Two Views of the Scriptures - Only One Is Correct

 Did you buy your beer mug from Jack Cascione to honor the 500th anniversary of the Reformation? 

 

Divide and Conquer is a famous slogan, proven many times through experience. In the Apostolic era, the two parties were 

1. a tiny group of Christian believers and
2. everyone else. 

We should be astounded that Herman Otten put these words on the back of his book about Dr. Walter A. Maier. Otten rejected the twin truths -

• The Inerrancy of Holy Scripture
• Justification by Faith.

Otten rejected Biblical inerrancy by promoting and selling the blasphemous Beck Bible, still sold by Christian News, Inc. Beck - far from being a scholar - was glory-hound who approved and copied the Westcott-Hort-Aland destruction of the Majority text behind the Greek New Testament of the King James Bible.

Kurt Aland's second wife took over his institute, but that did not last for long. Apparently, the next generation of shredders is already at work, making it even worse than Westcott-Hort.

Reading Christian News shows that Otten also loved every confession of faith - except Luther's.

The issues are clear, but overlooked. Biblical inerrancy is not strong and clear enough for our generation of fast-talking improvers of the Word. Calvinists are necessarily against the Lutheran Reformation because they teach the Scriptures as dead letter, unable to do anything on their own unless made appealing, relevant, and germane by man's efforts. That is how Calvinists become Unitarians in one generation - human reason.

The bedrock is knowing and believing the Scriptures are the Holy Spirit at work, and the Word/Spirit union is never split, the one departing from the other. Anyone picking up the King James Version and reading its passages will be affected by the Spirit at work - converting or hardening, enlightening or blinding. 

Because the Mod Lutherans (LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC) do not recognize or teach the efficacy of the Word, they are unable to grasp the message of the Bible. They are Fuller DMin clowns teaching future DMin morons to rail against the Sacred Scriptures and bring down the remnants of the true Church.

Because the Mod Lutherans do not trust the efficacy of the Word, they cling to their Peter Drucker five-year plans as they sink slowly into self-anihilation. Thanks to Covid, they have new excuses to add to the reasons they are shrinking and unable to fill their dorms - or - to strew their libraries with seminarians. 

Our little congregation, operating from a spare room in a rented house, has a simple plan - teach and preach the Word every way possible:

1. Means of Grace liturgical worship, broadcast and printed.
2. Books interpreting church history, Lutheran doctrine, and the Scriptures.
3. Classes on Lutheran history, Biblical doctrine, and the KJV Scriptures.
4. Visits with members and neighbors. One neighbor was baptized as an adult before she died.

We do not ask, "Is this working?" because the Spirit is always at work in the Word. Our town is presently 6 inches short of the rainfall expected during a normal year. The clay soil is harder than a Fuller professor's heart. Rain is predicted for today, and everyone is glad. Will it have no effect on the trees, bushes, flowers, grass, and weeds? No one questions that, but Mod Lutherans do.

KJV Isaiah 55:7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:

11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

12 For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.