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, that's their hand, o hands.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Christianity does not need Mormonism.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
These are not symbiotic relationships that exist between these two
schools of thought. They're actually one needs the other in
order to grow. Look at the growth in membership percentage
wise in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. It is lock
(08:37):
and step with Christianity. And so in order for Mormonism
to grow, they need Christianity. And I think that the
church is starting to realize that more and more as
they as they as they kind of explore, well, should
we muddy the water with Christianity and Mormonism? Should we?
(09:03):
Should we kind of make that uh something that well,
are they Christian? Aren't they Christian? I think that's kind
of a push for them. On a Lisa, I wanted
you to share what you sent over with this slide
here and just kind of share your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, thank you so much. This is an article that
I read and the reason the question is why do
what do some Christians say? Because this is not an
overarching agreement on with Christians, and so the ecmenical councils
are not recognized by nontrinitarian churches such as a Church
of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Do you mind if I do you mind if I
interrupt on a Lisa?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
When you say ecamenical, if I'm even saying that word, right,
what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
So it's like a universal way of saying different churches,
different denominations. So for example, you have the Orthodox or
the Roman Catholic, they belong to an ecumenical council where
we are under the umbrella of this trinitarian God that
we we love and serve. And so that's a council
that's actually not really well known to Mormons because it's
not really taught to us that there's even such councils
(10:14):
that even exist, to be completely honest, So I would
say most LBS people would just be like, what's ecumenical?
It's a pretty well known train of thought in councils
since like hundreds of years, you know, like thousands of year,
a thousand years over a thousand years, and so these
councils came together and they there's several different ones throughout
the world. So like you explain some of the ones
(10:34):
that you went through your list, and so that's what
we're talking about. The one of those pastors here's focusing
on why they're not recognizing quatrinitarian churches. So, but thanks
for the question. So As says that here it says
ecumenical counselors are not recognized by nontrinitarian churches such as
the Church of Jesus Christ, the Latter day Saints Okay,
(10:55):
and other denominations with mute movement chris Is Christadelphians, Jehovah's Witnesses,
Church of God Seventh Day and their descendants Unitarians. They
view the ecamenical councils as a misguided human attempts to
establish doctrine as and as attempts to define dogmas rather
than debate, debate by the debate rather than revelation. So
(11:20):
this is the biggest thing is that when we hear dogma,
we usually have a negative connotation. But there's a lot
of dogma like doctrinal bas like the Catholic Church has
this dogmas and they have them in certain you know,
years and stuff like that. So it's a base of
the doctrine. And so since the most Christians do not
believe in ongoing well I would say Christians don't believe
in ongoing revelation. Uh, this is one of those very
(11:42):
big differences. And so this is a man, this is
a pastor who was trying to bring his other Christian
pastor front say hey, you know what, they're not our enemies. Uh,
they're not our combatants. We should make him partners. And
regarding this, he spoke to a specific LBS apologist and
his name is Robert Mellett. Here on his quote right here,
it says the right hand sidist says to move into
(12:03):
mainstream Christianity. And he's speaking as an LBS person regarding
this article. This but to move into Christian Christianity, of
Christian move into the mainstream of Christianity. But this is
not the case. We are who we are, and we
believe what we believe, and those things will not change.
What we ask those those not of our phases to
allow us self identify, identity, to identify. We have claimed
(12:26):
to be Christians, followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. But
the Christians, but Christians with a difference. We are not Catholics.
And then he went on to explain different denominations. So
this Robert Miller is LDS, and I would say he
holds a my minority view. At this point, this article
was written in twenty twenty two, so I would say
most Christian, most Mormons would say, no, we are just
(12:49):
like Christians. And so he's actually saying, no, let us
self identify as Christians. And there's a good there's a
good quote saying just because you're striving to be like
Jesus doesn't mean you're a christ Because I know there
are several people who I know who have christ like attributes, kindness, generosity,
but they don't believe in the one true Guy, which
is Jesus Christ. And so there's all these things that
(13:11):
can that differentiate, and there's an issue in that. So
why does that matter? Why there's it's just such a
wide range of variety. But we do want to focus
on that the Mormons are not allowed in that ecumenical councils,
just like those Seven day Venice Nutarians. There's a big difference, yeah,
and I.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Want to speak to it and make it. See Ana Lisa,
You're a lot smarter than I am. And I just
want to break it down for people who might be
listening to this and who might say, Okay, maybe I
still think that these councils will call them ecumenical. I
can barely say the word. Counsels are just big meanies.
(13:53):
And what I want to say to those people is
these councils, the way that they be God and the
way that Christians view themselves is completely different than the
way that the Mormon Church views God and the Mormon
Church views its people and their potential and exaltation. And
(14:19):
so when you really put it that way, that's why
there is this barrier. Is it is a doctrinal barrier.
And I wish that me personally, I wish that the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. I threw
it out there so I don't sound like a bigot.
I wish that they would just say, this is who
(14:42):
we are. We believe in this, and this is a
doctrine that you guys don't believe in. Therefore, we don't
want to call ourselves Christian. We have our own brand
and our own flavor of Christianity. Thank you you, But instead,
(15:05):
that is not what they are doing. And I am
a really okay so I'm I'm I'm a nerd. I
like to research things, and I wanted to kind of
get into this idea of the church is completely flushed
with money and hemorrhaging members. And when you have that,
(15:26):
you have a little problem, and you can throw money
at a lot of different things. And one of the
angles of attack for the church has been search engine
optimization SEO. Now, before you kind of roll your eyes
and say, what, oh my gosh, what is this? This
might be technical. What it means is when you go
(15:48):
into Google and you put in a term, there are
there are search options that come up very the very
first one or on the first page. So search engine
optimization is just putting something into Google and getting out
the most relevant topic. It is extremely expensive to have
(16:15):
great search engine optimization. It's no wonder that every time
you search the word Mormon on YouTube, an ad for
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints comes up.
This is a side note. Those ads, in turn fund
(16:38):
the Mormon Stories project, they fund Alyssa Grinfeld, and they
fund even this podcast. If we monetized, which I find
it very very funny that, but SEO is incredibly expensive,
and so they had the leader of SEO on the
(16:59):
Leadleading Saints podcast. Let's bring up this podcast here. Here,
we have a apartment at the Church of Jesus Christ.
So we have this and the church sent a guy,
Paul McCarty to the Leading Saints podcast to talk about
(17:20):
the church's efforts in search engine optimization or just being
findable on the Internet. Most of his thoughts are about
being found on Google, and so I thought it would
be I'm just gonna do a quick intro and then
we're gonna do reactions to this video as we go.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
You guys ready, I'm excited.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
All right, let's do this. Hey, and we held this
back so we could have some immediate reactions. So let's go.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
The communications apartment at the Church of Jesus Christ Celebrity
Saints was kind enough to send Paul McCarty my way
to talk about all things se O, chapels and even recently,
if you maybe noticed, the church chapels have shifted from
being an Angel Moroni icon.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
To just a cross icon.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
We talk about why that was and why that that's needed.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
All right, are are you guys familiar with this with
the church changing from the Angel Morone to the Cross.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Yes, yes, familiar with that. It'll be rich to hear,
I think.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I mean I kind of feel bad for Angel Morona.
I mean, you get facted.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
I mean, yeah, well yeah it's not.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
He's not anymore. I mean I feel like that was
the cool thing.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
So yep, he's he's gotten kicked to the curb.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
All right, So they invited this guy on to really
talk about what the church is doing and why they're
doing it, and I think that's that's kind of where
this first clip is going from. Can I call him
Brother McCarty from Brother McCarty, And so he talks about
(19:14):
what the intentions are, and I think it's interesting to
figure to just kind of have a dialogue on why
search engine optimization is so important in.
Speaker 5 (19:25):
Us when they look for us specifically, was kind of
up in the air, but also when they're not looking
for us specifically, when they're looking for faith or God
or Christianity or whatever, we would like to be in
the conversation and be a consideration for them.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
So he starts off this conversation by saying, we want
people to find us when they are looking for us.
I think that's great. I honestly do. I think, hey,
your brand should be able to be found sometypes Mormon
church near me, they're on vacation, they can find a church.
But he also said when they are not looking for us,
(20:07):
so who would not be looking for them? And they
might want them to look into.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Them, you know, because when I, you know, search for
if I'm out of town in my church for Christian
church near me, what I want to see is a
list of you know, Buddhist temples and you know most
and stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Well, yeah, and I wanted to set the stage in
this podcast about there is this group of Christians that
are united and that all I self identify as Christians
and that are part of a huge body of christ
And now you have this other church that is trying
(20:53):
to come in and say, hey, we're the same as you. Okay,
let's let's continue on.
Speaker 5 (21:00):
So we've approached this local search effort more with the
ladder in mind of.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
The ladder being we want to be found by people
who are not part of our church. I know he's
trying to chime it up and do some word Smith here.
Speaker 5 (21:16):
The exactly what you described. I just I want to
go to church on Sunday and tried to approach our
local search optimization to that broader audience so that we
show up with the other potentially many other options for church.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Okay, on a Lisa, what are your thoughts on that one?
Speaker 2 (21:39):
I mean, like, you know, seeing it from a point
of view of like, it sounds like a business. It
sounds like a very very business approach to Christianity. I
mean i'd laugh at the whatever at the end because
I never ever actually thought, you know, the Jesus at
the Cross is it whatever seem? I think that it shows.
(22:03):
It shows to the lack of honestly respect and understanding
of who Jesus is and the and the reality that
he gave his life at the Cross. It's not so
much like, you know, bring him in. You know, it's
like that I just saw this MLM kind of thing.
You write into your friend's name down how many friends
do you know? And then you know, bring those people in,
(22:23):
and then you work with them, and then they bring
more people in, and it's at this point it's just
too I don't know, I just I find it icky.
I find it business like.
Speaker 6 (22:32):
I find it completely apathetic of really reaching people with
the true masses of the gospel, which they couldn't actually
tell you what the gospel is because it changes all
the time, so I don't know.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
It's icky.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Okay, well, let's let's keep going here, because this is
your guys' first time watching it, so let's let's keep
going on this.
Speaker 5 (22:53):
So they're fifty one at the time.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Fifty. So what he's doing is he's talking about how
the Urch of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, the
Mormon Church, was the only, as he would view it,
Christian church that had its own special symbol. And what
he's taught, what he's going to start talking about is
(23:15):
actually really interesting that he wants to abandon his own
unique brand to do something different.
Speaker 5 (23:27):
Do you want Christian denomination categories? Fifty of them have
a cross, and one of them had a unique.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Logo some angel Moroni characters Moroni think Yeah.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
So as I saw this, I thought, well, okay, you know,
we are a peculiar people. We're different. We feel like
we have a unique message and a unique thing to
bring to the world. So maybe that's good. But the
other thought that came to me, and I felt that
This was a prompting personally.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
A prompting from where.
Speaker 5 (23:56):
Was not only do people not know what this is is,
but maybe there's an actual data effect of having this difference,
and so with and I want.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
To stop it here. Gosh, I feel like I'm turning
into John de Lynn and this is gonna take four hours, but.
Speaker 7 (24:17):
I want to stop it here because he's saying that
people don't understand what who Mormons are and what their
brand is.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
And I think that's really disingenuous, like to say that
people don't know who Mormons are and that is and
and they don't know what that symbol means, what the
angel Moroni is. I don't think that's true.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
I'm wonder if you can even answer what that symbol
actually means scripturally. I mean, it's it's one of those
most one of the more important symbols, and that's why
they have them in the old temples all all in
the old temples, you know, Captain maroone I with his horn.
And so I feel like, like I said, it's so
business like, it's so like even if like like just
(25:14):
own the Mormonism, own that Captain maroon I is calling
you to the temple like, you know, and so I
feel like that's at the same time using the cross.
But he said about I forget what he said, something
about similar about the symbol itself. Well, you have to
think about it from the first century Christians who literally
died by wearing that symbol, and so to be just
(25:35):
so dish flippant about a symbol, it just it gets
me a little upset, to be completely honest, because it's
so disingenuous to the actual real meeting of the cross.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Okay, well, buckle up.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Oh no, I wanted to. I wanted to throw this
thought in there real quick to thinking of it from
a business standpoint, the and he about to go into
the data or whatever. But from a business standpoint, this
sounds like a move that business that's really hurting would make,
(26:12):
you know, because Walmart's not out there trying to look
like Target, you know what I mean, or you know,
or Vice ever like yeah, it's it's you know, you don't,
I don't know. There's a if they were successful, and
they were and they were growing at the rate that
they say they're growing, and you know it, they they
definitely wouldn't be wanting to look different than or or
(26:34):
look I guess the same as everybody else, they'd want
to keep that uniqueness about them shining.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Yeah, And I think it's like, I think it's important
for people to know that, Like, at least for me,
Christianity is kind of on fire. Like I'm just gonna
be straight up. I watched the church that I used
to go to go from a thousand people to three
thousand people in two years, like I watched full Revival happen,
(27:04):
like this happens.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
And in.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Growth. I don't want to get too Christianese on it
and talk about revival, but in that growth, you're not
changing your brand. A church that is struggling, a church
that is struggling with identity is gonna say our brand's
not working. Being called Mormon is not working, and we
(27:33):
want to hide behind the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter day Saints. That's important to us. This episode is
not about the rebrand. I have a separate episode that
I want to really hammer in on that. But okay,
let's let's keep going on this.
Speaker 5 (27:51):
One of the leadership we selected a small group of locations.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
So he said this, this is under the direction of
the leader ship of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter day Saints. So imagine the Q fifteen, you know,
first presidency in Eldish Korn kind of making these decisions.
Speaker 5 (28:10):
That we switched from the So the category that has
MORENAI is Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday and we
switched all of we switched about two hundred and fifty
buildings from that to Christian Church as the category.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Which, okay, so they go through and do this, let's
just go ahead and keep keep going through. I think
we're getting a result here.
Speaker 5 (28:31):
Change those to the cross again. That's not why. The
cross is not why we picked it. It's just Christian Church. Yeah,
category the cross.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
The cross is not why.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Oh my gosh, guys like that.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
That's man that's telling me that it's self.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
The Cross of Jesus not it.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Oh my gosh. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
That is hard, Paul. I believe that was a Freudian slip,
but I don't think so much goodness like, and I
think it's important for people who maybe are not Christian
to like talk about this or a Christian the cross
is everything, yes, like it is everything. It's not like, hey,
(29:24):
we can leverage the cross in this way that helps us.
It's literally everything.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
It like hurts my heart to even hear it, Like
it just hurts me, like physically, Like it just hurts
my heart to hear someone talk so flippantly about our
Lord and Savior and what he did at the Cross
for us. I mean, anyways, I'm not gonna say anymore.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
One of my favorite songs is at the Cross. At
the Cross, I surrender my life, am I give all
all to you? Right? That is that is the view
of Christianity. Not well if we click this button over here,
(30:10):
it helps us.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yeah, I mean that's that's the case. You just look
at you know, instead of you know, the Islam and
they have their little symbol to show the Islam you
know temple. I mean, they could just appropriate you know,
Angel Morona, because you know that's more popular in the
States than it is. And it's like, i mean, well
for Native people, they would be more apt to going
(30:34):
to and that. And then you show up and like, hey,
this is a Muslim temple. I've been I've been gypped here.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Yeah yeah, and it's yeah, He's basically saying like it's
it's not about the cross, it's about we want to
look like the cross though like, that's very like, that's
very telling. It's uh, we don't want to actually be
the Cross. We want to like it though, so that
(31:01):
people can, you know, stumble upon us on accident.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah, let's continue on here.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
And what we found was about a twenty five percent
increase in visibility to those locations after about three months.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
He seems pretty happy about a twenty five percent increase.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Okay, you know, Christianity happens to be more popular, weird.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah, all he had to do was leverage the Cross
of Jesus.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Yeah. Imagine, it's so horrible.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
It's so horrible.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
That's all he had to do. People. Okay, wow.
Speaker 5 (31:39):
For generalized Christian search terms. So from that, my analysis
was that we are not we are being hindered being
visible in that category for whatever reason.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Because whatever reason, my good.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
I mean, I'm glad you're like letting us watch this
as it comes along, because this is just like real,
like this.
Speaker 7 (32:05):
Is like.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
The lack of understanding, like looking in the mirror and
you're like or whatever reason.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Oh my gosh, what.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
You are openly rejected by all of Christianity and you
are excited about a twenty five percent bump in activity
on because you were able to be deceptive, okay.
Speaker 5 (32:39):
Of that, and because we now have through this effort
that we're doing all of our buildings instead of Magna
fifth ward or you know, Phoenix fourth ward or whatever
the pins now say the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter day Saints and often in language wherever it may be.
We felt okay, saying, okay, well we don't need the
category to say that again, so we can have the
name of the church, select this other category that increases
(33:02):
our visibility and move forward. And so with that we
we went back to leadership and said, hey, we feel
like this is a good opportunity for us to increase
the exposure and find ability of our chapels. And we
were approved to change all buildings to that, which we
did about a year and a half ago.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
All Right, so upper Leadership is okay with this deceptive practice.
Thanks for letting us know, Paul, we.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Know, weird.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Words.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
I just think, okay, let's continue on in some one
And I think this is they get into a lot
of appropriation, which I am really bothered by. And I
think that's kind of where that the rest of this
video is going.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Like, uh, we're gonna start seeing crosses on our buildings
or anything. It's just that's a data point of life.
Speaker 5 (33:56):
I mean, let's make it to we are a Christian faith.
All other Christian faith.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Well, no, that is a that's something else. But he
just said, like I just want to make sure we're
not going to have the cross actually on the physical premise,
but we will take it to get search search engine
optimization to gain more people to come to our church.
But we're not gonna put it. We're not We're not
gonna be We're gonna be embarrassed of the cross because
(34:23):
we're not gonna put that inappropriate it. But you know,
I mean, wow.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Yeah, we will leverage it, but we will not have
it be you know. And in a way I go
to kind of some fondness that I used to have
of this where you know, they talk like like the
Gordon B. Hinkley when he was on Larry King, they said,
well why don't you wear the cross? And he and
(34:52):
they actually had a really good response. It was our
people are a symbol of our faith. And I'm like, oh,
that's a pretty good you know, I know, he's hot
on the spot. That's kind of Gordon B. Hinkley, right,
and pretty good in media type stuff. This is like different.
This is like we are trying to hijack someone's brand.
We're trying to hijack Christianity, not be be comfortable with
(35:17):
who we are. Let's continue on in the vision is.
Speaker 5 (35:20):
A more of a broader thing. So we're generally trying
to use more common terminology congregation, worship service, not Melchzidic
priest or relief society or whatever, just so people can relate.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
What I can, I can try to replay this clip.
So what he said is we want to try to
use language that people can relate to, like worship service, congregation.
We don't want to use the terms Melkezedic priesthood or
(35:56):
relief society. We just want people to be a to relate. Okay,
I don't know how many times I've gone to the
Mormon Church in my thirty three years and referred to
it as a worship service. Never.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
I never, never.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
As well, Yeah, congregation, I mean that's just kind of
a general term. But not a fan of that, not
a fan of them hiding. Also, I mean, if you're
if you believe that you hold the Melkezdic priestthood and
you have all the keys of administering that priesthood, and
you're saying, well, we're ashamed of that because it won't
(36:39):
result in this twenty five percent bump in activity through Google.
I think that's a I think that's really sad.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
And you know, it's so it's so opposite of what
actual Christian enity is because I'm proud to be a Christian,
and those are things I'm proud to talk about, you
know what I mean, Like, I'm obviously there's some cultural
things that I'm not always proud of, but when like
I don't know, I'm I'm a son of God. I'm
(37:11):
proud of that. I'm trying to think of terms that
like I love the Trinity, you know, like these are
terms that I'm not gonna like try to hide from
like other faiths, I guess or you know, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
It's just it's just.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Strange to me, like why are you why are you
trying to Why is it necessary to hide those like
hide who you are?
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Well, it goes along with the same playbook of Mormonism.
I mean, you don't go to your friend who's like
like a non Mormon at ten years old and to
be like, Oh, by the way, we believe that Adam
and the Garden Invadian is Adam on diamond. Oh and
Heavenly Father has multiple wives or Heavenly Father. We're literally
like the offspring of Heavenly Father. We don't usually like
(37:58):
show that weirdness when as a Mormon. So this goes
along with their their their hiding of the their weirdness.
I don't I want to say weirdness in the most
nicest way, but unique, all right, we uniqueness and it's
and it's and it's an umbrella wanted to be Christian,
but it's not. It's just completely it's it's more having
to do with like Hinduism than Christianity.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
So yeah, all right, let's continue on here.
Speaker 5 (38:25):
The friends of the church are people who are trying
to find their new faith. Give them an experience already
familiar with. You know, we're again peculiar people. We we
function differently. We're not we're we don't we don't build
a chapel and then go gather a flock. We we
gather a flock and then build a chapel. Right, So.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I hate it when people try to act a lot
smarter than they are.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
I'm just yeah, that that was that was that was
That was that moment. That was that moment. I agree
with you. One thing he did say. One thing he
did say, A new faith, a new faith. If they're
Christian and they're Christian based, why would it be new.
It was Christian, but it's not new, and he knows
(39:09):
it's not. It's not the same thing.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Christians don't visit another Christians. Yeah, Christians don't visit another
Christian church and go, oh, this is a new faith. Yeah, no,
they that's not how that works.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
And I actually really I wasn't planning on talking about this,
but I'm just going to be open. I've been to
Baptist Church, I've been to Calvary Chapel. I personally am
a pretty charismatic Assemblies of God person I've been to
right now, I'm a part of a small only in
Hawaii type denomination. All of them are recognized as the
(39:49):
Body of Christ. Right Like, No one would be like, hey,
you used to be a g so now you're now
you're actually starting a new faith journey at the Baptist
church down the road. No one would equate that to
be the same. They will say, hey, these are all
different versions of religious expression. Yeah, but they're all the
(40:14):
same because they have the same God, and we as
Christians have the same relationship to God. And so to
say that I think, and I think as a way
to kind of get out of this, he uses this
little word smithy deal where he says, and I'm going
(40:34):
to try to quote it word for word, he says,
we gather a flock and then build a building, not
build a building and then gather a flock. That is
so not true for Christianity. It's just not true. People
fearlessly go and try to build congregations and meet in
(40:58):
their houses and rent buildings and do all these crazy
things based on faith. They do not have two hundred
and fifty billion dollars to back them up.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
They just feel called by God and they do it.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Not not only that, but this would be something that
I'm I would not say I'm an expert on, but
I actually have been told a few times by people
that that's exactly what they think they're doing with small temples,
like building them where there is no flock.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
You know, well, yeah, either they're totally flushed with cash,
and what do you do? Uh oh, I'm going to
quote Deeter f. Updorf on this one when he talked
about the Petunkum village where he talked about going down
a river and they would set up towns along the
river to look like it was being profitable, but there
(41:59):
was nothing behind them. They were all shanty towns. And
then they would they would go a little further down
the river and set it up, and it was to
create this illusion of growth. He gave that in a
general conference talk. And so I want to fix this quote. Okay,
I'm going to do this for Paul. Paul, I will
(42:20):
fix your quote for you, and.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
It is generous as generous.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yeah, the Mormon Church will build a flock, will lose
a flock, and then sell the building.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
I know you're going away.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
I know that I shouldn't. But for those of you
who know, they're selling a lot of real estate, right, yeah,
so where you know their explosive growth should be coming from.
They are selling a lot of buildings.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
And buying a arm a complexes.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
So you know, yeah, well they gotta they gotta put
it somewhere. Yeah, So let's go ahead and finish off
with our boy brother McCarty and uh and finish this off.
Speaker 5 (43:15):
So we we kind of approach it a little bit different,
utilizing common principles of the way maybe a business might
be wrong when we don't typically operate that way.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Interesting, that was very disingenuous of him. That was the
completely line. I'm surprised he said it with such a
straight face to be completely honest.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Like when you didn't have to he.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
Didn't have to even say that, you didn't have to
make you didn't have to make a comparison. But because
you know what, because of it, he knows it's dishonest.
It eats at him. He knows the dishonesty. He had
to say it because you know, you just it's like
if you're even lie, how the closest thing did not
do it? Say the lie?
Speaker 1 (44:01):
You know, that's like motherly guilt coming out of Hona
Lisa right now?
Speaker 2 (44:07):
True?
Speaker 6 (44:10):
So many you got me, you got.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
I just think it's like, we don't run this like
a business, Like we don't pay anyone and ask the
members to clean the building, and you know, still charge
ten percent and have all these assets and holdings. This
is not a business people, Okay.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yeah, And you're right off the time that you spent
at the temple at the chapel cleaning it to have
tax write offs. You know, it's just it's just sad.
It's like it's like I would say, it's like the
closest thing, like if I saved my house, Like you know,
they said, your house is your temple, right, the temple,
your your buys your temple. Your house is a temple.
Well you look at it that way, like me saying, oh, yeah,
(44:55):
so I run my house, but it's not like I
run my business. A completely makes zero sense. Why would
I even put them together? Right?
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, I'm just I'm just very bothered by this Christian
appropriation that's happening in this video where he's saying, you know,
it helps us, so we're gonna do it from a
business perspective. It helps us, and so we are going
to go into chameleon mode. Not that across is important,
(45:30):
but because it helps us. I give that one.
Speaker 7 (45:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Not cool, dude, that is not cool.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
It's like it's like it's like and like liater or
you're like you're like debating whether he's gonna take it,
and you're like death, yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Yeah, and yeah, I just it just bothers me. I
just think it's when I think about what it means
to take the Lord's name in vain.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
Yeah, this is.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
This is really really walking a very fine line. And
it's not my job to associate judgment. I mean, I'm
I'm I'm pretty soft guy on those types of things.
But that's just not cool. I mean, that's that's really
not the way it goes. So I brought on Damien
and Damien had something because Damon is a is a
(46:28):
crusader for Jesus, Damien, I'm gonna give you the floor
to talk about something that you saw and you took
action on.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Okay, well I didn't. I didn't think of it as
that big of an action, but once I shared it
in one of our mutual Facebook group, a lot of
people that were like, dude, great job. I got like
all these like a lot of uh, I guess notice
for that, and I'll like, I didn't. But I forget
(47:00):
sometimes that there's a lot of Mormons and x Morns
out there that are just a lot a lot more
shy than I am, I guess, you know, or and
there's and there's some of us that are a lot
more loud mouthed about it. Including US three, but all
it was with this simple Adam. I wish I could
(47:22):
play it for you guys, but it was just the
simple ad that's like it didn't say Mormon. I didn't
say the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Sands
and say LDS, like had no no indications of the
organization or the name of the church or anything like that.
(47:43):
And it was like it was like but it was
still very mormony mormon esque moremonies and in the way
it was worded, I think it even like had advertisements
for like are you a young single adult between the
ages of eighteen and thirty or whatever it was it was,
And I'm like, young single adult? Why say eighteen? Okay,
(48:06):
I've been there before. It's where I found my wife.
I don't know what else it was on there, oh,
if it's the one I'm thinking of. Still, there was
also like a it is gonna sound kind of harsh,
but there's also just like kind of a level of
naivety about how the how the young ladies are speaking.
(48:27):
I can't remember it was the video one that I
commented on or like just a like an advertagment page,
but anyway, and I was like this seems too fake basically,
and so I just I was like, ay, but this
is a Mormon thing, And so I looked. I looked
(48:50):
at the comments and there was one person, Oh, yeah,
there we go. Yeah is that it?
Speaker 1 (48:55):
That's it?
Speaker 3 (48:56):
Weekly social activities with games and food, group scripture studies.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Yeah. So I was able to find this. I just
went on to X Mormon Christians. If you are not
a part of X Mormon Christians, go ahead and get
on that channel. It's run by well and Damien is
one of the admins on there. Yeah, but this is
really what he posted. I'm giving him some time to
(49:25):
kind of look over his his posting and do that.
But if you are not on X Mormon Christians, go
ahead and and and get on there and and it's
really a good group of believers. Sorry for the interjection, Damien.
Speaker 3 (49:39):
No problem. As an admin, I do feel obligated to say,
you do need to be an ex Mormon Christian. So
you do need X Mormon any do you need to
be You need to be a professing Christian. There are
other groups, so I for you know, if you don't
fit into those categories that go over the very similar things.
And i'd be happy to talk to anybody about the
like what group options are are on social media.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
But yeah, from that somewhere, if Fred Anson is so
happy that you are given some plugs.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
That's so true.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
Yeah, that's so truth. Love you, Fred.
Speaker 8 (50:13):
But I think it was I don't know, like even
right now, it kind of kind of like, why did
you have to why did you have to clarify that
you are a Christian church?
Speaker 3 (50:33):
I don't think. I don't think most Christian churches would say, like,
we are a Christian church. I think that would just say, hey,
come visit our church. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong
in that, but.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
It actually says it multiple times on here, so it
says it says Christian church up here, and then it
says followers of Jesus Christ in North Texas. Fred Anson
actually did a bit on this, and I'm gonna include
it in the notes below through his Beggar's Bread. He
(51:05):
did how the church I saw this, Followers of Jesus
Christ in North Texas. They have that the church has
created these groups like all over all over. Yeah, and
and Fred did a great write up on it. And
if you're if you're interested in this, and also if
you're interested in Fred. He did an interview with me
(51:26):
on Jesus for Mormons, if you're interested to find out
more about him. But it says Christian multiple times on here.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
M hmm.
Speaker 3 (51:33):
Okay, and I maybe maybe I heard of this group
or something too, because it was not like a like
a very long thought procester for me, Like it was
like three or two or three things that indicated I'm like, okay,
this has got to be Mormons. So I went and
checked out the comments, and someone asked, what what denomination
(51:58):
of this? And and they are, oh, no, no, I
think they said, is this is this the Mormons or
something like that, and then they and then the group
the followers of the Church of North Pecas, but like responded,
it's the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints,
(52:20):
like clarifying it's not we don't like, we don't like
to be called Mormons. They didn't say that, but it's
the Church of Jesus Christ of latterday Saints. And then
I may and then that's when I, I don't know,
just naturally went in there and made made my comment.
And now I don't know. Now I kind of look
at it as kind of humorous. I don't know, I
don't maybe maybe I shouldn't look at it, maybe because
(52:41):
it seems like a big freaking joke to me. But yeah,
basically went in there and and like I said, a
few different things, like one was just if you're just
so you know, this is this is a very misleading ad.
This is not a Christian church. It's a it's the
(53:03):
Mormon Church. And then it was and they and they,
oh the way go. Thank you for anyone reading this
ad that wants more legitimate info. Here it is one,
this is the ld S a k. A Mormon church.
They left that out to be misleading. Two Mormons are
(53:23):
not Christians. And three, if you'd like to attend a
real Christian church in your area, feel free to message
me and I can help you find a biblically solid church.
So that's great, that's great, baby, Thank you. And there
as far as I know, it's it's still up there.
I don't. I don't think they like tagged me in
(53:44):
any responses or anything.
Speaker 2 (53:46):
So yeah, I feel like that says are here like this,
fill out the forum, we will contact you sign up.
I think that will be the most like like if
you were to get any signing up for anything in
the world, this would be the one you'd progress know.
They will never lose your contact in forming guys, so
you won't be found. You give you a Timbuktu in Antarctica,
(54:08):
they will find you. You know. I should have be like,
beware when you fill out the forum.
Speaker 3 (54:14):
Okidding, that should have been my point number four.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
Right, So I think that that's good, and Damian, I
appreciate your I don't even know if I would call
I guess it is evangelism.
Speaker 3 (54:28):
Right going on online?
Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yeah, yeah, I'm just saying, hey, and I you know,
I think there's something that is built into growing up
in the church and being deceptive and having and saying, well,
I'm not really being deceptive because I am helping push
(54:52):
the church forward. Yeah, therefore it's not really that bad.
Like let's not develop a true and you in relationship
with somebody so that we can give them. Let's let's
do it just so that we can give them a
Book of Mormon or just so that we can invite
them to ture. Right, it's icky, right, Like it's I
(55:14):
just I don't like lead with what you with with
what you believe in. Don't leverage relationships, don't leverage the Cross,
don't conveniently leverage parts of the Bible that don't really
say what you're trying to have it say. But you
can kind of cherry pick and create context around it,
(55:36):
but not pull the true context. And so there's this
there's this idea of Christian appropriation that I think is
really I just think is really sad. Like, go with
your own brand. You believe you have a profit, Let
that profit's track record speak for itself.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
I think that you're speaking something to like that if
they go with their own brand, at some point in time,
they'll have well it's spoken about in Philippians, right, they'll
have to be everything will about every town cup as.
So at some point in time they'll have to come
to the realization that their whole belief system is based
on a lie and it is not based on the
(56:17):
foundation of Jesus Christ. And I mean I think that
that I think they're trying to to avoid all of
that because there are so many people leaving. I mean,
like I just hadn't I just had someone to text
me sixty seven years old left the church, you know,
I mean, people are leaving guys because they know it's
(56:38):
not true. It's not built on any foundation other than
in business. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (56:43):
Yeah, and this is the business move. It's just that's what.
That's it.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yeah, And I think that and I just find it.
I just find it so deceptive and so and just
and just not okay. I mean it used to be
that they had this very unique position, and now they've said, well,
well that unique position kind of the jigs up, right,
And we we've kind of not been able to do that,
(57:11):
you know, not been able to push the church forward
with how we presented it. And so we have to
do something else. And Christianity is who we are going
to create this parasitic relationship with, and we're going to
try to take from that because that's a brand that
(57:32):
people know and and in Christianity, some people have a
bad taste in their mouth of Christianity, but it's a
lot better than a Mormon church, especially especially now. So
I wanted to ask you guys a kind of a
(57:53):
funny question. And we didn't talk about this before, but
you know, it's an interview. Did it make either one
of you uncomfortable going from Mormonism to like mainstream Christianity?
How much Jesus is mentioned in the service, I.
Speaker 3 (58:18):
Go, yeah, maybe maybe. I mean when when I decided
that Jesus was my savior and that I'm following him,
I was immediately on board. But when I was when
I was still Mormon, towards the end of my Mormon days,
I was more agnostic, kind of searching, but still called
(58:40):
myself Mormon. And at that point, yes, like when I
was visiting Christian churches with friends, and even when even
when my friends would come, my Christian friends would come
and read the Bible with me, and like, man, maybe
like it's kind of disrespectful of how often Jesus has
is being brought up, you know, like instead of savior,
(59:05):
and then even with even the name even God, you know,
and at the time completely separating Jesus. Jesus is the Savior,
but God is heavenly Father, and Jesus might be a
little God anyway. So the term God, I think bothered
me a little bit. And the yeah, the name Jesus, Yeah,
(59:29):
it was like not like to the point where it
was like, oh, I need to get out of here,
but it was like, oh, this is kind of a
I don't know, almost like made me flinch a little bit.
On the inside when I heard them being used so
non nonchalantly. Almost Yeah.
Speaker 2 (59:49):
I think for myself, I was there a little bit
of the time, like especially in the first couple of
months of leaving Mormonism to go into a Christian church.
I would say, though over arching, after I accepted Jesus
Christ and when I was in my Christian walk, I
didn't realize how much I needed to hear about Jesus.
I was like, it was something I was yearning for.
(01:00:11):
And that's why he's the living water, He's the true vine,
because I mean I didn't realize what I was. I mean,
I thought I knew him, and I had said that.
I said that several times to family members. I thought
I was Christian. I thought I was a follower of Jesus,
and when I truly understood him in my relationship with
(01:00:31):
my Lord and Savior, it was just you know, Yeah,
this is a perfect example. This is an amazing book
that we'll do a review on with Miss Brandy Bronson,
and she points this out that this is one of
the biggest issues in the LDS church is the lack
of Jesus Christ, and so this is this is a
talk from one of the more famous by U speakers.
(01:00:52):
She said, Jesseph Smith's lecturer. Maybe you guys want I
listened to her her talk, what is so amazing about Grace?
And if you do have a if you have a
chance to get a notepen and a paper, you might
draw a hamster wheel instead of like the notes. Actually,
because it's like they keep on going around in this
actual circle about what this actual what grace is. So
(01:01:14):
that's that's her talk. But this, this quote comes from that.
It says the entire three hour church meeting outside the
center prayer. Sure, we hear a whole lot about our
current or past lbs prophets and apostles, but learning of
Jesus was a hit or miss. Interestingly enough, a b
YU professor named Camillos and Spoke spoke to this very
point during a BYU devotional, claiming that the majority of
(01:01:36):
her students felt similarly about Jesus taking a back seat
or maybe even the even the nosebleeds to other teachings
and figures in the Mormon faith. And you just think
about teachings of the prophets and think of all these things,
when did we really yes, he was like a backseat
to the story of the prophets that we're going through
these things. You know, I can think of like Harold
b Lee and all the things he went through, you know,
(01:01:58):
losing a child and stuff like that. But it was
like he was a subcategory of how he overcame and
how it was like a reciprocal relationship instead of our
Lord Jesus bless him through these all these horrible things. Right, So,
as a Mormon leaving LBS, it is different. It is
(01:02:20):
uncomfortable at times. But what is not uncomfortable when I
think about anything once you accept Jesus Christ, is you
cannot get enough of the true living water of Jesus
like that that I think will be uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
So yeah, amen, Yeah, and I think it's I think
that's a really good way to end this is for
me and for Christians all over the world. Jesus is
not a convenient tool. Jesus is not something that you
(01:02:55):
hijack and that you leverage for a twenty five percent
bump in activity. Jesus is who you give it all to,
every bit of yourself you lay it down at the
cross of Jesus. If you really want to find out
(01:03:16):
more about what that means to give your life to Jesus,
especially if you're coming out of an ex Mormon background.
Please reach out to us at Jesus for Mormons and
we would sorry, that's Jesus for Mormons at gmail dot com.
Reach out to us. We would love to take you
through that path of what that means to find salvation
(01:03:40):
in Jesus. I really appreciate Damien and an A Lisa
coming on and being the evangelists that they are and
love you guys, and we'll see you next time. Yeah,
thank you,
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