Dueling Gurus and the Doctrine of Christ

Zion, Agency, and the Question Behind Every Question: How Do We Know the True Voice?

Christos Fellowship — Renaissance Ministries

Fellowship Essay · 9 August 2026 · A follow-up to “Quietism Is Not More Light” (3 August 2026)

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. — 1 John 4:1

I. Where We Left Off

Last week’s essay argued that the wait-for-divine-initiation teaching is quietism — an old error under a new name — and that the Great Commission is a standing order to every disciple. This week’s meeting was the fellowship’s living response to that essay. Leonard presented the fuller frame of the Covenant Christian movement’s teaching; Michael pressed with a barrage of questions; Charlie, Susan, and Isak each brought a piece of the answer.

Leonard’s opening move was a clarification: the charge of quietism, he said, rests on a misunderstanding. “We’re not being quiet. We’re trying to get out there for people to see it and to respond, but we’re not being pushy. We’re not knocking on doors.” The movement’s method is presence and availability — the seal on the hat, the cashier at the Golden Corral who noticed and asked — rather than a campaign. I receive the clarification in good faith, and I will return at the end to examine whether it answers the essay’s argument or restates the position the essay examined. But first, the frame Leonard laid out deserves a fair hearing, because we cannot weigh what we have not honestly heard.

II. The Frame Presented: Zion, the Gathering, and the Ten Talks

Leonard recounted the movement’s founding commission: Denver Snuffer, he told us, was directed by the Lord to deliver ten talks — ten parts of one talk — at ten locations along the “Mormon corridor,” with the message intended first for the Latter-day Saints and then for the wider Christian world. The subject was Zion: the concept, drawn through Joseph Smith’s teaching, of a people of one heart and one mind, dwelling in righteousness, with no poor among them. Leonard traced the lineage: Enoch’s city of righteousness, taken up before the flood because the earth was not ready; a second city under Melchizedek (identified in this teaching with Shem); and, in the last days, the necessity of a Zion people prepared on earth to receive these cities at their return, lest the earth be smitten. The New Jerusalem, in this telling, will be established in the Western Hemisphere, will grow into Zion, and Christ Himself will come to His temple in the midst of that people.

I asked the clarifying questions: Is the taken-up Zion a biblical concept? Answer: “It depends on which Bible you’re talking about” — the concept in its full form comes through Joseph Smith’s revelation, though the word Zion appears throughout the King James text (Charlie counted 153 occurrences). Is this the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21? Answer: yes and no — the New Jerusalem is the community; Zion is what it becomes when the ascended cities are reunited with the earthly one.

Two further claims from the presentation must be recorded:

• First, Leonard corrected the standard account of Mormon origins: it was not Moroni who visited young Joseph, he said, but Nephi — and the change to “Moroni” was made later, “in our time, by our people.”
• Second, he described the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible: not a new Bible, he insisted, but a restoration of the original — the King James text plus corrections and additions Joseph was directed to make, which this fellowship’s movement has now assembled and printed. The example offered was Romans 13, where the change of a single word — the powers that be are “elders,” church government rather than civil government — “changes the whole meaning of it.”

I want the fellowship to see what I see in these two claims. Each one is a revision of a revision.

• The Moroni/Nephi correction tells us that even the founding vision of the Restoration was corrupted in transmission by the Restoration’s own custodians, within living memory of the event.
• The Romans 13 example tells us that a single word, altered on one man’s authority, is sufficient to invert the plain meaning of an apostle’s teaching that the whole church has read one way for two thousand years. Both claims depend on the same premise, which Leonard then stated openly, and which became the true subject of the meeting.

III. Entropy or Refinement: Two Theories of the Word

Leonard put the premise plainly: “History is always recorded by the victors… it becomes corrupted. It doesn’t become true… It’s always been entropy when it comes to knowledge. Knowledge has always been entropic rather than refining.” On this view, the Bible is a degraded signal — “plain and precious things” removed, the name of Christ stripped from the Old Testament — and the latter-day revelations are the restoration of the original broadcast.

Michael answered this with the historian’s craft. History is not simply entropic, he argued, because corruption is not the last word — correction is. The Nazis wrote the history of conquered Europe from 1940 to 1943; when they lost, that history did not stand. The bias of the victors is real, “endemic,” but the remedy is known to every honest historian: gather the accounts from both sides, from many sides, and compose them — like the blind men and the elephant, no single testimony is the animal, but the sum of testimonies approaches it. Bias is defeated not by finding one unbiased witness (there are none) but by multiplying witnesses whose biases cut in different directions.

Now notice what Michael has described, because it is precisely the architecture of the Bible, and precisely the argument I made to Leonard in this week’s written reply. The canon of the Bible is not one victor’s chronicle. It is forty-some authors across fifteen centuries — shepherds and kings, prisoners and physicians, fishermen and Pharisees — whose accounts were delivered through separate hands into separate communities that copied them in parallel across continents. An error introduced in one line of transmission is exposed by comparison with the others; that is why the manuscript evidence, thousands of copies deep, shows the text stable to within spelling and word order, with no doctrine hanging on any disputed reading. The children’s telephone game corrupts because it is serial and oral — one whisper, one chain, no checking. The Bible’s transmission is parallel and written — many chains, constant checking. Entropy is the fate of the single channel. The polyphonic canon is Michael’s elephant: many hands on the animal, composed.

And here is the point that must be pressed: the entropy argument, if it proves anything, proves most against the system it is deployed to defend. A revelation that passes through one man — however sincere — is the serial channel. One link, no parallel witnesses, no manuscript trail, no possibility of comparison. When the movement itself must correct its own founding vision (Nephi, not Moroni) within two centuries, it has demonstrated the entropy of the single channel on its own history. The argument Leonard raised against the Bible is the strongest argument against the alternative.

IV. Dueling Gurus: The Question of Discernment

From there the meeting arrived, as it had to, at the question beneath every question, and I gave it a name that Charlie and Isak improved into “dueling gurus.” We are not adjudicating Hinduism against Islam. We are weighing two claims within the house of those who name Christ: the historic faith, received through the polyphonic canon — and a succession of single-channel restorations, each claiming to correct the last. Joseph Smith corrected historic Christianity. The LDS institution, by Leonard’s own account, corrupted Joseph within a generation of his death — “it went off the rails very quickly” — building temples like idols and development deals around them. Denver Snuffer now corrects the LDS institution. Each restoration requires a new apostasy to justify itself. The pattern is not incidental; it is the logic of the single channel, which can be corrected only by another single channel, forever.  ***

Charlie named the stakes with the memory of Jonestown, and the deeper memory of every century’s men who marched under “God is on our side”: the stream of history is full of false prophets, and the price of following one is everything. His counsel — study, comparison, prayer, and constant vigilance, because “it doesn’t seem like God made this easy” — is the sober truth. Michael noted: many people say God has spoken to them; how does this one claimant earn the credibility the others are denied? Doesn’t God speak to each of us?***

The Bible’s own answer, which the fellowship converged on from three directions, is the test of fruits: “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20). But last week’s essay showed why fruit must be assessed carefully here — growth under an anti-campaign doctrine is not fruit but recursion, since the anti-campaign posture is itself the recruitment mechanism. The fruit that counts is repentance, holiness, and Christ-dependence in the gathered — assessed on separate evidence. And to the test of fruits Scripture adds the test of the message: “though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8). The messenger’s sincerity, humility, and reluctance are not the test. Agreement with the deposit already delivered is the test. That standard is fixed, public, and checkable — which is exactly what a standard must be if the sheep are to know the voice of a stranger (John 10:5).

V. The Crusade Question and the Agency Answer

I put to Leonard the challenge that has struck me since I first encountered this movement, and I put it here for the record: if the Denver Snuffer revelation is the pure word — if historic Christianity is the corrupted signal and this is the restoration — then there should be no apology and no restraint. It should be a crusade. Everyone, everywhere, should be told, urgently, because nothing less is at stake than the true gospel. The movement’s own logic demands the very campaign its doctrine forbids.

Leonard’s answer was agency: “People have to choose… I can’t convert anyone. No man can convert another man. God has to do that. The Lord does that. The Lord goes and changes people… we’re waiting on the Lord to prepare His people.”

I want to honor what is true in this answer before showing what it does not answer. It is true that no man can convert another man. It is true that the increase belongs to God alone — “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6). It is true that agency is real and that most will not receive the word; the Lord Himself said the way is narrow and few find it (Matthew 7:14). Every word of this is historic Christian doctrine, held without supplement for two thousand years.

But observe what the argument actually proves. Agency explains why not all will accept the message. It says nothing about whether we should deliver it. The sower in the Lord’s parable knows that most of the seed will fall on path, rock, and thorn — and sows broadcast anyway, because the sowing is his office and the soil is not (Matthew 13:3-8). Paul knew agency as well as any man who ever preached — “our gospel is hid to them that are lost” (2 Corinthians 4:3) — and reasoned daily in the market with them that met with him (Acts 17:17). If the reality of agency justified withholding the campaign, it would have justified Paul’s silence; instead Paul said, “woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!” (1 Corinthians 9:16). Agency is the reason outcomes belong to God. It has never been the reason messengers stay home. So the clarification Leonard offered at the meeting’s start — “we’re not being quiet, we’re just not being pushy” — resolves into the same position the essay examined: presence without campaign, availability without initiative, the hat and the cashier but not the crusade. The label matters less than the substance, and the substance is unchanged: a standing order treated as awaiting activation. I leave last week’s four tests standing, and I commend them again to Leonard with the affection in which they were written.

VI. Isak’s Bread: The Chain of Neighbors

Isak brought the question down from the cosmic to the concrete, and his contribution deserves its own section. Wrestling with what the Commission asks of one person — surely not to be the street-corner pest that people flee, nor to carry the lunacy-inducing burden of personally saving seven billion — he offered a picture from the feeding of the five thousand: each of us provides for those directly around us, and the ones next to them do likewise, and the gospel moves as a chain reaction of neighbors rather than the heroic reach of one arm. “It’s not up to me to provide for everyone, but it’s up to me to provide for those around me.”

The picture is true and biblical: the faith did in fact cross the world largely through households, friendships, and scattered ordinary believers — “they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word” (Acts 8:4). And Isak is right that the Commission never assigns any single disciple the whole world; it assigns the whole church the whole world, and each member his portion. Two friendly amendments, offered as sharpening rather than correction. First, the chain of neighbors and the organized campaign are not rivals; Acts records both, side by side — the scattered believers gossiping the gospel and Paul’s planned itineraries, the household conversions and the daily disputation in the market. The body has hands and feet; a theology built on only one member is a body part, not a body. Second, on the naturalistic reading of the loaves — that the miracle was hearts opened to share their hidden provisions — I would hold the beauty of that picture without trading the text for it. The evangelists present a multiplication, and all four record it; the crowd sought Him the next day precisely because they “did eat of the loaves, and were filled” (John 6:26), and the Lord’s rebuke was not “you misunderstood the sharing” but that they sought bread rather than the Bread of Life. A God who cannot multiply loaves cannot raise the dead, and our whole hope hangs on the latter. But Isak’s instinct — that the miracle also teaches the economy of Zion, provision flowing neighbor to neighbor under the blessing of Christ — is not wrong. It is the application; the multiplication is the event.

VII. Where We Met: Relationship, Obedience, and the Doctrine of Christ

Now the meeting ground, because the meeting found one, and it was Susan who laid the first stone. Before any ministry, she said, must come the believer’s own relationship with God — ministry without relationship empties and drains and ends in walking away. And to the week’s running question — how do we know what is true among competing claims? — she brought the verse that reframes the whole inquiry: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself” (John 7:17). Knowledge of the doctrine is promised to the one who does the will — obedience is an organ of knowledge. She joined it to Psalm 111:10 — “a good understanding have all they that do his commandments” — and to John 1:12: “as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.” The power is His; the frailty is ours; the doing is the path to the knowing.

Notice what Susan’s verses accomplish for the entire dispute. If understanding comes through doing His commandments, then the surest ground in a contest of revelations is the commands no one disputes — and the Great Commission is among them by every account, since even the movement Leonard follows agrees the word must go to all the world; the disagreement is over the manner. Do the will; the doctrine will clarify. This is also the answer to Michael’s question about how to choose among the claimants: begin with the commands held in common, obey them, and the promised understanding follows.

Leonard then made the proposal that I want to receive with both hands, because it is the week’s best fruit: the doctrine of Christ can unite us. “There’s only one person at that gate; He doesn’t employ anybody else.” Whatever else divides our libraries, he said, if we come together on who gives us life and who holds our salvation — believe Him, confess Him as Lord, follow Him — we can fellowship as one while we contend over the rest. And Susan’s picture of increments completed it: a soul comes to Christ by steps, each sincere step a springboard to the next, faith becoming obedience becoming understanding. This is the fellowship working as it was built to work: we did not paper over the dividing line — the line is the authority of Scripture against the authority of a living revelator, and this essay has not moved an inch on it — but we located the gate we all stand at, and the Gatekeeper we all confess.

VIII. The Baptism Coda: Authority and the Fruits of the Spirit

The meeting closed on baptism, and the exchange between Leonard and Susan was a small masterclass in exactly the difference between the two systems — conducted, notably, between two people raised in the same church.

Leonard argued from the Lord’s own example: Christ, needing nothing, sought out John — his cousin, “set apart” from infancy — and submitted to baptism; therefore the believer’s first act of obedience is baptism, and one should “find an authorized person” to perform the ordinance. He told the story of his own rebaptism in 2018, and told it movingly. Susan pressed the word authorized: the authority is not a paper trail, she argued, not an office or a lineage — it is Christ’s Spirit, and the credential of the baptizer is the fruits of the Spirit in his life. She pressed further: is water baptism a saving ordinance, as they were both taught, or an act of obedience — real, commanded, but not the mechanism of salvation, as the deathbed believer with no water and every fruit of the Spirit attests? Leonard, to his credit, moved toward her in real time: “if the person performing the ordinance understands what he’s doing… absolutely, I agree with that.”

For the record of this fellowship, the historic answer, which I hold: baptism is commanded — this very week I withdrew, under sound rebuke, my own speculative reading that “baptizing in the name” might mean immersion in the divine nature rather than water, and the full argument will appear in the forthcoming reply essay — but the water is the sign, not the power: “not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God” (1 Peter 3:21). The thief on the cross entered Paradise unbaptized on the word of the Lord Himself (Luke 23:43). And on authority, Susan’s instinct is the Bible’s: Philip who baptized the Ethiopian was not of the Twelve; the scattered laymen of Acts 8 preached everywhere with no ordination but the Spirit; and the requirement of an “authorized” chain of ordinance is precisely the mediating structure that 1 Timothy 2:5 forecloses — one God, one mediator, the man Christ Jesus. Where the fruits of the Spirit are, there the authority is, for the Spirit is not given by paperwork.

IX. The Cultural Stakes: A Note on the Wall

I closed the meeting with a piece of cultural history, and I set it down here because it names why the campaign question is not academic. In 1947, in Everson v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court lifted a phrase from Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists — a letter assuring a worried religious minority that the state would not interfere with the church — and declared that the Constitution had erected “a wall of separation between church and state.” The phrase appears nowhere in the Constitution; the First Amendment restrains Congress from establishing religion or prohibiting its free exercise — a shield for the church, not a muzzle. Yet within a generation the inversion was complete: prayer stripped from the schools, faith privatized, and an educated nation persuaded that the wall is the Constitution’s most sacred clause. I have watched an intelligent, accomplished woman be genuinely shocked to learn the phrase is not in the document.

Set against this a scene from only six years before Everson: Roosevelt and Churchill, at the service where the Atlantic alliance was consecrated in 1941, standing together on a warship’s deck, singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers” — two heads of state, on film, unembarrassed. From that to “you can’t pray at the football game” in a single generation. This is the measure of how far and how fast a culture falls when the church accepts the muzzle — and it is why quietism, whatever its sincerity, arrives at the worst possible hour. The sanctification of the culture is the only remedy for the culture, and sanctification does not campaign for itself. Someone must go. That is not a distraction from the fellowship’s purpose, as I said in the meeting; the Mormon-versus-historic question, important as this essay shows it to be, is the proximate discussion — the ultimate work is a nation of godly character: children raised in the way they should go (Proverbs 22:6), households of godly men and women, and from them neighborhoods, and from them a government godly because its people are — which is Zion built the only way Zion has ever actually been built, one regenerate heart at a time. On that end — remarkably, wonderfully — Leonard and I are in full agreement. One heart and one mind, righteousness, and no poor among us: I have no quarrel with that city. My quarrel is only, and always, over which voice commands the road to it.

X. Conclusion

Here is where the week leaves us. The dividing line is real and this fellowship will not blur it: it is the closed, polyphonic canon against the living single channel; the standing order against the waiting posture; the Bible’s own tests — the command, the practice, the fruits, the message — against the claim of newer light. On that line I stand where last week’s essay stands, and this week’s meeting gave me no reason to move and several reasons to hold.

And the meeting ground is real too, and we will not abandon it: the doctrine of Christ — believe Him, confess Him, obey Him — with relationship before ministry, obedience as the organ of understanding, each of us feeding the neighbors within arm’s reach while the church together reaches the world. Susan’s closing prayer asked that we return next week able to edify, challenge, and reach for truth together. That is the fellowship’s charter in one sentence, and by the grace of God we will keep it.

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. — 1 Thessalonians 5:21

— Thomas

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Renaissance Ministries | Hyperphysics Institute

Of one heart to make Christ King – 1 Chronicles 12:38