My Dear Brothers and Sisters

My Dear Brothers and Sisters - Ep.1000 Heart of the Matter with Shawn the Baptist (Shawn McCraney)

Transcripts: This is Heart of the Matter. In fact, without planning this, it's our 1,000th Heart of the Matter. Tonight, I am Shawn the Baptist, spiritual son of my father and his bride, preparing the way for her to come down, possibly again, to spiritually exist on the earth in some future unknown form or fashion. This is my family. and what might be seen as a first family or the first family of what we are calling the reclamation, recipients of His grace and truth, not by way of religion at all, and not because we are in any way special. But simply by faith and love, we present any family on earth, Protestant, Catholic, LDS, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or Jew, with children and without, divorced, single-parenting, rich, poor, conservative, liberal, straight, gay. These are Asian, African, North and South American families. They're European and Australian, from every lifestyle of any culture and gender, as each and every one of us are the spiritual children of our father and his bride, whether we accept him in faith or not. Our message tonight, however, and all future presentations of Heart of the Matter Hereafter is primarily focused on the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their unique role that it has played in the victorious work of our Father for nearly 200 short years. Let us try to explain what we have worked hard to understand that has led to this specific program tonight. May Yahava, let his name be known, be pleased in all that we say and do. My dear brothers and sisters in the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, specifically President Dallin Oaks and the Quorum of the Twelve, when our Father led the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt, He gave them the law through Moses at Sinai. The law was to serve as their, the nation's, schoolmaster to ultimately bring them to Christ the Messiah. Why? Paul said in his day, wherefore, the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, ready? That we might be justified by faith. Initially, the nation of Israel did not do that well under the law of Moses and repeatedly broke its central fundamental commandment, which was to have no other gods before him. In fact, after agreeing to do all that our father said that they should do, they almost immediately built a golden calf and began to worship it in his place. After approximately 850 years of them repeatedly and almost unitedly pursuing after idols of other nations and other spheres and realms, our Father led them into Babylonian captivity. When they came out, they appeared to have learned their lesson on worshipping and not worshipping the gods of other nations. But instead of seeing the purpose of his law and humbling themselves from their heart before him, they began to idolize the law itself, ostensibly making it their God again instead of him. This was the very environment that my brother, John the Baptist, faced, who came in the spirit of his brother, Elijah. When he came to prepare the way for the promised Messiah, our spiritual father, Yeshua of Nazareth, relative to the law and all that pertained to it, including a priesthood, a temple, temple worship, rites, ordinances, rituals, demands, John the Beloved plainly wrote the following. For the law was given by Moses. But grace and truth came by Yeshua the Christ. Paul added in Romans 10.4, For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Of course, the religiously devout leaders of the nation in that day were unwilling to part with their power and their wrongful interpretation and application of the law, and missing the purpose of it, rejected the Messiah who came and fulfilled it in his flesh. This error caused Paul to write to his brethren of the nation and say, Brethren, My heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God, who is Christ, I'm adding. As we're all well aware, instead of the Sanhedrin and religious leaders of that day receiving and letting our Father be their law, be their prophet, be their apostle and their righteousness, they put our Father to death. Partly out of envy, according to Matthew, even some thinking that they did God's will. But as you and I both know, the death could not hold our righteous father. And he rose victoriously from the grave, showing himself to several hundred onlookers, including his chosen 12 apostles, who he then sent into all of Israel to share their witness of him and his teachings and specifically his resurrection and victory. over sin, death, and ultimately Satan and hell. Before our Father ascended into the clouds, he promised his disciples that he would come back and save those who believed on him before what was called and prophesied of as the great and dreadful day of the Lord, promised hundreds and hundreds of years before by many, many different people. For about 30 years or so, his apostles went out first to the Jews, his brethren, and then to the Gentiles, as prophesied, gathering a faithful bride for our Father to come back and rescue from that great and dreadful day. The apostolic record, what people call the New Testament, is an account of their efforts. Only a small percentage appeared to believe and receive Yeshua as the Messiah, and only a small percentage of them were worthy of their role to be his bride. The rest were wiped out and dispersed when he came on that dreadful, prophesied day. But our Father was faithful to his promise and returned before the destruction of Jerusalem, the temple, the genealogies, the priesthood, and the demanded rules for living imposed upon them by God and man. Of the bride and her demanded condition in that day, Paul said of our father's intention that he might present it, the bride, to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it, the bride, should be holy and without blemish. Once saved from the destruction by her faith and purity and resolved to be his never idolatrous bride, Revelation describes her as the new Jerusalem. And Paul distinguishes this spiritual Jerusalem from the former by saying, but Jerusalem which is above is free. which is the mother of us all. After taking his bride up as the new Jerusalem above, all the former things of the biblical age were materially fulfilled and all things in heaven and earth and under the earth were put into our father's hands by his father. to whom he was completely obedient and became his only begotten. We presently maintain that then and there, the time of the Gentiles spoken of in the scripture began on earth. And the spirit of our Father that was given at Pentecost scoured the earth for those who sought him from their heart in spirit and truth. That spirit is still seeking for such who worship him from the heart in spirit and truth. Now, in the face of this summary, President Oaks, We maintain that everything before our Father's victory was put under his feet. And everything that has occurred over the past 2,000 years or time of the Gentiles, are you ready? He has allowed for his own intents and purposes. We reiterate everything that is happening, has happened, or will happen for the past 2,000 years our Father has allowed. From the patristic fathers to the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church under Constantine, to the Orthodox schism of 1054, to the Anabaptist sufferings, to the Protestant Reformation, to the pogroms and inquisitions, along with the continued existence of Judaism and Islam and Hinduism and Buddhism and the Baha'i and the Sikh and atheism and countless other human endeavors our Father has allowed and used to bring about to this very day and time. We suggest that by allowing all these things from the free will choices and imaginations of man, he has steadily unfolded his plan for using them in the future. But like the nation of Israel before us, almost every human expression he has allowed to exist has leaned or ended to some extent or another in some form of idolatry. Summarized by John when he wrote, For all that is in the world, The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of this world. In 1806, our brother, Joseph Smith Jr., was born into a very unique family, surrounded by about 1,700 years plus of Gentile ideas about the faith our father came and victoriously established. Seeing the chaos around him and listening to the input of his family, his grandfather, his father, and his mother, the results caused Brother Joseph also allowed to use his inspiration and gifts and skills to establish what ultimately became the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830, the very institution over which you, President Oaks, currently preside. possessing an extremely imaginative and syncretic gift for assimilating information and concepts from the Bible, Freemasonry, and other sources, Brother Joseph reinstituted a version of exactly. what God instituted through Moses. Except Joseph's version was a Gentile amalgamation of our Father's finished work aimed at restoring order while providing certainty to a people at that day and beyond seeking to honor God through the whole of their lives and not just through a single religious expression once a week. Like a Moses before him, Joseph gave them a newfangled Gentile form of law. And then like Joshua after Moses, Brigham Young led the saints into an American promised land, even equipped with its own Dead Sea, from where we have broadcasted this show for over 20 years. Again, like Moses before him, Brother Joseph introduced what would be another priesthood. Temple rites in an abundance of temple sites and locations, rituals, and above all, laws. I mean innumerable laws that fell from the lips of the leaders of the church and which in this world, this world, serve to create order, wealth, and power. But in the human heart, they create something altogether different and opposed to what our Father established through His life, death, and resurrection. And that's bondage, pride, condemnation of others, and the opposite of what our Father gave to the world. Remember, Our father allowed Joseph Smith to do this and would use it all to bring about his ultimate intended purposes at some day in the future. Some of the more advanced and inspired factors on Brother Joseph's work included an ingenious superstructure of ecclesiastical polity, or church governance, which, operating by law and a priesthood that he created, he also created the idea of a continuing, evolving revelation. through its leaders, and the ability to change direction as modern leaders decide, including the ability for leadership to even renounce earlier revelations from men formerly in charge. We know that the LDS Church has taken advantage of this several times and used this liberty in denouncing former practices and beliefs, even books like The Miracle of Forgiveness by the prophet Spencer W. Kimball and books like Bruce R. McConkie's Gospel Doctrine. But they have also... stopped the once-demanded material practice of the doctrine of plural marriage found in Doctrine and Covenants 132. They renounced Brigham Young's firmly established Adam-God doctrine, and they ended the ban on blacks and the priesthood in the 1970s. All of those doctrines, practices, policies, once believed absolute, were changed by LDS leaders like you. According to folklore, Brother Joseph also spoke of a day when the Constitution of the United States would hang by a thread and the LDS leadership would ride in and save it as if on a white horse. But what is not folklore? was Brother Joseph also foresaw a day when the church would become as unsteady as the ark in King David's day, which Uzzah reached to steady and was struck down and killed. It caused Joseph to prophesy the following, which is currently found in the modern LDS Doctrine and Covenants. while his bowels shall be a fountain of truth. to set in order the house of God and to arrange by lot the inheritance of the saints whose names are found and the names of their fathers and of their children enrolled in the book of the law of God. While that man who was called of God and appointed that put forth his hand to steady the ark of God shall fall by the shaft of death. like as a tree that is smitten by the vivid shaft of lightning. That's Doctrine and Covenants 85, 7 and 8. Like the prophecies in the Old Testament, this utterance had application both in Joseph Smith's day when he said it, but also it had a future purpose. We maintain that the future application of those words have arrived. But unlike those claiming the title of the one mighty and strong in the past and even in the present, and seeking to create their own vision and followers from their own minds, we believe and preach and teach that the one mighty and strong, holding the scepter of power in his hand, clothed with light for a covering, whose mouth shall utter words, eternal words, while his bowels shall be a fountain of truth, is nothing more than the presence of our Father. in spirit and truth, seeking to reclaim his finished work in the world and to use the LDS empire he allowed to grow in affluence, wealth, and power for what is to come. The question then might be, if the vision of Brother Smith was correct, why is the church needing to be steadied today? The answer lies, in our opinion, in the words of James, who said, relative to the law of Moses in that day, for whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet fails in one point of it, he is guilty of all. What that means is, you can keep the whole law, But if you break one commandment, you're guilty of breaking the whole thing. What this implies directly to what our Father allowed Brother Joseph to create is that in the end, what it ultimately did to the membership, while effective in building a material kingdom of wealth and power, is it put the people in bondage. It made them proud if they thought they were obedient to the law, which nobody could be because it's impossible. Or it made them guilty and sinful, which frequently caused them to be seen as disobedient and or hypocritical liars and denying that. And they became altogether disingenuous before God because we all know that nobody on earth has ever been capable of keeping the whole LDS law. None. Our family has devoted itself to understanding these things relative to... Most of the claimed historic elements of Christianity, and this day as proclaimed Yeshuans, humbly say to you, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that our Father, the One mighty and strong, has allowed us to prepare and establish through over 20 years of exploration and compiling, testing, making mistakes, changing what is needed for our Father to steady the ark and the whys and the whats and the hows of how it should be done. In those years, we have never sought to start our own religion. We have never tried to utterly destroy all that the Father allowed Brother Joseph to create, but have frankly sought to do exactly what he told us to do. Please understand, we know we are nobody and nobodies in the scheme of your personal prestige and influence in this world. We have no authority, no better connection to God than anybody else, and really possess nothing of material value other than what he has blessed us with as a family, as devotees to him alone in the way, along the way. By the way, we were told, Mary and I, that we would lose our family, and that our family would go to the ways of the world if we ever left the church. Mary was advised to divorce me when I fell from grace. None of the things that we were warned against by threats of the law have happened. In fact, the opposite have happened to us. He has more than abundantly blessed us. Each of my children, all of their husbands, and their children. Do we have problems? Of course we do. We're humans. But no more problems than a standard LDS, standard Catholic, or standard devout Baptist. You know, that's part of life. But in terms of our family at this point, trying to at least walk in faith and love, we have been more than abundantly blessed. Because of the disparity between you and your position of influence and our lack of all such things, we realize that listening to us will go contrary to probably the way you would receive this message. That you may even laugh at this. At least your followers have been laughing at things like this. And for this reason or purpose, we come to you in the spirit of Elijah and the spirit of John the Baptist and extend what must be, in the end, a work of the Spirit. Or not. We are not doing it and we have not tried to do it through mass appeal to growth, mass appeal to money, or to be online and really try to push it out in every possible way. We've tried a few things thinking that was what we were supposed to do, but at this point we have said our Father has taken it. He will do it. So this is what we're doing. We have created an enormous body of researched work that awaits implementation by the church over which you preside. We await the invitation to meet with you face to face and to explain everything again as prepared for what we feel might be the spiritual realization of Revelation 21 through 22. 5 in the future, and perhaps from a historicist model. While we wait, we are traveling and meeting people in the wilderness, so to speak, as John the Baptist, Delaney and I, seeking to unite all people, irrespective of faith, under a banner of absolute, unconditional mercy. We are doing what the LDS youth could and should be doing today, but aren't. Because they're still under the law. We will continue to teach the principles absent in the present day church to those interested every Sunday, like we have. We have done this free of charge or obligation for 20 years plus. Every week that we wait on you to respond, we will host this program Tuesday nights and explain further and in detail what needs to change in the current existing Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but more importantly, why it needs to change. We place all of our efforts in the hands of the Spirit of our Father, trusting that He will be the one to make it prosper and happen or not. In the meanwhile, we wait on you. President Oaks, for an invitation to come and meet with you face-to-face, perhaps privately, maybe in your offices, along with your counselors or the Council of the Twelve. Whatever it is, whatever you decide, we await on that invitation. We will do nothing else to reach you than do this show right now. There will be no more petitions. We won't encourage people to give us an inside scoop or network with anyone to make this happen. We are leaving it in the hands of our Father. And He will either make it happen or He won't. If not, we understand the following. You are not hearing Him. If that's the case, we will continuously do what Elijah did with the prophets of Baal. and challenge you in your claims of representing our Father, the true and living God, and the church over which you govern will continue to be increasingly unsteadied. I want to appeal to my trust in the work of the Spirit at this time, having said this. My use of this will certainly be mocked and criticized, laughed at, but if you are truly inspired by the Spirit of my Father, He will use what I'm about to say, and you will know that my request and our request is from Him. I believe that the Spirit of our Father will bring to your mind a distant memory which you most likely have completely forgotten and would never remember on your own. You were speaking at a multi-state conference in Anaheim, California, a number of decades ago. I was part of an organized choir from our stake, embarrassingly enough, and attended with my childhood friend, Dr. Stephen Rudd, who is a faithful member of the church and I believe still serves as one of your stake presidents in Southern California today. To jog your memory, you told what I thought was really sort of a sketchy joke about a watermelon farmer at that event and I also recall that Howard W. Hunter was in attendance. When your speech was over, you remained on the stand and greeted those who had formed a long line to come up and shake your hand. My childhood friend Steve and I were standing on the floor of the convention center and watched from about 50 yards away from that position with a hundred or so people between us and the stage. And we made observations and comments about what had happened in the event and everything else. So at one point, though, someone stepped toward you. I think it was a woman. You smiled at her. And you took her hand. And you held it while you greeted her. But while she began to ramble on and on, you did this. Now I'm going to pretend like the camera is me in the audience looking at you. And I'm going to pretend like I am you on the stand. And Brother Oaks, you did this to the woman. And then all of a sudden, you did this, and I'm going to count how long this happened. When you looked me in the eye, you went directly over the whole audience and you looked at me. So you're shaking her hand, you're listening, and then while you're holding her hand and she's talking, you went, and then you turned back and smiled and kept that conversation going, whatever it was. This was not by chance. This was a direct communication from your eyes, heart, to mind. Now maybe you thought, there's the evil one. Or maybe you thought, why, there's a mighty fine looking guy. I don't know what you thought. But our eyes locked. This was not a figment of my imagination. I believe I even mentioned it to Steve, the guy staring at me. And we looked at each other for that long of a time. You then, without any smile, wink, blink, nod, looked back to that woman and went on. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't believe for a second that a man like you and in your place and power and position and all the experience you've had with thousands and thousands and thousands of people, you would ever remember me and looking me in the eye like that. I'm not that egotistical to think that that would be something in your memory, but I do believe completely. that our father can bring all things to your remembrance and that if he is in this he will bring this to yours along with you somehow watching this video not by our efforts but by his when he does president oaks i believe it's incumbent on you in this your presidency over the church corporation to face me and my family with your counselors in the 12 and anyone else you desire, if that's the fact, and hear what our Father has for you to hear in the studying of the ark. I trust, President Oaks, that by the spirit of our Father, you have ears to hear, eyes to see, and that the time has come that the one mighty and strong is there to steady the ark of the church in these latter days and in preparation for what will be the spiritual coming down of his bride to the earth. I am Shawn the Baptist. preparing the way for the spiritual realization historically probably cycled through time of Revelation 21 through 22.5 to possibly occur and again in the future. Unlike my brother John and his brother Elijah, I am completely unworthy. I'm a reprobate. I'm unworthy to tie your shoe, let alone any of the saints or true Christians that have gone before me or around us today. But I was absolutely called. beginning in 1997, and have responded in sold-out faith ever since without equivocation on anything that has been false or predatory on others to do what our Father has prepared us to do, which I'm going to summarize in conclusion of this message tonight. One, to prepare the theological content for his coming administration, correcting the former ideations and notions of Brother Joseph before us, to go out into the wilderness and meet any person of faith or inclination who wants to unite in peace, love, and understanding according to their respective beliefs through the spirit of unadulterated mercy. Our first meeting was in Cache Valley last Saturday and our second will be this coming Saturday in the wilderness of Ogden. to share his clarifications of the faith with anyone to freely accept in the world of any faith, and to offer these clarifications and insights first to you as president of the Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and to patiently allow you, or those who follow in after you should you pass, to be led by the Spirit of our Father before the bride comes down from above. Should you choose to ignore what we are saying and refuse to hear what Brother Joseph predicted on behalf of the institution over which you preside, I believe another institution, the Catholics, the Baptists, some denomination, will step in and take the content and begin to govern in preparation of the spiritual administration that might come down upon the earth as we've imagined. Hard as it to believe, I also believe the empire my father allowed to flourish and exist from the mind of Joseph will never return to its former strength, even with all of its wealth and power and riches in present day. The choice is yours. We have waited until tonight to ready and steady and prepare these findings. We have given ideas along the way as we've blindly sort of looked through everything as we've pursued the course. The time to act demands action. We've done our part and trust in the power of our Father to do the rest, whatever it may be. And while I am obviously nothing more than just another weirdo coming into the esteemed power play of overseeing men and women over an institution and challenging what seems like an impenetrable fortress, if you can hear my father and humble yourself like Nicodemus of old did, we will work together to right what was temporary and useful but is now wrong and unsteady. If you won't do this, I believe our witness will, in short order, become an Elijah against the prophets of Baal, a John the Baptist confronting the Sanhedrin with no amount of money, power, or wealth to withstand the power against what my father will bring. We sincerely pray that you have the humility of heart to hear and respond. If you are his, truly, you will. If you're not, you won't. Simple as that. And this is the first call of an Elijah against the prophets. Show us your God. What can he do? For the rest of you, as you are inclined and willing, freely join the Shawn the Baptist team, that's Delaney and I, in Ogden this Saturday for one hour, from one to two in the afternoon, as we try to accomplish bringing unity to people of faith through a heart of mercy. With my youngest daughter Delaney, my partner in ministry, the wife of my youth of 40 plus years, Mary, our other two daughters who have all played a role in the ministry, along with their three amazing, beautiful, strong, good husbands, and then the four grandchildren they've given us, who I believe serve like other children today as the future of the faith. We love all people in the name and spirit of our Father. What you have just heard is 20 years of solid effort to study a church we have always valued and loved. Test everything and thank you for your time and consideration.