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| Like his pal Valleskey, Bivens teach Church Growth and UOJ. Both admitted going to Fuller Seminary; both denied going to Fuller Seminary - a notoriously liberal training school. |
AC V has left a new comment on your post "UOJ Questions Answered: Enthusiasm Breeds Enthusia...":
If you want a PRACTICAL application of the dangers of UOJ, read this the following article, "Making Peace with a Monster" and look for this:
"Some people may say the Colorado shooting victims need to learn how to forgive the gunman to move on.
Franscell doesn't buy that. The survivors who fared the best, he found, didn't grant pardons.
'They don't absolve their would-be killers and they haven't stopped crying, even decades later,' he says."
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/26/us/mass-murder-survivors/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
Granting a "pardon" to one who has sinned and is not repentant does not help the sinner either.
But that's not what UOJ WELS teaches. Compare and contrast these passages from Scripture and the Confessions with what Seminary professor Forrest Bivens wrote in the April issue of the WELS Forward in Christ:
Scripture:
If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld. - John 20:23
For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret... - 2 Corinthians 7:10
Confessions:
And Is. 28:21: The Lord shall be wrath that He may do His work, His strange work, and bring to pass His act, His strange act. He calls it the strange work of the Lord when He terrifies, because to quicken and console is God's own work. [Other works, as, to terrify and to kill, are not God's own works, for God only quickens.] But He terrifies, he says, for this reason, namely, that there may be a place for consolation and quickening, because hearts that are secure and do not feel the wrath of God loathe consolation. In this manner Scripture is accustomed to join these two, the terrors and the consolation, in order to teach that in repentance there are these chief members, contrition, and faith that consoles and justifies. Neither do we see how the nature of repentance can be presented more clearly and simply. [We know with certainty that God thus works in His Christians, in the Church.)
For the two chief works of God in men are these, to terrify, and to justify and quicken those who have been terrified. Into these two works all Scripture has been distributed. The one part is the Law, which shows, reproves, and condemns sins. The other part is the Gospel, i.e., the promise of grace bestowed in Christ... - Defense of the Augsburg Confession, XII:51-53, Of Repentance.
Now, what does WELS teach? Answer, Forrest Bivens, April Forward in Christ:
Especially to those who have wronged us yet have given no evidence of contrition before God or reliance on Jesus as their sin-bearer, we may say: 'I fully and freely forgive you, sinner to sinner.... You have my forgiveness, given cheerfully in love.' Our responsibility is to forgive others fully, unconditionally." (p.9)
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GJ - Has anyone seen a more vindictive and unforgiving bunch than the UOJ Stormtroopers? The three characters above were glad to kick out a long-time faithful member for asking questions.
WELS and the ELS think nothing about threatening to expel congregations for disagreeing with them.
