Saturday, February 17, 2024

Instructor - "You Are My Favorite Demographic."
The Synods Knew the Demographics Years Ago, And Skimmed the Cream

 

HAL, a tribute to IBM, knew the future of synods.

I signed onto my class - toward an online teaching degree (MA, Adult Education) and read this greeting from one of the instructors. "You are my favorite demographic." She read too many statistics, and that sounded ominous.

Decades ago, the LCA was projecting the future using statistics. They said, "It used to be that half the babies baptized would be in confirmation. Now there are very few to stay in the same church where they were baptized." I looked up the figures of my first call. Earlier, half the baptized members were there for confirmation. Later, very few. America was mobile and having fewer children. Christina and I attended a big LCA conference where one staffer predicted everything from statistics.

The LCMS, WELS, and others did the same thing. AAL/Lutheran Brotherhood naturally used statistics to gain from the synodical trends, just as they did with mortality. Large numbers do not lie. The synodicals were afraid, so they latched onto the worst possible influencers - Robert Schuller (covert), Fuller Seminary (Paradise on earth), Trinity Divinity (a WELS fave), and others. The executive managers (no real leaders spotted) were eager to pretend future prosperity when they should have known they were thieves and robbers claiming to lay up treasures in heaven. They were quite willing to keep the farce growing while they poured out millions to give themselves a better future.

When I plant roses, I use all the best organic ingredients to provide rich soil without the poisons from the chemical business. Anyone can dose the plants, often fatally, but the successes come from God's Creation and all the things done to grow beautiful roses. Moreover, the Creation combinations bring even more good to the garden. John 15 is strikingly like this parallel.


 KJV John 15 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.

2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.

3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.

4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.

5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.

8 Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.

9 As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.

10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.

11 These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.

The synods bet on fakey gimmicks fermented in the limited minds of useful idiots (Evangelism committees, mandates, programs, posters, films, and slide shows). They never thought about faith in Jesus Christ because they were there for the loot, the bonus for being close with the most obnoxious managers (district and synod presidents). Those are the charlatans who built brand new gyms for the ELS and WELS, knowing their student bodies would shrink as fast as the synod waistbands expand. 

WELS famously spent $30 million on merging Dr. Martin Luther College with Northwestern College. Add their gym and other luxuries - where does one start?

The ELS is finishing a gym worth $15 million - or is it $17 million - for a demographic that will demand more shuffle board room for the last few players.





Our Zoom Program Works with Sound and Music Now.

 


Hello Everyone.

Thanks to Glen, I found a good way to play the hymns, using Share. So far, I need to switch between music and speaking, but it means both work in that set up. I will be doing more research and practicing too. Zach was a big help in practicing. 

That is how I felt until Glen showed me how to use Share on Zoom. Alec listened in and watched while I used speaking and music, separately.



Note - I will link Zoom near the top of the Ichabod page - Zoom Link Here. Click on that and it will open up Zoom. I will also send it around, plus the separate Word file with the whole service.

Best Buy did not honor its live, personal visit today. Their remote "serving" from India is a farce. 

Thank you for your patience. Music is a big issue with Zoom.

In Christ,

Pastor Jackson

Daily Luther Sermon Quote - Lent 1 - "Such are also the heretics who start sects and factions in matters of faith among Christians, that they may make a great parade before the world and soar aloft in their own honor."

 



Complete Sermon -> Matthew 4:1-11.
Invocavit. First Sunday in Lent


19. Thus you see here that Satan held before Christ want and need where there was neither want nor need; but where there was already good means by which to descend from the temple without such a newly devised and unnecessary way of descending. For this purpose Satan led Christ to the top of the temple, in the holy city, says the Evangelist, and placed him in a holy place. For he creates such precious thoughts in man that he thinks he is filled with faith and is on the true way of holiness; and yet he does not stand in the temple, but is only on the outside of the temple, that is, he is not in the true holy mind or life of faith; and yet he is in the holy city; that is, such persons are found only in Christendom and among true Christians, who hear a great deal of preaching about faith. To these persons he applies the sayings of Scripture. For such persons learn Scripture also by daily hearing it; but not farther than they can apply it to their erroneous opinions and their false faith. For Satan here quotes from the Psalter, Psalm 91:11-12, that God commanded the angels that they should protect the children of God and carry them on their hands. But Satan like a rogue and cheat fails to quote what follows, namely, that the angels shall protect the children of God in all their ways. For the Psalm reads thus: “For he will give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone;” hence the protection of the angels does not reach farther, according to the command of God, than the ways in which God has commanded us to walk.

When we walk in these ways of God, his angels take care of us. But the devil omits to quote “the ways of God” and interprets and applies the protection of the angels to all things, also to that which God has not commanded; then it fails and we tempt God.

20. Now, this temptation seldom takes place in outward material things as bread, clothing, house, etc. For we find many foolhardy people, who risk and endanger their body and life, their property and honor, without any need of doing so; as those do who willfully enter into battle or jump into the water, or gamble for money, or in other ways venture into danger, of whom the wise man says in Sirach 3:27: “Whoever takes pleasure in danger, will thereby be overcome;” for in the degree one struggles to get a thing, will he succeed in obtaining it; and good swimmers are likely to drown and good climbers likely to fall. Yet it is seldom that those of false faith in God abstain from bread, clothing and other necessities of life, when they are at hand. As we read of two hermits, who would not accept bread from the people, but thought God should send it to them directly from heaven; so the consequence was that one died and went to his father, the devil, who taught him such faith and left him fall from the pinnacle.

21. But in spiritual matters this temptation is powerful when one has to do with the nourishment not of the body but of the soul. Here God has held before us the person and way, by which the soul can be forever nourished in the richest manner possible without any want, namely Christ, our Savior.

But this way, this treasure, this provision no one desires. Everybody seeks another way, other provisions to help their souls. The real guilty ones are those who would be saved through their own work; these the devil sets conspicuously on the top of the temple. They follow him and go down where there is no stairway; they believe and trust in their own work where there is no faith nor trust, no way nor bridge, and break their necks. But Satan makes use of and persuades them through the Scriptures to believe that the angels will protect them, and that their way, works and faith are pleasing to God, and who called them through the Scriptures to do good works; but they do not care how falsely they explain the Scriptures.

22. Who these are, we have identified often enough and very fully, namely, workrighteous persons and unbelieving hypocrites under the name of being Christians and among the congregation of Christian people. For the temptation must take place in the holy city and one temptation is seldom against another. In the first temptation want and hunger are the reasons that we should not believe; and by which we become anxious to have a full sufficiency, so that there is no chance for us to believe. In the second temptation, however, the abundance and the full sufficiency are the reasons that we do not believe, by which we become tired of the common treasure, and every one tries to do something through his own powers to provide for his soul. So we do; if we have nothing, then we doubt God and believe not; if we have abundance, then we become tired of it and wish to have something different, and again we fail to believe. There we flee and turn against want and seek abundance: here we seek want and flee from the abundance we have. No, whatever God does for us, is never right. Such is the bottomless wickedness of our unbelief.

23. Christ’s third temptation consists in temporal honor and power; as the words of the devil clearly teach, when Satan shows and offers Christ all the kingdoms of the world if he would worship him. To this class those belong who fall from their faith for the sake of honor and power, that they may enjoy good days, or not believe further than their honor and power extend.

Such are also the heretics who start sects and factions in matters of faith among Christians, that they may make a great parade before the world and soar aloft in their own honor. Hence one may place this third temptation on the right, and the first on the left side. The first is the temptation of misfortune, by which man is stirred to anger, impatience and unbelief; the third and last, the temptation of prosperity, by which man is enticed to lust, honor, joy, and whatever is high. The second or middle temptation is spiritual and deals with the blind tricks and errors that mislead reason from faith.

24. For whom the devil cannot overcome with poverty, want, need and misery, he attacks with riches, favor, honor, pleasure, power and the like, and contends on both sides against us; yea, “he walketh about,” says St.

Peter in 1 Peter 5:8, so that if he cannot overthrow us either with suffering or love, that is, with the first temptation on the left or the third on the right, he retires to a higher and different method and attacks us with error, blindness and a false understanding of the Scripture. If he wins there, we fare ill on all sides and in all things; and whether one suffers poverty or has abundance, whether he fights or surrenders, all is lost. For when one is in error, neither patience in misfortune nor firmness in prosperity helps him; seeing that in both heretics are often powerful and the devil deliberately acts as if he were overcome in the first and last temptations, although he is not, if he has only won in the middle or second temptation. For he lets his own children suffer much and be patient, even at times to spurn the world; but never with a true and honest heart.

25. Now these three temptations taken together are heavy and hard; but the middle one is the greatest; for it attacks the doctrine of faith itself in the soul, and is spiritual and in spiritual matters. The other two attack faith in outward things, in fortune and misfortune, in pleasure and pain etc., although both severely try us. For it is sad that one should lay hold of heaven and ever be in want and eat stones where there is no bread. Again, it is sad to despise favors, honor and possessions, friends and associates, and let go what one already has. But faith, rooted in God’s Word, is able to do all things; is faith strong, then it is also easy for the believer to do this.