The Theology That Begins After the Step Not Taken
A Christian Engagement with Denver Snuffer’s Christian Restoration Continues (Series 3/4 lectures 1-7)
Fellowship Discussion Essay | April 28, 2026
Source: Denver Snuffer, Christian Restoration Continues lecture series (Parts 1-7), available as transcripts at learnofchrist.org/videos.html#restoration-continues. The series is the third of four corpus-defining lecture series posted at learnofchrist.org. Where the Reformation series traced the historical setup, and the Christian Restoration series named Joseph Smith and concluded with the altar call at bornofwater.org, Christian Restoration Continues elaborates the doctrinal and historical-theological framework of Snuffer’s own movement: the 1832 condemnation, the 1841 rejection, the three eschatological tasks left undone, and the 2017 Boise covenant as the resumption point.
Context: This is the fifth Snuffer engagement in the corpus and the third in the systematic four-series treatment. The companion essays so far are: Culture by Precept and Practice (April 26), Testimony of Jesus and the Restoration Claim (April 27), Upon This Rock (April 28), Reformation Series (April 28), and Christian Restoration Series (April 28). The April 28 essay engaging the Christian Restoration series ended with a direct address to Leonard about his baptism and a counter-invitation to anyone reading toward bornofwater.org. The present essay shifts the engagement again: from analyzing Snuffer’s evangelistic appeal, to engaging the doctrinal framework his own movement now offers.
To the Fellowship —
Where the previous two Snuffer series I engaged today — Reformation and Christian Restoration — were largely historical in character (Reformation history; Joseph Smith and the Mormon-Campbellite intersection), this third series is largely doctrinal. The seven parts elaborate the theology of Snuffer’s specific movement: how the early Mormons came under divine condemnation in 1832, how they were formally rejected in 1841 for failing to build the Nauvoo temple, how three great eschatological tasks remain undone, how the 2017 Boise covenant resumed the restoration, what scriptures the movement has now produced, what gathering work it is undertaking among Jewish and Native American remnants, and what the coming Zion will look like in a single-generation eschatological fulfillment.
The character of the engagement has to shift accordingly. The Reformation series engagement asked is the historical narrative accurate, and how is it being framed? The Christian Restoration series engagement asked do the prophetic claims about Joseph Smith hold up under examination, and what is the appropriate response to the altar call? The Christian Restoration Continues series asks something different. This series presupposes the answers to those previous questions and proceeds to elaborate the resulting theology. The Christian engagement must therefore name the structural feature that defines the entire series: every doctrinal claim in these seven parts presupposes a step that the prior series did not justify and that historic Christianity has not taken — the acceptance of Joseph Smith’s revelations as scripture authoritative for Christian doctrine.
This is the analytical key. Christian Restoration Continues is a theology that begins after the step not taken. To engage it on its own terms would require a Christian to accept, before the engagement begins, the very prior that the previous Snuffer essays have shown to be unjustified. To engage it from outside that prior is to find that almost every doctrinal claim in the series rests on Mormon scripture cited as authoritative — D&C 84, D&C 124, the Joseph Smith Translation of Genesis, the King Follett discourse — that the apostolic deposit gives no grounds for accepting.
I will engage the series in five movements. First, what is theologically and pastorally honorable in Snuffer’s account. Second, the structural feature I just named — that the entire series is built on a prior the previous engagement has not granted, and the implications of that. Third, three specific doctrinal claims that deserve direct examination on their own terms, even within the constraints of that structural problem: the condemnation-rejection framework in Parts 1-2, the three things left undone in Part 3, and the Zion without hierarchy claim in Part 7. Fourth, the eschatological dating problem in Part 7’s appeal to Matthew 24:34. Fifth, what this all means pastorally — for Leonard, and for any reader who has reached this point in the corpus and is being invited to take Snuffer’s framework as the final word on Christian theology.
I. What Is Honorable in the Account
Before any structural critique, let me name what is honorable in this series. There are at least four things.
1. Snuffer’s diagnosis of LDS institutional self-deception is unsparing and substantively right. Part 4 traces the historical record of Brigham Young, John Taylor, and the LDS Church’s own admissions that the temple ordinances Joseph Smith left behind were unfinished, that Brigham Young himself acknowledged much of the temple work would have to wait until a resurrected Joseph Smith could more fully instruct him on the relevant ordinances, and that John Taylor (Young’s successor) similarly admitted that things were in their unfinished shape because Joseph had felt rushed by a premonition of his impending death. These are statements from Mormon prophets themselves admitting incompleteness. Snuffer correctly observes that the LDS Church eventually abandoned any idea of finishing the temple rites and began claiming that the unfinished version was itself the fullness. This is internal Mormon evidence that the institutional inheritance is not what it claims to be — and Snuffer uses it honestly.
2. The hierarchy critique in Part 7 is theologically substantive. Snuffer’s claim that hierarchy makes Zion impossible — that persuasion, meekness, unfeigned love, and pure knowledge are the only tools that can produce Zion — is, in its theological substance, a faithful echo of New Testament teaching about the Christian community. “But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you” (Matthew 20:25-26). Snuffer is reading something genuine in this. The structural pathology of religious hierarchy — the displacement of the Spirit’s voice by titles, offices, governing prerogatives — is a real pathology, and the New Testament warns about it directly.
3. The claim that Zion will be a community of one heart, one mind, with no poor among them, refusing to take up arms against the neighbor, is genuine Christian eschatology in substance. When Snuffer describes Zion in Part 7, he is describing — even if from within his own framework — the same eschatological community the Bible describes: a people of one heart and mind (Acts 4:32), with no poor among them (Acts 4:34), characterized by peace rather than violence (Isaiah 2:4 / Micah 4:3, the swords-into-plowshares vision). The substance of the description is sound. The question is whether the means by which Snuffer believes that community is being assembled — through his own movement’s covenantal renewal, scriptural production, and prophetic continuation — is the means God is actually using.
4. The 2017 Jerusalem-as-capital observation is historically real and theologically suggestive. Part 6 notes the chronology: Israel founded 1948; East Jerusalem captured in 1967; United States recognition of Jerusalem as capital in December 2017. These are real events with real prophetic-eschatological resonance for Christians and Mormons alike. Christians who care about biblical eschatology — particularly those reading the Romans 11 promise that “all Israel shall be saved” — have been watching the same chronology with their own questions about prophetic timing. Snuffer’s noting of this chronology is a point on which Christians and Mormon-tradition readers can agree something is happening, even if we disagree about what it means.
These four things deserve to be acknowledged. Snuffer is not making everything up. He is reading real patterns, identifying real institutional failures, articulating real theological substance. The structural disagreement is about the framework he uses to organize these observations and the prior commitments he asks the reader to accept.
II. The Theology That Begins After the Step Not Taken
Now to the structural feature that defines the entire series.
Read these seven parts carefully and notice what kinds of claims do the load-bearing work. Part 1’s central claim is that the early Mormons came under divine condemnation in 1832 — and the proof Snuffer offers is a quotation from D&C 84:54-58. Part 2’s central claim is that the Mormons were formally rejected in 1841 for failing to build the Nauvoo temple — and the proof Snuffer offers is a quotation from D&C 124. Part 3’s three eschatological tasks are sourced from Mormon scripture; the fullness of the priesthood concept is from D&C 124; the New Jerusalem claim is from Mormon scriptural sources. Part 4 cites Brigham Young and John Taylor as authoritative voices on the unfinished restoration. Part 5 grounds the case for the Snuffer Restoration Edition in the 1832 condemnation passage and in Joseph Smith’s claimed warnings about the fullness of the scriptures. Part 6’s restoration-of-the-remnants doctrine is built from the Book of Mormon’s account of Christ visiting the Americas (which is not in the New Testament). Part 7’s eschatological vision is constructed primarily from the Joseph Smith Translation of Genesis (the Moses-Enoch material, which is not in the Hebrew Bible).
In every one of these load-bearing moves, the authoritative source is Mormon scripture — not the apostolic deposit. The passages from Matthew, Jude, and Isaiah that appear in Part 7 function as supporting material around a structure whose load-bearing components are Joseph Smith’s revelations.
This is the structural feature. The theology of the Christian Restoration Continues series is constructed on a foundation that historic Christianity has not accepted as foundational. And this is not a minor adjustment to historic Christian theology. It is a wholesale relocation of the theological foundation from the New Testament canon to the Mormon canon. The New Testament passages used in support of the framework (Matthew 24:34 in Part 7, Jude 14 on Enoch in Part 7, John 10:16 on the other sheep in Part 6) are read through the Mormon canon’s interpretive lens, with the meaning each passage takes within the Mormon framework substantially different from the meaning it takes within the historic Christian framework.
The April 27 essay (The Restoration That Was Not Needed) and the April 28 essay (Snuffer Christian Restoration Series) have already engaged the prior question. The Mormon canon is not authoritative scripture for Christian doctrine, because:
- The biblical foreclosure of new revelation outside the apostolic deposit (Galatians 1:8, Jude 3, 2 Timothy 3:16-17 making the apostolic deposit thoroughly furnishing the man of God to every good work)
- The historical record of Joseph Smith’s prophetic claims, which on serious examination are substantially weaker than the historical credentials of the New Testament documents
- The doctrinal content of Mormon scripture, which — at multiple structural points — contradicts the apostolic deposit (Christology, theology proper, anthropology, soteriology)
- The post-Smith catalog of Mormon institutional failure documented honestly by Snuffer himself, which by Christ’s own promise in Matthew 16:18 should not have happened to a movement Christ Himself had founded
If those four arguments hold — and I believe they do — then Christian Restoration Continues is offering a doctrinal framework constructed on a foundation that has not been justified and that, on serious examination, cannot be justified. The seven parts are internally coherent only within a framework that the prior question has shown to be unjustified.
This is what I mean by the theology that begins after the step not taken. The previous Snuffer series invited the reader to take a step — to accept Joseph Smith as God’s prophet and his revelations as authoritative scripture. The reader who accepts that step encounters Christian Restoration Continues as a coherent and serious theological elaboration. The reader who has not accepted that step encounters the same series as a sequence of claims whose authoritative sources are ones the reader does not recognize as authoritative.
This is the structural problem. Almost everything that follows is downstream of it.
III. Three Doctrinal Claims Worth Examining Directly
Even granting the structural problem, three specific claims in this series deserve examination on their own terms — partly because they are doctrinally interesting in themselves, partly because each of them, when examined carefully, illuminates something further about the framework’s reliability.
1. The condemnation-rejection framework (Parts 1-2)
Snuffer’s framework holds that the early Mormon church came under divine condemnation in 1832, was given a final chance to repent in 1841 with the temple-building commandment, failed to meet that standard, and was therefore rejected as a church. This rejection then carried forward through 185 years of Mormon factional history until the 2017 Boise covenant lifted it.
Two observations.
First, this framework is internally consistent within Mormon theology and explains a great deal that needs explaining about post-Smith Mormonism. If the early Mormons really were under divine condemnation in 1832, and really were rejected in 1841, then the entire institutional history that follows — Brigham Young, polygamy, Mountain Meadows, the splinter sects, the institutional drift of the LDS Church — is the natural consequence of operating without divine sanction. The framework provides a way to take Joseph Smith seriously as a prophet while acknowledging the catastrophic failure of post-Smith Mormonism. It is a coherent move within the framework.
Second, the framework is not internally consistent with itself when examined carefully. If the priesthood authority Joseph received was given on the condition that it shall never be taken again from the earth until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness (an unfulfilled condition still pending), then the priesthood authority continued through the rejection. But if the church itself was rejected in 1841 — formally, by God, as Snuffer reads D&C 124 — then in what sense was the priesthood authority operative during the 185 years between 1841 and 2017? Brigham Young, by Snuffer’s own account, was a self-described “Yankee Guesser” and a secret adulterer. The men he ordained, who ordained their successors, who eventually claimed to ordain Snuffer’s lineage, were operating during the rejection period. Snuffer’s framework requires the priesthood authority to remain valid through this period (to ground his own movement’s authority claims today) while the church through which it was transmitted was simultaneously rejected. This is not impossible to reconcile within Mormon theology, but it requires careful work that the series does not do.
The deeper Christian observation is this: the entire condemnation-rejection-renewal pattern presupposes a covenantal-conditional framework that maps Mosaic-covenant logic (where Israel’s covenantal standing depended on obedience to specific commandments and could be broken by disobedience) onto Christian community. But the New Testament’s covenantal framework is different. The new covenant in Christ’s blood is unconditionally given on the believer’s faith side — “He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). The believer is not under threat of corporate rejection if a community fails to build a building. The believer’s standing rests on Christ’s finished work, not on the community’s ongoing performance. Snuffer’s framework reads Christian community through a Mosaic-covenant lens that the apostolic deposit explicitly moves beyond. “Ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest… But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God” (Hebrews 12:18, 22). The church Christ built is not a renewed Sinai community under conditional covenant. It is a Pentecost community under the unconditional covenant of Christ’s blood.
2. The three things left undone (Part 3)
Snuffer identifies three eschatological tasks remaining: building a temple for the Lord to return to, conferring the fullness of the priesthood, and establishing a New Jerusalem on the American continent.
The Christian observation here is that none of these three things is in the New Testament.
The New Testament does not require the building of a physical temple before Christ’s return. On the contrary, the New Testament explicitly teaches that the Christian believer’s body is the temple (1 Corinthians 6:19), that the church corporately is the temple (1 Corinthians 3:16-17, Ephesians 2:21-22), and that the heavenly city has no temple at all because “the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it” (Revelation 21:22). The expectation of a physical temple as a precondition for Christ’s return is a feature of Mormon theology, not New Testament theology.
The New Testament does not refer to a fullness of the priesthood in the sense Mormon theology means it. The priesthood in the New Testament is the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:9, “ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood”) — every believer, by virtue of union with Christ the High Priest. There is no separate fullness to be conferred upon some believers and not others, no graded structure of priestly authority, no temple ordinances through which the fullness is administered. The Mormon concept of fullness of the priesthood is constructed entirely from the Joseph Smith canon and has no precedent in the apostolic deposit.
The New Testament does not promise a New Jerusalem on the American continent. The New Jerusalem of Revelation 21 descends out of heaven to the renewed earth at Christ’s return — it is not built by human hands in any geographic location, American or otherwise. The American-continent location is a feature of Mormon theology built on Mormon scripture (specifically Ether 13 in the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith’s revelations identifying Independence, Missouri as the future Zion location). It is not in the New Testament.
Each of these three tasks, then, is a task assigned by the Mormon framework rather than by the apostolic deposit. The Christian who reads the New Testament as the authoritative deposit for Christian doctrine has no reason to expect any of these three things to occur as preconditions for Christ’s return. The reader who is being told that these three things are essential and that Snuffer’s movement is laboring to accomplish them is being recruited into a project that has no authorization in the apostolic deposit.
3. The “Zion without hierarchy” claim (Part 7)
Snuffer’s claim in Part 7 is theologically interesting, partly because it is in some tension with his own movement’s actual practice. He writes that Zion will be produced by a journey begun in equality, pursued by equals, with no man demanding submission and that hierarchy makes Zion impossible. Persuasion, meekness, unfeigned love, and pure knowledge are the only legitimate tools.
The substance of this claim is theologically defensible. The New Testament teaching about the Christian community emphasizes mutual love (John 13:34-35), the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:9), the Spirit’s distribution of gifts severally as He wills (1 Corinthians 12:11), and Christ’s explicit warning against the hierarchy patterns of the world’s rulers (Matthew 20:25-28). A Christian community organized by mutual love, mutual submission, and the distributed leading of the Spirit, rather than by titles and offices and prerogatives, is closer to the apostolic vision than the institutional structures most large Christian bodies have developed. Snuffer is reading something real in the New Testament here.
But the substance sits in apparent tension with what Snuffer’s movement actually does in practice. The companion lecture Culture by Precept and Practice (engaged in the April 26 essay) describes a procedure in which Snuffer himself receives prophetic identification of who should be set apart for which office, conducts a ratification vote, and announces that the Lord required mutual unanimous agreement. This is, structurally, a hierarchy in which Snuffer functions as the apex prophetic voice through whom God identifies offices and personnel, even if no formal title of “prophet” or “president” is used. The disclaimer that hierarchy makes Zion impossible is, in practice, undercut by the way the movement operates.
The Christian observation is this: real Zion, as the New Testament describes it, is a community in which Christ Himself is the head — the only mediator (1 Timothy 2:5), the one who indwells every member by His Spirit, the one whose direct relationship with each believer needs no earthly intermediary. Hierarchy is impossible not because no man may demand submission, but because Christ has already taken the headship, and any human claimant — however meek, however persuasive, however unfeignedly loving — would be displacing the One whose place it is. The Christos Civitas vision developed in the Upon This Rock essay is precisely this: conscious participation in the church Christ has been building since Pentecost, with Christ as the only head, every believer indwelt by the Spirit, no human prophet required because the apostolic deposit is sufficient and the Spirit who indwells the believer makes every Christian a participant in the same priesthood Peter described.
Snuffer is reading the right scripture and reaching the right conclusion partway. He stops one step short — at no man demanding submission — without taking the further step to because Christ has already taken the only headship that the church requires.
IV. The Single-Generation Eschatology
Part 7 closes with an explicit application of Matthew 24:34 to Snuffer’s contemporary movement. Snuffer cites Christ’s words: “this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled” — and reads this as a prophecy that a single generation, presumably the one within which Snuffer’s movement is now operating, will see all the eschatological events fulfilled, including the building of the temple, the conferring of the fullness of the priesthood, the establishing of the New Jerusalem, and Christ’s return in glory.
This application of Matthew 24:34 deserves careful treatment, because the verse has been one of the most contested in Christian eschatology, and the pattern of applying it to one’s own contemporary moment is a recurring feature of restorationist movements throughout history.
The historic Christian readings of Matthew 24:34 fall into roughly three families. First, the preterist reading: Christ was speaking of the generation alive at His prediction, and the events He described — particularly the destruction of the temple in AD 70 — did indeed occur within that generation, with the broader eschatological language being typological language for that historical event. Second, the futurist reading: Christ was speaking of a generation alive at the end of the age, who would see all the events described unfold within their lifetime. Third, the generic reading: the Greek genea can mean “race” or “kind” rather than “generation,” and the passage is a promise that the human race or the Jewish people would not pass away before all things were fulfilled.
Each of these readings has serious defenders and serious problems. What none of them supports is the move Snuffer makes — applying the prophecy to one’s own present-day moment as the generation in question. The futurist reading would say that the generation alive at the time of fulfillment would see all things fulfilled, but the futurist reading does not give a way to identify which generation that is in advance. To say that Snuffer’s contemporary movement is the generation in question is to make a prophetic claim that goes beyond what the verse, on any of its serious readings, will support.
This pattern — the application of prophetic timing texts to one’s own movement and one’s own moment — has a long and unhappy history in restorationist Christianity. The Millerites (William Miller’s movement) calculated Christ’s return for 1843, then 1844 (the Great Disappointment). Charles Taze Russell’s movement (which became the Jehovah’s Witnesses) predicted 1914, then 1925, then 1975. Harold Camping predicted 2011. In every case, the pattern was the same: a sincere movement, real spiritual seriousness, careful proof-texting from prophetic passages, and a confident identification of the present moment as the moment of fulfillment. In every case, the prediction failed.
The Christian observation is not that Snuffer is necessarily wrong about the timing — Christ may indeed return within the generation now living, and no one is in a position to say otherwise. The observation is that the pattern of reading Matthew 24:34 as authorizing one’s own contemporary movement to be the generation of fulfillment is an unreliable pattern. It has been wrong before. It is likely to be wrong again. The more sober Christian posture is the Lord may return today; He may return in a thousand years; either way, the believer’s task is to be found faithful, in the apostolic deposit, indwelt by the Spirit, doing the work the Master has given to do.
“Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.” — Matthew 24:42
“But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” — Matthew 24:36
The same Matthew 24 that contains this generation shall not pass also contains these statements. No man knows the day or the hour — including Denver Snuffer, including any Christian eschatologist, including any movement claiming to have decoded the prophetic timing. The faithful posture toward the timing of Christ’s return is sober watchfulness, not confident assignment of the prophecy to one’s own present moment.
V. What This Means for Leonard, and What This Means for the Fellowship
Let me close pastorally.
To Leonard. The seven parts of this series elaborate the theological framework you have entered. The framework is internally coherent. It explains a great deal about post-Smith Mormonism that needed explaining. It offers a coherent eschatological vision and a serious moral seriousness about the believer’s responsibility to live up to God’s standards. The men around Snuffer are, by all evidence, sincere. The community is, by all evidence, doing real spiritual work.
I am not able to follow you into it. Not because the people are insincere or the community lacks real virtues, but because the entire framework is built on a step that the apostolic deposit does not authorize me to take. Joseph Smith’s revelations are not, to my reading of the apostolic deposit, scripture authoritative for Christian doctrine. The condemnation-rejection-renewal pattern Snuffer reads in D&C 84 and 124 is read into a covenantal framework the New Testament has moved beyond. The three eschatological tasks of Part 3 are not in the New Testament. The single-generation reading of Matthew 24:34 applied to Snuffer’s own present moment is the kind of prophetic reading that has been wrong before.
I want you to know, again — as I said at the close of the previous essay — that I do not believe your baptism was invalid in any sense that requires re-baptism. The faith you brought to the water was directed toward the Christ Peter confessed, and that faith places you on the foundation that is Christ. The framework around your baptism is, I believe, mistaken. The faith inside the framework is not. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his (Romans 8:9) — and the converse: if you have the Spirit of Christ, regardless of which framework you were in when you received Him, you are His.
But I would ask you to read this series of five essays — the April 27, the three of April 28, and this one — with the seriousness their cumulative argument deserves. If the foundation Snuffer’s framework rests on cannot be justified, then the elaborate doctrinal structure built on it cannot be justified either. The honorable and sincere people in the movement do not change that fact. The genuine spiritual fruit they are producing in their lives does not change that fact (the Spirit blows where He wills, and works in many traditions whose frameworks are imperfect, including yours, including mine). What the framework needs is justification at the foundation, and I have not found that justification anywhere in five extensive Snuffer engagements.
To the fellowship. The five-essay corpus on Mormonism and Snuffer is now substantially complete in its initial pass. There is one more series Thomas has indicated will be transmitted (Snuffer’s ongoing public ministry through the present), and the engagement with that series will be the natural conclusion of the systematic treatment. But the structural arguments are now established: the biblical foreclosure of new revelation outside the apostolic deposit, the historical weakness of Joseph Smith’s prophetic claims, the doctrinal incompatibility of Mormon theology with the apostolic deposit, the post-Smith Mormon catalog as evidence by Christ’s own standard against the restoration claim, and the structural problem of Christian Restoration Continues as a theology that begins after a step not justified.
What we owe Leonard, and what we owe every reader of these essays who is in the same position, is honest engagement and an open invitation back to the historic apostolic Christ. We do not need to win an argument. We need to keep the door open, keep the friendship intact, keep the witness clear, and trust the Holy Spirit to do the work that argument alone cannot do — the work of bringing every honest seeker home to the Christ they are seeking, whatever path they took to get there.
Thomas
“Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” — Ephesians 2:19-22
“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” — Matthew 24:35-36
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