Lest the Theme of This Blog Be Lost

"Hi there, folks. I am Pastor Bob. I will be your inspirational leader today. We have an exciting 50 minutes for you again. Cousin Brunhilda will sing You Light Up My Life. I promise the back-up tapes will work better this time, Hilda. My Life Partner, Pastor Pat, will give a dialogue talk with me: Success Through Goal Setting Dreams. Pastor Pat has learned a lot through those Twelve Step Programs. Later, our Liturgical Dancers will amaze you with their movements. So put your hands together and welcome Cousin Brunhilda now."

And she named the child Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel. 1 Samuel 4:21 (KJV)

"The doctrine of the means of grace is a peculiar glory of Lutheran theology. To this central teaching it owes its sanity and strong appeal, its freedom from sectarian tendencies and morbid fanaticism, its coherence and practicalness, and its adaptation to men of every race and every degree of culture. The Lutheran Confessions bring out with great clearness the thought of the Reformers upon this subject." "Grace, Means of," The Concordia Cyclopedia, L. Fuerbringer, Th. Engelder, P. E. Kretzmann, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1927, p. 299.

"Must Lutheranism be shorn of its glory to adapt it to our times or our land? No!"
Charles P. Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology, Philadelphia: The United Lutheran Publication House, 1871, p. 208.

The Ark of the Covenant was captured in this famous passage from 1 Samuel, so the following selection of essays about Lutheran doctrine will be called Ichabod. The glory has departed from the Lutheran Church. In fact, the Lutheran Church no longer exists in America in any institutional form. The enemy has not stolen the Ark of the Covenant - the Means of Grace. Instead the apostate Lutheran leaders have thrown a tarp over their Ark in order to glory in their Fuller Seminary and Willow Creek classes, their Purpose-Driven (TM) mission visions, their contemporary Pentecostal music, their pit bands, and their self-glorifying pep talks disguised as sermons.