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| Why pay $100,000 for an education in apostasy at the Concordia seminaries? |
Doubtless the ancient Romans thought the world was coming to an end. The greatest engineering empire collapsed abruptly, though they saw it coming centuries earlier. But Constantine had already founded a New Rome, in what became Constaninople, and that lasted 1100 years.
The fall of Constantinople, conquered by the Muslim Ottoman Empire, led to the Renaissance and established the Reformation. The Turks drew the Christian forces away from Germany long enough for Luther's reforms to become established.
America has gone so far downhill - and so fast into the arms of Fuller and Rome - that I cannot imagine a recovery. Yet God changes history in a flash, and triumph turns to ashes.
I am encouraged by the interest in sound doctrine by the younger generation of men. There is a parallel with retail and other parts of our economy, like publishing.
Higher education, publishing, and other mainstays were local. Big rich families controlled publishing, and shooling was often an issue of location, whether teaching or enrolling.
The fancy publishing companies are collapsing while independent news gathering on the Net is taking over. The denominations turn out their laughable, expensive PR magazines (the few remaining) but everyone can blog the truth faster than the establishment can print.
Higher education is continuing to leave giant piles of carved stone and brickwork empty. The seminaries are their own competition, because people need online courses to study and pay their expenses. I lived in the Gilded Age, when seminary tuition was $150 a year and a Heick hardbound doctrinal volume cost $7, likewise the Book of Concord.
Now they want ransom payments for tuition and books - $90 for regurgitated Barth - Missouri's UOJ Dogmatanic.
Congregations used to get people excited about a new building program, but now those aging buildings are their tombstones, not their anchors. They drive people away with their false doctrine, abuse, and gaslighting, then complain about the results. When one restaurant made my wife violently sick, do you think we went back? When a famous chain served rancid food and refused a full refund, can you imagine us going back for more?
The apostates of the Pan-Lutheran Synodical Corporation (ELCA-WELS-ELS-LCMS-CLC sic) know they are failing, but they hope to wring whatever salaries and benefits they can before the slide accelerates.
The Word will still accomplish God's will, no matter what they plot. Braver men than they burned dissenters at the stake, and what did that accomplish? The Reformation spread even faster. Smarter debaters argued against the Scriptures, and that only sped the forging of the Book of Concord.
Now the opponets are poorly trained, lazy, and prone to let their lupine fangs show. What are they against the Word of God? Better men - coached by Holy Mother Rome - had the power of the sword, the best dungeons in the world, the slowest torture devices. But still Rome raves against Luther, for defeating them. They cannot tell the truth - the Word defeated them - not Luther. However, Luther was not afraid to use the double-edged Sword of the Spirit against the murdering horde.
This parallel will give you goosebumps.
What did Rome use against the Scriptures?
Answer - Theses. Philosophical statements that cited the Scriptures at times but never related to the actual issues at hand. Can you name another example like that, equally weak in the Scriptures, but impossible to derail from his domineering statements? Walther, Walther, anyone, anyone?
