I googled upon the website of Heritage, ELS, in Appleton, Wisconsin.
Here is part of their confession of faith, apparently conjured by the Little Sect on the Prairie in 1992:
Because Jesus was true God, He was able by His divine power to save us all; because He was true man, He was able to be our substitute under God's Law. Christ was tempted in all things as we are but was in every respect without sin. See John 1:1 and 14, Col. 2:9, Matt. 1:23,1 Tim. 2:5-6.
By His perfect life and His innocent sufferings and death Jesus has redeemed the entire world. God thereby reconciled the world to Himself, and by the resurrection of His Son declared it to be righteous in Christ. This declaration of universal righteousness is often termed "objective justification." One has this justification as a personal possession and is personally declared by God to be righteous in Christ when he or she is brought to faith in Him as Savior. This is often called "subjective justification". If the objective fact of Christ's atonement is not personally received by faith, then it has no saving benefit for the individual. We reject as unscriptural any teaching that people can be saved apart from faith in Jesus Christ. See 1 John 2:2, 2 Cor. 5:19, John 1:29, 2 Pet. 2:1, John 3:16-18, 2 Cor. 5:19, Rom. 4:25, 1:17 and 5:1-2.
5. THE MEANS OF GRACE...
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GJ - I broke off at the Means of Grace because the entire world is already saved and declared righteous. Why add grace to grace?
True, Jesus is the Savior of the world because there is no other savior. "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." That is not the same as claiming Jesus saved the world. The Universalists say that, or they used to say that.
Even the Universalists have fallen into apostasy. They used to believe in universal salvation. But they merged with the Unitarians and became ultra-Left political activists. Their websites seldom if ever address the topic of God, but then neither do the Lutheran Church Growth websites.
Someone must wonder, as I did, "Why did the Little Sect adopt a new confession?" They used to wave the Brief Confession of 1932, but that has the Missouri Synod brand on it. Besides, the Waltherians of the Little Sect could use that against the ELS. Then we need to remember that the ELS is the Amen Corner for WELS. Justification Without Faith is bad enough coming from Missouri. The Wisconsin sect goes beyond the absurdity of UOJ and the ELS must follow.
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Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Our Great Heritage - Of Universalism":
WELS has published Pastor John Buchholz' 2005 Convention essay on Justification in video format here. The entire UOJ belief is promoted in the first segment. Interesting that they still teach that unbelievers partaking of the Lord's Supper for the forgiveness of sins, take it to their damnation because they do not discern Christ's body and blood. But yet in the false doctrine of UOJ they declare all unbelievers forgiven of all sins and justified while they are not of the body of Christ and at enmity with God. Martin Luther stated it this way in one of his sermons on Galatians, “It is given of pure grace. Note, faith justifies the individual; faith is justification. Because of faith God remits all sins, and forgives the old Adam and the Cain in our nature, for the sake of Christ his beloved Son, whose name faith represents.” ... “Then nothing else is necessary to justification but to hear and believe in Jesus Christ as our Saviour. But that is not a work of the natural man; it is a work of grace. He who presumes to attain justification by works, only obstructs the way of the Gospel, of faith, grace, Christ, God and all good."
