Fake, Timid Blogger Comes Out for UOJ, Cuts Off Responses. Color Me Surprised

UOJ at work.

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Or - about justification by faith.
No wonder Paul Kuske won't commune with WELS anymore.

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Hello sir!

I was leaving a comment on the UOJ thread that was going on when he decided to shut the comments down.  I cannot understand why one would create and build the oven, put it in the kitchen, turn it on, and then complain because the heat coming off of it is too much to take.  I admit my eyebrows were raised several times during this "open discussion".  I was heartened at first that it was taking place but then it just turned nasty.  Anyway, I thought I would share what I was submitting right as the comments closed:

I find it relatively interesting that after going back to the top of the comment list and back down to here that the only actual Scripture I've seen quoted has come from Mr. Meyer and Pr. Rydecki.  One of the only things actually quoted in rebuttal has been the lyrics to a "Weird Al" Yankovic song.  That is rather telling.

I know I am appreciative of the discussion that was going on.  I am heartened to know that there are those Christians who definitely care about where their church body is going in relation to doctrine.

I know I corrected my words and apologized for the confusion they may have caused.  I obviously wasn't clear and it led into an entire limited atonement tangent that was unintentional.  I didn't know that would be the lone nugget taken out of the main point about Law and Gospel that I was trying to make.

As one who has read Mr. Meyer's posts on several blogs and sites over the years, I have never suspected a hint of Calvinism.  But once again, I think it becomes easier to pigeonhole someone when you label them.  "You're a Calvinist!  Now I know what you are and now I'll have that tack to take because Lutherans know that Calvinists are wrong, so you're wrong!  I don't have to read any further!"

I guess another concern is that if one is prepared to leave the synod and have even typed up a draft to do so, but reneges on it just because of comments on a blog topic they started fully knowing about the hornet nest they were knocking over, I would wonder if you're going whichever way the wind blows at the moment.  I don't know how much confidence I'd have in a pastor that would be that wishy-washy in their doctrinal stance and ministry. 

I don't mean to be confrontational by saying that either.  I agree that the time of day and the lack of sleep can lead to irresponsible posts.  However, I would be taking a good long prayerful look at what you are doing and what exactly you believe.  Go forward from then, but only if you are secure in your position and can defend it with Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions. 

I think I find it disheartening that if this bait and switch is the blogger's motivation.  But going back, it makes sense.  Start off with topics that everyone can get behind and cannot truly defend such as GA or hazing or the CORE and then pull a bait and switch like that.  I've read and watched the debate go back and forth on Ichabod and Intrepid and the like for a while now.  At the very least you, Brett Meyer, and Pr. Rydecki can back up statements with actual Scripture and quotations from the Book of Concord.  That seems to be sorely lacking from the other side, where anonymous name-calling seems to be the order of the day.

Hope you and yours are well and again thank you for your efforts!

In the risen Christ,

Ben Wink

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GJ - I agree with all you write, Ben. Vernon K. wrote many fine posts too. 

To fake an open discussion about justification and become another Buchholz, axe in hand, carpenters building the gallows, is just too GA for me - the old fake a persona bit from their secret homoerotic ritual.

I had an experience with a Mequonite once. He wanted to interview me in New Ulm. He showed up with a tape recorder - something he never mentioned, for some reason. I did not care because I tell the same story. When he got to his question about Valleskey and Bivens going to Fuller, which they both denied and affirmed, he got very hostile and the mask came out, the slaver dripping on the kitchen table. He came smiling but left looking full of Pietistic wrath.

I have stories from others about the same kind of behavior.

Laymen Make the Message Clear

 Gregory Jackson said...

Flack (slang for public relations) has been playing the GA game all along. He is a UOJ fanatic who played "undecided" or "questioning" so he could pivot at the end. This is just another puerile WELS game. Vernon and Brett have been patient with GA crowd, which includes the anonymous Joel Lillo.

July 24, 2014 at 8:17 AM

 

 Vernon Knepprath said...

Matthias,

You are a pastor. What is your job? Am I too simple minded, or is your job to use the Means of Grace to bring people to faith. Not child care, not contemporary worship, not Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University or self help seminars, but the Means of Grace. Does the work of the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Holy Spirit matter or doesn't it? Should we get rid of the third article of the Apostles Creed? Should we reduce the three solas to the two solas by eliminating "Faith Alone"? Do we have a Triune God with one of the person's of the Trinity missing in action? Do we ignore the work of the Holy Spirit because someone might have a crisis of faith? Do we then throw the Means of Grace, the Word and the Sacraments, out the window? It seems to me that this is exactly what I see happening in so many churches, and now in the WELS. Fewer and fewer churches using the Sacraments, or ashamed to use the Sacraments because it will scare off visitors, thereby turning their back on the Means of Grace. I've heard this rejection of the Sacraments said first hand by pastors and church leaders. The Word is being twisted and distorted and neglected. You've seen it yourself, and raised the concern in your other posts. Does the gift of the Holy Spirit matter or doesn't it?

July 24, 2014 at 8:17 AM

How We Deal with Inevitable Rot

The article about downtown Milwaukee sinking is a fascinating read for anyone who has lived in the area. To create large structures, wooden pilings were driven into the marshland, to provide a base. Borers are eating away at the wood, so buildings are tilting and sinking. "Change and decay in all around I see...."

Charles Darwin was fascinated with the earthworm's ability to bury structures by creating soil, but he never grasped the divinely ordered purpose of the earthworm in improving soil. Four decades of study left him clueless about the design of the creature. If earthworms were not so common, we would have lecture series on them.

Rot is inevitable, so the real issue is how we deal with it. The Chinese recognized that they needed to return plant waste to the garden. This became Sir Albert Howard's contribution to agriculture in India, where the climate used up the soil rapidly. How can they grow tea without good soil?

I think of yard waste in terms of using it again. The bushes have their trimmings used for mulch or in the compost. The crepe myrtle will yield a lot of leafy scrap with relatively soft branches. That will be good for air pockets in the compost and new ingredients before the autumn leaves are added.

Agent Orange devastates tender plants.

The backyard gardens need plenty of shade to turn the grass into compost for planting in the spring. I tried to compromise in the corn patch and get some vegetables growing late, but Agent Orange feasted on the seedlings instead. I can use leaves and mulch to cover where I will plant in the spring. Downed branches from the latest storm will hold the leaves in place.

Some people plant green manure. They start beans or another nitrogen fixing plant. Before winter, they get out their 12 horsepower rototillers and osterize their soil. Instead, they should just let the frost kill the plants,allowing the roots to rot into the soil with their nodules of fixed nitrogen. The soil creatures are designed for this, not for being eviscerated and tossed around like grain in a threshing machine.

Here are some deep roots for rotting into the soil -

• Dandelions - fleshy roots rot into channels for rain and transport.
• Sunflowers - their stalks also serve as perches for birds during their hunt for food in the snow.
• Corn - this heavy feeder has extensive roots, so they can give back a lot of the soil ingredients they tied up while creating sweet corn.

Big leafy plants are going to have a good root system, which we loathe when weeding. If the weed is not obnoxious, let it rot into the soil by cutting the plant just above the surface.

White Goosefoot, called Lambs Quarters and Wild Spinach.
This robust weed is really a nutritious plant, loaded with vitamins and calcium.

I had plenty of Goosefoot growing in Midland, and I ate it whenever I was gardening. If I went around spraying everything with pesticide and herbicide, the plant would be less enticing. A patch of Wild Spinach is good for eating and for composting. In the back of the yard, it can serve as a screen and a place where ground-nesting birds can feel safe. I recall killdeer nesting in my weedy-herbal patch in Midland. The mother was offended that I lived nearby.

A pile of branches can harbor the wrong animal and even be a fire hazard, but in the short run, branches on the ground are a bird haven. They love to have some elevation when searching for food in the grass. They also perch there after bathing on or under the bird spa along the fence. Branches give up insect larvae and harbor insects, so a bunch of branches can be a good source of bird food as well.

I took tossed out Christmas trees and put them in the backyard for bird shelters in the Midland winter. The dry skeletons became part of the compost in the spring. Once I bought garbage bags of leftover popcorn after a public event. Soon after, we had a record snow. I went out daily and tossed handfuls of popcorn in the snow. Soon I had resident birds cooing the moment I walked toward the garage, where their food was stored.

Likewise, a large tree overlooked the Midland yard, which served as the choir loft for birds observing me dig in the garden. I definitely felt watched. When I overturned the soil with my shovel, the prelude began. Happy hunting followed when I went inside.

Preying Mantis.

My favorite pesticide was Little Ichabod. He took to blocks of wood and got rid of asparagus beetles for me. He came inside with green fingers from crushed beetles. Then we went modern and got some preying mantis eggs.

WELS Playing Little Boy Games

One WELS pastor started another anonymous blog, Polluted WELS, where he can dither and dodge anonymousely. After begging people not to use name-calling, like "Calvinist," he engaged in it himself. That is easy for a nameless person with a partial, defective education.

The WELS pastors are so afraid of using their own names that they claim I am hosting the blog and attacking myself for credibility. One of the bizarre traits of WELS clergy is their illegal use of other identities, which was fairly common in the Fox Valley eructations.

One reader pointed out something I noticed - WELS clergy never grow up. They are still adolescents in the dorms, playing hateful pranks, avoiding their studies, vowing they will never grow up in Never-Never-Land.

In fact, Mark Jeske and Richard Starr and another WELS pastor had a pact. The last one to get married would get a refrigerator. Starr lasted the longest and got his prize fridge. Why would a minister want to avoid getting married? That means growing up and giving up the narcissism of youth. Playing Peter Pan is so much more fun. Thus the Mequon Mattress Room.

Those who do not use their names, not even an anonymous identity, can grill others, name-call, and act silly with their dog notes. (Dog Notes are the yellowed dogmatics notes that make up the backbone of WELS false doctrine. The original author was J. P. Meyer, author of three Kokomo Statements. The new editor is Tim Glende's uncle, so we know they are infallible.)

If the blog ever became serious, WELS would shut it down, but this is useful for the leaders, who will find out the author and contributors. The Intrepids used their names and soon the clergy were gone, including the Founder.

When enough idiots say the same thing about justification, the drivel turns into dogma, and the dogma into practice. Jack Cascione and Paul McCain quoted Ed Preuss with approval.

Robert Preus used this abomination in his worst essay ever, when his lobby was driving WAM out of the Ft. Wayne presidency. He found it difficult to back away from the assassination. Like LBJ and another assassination, he repented before he died and recorded his confession.

Whenever the Gospel begins to take root, Satan and his minions rise up to destroy it. They scatter, but do not destroy. Some doubters return to their folly. Others see how horrible UOJ dogma is. Still others search the Scriptures and rely on the plain teaching of the Holy Spirit rather than the philosophical acrobatics of the poorly trained clergy.

That Sinking Feeling - In Milwaukee

"Pay no attention to St. Marcus leaning."

The sinking city: Dozens of buildings in Milwaukee…sinking! There’s a problem and it’s deep underground

MILWAUKEE (WITI) — If you ever look up in Milwaukee, even just a little bit, you can’t help but notice we have some amazing architecture here — buildings that were built to last. But some of them may not last much longer. There’s a problem…and it’s deep underground.

On Milwaukee food tours, hungry walkers can feast their eyes on a strange phenomenon.

“As we’re walking through the Third Ward — how the bricks are starting to crumble a little bit, and the buildings are beginning to lean,” Theresa Nemetz said.

You can even feel the problem under your feet.

“You see the sidewalk is beginning to settle. The city has actually come through and shaved down the sidewalk,” Nemetz said.

So what’s happening here?

Dennis Barthenheier has dug a giant hole in his basement to find out.

“I noticed this large crack that`s along the wall line here. It’s coming apart…and I know why,” Barthenheier said.

Much of Milwaukee was built on a marsh. Around the turn of the century, for stability under foundations, contractors used steam-powered pile drivers to sink into the soggy land below thousands of wood pilings — tree trunks stripped of their branches and bark.

A concrete gap — basically the building foundation, was placed on top.

Milwaukee landmarks were made this way. Among them: Milwaukee’s City Hall, the Mitchell Building. the Button Block, the Pabst, and the Riverfront Building that houses the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.

“A couple years ago we started seeing cracks, basically — in the walls,”  Chad Bauman, Managing Director of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater said.

Floors are no longer level. There are growing gaps under the doors — and a tell-tale sign of the source: wharf borer beetles.

“This wall has come down almost two-and-a-half inches,” Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Chief Building Engineer Mark Uhrman said.

Signs of the building sinking are everywhere. Wood wedges temporarily support the floor above.

The technique of setting foundations on wood pilings was nothing new. It had been done in Europe for centuries.

However…

“The pilings need to be kept wet. This sounds counter-intuitive, but things that are wet permanently rot slower,” UW-Milwaukee Professor of Geosciences Doug Cherkauer said.

In parts of Milwaukee, the water table has fluctuated — and pilings have been exposed to air.

“They’re starting to rot,” Cherkauer said.

How long they’ve been rotting, nobody knows. And why the water table has gone down is disputed. Cherkauer, a hydro-geologist says he isn’t even sure it has.

“As far as I know, there are no monitoring wells anywhere in the downtown area, so we don`t know what the groundwater conditions in Milwaukee actually are,” Cherkauer said.

But we do know the buildings are sinking — dozens of them.

In the basement of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, they’re getting ready to remove the rotten wood and replace it with a new foundation.

That brings us back to Dennis Barthenheier — and the large hole he’s dug in his own basement. Fixing sinking buildings is his specialty. The repair at the Repertory Theater will be one of his big projects this year. In his basement, he’s just discovering the depth of the problem.

“That wood that you see should be all the way up and into the bottom of that concrete — but it is gone. It’s rotted away,” Barthenheier said.

So here’s how Barthenheier stops the sinking. He digs down, and each rotted piling is cut off below the water level. One by one, steel jacks are installed. Then, a new concrete form is filled to close the gap between the old cap and the new piling top below.

“All we`re doing is extending the concrete down further to make sure the wood is submerged in water,” Barthenheier said.

But with potentially thousands of pilings rotting under buildings in Milwaukee, it’s a big job.

“We have water in our basement and we WANT water in our basement,” Milwaukee Repertory Theater Chief Building Engineer Mark Uhrman said.

You might be wondering: What if the water table goes down? Won’t the pilings rot again?

As part of the repair, they’re often installing reverse sump pumps. In your basement, the sump pump kicks in when the water gets high. Here, it kicks in when the water gets low, and pumps water in from the city system to keep the pilings wet.