Universal Objective Confession

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

Universal Objective Confession - Joe Krohn:

According to Scripture, the message has always been to preach the Law, the need for repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Never is this more clear than in the book of Jonah. Any church that is heavily into church growth methods should do a study of the book, for it is here that we see the efficacy of the Word.

A WELS man emailed me recently concerning our situation; a caring young man. He talked in terms of the usual OJ/SJ terms. It dawned on me that in order for a universal absolution to be true, there would need to be a universal confession, right? I would appreciate someone pointing me to that verse or verses, because there are many places in the Bible that state if individuals do not believe in the Christ as the Savior in their stead...they die in their sins.

***

GJ - Joe, you are being overly droll tonight.

Sinuflecting to Rome, Again

The Loss of Rev. Mason Beecroft

Sep 15th, 2011

by Dan.

I’m saddened by the departure of Mason Beecroft from the LCMS roster of the ordained, as reported by The Lutheran Witness in its September issue.

I was privileged to meet him at the Model Theological Conference on Worship in January 2010. His presentation there, essentially saying that the key to revitalizing our synod was the restoration of the Mass, was excellent.


Rev. Beecroft had stepped down from his office at Grace Lutheran in Tulsa for health reasons. We prayed for his health, but now there are other concerns.


I’m told (and verified with a second source) that he has left for Roman Catholicism, and this disappoints me for several reasons. First, because all of the good things that he did will now simply be poo-pooed as “Romish.” Secondly, because he was a good scholar whose services will not be in the LCMS employ any more. Finally, because of where he’s going, how one can renounce justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone? The man-made law can only bring an appearance of comfort.


And he’s not, in Roman Catholicism, going to avoid theological liberals.

Please come home, Rev. Beecroft.

***

GJ - One Lutheran lady told me about the LCMS pastor who kept a rosary. Soon after he was a priest. Many Lutheran clergy are promiscuous in their use of these terms:

• Mass
• Father
• Mary
• Saints
• The Holy Father, aka The Antichrist

Not every Lutheran minister who glories in those terms will join Rome or Constantinople. Some will walk the tightrope instead. But many will lead their flocks into deception.

Someone told me that Robert Preus wrote Justification and Rome to deter his own seminary from poping, but that obviously did not work.

I am happy to say to all those Lutheran clergy who have left for Rome or Constantinople - "Stay there. You probably never grasped Biblical doctrine in the first place."

*** GJ - Someone told me that that a WELS pastor in Alaska went Russian Orthodox. Now that's cold.

"My Dear Twin Sister" - Jumping Off the Cliff Together

'My dear twin sister church'

National bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada addresses assembly

Susan Johnson, national bishop of theEvangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, told theChurchwide Assembly she'd been reading Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone, an account of conjoined twins separated soon after birth. It made Johnson think of her church and the ELCA.

"Together in predecessor church bodies we underwent a process of mitosis and have been sister churches growing side by side," she said, referring to a decades-old separation between U.S. and Canadian Lutherans.

Susan Johnson, national bishop of theEvangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.

She then listed recent ELCICactions, including restructuring, moving to triennial conventions, merging some synods, committing to right relationships with indigenous people, and adopting a social statement on human sexuality. "Kind of sounds familiar, eh?" she asked the assembly.

"We are freed in Christ to serve, but sometimes the call to serve feels overwhelming and lonely," Johnson said. "That is why we have partners. ... Thank you, my dear twin sister church, for our shared history and for the promise of walking together in a shared future — freed in Christ to serve."

ELCA's Report on How Marvelous They Are: WELS, ELS, LCMS Still Working with Them

"Brett, we passed a resolution against elk hunting."

Resources strong in spite of congregational withdrawals Report of the secretary

Despite the loss of several hundred churches, remaining ELCA congregations control assets worth more than $22 billion and that figure grew in 2010, ELCA Secretary David D. Swartling told the Churchwide Assembly.

"Undeniably, the ELCA has been affected by congregations leaving, but we continue to have enormous capacity for ministry," he said. "Based upon [annual] congregational reports, as analyzed by Research and Evaluation: approximately 95 percent of our congregations; 94 percent of baptized membership; 94 percent of total congregational giving and congregational assets remain," he said.

ELCA Secretary David D. Swartling. "We can do things together in ministry — do different things and things better — than we can do separately. Because of who we are as the ELCA, we have the potential for evangelical synergy."

Swartling also noted that congregations received $2 billion in contributions for mission and ministry in 2010, plus had more than $2.1 billion in endowment funds, memorials and cash.

Congregational withdrawals have taken a toll, he said. As of June 17, 2011:

• 832 congregations had taken a first vote to leave (51 of those have taken multiple first votes).

• 621 congregations have passed first votes.

• 517 congregations have passed second votes.

Eight synods had lost 10 percent or more of their congregations, while some had lost one or no congregations.

Most of the withdrawals resulted from passage in 2009 of a statement on human sexuality and the related opening of ELCA rostered positions to gays and lesbians in committed relationships. The ELCA now has roughly 10,000 congregations.

Swartling noted that 54 percent of departing congregations were from communities of 10,000 people or fewer. "Given the small size of these communities, profound questions exist about the long-term viability of many of these congregations and their capacity to be effective in ministry and to develop the kind of interrelationships that they had in the ELCA," he said.

Conversely, 25 percent of large congregations in urban and large suburban centers have left the ELCA, Swartling said.

About 61 percent of congregations that have disaffiliated reportedly joined Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ; 31 percent or about 160 congregations have joined the North American Lutheran Church; and the rest represent fewer than 2 percent each. Some of those church bodies allow multiple memberships, he said.

"Monitoring these data has sometimes been upsetting, particularly when I hear from bishops and synod leaders about their experiences on the ground. But this work has not shaken my faith," he said. "[The ELCA] is the church that it's always been, but at the same time it is being made anew. It is a 21st-century reformation church."

Excerpts - Letters from Paul T. McCain When He Was a Parish Pastor

I have two letters from Paul T. McCain, written on his parish letterhead, from St. Paul Lutheran Church, Waverly, Iowa. He was serving his first and only parish, running Al Barry's successful campaign for the synod president's office (1992), working covertly with Herman Otten to leak materials in advance. Al Barry's publications appeared as if by magic in Christian News, building support for the relatively unknown DP. McCain and Otten denied working with other, continuing to do so covertly when Barry made Paul his assistant in 1992.

Barry hailed from four (4) synods: an orthodox leaning group in the Twin Cities, the Little Sect on the Prairie, a brief stop for vicarage in the WELS, and finally the LCMS.

McCain reviewed Liberalism: Its Cause and Cure (favorably) for Christian News. He wrote on November 4, 1991:

I apologize for the personal reflections in my review which apparently incurred even more wrath towards you from your administrators. That was not my intention. I was totally unaware of the pressure on you when I made the remark that the WELS would be wise not to "squander" your influence. In retrospect and with your letter I now feel it was a Providential remark.

McCain also wrote on November 23, 1991:

I am completely confused by the charge of slander some level at you for challenging certain theological positions. I suppose that it is possible to do this in an offensive manner, but I have read many of your articles and have always considered them to be objective. You never get "personal" or attack individuals on a peronal level. Why have we so completely lost our stomach for polemics?

***

GJ - Twenty years later, I teach and publish the same doctrine as I did then. I have an illustration for all those Syn Conference friends who are so distant now, including many not-so Intrepid Lutherans.

A farmer was driving his wife to the market in their truck. She asked, "Why don't we sit together in the truck, the way we used to when we first got married."

The farmer answered, "I ain't moved."

I have learned a lot more about the Scriptures and Confessions, thanks to a constant barrage of attacks from the so-called conservative Lutherans. McCain is ample proof that a shape-shifter thrives in today's Age of Apostasy.

How To Keep the Laity Submissive

narrow-minded has left a new comment on your post "DP Glaeske's Letter Means: "Abandon Ship!"":

Once word of the Krohns' treatment gets around, the laity will further cower in fear. 

Only One Justification - By Faith

Sometimes I mull over the flimsy excuses for Universal Objective Justification. Most of them follow the Knapp line of two justifications. According to their delusions - Objective Justification means the entire world is forgiven, without faith; Subjective Justification takes place when individuals decide they are already forgiven.

When people responded about how ridiculous that sounded. WELS SP Mischke said, "There is only one justification. They are two sides of the same coin." I wonder where he got that analogy - II Mortimer 4:13?

Jay Webber, who makes fun of WELS repeat-after-me doctrine, parrots - "They are two sides of the same coin."

The UOJ Stormtroopers search far and wide for ways to prop up their fantasy, trying to distance themselves from Calvin and Pietism, but are only successful in alienating themselves from Luther and the Apostle Paul.

Their search for UOJ in the Book of Concord is as touching and tragic as the eternal search for the Lost Dutchman Mine outside of Phoenix.

F. Schleiermacher, a bridge between old Halle University and its completely rationalistic era, accepted the first justification and taught that the entire world was justified. This is also the message of the Universalists. Scheiermacher is the foundational theologian for all modern Protestant theologians, such as Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. Thus all of modern theology mocks the notion of faith as detrimental to the concept of grace. Everyone already has grace. Everyone is justified, because Christ rises from the dead every time someone believes He did. How blessed - to reflect on the Easter faith of the Apostles, whose simple fishermen's hearts grasped that illusion! One can carry on with this charade forever, because believers fail to parse the message of the theologians and their deluded pastoral followers.

Tholuck was another bridge theologian at Halle, with a nod toward the past but a bold embrace of Universalism. Tholuck is a footnote in many textbooks, but he was the mentor of Adolph Hoenecke. Some of you are thinking, "Now he will pull a guilt by association fallacy out of his beret." But no, I am just clarifying the historical perspective. Hoenecke was trained in Pietism. So was Walther. Hoenecke did additional study in the Confessions after Halle, so that must have saved him from becoming another CFW. But there remains the dialect of Pietism here and there in Hoenecke, although it is slight.

The precious OJ quickly becomes Universalism among the so-called Lutherans. That is widely acknowledged in ELCA. The implicit Universalism in the Syn Conference renders all discussions about doctrine and worship obsolete. Many realize this, so they play games with their weighty theological treatises, each author hailing the brilliance of the others while "having certain problems with his notion of..."

Universalism as a religion is quite conservative as a heresy, but the Unitarians merged with them and killed off whatever remained of the Scriptures in them. The same path is found among the Syn Conference Lutherans. They adore UOJ and Church Growth because they are Universalists. The rationalism takes over completely and they become Unitarians who despise everything about the Christian faith. I have known three WELS ex-pastors who followed this downward trajectory, each one praised and supported by the synodical leadership - Robert Schumann, Curtis Peterson, and Mark Freier. Doubtless there are many more.

If one knows and believes justification by faith, then he must reject and repudiate justification without faith. No one can teach the efficacy of the Word and UOJ at the same time - one displaces the other. Therefore, all the UOJ nonsense is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, as one reader from California like to point out.

WELS Is Catching Up to ELCA - Fast

Comment from Joe Krohn's Blog


Yi'su ke Bala said...
Do I understand correctly? The WELS pastor chooses not to answer a doctrinal question simply on the account that you are not in the fellowship of their communion? How would they expect to win back an erring brother (I assume that is their perspective in this situation)if they refuse any doctrinal discussion simply on the account that you are "not in fellowship." How do any non WELS people ever inquire into WELS position if they squelch any doctrinal discussions between WELS pastors and Christians who are not in fellowship with them? I can understand them frowning on the fact that you are communing outside their fellowship, but to refuse to answer a doctrinal question on those grounds seems preposterous. I am a member of LCMS who once was considering the WELS (in fact the same congregation that you reference in your posts). The pastor once told me that WELS was 'the old LCMS.' I can concede with WELS that the LCMS is not what it once was, but by no means do I discern the WELS to be anything akin to my grandfathers' LCMS. My grandfather's LCMS valued doctrinally rich hymns and liturgy and relied on Word and Sacrament to create the faith which receives the gift of salvation found only in the precious Blood of the Lamb. They did not value cultural relevance as some sort of third sacrament, turning Divine Service into a Rolling Stone Concert and jettisoning honest Bible translations for something that is PC to the masses. I'm thankful, at least for the moment, that I stayed where I am.


***

GJ - I predicted a long time ago that WELS would have women's ordination long before Missouri, to use one yardstick of conformity to the Spirit of This Age. "The church that dances with the Spirit of This Age will be a widow in the Age To Come."

Women's ordination is just a symptom. Enthusiasm took over the sect many decades ago, with a lobbying group--known as Church and Change--determined to take no prisoners. They combine stealth and deceit even today. Kudu Don Patterson is a Church and Church leader but denies being part of it, even though he attended their "last" shindig.

How Church and Change took over everything is easy to determine. People suggested that I attend the "final" meeting of these shape-shifters, Regaining Momentum. I did latrine duty in Columbus - why sub for others after my enlistment is over?

When Issues in WELS met, Gurgle announced he would attend the next meeting, when 200 men were supposed to show up. That did it. Attendance was sparse, lest anyone arouse the righteous wrath of Gurgle. Faith makes people bold, and there is little faith among the pastors of WELS. DP Free died and Issues in WELS disappeared, website and all.