A WELS member sent me the link to the Joel Hochmuth arrest, which was already in a newspaper. Today a search on the story, via Google News, yields 37 or more media listings. The brain-washed do not realize that most of my information comes from within. The rest is on the Net, especially since the worst characters cannot help bragging about themselves.
When District President Ed Werner was arrested and sent to state prison for molesting girls in his own congregation, WELS only admitted to it in that region, because it was in the newspapers. However, the vast majority knew nothing about it. DP Free's son (now at The Love Shack) offered the WELS cover story as soon as Werner was arrested.
But no news is local now. I can look up the smallest local paper and find out who died and what is being offered in the school lunch program. The Survivors' Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP) had their first successes by combining information across the country, tracing where abusive priests were moved. Many of those scandals in the Roman Catholic Church were erupting in the 1980s. The same pattern continues, but reporting is putting a crimp in the plans. One prelate is in trouble because he is remembered for praising a bishop who covered up gross child abuse by one priest. "He supported this priest, a son of the Church."
Denominations are the New Rome. They are obsessed with themselves and hate their own doctrine, whatever it might be. Institutional secrecy, felonious cover-ups, shunning, and excommunication mark their Gospel work. They all gather at Fuller Seminary, which is only good at one thing - flattering idiots into thinking that business methods do the work of the Holy Spirit. Priests train there too.
The Book of Concord shows no interest in denominations and the visible church of its time. However, Church Growth is based on business management theories and marketing, so it is obsessed with institutions. Any large congregation is good simply because it is large. Faithful members and pastors are wolves, according to a founder of Jeske's Church and Change lobby, an employee at Parlow's plagiarizing church.
The Roman Catholic Church is very good at what they do - not that we should emulate them. They allow any teaching, any deviancy, but no criticism. The Church of Rome is indefectible, they claim. A priest can be a New Ager like Jeske, but he will not be touched, no matter what absurdity he teaches, as long as he remains loyal to Rome. A priest can get himself into any kind of trouble, but he is still a priest and likely to pop up again, like Fred Adrian or Floyd Luther Stolzenburg. Money talks, doctrine walks.
The Roman Catholic leaders live like royalty and court the wealthy. The Lutheran leaders also have their trotters in the trough, with first dibs on the offering money, the Thrivent and foundation grants. A Lutheran who is faithful to Holy Mother Synod can expect to travel around the world on offering money. He can almost destroy his sect - like Pope John the Malefactor - and still travel like the Secretary of State. But if he criticizes the New Rome, he will be pushed out of his parish, treated as a leper by all, and see his family trashed at every opportunity.
The synods need a Book of Concord approach if they are going to last a few years more. The clergy and laity will need to tremble at the Word, not at the voice of the DP.
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| How many Lutheran leaders know who Chytraeus is - or care who he is? |
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LutherRocks has left a new comment on your post "The New Rome - How Denominations Destroy Themselve...":
I believe it is the fulfillment of prophecy...from Revelation 17: " 1 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters. 2 With her the kings of the earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.”
3 Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a desert. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. 5 This title was written on her forehead:
MYSTERY
BABYLON THE GREAT
THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
6 I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus. "
