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| WELS: "GA? There is no GA." At graduation, "Remember the pond?" |
Matthew 5:37 But let your communication [logos, statement] be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
37 εστω δε ο λογος υμων ναι ναι ου ου το δε περισσον τουτων εκ του πονηρου εστιν.
The perfect verse for WELS is Matthew 5:37, because that one verse goes against their entire GA culture.
GA is their secret initiation week, where the sympathetic seniors pretend to be "hards," and the mean seniors act as though they will protect and help the new seminary students. They begin with a fake debate over whether they will have GA. Wink, wink. Oldster pastors come back to watch the antics, remembering perhaps the gay GA pope who is now Michigan DP. One of the standard pranks is "losing the pope's bowling ball" in the pond full of raw sewage. The new students have to look for it. The new students are told to take off their sewage-soaked clothes outside the dorm, and the female kitchen staff watch the nude students from the kitchen windows.
When a WELS leader declares something to be true, and every pastor knows it is a lie, that sends a message. "We will do this and you will be quiet." WELS pastors will go into a meeting, misleading a layman, and suddenly switch sides after being super-sympathetic. All meetings in WELS are fake, because the outcome is decided beforehand in the pre-meeting.
WELS is not unique, just highly polished after decades of practice and winnowing out the bad eggs. They have fewer, but better members this way.
The synod politician is easy to spot. He wants to be buddy-buddy (Paul McCain, Jay Webber, Jon-Boy Buchholz, Steve Spencer, Jack Cascione, John Shep, Paul Fleischer, His Holiness James Heiser) - until he is the opposite.
These synod politicians seek to gain the advantage through dishonesty. The trouble is, the dishonesty habit is tough to break. When Jack Cascione wanted me to review his book on lists in the Bible, he printed my name as "Pastor Gregory Jackson, PhD Yale". That was a lie, and he knew it. I told him that was wrong - he must have thought that gave his book cover more credibility. Later, he decided I was a bad guy, and he dropped my name from his vanity press book.
The LutherQuisling blog invited me, in a friendly way, to post on their odious site. I did, and they answered by attacking me. I did not mind their attacks, but their initial deception gave them away for what they were. A friend said to me, "Why should you waste your time posting with those skunks?" I once had a pet skunk - maybe I was nostalgic about Hilda.
Mrs. Ichabod likes to keep up with the latest debates. I read her some samples from LQ, the cloaca maxima.
She said, "How does that make you feel when they call you all those names?"
I said, "It is very encouraging." She burst out laughing. Over the years she gradually learned that getting flak is a sign of being right over the target.
I even had an ankle-biter send a friendly email about Romans 5, claiming the entire issue depended on one word - "many." (Calvinistic Claw Machine alert) The next message was - I had never dealt with the word. Then the name-calling began, followed by an incoherent rant that supposedly proved his case.
Two things are consistently true about Objective Justification addicts:
- They are pathological liars.
- They are perpetually angry.
One would guess that their gushing about grace would make them full of grace. But that is what Luther warned about the sectarians. They talk about Jesus all day but they tear down the bridge to Him, the Means of Grace.
No one needs the Word, according to OJ, because God has already declared the entire world righteous, forgiven, saved. Once upon a time, there was one Moment of Universal Absolution without Faith - Easter (Halle Pietism).
Now there are many Moments -
- The Cross - "It is finished."
- The angelic choir "good will to men,"
- The Garden of Eden. "He denies Garden of Eden OJ!"
And why not? Their guru Calvin has all salvation and all damnation determined before the world began - or maybe after the Fall was when that "horrible decree" was announced. Calvin's dogmatic sources, like OJ's, are invisible in the Bible and seen only by the elite.
Calvinism and OJism make faith and the Means of Grace irrelevant. OJ faith (sometimes marketed as SJ) is merely faith in the sublime truth of OJ.
Could this be why the WELS pastors are notorious for alcoholism, adultery, and uncouth behavior? (Source - Father Steve Spencer)
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| Easter is all about petting baby bunnies and other gimmicks, like meeting in a cemetery. |
