Temple of Doom Semester - Now Finished

Running Ahead of a Boulder - No Escape

January 7th began a new course in journalism and an intense course in teaching at a new online school. The three online journalism classes will finish this week. I will take a novel-writing class this summer, in preparation for a novel in 2009.

The online training program began with two weeks of constant posting. I soon learned that the probationary teaching would begin one week early, in January. Oh joy. Next I had a constant stream of new things to do in both.

The online training program for teaching is just ending. It went well. I had students from all over the East Coast studying critical thinking. One section was on logical fallacies. I honed my skills discussing doctrinal issues with Wisconsin sect pastors. They used personal attacks, threats, changing the subject, poisoning the well, the slippery slope, and various other logical fallacies.

Most of my teaching is now online. One graduate student in education told my class that students at a Kansas state university live in the dorms and take online classes. The school has trouble getting students out of their rooms and into the classroom.

In the middle of all this training and education, one Ichabod reader said, "Why not have services broadcast over the Internet?" I knew it could be done at a very high cost, but he found a way to do it without the huge corporate fees. I have found it surprisingly enjoyable. I have looked into a glass eye before for video taping. This is different because it is live. Also, people are very pleased that we can do this.

Also, I feel free to promote the great Lutheran hymns, which are often ignored in favor of having more singable hymns, as some claim. Mr. Bose plays the organ flawlessly and I am free to choose all eight verses. Mr. Bose never frowns at five sharps and never gives me lip about the chords.

So, I am about to catch up on the promises I have been making and not keeping.

Apostasy

Denominational Leader

Click here to find which denomination is being discussed.

"Schism is sinful separation on secondary issues. This is separation over essential issues. You have not moved. You have remained where you were in Jesus. If anyone has moved, it is those who have abandoned salvation. This is separation from an apostate situation.


"Apostasy has gone unchallenged. Moves away from absolutely essential truth have gone unchallenged. There is no move time. This is the time to move. What you are facing is not another version of the gospel, but another gospel, which is not the gospel."

Pointing to Galatians 1.6 where the apostle pronounces that there is no other gospel, Venables said that when you turn to another gospel, you desert God and that is a terrible thing. "In the Garden of Eden, they thought they could get away with it. Another Gospel means deserting God. It is important because otherwise you will be leading people away from eternal security. You can do that by keeping your mouth shut. Some who trouble you want to distort the gospel of Christ. They take what is true and they distort it. They take the words God has given us and they distort them. 'If you or an angel of heaven let them be accursed.' Preaching a different gospel is serious. Let him be accursed. Am I trying to please man? If your preaching does not offend someone, look very carefully at what you are preaching."

"If I was trying to please man I would not be a servant of Christ," said Venables. "Christian Humanism is trying to make us feel better and all right. You were not all right to such an extent that Jesus had to die on the cross to put you right. You need a complete transformation. The Gospel preached by me is not man's gospel. I did not receive it from any man nor was I taught it. This is not about the sheep finding its way back to the shepherd but the shepherd coming to find the sheep."

***

GJ - This is another version of what has happened in the LCMS, WELS, and the Little Sect on the Prairie. The micro-mini Lutheran groups are not different, in spite of their pretensions.

The first divide was Church Growth. That is the choo-choo engine running the Lutheran synods right now. Church Growth is atheistic in nature. It is not an enhancement, an improvement, a doctrinally-neutral method. It is anti-Gospel, anti-God, anti-Scriptural. The first thing Fuller did was attack inerrancy, when Church Growth was getting started. Did that give WELS a pause? No. Did that slow down the LCMS rush to get a DMin from Pasadena? No. Did the ELS even squeak out a protest? No, the ELS was the Amen Corner of Church Growth.

The following is a telling detail. The Church Growth pastors like Kelm and Parlow steal their sermons from the Reformed and post them on their own website, as if they wrote them. Other CG pastors have done the same. I know, when Kelm and Parlow were caught, they began giving credit, I hear, for their thefts.

If the purpose of the Christian Church is to proclaim the Gospel, and if ministers are ordained to do just that, then why must CG pastors steal their material and claim it as their own?