{"id":620,"date":"2020-08-18T08:58:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T14:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/restorationarchives.com\/blog\/?p=620"},"modified":"2020-08-17T13:37:34","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T19:37:34","slug":"8th-address-to-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restorationarchives.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/08\/18\/8th-address-to-christians\/","title":{"rendered":"8th Address to Christians"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_7312\"><!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-620-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/lightandtruth\/www.denversnuffer.net\/podcast\/episodes\/2019.05.18_LT058_8th-Christians.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/lightandtruth\/www.denversnuffer.net\/podcast\/episodes\/2019.05.18_LT058_8th-Christians.mp3\">https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/lightandtruth\/www.denversnuffer.net\/podcast\/episodes\/2019.05.18_LT058_8th-Christians.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\" style=\"margin-bottom: 1px !important;\">Podcast: <a href=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/lightandtruth\/www.denversnuffer.net\/podcast\/episodes\/2019.05.18_LT058_8th-Christians.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('https:\/\/restorationarchives.com\/blog\/?powerpress_pinw=620-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/lightandtruth\/www.denversnuffer.net\/podcast\/episodes\/2019.05.18_LT058_8th-Christians.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"2019.05.18_LT058_8th-Christians.mp3\">Download<\/a> (Duration: 1:03:55 &#8212; 74.1MB)<\/p><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_subscribe_links\">Subscribe: <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/light-and-truth-podcast\/id1474389927?mt=2&amp;ls=1\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_itunes\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe on Apple Podcasts\" rel=\"nofollow\">Apple Podcasts<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/restorationarchives.com\/blog\/index.php\/feed\/podcast\/\" class=\"powerpress_link_subscribe powerpress_link_subscribe_rss\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Subscribe via RSS\" rel=\"nofollow\">RSS<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This 8th lecture in a series of messages to Christian audiences around the world was delivered May 18, 2019 in Montgomery, Alabama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.denversnuffer.net\/podcast\/transcripts\/2019.05.18%208th%20Address%20to%20Christians,%20Montgomery,%20AL_transcript_v1.2.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Transcript<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>I want to talk about religion\u2014but I don\u2019t want this topic to be what it usually is, and that\u2019s a source of unease and friction and conflict and debate and discomfort and\u2014I mean, religion is one of those things where we find it really easy to do two completely contradictory things: love religion\u2014because we want to be close with God\u2014and take offense at our neighbor\u2014because their religious views differ somewhat from our own when, in fact, the Author of the religion is telling us all to love one another. If we\u2019ve got Christ in common, we ought to be able to de-emphasize our dissimilarities and emphasize our similarities to find peace in Him.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you study the events that occurred following the New Testament\u2014that immediate generation following the New Testament; you can see it in the book of Acts; you can see in in the letters of the New Testament\u2014Christ commissioned twelve apostles, and He sent them out with a message to bear about Him. But Christianity, in the immediate aftermath of Christ\u2019s life, had various kinds of Christianity. We had a Matthean Christianity that was based upon the teachings of Matthew. We had a Pauline Christianity that was based upon the teachings of Paul. We had a Petrine Christianity, and it was based upon the teachings of Peter. (It was the Petrine version of Christianity that ultimately got the broadest sweep that resulted in the formation of the Catholic Church.) But Christianity did not start out centralized. It started out \u201cdiffused.\u201d It\u2019s almost as if what Christ wanted to do was to get the word out and let everyone have in common some very basic things, in which we could find peace and love and harmony with one another\u2014but outside of that, to explore, perhaps, the depths of what the message could be and not to have it insular, rigid, and one-size-fits-all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We had during that very earliest period\u2014&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You had obviously-commissioned companions that had walked with Jesus, had been witnesses of His teachings. He had brought them aboard; they had heard the Sermon on the Mount; they had witnessed miracles. John (in his gospel) makes it clear that they weren\u2019t really up-to-speed with what Christ was doing and what He was about, because He would say things, and they wouldn\u2019t understand Him. From John\u2019s gospel, what happened was: it was retrospective; it was post-resurrection. When they knew\u2014now\u2014that Christ was going to come, He was gonna die, and He was gonna be resurrected, and then He was gonna ascend into heaven to be in a position of glory\u2014that they looked back retrospectively and they say, \u201cOk, now I get it. Now I understand what He was talking about. Now those statements about the necessity that He suffer come full circle, and we get it.\u201d But walking with Him during this time period, they were really not tuned in to comprehending what the Savior was intending to do and ultimately would do.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then after all that, we\u2019ve got this guy who is a persecutor of the Christians and an opponent of Christianity who\u2014on his way with a commission to try and bring Christians to justice\u2014 on the road to Damascus, gets interrupted in what he\u2019s doing:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cSaul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? [Now it\u2019s] hard for [you] to kick against the pricks\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;(Acts 9:4-5; see also Acts 5:8 RE). The pricks were what you\u2019d use to drive the donkey\u2014if it kicked, it impaled itself, and it could be a fairly nasty wound; they didn\u2019t kick without suffering. And Christ is telling him, \u201cThat\u2019s what you\u2019re\u2014 You\u2019re like a mule; you\u2019re so mule-headed about what you\u2019re doing, and you\u2019re actually doing something that is, ultimately, going to be to your harm.\u201d So Paul comes aboard\u2014he\u2019s told to go to&nbsp;<s>Cornelius<\/s>&nbsp;[Ananias]; he goes to&nbsp;<s>Cornelius<\/s>&nbsp;[Ananias]. He gets baptized, and then scales fall from his eyes (he\u2019s been blinded for a while). \u201cScales\u201d&nbsp;<s>are<\/s>&nbsp;is a great word\u2014as an English translation\u2014because they not only imply, potentially\u2014like the scales of a fish; like a contact lens that\u2019s opaque, and you can\u2019t see through it. But they also imply judgment\u2014that Paul\u2019s judgment about things&nbsp;<s>were<\/s>&nbsp;was wrong, and the scales needed to be put aright.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So Paul comes aboard. But Paul is just as much what Paul was \u201cbefore\u201d as he was \u201cafter.\u201d And so Paul and Peter never do quite get on the same page. And Paul writes that he \u201c<em>withstood [Peter] to [his] face, because he was to be blamed\u201d<\/em>(Galatians 2:11; see also Galatians 1:6 RE), which makes it clear that you can be a Pauline believer in Jesus Christ, witness of His resurrection, and in communion with Him; and you can be Peter, who walked with Him and was told, upon the foundation (that he was part of), that this church would be built. And you can authentically be Christian in both cases and the two of you absolutely not agree on much of anything. So Christ set up, at the beginning, a Christianity in which there was a necessary diversity, a necessary broad-mindedness, a necessary tolerance.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The apostle Peter would write about coming into the union of faith. It\u2019s a theme that you see in James; it\u2019s a theme that you see in Paul\u2014about&nbsp;<strong>growing<\/strong>&nbsp;into unity. So, why would we have a Christian establishment, at the outset, in which we have this diversity of thought, with the expectation that you will&nbsp;<strong>grow<\/strong>&nbsp;into unity\u2014and we\u2019re told \u201c<em>love one another; as I have loved you&#8230;love one another\u201d<\/em>&nbsp;(John 13:34; see also John 9:5 RE). So, why would it be set up that way if Christianity was simply supposed to be \u201cmutually-opposing camps with differing points of view,\u201d in which your-particular-brand-of-Christianity will ex-communicate their-brand-of-Christianity, and your-brand-of-Christianity will denounce (as \u201cthe great whore\u201d) Catholicism, instead of everyone saying:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>What has the Lutheran group observed about Christianity that can help bring light, knowledge, and understanding to me?<\/li><li>What has Catholicism preserved from their traditions that can help enlighten my understanding, because it\u2019s a treasure that we have not preserved in our own right?&nbsp;<\/li><li>And what is it within the Baptist movement that has developed a keen insight into some of the most penetrating beliefs that Christ taught?<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Why do we separate into denominational differences and hold this hostility towards one another?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the things that I personally believe in is that you have to take the money out of religion in order for religion to ultimately be its greatest self. I believe that in order to have faith, you have to sacrifice for your faith. That means that no one can or should pay me for anything I do as a religious individual. I have to sacrifice to come here. I have to sacrifice to prove my belief in Christ. No one gets to pass a plate, collect money, and give it to me. I have an obligation, instead, to donate, to sacrifice, to serve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have an incipient group of people\u2014very small\u2014but people that believe that we do have an obligation to give tithes and offerings. But we collect tithes and offerings in very small groups, and once the money\u2019s collected, then within the group, the question is asked, What are the needs; who among us has a need? And if there is a health need, if there\u2019s a food need, if there\u2019s a housing need\u2014the money is used to benefit those that are in need among the household of faith. And no one gets to be paid. The reason why Catholic priests are hostile to Lutherans, and Lutherans are hostile to Methodists, and Methodists hostile to Baptists, and Baptists hostile to the Church of Christ is because the clergy of the respective denominations have a financial stake in making sure that their version of Christianity survives.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I went out to a Christian Evangelical conference in Memphis, Tennessee a couple weeks ago\u2014again, on my own nickel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Stephanie Snuffer:] Nashville.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Denver:] Oh, it was Nashville.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Stephanie:] Not that it matters.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Denver:] Yeah\u2014no, it was Nashville. It was a national conference, lasted for days. Went out with some Evangelical folks, met some new Evangelical friends; and our last day there, when we were on our way to the airport, the driver was a retired Air Force Chaplain. (He\u2019d been enlisted; he left, used the GI bill to get through ministerial school, became a Chaplain, came back in as a Captain, served his twenty years, retired.) After he was retired, he went to work as a Methodist church leader\u2014I think Bishop; he was ordained to something\u2014and he led a Methodist congregation in South Carolina until he retired again. And he was being paid retirement from both the Air Force and from the Methodist church because their clergy have a financial setup in which they\u2019re not only compensated during their time of ministry, but they\u2019re then also compensated in the retirement. So, he\u2019s all on board with Methodism, and that\u2019s just the way things work in this world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the period of time between that very first generation of Christianity and 324 AD, when Constantine determined that it was a mistake to have made Christianity the religion of Rome (because they were in disagreement), and his internal strife was not going to be solved by making Christianity (he thought it was&nbsp;<strong>one<\/strong>&nbsp;religion)\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The factions were so opposed to one another over teachings that they literally were\u2014Christians were killing Christians. And so the answer to the need of the Roman empire to have a \u201cstate religion that would unify\u201d was not going to be served. And so he had (what is called by the \u201chistorical Christian movement\u201d\u2014and that includes everyone, it includes all denominations\u2014they called it) the First Great Ecumenical Council. He summoned all the Bishops to Nicea; he put them under arrest, and he told them they could not leave until they reached an agreement on some fundamentals of what the Christian faith was so that once that was adopted, we had an orthodoxy. And they nearly got unanimity, but there were a handful that would not agree, and they were exiled from Rome. So they had a state religion that was now agreed upon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you look at what are called the ante- (or the \u201cprior to\u201d), the ante-Nicene fathers\u2014and you read the works of the ante-Nicene fathers, there are a lot of teachings that were still left over from that first generation that began to evaporate once you reach the 324 AD time period. It still required years of conflict\u2014and many more years of death and killing\u2014 before Christianity settled down into a stable form that you could call \u201corthodox.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the time period prior to 324, there were multiple kinds of Christianity. One of them gets identified as \u201cproto-orthodox.\u201d The reason the one form is regarded as proto-orthodox is because&nbsp;<strong>it<\/strong>&nbsp;will eventually win the battle. Once it\u2019s won the battle, then you can go back in hindsight and you can say, well, that was the one that was the predecessor to what will become orthodox Christianity over time. That was the Petrine church\u2014or the Petrine view\u2014which emphasized priestly authority, which emphasized the necessity of a priestly intervenor.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That view held sway until a split that occurred at about a thousand [1000] AD between the East and the West, between Constantinople and Rome, between two Bishops who were vying for primacy. And so you have the Orthodox Christianity that spread into Eastern Europe and into Russia\u2014the Greek Orthodox Church being part of that; the Russian Orthodox Church being part of that\u2014and once again, they preserved some teachings in Christianity that got dropped off the table in the Western church (or the Catholic church)\u2014doctrines that you don\u2019t hear much about.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You get down another 500 years to&nbsp;<s>517<\/s>&nbsp;[1517] AD, to the time of Martin Luther, and Martin Luther comes along a devout\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He was a sincere, a religious man as ever lived in the Catholic faith. He believed. And he believed with all his heart\u2014believed so much, that he saw signs in his life of God intervening to do things. He saw miraculous events that showed him that God was walking with him. Martin Luther went to Rome and was horribly disappointed by what he saw as corruption and as profiteering and as something that could not possibly be true because these men were doing vile things\u2014prostitutes were at court with Bishops; everything about what was going on was unseemly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Martin Luther believed. In fact, in the universe of Martin Luther\u2019s Christianity, salvation required a priest \u201cto save.\u201d If you did not have a priest, you could not access salvation. And so Martin Luther\u2019s dilemma was, \u201cIs it possible\u2014is it even possible to be a Christian, separate from the clergy that comes down from the time of Christ? Is that even possible?\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reading in the New Testament in the book of Romans, he comes across the passage that says it is by grace that you are saved; it\u2019s through the instrumentality of faith; and that faith is, in itself, the means for salvation. So Martin Luther conceives the idea that salvation just might be possible, separated from the Catholic clergy, if you rely upon the grace of Christ and the faith that you have in Him. And so Martin Luther took the brave step of trusting what he had read, and he founded the Protestant movement, based upon the concept that it is possible to be saved separate from, then, a hierarchy that\u2019s grounded in Rome. Well, that separation began\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As soon as you have Lutherans, you\u2019re inviting someone else to come along\u2014like John Calvin\u2014to say, \u201cWait a minute. You\u2019ve got part of the idea, but you don\u2019t have it really in place.\u201d You have John Wesley; you have Zwingli; you have a number of Protestant leaders, all of whom say, \u201cYeah, Martin Luther got one thing right, but he didn\u2019t get&nbsp;<strong>everything<\/strong> right.\u201d And so immediately, you begin to divide up, and the Protestant movement morphs into dozens\u2014and then hundreds and now thousands\u2014of different denominational divisions that are saying, \u201cYes, BUT\u2014all those other churches got some things right, BUT! There\u2019s still something that they\u2019ve omitted that needs to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, I was raised by a Baptist mother, and I was shown the Baptist religion from my youth. I never joined the Baptist Church. My next door neighbor, my best friend, was a Catholic altar boy\u2014Rick was a Catholic altar boy! And so was Wayne. (You\u2019d need to know those two guys before you understand how broad-minded Catholics are about their altar boys.) And so, on occasion, I would go to Rick\u2019s church. Mary was really devoted and (his mother) \u2014Rick was just a pedestrian that happened to be, on occasion, in the Catholic church. I was always interested in religion. I always thought there was something to this\u2014that Christianity has a core that is true. I believed that. Over the years, the more I have examined it\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m an attorney, and I do trial work. In the courtroom, witnesses of an event (if they\u2019re telling the truth) will agree in broad-brush and will disagree on details. If they agree on all the details, someone\u2019s lying, because that\u2019s not the way witnesses work. Witnesses\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you\u2019re standing on one side of the street and you see an accident, and you\u2019re standing on the other side of the street and you see the same accident, what is left on one is right on the other. They will disagree, if nothing else, from the vantage point from which they observed it. You also have the tendency to focus on \u201csomething,\u201d as opposed to \u201ceverything.\u201d And if everyone is focused on a different \u201csomething,\u201d the story that you will get from people\u2014swearing to tell the truth, under oath\u2014will be different versions; same general theme, same large-picture outcome, but they will disagree many times on the details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOh, I didn\u2019t notice that\u201d\u2014because that\u2019s the way humans are. \u201cI didn\u2019t notice that. I didn\u2019t hear that. You\u2019re sure he said\u2014he really said that? Because when he was speaking, he said&nbsp;<strong>this<\/strong>, and I know he said&nbsp;<strong>this<\/strong>. The reason I know he said&nbsp;<strong>this&nbsp;<\/strong>is because&nbsp;<strong>that&nbsp;<\/strong>struck me to the heart. And when he said that, I was thinking back about twenty things in my life, and so when I tuned back in\u2014you\u2019re telling me that one of the things I missed is what you heard about&nbsp;<strong>that<\/strong>? I find that astonishing! I wish I\u2019d heard it.\u201d My story and your story and the next person\u2019s story of the event (if they\u2019re authentic, in the courtroom), you will always find details are different. Same major theme.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus Christ had a group of witnesses in a&nbsp;<strong>single<\/strong>&nbsp;generation\u2014<strong>in a single generation<\/strong>! This isn\u2019t a work of fiction! You have&nbsp;<strong>four<\/strong>&nbsp;different gospel accounts that come into being&nbsp;<strong>in a single generation of time<\/strong>, in which they all agree on the massive truth that this was the Son of God who came into the world to be the sacrificial lamb, who died\u2014He was rejected and died\u2014and who was resurrected and ascended into heaven. All four of them agree on that. And yet, only Matthew has the Sermon on the Mount. Some of them mention feeding five thousand; some of them mention feeding seven thousand; and some of them mention both. But not all of them mention everything. There are differences. It\u2019s what you would expect if you\u2019re dealing with an authentic account of a real person that lived a real life and left behind people who were so astonished by what they witnessed from this man that they wrote accounts. And whereas, before, they were cowering, and they were running, and they were denying that they knew that man, after His resurrection (and they witnessed that), they went forth boldly and proclaimed who He was, performing miracles themselves, based upon the name of Jesus Christ.&nbsp;<strong>Something&nbsp;<\/strong>actually happened. And that&nbsp;<strong>something&nbsp;<\/strong>was the life of Jesus Christ. And these men went willingly; whereas, before they ran and hid, after His resurrection\u2014after they became acquainted with Him\u2014they went willingly to their deaths as witnesses of Him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I believed that there was something authentic about Christianity. I just wasn\u2019t quite sure about the brand of Christianity that my mom, a Baptist, was teaching me in my youth. I also\u2014going down to the Catholic Church\u2014was skeptical. (It was Pope John VI\u2014was the pope back then; seemed like a decent enough chap. The first Catholic pope that impressed me was Pope John Paul I. That guy was\u2014he was a fan of Mark Twain&#8217;s, ok? Pope John Paul I was the greatest pope that ever lived, as far as I\u2019m concerned.)&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I thought there was something missing from the Baptist faith. I thought there was something theatrical and hollow, even inauthentic, about what I saw in Catholicism\u2014not because the pageantry wasn\u2019t depicting something noble and great and wonderful, but because the players weren\u2019t always up to the job of carrying off the pageantry. There were times when it appeared to me that the last thing the priest in Mountain Home, Idaho was interested in was celebrating the service\u2014the Mass. He did it anyway, and it was lifeless. His heart wasn\u2019t in it. And so, it seemed to me, hard for that to drive religious conviction if the heart of the priest is not in the celebration of the Mass. The Baptists were always into the celebration of what they do because it\u2019s based upon a sort of charismatic movement, in which enthusiasm is expected\u2014an expected part of it. But I remember the pious gestures, the things from the pageantry of Catholicism that depicted things, that depicted holiness\u2014and I believe there is holiness. I honestly believe there to be holiness. But I think it is hard to imitate it, instead of authentically be it. That\u2019s why a Mother Theresa stands out as a global figure because she didn\u2019t imitate it. And Mother Theresa stands as evidence that there is such a thing as Catholic holiness.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another one that stands out in history as an authentic evidence of Catholicism having holiness is St. Francis; St. Francis believed and accepted the Sermon on the Mount. He lived the Sermon on the Mount. He went to Rome to get an order commissioned by the pope, and the pope laughed at him and said, \u201cYou can\u2019t\u2014you can\u2019t get anyone to live the Sermon on the Mount.\u201d He said, \u201cI would give you an order if you could come back here and bring with you twelve men who would be willing to live the Sermon on the Mount.\u201d (St. Francis was the guy that\u2014if you saw him in the cold in winter and you gave him a coat\u2014he would wear that coat until he ran into someone that had a greater need than he; and then he would give away his coat to the person in need. When he decided that he was going to become a priest, his father\u2014who was a wealthy man\u2014went and intervened and said, \u201cYou can\u2019t do this\u2014everything about you, I paid for! You are utterly dependent upon me, and I refuse to let you go do this.\u201d St. Francis took off all his clothes, handed it to his father, and came to the clergy a poor and naked man\u2014literally. He was a devout man.) When he came back to the pope with twelve believers, the Franciscans were commissioned, and the order of the Franciscans came into being.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The current pope is named after St. Francis. I think St. Francis was an authentic Christian. In the last two months of St. Francis\u2019 life, he reported that angels were visiting with him. There are a lot of people that dismiss that end-of-life spiritual experience (and telling tales of angels and visits and such things) as, you know, the frailties of a dying body. I don\u2019t think so, in the case of St. Francis. I think that he was ministered to by angels.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s an expression\u2014it\u2019s found in places some of you would find dubious\u2014but there\u2019s an expression about how some people do not \u201ctaste death.\u201d The statement that they do not taste death doesn\u2019t mean they don\u2019t die. It just means that their death is sweet because they die in companionship with those on the other side who bring them through that veil of death in a joyful experience. There are a handful of people who have reported that, as they were dying, angels came and ministered to them. I think all authentic Christians, in any age, belonging to any denomination\u2014I don\u2019t care what the denomination is\u2014I think all authentic Christians who depart this world find that death is sweet to them and that they are in the company of angels as they leave this world. And I don\u2019t think it matters that the&nbsp;<strong>brand&nbsp;<\/strong>that you swore allegiance to\u2014and you contributed your resources to support\u2014 matter anywhere near as much as whether you believe in Christ, whether you accept the notions that He advances about the Sermon on the Mount, and whether you try to incorporate and live them in your life.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus took the Law of Moses as the standard. What the Sermon on the Mount does is say, \u201cHere is the standard, but your conduct should not be merely&nbsp;<strong>this<\/strong>. \u2018<em>Thou shalt not kill\u2019&nbsp;<\/em>(Exodus 201:13) is not enough\u2014you must avoid being angry with your brother; you must forgive those who offend you; you must pray for those who despitefully use you.\u201d Just refraining from murdering one another, with a reluctant heart, bearing malice at them\u2014\u201cWell, I didn\u2019t kill the guy, but I got even!\u201d\u2014that\u2019s not enough! That\u2019s not the standard that Christ is advancing. \u201c<em>Thou shalt not commit adultery\u201d&nbsp;<\/em>(Exodus 20:14) is not good enough\u2014don\u2019t look upon a woman to lust after her in your heart. Jesus is saying, \u201cHere\u2019s the law. And you can do all of those things and be malevolent; you can be angry; you can be bitter; you can be contemptible; you can hold each other out as objects of ridicule. Its purpose is to make you something more lovely, more wonderful, more kindly, more Christian.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christ says to be like Him. The Sermon on the Mount is an explanation of what it\u2019s like to be like Him. St. Francis made the effort of trying that, of doing that. I suspect that the first time St. Francis gave away a coat in the middle of winter to someone else, that it pained him. He probably felt the biting sting of the cold and thought, \u201cHow wise is this that I\u2019m doing?\u201d Because it\u2019s always hard to accept a higher standard and to implement it for the first time. But I suspect by the hundredth time he\u2019d done that, he didn\u2019t feel the cold anymore; he felt the warmth in his heart of having relieved the suffering of another person. Because the practice of Christian faith involves the development of Christian skill and the development of Christian charity in a way that changes you. You don\u2019t remain the same character that you were when you began the journey! You become someone absolutely and fundamentally different.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, while I was in the Air Force, away from home, I was attending a University of New Hampshire night-class\u2014some kind of organizational behavior class. Having grown up in Idaho, I knew what Mormons were, and this professor, Cal Colby (he\u2019s from Brandeis University, but he was teaching a night class for the University of New Hampshire) just gratuitously started attacking Mormons. And my honest reaction was, \u201cWhat the hell are you talking about Mormons in New Hampshire for? That\u2019s a local infestation somewhere out in the West, and there\u2019s no\u2014there\u2019s none of that going on here.\u201d And in the middle of his diatribe, a guy raised his hand, and Colby called on him. And a fellow named Steve Klaproth defended\u2014because he was Mormon\u2014defended Mormons. I made the mistake afterwards of saying to the fellow (I didn\u2019t know his name at the time, but I know him now\u2014Steve), \u201cGood job!\u201d I always hate it when a person in a position of strength picks on someone in a position of weakness, and so I went to the guy that was weak and said, you know, \u201cGood job!\u201d He mistook this for interest in his religion. And I wound up (trying to be polite), I wound up being hounded, literally\u2014pamphleteered, missionaries coming. It was\u2014it was gosh awful.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, I left New Hampshire on what\u2019s called \u201cOperation Bootstrap,\u201d where they send you to college. I went to Boise State University. The Air Force paid for me to go to school. I came back. When I came back there was this campout; the campout was at the birthplace of Joseph Smith in Sharon, Vermont. And I went to the campout. There was a book that was in the Visitor\u2019s Center, and they gave me a copy of that book for free. Steve says, \u201cYou should read this.\u201d I read that. And at that moment, I was surprised because my reaction to Mormonism had been very, very negative. But the ideals that were expressed in this one statement were lofty and noble and Christian and charitable, and I wanted to know, \u201cWhere did this come from?\u201d It was something that Joseph Smith had written; a revelation that Joseph Smith had received.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, I got baptized for the first time in my life on September the 10<sup>th<\/sup>&nbsp;of 1973, into the Mormon church. I was a Mormon until September the 10<sup>th<\/sup>&nbsp;of 2013\u2014forty years to the day. And on the 40<sup>th<\/sup>&nbsp;anniversary of becoming a Mormon, I was excommunicated from the Mormon church.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, I don\u2019t say this to sound like I\u2019m bragging or exaggerating, but I do not know anyone alive today that knows as much about Mormon history as I do. Because while I was part of that, and then afterwards, still, I\u2019ve read every historical document that I can get my hands on; I\u2019ve read everything that Joseph Smith said that got recorded, wrote, or transcribed when he had a scribe writing for him. My understanding of Mormon history is encyclopedic, really.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s a thing that goes on in Salt Lake City called the Sunstone Symposium. It\u2019s run by people who are, basically, renegade Mormons\u2014intellectuals\u2014and it started out being friendly to the Mormon church; it grew into outright hostility and anger towards the Mormon church; and then it converted into a mixed bag. And some of it is pro; some of it is con. And I\u2019ve spoken at the Sunstone Symposium. One of the things I\u2019ve presented was a paper about Brigham Young, in which Brigham Young\u2019s megalomaniacal-presiding over Mormonism (during the late 1840s, into the early 1850s) and the excesses that went on during that time period\u2014including murders that occurred on Brigham Young\u2019s watch\u2014were laid out. Sunstone asked the Dean of Mormon History\u2014the guy that is most respected, Thomas Alexander\u2014to respond to my paper. And Thomas Alexander came and responded to my paper. I was talking about Brigham Young\u2019s literal regarding of himself as an actual king from the time they got out of the valley in 1847, until the time he was deposed by the Army of the United States as the territorial governor in 1857. I was talking about that period of time. Thomas Alexander got up and said, \u201cNo, Brigham Young didn\u2019t believe those things because he said things in 1860 and in 1870\u2026\u201d and he read the quotes from 1860 and 1870. Well, as soon as he was deposed as governor he knew he wasn\u2019t king. All 1860 and 1870 have to contribute is the fact that Brigham Young ultimately managed to grapple with reality because he had been deposed. But what he was saying in that early time period is exactly what he meant. So after Thomas Alexander got through with his rebuttal paper, I got up and, for five minutes, dismantled the Dean of Mormon History\u2019s view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Mormon church is a cult. It is not an authentic Christian organization. But I believe that you can find Christians who are Mormons. I believe that you can find Christians in every denomination that are out there. I believe that there is an authenticity to belief in Christ that transcends every denomination that\u2019s out there. I wrote books about the history of Mormonism that expose many of the things that the Mormon church represents to be true\u2014I show to be false, including their authority claims; including their [in]consistent following of what the founder of Mormonism stood for, believed in, and practiced himself.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joseph Smith raised the largest Army. The largest standing Army in the United States in 1844 was under the command of Major General Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, Illinois. Literally, he could have taken on the United States Army and defeated them. And do you know what Joseph Smith did with a standing Army larger than anyone else in the United States; larger than the federal government; larger than any of the state militias? Do you know what he did? He disarmed his soldiers; he turned the canons over to the state of Illinois; he surrendered to the governor of the state of Illinois; and three days later, he was murdered while he was in jail. He would rather personally die or give up his life than to have people on both sides of a fight die as a consequence of a religious dispute.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1837, Joseph Smith was in Missouri; and while he was in Missouri, hostilities broke out between Mormons and Missourians. Part of the problem with the hostilities was that leaders around Joseph Smith were spoiling for a fight\u2014literally, spoiling for a fight. Guy named Sidney Rigdon who was a counselor to Joseph Smith gave a speech in which he said, If you people show any more aggression towards us, we&#8217;re gonna wage a war of extermination, and we will wipe all you Missourians out. It&#8217;s called the Salt Speech; it was delivered on July the fourth of that year. It&#8217;s an incendiary talk.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was a Mormon named Sampson Avard who went about provoking hostilities with the Missourians. Sampson Avard was a Mormon, and he had a group that he called the Danites (based upon the tribe of Dan\u2014the blessing that is given to Dan in the 49th chapter of Genesis talks about Dan being an asp in the way that bites the horses; it&#8217;s a preamble of the violence that the tribe of Dan would render in the posterity of Dan\u2014so Sampson Avard took the name \u201cDanites\u201d as his group). And they began to retaliate by burning houses, burning fields, stealing cattle, stealing hogs, bringing them back. Joseph Smith found out about it, and he demoted Sampson Avard. He was relieved of all responsibility, and Joseph made him a cook. So the guy who was the militant leader is now a cook.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hostilities ultimately did break out. It was inevitable that there be retaliations. Each side were saying that they were the victim, and the governor of Missouri said, \u201cWe\u2019re gonna wage a war of extermination,\u201d quoting what the Mormons had said in that July 4th talk. And so Mormons were expelled from the state of Missouri. The militia was outside Far West, Missouri (a town called Far West). Joseph Smith and his family, friends, and Mormons were inside Far West. They had a defensive position from which they literally could have caused so many casualties that the militia could never have overrun the town. The cost in blood would have been too high. Joseph Smith surrendered and told his people to surrender their arms, and he deflated the tension.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He was taken into custody by the state of Missouri; he was charged with treason against the State for fomenting rebellion. And they had a series of hearings trying to get witnesses to prove that Joseph Smith should be held for trial on the charge of treason. And no one\u2014no one\u2014could prove that Joseph Smith was involved with any of the hostilities, until the guy who actually caused the hostilities, Sampson Avard, came to the courthouse to testify\u2014to blame Joseph Smith for everything he [Sampson Avard] had done.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so Joseph Smith was held over on the charge of treason, based upon the testimony of the guy who knew what cattle were stolen, what hogs were stolen, what fields were burned (that he was responsible for.) And he simply said that all that\u2014that Joseph engineered that. And so, based upon the testimony of traitors, Joseph Smith was held in prison for a period of six months, over a winter time-period in an unheated dungeon that had bars but no glass on the windows. And they suffered for six months in a Missouri prison.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He was allowed to escape and get back to his people, all of whom had been driven out of Missouri. But while he was in prison\u2014and while he had the opportunity to think about everything\u2014Joseph Smith composed a letter from Liberty Jail that breathes with the spirit of Christian compassion, forgiveness, love, kindness, and refraining from abusing others. This is a man who got betrayed by his friends, and he turns around and shows\u2014for his friends\u2014compassion.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the books that I&#8217;ve written is called&nbsp;<em>A Man Without Doubt<\/em>. In it, I set up the historical context out of which Joseph Smith produced the three longest writings of his own in his life. It&#8217;s a letter from Liberty Jail; it\u2019s Lectures on Faith; and it&#8217;s a statement of his own history because the church historian had stolen all the manuscripts. Time and time again, the worst enemies of Joseph Smith were Mormons\u2014people that claimed to follow the religion that he was developing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joseph Smith, in my view, is authentically Christian the same way as Saint Francis is authentically Christian. The problem is (and it is an enormous problem)\u2014the problem is that everyone outside of the Mormon world looks at him as the property of the LDS Church. They look at him as if he were accurately represented by a group of people that, time and time again, he condemned and, time and time again, betrayed him.&nbsp;<em>A Man Without Doubt<\/em>&nbsp;is an attempt to let people see Joseph Smith as a Christian, divorced from the LDS Church or any of the splinter Mormon groups, and to see him, potentially, as an authentic Christian\u2014 in the same way that I think Martin Luther and John Wesley\u2014even John Calvin, although Calvin was so militant, he&#8217;s kind of a drum-beater that scares me a little\u2014nevertheless, he was authentically Christian.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think that everyone who sacrifices for the cause of Christ can help contribute to my understanding of what it means to follow Christ\u2014because people who follow Christ bear the evidence of that discipleship in the way in which they walk and the things that they do and the things that they give up\u2014in how they discipline their heart and how they discipline their mind; in how they treat one another. When you find someone whose life bears evidence that they are authentically Christian because of what they&nbsp;<strong>do<\/strong>; they are authentically Christian because of what they&nbsp;<strong>say<\/strong>\u2014&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christ said it&#8217;s not what goes into the mouth that proves you&#8217;re unclean. It\u2019s what comes out. What do you say? How do you display the grace of God in your life? I can tell you one way you&nbsp;<strong>don&#8217;t<\/strong>&nbsp;display the grace of God\u2014and that&#8217;s by condemning merely because of their affiliation with one Christian group or another, condemning them as being inauthentically Christian.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christ looks upon the inner person. All of His parables\u2014all of His parables suggest there&#8217;s something very different about authenticity and inauthenticity. There are ten virgins\u2014well, what are virgins a symbol of? If Christ is using the virgin as a symbol, He&#8217;s talking about good people. These are good religious people; they have to be. And of that group, only five were allowed in.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s a wedding feast\u2014and at the wedding feast, He invites friends, and they don&#8217;t come. Well, who are the friends of Christ that are invited to come to His wedding feast? And they don&#8217;t come. They don&#8217;t come because their hearts aren&#8217;t right; their words aren&#8217;t right; their mind isn&#8217;t right; they are not authentically what Christ is trying to have us be. But He invites, and they don&#8217;t come\u2014because they will not be His. And so He goes out, on the highways and the byways, to try and find anyone that will come. And \u201canyone that will come\u201d suggests that, well, they could be a Samaritan. Think about the Parable of the Good Samaritan from the perspective of a Jewish audience\u2014they were nothing but apostates! And yet he uses the&nbsp;<strong>apostate<\/strong>&nbsp;as the illustration of authentic Christian discipleship. They invite in\u2014off the highways and the byways\u2014strangers, people that you don&#8217;t expect to be invited \u2018cuz they&#8217;re not at your church every week; they&#8217;re going to some other place or, perhaps, no place at all. And yet, they&#8217;re invited in, and they&#8217;re allowed to remain, so long as they have on the wedding garment. In other words, if they come, having donned the mantle of authentic Christianity, they&#8217;re welcome\u2014they&#8217;re welcomed. We care and we fight about religious issues that are of no moment at all to Christ. And we do that because we&#8217;re paying clergymen every week to rile us up so that we&#8217;ll stay loyal to them and their congregation\u2014 and we\u2019ll contribute, and we will view one another with fear and non-acceptance.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You take the money out of Christianity; most ministers would go into politics. They would not hang around. I&#8217;m not lying\u2014they have done polls of Christian ministers to ask them if they believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God who was resurrected. The majority of Christian ministers do not have faith; what they have is a career. And they can&#8217;t abandon their career. \u201cIf I leave your employ, what&#8217;s gonna become of me? Because I\u2019ll be a poor man.\u201d And so they stay employed, preaching what they don&#8217;t believe. It&#8217;s one of the reasons why I think Father Ordway\u2014in Mountain Home, Idaho\u2014made the gestures, and his countenance was devoid of the holiness that should be expressed, of the joy that should be expressed. I saw that in my friend Rick&#8217;s mother, Mary. I saw in her that fire of belief, that devotion. I didn&#8217;t see it in Father Ordway.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, I&#8217;m trying to get people to consider the possibility that authentic Christians could come from anywhere, among any people\u2014and that we can fellowship with one another. And that it is even possible to fellowship with one another, even independent of an employee-hireling priest\u2014in which we study together; we worship together; we rejoice in Christ together; we try to figure out how to be more authentically Christian in what we do, and what we say, and how we treat one another, and how we view one another.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then to take the next step and to contribute our tithes and our offerings to a group of believers to help believers, to help each other\u2014so that it&#8217;s not just the support of the clergy and the support of the buildings, and the support of the programs\u2014but it&#8217;s also helping the fatherless and helping the mother who has no one to help her. And to have Christianity, not just theoretically modeled in feel-good sermons, but actively part of life and part of how we deal with and treat one another, in which we all say,&nbsp; \u201cWe&#8217;ve all sinned; we&#8217;ve all fallen short of the glory of God, but let&#8217;s&nbsp;<strong>not&nbsp;<\/strong>let&nbsp;<strong>that&nbsp;<\/strong>cause&nbsp;<strong>me&nbsp;<\/strong>to condemn&nbsp;<strong>you<\/strong>. Let&#8217;s not let&nbsp;<strong>that&nbsp;<\/strong>stop&nbsp;<strong>me&nbsp;<\/strong>from trying, in as authentic a way as I can, to be charitable or kindly to you, and you to me, and us to the people in need among us.\u201d Because if there were ever an authentic group of people who are Christian who were helping one another, the appeal of&nbsp;<strong>that&nbsp;<\/strong>would cause everyone who comes into their midst to have a change of heart. They\u2019d want to be part of that; they\u2019d want to live that kind of life because there&#8217;s no better life than the one that Christ taught us to model in the Sermon on the Mount.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyway, I&#8217;ve talked for an hour\u2014and my experience teaches me that when you&#8217;ve had people sitting and listening to you for an hour, you&#8217;re a wicked and despicable man if you make them sit and listen to you any longer. So, unless there&#8217;s anything that someone wants to talk about, ask about\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I really do know a lot about Mormon history, and it&#8217;s not at all what the Mormon persona is represented to be\u2014either by the church itself or by its critics. In some ways, its history is much worse than the critics tell you. And in some ways, the very beginning of it was much different and much better than what they represent.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I believe that Brigham Young introduced the practice of plural wives. I believe that Joseph Smith was an ardent opponent of that. I believe that Joseph Smith has been falsely portrayed because Brigham Young didn&#8217;t think he could bring that into the practice unless he laid it at the feet of Joseph Smith. And I think there&#8217;s been a lot of history in Mormonism that tries to lay at the feet of Joseph Smith responsibility for the things that traitors and treacherous and evil men did\u2014and escape responsibility for it by saying:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cJoseph taught it.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOh, he taught it in private.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOh, he lied to the public.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHe lied to the public about it, but in private he practiced it, and he taught it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I have to tell you, Joseph Smith was not that kind of man. I read the letters between Joseph Smith and his wife, Emma. Emma was a stronger personality than Joseph. Emma was his trusted counselor and guide. Joseph deferred to her; he took advice from her; he took counsel from her. She was better educated than him. The stories that have been attributed to Joseph Smith\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You should read&nbsp;<em>A Man Without Doubt<\/em>. You should go back and reconsider whether what&nbsp;<strong>you&nbsp;<\/strong>think Joseph was, is it all supportable by a true-telling of history\u2014because I don&#8217;t think it is. And that&#8217;s one of the reasons why I\u2019m an excommunicated Mormon because\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because I think the truth is valuable, and it&#8217;s worth searching out.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This 8th lecture in a series of messages to Christian audiences around the world was delivered May 18, 2019 in Montgomery, Alabama. Transcript<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podcast"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>8th Address to Christians - Restoration Archives Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/restorationarchives.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/08\/18\/8th-address-to-christians\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"8th Address to Christians - Restoration Archives Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This 8th lecture in a series of messages to Christian audiences around the world was delivered May 18, 2019 in Montgomery, Alabama. 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