“The blog below is from a a man who calls himself “Peter Pan.” I respect all peoples opinions, but it is very sad when they begin calling Heartlanders names. He said we are an apostate sect, and hucksters, racists and other inflammatory things.
He defends the “fantasy map” they use as you see it in the video below by John Lefgren. I support the following scriptures and quotes, that strengthen my faith and testimony, as I believe the Book of Mormon events began in North America:
1- D&C 128:20
2- D&C 125:3
3- Joseph’s letter to his wife Emma, on the Plains of the Nephites. JSP
4- Story of Zelph and Onondagus on the Illinois River JSP
5- Hundreds of quotes by Prophets, Apostles and Leaders HERE.
Please read, pray and study these references above on your own, for validation of your own feelings.
I share this information with you for an awareness of the vitriol my friends Wayne, Rod, and Jonathan have endured for many years. They are entertained and just shrug it off as the good men they are.
I love the gospel and the Savior and His Church. It saddens me to see good members put others down and don’t have the courage to openly debate in a positive way. We all love the Book of Mormon and it is my prayer we can all come together and not fight with each other. Our fight is against Satan not our fellow members.” Rian Nelson
Wayne May and the apostasy of the Heartlanders
“Jonathan Neville, Rodney Meldrum, and the rest of the hucksters who are selling the Heartland hoax to gullible Latter-day Saints are relative newcomers to the movement. Long before them—before the term “Heartland” was even applied to a U.S.-centric Book of Mormon geography—there was Wayne May.
Wayne May was, at first, a proponent of the Great Lakes theory of Book of Mormon geography. Since 1993, he has been the publisher of Ancient American, a magazine dedicated to advancing fraudulent pseudoarchaeology and the claim that there is a massive conspiracy among historians and scientists to suppress the real history of indigenous peoples of North America. After Rod Meldrum began advocating for the “Heartland” Book of Mormon theory around 2007, he and May allied themselves and May shifted his focus from the Great Lakes to the Midwest as the setting for the action in the Book of Mormon. (For more on this, see the articles in FARMS Review 20/2 and FARMS Review 22/1.)
May’s latest venture is a scheme to find the ancient Nephite temple in the city of Zarahemla, which he asserts (as do other Heartlanders, based on their dubious interpretation of D&C 125:3) is across the Mississippi River from Nauvoo, Illinois. May’s initial attempts to find the Nephite temple—which involved dowsing and the eventual use of heavy machinery—were fruitless, but he’s raising funds to do a more thorough search using drones and earth-penetrating scans to find what he insists must be there.
Like Jonathan Neville, Wayne May believes that Latter-day Saints must have a true and correct belief in Book of Mormon geography, otherwise their faith is misplaced. To give you an idea of what he believes about this, take a look at his six-minute video, “True Map for the Book of Mormon,” which he uploaded to YouTube on June 24, 2020:
Let’s return to the original account that an angel from on high gave to Joseph Smith. As a Church, we can do much better than this. God is merciful, but only for so long. As a Church, we are under his condemnation. We must come back to the light and truth that He revealed to Joseph Smith. Bring the Book of Mormon back to its real setting in the real world. Take down the false and replace it with the truth.
According to Wayne May, the Church is “under condemnation” for not believing in the correct geography of the Book of Mormon.
This is yet another example of the false god of the Heartland Book of Mormon movement: They’ve replaced the central message of the Book of Mormon—repentance and obedience to the Lord’s commandments, as taught by His prophets—with their own message of American Exceptionalism. For Neville, Meldrum, May, and other Heartlanders, the Book of Mormon is, first and foremost, a witness of the United States of America. According to them, the United States is God’s promised land, and therefore the peoples of the Book of Mormon must have lived in the United States and the Book of Mormon’s promises must apply only to the United States and its inhabitants.
(This partly explains Neville’s disturbing views on nationalism and racial superiority, as seen in blog posts like this charming one from July 2018.)
May’s video continues by citing the Church’s Gospel Topics Essay on Book of Mormon geography (another one of Neville’s frequent whipping boys), and then it directly accuses the Church and its leaders of hypocrisy and teaching false doctrine (starting at 4:03):
The second question is the geographical neutrality. The Church’s stated position on the geography of the Book of Mormon is “that the events the Book of Mormon describe took place in the ancient Americas.” The statement also says that “the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles urge leaders and members not to advocate those personal theories in any setting or manner that would imply either prophetic or Church support for those theories.”
In concept, the position of neutrality seems clear. In practice, the resources of the Church only favor either the Mesoamerican theory for the book’s setting or the fantasy map that is found in the study materials that are used to instruct millions of members about the geography of the book.
We can do better than this. Joseph Smith brought forth the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God. The revelations that Joseph Smith gave to the Church are clear. That fantasy map puts the Church in a place where no truth can be found for the setting of the Book of Mormon.
As a people, we remain under the very same condemnation He pronounced upon the early members of our dispensation. We read in the Doctrine and Covenants, Section 84:57: “And they shall remain under this condemnation until they repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon.”
In this segment, Wayne May once again claims that the Church is “under condemnation” for not accepting the Heartland Book of Mormon geography. As evidence of this, he quotes D&C 84:57 and implies that what Joseph Smith’s revelation was referring to a true belief in the geographical setting of the Book of Mormon.
But even more unsettling is how May quotes the counsel of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to not advocate personal theories about the location of the Book of Mormon “in any setting or manner that would imply either prophetic or Church support for those theories,” and then he immediately proceeds to ignore their counsel by claiming prophetic support from Joseph Smith (via D&C 84:57 and 125:3) that the ancient city of Zarahemla is on the west bank of the Mississippi River. And the summit of his chutzpah? He then asks viewers to give him money to help pay for the effort to find it.
As I’ve previously written, the Heartland movement is an apostate sect that is critical of living prophets and apostles.
Hopefully Jonathan Neville, Rodney Meldrum, Wayne May, and others who advocate for such heterodox teachings will repent and take a different approach before the entire movement implodes and takes thousands of Saints out of the Lord’s Church.”
—Peter Pan
