Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Slinging Mud Anonymously":
“I'm ashamed that what should be a proper stand against false teachers in our synod has turned into a witch hunt that's dragging even good solid pastors through the mud.”
I am not ashamed. What I am ashamed of are the fools who deemed themselves smarter than Christ and refused to keep a careful watch on things.
***
GJ - When a Lutheran pastor worships with Babtists, he despises the Word of God, which plants faith in the hearts of babies. He rejects the words of Christ, who taught us to believe as a child. Andy Stanley does not believe that babies have faith - he does not trust the Savior of the world.
When a Lutheran pastor is ashamed to provide regular services of Holy Communion, because it will interrupt the entertainment and be a barrier to unchurched Harry, he is mocking the Scriptures, which teach us - Do this in remembrance of Me.
When a Lutheran pastor asks for training from Schwaermer, he is saying, "I believe in the Real Presence, but that is not divisive when I can learn so much about how to do church."
When a Lutheran pastor thinks he has to make the Word of God attractive, reasonable, or appealing, he is blaspheming the Holy Spirit, Who works only through the Word and never apart from the Word.
The WELS Chicaneries and their counterparts in the ELS, Missouri, ELCA, and the CLC (sic) are worse than the Sodomites who only destroyed themselves. They are soul-murderers, slandering the Scriptures by substituting their spittle for the Word of God.
1 comments:
Dr. Jackson -- Thank you for this fine bit of hot polemic. It bears the marks of Martin Luther – one who's influence is fading quickly in our age overbearing tolerance toward matters of truth and falsehood. It seems to have become a virtue among liberal Lutherans to recognize error without necessarily rejecting it, and to recognize false teachers without avoiding them. Instead, like looking for seed by sifting through horse excrement, these wise and virtuous Lutherans seek out false teachers, that they may mine their error for golden nuggets – as if the gold cannot be obtained from any purer source. When criticized for this, they claim the right of so-called adiaphora, never respecting for a moment that Lutherans have been in a state of Confession since the Reformation, and that to make clear their separation, true confessors exercise their freedom to avoid the unique expressions and practices of the heterodox, not to take them on as their own.
Anyway, I happened to be reading in the historical introductions of my Triglotta this evening. The last paragraph of section 121, pg 94, reads as follows:
It was, above all, the spirit of indifferentism toward false doctrine, particularly concerning the Lord's Supper, which Luther observed and deplored in his Wittenberg colleagues: Melanchthon, Bugenhagen, Cruciger, Eber, and Major. Shortly before his last journey to Eisleben he invited them to his house, where he addressed to them the following solemn words of warning: They should "remain steadfast in the Gospel; for I see that soon after my death the most prominent brethren will fall away. I am not afraid of the Papists," he added, "for most of them are coarse, unlearned asses and Epicureans; but our brethren will inflict the damage on the Gospel; for 'they went out from us, but they were not of us' (1 John 2, 19); they will give the Gospel a harder blow than did the Papists." About the same time Luther had written above the entrance to his study: "Our professors are to be examined on the Lord's Supper." When Major, who was about to leave for the colloquy at Regensburg, entered and inquired what these words signified, Luther answered: "The meaning of these words is precisely what you read and what they say; and when you and I shall have returned, an examination will have to be held, to which you as well as others will be cited." Major protested that he was not addicted to any false doctrine. Luther answered: "It is by your silence and cloaking that you cast suspicion upon yourself. If you believe as you declare in my presence, then speak so also in the church, in public lectures, in sermons, and in private conversations, and strengthen your brethren, and lead the erring back to the right path, and contradict the contumacious spirits; otherwise your confession is sham pure and simple, and worth nothing. Whoever really regards his doctrine, faith and confession as true, right, and certain cannot remain in the same stall with such as teach, or adhere to, false doctrine; nor can he keep on giving friendly words to Satan and his minions. A teacher who remains silent when errors are taught, and nevertheless pretends to be a true teacher, is worse than an open fanatic and by his hypocrisy does greater damage than a heretic. Nor can he be trusted. He is a wolf and a fox, a hireling and a servant of his belly, and ready to despise and to sacrifice doctrine, Word, faith, Sacrament, churches, and schools. He is either a secret bedfellow of the enemies or a skeptic and a weathervane, waiting to see whether Christ or the devil will prove victorious; or he has no convictions of his own whatever, and is not worthy to be called a pupil, let alone a teacher; nor does he want to offend anybody, or say a word in favor of Christ, or hurt the devil and the world."
I wonder who among our Ministerium needs to be examined and/or re-colloquized?
Freddy Finkelstein
Post a Comment