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| Pool levitation is easy after watching Time of Grace. |
Ichabod - Re: Your article:
"Truth
Faith Seems Quenched on Every Hand. Men Suffer Not Thy Word To Stand. Dark
Times Have O'ertaken:"
http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2012/07/truth-faith-seems-quenched-on-every.html
Your pic of
the Rev. Mark Jeske reminded me of his weekly "Time of Grace" online
presentation. So, I accessed it on my computer and found his latest weekly
message of July 27, 2012. It is entitled:
"The ears of the deaf are open." Under the video box, were the
written words:
"God works in mysterious and
wondrous ways. As sinful human beings, we are not perfect and often forget that
even though we have hardships God delivers us through it all."
No, - not so! I find that aforementioned
statement to be very misleading [false] - God does not deliver the ungodly
"through it all." [Psalm 1] The Scripture says that:
"Many are the afflictions of
the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all." – [Psalm
34:19 – KJV]
Scripture
does not lump the righteous and the unrighteous together to receive the Lord’s
blessing.
As
pleasantly communicative and gifted as Rev. Jeske is, that, which I've pointed
out, violates a basic rule of public communication - especially as it pertains
to proclaiming God's Word. To be a responsible public speaker and faithful to
God's Word, one must differentiate in public speaking. It is irresponsible to
lump all the listeners into one group; assuming that they are godly (righteous
/ Christians). When one has an audience which is public, such as Rev. Mark
Jeske, one ought to be responsible and careful not to give the non-Christian
[unbeliever] the impression that he or she is so favored by the Heavenly
Father:
"God
is not your heavenly father unless you are one of His children:"
http://www.thechristianmessage.org/2010/10/god-is-not-your-heavenly-father-unless.html
Common to
Christian preachers, (and Pastor Mark Jeske is not the exception), is to
include the non-Christian (unbelieving) audience into the Christian audience
fold. Still fresh on my mind is the Christmas Eve children's service message I
heard at Bethel Lutheran. The pastor missed the opportunity of clearly
proclaiming the Gospel to the mixed audience. What more of a mixed audience can
one have at a children's Christmas program, other than that of a Christian
burial (funeral) service where relatives and family are attending who aren't
all church members and Christians?
As I was
mentioning, a wonderful opportunity was missed because the pastor omitted the
complete Gospel message. Although he did make reference in passing to God's
Law, he did not mention "sin" or being "sinful. His re-occurring
theme to the mixed audience was that Christ coming in Bethlehem 2000 years ago
was "for you." But, the pastor failed to connect the dots, illustrating
the full reason why Christ came.
In short,
he did not spell out, and make it clear, what Christ the Savior saves the
individual soul from. Nothing was mentioned about the fatal eternal results of
sin - hell (eternal damnation). In summary (I believe) he did not go "full
circle." He left the impression that all that was important for the mixed
audience was to accept the principle that Christ came, "for you"
[them] - without explaining the crucial "why" and spiritual and
eternal implications.
Seminary
never did teach this basic principle of public speaking. I learned it from my
first two public speaking courses in college. [And, I continue to learn it]:
"A speaker is not only
responsible for what he says; he is also responsible for the impression he
leaves."
Hence, with
this aforementioned Christmas message, (I believe) the pastor left the
impression to the mixed crowd that Christ came "for them" without
conveying "full circle" in his message what Christ came to completely
save them [us] from. And, I don't
recall the preacher speaking about faith and belief; but only conveying the
universal objective justification message of God's forgiveness without personal
faith [belief] as Luther taught it.
Finally, I
only hope and pray that with the rich Christian heritage with which Lutherans
have been blessed, - that many pastors and others would figure out how to speak
to the mixed audience crowd. After all, didn't Luther distinguish between the
visible and invisible church? Didn't he correctly point out that even in the
visible church there are both believers and unbelievers?
Nathan M.
Bickel - Bay City, Michigan
