THE HAVEN NEWSLETTER
(This arrived in my email today, 11/14/26)
Upping their game – The Mormons are playing a new game, and Christians are falling for it!
Three years ago, Trevor, (one of our Haven missionaries) and I stayed in a Mormon Bishop’s house in a small community in the middle of Utah. While we had some great opportunities to witness to the family at dinner, we were stunned to see one of the daughters wearing a cross. Mormons don't wear crosses! Mormons have never worn crosses. Talking to fellow missionaries around the country, I found out that they had seen Mormons wearing crosses as well. So, what is going on? Something seems to be changing.
I recently watched some Mormon apologists online and from a theological standpoint they sounded exactly like Baptist or other evangelical Christians. They denied that God had parents, which Mormons have always taught. They denied that God was a created being. Mormon leaders had always taught that Jesus was conceived the same way all other humans were conceived! What was going on here?
Another of our missionaries, Carl, had visited Temple Square in Salt Lake Utah recently. It has been remodeled extensively, and the shocker was instead of finding the historic numerous pictures and statues about Joseph Smith – instead there were statues of Jesus everywhere.
I've noticed on my own trips to the Salt Lake Temple in 1986 and 1989, and more recently in going to Temples and visiting centers that Mormons were downplaying much of historical Mormon belief, especially that which was seen in the First vision, that is that non-Mormon churches were considered abominations and a stench in God's nostrils. Mormon temples are busy taking down the statues of Morani blowing his trumpet, which have been at the top of Mormon temples everywhere in the world. Now the newer temples just have a spire.
What is important to note here is that the people who run the Mormon Organization are not their apologists or their missionaries. The people who are in charge collectively are called the General authorities, which starts with a “prophet”, his two advisors, their apostles, and the Seventy. They have not spoken authoritatively about these changes. They seem to be quietly complicit in letting Mormons put on a Christian mask. I see this action as highly deceptive and manipulative at the same time. And sadly, because of books like “How Wide the Divide” years ago and more recently the popularity of the show “The Chosen", the latter of which whose primary Director and spokesman, Dallas Jenkins, has told millions of people that even though he's Evangelical (very doubtful) the Mormons are his brothers and he will die on that hill! So, the Mormons have evangelicals carrying their water in their campaign to appear as Christian. I wonder if in 20 years young Mormons will ever even hear the name Joseph Smith. The same thing happened many years ago in the Jehovah's Witnesses (JW) cult. The founder Charles Taze Russell is not even known by the average young JW!
If I was a Mormon, I would want to hide Joseph and Brigham and many others in their history and leadership as well. The same is true of the JW’s. Their leaders were truly evil as well as doctrinally aberrant.
Upping OUR game!
I could rant on these cults and how others are busy doing their own individual version of rebranding with each different group trying to seem more palatable for weeks on end. But what I think it is important for us as believers in the Jesus of the Bible, especially now in the Christmas season, is to focus on what we are called to do in response to these direct challenges or imitators of the real Jesus.
It is said that imitation is the sincerest type of flattery. There is a half-truth buried in that phrase. It might be the case, but in the example of trying to pass off counterfeit $100 dollar bills, it is an attempt to defraud someone. Unlike virtually all the worlds’ religions, we don’t get to lie to spread our faith. We are told we cannot bear false witness. We are commanded to speak the truth in love to each other in the church, but at Haven we have always thought this was the best way to address any other person in any religion/cult or atheist and so on. There have been many attempts to “rebrand” the Christian faith over the millennia – most of them failed experiments. The gnostic heresy spread thru the early church, denying the incarnation of Jesus in the flesh, and allowing for virtually any violation of the Lord’s commandments that they felt like any given day. This “secret” knowledge allowed the adherents to proclaim themselves as possessing an elite version of the faith not accessible to mere believers. A different effort was made to flee the cities of decadence and move to caves and monasteries seeking to avoid all sinful contact. Sadly, they didn’t realize that sin is not geographical, hence they took their sin with them! Another attempt to “rebrand” was seen in the form of “Christendom” as seen for over a thousand years, with the faith looking like a state-run organization managed by whoever the secular ruler was. This produced centuries of war and disputes between the church and the crown head of every state. Again, the faith is not determined by geography, which for example, is seen as normal by Islam. Some other bad marriages, as I have written about before, have been to wed the faith to the atheistic ideals of much of the so called “enlightenment”, reducing the faith to true propositions. Don’t get me wrong – the Christian faith contains many, many, true propositions, but it cannot be reduced to just that.
In more recent times, the faith has been adapted to secular business models, postmodern deconstruction, and trending now - stories and authenticity. And don’t forget of course “the prophetic”! The faith contains true stories; it is certainty authentic in the real sense. But it cannot.
Earlier I quoted Ephesians 4:15 “speaking the truth in love one to another”. Now I know this is a commandment for the church, but as I mentioned, I think this is the best approach when speaking to anyone you encounter. Notice how Jesus encountered people. He spoke the truth to the Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, and to the prostitutes, traitors, soldiers, and everyone else! It is a loving thing to tell someone the truth. Imagine your disdain for the Doctor who tells someone whose body is rife with cancer, that all they have is some back pain and go home and take some Tylenol? This happened to my cousin Henry. He died a few weeks later. As far as I am concerned, his kids should own that hospital. Speaking the truth is the commandment and therefore, I believe it is the exact correct path to reaching people for the Lord. Jesus called John the Baptist the greatest in the kingdom, and he certainly spoke the truth to everyone regardless of the cost!
We are commanded to speak the truth in love. As I have preached about repeatedly over the years, no one gets hated into the Kingdom. The commandment from the Apostle is to approach people gently, with respect. We have great songs about how Jesus showed grace and mercy to the worst people he encountered. I am living proof that the message can truly reach pond scum! (Yeah, I know Terri hates when I say that about myself but if the shoe fits…) Many years ago, one of my heroes, Francis Schaeffer, spoke about “The Final Apologetic”. This was a reminder that when we love like Jesus did, there is nothing in the cult/false religion playbook that they can counter with. We look at the outreach of Jesus to so many he wasn’t supposed to even talk with. We see him heal the worst cases of the sick. We see him forgive even those who were in the act of killing him. This can all be summarized by the two great commandments – when we truly love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and then when we love our neighbors like we love ourselves. Notice that both the great commandments are a knife to the sinner’s deepest desires. Without the Lord himself, we cannot do this. But with the Lord, all of this is on the table. Why are we so reluctant to do both? We are told by John the Baptist, the apostle Peter and most importantly the Lord Jesus himself, that the enemies of the Lord must repent. But this is practically a swear word in the church today. I know that many have used this as a club to beat the sheep with, but we have now swung the pendulum too far in the other direction. We have now put our light under a cover for fear that people won’t like us. We have put our salt back in the shakers, thinking that people will respond better to our compromises and our silence. Universalism, the belief that all are the children of God and that nobody is required to repent from their sin and idolatry/false belief is preached in some powerful pulpits in the American church. So called “inclusivism” teaches that all people are saved by Jesus through all the different cults and religions! This is also preached in some powerful places. But we are told by the Lord that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus. We are told in John 3:16 that because of what of Jesus did we must believe in Him or be lost forever. John prefaces that statement by telling us that God loved… This is my point; it was the love of God to send Jesus to pay for our sins. It is that same love of God that compels us to share what Jesus did to the highest and lowest in every land. When we love the unlovable, when we speak the truth to the deceitful, we are following Jesus directly. It is Christmas time – the love of the Lord was on full display leading from the incarnation to the crucifixion to the resurrection. This doesn’t need rebranding, it doesn’t need editing, it doesn’t need embellishing. It doesn’t need a sales pitch from the huckster/grifters of the “prophetic” – it needs to be lived out, spoken out, and believed. BIGGEST and BEST Christmas present ever y'all!
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