About the same time a second group of Mormon Scholars
seeking to historically authenticate the book of Mormon – after finding the
book of Mormon to be a historic fraud – were kicked out of the Mormon Church.
As a result Mormonism over the last decade has been seeking
to reinvent itself from the unscriptural cult of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young
– to a religion of “Authentic American Christianity”
Here now we see this campaign is now plumbing the depths of
the wild world of Mormon Mystery Babylon – by declaring that because it has
duped and or caught in its generational web, common decent and spiritually
hungry people, therefore it is “Truly a Christian Religion”.
Latter-day Saints themselves are the new
face of public relations for
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, several presenters said during
last week’s Mormon Media Studies Symposium on BYU’s campus.
“The most authentic and transparent ways to
dispel myths about the Church is through the lives of our members,” said Joel Campbell, associate professor of
communications at BYU.
The two-day conference was the first of its kind and brought together scholars
and practitioners to discuss a variety of topics relating to Mormonism and
media.
Keynote speaker Teryl Givens, a
literature and religion professor at the
Scott Swofford, who previously coordinated media for
the Church and is now director of content at BYU Broadcasting, said the
missionary department has done research for years on the most effective way to
share the gospel message. A catalyst to the new campaign was a Pew study that
said 51 percent of Americans know little or nothing about Mormons.
“We did the research and the most authentic and transparent way to do that
[introduce the church] is through the lives of our members,” Swofford said. “The way to connect with people most likely
to respond to our message is personally, not institutionally.”
Swofford said visitors to mormon.org (Here we see that Mormonism as part of this campaign has also has added Facebook style socialization to its web presence) have the opportunity to look at 4,000 to 5,000 profiles of Mormons who have entered their profile, given links to their social websites and answered questions about the gospel.
“You could literally type in, ‘I’m a 30-year-old female professional raised
Catholic’ and 20 names will pop up with similar backgrounds,” Swofford said. “I think the overriding message probably is
that when it’s personal then it’s authentic so that’s an approach we’re going
to start taking
at BYU Broadcasting as well.” (Start talking the
BYU Casting Call)
Otterson said in a recent interview on the Mormon
Channel that public perceptions are influenced just as much — if not more so —
by interactions with individual Church members.
“Elder Ballard started something a couple years ago when he
gave that speech in
Givens described the boldness of Parley
P. Pratt, who addressed the first anti-Mormon book, “Mormonism Unveiled” by writing a book with the same title.
“Yes, Mormonism will be unveiled,” Givens said, imitating Pratt, “but we will do the unveiling.”
Plenary speaker Sterling Van Wagenen also described
the Church’s shift from focus on the institutional image to the individual (Scripted Hollywood-style members images) by
presenting “Image and Authenticity: What We Believe About Ourselves.”
“What kind of vocabulary can we use to talk about what it means to represent
ourselves authentically?” Van Wagenen asked.
“The Book
of Jer3miah,” one of the first Mormon Internet TV series, was presented Friday
night to end the conference. Jared Cardon, film
professor and executive producer of the series, said the film is
unapologetically Mormon and compared it to shows like “Lost” and “24.” (Understand and grasp what the Mormon’s “Best and Brightest”
are saying here)
“I think there has been a nervousness about
sharing the things (The Unscriptural Teachings)
that we believe are true and that are fundamental parts of our faith, and when
we represent ourselves we leave that part out of the conversations,” Cardon said. “Those are the things that convert us.”
As we have spoken of in other articles there was a time when we were in the belly of the beast, working a job in marketing and direct sales in which we were trained and drilled for three hours every day of the work week and many times on road trips on weekends as well.
A brother in the Lord upon hearing some of our testimony
asked on more than one occasion why did we not teach him and those in his
church how to get in people’s doors. How to pitch Christ as
we did products. How to close one’s confession of Christ like one would
close a sales deal and make the sale stick.
The reason we write this is that we realize that a number of
people will read this article and think in their heart why don’t we, why
doesn’t my church do these things, or add these kind of things and techniques
to the arsenal of stuff they use already?
There are those in the church already that believe that it
is acceptable to God to persuade, to argue, to deceive, to trick, to bribe with
gifts, prizes, meals, parties, banquets, feasts etc. to bring a soul to Jesus
Christ. Much of this is employed in the
salvation call at the end of the service where special mood music is played,
and a very emotional appeal is given, after which pastors routinely ask
everyone to close their eyes and no one is to look, and then unabashedly beg
again and again and again for someone anyone to come to Christ.
All of these things are the powerless, earthly fleshly, sensual,
and at times devilish, the doctrines and traditions of men. Also of these seek the man of the flesh to as
it were to get the flesh of man to put upon itself a gown of righteousness.
Regardless if one person in ten or a hundred or a thousand really commits to
Jesus Christ in such doings – it is not worth it all as claimed by those who
employ this evil and perversion in the name of Jesus Christ. But rather the opposite is true that many are
defiled and forever corrupted from coming to Christ because they were at one
time duped and deceived into believing they had some kind of conversion or
change in their hearts.
John 6:25-26 And when they had found Him on
the other side of the sea, they said unto him, Rabbi, when camest
thou hither? Jesus answered them and said, Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did
eat of the loaves, and were filled. (Here contrary
to the conventional fleshly wisdom of the Church in this hour Jesus did not
look up at the crowd and say to his disciples; “We have water here, so what preventeth us from baptizing these”?
Jesus answered then and said verily, verily ye seek Me not --- because ye believed when you saw the
miracles. Jesus did not open the altar
rail for new disciples here, [Realize here that in just a few verses John 6:66
to be precise Jesus does the exact opposite by instead cleaning house and
ridding himself of almost all of His disciples]
Whereas in real life as opposed to spoken in parable [John
6: 25-26] Jesus rebuked the crowd that came to him for the bread of the natural
man. Jesus rejected using the natural bread as an opportunity to lure in
unbelievers so as to then be able to preach Christ to them.
Jesus for all time in this passage rejected for all time the
notion of compelling the people to become christians. Jesus is declaring here and in other passages
that our arguing or persuading, or using the wisdom of this world to make people
come to Christ is out of bounds and therefore the fruit of such deeds would be
rejected of the Father. Jesus here is
refuting the use of dishonesty, tricks, chicanery, bribing, lying, cheating,
stealing, and deceives people in any manner into becoming followers of Jesus
Christ.
For to do any of these things to compel one to come in unto
Christ is NOT the straight and narrow way. Rather it is the act of thieves and robbers
to somehow gin up the system to make their earthly deeds and earthly numbers to
look good all of which is an abomination unto the Lord.
when Jesus said Ye came unto me not because ye believed but
because I gave unto you bread.
And in this instance Jesus then walked away, he departed
these fair-weather believers miracle seeking believers. Choosing
instead to seed or water and to leave open the possibility that one day Peter,
Paul or someone else who come and reap the true harvest of that soul.