ICHABOD, THE GLORY HAS DEPARTED - explores the Age of Apostasy, predicted in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, to attack Objective Faithless Justification, Church Growth Clowns, and their ringmasters. The antidote to these poisons is trusting the efficacious Word in the Means of Grace. John 16:8. Isaiah 55:8ff. Romans 10. Most readers are WELS, LCMS, ELS, or ELCA. This blog also covers the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Left-wing, National Council of Churches denominations.
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| Franz Delitzsch |
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| Carl Friedrich Keil |
https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/kdo/genesis-2.html
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| The "cross" held by various popes, including Francis, is more like a devil's stang. The Vatican is quite comfortable with a host of pagan symbols. Fishhats or mitres sell for $400 to $3,000 dollars, but one is needed for each colorful season, from sky blue to rosy pink. The adiaphora article in the Formula of Concord is almost universally ignored. One point is that we should not identify with false religion, even when it is not done with bad intent. The purpose of such grand costumes is to impress the ignorant and the easily persuaded. |
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| Pope John - and Paul after him - loved to wear the papal tiara, the crown signifying rule over all kingdoms. Pope John Paul II had to leave it alone because it was considered too arrogant. Francis? - no one does humility better than a Jesuit. |
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| The papal audience hall features a crucifix more like a snake. |
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| The ceiling of the papal audience hall suggests a snake and its eyes. |
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| The long view is obvious, but we will never be invited to see it. |
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| The print version of John's Gospel of Faith is available on Amazon, and can be ordered at the author's price. |
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| John's Gospel does not harmonize with Objective Justification, so the answer from the WELS-ELS-LCMS-ELCA-CLC is - "Ignore John! This link explains why. |
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Ladies, Gentlemen, and Undecided -
I have concluded that the Gospel of John perfectly reflects the Church of Whats-Happening-Now.
Everyone knows the basics of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but John is entirely different.
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| Loy, Lenski, and Leupold made the Columbus, Ohio seminary famous and respected, but their students rejected the Biblical view in favor of rationalism. The Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry and the Lutheran Librarian printed books are the best sources for these authors. Note that the sign highlights Capital three times, Christ not once. |
We went to the oncology clinic and pharmacy today. We joked with the HOG Pharm about prescriptions. Christina had the usual blood draw plus visits with the oncologist, a visiting oncology, and a nurse practitioner. Christina has recovered fast from her fall at home.
We wore masks enough to get in the door, then pulled them down or off.
She will have a CAT scan next month. She is no longer on the shot and pill combination, which really worked her over. The combination was powerful and vexing, but she still had four separate radiation treatments, a series of ten each time, to cancel the growths.
In other news, I planted two sections from the Shasta daisy in the butterfly garden and one from the Bee Balm (monarda). Thus - it is raining cats and dogs.
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| Were you born in Wisconsin? |
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| Our sacraments are the stink-eye and shunning. Which synod are we? Answer - all of them. |
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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. |
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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. |
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| Creation Gardening - covers by Norma A. Boeckler - A gift for our new neighbor and soon being shared with her mother. |
One new neighbor has been so friendly to Sassy that our dog was frozen between going to Bob's or to Alaska's across the street. She chose Bob's but had our new friend penciled in for later.
The day before, Alaska's mom worried out loud about how to fix the area around the front of her house, overgrown with long grass and weeds, thick enough to defeat the weed-whacker.
I said, "Put cardboard over it and weigh it down with mulch. The cardboard will turn the grass and weeds into the best soil. Soil creatures do that as the green material dies from no sunlight."
After the Bob event, Sassy had to see her and Alaska, so we stood in shade and talked over the results. A large, beautiful rose bush was set off by a neat mulch layer - blooming all over. No week-whacking, no 10 horsepower soil churning.
"Thanks for the gardening book!" she said. "I am sending it to my mother next." No, her mother will get her own copy.
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| Benjamin Schmolck was a German Lutheran pastor. |
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| Norma A. Boeckler's Robin |
Most of the bird feed goes on top of the garbage and recycle barrels, so birds are anxious when one barrel stays overnight on the sidewalk, and even more nervous when both "feeders" are waiting to be emptied.
Last week I had one barrel, so I was dragging it back under Sassy's supervision. When we approached the gate to the backyard, a robin dropped down on it and make some pleasant noise, as if to remind me of my feeding duty. She flew up and landed again to emphasize the message.
I found the same thing happening long ago in New Ulm. I fed the birds near the front door. If I came out the front door at any time, the robin would perch out on the end of a limb and sing to me. Given the growth of tiny birds, the soliciting was understandable and always welcome.
Blue jays called to me when I walked around our neighborhood in Midland. Maybe it was same one, or perhaps his kin. Their happy sound is bell-like, and they rang out with that when I walked to the church. Blue jays built a nest at window level in Bella Vista, so everyone got on the little step-ladder to look down on the nestlings. I delivered sunflower seeds daily to the parents, who never attacked me. They watched me dump seeds at the base of the tree - where they were watching.
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| Blue bird - by Norma A. Boeckler |
Luther
and the printing press arrived so powerfully that the Church of Rome could not
kill, torture, imprison, and enslave Evangelicals fast enough to stop the
Reformation. The Beast of Revelation[1] was
mortally wounded and never recovered its full strength in promoting error in
the name of Mary, Purgatory, the Mass, and the infallibility of the pope. One
part of the Reformation miracle was the built-up hunger of people for God’s
love, grace, and forgiveness through the Savior. The instrument of
communication was the printing press, but the energy came from Luther’s
writing. An expert in early publishing stated:
Gutenberg
had produced an orthodox Latin Bible and he had taken advantage of a large
market of printed indulgences. Luther launched the Reformation by an attack on
indulgences and he dethroned the Latin Bible from the heart of Western
Christendom, but he used the printing press as no one had ever done before.
Over 3,700 separate editions of books and pamphlets by Martin Luther were
published in his lifetime, not including Bible translations. This is an immense
number for any one author, even by today’s standards. It is an average of
almost two publications a week for most of his adult life. In his time, Luther
was by far the most extensively published author who had ever lived.[2]
Luther attracted and worked with brilliant men who wrote
in harmony with him. Melanchthon was his younger associate from the beginning,
an acclaimed scholar and editor/author of the Augsburg Confession and its
defense – The Apology. Fifty years after Augsburg Confession, Martin Chemnitz
and others collected doctrinal confessions in the Book of Concord, which
included the Formula of Concord, 1580. Chemnitz was a student of Luther and
Melanchthon, with the best qualities of most men. This second Reformation
generation of Biblical scholars dealt with issues about false doctrine and defended
clearly the Scriptural truths of the Reformation – Justification by Faith, the
efficacy of the Word and Sacraments, and the inerrancy of the Scriptures. They
began with the Three Ecumenical Creeds, included vital statements by Luther and
Melanchthon, and created harmony (concordia in Latin) with a variety of
issues in the 1580 Formula of Concord. However, the Reformation and the Book of
Concord era have been neglected and supplanted by the insights of Zwingli,
Calvin, and Robert Schuller.
Zwingli
first - and Calvin later - appeared to agree with Luther, but they were not
charter members of the Reformation, as many imagine. Chemnitz, in his Apology
of the Book of Concord, compared the Calvinists humorously to tenants who
claimed everything would be fine if only the landlords would agree to their
demands. The Zwinglians and Calvinists eventually conceded their departure from
the efficacy of the Word in the Means of Grace. Although they became bold in
their disagreement with Luther, they became uncertain about forgiveness and
salvation. For Calvin, God being sovereign meant that no one knew if the Spirit
would be active in a given sermon, baptism, or Lord’s Supper. The emphasis
shifted from the certainty of God’s Word in preaching, teaching, and the
Sacraments (the Means of Grace) to hoping for results, shifting the responsibility
to man.
Their
dogma can be summed up as the rejection of the Holy Spirit and Word always at
work together, not a small matter, but a breech. For instance, Zwingli
mockingly stated that the Holy Spirit did not need a vehicle, like an oxcart,
as his response to the Real Presence of Christ in Holy Communion. His rejection
of the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, making them merely
symbolic, caused the Anabaptists to leave and become persecuted and drowned by
the Zwinglians. Calvin openly mocked the presence of Christ in both natures in
Holy Communion, and he placed human reason above the Scriptures. That magisterial
use of human reason was employed to judge, explain, and make the Word of God
appealing. The magisterial use of reason made it man’s job to get the work
done, a tragic departure from “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the
growth.”
1
Corinthians 3:5 Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye
believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? 6 I have planted, Apollos
watered; but God gave the increase. 7 So then neither is he that planteth any
thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. 8 Now he
that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own
reward according to his own labour. 9 For we are labourers together with God:
ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.
As The Other Side of
Calvinism has shown so abundantly, all five categories of the five-points
of Calvinism are disputed by its theologians, either one point or another. Ironically,
when Lutherans abandon Scriptural certainty and clarity, they inevitably move
toward Calvinism or allegiance to Rome.
The effect upon translations is immense and difficult to
correct, once adopted and deployed in millions of Bibles, church textbooks, and
devotional booklets.
[1]
Revelation 13: 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count
the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six
hundred threescore and six.
[2]
Christopher De Hamel, The Book, A History of the Bible, p 236, 2001.
