Pastor Nathan Bickel Spoofs UOJ Fanatics

Ichabod –

Regarding your recent offensive posting:

Hebrews 11 Graphics - Sunday, August 12, 2012

http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2012/08/hebrews-11-graphics.html

Why do you exhibit all these pictures and include Scriptures (with them) about faith? Haven't you graduated beyond the Scriptures of our Heavenly Father's divine revelation? Shame on you for even displaying these anti-Christian / anti Lutheran propaganda pics and the Bible verses that speak of faith! Why can't you pick up on the new wave of Christianity? Why can't you begin to proclaim some universal objective justification? Why can't you do that and make it more comfortable for your massive viewing audience?

Please allow me to illustrate what you should be doing:

According to the July 2012 Edition of Bethel Ev. Lutheran Church, Bay County WELS "Bulletin," there appeared on the front page, the featured article, "The Sabbath Gift."

Nowhere in this full page article, [perhaps, likely, a canned synodical one] was I forced to read about faith! That uncouth and uncomfortable word, “faith” was never once, mentioned! It was a very comfortable article to read about the Third Commandment. Especially, was it cozy and comfortable to read toward the end, as it made clear to me that all I had to do is sit back and stand in amazement over all that Christ has done for me, without all that nasty faith business to complicate things!

You see, Ichabod - there is no need for you to clutter cyberspace with all those quoted Scriptures about outmoded faith and all those offensive outdated Book of Concord quotations, and sayings of Neanderthal Luther, and Chemnitz!

Here's the end portion of that model "Sabbath" article:

>>>>>>> ........Jesus has secured forgiveness for your sins, including the one where you ignored God's wisdom of work and rest. Always living up to the demands of his Father and the law, Jesus has carried all of your weariness to the cross. There he paid your death sentence. He now lives. Jesus is the gift of forgiveness and eternal life...for rest. Jesus is the gift for your sanity and wholeness. Jesus is the gift to enrich your lives. Jesus is the gift to make your joy complete. Jesus restores your bent and withered parts. Jesus is Sabbath (rest).

Take a breath and relax. Jesus is your Sabbath gift...... <<<<<<<<<<

Ichabod - Please get this faith thing out of your head. Go through your old hymn books and tear out those sections entitled:  "trust," "consecration," "new obedience," - and, especially that awful, "faith and justification" section! Make sure that you destroy that very offensive hymn - "My Faith Looks Up to Thee!"  And, most of all get rid of that one entitled, “Salvation Unto Us Has Come!”

Well - there you have it Ichabod! So, then, why do you still insist on all this faith in Christ business? Can't you see and understand that all a human soul needs is to understand that Jesus has brought universal objective justification to everyone? Can't you get it through your thick head that faith is outmoded and that there isn't any need to put faith in Christ, especially since He does everything for everyone?

Finally, shame on you umpteen times for all your Luther justification by faith alone, material! Can't you finally get with it and be in vogue with the current culture? Shame, shame on you!

Nathan M. Bickel – pastor emeritus

Bay City, Michigan

www.thechristianmessage.org

www.moralmatters.org

Will Yale Fire Fareed Zakaria? « Commentary Magazine.He Can Always Work for Concordia Publishing House. Check with Bruce Kinz and Paul McCain

Will Yale Fire Fareed Zakaria? « Commentary Magazine:

There is now little question that Fareed Zakaria is guilty of plagiarism. He has admitted copying a portion of aNew Yorker essay and apologized.Time, where Zakaria works as a columnist, has suspended Zakaria for a month, and CNN—owned by the same parent company—has suspended him pending an investigation. This represents a mere slap on the wrist for someone whose standard speaking fee is $75,000.

As Yale University lecturer Jim Sleeper notes, however, Zakaria has a perch not only at CNN and Time, but also at Yale University, where he sits on the Yale Corporation, the University’s governing board and policy-making body. There is no greater academic sin than plagiarism. Students can be expelled for plagiarizing papers, and professors can be fired. To let Zakaria off the hook on his own recognizance would be to eviscerate the principle of academic integrity for which Yale says it stands.

Notre Dame has its own firing squad for plagiarists.

Whether Yale President Richard Levin will do the right thing, however, is another issue. While Levin has distinguished himself as a master fundraiser, he has also shown a disturbing willingness to undercut free speech (ironically, with Zakaria’s acquiescence), compromise academic integrity to foreign interests, and embrace fame over principle. Seldom is an issue as cut-and-dry as Zakaria’s plagiarism. Unless Yale seeks to demonstrate that cheating is acceptable and that there is no principle to which it will not turn a blind eye, then it really has no choice: It is time to give Zakaria the boot.

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Hebrews 11 Graphics

In Euro Crisis, Germany Looks to Martin Luther - NYTimes.com

In Euro Crisis, Germany Looks to Martin Luther - NYTimes.com:

Consider Luther’s view on charity and the poor. He made the care of the poor an organized, civic obligation by proposing that a common chest be put in every German town; rather than skimp along with the traditional practice of almsgiving to the needy and deserving native poor, Luther proposed that they receive grants, or loans, from the chest. Each recipient would pledge to repay the borrowed amount after a timely recovery and return to self-sufficiency, thereby taking responsibility for both his neighbors and himself. This was love of one’s neighbor through shared civic responsibility, what the Lutherans still call “faith begetting charity.”

How little has changed in 500 years. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, a born-and-baptized daughter of an East German Lutheran pastor, clearly believes the age-old moral virtues and remedies are the best medicine for the euro crisis. She has no desire to press a secular ideology, let alone an institutional religious faith, on her country, but her politics draws unmistakably from an austere and self-sacrificing, yet charitable and fair, Protestantism.

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