KJV Matthew 7:16 Ye shall know them by their fruits.
Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
Valleskey said "Yes!" and this is the result.
I. J. Reilly has left a new comment on your post "Hymns and Music":
At first I wondered how emotion could possibly be removed from music as raklatt suggests in his post. Then I listened to Insurance Salesman Jackson try to sing in one of his "services" and I perfectly understood how it could be done. Bravo for showing us the way, GJ!
***
GJ - This fake-named person has been sending his peevish comments on a regular basis for a long time. He finally revealed he is a member of Ski's The CORE, fastest money-gulping operation in the Wisconsin Synod. Why did he join? Because Ski's coolness caused the son to want to come back (shoes and rock being the Means of Grace).
Animated by hostility toward Lutheran doctrine, this person wastes his time observing that I cannot sing well. What a revelation. And yet I sing the great hymns anyway, the best I can. Paul qualification for pastors is that they be found faithful, not tuneful.
When I look at the Bethany blog map, I see the globe lit up up with people who are reading the sermons, many of them copied and sent to others. Meanwhile, people have free services (no secret passwords, unlike some WELS churches) to watch live and to watch recorded, plus adult studies - live and recorded.
After burning more than $20,000 per month,The CORE
We know that WELS members have left one local church for The CORE. Is this considered a vital mission in Fox Valley, transferring members?
Ichabod has been successful in getting the Shrinker faction reading about Lutheran doctrine on a daily basis. Bad news, Stetzer fans - WELS and ELS members appreciate the blog. Worse news - clergy thank me personally for the blog.
The highest accolade is the way web information is locked down and changed after being exposed in Ichabod.
- WELS Pastor Tim Glende no longer makes his gawking, bug-eyed pose with Katy Perry ("Ur So Gay" and "I Kissed a Girl") available from a Facebook search. In fact, Tim Glende has closed off the general Facebook search altogether.
- WELS first successful stealth congregation, Crossroads Evangelical Covenant Church (? ! ?) in S. Lyons, Michigan, no longer thanks WELS pastors Miller, Freier, and Voigt for getting them going. Who got to you, Pastor Joe?
- Church and Change has the same bad spelling and the November 2009 conference announced on its main page - my biggest failure.
- Pastor Rick in Corona, California, erased his disastrous offering figures and his gushing Leonard Sweet comments a few hours after I posted my shock at both.
- Pastor Mark Walters, a regular at Chicanery conferences, threatened to shut down Ichabod, but changed his mind soon after.
- Joe Krohn, another Chicanery conference regular, and promiscuous poster on the not-so-secret Chicanery listserve, started another feeble blog or two. Someone has to defend false doctrine - why not Joe?
- Tim Felt-Needs, blogger for Victory Cinema and Soccer Camp, has joined the battle with more copycat posts. Creativity is not a strongpoint among the WELS Shrinkers.
NKJ Proverbs 7:22 Immediately he went after her, as an ox goes to the slaughter,
Or as a fool to the correction of the stocks.
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Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Fruit of the Stealth Mission":
Reilly's fondness for the Emergent Church has the same origins as this Luther Qwest UOJ promoter:
Posted by Dr. Erich Heidenreich on Wednesday, June 29, 2005 -
12:00 pm:
"Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
I have returned from my long silence here on LQ to offer to
everyone my sincere apologies, and to recant and repent of my long-time arguments regarding Objective Justification. I have studied much since our last marathon thread!
Please forgive me for my errors. I pray that my words did not lead
anyone else into error. I identify my error as stemming from
unconsiously troubling myself and others about what remains the
secret counsel of God, trying to solve the mystery of election -
"why some and not others?" Studying FC XI again in depth was
especially helpful in ending my sinful search for the answer.
Then, in dealing for weeks with a loved one who was despairing
due to the weight of the law and doubt over her own faith, I saw
the true necessity and beauty of Objective Justification, though I
never used the term. The objective truth of Christ's universal
forgiveness has lifted the veil of tears from her eyes and given the
peace the passes all understanding.
Finally, I desire to thank all of you, but especially Pr. Rolf Preus for his tireless correction of my errors here on LQ. Without his patient teaching, and that of my own wonderful pastor, Rev. Roger James, I would still be in grave error and not have had the true doctrine to offer to this loved one. Thank you, Pr. Preus, for staying true to the pure doctrine of the Word! The Righteousness of Christ is objectively imputed to all people. I say that now without hesitation.
Sincerely,
Erich"
Erich's relative was struggling with unbelief. In steps UOJ which grants forgivness without faith - without the Holy Spirit's faith.
2 Cor. 13:5, "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?"
Reilly reminds me of the mother who rejoices that her kids eat jelly beans and pop tarts at each meal because they had refused meat and vegetables before.
Baptist decision theology is poison.
***
GJ - Heidenreich's conversion from justification by faith to Pietistic UOJ was sad to witness:
Thank you, Pr. Preus, for staying true to the pure doctrine of the Word! The Righteousness of Christ is objectively imputed to all people.
Robert Preus' final book makes it very clear that the righteousness of Christ is NOT imputed to all people.
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Fruit of the Stealth Mission":
"After burning more than $20,000 per month,The CORE Lutheran Church has reached how many non-WELS members? How long will that continue before someone pulls the plug on the funding?"
What outreach? I do not care what you do when you sit back and wait for others to find your church. It is not outreach.
Is traveling to one conference after another outreach? No
Are weekly sermons in your church outreach? No
CORE despises doing outreach the way Christ did, and refuses to do it.
***
GJ - The Gospel Promises are always effective, because they are either sustaining faith, creating faith, or hardening hearts (as evidenced by Mormon and JW missionaries responding in hatred). Aping modern culture does not sustain or promote faith. "The church that marries the spirit of this age will find herself a widow in the Age To Come." I quoted that in Liberalism, Its Cause and Cure.
10 comments:
Reilly's fondness for the Emergent Church has the same origins as this Luther Qwest UOJ promoter:
Posted by Dr. Erich Heidenreich on Wednesday, June 29, 2005 -
12:00 pm:
"Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
I have returned from my long silence here on LQ to offer to
everyone my sincere apologies, and to recant and repent of my long-time arguments regarding Objective Justification. I have studied much since our last marathon thread!
Please forgive me for my errors. I pray that my words did not lead
anyone else into error. I identify my error as stemming from
unconsiously troubling myself and others about what remains the
secret counsel of God, trying to solve the mystery of election -
"why some and not others?" Studying FC XI again in depth was
especially helpful in ending my sinful search for the answer.
Then, in dealing for weeks with a loved one who was despairing
due to the weight of the law and doubt over her own faith, I saw
the true necessity and beauty of Objective Justification, though I
never used the term. The objective truth of Christ's universal
forgiveness has lifted the veil of tears from her eyes and given the
peace the passes all understanding.
Finally, I desire to thank all of you, but especially Pr. Rolf Preus for his tireless correction of my errors here on LQ. Without his patient teaching, and that of my own wonderful pastor, Rev. Roger James, I would still be in grave error and not have had the true doctrine to offer to this loved one. Thank you, Pr. Preus, for staying true to the pure doctrine of the Word! The Righteousness of Christ is objectively imputed to all people. I say that now without hesitation.
Sincerely,
Erich"
Erich's relative was struggling with unbelief. In steps UOJ which grants forgivness without faith - without the Holy Spirit's faith.
2 Cor. 13:5, "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?"
Reilly reminds me of the mother who rejoices that her kids eat jelly beans and pop tarts at each meal because they had refused meat and vegetables before.
Baptist decision theology is poison.
"After burning more than $20,000 per month,The CORE Lutheran Church has reached how many non-WELS members? How long will that continue before someone pulls the plug on the funding?"
What outreach? I do not care what you do when you sit back and wait for others to find your church. It is not outreach.
Is traveling to one conference after another outreach? No
Are weekly sermons in your church outreach? No
CORE despises doing outreach the way Christ did, and refuses to do it.
Can WELS pastors ever learn from mistakes? The answer is a resounding NO. They characterize untoward outcomes as the Will of God, assuring members that they had nothing to do with it.
Wonderful isn’t it. The rest of us are left to put up with accountability and responsibility.
Anonymous at 8:14 PM is right!
I've been saying in several posts in the last year that even though these guys believe in, and promote, Church Growth, they actually don't do any true outreach or evangelism. It's all about spending a lot to create a show at church (Church Growthy pastor are expensive), but not many people even visit church anymore. They just don't walk in like they used to decades ago. So the CG model is outdated and broken.
It seems so counter-intuitive that Church Growthy pastors don't really go out to the masses or attract the masses to the church, especially since they attack traditional pastors for not doing just that, that this information just languishes where it is not useful. So the CG pastors just get away with it decade after decade and no one kicks them out of the ministry.
First off, I would like to apologize. I never explored blogs before I happened onto yours by accident because I was convinced that the tone of most blogs was way too nasty and that everyone who got involved in them was destined to become nasty whether he or shee wanted to or not. I'm afraid that I became what I did not want to become. I became too nasty. I became blog-level nasty. I became GJ level nasty (oops, that was nasty). I think the situation was made worse this weekend because I was experiencing a particularly dreary weekend with relatives this weekend.
That is why I have made a New Year's resolution of sorts. I have resolved never to come back here ever again (except to check whether you post this). I mean, I'm really not this snide or nasty in real life. The atmosphere of this blog brought out all of my snarkiest comments that usually remain unspoken.
I really wish you no harm, Greg. I just wish that you could see the positive that I see in most people in the WELS. I'm not saying that the WELS is perfect. Goodness knows that I've had my issues with some of the things that go on -- mostly in the arena of politics. However, most of the clergy and laity I've known have had the best of intnentions and genuinely strive to promote the truth of God's Word to the world. This includes the traditionalists and the "shrinkers" (as you call them). I guess that my point is that if you look for the bad in people and institutions, you will find it in spades. If you look for the good, you will be amazed at how much work for the Lord all of these people with their various approaches of ministry are doing.
Oh, and here's one going away present. I'm going to let you in on the little joke that is present in my pen name. "I. J. Reilly" really gives no hint to my identity. In truth, I'm nobody really. I'm a WELS pastor in the Fox Valley area, but that's it. I'm not a muckity muck in the Synod. I've never had a by-line in "Forward in Christ" or even composed a weeks worth of "Meditations" (I must be about the only WELS pastor who hasn't). I'm just a guy who likes to assume the best about his fellow pastors and hates it when people look for the worst, which is why I've been so hard on you.
My name is also not a reference to Bill O'Reilly. I like watching his show from time to time, but I didn't choose it because I'm
emulating his bull-dog tactics.
"I. J. Reilly" is actually a reference to the main character of one of my favorite American novels of the 20th Century, "A Confederacy of Dunces." If you read the book, you might understand why I chose to pay homage to Ignatius J. Reilly. Here was a man in Twentieth Century New Orleans who wishes to be a citizen of the Middle Ages. Instead of emulating Luther, he loved Boethius. He believed that by latching on to this philosopher, he was making himself superior to all the small minded people around him. Instead of doing that, he made himself and those around him miserable. Kind of reminds me of a certain 21st Century resident of Arkansas. The good news for Ignatius is that he finally finds escape when he is forced to leave New Orleans. His pyloric valve opens (a closed pyloric valve tortures him throughout the book) and he finds himself at peace with the world.
I sincerely hope that your spiritual pyloric valve opens some day and you find the peace that Reilly (and Luther, for that matter) eventually found and the great truths of the Bible--of which you imagine yourself to be a defender amidst a church of dunces--can actually bring you some measure of peace.
The Lord's blessings. It's been kind of fun jousting with you, but I've had enough.
Your Friend,
Officer Mancuso
I wrote to President Schroeder on the Ski/Glende issue and received his personal reply within a week. I told him I was admonishing the Synod in advance if these men were not removed from their posts within a month.
He replied that he became aware of the situation a few days before I wrote him. He forwarded it to the president of the Northern Wisconsin District, who's job Schroeder said it is to deal with this initially, and is awaiting a report from him. While he desires to have matters like this addressed very quickly and decisively, there are times when the process of dealing with pastoral wrongdoing may take a little longer. He asked that I have some patience as they work through those who are called to carry out evangelical discipline.
I also addressed the Thrivent issue, and will deal with his response on a later post. I felt Pastor Schroeder really understood my concerns and that his response was immediate and thoughtful.
There by the grace of God go I. I could have pastors like those of the CORE, but I do not due to the grace of God.
Thanks be to God for such fellow brethren in Christ such as you; Anonymous of January 3rd, 4:01 am.
'A confederacy of Dunces' sure is the appropriately named fellowship of the un-named pastor hiding behind the pseudo name of Ignatious. J. Reilly.
Another love triangle! What do their wives think? Left unchecked, these pastors will continue to find lower lows.
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