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| Were you born in Wisconsin? |
Doubtless, the Unstuck are sticking to the latest from their Church Growth salesmen. Kent Hunter - D.Min. Fuller - is retredding his relationship model, which Paul Kelm endorsed and Frosty Bivens denied three times. I talked to Kent about it later, on the phone. He said, "I asked Paul Kelm to endorse it and he did."
I had to prove that the quotation in the paper was gen-you-wine, which suggests a few were calling me a liar. It was great fun to assume that would happen, pull out the actual brochure from my briefcase, and pass it around. One of Kelm's fellow-travelers then said, "This endorsement could be fraudulent."
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| Our sacraments are the stink-eye and shunning. Which synod are we? Answer - all of them. |
We know that all the denominations are in a spiral dive, with a collapse in income, membership, and higher education.
The synods are not interested in Biblical doctrine, so I am proposing a theory, which is directly related to Kent Hunter's original and retread relationship model. Denominational officials - down to ELDONA levels and even smaller - are nasty, domineering, short-fused bullies. They lose by winning, because many people, who see the timid tyrant behind the curtain, drift away.
The leaders and camp-followers also lose ground by driving away, silencing, or shunning anyone smart enough to see how far into apostasy the church body has gone. A classic example is the the Preus-Scaer beat-down of Walter A. Maier II, known as WAM II. The Preus brothers, Christian News, and David Scaer won, taking away Maier's Romans course and depriving him of leadership positions.
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| How could Dr. Walter A. Maier get a doctorate (not D.Min.) from Harvard and still teach Justification by Faith and Biblical inerrancy? "Let's bury him with neglect!" said the synodical bullies. Note that the Lutheran synods replaced the KJV with the NIV and various clones. Big money, big rewards. |
If we pause to look at the conflict, the Preus-Scaer-Otten cabal was so stupid and anti-Lutheran that they should have been laughed out of the pastoral office. They were the deniers - attacking the Chief Article of the Christian Religion - Justification by Faith. They never had to the courage to confess their actual dogma and say, "Because we believe in world absolution without faith, we reject Romans 4-Romans 5, Genesis 15:6, Ephesians, and Galatians."
As many know, anti-aircraft weapons did not shoot down bombers - they lobbed explosives into the zone where the bombers were flying, assuming that near-hits would be damaging and often fatal. That is how the Preus-Otten-Scaer team worked. They were always lobbing charges at anyone who got in the way of Justification without Faith, Objective Justification.
Dogmaticians seem to know very little church history, even less than Biblical languages. If the cabal had looked at the example of Tyndale, they would have shuddered in fear, confessed their sins, and asked for forgiveness. In the end, only Robert Preus conceded - in his Justification and Rome, a book Rolf Preus forgets to quote.
Royal England was so furious with English Bibles that they forbade translations, unless approved. Tyndale made a number of efforts, direct (asking the bishop) and indirect (smuggling). They choked him to death and burned his dead body at the stake, to scaer everyone who might think and work on his own. Tyndale came back in the form of the King James Version of the Bible.
The dogmatic bullies can slander, cripple, shun, and murder, but they cannot win Satan's side for him. John 10 makes it clear - He knows His own sheep, and they know Him. He calls them by name and leads them out to pasture. The wolves kill and scatter - that is the best they can do.
I slipped into doctrine, a mistake. Don't worry. Those who worship Holy Mother OJ will miss the reference. They may read John 10 and Psalm 23 with trembling, stained glass voices, but they will not know the meaning. But consider - they have all the Lutheran synods, Thrivent gushing gold, small change from Schwan, and a close relationship with Rome (lectionary readings, liturgical colors, dumbed-down Sunday names, and the chance to wear pink - I mean - rose.) Life is good! until it isn't.
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| They prospered, didn't they? Rutschow promoted Church Growth in every parish in his district - except his own. Hypocrisy is a virtue in WELS. |
