Edward Gibbon. "In 1776, the first volume of The Decline and Fall was published, and its success was prodigious."
This quotation certainly explains the Obamessiah situation, but it also applies to the false teachers who have bewitched the Lutherans and every other denomination:
Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions . . . . Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.' Julius was always an ambitious villain, but he is only one man.
Here is another good Cicero quotation:
"An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself... A murderer is less to fear."
--Marcus Tullius Cicero
Oh yes, sly whispers are the energy that carried the Church Growth Movement forward. My ecumenical experience showed me that WELS was falling hard for something already well established in ELCA, 22 years ago. In fact, Norm Berg (WELS Mission Board) and Mac Minnnick (ELCA Mission Board) knew each other well from joint training and unionistic meetings.
I recall Marc Schroeder (Salty's son, not the SP) repeating the sly whispers of Floyd Luther Stolzenburg (expelled from Missouri's clergy roster, welcomed in WELS, but never a WELS member) - "No one likes the liturgy. Get rid of the liturgy. It is a barrier." Later, Marc and his heavily subsidized congregation were drop-kicked into Missouri for being as unionistic as the WELS leaders.
Earlier, at the Ad Fontes LCA conference, where we met up with our dear, late friend from Yale, an LCA pastor stood up and talked about "user-friendly services." That meant dumping the liturgy, singing children's songs, and other Fuller-inspired sly whispers. The late Richard Neuhaus spoke against Church Growth, calling it "tacky," and jibed me for not taking communion with them. I said, "You are Ad Fontes. We are Fontes." (You are searching for the Source. We are there.) He enjoyed that. LCA Bishop Crumley talked earnestly to Neuhaus, in private, and Neuhaus poped soon after, taking others from that conference with him.
Echoing Cicero, I do not blame Kelm, Valleskey, Roth, Bivens, Hunter, Werning, Berg, and Hagedorn. Lupine leaders have always raised themselves up - "to improve the church." I blame the ovine clergy and bovine laity who gladly gave up sound doctrine for the cancerous ravings of Pentecostals, marketing mavens, and known apostates. Animals do not realize they are walking up the ramp to the slaughterhouse. Humans should know better.
In the 1950s I heard my parents and teachers say more than once, "We are following the Roman Empire. That is how they began to decline." I cannot imagine public school teachers today knowing anything about Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a set of books that greatly influenced our Founding Fathers. Our high school class, 1966, was expected to have two years of Latin, to apply for a good college. No one had to take Latin, but the college-bound did, knowing that mattered. We learned Roman history for two years. When I poll college students today, I find only one out of 100 (if that) who has had any Latin.
The Boomers, my cohort, gave it all away.
