Composting to Save Planet Earth

 

More ecological headlines and plans remind me of a locked ward at a secure, carefully watched institution. If no one can get out, they will not frighten normal people. But now these people are in charge of powerful entities where everyone must go along with the plan.

I saved the photo of the compost barrel being blessed at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, long ago when this blog was young. I hope they took the barrel along to their newly rented spaces. They had to sell their brutalist building to stay afloat, and they gladly sold their pipe organ as well. Their twin seminary (Presbyterian) joined the same Roman Catholic group of schools, selling their part of the complex to U. of Chicago, as LSTC did.

Yale Divinity School is also trying to be one shining ecological light in the gloom of fossil fuels. YDS writes about everything except theology.

 "NEW HAVEN —  Sustainability is a key tenet in the philosophy of the Yale Divinity School, but out in the world, philosophy doesn't always translate into action. This fall, the Divinity School will break ground on a "living building" residence hall that will house students in a manner designed to give back more to the environment than it takes.

How the Christian Faith Was Turned into Mockery by the Mainline Denominations - Including the Lutherans, Worst of All.

 

The starting date of the debacle - the Revision of the KJV - is 1881, almost 150 years ago. The British and Americans agreed to improve the King James Bible in a joint effort. Westcott and Hort, genuine crackpots, sent their version of the Greek New Testament to all the experts - secretly, ten years earlier. No one outside the Revision "experts" could read it, and the Westcott Hort Greek New Testament (which I own) had no notes to explain their fantastical corruptions of the text. For example, they began Mark as - "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ..." omitting the Son of God. Their version is also where the second Gospel ended at Mark 16:8, omitting the Empty Tomb and the Resurrection of Christ. 

This is still done today, by putting a spin on Mark 16:9-20, much like the Virgin Birth of Christ, Isaiah 7:14. The RSV began with the translation "young woman" and backslid to virgin (with "or young woman" in the footnote) when everyone objected. But the RSV brought back "young woman" in the text - and put "or virgin" in the footnote.  

One needs Hebrew, Greek, English, and biblegateway.com to discover all the scheming and lies of the academic crowd. Very few seminarians have serious language study, and even those people are saturated in the apostasy which began to take over in 1881. I was quite confused when my first Greek New Testament (Westcott Hort) differed from the American Bible Society's version in my college class.  

The 1881 Revision of the King James Version was such a flop that no one would buy it, once the truth came out, and no one could figure how to edit it, so it was an international flop. However, the theological experts were blinded by science and gradually approved growing doubts about the Trinity, miracles, the divinity of Christ, and faith in Jesus Christ. 

The Lutheran Librarian, Alec Satin, pointed out that the KJV is not "Shakespearean." The poet had a larger vocabulary than any other English author, including John Milton. The KJV is from that era, but the final version, largely the original work of William Tyndale, was polished by 50 of the greatest language experts in England. The aim was clarity for reading out loud in church, making it equally powerful for individual reading as literacy caught up with the printing press. Today we have a growing illiteracy scheme for modern Bibles, called Everyone Knows, Anything Goes. Modern Bibles often use a larger vocabulary than the KJV, doubtless in the hopes of keeping their efforts profitable and flexible.

The synod presidents, all poorly educated, lack the authority to use only one Bible and do their best to sell whatever is truly obnoxious. Matt the Fatt is just an MDiv. Liz Eaton went to Harvard for music. Mirthless Mark Schroeder, the high school principal, went to a repeat-after-me seminary in Mequon, where questioning the NIV was blasphemous. That same NIV (the classic one) was replaced with one even worse, but including the startling claim by the Apostle Paul, in Romans 3, that "all are justified." No wonder the WELS abusive sect is scraping the bottom.

The Lutherans are worst of all because they long to be like the chief managers of apostasy. Name a Lutheran trend and it will reveal itself as 10 years later than the rest of the denominations, 20 years later than the Unitarian-Universalists. Lutheran managers of all synods mock the Reformation of Luther, Melanchthon, and Chemnitz by drooling over the errors of Zwingli, Calvin, Robert Schuller, and the Pope. 

If you want to lose your faith in Jesus Christ, attend a Lutheran seminary - ELS, WELS, LCMS, ELCA. They used to charge almost nothing for an education. Now their raging hatred of the truth allows them to extract as much money (and debt) as possible. 

There are two popular responses to the Reformation - the smirk and the furious attacks. Judgment Day has already arrived. 

Daily Luther Sermon Quote - Water into Wine - "But whenever the need is felt, He does not at once hasten and bestow what is needed and desired, but delays and tests our faith and trust, even as He does here; yea, what is still more severe, He acts as though He would not help at all, but speaks with harshness and austerity."

 

 

Bartolomé Estebán Murillo, Spanish

Click here -> Complete Sermon - Changing Water into Wine - Second Sunday after Epiphany 

14. But whenever the need is felt, he does not at once hasten and bestow what is needed and desired, but delays and tests our faith and trust, even as he does here; yea, what is still more severe, he acts as though he would not help at all, but speaks with harshness and austerity. This you observe in the case of his mother. She feels the need and tells him of it, desiring his help and counsel in a humble and polite request. For she does not say: My dear son, furnish us wine; but: “They have no wine.” Thus she merely touches his kindness, of which she is fully assured. As though she would say: He is so good and gracious, there is no need of my asking, I will only tell him what is lacking, and he will of his own accord do more than one could ask.

This is the way of faith, it pictures God’s goodness to itself in this manner, never doubting but that it is really so; therefore it makes bold to bring its petition and to present its need.

15. But see, how unkindly he turns away the humble request of his mother who addresses him with such great confidence. Now observe the nature of faith. What has it to rely on? Absolutely nothing, all is darkness. It feels its need and sees help nowhere; in addition, God turns against it like a stranger and does not recognize it, so that absolutely nothing is left. It is the same way with our conscience when we feel our sin and the lack of righteousness; or in the agony of death when we feel the lack of life; or in the dread of hell when eternal salvation seems to have left us. Then indeed there is humble longing and knocking, prayer and search, in order to be rid of sin, death and dread. And then he acts as if he had only begun to show us our sins, as if death were to continue, and hell never to cease. Just as he here treats his mother, by his refusal making the need greater and more distressing than it was before she came to him with her request; for now it seems everything is lost, since the one support on which she relied in her need is also gone.

16. This is where faith stands in the heat of battle. Now observe how his mother acts and here becomes our teacher. However harsh his words sound, however unkind he appears, she does not in her heart interpret this as anger, or as the opposite of kindness, but adheres firmly to the conviction that he is kind, refusing to give up this opinion because of the thrust she received, and unwilling to dishonor him in her heart by thinking him to be otherwise than kind and gracious-as they do who are without faith, who fall back at the first shock and think of God merely according to what they feel, like the horse and the mule, Psalm 32:9. For if Christ’s mother had allowed those harsh words to frighten her she would have gone away silently and displeased; but in ordering the servants to do what he might tell them she proves that she has overcome the rebuff and still expects of him nothing but kindness.