ELCA Seminary Enrollment Parallels NFL Attendance - Similar Reasons? What We Have Here Is a Failure To Matriculate!

 This professor of confessional Lutheranism (right) was
fast-tracked into the parish and then made bishop overnight.
The 98% do not sign up for enormous loans to be trained as pastors by the 2%, but the 2% will take the scholarship money and jobs, thank you.

Here are some insights from an ELCA pastor.

Dave Likeness

• ALPB Contribution Leader
• 
• Posts: 4083
• • 

ELCA Seminaries Enrollment

« on: Yesterday at 12:08:10 PM »

In the Lutheran Forum (Winter 2017 Edition) there is a interesting chart on the enrollment at
the 8 ELCA Seminaries for the 2016-2017 Academic year.

There was a total enrollment of 663 ELCA students studying for their Master of Divinity degree.
This compares to 1274  ELCA students studying for the M.Div degree ten years ago. This amounts
to a decrease of 611 seminarians in one decade.

The 2016-2017 leader was Lutheran Seminary, St. Paul with 238 ELCA students.  In second place
was the Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago with 91 ELCA students and Wartburg Seminary of
Dubuque, Iowa was third with 88 ELCA students.  https://alpb.org/Forum/index.php?topic=6891.0

Got problems? Email WELS fire-fighter Scott Barefoot.
He and his People of Grace Ministry will keep it confidential.
No, really. They all will. God appointed them, and they
are full of grace, born forgiven, guilt-free saints.

 Teaching the ELCA dogma of universal forgiveness and
salvation is not helping the LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC sic.

What We Have Here Is a Failure To Matriculate - ELCA

Now the enrollment is   663 - 2/3rds loss in 28 years.
Ten years ago it was  1,274
28 years go - FTE      1,989

Full Time Equivalent is used because so many seminary students are getting a large share of their credits online, aka distributed education. Many ELCA seminaries have excitedly decided to merge with a college and pretend to be real schools - the Bethany model, without the frozen food money.

 These four apostates will not go away.
They are experts in hanging onto the salary and benefits.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It also rocks absolutely.

His Heinous Mark Jeske went to the mountain
and brought back the Ten Commandments of Fuller Seminary. As they go down the drain together, all say, "ELCA is worse." WELS says, "Missouri is losing members twice as fast." The ELS says, "At least we are not WELS."

MidWeek Service at 7 PM Tonight - Hardware Upgrade Was Needed

Here is the link to the service tonight.

Cox Cable came by early and did a great job with diagnostics and repair.

The modem was replaced and now yields double the bandwidth. That means 180 megs download and an increased upload.

The repeater was tossed because it no longer worked.

The television box was also replaced.

Various things had not been installed properly, so they were fixed. Everything was tested, except for the tap, which is being guarded by our neighbor's pitbull.

Friday MidWeek Service - 7 PM Central

By Norma A. Boeckler

Advent, December 15, 2017

Pastor Gregory L. Jackson

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bethany-lutheran-worship

Mid-Week Advent, Wednesday, 7 PM Central Standard

The Hymn #95               Savior of the Nations Come
The Order of Vespers p. 41
The Psalmody Psalm 100 p. 144
The Lection - Isaiah 40 KJV
The Sermon Hymn #76     A Great and Mighty Wonder

God's Wonder - The Incarnation

The Prayers and Lord’s Prayer p. 44
The Collect for Peace p. 45
The Benediction p. 45
Hymn #562           Round Me Falls the Night  

Isaiah 7:10 Moreover the Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying, 11 Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.

12 But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. 13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? 14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

God's Wonder - The Incarnation   

We know what a wonder this is, because this Isaiah passage and the Virgin Birth have been attacked with great energy, most heatedly from within the institutional church. Someone asked about a particular church - a magnificent building with a splendid organ. The pastor closely identifies with the Jenson of Braaten-Jenson, the pair who wrote the dogmatics book for the LCA/ELCA that denies every article of faith - including the Virgin Birth.

There is no better way to attack than to gently displace what God has revealed. There are many like Ahaz who boldly reject the miracle promised, but even more who undermine it with their soft, subtle betrayals.

That is what alarms and alerts people, the frontal attack. So that is seldom attempted. The very nature of the Virgin Birth is like the Promise to Abraham, so far beyond human reason that it requires faith in God's Word.

    God's Word - One United Truth

The Scriptures are one Book of the Holy Spirit, one united Truth. We can see the effect of unbelief when people play with phrases and verses and say, "Aha! Look at what I have found, something no one ever saw or imagined before." Or they claim to have discovered some ancient and almost hidden truth. But what they want is for everyone to admire their smooth words instead of the
"fisherman's voice of the Holy Spirit."

God's Word is too demanding for them, to subordinate their pride and wisdom to these basic truths. We can see the great unity of the Word when we consider the Incarnation itself.

God promised the Savior already in Genesis 3:15. How many centuries later did Moses receive His Name from the Burning Bush?

What is Your Name? Who should I say sent me?

"My Name is I AM. Tell them - I AM sent me."

More centuries pass, but not without many more Promises, but this one stands out with Isaiah 9. If one denies the great miracle, it is not a miracle but as they say on TV - the miracle of birth. Man has cloaked this miracle by denying its truth.

"A Virgin will conceive." I always marvel at the learned when they deny the plain words of the Bible. Here they have three battles at once.
1. A miracle declared by God must be stupendous.
2. Virgin birth is not natural or explained by man.
3. God with Us, repeated another way in Isaiah 9, is the Incarnation - God and man, one Person, Two Natures, divine and human.

One must attack all three truths at once, deny them, or subvert. The coward who keeps one or two and denies the rest is a playing a shell game - now you see it, now you don't.

All these passages are knit together, taught by the Holy Spirit in the Word, and clarified by the Spirit in teaching and preaching.

But this does not stop with Isaiah, since there are many other related passages. Jesus' entire ministry was based on showing the people of Israel and the Gentiles that He was and is the Messiah, that righteousness only comes from faith in Him.

The opposition came from the clergy, naturally, because they are trained by their own kind to continue the traditions. They worship the traditions and bristle when their traditions are impugned or insulted by anyone.

Therefore they placed themselves above Jesus, saying, "We have Abraham for our father." And they truly were Abraham's children according to the flesh. But Jesus united all the Messianic passages with this divine claim -

"Before Abraham was, I AM."

Not everyone thinks about the Exodus all the time or concentrates on the meaning of the Exodus, as the Gospel of John does so clearly. Here Jesus said - "I AM" - God's Name. And of course, that is part of His famous sermons in John.

So Jesus was not crucified for pretending to be the Messiah, but for being the Messiah and God's own Son.

Therefore, as we see in so many of Luther's sermons and the hymns of the Reformation, the great wonder is God's own Son, with all the power of God, comes to us in such a humble way, not in great flashes of lightning and thunder, but in the quiet of the manger. And so He dwells in the Word today.

The Word conveys Him to us.

Could Not Get Trouble-Shooting Done for MidWeek Advent - Will Try for Friday

I will trouble-shoot the Ustream issue Friday. One viewer said the supposed signal was all crazy - Cox Cable reported no issues. I never saw anything like that with Ustream.

How Karl Barth Leveraged the UOJ of the UniSynod : LCMS-WELS-ELCA-ELS-CLC sic

Karl Barth paid his mistress pennies for doing his research work,  for sleeping with him, and for ghosting his Dogmatics.
His children seem to be instrumental in getting the facts out about Charlotte Kirschbaum and their father.

Frank Fiorenza was my theology professor at Notre Dame and later landed an endowed professorship at Harvard. President of the Karl Barth Society at one time, he taught that Barth's mistress - Charlotte Kirschbaum - wrote the fine print in the Dogmatics while Karl wrote the large print. That was the consensus of the Barthians.

My friend from Yale, now teaching at Princeton, wrote about Barth's Marxist radicalism. The Nazis were bad but the Communists could do no wrong, according to Barth. Here is a sanitized bio of Barth, but look where he met his wife Nelly...teaching confirmation class.

Barth's influenced the early leaders of Fuller Seminary to abandon their weak stance on Biblical infallibility and reject it altogether. They did not want "doctrine" to stand in the way of "mission," which should be a solemn warning to the Lutherans who look at Fuller with awe and envy. Like Barth, they are flyweights, pretenders, thieves, wolves, robbers, and snake-oil salesmen.

I was thinking about Barth this week when I recalled Robert Preus discussing the theologian - and all large theology books. "Read the introduction," Preus said, "and you will not need to plow through the rest of the book."

 "Give me ten bots, who are stout-hearted bots,
and I'll soon give you ten thousand more."
Never underestimate the stupidity of large groups
of synod leaders.

In his Dogmatics, Volume II, Part 2 (or 2-2, Barthians say), Barth developed this idea - Jesus became the Reprobate, taking on the sins of the world. Does that mean a "restoration of all things"? The question is from Acts and not exactly relevant to the question. But the implied answer is clear. If Jesus took on all sin, then everyone is free of sin.

Barth does not deserve a lot of space to work out all the fine details, but that is essentially his message. Therefore, when the LCMS-WELS-ELS-ELCA leaders were drawn to Fuller Seminary to study how to make their sects grow, their UOJ was supported and encouraged rather than criticized by the Pasadena Synagogue of Satan.

Of course, UOJ is the natural outcome of Calvinism. How warm and fuzzy the apostate Lutherans must have felt, to have their UOJ encouraged by the gurus of Fuller. Wayne Mueller said to the youth of WELS, "Mission work is easy. Just tell them they are already forgiven." That has worked wonders, hasn't it? No, it has not.

Need I say this? The Church Growthers have always been famous for their marital and Scriptural infidelities, so they model Barth in every way possible.

In the 1960s, Barth gave a series of lectures in the US. He stayed at the homes of faculty members. He took Charlotte with him - not his wife Nelly. His hosts were instructed to provide  only one room, one bed for the professor and his assistant. As someone wrote - "It was common knowledge."

So, if you know a heart-broken Barthian who just learned what fraud Barth was, let him know that entire Protestant world winked at the couple and said, "We know. Everyone is forgiven, even before we are born."

 Barth stopped publishing when Charlotte grew sick and died, but he finally dedicated a volume to his wife Nelly.

Martin Stephan Forum - Good Historical Documents To Study

Drawing of CFW Walther, shortly before he died.

Martin Stephan Forum:



"Stephan Family Archives



LETTER OF MARTIN STEPHAN, JR, ON C.W.F. WALTHER AND THE MISSOURI SYNOD

BACKGROUND ON PRE-LCMS HISTORY:

My first entry is an excerpt of a seminal letter in 19th Century Lutheran  Church history, penned in 1878 by Martin Stephan Jr., the son of Bishop Martin Stephan. The letter is addressed to Martin Jr's brother-in-Law, George Schick. In it, Martin discusses the treatment he received from members of the Missouri Synod, and in particular, by Pastor C.F. W. Walther, the first President of the Missouri Synod. This letter is in the possession of the Concordia Historial Institute, or CHI.

Professor Theodore Buenger, no friend of Martin Stephan, prefaced his authenticated typewritten copy from the original with the title: Not for Publication.

Buenger goes on to write in his preface to say that this letter "is important as to the guilt of Stephan the leader," and one "can conclude (ex silentio) that son does not claim his father's innocence or else he would  have mentioned that fact in this letter."  [If the letter "proves" that Bishop Martin Stephan was guilty, then why keep it from public view?] Martin's discussion of C.F.W. Walter in this letter will provide the answer."

'via Blog this'

***

 The Walther Shrine

GJ - I was scrolling along the left margin of the blog, where a lot of material is linked. The Stephan Forum is important because the family has gathered historical documents that show much of the truth about how the LCMS was born.

The Walther Infallibilists are always bowing and scraping to the image of CFW, but the documents show he was a multiple kidnapper, an extreme Pietist, the enforcer for a syphilitic and adulterous bishop, and the organizer of a riot to topple the bishop and rob him.

Walther not only stole the land given to the bishop by the immigration group, but he also talked Stephan's healthy son into giving up the land in Perrysville that the bishop owned separately. Add to that a stolen fortune in gold, a large library of books, and the bishop's personal possession.

Walther was the follower, not the leader of the Stephanite exodus from Europe. The group left after Stephan was found guilty of improprieties in a court of law and deprived of his congregation. They did not leave "for religious freedom," because previous few religious leaders were ever given so much freedom.

Moreover, Walther was a nasty little man, who could not bear the presence of Stephan's son, who first became an architect and then came back to be trained as a pastor. One descendant was a speaker for The Lutheran Hour. The linked letter shows how petty and vindictive Walther was, which is shown also in the Walther hagiographies.

By lying about the leadership of Stephan and the enabling work of Walther, the LCMS continues to deceive its members and clergy. That makes Missouri all the more guilty when they try to prove points by starting with "Walther wrote..." If the truth were known more widely, that would be a warning rather than a commendation.

UOJ, Pietism, and bullying are the attributes Walther gave to the LCMS.

 He left his dying wife and children at home,
but sailed to America with his mistress,
so Walther and Company made him a bishop.

Ustream Is NOT Working Tonight

After several tries - Ustream will not work tonight. I will do more troubleshooting. Cox cable had problems earlier, but these are Ustream messages. I will see about another day.

Midweek Advent Vespers Service - December 13, 2017

Advent, December 13, 2017

Pastor Gregory L. Jackson

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bethany-lutheran-worship

Mid-Week Advent, Wednesday, 7 PM Central Standard

The Hymn #95               Savior of the Nations Come
The Order of Vespers p. 41
The Psalmody Psalm 100 p. 144
The Lection - Isaiah 40 KJV
The Sermon Hymn #76     A Great and Mighty Wonder

God's Wonder - The Incarnation

The Prayers and Lord’s Prayer p. 44
The Collect for Peace p. 45
The Benediction p. 45
Hymn #562           Round Me Falls the Night  

Isaiah 7:10 Moreover the Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying, 11 Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.

12 But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. 13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? 14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

God's Wonder - The Incarnation   

We know what a wonder this is, because this Isaiah passage and the Virgin Birth have been attacked with great energy, most heatedly from within the institutional church. Someone asked about a particular church - a magnificent building with a splendid organ. The pastor closely identifies with the Jenson of Braaten-Jenson, the pair who wrote the dogmatics book for the LCA/ELCA that denies every article of faith - including the Virgin Birth.

There is no better way to attack than to gently displace what God has revealed. There are many like Ahaz who boldly reject the miracle promised, but even more who undermine it with their soft, subtle betrayals.

That is what alarms and alerts people, the frontal attack. So that is seldom attempted. The very nature of the Virgin Birth is like the Promise to Abraham, so far beyond human reason that it requires faith in God's Word.

    God's Word - One United Truth

The Scriptures are one Book of the Holy Spirit, one united Truth. We can see the effect of unbelief when people play with phrases and verses and say, "Aha! Look at what I have found, something no one ever saw or imagined before." Or they claim to have discovered some ancient and almost hidden truth. But what they want is for everyone to admire their smooth words instead of the
"fisherman's voice of the Holy Spirit."

God's Word is too demanding for them, to subordinate their pride and wisdom to these basic truths. We can see the great unity of the Word when we consider the Incarnation itself.

God promised the Savior already in Genesis 3:15. How many centuries later did Moses receive His Name from the Burning Bush?

What is Your Name? Who should I say sent me?

"My Name is I AM. Tell them - I AM sent me."

More centuries pass, but not without many more Promises, but this one stands out with Isaiah 9. If one denies the great miracle, it is not a miracle but as they say on TV - the miracle of birth. Man has cloaked this miracle by denying its truth.

"A Virgin will conceive." I always marvel at the learned when they deny the plain words of the Bible. Here they have three battles at once.
1. A miracle declared by God must be stupendous.
2. Virgin birth is not natural or explained by man.
3. God with Us, repeated another way in Isaiah 9, is the Incarnation - God and man, one Person, Two Natures, divine and human.

One must attack all three truths at once, deny them, or subvert. The coward who keeps one or two and denies the rest is a playing a shell game - now you see it, now you don't.

All these passages are knit together, taught by the Holy Spirit in the Word, and clarified by the Spirit in teaching and preaching.

But this does not stop with Isaiah, since there are many other related passages. Jesus' entire ministry was based on showing the people of Israel and the Gentiles that He was and is the Messiah, that righteousness only comes from faith in Him.

The opposition came from the clergy, naturally, because they are trained by their own kind to continue the traditions. They worship the traditions and bristle when their traditions are impugned or insulted by anyone.

Therefore they placed themselves above Jesus, saying, "We have Abraham for our father." And they truly were Abraham's children according to the flesh. But Jesus united all the Messianic passages with this divine claim -

"Before Abraham was, I AM."

Not everyone thinks about the Exodus all the time or concentrates on the meaning of the Exodus, as the Gospel of John does so clearly. Here Jesus said - "I AM" - God's Name. And of course, that is part of His famous sermons in John.

So Jesus was not crucified for pretending to be the Messiah, but for being the Messiah and God's own Son.

Therefore, as we see in so many of Luther's sermons and the hymns of the Reformation, the great wonder is God's own Son, with all the power of God, comes to us in such a humble way, not in great flashes of lightning and thunder, but in the quiet of the manger. And so He dwells in the Word today.

The Word conveys Him to us.

Birds Provide Winter Wonder and Entertainment

Here is a good reason to feed birds. The worse the weather is, the more they want to supplement their diets with seed and suet. The worst for them is a sleet storm, because ice coats their favorite source of fresh meat - larvae hiding in the bark and in bushes. Many over-winter in piles of brush and leaves too, if one is intentionally kind to wildlife.

During our extended Indian summer, few birds were seen at the feeders, even when I switched the supply from corn to sunflower seed. Once we had some serious hard freezes, birds and squirrels began their return. I only hang suet when it is reliably cold, so that began in mid-November.

The Jackson EZ Bird Swing went condo this year, with an additional landing area between the two hanging chains. That made me think of a third swing with five threaded rods between them, simply an area to rest and observe, outside the breakfast table.

When bird activity is high, they love to land near the food and work their way to the seeds. Sometimes they back off when the squirrels stop by for an easy breakfast. In the summer, the birds and squirrels have the Butterfly Bush branches to use for resting, waiting, and escaping.

Two Lowe's feeders are
framed by the bird swing with two
levels (threaded rods) to swing on.
Two chains hang from two screw hooks -
too simple!

The kitchen window looks over a new Crepe Myrtle, which began to grow last year. That will supplement the swing and feeder already installed.

Years ago, I longed for a complete indoor shelter for a large group of small birds, until I thought about daily maintenance, clean-up, and feeding. If they are just outside our windows, God takes care of 99% of the work.

• Feeding - berries, seeds, and larvae.
• Cleaning - soil creatures converting guano into plant food.
• Maintenance - plants growing and fading away, providing shelter, rest, and food hidden in the bark and branches.

In Bella Vista, the squirrels taunted Sassy. One would peek in the window, disappear, and peek in on the other side. The brick exterior made that easy for her, maddening for Sassy. She learned to ignore them.

We had such a sylvan paradise in Bella Vista that all the creatures were happy to eat at our house, from raccoons to deer to foxes. Unfortunately, gardening was impossible.

Sassy and I saw vultures in Bella Vista,but now we find hawks overhead here. She still loves barking at her rivals in nearby yards. Once the summer growth disappeared,  she could see and hear their challenges better and return them. Nothing is more urgent for her than running outside and telling off those dogs, whatever they are saying.

 Beautyberries feed the birds in late summer and early fall.

Meanwhile, the returning birds are getting conditioned to us being a few inches away, on the other side of the window. At first they took off and the flock followed. Gradually they  came to see no threat and felt more hunger, so they are  staying longer to eat.

I will soon be taking pails of water out for their baths so they have fresh water for bathing - essential for them - and for drinking. They do not need a bird bath warmer, but if we had a tough, long winter, I would buy one and keep one kiddy pool unfrozen. For now it is easier to dump ice and replace it with fresh water.

Two Comments for a Late Night Posting - Icha-peekers Alert

Almost 6,000 views after reaching the 6 million mark, so one reader asked, "When you started the blog, in your wildest dreams, did you foresee 6 million views? That is the power of the internet."

No, I never imagined that and did not really expect it for any reason. But I kept posting new material all the time, outlasting many others. Writing on a blog exhausts most people, but I love every aspect of it - research, graphics, SEO, polemics, humor.

"When you finally die, everyone will be so happy." That early comment motivated me to keep going. At one WELS convention, every computer was logged onto Ichabod.

Another person wrote specifically about WELS, "Thank you again for exposing the truth about this alcoholic good-ole-boys' club and the dying synod's apostasy." 

One Book's Progress

Spener seems to have gathered Luther's sermons, and there is a history behind the collection Lenker organized and edited, with the help of translators from various synods. His background was decidedly non-SynCon.

Various people have republished the Lenker edition, including an Internet version in PDF form, in various languages.

I found the whole set at a site called God Rules. I downloaded that to the blog, which was a big venture, but lots of fun.

I took those sermons from the blog and put them in Word, which we began to edit. That included members of our church, a Missouri pastor, and a Missouri member. Norma A. Boeckler agreed to illustrate it.

I took the initial edits and went through each volume. Some were scanning errors and rather funny. Others were subtle errors in citations, which can happen for many reasons. The Lenker print edition had its own errors, and one edition (mine) conflicted with another one (Virginia Roberts').

After fixing as much as I can, I go over all the format issues, which means reading the volume forwards and backwards. Sometimes looking for mistakes is reason to bypass reading comprehension. But some passages are so arresting that I slow down and read paragraphs.

Norma A. Boeckler inserts her art in the finished volume or the nearly finished one. I go through it again because the volumes are blurring together in my mind now. There are peculiar repetitive errors I try to catch with control-f. And broken paragraphs.

Janie Sullivan gets the completed file. She polishes the format and submits to the rules of Amazon and Kindle. She finds errors and irons out mistakes I left behind. I "fixed" some things and introduced some new glitches.

Are we done yet? No. Amazon has to check it with its software. Sometimes an issue will come up. Then I get the proof to check and OK.

Once the book is OKed, the title can be added to the author's page and social media picks it up.

Method in the Madness
Why bother, since many things are already in the public domain? The current list, which includes a number of books in full color, costs a grand total of $90 to send to one address in the USA. It costs another $100 to send to Africa.

It is a lot of work but also very satisfying. Everytime someone enjoys Luther for the first time, an angel gets his wings. Really.

 

 Thx. LOL.

Additional Progress - Volume V of Luther's Sermons - And African News Too

Janie Sullivan now has Volume V, the last of the Gospel sermons, and is getting it ready for Amazon print books and Kindle e-books.

Virginia Roberts has already prepared edits for Volume VI, so I am getting that done during Christmas lay-offs. As I told the English class, "They call it vacation, but there is no pay, so I call it being laid off." I enjoy the break, once grading is done.

In fact, Virginia has already started Volume VII edits. The last three volumes are the Epistle sermons - and they soar too.

God willing, we can be done with the set and the Gems volume in early 2018, far ahead of my best expectations - thanks to the help of so many. Norma Boeckler has the art ready before the editing is done. How so? She looked up a complete set of sermons in PDF, so she can figure out the layout of each one.

 The total cost for all of the above - including shipping to the missionary - is $90.
We already have the $100 for the mailbox to Africa.

Africa News
As I wrote before, there is a great need for Luther books in the African seminaries.

We already received a donation for the shipping cost of the first books - $100 for a mailbox, 20 pounds. By chance we have free shipping via the missionary's daughter.

So I have ordered a new set of books sent so those books can go to a second seminary fairly soon. The shipping is already paid for, thanks to that previous gift.

If you want to give toward the African seminary book fund, make out the check to Bethany Lutheran Church, 1104 Letha Drive, Springdale, 72762. We have an IRS tax number as a church and are incorporated, thanks to attorney Glen Kotten.

Some people use PayPal, so I transfer stipulated gifts to the church fund. PayPal allows a memo on funds sent, so that is an easy way to route the gift. Dr. Lito Cruz had us get that started, and it is handy for a lot of uses, such as paying for the mailbox, which is sent from St. Louis.

One reader is sending six copies of each Luther volume as Christmas gifts. My thinking goes like this - the readers are the best distributors, since the big money church publishers boycott me. The important part is getting people to read Luther again, so giving Luther books is one way to do that, and the cost is very low.

In the near future, the Gems from Luther's Sermons, in full color, will be available as a great introduction to the best of Luther.

Gardening and the Gospel - One by One - Not Giant Movements

 The collars around the new Crepe Myrtles
will protect them against a dry cold winter
and discourage rabbits from chewing on their new sprouts.

My neighbors are cleaning up their leaves while I am gathering them to improve the soil. Some days I only scoop some fragmented leaves under the Mother of all Crepe Myrtles.

Gardening is perfected through a series a small activities, each one seemingly insignificant. When I made the decision to use rose collars, I bought some and gradually fitted them around the new Crepe Myrtles and the roses. Leaves fell and the ground crew stuffed each collar with leaves, since i have most of the leaves from three yards.

Pardon me while I indulge in some sales talk. The manager always said, "Back end activity leads to front end sales." They even had a chart. I averaged so much income each time I dialed a number and earned so much an hour each time I met with someone. Scientific. In gardening that means building the soil, no matter what else is done. Fertile soil, teeming with microbes and soil creatures, will support plants, keep them healthy, and feed them during drought.

The old farm slogan is, "The only time I know what I'm doing is when I spread manure." In other words, adding organic matter will always be worthwhile for the plants. Our other plans and methods are open for debate. Fortunately, for our neighbors, we have no access to manure.

The Gospel has been reduced to a product marketed by devilishly clever people. Whether we give credit to Robert Schuller, Fuller Seminary professors, or other charlatans, the message is the same - "We can figure out how to grow a very large church, a yuuuuuge church, and this is the recipe."

That fits into the mainline apostate formula followed by the UniSynod: ELCA, WELS, ELS, LCMS, CLC (sic). They say - "God is all grace, so the entire world is already forgiven and saved. The Gospel is simply telling them this good news. Amen. Halleluia."

The Gospel
The mass movement hokum, spread by Donald McGavran, places a lot of trust in large numbers, not surprising for a man trained in sociology rather than Biblical doctrine. Some might call it ironic, since talk of numbers led to vast shrinkage everywhere.

But the goal was not the Gospel, but apostasy. The leaders got everyone involved and very busy, spending enormous sums at Fuller, Willow Creek, Trinity Divinity, and other snake oil emporiums.

The portrait of Jesus in the Gospels is just the opposite. Vast crowds came to Him, but He did not boast about them. Instead, the focus of each miracle is an individual whose faith was a significant part in the healing. People brought their friend in faith. Some asked for miracles on behalf of others - in faith. The woman with the flow approached Jesus - in faith.

The WELS apostates were clever in warning, "Do not make faith a cause of salvation." They are skilled in the art of poisoning the well. If anyone dares to ask about a felony, "Who told you?" Then they rail against that person, so that merely asking is by itself a felony, not to mention knowing that awful person who told. Faith as a cause is a philosophical diversion, away from the Scriptural truth that God's Word plants faith in our hearts. As the Gospels teach, the story of Jesus spread and people had faith in His divine power to heal.

How many times did Jesus say, "Your faith had made you whole"? I wonder if the WELS leader would scold Jesus for saying that. But they do not trouble themselves with their inconsistencies and contradictions. The power and the glory is theirs.

The Gospels do not reveal any special message except spreading the Word. The Parable of the Sower makes that clear, but the Fulleroids get that wrong too (an indication of their reading comprehension approaching zero). The Sower teaches us to sow the Word with abandon - not to "test the soil first." Whadda hooot. When synodical jackasses test the soil, they always find rich suburbs the most delightful. Growing suburbs - even better.

Jesus' message is founded upon faith in Him. Yes, that is true, no matter what the seminary professors claim. The foundational sin is not believing in Him. John 16:8ff. Therefore, the work of the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus Himself, is to teach faith in Him.

Claiming that unbelievers are forgiven or saved - or both - is a horrible blasphemy against Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

So how did Jesus organize His church? I find nothing beyond charging His disciples with teaching the Gospel of faith in Him. He did not appoint bishops, although ELDONA thinks bishops - or A Bishop - is the Chief Article of the Christian Church. The New Testament speaks very little about church structure, which is why they UniSynod studies and talks about structure all the time. They have no faith, so they have to discuss something.

Not that God works without purpose or result. When people come to faith, the Spirit distributes gifts so that each person has something to contribute. The combination is miraculous because that is how God works.

To borrow a phrase from Luther, God delights in doing the best work through the most unlikely people. They discover what they can do together in faith.

Schmauk has a statement on this, which someone will probably resend to me. (That can create a strange pun - I resent that quotation.) The point is that we should not rush around trying to be successful but only try to be faithful. Individual congregations come and go. The Gospel remains forever.

Six Million Views, Almost 16,000 Posts

Pageviews today

660

Views yesterday

1,142

Views last month

54,357

Views all time since 2007

6,000,001

Five million views - November, 2016.

Four million views in 2015.

Three million views in 2014.

Two million views in 2013.

15,677 posts?!
But some of them are news stories, copied,
right? right?

Blogger shows that I have posted 15,677 times. One of the alcoholic ankle-biters objected to my numbers, writing, "But those numbers are from news stories."

Yes, I  use blog this to lead people into good posts from other sources, being careful to give credit where it is due. But that is part of the plan, keeping people up to date on apostate news.

The Blog Plan
Originally I xeroxed and mailed instructive, factual material to various friends and to synod officials. I even told Jim Huebner about my xerox ministry, which made his face go pale, as if Al Just were going to move into his neighborhood.

May, 2007, Dead Man Talking

I started the blog based on the group emails I was already sending out. They were a bother to keep updated. Paul McCain, who was all over me when campaigning for Al Barry, wanted to be dropped from the email list, calling me a "jerk." That shocked me. Usually he did everything behind someone's back.

I expected to reach about 20 people with the blog. I still think in terms of a few people who love and appreciate Luther, the King James Bible (the English Luther Bible), the Book of Concord, and Reformation theology.

When people poured on the hate, they encouraged me to continue. Opposition - especially from the clergy - is a sign of orthodoxy. I gleefully quoted them verbatim in the main posts, which they could not erase, and answered them. They thought they were giving expert kidney punches no one could see, but they did not like being exposed to the attention of the Internet.

Kilcrease erased so many of his own posts that we began calling erasing "kilcreasing."

Those, like Herman Otten, who whine about persecution, show they have no grasp of the cross, which is clearly taught in the Scriptures and emphasized by Luther. The cross consists of all the difficulties that come from teaching the Word of God. The cross must be good, because that doctrine comes from God and is blessed by Jesus.

Notice that the whiners always want the approval of man and the loot to go with it. I look at it this way - the opposition has tried so hard in so many ways to silence me that I now have a perfect place for teaching the truth, unhindered by meetings, synodical legalism, and hushed warnings about rubbing certain capons the wrong way.

I highlight the numbers every so often because two ELS pastors, Kincaid Smith and Paul Schneider on the phone together, said, "You haven't a friend in the world. You have no credibility." I responded, "If I have no credibility, why are two pastors calling me long distance?" They had no answer for that.

God works His will through the Word, so why starve people of the Word? The Lutheran Reformation taught the Word, not the organization. Lutherans should try that again. The 500th Anniversary was the most disgraceful of all the Lutheran centennials.

 Only morons would think it clever to sell
Here I Stand socks. CPH must stand for
Certified Public Haters of the Gospel.