Church History at Yale. We Met Pelikan and Ahlstrom at Church Each Week. Bainton Helped Me with My Dissertation

 Kenneth Scott Latourette

 History of the Expansion of Christianity

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/k/kenneth_scott_latourette.html

“The single work for which Latourette is most remembered is the seven-volume "A History of the Expansion of Christianity".^[9]Latourette noted within Volume 4 that only 5% of Americans in 1790 had formal ties to churches or synagogues.” Wiki

Latourette was prolific in writing, very much loved by students at Yale, and a genuine believer.

 Jaroslav Pelikan,
LCMS, ELCA, Eastern Orthodox

Jaroslav Pelikan was very famous. We often saw him at Bethesda Lutheran Church. I think he was more of an opportunist. He became “senior editor” of Luther’s Works then left that to be at Yale, if I remember the facts correctly. Someone else continued the work, and Pelikan got most of the credit.

One long-term history professor at Yale thought Pelikan’s history of Christianity was not good at all. He published a tough review in the Yale Divinity magazine. It was a shock for Yale to have a Yale professor say the Great Pelikan was not that good. Pelikan wanted to be Yale President, I think, and devoted a lot of time to that. Pelikan became Eastern Orthodox after leaving the LCMS for ELCA. He won a $500,000 prize and gave it to the Russian Orthodoxy Seminary in America.

Sydney Ahlstrom, (Augustana Synod) another Lutheran, wrote his famous American Church History book. A bit too general for me. The joke was “A elephant conceived and bore a mouse.” Ahlstrom had serious neurological problems and that may have blunted his efforts. Still, it was a best seller.

Day Missions Library, Yale Divinity School

Yale Divinity School,
New Haven, Connecticut

 

More Feeding Stations - Clustered around the Bedroom Window, Near the Tall Butterfly Bush

 I bought a second one at Lowe's for $7.
Multiple birds sit on it and eat, and the feeder is easy to fill.

The squirrels dominated most of the feeding stations because they stood on two of them while eating from the hanging feeder from Lowe's. That also tied up the suet hanging from the squirrel-proof feeder filled with finch seed. Only the squirrels were eating for a time.

I needed sunflower seed, so I stopped at Lowe's for a large bag and looked for a second hanging feeder, which is popular with the small birds and easy to fill. The price dropped from $10 to $7, so I grabbed one, bought a rake, and tossed a bag of seed on the cart.

My ideal is the set-up at the home of Michigander, who has an array of feeders near a large window, where his cat sits and watches patiently. Sassy ignores our animal life altogether.

 "A new feeder - just for us."

Now we have:

• Two hanging feeders with sunflower seeds.
• One platform feeder with corn.
• One finch feeder with thistle seed.
• One Jackson EZ Bird Swing.
• Two large, hanging baskets of suet.

The squirrels are having fun with the abundance of food and eating more of the corn. That comes from a large bag of deer corn sold to hunters. I toyed with buying a sack of field corn ears, but they wanted $10 for a bag of gleaned corn, which calculates to $50 a bushel, a bit pricey for the cuteness of the feeder below. They used up an ear a day, so a bag was good for one week. When I stopped filling it, they placed empty corn cobs near the bird feeder to remind me of my duties.

 "Squirrel, you are not worth $10 for a bag of ears."

After a brush with snow, we have mild autumn days again. The ground is not frozen, so I tripped over a fresh mole run. Their shallow ones are for feeding, so the soil creatures are active now.

Meanwhile our helper is planning on adding another layer of leaves and needles to the newly covered areas, far in the back. We have a lot of Morning Glory seeds there now, so we should have a fence full of Morning Glories next year and relatively few rank tall, rank weeds. I have nothing against most weeds, but I liked the effect of cardboard and leaves between the Butterfly Bushes in the back. That made them stand out as they strive to reach their designated 12 foot height.

I can also attract the right creatures with buckwheat sown in the wild areas. The buckwheat grows and flowers quickly, attracting bees and butterflies. Unlike some magical plants (easy to establish - or, wildly rampant and invasive) buckwheat is tame, small and attractive.

The Trouble with Unlearned Clergy Pooling Their Ignorance at a Synod Seminary

Jay Webber (ELS) finally got his STM from an online, ELCA school, one where Jack Kilcrease, Roman Catholic adjunct teaches the wisdom of UOJ.

Webber complained to me about the weakness of the Bethany Lutheran Seminary faculty. I have fervently wished for them to hire him, because God's wrath is shown most clearly in letting false teachers flay and oppress those who have abandoned God's Word.

There are two kinds of theological education. The most important is to dwell in the Word and to trust in the plain message of the Scriptures. The laity I know have this training on their own and thirst for even more knowledge. No clergy have asked me to train them in Greek, but seven laity have.

The second kind is formal education, which is significant for training a new generation of pastors. That is where the "conservative" synods have utterly failed, because both kinds of education must be brought together.

The LCMS is better about formal education, but they want their faculty members immersed in synodical correctness, not in the Scriptures.

 When a Disciples of Christ apostate and promoter of Planned Parenthoodgives a guy goosebumps, it is time to shut down the so-called educational system.

The smaller "Lutheran" sects are worse, lacking formal education and only a superficial knowledge of the Scriptures. Their in-house publications show their deficits. But these also become the new additions to the canon, so who can object and remain within the synodical coral?

From Missouri on down, the academic incest is deplorable. Universities abhor having their own graduates immediately become teachers at the same school. That turns the faculty into ring-knockers, a quaint term that applies to those who never left the womb of the sect, have family connections with everyone, and show off their power by knocking their rings on the table (figuratively speaking) when a different idea comes up.

WELS-ELS-CLC-ELDONA - All are so pure, in their own minds, that they can easily use their own MDiv graduates to train their future pastors. The same is true at the college level, if they are big enough to have colleges. Larry Otto Olson monopolizes one area of their only synodical college. He lacks a real doctorate and had a miserable parish experience. So he is simply stamping out more versions of LOO.

ELDONA has one seminary student and one poorly educated MDiv to serve as the dean, registrar, faculty, baseball coach, music director, and cafeteria crew for the entire student body. They fly in or online their varied MDivs to provide a rich soup of Ft Waynianism. Their Lord High Bishop, the Right Reverend Jim Heiser, STM, tells everyone what to do and think, so they have re-imagined the original Stephanite model, minus the young women and the STDs. What is the chance of having real Biblical studies under such high church Stalinism?

The main ingredient for the Christian Church is Biblical studies. Exegetical sermons are mostly absent now, a great chance to provide year around training for the pastor and members. Coptied cutsy sermons and canned cutsy-wutsy adult classes have made people impatient with Biblical classes.

Luther Quotation Refutes UOJ - Sent by Lutheran Laity

"We see what a wretched thing the human heart is when it begins to waver so that it cannot be lifted up. The apostles and Thomas had seen not only that the Lord had risen but also that He had raised three others: Lazarus, and before that the daughter of Jairus and the widow’s son. Among all of them, Thomas was the boldest and bravest and said, “Let us also go with Him and die” [John 11:16]. They were such fine folk . . . and yet they could not believe that the Lord Himself had risen. And so we see in the apostles what things of nothing we are when we are left to ourselves and [God] withdraws His hand. . . . The dear apostle chooses to be damned, because there is no forgiveness of sins or salvation when there is no faith in the resurrection of Christ. . . . 

So Thomas insists; he refuses to be saved, because he refuses to believe that Christ is risen."

Martin Luther

Luther's Works

Volume 69

***

GJ - 

I was happy to get this quotation. Recently the UOJ Stormtroopers have encountered excellent refutations of their folly - each time from laity who did this on their own and shared with me what they wrote.

That led me to consider one of the most worn-out excuses for UOJ, which is really circular reasoning of the worst kind.

The grossest expression comes from the timeless treasury of Tiefel, CLC (sic) bon vivant and theologian. He interviewed one of the troglodyte pioneers of his sect who said this about Universal Absolution - the key dogma of Universalism - "If it wasn't so, I would blow my brains out." See their "Hewn from the Rock" video, which should be renamed "Dredged from the Swamp of Enthusiasm."

I have noticed that the UOJ fanatics always want to take their dogma another step, as if to prove how pure their teaching is.

This is the common argument, repeated without end - 

"I cannot believe unless I know I was already forgiven."

They connect this statement, drawn from the wells of Pietistic rationalism, to support the notion (LCMS Brief Statement; Ed Preuss, CFW Walther, David Valleskey, David Scaer) that God pronounced the world righteous when Christ died - or rose from the dead. They are not sure about the Moment of World Absolution. They are quite sure "everyone was saved 2000 years ago."

In fact, according to Ed Preuss and his acolytes, everyone is born forgiven.

The Big Distortion

The strangest aspect of this claim is its divorce from Scriptural teaching. They seize the basis and twist it into Universalism, which we can see in their jabbering about everyone being forgiven, even before repentance and confession, and their almost complete silence about the Means of Grace.

They also stutter and stammer about being forgiven absolutely and then being forgiven again when they believe the entire world is forgiven  and saved without faith.

Christ did take on all the sins of the world and atone for them. He became all sin so that we might have His righteousness through faith. The Gospel is the Atonement message of the Holy Spirit, which is true whether anyone believes it or not. 

The power of the efficacious Word is so great that those who are told of the Atonement believe this Gospel message and receive with joy the message of forgiveness. Likewise, those who waiver and doubt, after engaging in great and terrible sins, are strengthened to believe again in Christ's victory over sin, death, and the devil. But this does not happen without repentance and faith in the Gospel. Preaching, visiting, and counseling depend upon the objective truth of Christ dying for our sins, for all sins, for the trivial sins and the ones we imagine we can conquer, and especially for great and terrible sins.

Forgiveness of sin brings healing and power to resist temptation. UOJ tells people they are already forgiven, so they have no reason to repent or believe. Faith - the purpose of the Biblical proclamation - is reduced to agreeing with the rationalists of Halle University, as Walther taught so plainly and absurdly. There is no greater danger to sound doctrine than taking a slice of the truth and using it to promote apostasy from the Truth.

ELCiC Pastor Horst W. Gutsch Buried by LC-C (Missouri Synod) Pastor. Gutsche, a Man for All Synods, but Special for the CLC (sic)

Why is the Church of the Lutheran Confession (sic)
working with Horst Gutsche - center?

"Do not be alone with minors while on probation."

"Required to disclose conviction..."

CLC (sic) Pastor David Koenig, on the extreme left, is a great friend of Church Growth
and simply loathes Lutheran doctrine.

Is Gutsche also a former WELS pastor? Yes. See below.

---

Lutheran Church - Canada Pastor Reinhard Dittmer made a point of sending me the funeral and sermon he prepared for Gutsche, showing that Horst was indeed a man for all synods, especially ELCA.

"He enjoyed learning and took a variety of theological, cultural and language courses at Northwestern College, Watertown, Wisconsin, USA; the Lutherische Theologische Hochschule in Oberursel, Germany; the Alliance Francaise in Paris, France; the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington USA and at the Institute of Hispanic Culture in Madrid, Spain.

Horst was ordained in 1975 as a pastor of the Lutheran Church in America at St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Edmonton. He went on to serve as pastor for over 40 years in bilingual German – English congregations in Canada (Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Vernon, Barrhead, Onoway and Mystery Lake) and in the United States (New York and San Francisco).  

He was active and held leadership positions in various church and cultural organizations including Secretary and President of the German Conference of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America/ (delkina.org)."   

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lfk.lutheranmissions.org" - LutherQuest

Revelation

A study of the book of Revelation by Pastor David Koenig.

Koenig worked with Gutsche on this conference

A WELS pastor too?
Gutsche's LinkedIn profile links to
St. John WELS, Libertyville, Illinois

School and Preschool  

St. John connects children and families with Christ through our growing preschool and school.  We offer 3 year old Preschool through 8th Grade... 

"St. John Lutheran School exists to nurture children in faith and intellect, equipping them for Christian lives of service."

Horst Gutsche phoned me to claim the dismissal
of his court case made him innocent!
Why was he forbidden to be alone with minors?
The dismissal clearly states otherwise - it simply means
the court is done with the parole or any other stipulations
from his arrest and conviction.
He was an ELCA pastor in San Francisco at the time - and ELCA dumped him.
The Canadian version of ELCA hired him as a pastor.