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.
Saturday, July 27, 2024
One Giant Leap for the Church Growth Synodical Heroes.
Protestia Strikes Again.
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16ft Chocolate Waterwall? Megachurch Turns Church Into High-Production Willy Wonka Factory
"LCBC (Lives Changed By Christ) is a non-denominational multisite megachurch with twenty locations spread across Pennsylvania. Founded in 1986 and led by senior pastor Jason Mitchell, last year, they had an average weekly in-person attendance of 14,044, with another 7354 watching online. They had 12,267 first-time guests, baptized 640 people, sponsored 934 children overseas, and gave $41,115,218 in tithes and offerings."
Imagine all the time pastors have wasted studying the Bible, the Confessions, and church history. Fortunately, Church and Change - established in many other forums - developed new efforts with even less knowledge. Gimmicks are the solution, so they can all sit down to eat and rise up to play (Exodus). Bible study with booze was an innovation, because they could not get the Babtists to come out into the open with the ultimate lure of liquor.
The efficacy of the Word has its negative but powerful side. When people mock the Gospel Word, substitute various poisons, and gloat over their success, they are hardening and blinding themselves.
Note that the Growthers are quick to pounce on any pastor or layman who dares to question the Great Fake, hatched by Fuller Seminary and coached by Peter Drucker hisself. Fate propelled me into LCA Growth, then WELS and LCMS Growth, and finally the doomed CLC (sic) Growth. That moved me to question the great New Awakening that seemed so appealing to the dim-wits yet smelled like vomit.
Congratulate - The Faithless Five -
ELCA-LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC (sic).
Look back in anger, reflect on the last 50 years of Lutheran Synodality:
1. Ridiculing the KJV Bible while embracing and promoting the Left-wing paraphrases - RSV, ESV, NRSV, NIV, Becker-Otten Copycat, TEV, etc.
2. Promoting women's ordination, which opened the gates to gay ordination, or merely ordination cloaked gay - you know who they are.
3. Seminary posts derived from the Pasadena Polecats, to legitimize the district Church Growth experts and meetings with ELCA and the whole gang.
4. Women in charge of congregational worship, so the exhausted pastors can do even less work and be subordinate to the lady's ordination circle.
5. Confirmation watered down to the least possible content, but not without a 400 page Small (stop laughing) Catechism.
6. Run, crawl, spy on, and surveille the nearest clown sect (especially in one's own demi-semi-Lutheran district).
7. May your clown congregations be like Bill Hybels'. I remember the WELS pastors slobbering about Willow Creek Community Church, given money from the sect to be trained there for free.
"The scandal prompted Hybels to resign under pressure on April 10, 2018, and eventually led to the resignation of Willow Creek’s entire board.
In 2019, Willow Creek’s new board released a statement accusing Hybels of “unchecked sin and intimidating behavior.” And the board admitted that the church’s initial response, blaming the alleged victims, harmed the victims and their advocates.
Since 2018, Willow Creek has shrunk in size, and giving has plunged as much as 45 percent."
Daily Luther Sermon Quote - Trinity 9 Epistle - "It is foretold in the Scriptures, predicted by Christ and the apostles, that awful and distressing times will come, when there shall be wide wanderings from the true faith and sad desolations of the Church. And, alas, we see the prophecies only too painfully fulfilled in past heresy, and later in Mohammedanism and the papacy."
Luther's Sermons - 1 Corinthians 10:6-13 Epistle. Ninth Sunday after Trinity
ISRAEL’S CAREER AN ADMONITION TO INDIVIDUALS.
28. When you read or hear this historical example, the terrible punishment the Jewish people suffered in the wilderness, think not it is an obsolete record and without present significance. The narrative is certainly not written for the dead, but for us who live. It is intended to restrain us, to be a permanent example to the whole Church. For God’s dealings with his own flock are always the same, from the beginning of time to the end.
Likewise must the people of God, or the Church, be always the same. This history is a portrait of the Church in every age, representing largely its actual life — the vital part; for it shows on what the success of the Church on earth always depends and how it acts. The record teaches that the Church is at all times wonderfully governed and preserved by God, without human agency, in the midst of manifold temptations, trials, suffering and defeat; that it does not exist as an established government regulated according to human wisdom, with harmony of parts and logical action, but is continually agitated, impaired and weakened in itself by much confusion and numerous penalties; that the great and best part, who bear the name of the Church, fall and bring about a state of things so deplorable God can no longer spare, but is compelled to send punishments in the nature of mutinies and similar disorders, the terrible character of which leaves but a small proportion of the people upright.
29. Now, if such disaster befell the nation selected of God, chosen from the first as his people, among whom he performed works marvelous and manifest beyond anything ever known since, what better thing may we expect for ourselves? Indeed, how much greater the danger threatening us; how much reason we have to take heed that the same fate, or worse, overtake not ourselves!
With reference to the things chronicled in our text, Paul tells us: “They were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.” That is, we are now in the last and most evil of days, a time bringing many awful dangers and severe punishments. It is foretold in the Scriptures, predicted by Christ and the apostles, that awful and distressing times will come, when there shall be wide wanderings from the true faith and sad desolations of the Church. And, alas, we see the prophecies only too painfully fulfilled in past heresy, and later in Mohammedanism and the papacy.
30. The era constituting the “last time” began with the apostles. The Christians living since Christ’s ascension constitute the people of the latter times, the little company left for heaven; and we gentiles, amidst the innumerable multitude of the ungodly generation in the wide world, must experience worse calamities than befell the Jews, who lived under the law of Moses and the Word of God, under an admirable external discipline and a well-regulated government. Yet even in this final age so near the end of time, when we should be occupied with proclaiming the Gospel everywhere, the great multitude are chiefly employed with boasting their Christian name. We see how extravagantly the Pope extols his church, teaching that outside its pale no Christians are to be found on earth, and that the entire world must regard him as the head of the Church.
31. True, his subjects were baptized unto Christ, called to the kingdom of God and granted the Sacrament and the name of Christ. But how do they conduct themselves? Under that superior name and honor, they suppress Christ’s Word and his kingdom. For more than a thousand years now they have desolated the Church, and to this hour most deplorably persecute it.
On the other hand, great countries, vast kingdoms, claiming to be Christian but disregarding the true doctrine of faith, are punished by the Turk’s desolating hand, and instead of the incense of Christianity, with them is the revolting odor of Mohammed’s faith.
32. Great and terrible was the punishment of the Jewish people. Seemingly no disaster could befall man more awful than overtook them in the wilderness. Yet it was physical punishment, and although many, through unbelief and contempt of God, fell and incurred everlasting condemnation, still the Word of God remained with a remnant — Moses and the true Church. But the punishment of this last age is infinitely more awful, for God permits the pure doctrine to be lost, and sends strong delusions, that they who receive not the truth nor love it shall believe falsehood and be eternally lost. 2 Thessalonians 2:10. Such has been our reward; we have only too terribly suffered punishment. And if we are not more thankful for the grace God extends in his Word — a last gleam of light, on the point of extinction — we shall meet with retribution even more appalling. “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”
28. When you read or hear this historical example, the terrible punishment the Jewish people suffered in the wilderness, think not it is an obsolete record and without present significance. The narrative is certainly not written for the dead, but for us who live. It is intended to restrain us, to be a permanent example to the whole Church. For God’s dealings with his own flock are always the same, from the beginning of time to the end.
Likewise must the people of God, or the Church, be always the same. This history is a portrait of the Church in every age, representing largely its actual life — the vital part; for it shows on what the success of the Church on earth always depends and how it acts. The record teaches that the Church is at all times wonderfully governed and preserved by God, without human agency, in the midst of manifold temptations, trials, suffering and defeat; that it does not exist as an established government regulated according to human wisdom, with harmony of parts and logical action, but is continually agitated, impaired and weakened in itself by much confusion and numerous penalties; that the great and best part, who bear the name of the Church, fall and bring about a state of things so deplorable God can no longer spare, but is compelled to send punishments in the nature of mutinies and similar disorders, the terrible character of which leaves but a small proportion of the people upright.
29. Now, if such disaster befell the nation selected of God, chosen from the first as his people, among whom he performed works marvelous and manifest beyond anything ever known since, what better thing may we expect for ourselves? Indeed, how much greater the danger threatening us; how much reason we have to take heed that the same fate, or worse, overtake not ourselves!
With reference to the things chronicled in our text, Paul tells us: “They were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.” That is, we are now in the last and most evil of days, a time bringing many awful dangers and severe punishments. It is foretold in the Scriptures, predicted by Christ and the apostles, that awful and distressing times will come, when there shall be wide wanderings from the true faith and sad desolations of the Church. And, alas, we see the prophecies only too painfully fulfilled in past heresy, and later in Mohammedanism and the papacy.
30. The era constituting the “last time” began with the apostles. The Christians living since Christ’s ascension constitute the people of the latter times, the little company left for heaven; and we gentiles, amidst the innumerable multitude of the ungodly generation in the wide world, must experience worse calamities than befell the Jews, who lived under the law of Moses and the Word of God, under an admirable external discipline and a well-regulated government. Yet even in this final age so near the end of time, when we should be occupied with proclaiming the Gospel everywhere, the great multitude are chiefly employed with boasting their Christian name. We see how extravagantly the Pope extols his church, teaching that outside its pale no Christians are to be found on earth, and that the entire world must regard him as the head of the Church.
31. True, his subjects were baptized unto Christ, called to the kingdom of God and granted the Sacrament and the name of Christ. But how do they conduct themselves? Under that superior name and honor, they suppress Christ’s Word and his kingdom. For more than a thousand years now they have desolated the Church, and to this hour most deplorably persecute it.
On the other hand, great countries, vast kingdoms, claiming to be Christian but disregarding the true doctrine of faith, are punished by the Turk’s desolating hand, and instead of the incense of Christianity, with them is the revolting odor of Mohammed’s faith.
32. Great and terrible was the punishment of the Jewish people. Seemingly no disaster could befall man more awful than overtook them in the wilderness. Yet it was physical punishment, and although many, through unbelief and contempt of God, fell and incurred everlasting condemnation, still the Word of God remained with a remnant — Moses and the true Church. But the punishment of this last age is infinitely more awful, for God permits the pure doctrine to be lost, and sends strong delusions, that they who receive not the truth nor love it shall believe falsehood and be eternally lost. 2 Thessalonians 2:10. Such has been our reward; we have only too terribly suffered punishment. And if we are not more thankful for the grace God extends in his Word — a last gleam of light, on the point of extinction — we shall meet with retribution even more appalling. “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”
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