Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Review of J. P. Meyer - Ministers of Christ, Revi...":
UOJ is insidious. It's sole function is to separate the hearer from the one true Gospel.
Those who have rejected Christ's faith but still desire to be called Children of God, have created a new way to be righteous in God's sight that doesn't require the faith which they lack. Having established this new righteousness they go about to destroy Christ's righteousness because it stands as a testament to their deception and departure from Scripture.
Romans 10:2 For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
Romans 10:3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.
Almost all (W)ELS UOJ essays bow deep before the holy grail of Universal Justification, Siegbert W. Becker's Justification essay. His is the most clear confession concerning the false, deceptive and contradictory nature of UOJ.
This is his statement on the Kokomo four:
"Every one of the statements can be understood correctly, even though one must swallow a little hard to accede to the fourth. However, because the statements were used to discredit the truth of universal justification and to cause other laymen to doubt this teaching it is especially necessary to point out that the statements do not contain false doctrine."
"One really becomes a guilt-free saint only through faith, if we limit ourselves to the biblical usage of the word. However, since our holiness, as Augustine says, consists in sin’s remission rather than in life’s perfection, we could say that when God forgave the sins of the whole world he regarded all sinners as guilt-free, but if they are guilt-free we might also say that they are considered sinless in the sight of God. But a sinless person is a holy person, a saint."
Page 14
Saints in Hell
"Even the fourth statement can be defended even though it leaves much to be desired. As we have said, the statement is not drawn from a WELS source. If it is true that God has forgiven the sins of the world then it is also true that he forgave the sin of Judas. When Jesus called Judas “friend” in the garden, he was in effect treating him as a forgiven sinner. If Jesus took away the sins of the world he also took away the sins of the people who died in the flood. It is surely no more difficult to believe that God forgave sins that were already being punished than to believe that at the time of the resurrection he forgave sins that had not yet been committed. How that is possible I do not know. It very likely finds its explanation in the divine attribute of eternity.
But while the statement can be defended as expressing a biblical reality, yet it would be best not to speak in such terms. In Scandinavia it is customary on the part of some to ridicule universal justification with the remark, “The damned lie in hell with their forgiven sins.” So this fourth statement is a caricature which has a tendency to make universal justification look ridiculous." Page 15
http://www.wlsessays.net/files/BeckerJustification.PDF
There is little about UOJ, and certainly S.W. Becker's essay, which doesn't contradict Scripture, Christ's Holy Word.
And yet I received this warning from an Intrepid Pastor no less, "I did have Sig Becker for a professor, for a number of classes, and I can say, and will say from the roof-tops if called upon to do so, that this man is so far away from UOJ that he's not even in the same universe. OK, I know, I know, he defended Kokomo, but I happen to know that that was a case of synod blood being thicker than confessional water, so to speak...So, I may be dumb, but I'm not totally stupid. So, I think - in my own humble opinion - that if I say some guy is not an UOJ fanatic, I just might know what heck I'm talking about...I only ask you to consider three things - and this advice comes from my own experience - and please believe me, I know of what I speak:
1.) Bashing dead WELS guys, especially greatly beloved ones like Meyer and Becker, will not get you any sympathy or even so much as a hearing among 95% of WELS people. So, if you want to actually make any points or any progress, stick to the living."
So from the only publicly contentious corner of (W)ELS comes the admonition that if we want to be heard by the (W)ELS laity - which these guys shepherd - we can only discuss the statements of the living or the unbeloved dead. Well, so far they haven't promised to stop quoting the dead false teachers. Maybe if they stopped elevating men above Christ they would, by God's grace, hear Christ's voice in the Words of Scripture and faithfully defended and promoted in the Lutheran Confessions.
