Fruit of the Stealth Mission

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!

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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 Lutheran Church has reached how many non-WELS members? How long will that continue before someone pulls the plug on the funding?

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.

1. 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.
2. 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?
3. Church and Change has the same bad spelling and the November 2009 conference announced on its main page - my biggest failure.
4. 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.
5. Pastor Mark Walters, a regular at Chicanery conferences, threatened to shut down Ichabod, but changed his mind soon after.
6. 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?
7. 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.

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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.

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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.

Hymns and Music

raklatt has left a new comment on your post "Worship - From WELS":

Combining "Thaxted" and the lyric of "Jerusalem the Golden" makes for romance and emotion.

The fourth movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony and either the original lyric or the Joyful lyric are also to stir up human emotion.

Emotion is not a useful conveyance for the Word because of its temporary nature. Neither of those tunes should have added words to given them religious connotations. They need to stay in their pagan and secular realms.

The words of the lyric and its poetry come first. The musical setting for that poetry must only accompany and not out-shout the lyric as it does in both the Beethoven and this arrangement of Jerusalem.

The Beethoven theme has become trite and so will the Holst theme.

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Freddy Finkelstein has left a new comment on your post "Worship - From WELS":

I.J. Reilly asks: do you also object to the use of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement in the hymn "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee"?

Yes, I do, and for the same reasons. The final movement of Beethoven's Ninth is, by far, more well known as a herald of agnosticism than an instrument of worship to the One, True God. Adopting it as an anthem of Christian worship is, at best, an awkward and mostly unsuccessful attempt to co-opt overtly and deliberately agnostic art as sacred expression. Believe it or not, strange as it may seem, I have run into many Christians, even in pop-church Evangelicalism, who strongly dislike it. When they sing "Joyful, Joyful" they know they are really singing two different things at the same time.

For that matter, I also disfavor the use of Sibelius' hymn, Finlandia, originally included in his nationalistic symphony of the same name, but later re-written by him as a stand-alone hymn for use in Masonic rituals. It was later used as a national hymn and also incorporated by Scandinavians into church hymnody. Pretty song? Yes. Unfortunately, it carries with it far too much secular and Masonic baggage to be suitable as Christian worship, in my opinion.

Christians are far better off using original art for the purposes of Christian worship.

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 Freddy Finkelstein has left a new comment on your post "Worship - From WELS":

Interesting. This is the new setting from the WELS Hymnal Supplement. The tune is named Thaxted -- the name of the favorite hometown of its author, Gustav Holst. This tune was written for the Jupiter cycle of his very popular orchestral suite, The Planets -- a series of tone poems written to describe the astrological characters the planets are named for. While the entire suite was inspired, in part, by the political times in which Holst wrote the work (he was a Fabian Socialist), and in part by the landscape and daily life of Thaxted (indeed, the tune Thaxted was inspired by the impressive image of the steeple of St. John the Baptist that rises above Thaxted), it was nevertheless written to celebrate the character and influence of pagan gods.

The tune Thaxted is inserted in the tone poem about Jupiter, "the Bringer of Jollity," in a section that has been described by some as Jupiter's descent to earth, where he leaves the celebration to woo female virgins. Thaxted is his love song. After his "courtship," Jupiter returns to the celebration. Even today, all the girls go goo goo when they hear this tune. It is a pretty song. Here is a YouTube video of the entire Jupiter cycle -- you can hear Thaxted solemnly emerge from the "jollity:" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B49N46I39Y

It is interesting to me that in a Synod which does not allow wedding music by Wagner -- because of its pagan associations -- that they would publish much more recently written pagan-themed music. I remember hearing Jerusalem the Golden put to music from Holst's pagan tone poem five years ago (I think) at District Convention. They were "testing it." I immediately recognized it as having pagan associations and wouldn't sing it. Listening, then, to several hundred men sing this sugary/sappy love song just made me chuckle. The version has become the standard version at our church. My wife and I won't sing it, though -- and, yes, we've complained. But no one cares -- all music is amoral, right?

Freddy Finkelstein
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Freddy Finkelstein has left a new comment on your post "Worship - From WELS":

This is a valid difference. What of the words? I would argue that words are irrelevant, in both cases, to the point being made. If tunes by Wagner, all by themselves, carry pagan and/or secular association strong enough to forbid them, then the pagan tunes by Holst, regardless of the words superimposed on them, themselves carry these associations strong enough to offend, as well. Lipstick on a pig doesn't change the pig. No one among us, that I know of, has attempted to sanctify Wagner's music in this way. As it would be in the case of Wagner, by adding words to Holst's pagan anthem, all one succeeds in doing is preaching two different messages at once, even holding them both up as equivalent. This is the same issue foundational to the use of so-called "Contemporary Worship" -- strong associations not only with pagan and secular sources producing the music itself, not only of strong associations with heterodox church bodies that make use of the contemporary genre, but of its inherent ability to teach and reinforce false doctrine. The lyrics of so-called "Contemporary Worship" aren't bad primarily because the theology of its authors is bad, the lyrics are bad principally because they don't matter -- the experience produced by the use of this music, all by itself, regardless of the words, is not only sufficient but necessary to teach and reinforce their false doctrines regarding the Holy Spirit and the Means through which He works. There is no such thing as amoral music, and Contemporary advocates in America exploit this fact in their own interest.

I would further argue that invocation of "eating meat sacrificed to idols" is incomplete in the application given to it, above. Mention of this was not intended by Paul as a tool for identifying and ridiculing those with a supposedly weak conscience. The point is, whether anyone is known to have a weak conscience or not, if association of the meat to paganism is publicly known, don't eat it because of the offense such eating would create. Tunes by Wagner -- without the words he wrote to accompany them, I might add -- create offense. We don't use these tunes. Given the popularity of his wedding march, it is incredible to me that none of our talented Lutheran lyricists haven't written suitable words for it, if that is all that is required in order to make it suitable. Nevertheless, if, all by themselves, tunes written by Wagner ~150 years ago are still strong enough in their association with pagan themes to create offense, the tunes by Holst do as well -- more so given that Holst is a much more recent composer, that The Planets is much more popular among average folks these days than any of Wagner's works, and that his intentions with the music, and the stories he succeeds in telling with it, are so transparent and direct.

My opinion,

Freddy Finkelstein

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GJ  - Mr. Klatt and Mr. Finkelstein have made good points. Some melodies are so closely associated with the words that people think of the other context. "How Firm a Foundation" can be sung to Adeste Fidelis, as indicated in the LCA hymnal, but everyone looks around when singing a Christmas melody to another hymn. That conflict reminds me of  the New Dick Van Dyke's  TV show failing because he had a "another wife," not Laura Petrie. Van Dyke lived in Cave Creek (Phoenix) and shot the failing show there, with his alien TV wife Hope Lange.

Some hymns are popular and sung threadbare for a time. "Life High the Cross" was over-appreciated and overused in the LCA, only to appear again in the WELS hymnal. James Tiefel predicted its demise.

The often-denounced hymns are really the best because they are not popular with the Methodist-Babtist crowd and emphasize Biblical doctrine rather than feelings. The denounced hymns are the German chorales, Gerhardt (but not during a centennial celebration), and Luther. Unfortunately, Lutheran pastors have been lazy in pleasing their Pietistic audiences while neglecting their congregations' doctrinal education. The Shrinkers have taken this tendency to a new, lower level by aiming at entertainment, training their members to join even worse sects.

I have always enjoyed popular music, but children raised with pop music alone never develop a capacity to enjoy real music. Our policy at home was to play only classical music, hymns, and sacred music. We never played pop or rock music in the car. The result was a Lutheran who knew classical music well and still enjoyed pop favorites.

I told a shocked and grieving college audience, "It takes very little talent to play rock music." I did a loud "TWANG!" and screamed. They asked me to repeat that and defend my thesis. That was simple. The entire class agreed that the Boston Symphony could play rock if they wanted, but very few rock musicians could join the Boston Symphony. The next week I brought Mr. Bose to play Pachebel's Canon as they arrived in class. Most of the students asked, "What's that?" and wrote down the name of the piece. I encouraged them to learn about classical music and appreciate - not as background music - but for its own value.

The same can be said for classical Christian music - not because it is old, although much of it has withstood the test of time, outlasting truly dreadful hymns. Classical Christian music is valued because it is good. Zinzendorf wrote hundreds of bad hymns and two good ones, both in The Lutheran Hymnal.

Jerusalem - Unofficial British Hymn - Inspired "Chariots of Fire" Title

Wikipedia

The Hymn: "Jerusalem"

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

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GJ - I posted this as a curiosity. While searching for a traditional version of "Jerusalem the Golden," sung by a choir, I found this. John Milton combined classical mythology with Biblical images in his Paradise Lost. This poem fits the Milton method, which is strange, to say the least.

Paul Tillich did the same, artlessly, in his bizarre Systematic Theology book. His liberal Union Seminary colleagues were shocked.