NPH Fires Back

Irrelevant photo, but funny anyway.

Mark Buske has left a new comment on your post "Run--Do Not Walk--To View the Latest WELS Typo":

Pastor Jackson,

I was excited the other day when you posted my comment about the Triglotta in electronic format with Bente's Introductions.

Then I open my RSS reader today and find you criticizing NPH for not checking our spelling. Interestingly enough, the page you point to is at www.logos.com and is not an NPH page. We didn't use the lovely phrase, "taylor-made;" that's from Logos.

The "after-shock" price you quote is actually the combination of all the volumes in print, and not if the customer purchases the disk separately.

Anyway, thank you for the publicity.

Mark Buske

NPH Marketing Director

***

GJ - Round One. I have to admit. He is right. Logos edited that page. Techies cannot spell. The title of the page in the browser is NPH, so I am sure Buske is leaving some phone messages at Logos headquarters right now. "You are making us look like idiots!"

Round Two - the huge, inflated price is the printed material price, as he said:

"The equivalent print volumes of these resources are valued at $2,115.59!" I would dispute the 59 cents, without fear of contradiction.

The post-production price is somewhat higher than the grand total pre-publication price:

$2,115.59 printed;
$524.95 post-pub CD-ROM;
$399.95 blue light special, pre-pub CD-ROM.

If someone wants all these resources, the CD-ROM set is ideal for portability, research, etc. I love reading real books, but I favor the computer for research. If NPH would favor me with information about how well Logos print-to-CD works with copy and paste, I will be glad to post that information. The WELS students might want to offer their experience.

Congregations should be buying these resources for their seminary students, pastors, and teachers.

My suggestions for divinity students and pastors:

1. Luther's works first.
2. Triglotta and Bente second, (but just as important).
3. Lenski third.
4. Boxer shorts if there is any money left. (Old NWC joke: "All you need is Lenski, the Triglotta, and boxer shorts....")

Charity Begins in the Senate - With Your Taxes

The back of Biden's head has been declared a hairplug-free zone.

Biden Gave Average of $369 Annually to Charity in Last Decade

upi via email no link | 9/12/8

Posted on Friday, September 12, 2008 11:36:40 AM by NativeNewYorker

Sept. 12 (UPI) -- Delaware Senator Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for vice president, and his wife reported giving less than half of one percent of their income to charity during the past decade, below the national average, tax records show.

A Biden spokesman said the couple has given more to charity than they claimed on their taxes.

Biden and his wife, Jill, earned $319,853 in adjusted gross income and paid $72,787 in federal taxes last year, including $2,721 in alternative minimum taxes. They claimed $995 in deductions for charitable giving, about triple what they deducted in any of the nine previous years. Over the past decade they reported giving an average of $369 to charity.

Their deductions for charitable giving -- about two-tenths of one percent of their income -- is lower than the national average of about 3.1 percent, according to JustGive.org, a nonprofit organization that connects donors with charities.

``That lack of charitable giving at that level of income would definitely be outside the range of what we say is normal,'','' said Russell James, a professor at the University of Georgia who researches charitable giving.

Biden spokesman David Wade said the deductions on the tax forms ``are not the sum of their annual contributions to charity.'' The Bidens ``contribute to their church, and they also contribute to their favorite causes.'' He said the Bidens also do volunteer work with military families and for other causes.

***

GJ - Biden's train trips to and from DC cost taxpayers $200 a day.

What Moves Missouri?

The LCMS is a puzzle. How did such a large group of putative Lutherans lose their way?

Several causes might be listed.

1. German Lutherans felt a great cultural and language kinship with the German Reformed, but also as doctrinal allies against Romanism. Opposing the Antichrist was a hallmark of Protestantism at one time. The declaration of the pope's infallibility (Pope Pius IX) shocked and appalled Europe in the 19th century.
   
2. The old Synodical Conference was extremely weak on the efficacy of the Word. This blindness led the synodical partners large and small into UOJ, receptionism, Pentecostalism, and eventually the Church Shrinkage Movement.
   
3. In the early 20th century, the liberal/conservative split about Biblical authority had the conservative Lutherans viewing the Reformed as allies once again.
   
4. This partnership continued during the Seminex crisis. The Preus-Marquart contingent would show up at Biblical inerrancy conferences where the only thing the rainbow coalition agreed upon was infallibility.
   
5. Once de-sensitized about the Reformed, Missouri had no qualms about sending their leaders to Fuller Seminary and Willow Creek. Salesmen like Kent Hunter and Waldo Werning served as Synodical Conference recruiters for the cause. Since the executives of all the Lutheran groups were recruited first, they had no trouble urging their minions to sign up, rewarding them with promotions, protecting them from the scandals they stirred up so effortlessly.
   
6. Once in the third stage of false doctrine, the various synods made sure their Church Shrinkage buddies moved into seminary positions so that anyone questioning Fuller Seminary was attacking Holy Mother Synod. Only then did they study the Church Shrinkage Movement. They frowned a bit but found it - just wonderful. WELS had the best sense of humor, having its most Enthusiastic proponent of Fuller doctrine study Fuller doctrine and declare, "Let us spoil the Egyptians in Pasadena." But, the tide is turning. Fads come and go. The Church Shrinkage Movement has destroyed more congregations than the Chicago Fire. Lazy-minded Boomer pastors are dying and retiring, letting the younger pastors clean up their messes.
   

Holy Father, Holy Smoke

I was looking at the Christian News website, which stays the same for months at a time.

One page has a big to-do about the Pope and District Pope Benke, who has the guts to admit he is ecumenical everywhere he goes. Yes, I know Benke is an apostate. But I prefer honest apostates to dishonest ones, those closeted Calvinists who run off to Fuller and Willow Creek, bragging to their friends, denying it to the public.

Benke is an official bad guy at Christian News, for those who read it even less often than I do. Benke is ecumenical, hanging around with ELCA (like ELDONA) and Romanists (like ELDONA) and other thoroughly bad dudes like Neuhaus.

Speaking of ecumenism, another page quotes LCMS Pastor Don Matzat, an avowed Pentecostal, so deep into Enthusiasm that he must have swallowed the Holy Ghost, feathers and all. Christian News is glad to quote him:

“While the pre-millennialists, the Calvinists, the Arminians, the mystics, the prosperity teachers, the Pentecostals, and the Charismatics all have their theology widely promoted in over 3,000 Christian Bookstores around the nation, we who claim to have the pure Gospel, seemingly feel that our truth is neither worth promoting nor relevant to the popular issues being so widely discussed and debated. Rather than promoting what we believe for the welfare of the wider church, we pick fights among ourselves, ignoring the Christian world and the issues debated…The only legitimate vehicle that exists whereby Missouri Synod Lutherans are enable to speak a word to various Christian issues is Christian News. For this reason, God bless Herman Otten”
(Rev. Don Matzat, LCMS pastor, St. Louis MO).

The bizarre content of this quotation is worth preserving forever, since Otten sent me one Matzat book where Don boasted that the Holy Spirit spoke to people in dreams (always favorable to his cause), told people to give him big checks, and otherwise worked everywhere except through the Word. Otten marked the false doctrine in the book, so Herman was not unaware of the Don's precession into Pentecostalism.

Even better, Matzat (the good guy on this page) is the counselor, helper, and supporter of Benke, the bad guy on the front page.

Dizzy yet? There's more.

Matzat accused Waldo Werning of false doctrine in Christian News. Holy smokes - that is worse than Werning accusing Cascione of false doctrine, or Cascione accusing Werning. What do all three have in common? Christian News - a beacon orthodoxy in a sea of false doctrine.

That reminds me of a famous sermon quotation from Northwestern College: "I dreamt I was floating on a mattress in a sea of iniquity - and I was THIRSTY!"