to keep people from reading it.
When WELS Pastor Papenfuss (the pope's foot) was stirring up a national controversy over guilt-free saints in Hell, he admitted, "I never heard anything about UOJ until I went to seminary."
The families who agreed with the Bible and the Book of Concord were kicked out of WELS for not subscribing to the Kokomo Statements, which are no more ridiculous than the Missouri and ELS versions of the same thing - Halle's Professor Knapp.
I understand Papenfuss next went to Africa, to teach them that the Hottentots and Judas Iscariot were already justified.
Justification by Faith
The Gospel is the message that Christ has died for our sins. When this is preached to adults, the Holy Spirit creates faith in the hearts of the audience. They receive the Gospel message in faith and are declared innocent by God because of Christ.
Infants also hear the Gospel when they are baptized and become believers. The efficacious Word accomplishes this, just as it does when preaching to adults. The newborn babies are examples to us. If we do not believe as these children do, we cannot enter the Kingdom of God.
The Babtists, who are so dear to the UOJ Stormtroopers, deny infant faith and their justification. These tiny newborns, who trust and love their parents, turning to hear their voices, cannot trust and love God or hear His Word, according to the Babtists.
We call the Word and Sacraments Means of Grace because they are the Instruments by which God gives us His grace. The Holy Spirit is always at work in these Instruments and constant in fulfilling God's will. They are Means of Grace because God has appointed them as the way in which He offers His forgiveness, love, and compassion. They are Means of Grace because this forgiveness is not based upon merit.
Someone stays under God's wrath and outside of the Kingdom as long as he remains a unbeliever. As the Parable of the Sower reveals (Matthew 13), many lose the Gospel for various reasons, which are not due to God's failure or the ineffectiveness of the Word.
The Scriptures and the Confessions teach that we should broadcast the Word, trusting in God to accomplish His will. If anyone does this, in spite of the Enthusiasts' best efforts, the Stormtroopers fly into a rage and disparage the person who relies on the Word instead of their opinions - but they do it in the name of love.
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Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Justification by Faith Is Simple - Only the Sem Ro...":
In all the versions of UOJ promoted in the Lutheran churches the distribution and application of God's grace, upon the whole unbelieving world, outside of the Holy Spirit working through the Word is universal.
Scripture condemns this as the Lutheran Confessions confirm.
Romans 5:2 By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
The Smalcald Articles, Confession:
3] And in those things which concern the spoken, outward Word, we must firmly hold that God grants His Spirit or grace to no one, except through or with the preceding outward Word, in order that we may [thus] be protected against the enthusiasts, i.e., spirits who boast that they have the Spirit without and before the Word, and accordingly judge Scripture or the spoken Word, and explain and stretch it at their pleasure, as Muenzer did, and many still do at the present day, who wish to be acute judges between the Spirit and the letter, and yet know not what they say or declare.
http://www.bookofconcord.org/smalcald.php#confession
