Three Months After ELCA's July Cataclysm in Phoenix - The Bishops Will Retreat To Baking Hot Scottsdale - October 1

 

 Rev. Dr. Kristin Johnston Largen

In addition to worship and synod updates, good food and fellowship, we will have two special guests from Wartburg Theological Seminary: Rev. Dr. Kristin Johnston Largen, President of Wartburg Seminary, and Rev. Dr. S. Helen Chukka, Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible.

Give Me Some Stouted-Headed Men

Give me some men who are stouthearted men
Who will fight for the right they adore
Start me with ten who are stouthearted men
And I'll soon give you ten thousand more.

Shoulder to shoulder and bolder and bolder
They grow as they go to the fore
Then there's nothing in the world can halt or mar a plan
When stouthearted men can stick together man to man.

Background on the Universal Objective Justification of CFW Walther, B.A.

 

Magic acts are a lot of fun. We all know that the magician distracts our eyes so that he can quickly do the trick where we are not looking.

The UOJ Magicians work the same way, but they are nasty and vindictive, not entertaining. Their energy comes from their hatred of the Word, which they cloak with fine words and sanctimony.


LCMS and WELS - Same History - Same Tricks
Missouri and WELS came from Pietism, which has a way of asserting itself again. The clergy who would rather be unionistic, because they love every doctrine but their own, bitterly resent the chains and shackles - as they see them - of the Book of Concord so they throw off those horrid Confessions.

Missouri and WELS both taught Justification by Faith for many decades.

JFBA Examples in WELS:

1. Gausewitz was the catechism and no one talked of UOJ. The instigator of Kokomo never heard of UOJ before seminary.
2. Some oldsters in WELS remember that they were taught Justification by Faith in the olden days, because they were.
3. JP Meyer and other false teachers worked to supplant the Confessions and the Chief Article, so WELS clergy ignore and loathe the Book of Concord.

JFBA Examples in the LCMS:

1. The 1905 German catechism of the synod taught Justification by Faith, not UOJ.
2. They also used the Gausewitz Catechism, because he was the president of the Synodical Conference.
3. The KJV catechism, lately in the CPH catalogue, teaches Justification by Faith - not UOJ.
4. Dr. Walter A. Maier preached Justification by Faith and taught it as the foundational doctrine of Christianity, named before inerrancy in one quotation. See the graphic. He was praised by sister synods, not denounced as a false teacher.

The Magic Wand of Verbal Abuse

The UOJ Magicians have only one trick. They verbally abuse anyone who threatens their position, and they scare easily. They mask their fear with fake ferocity, always using their buddies to back them up, like shills in an audience helping with a mind-reading trick.

Quoting Rolf Preus on "Due Process":

Robert believed in due process.  He repeatedly said that he would not be used to deny due process to Walter A. Maier.  He also expressed his opinion that his efforts to bring Maier to an orthodox formulation (sic) of this doctrine with the help of such eminent theologians as Dr. Harry Huth, the great Missouri Synod Confessions scholar, would bear more fruit than his brother’s approach. 

 WAM II, left, got the Preus "due process" treatment.
I do not have his academic achievements at this time.
He is with a bunch of Maiers. When I met WAM II, he was jolly and friendly.

Imagine yourself as a professor at the synod's seminary, the son of the world-famous preacher and Biblical scholar, Walter A. Maier, PhD, Harvard, who taught Justification by Faith and inerrancy.

• Jack Preus, the LCMS president, sends a letter to every congregation, denouncing you as a false teacher - for teaching what built The Lutheran Hour, your father preaching on the radio. But the accusation is dishonest, because it does not say, "You teach the Chief Article and we reject that, agreeing with the rationalistic Pietists." No, it is "YOU deny our precious dogma doctrine of Justification without Faith Objective Justification."
• Robert Preus, Jack's brother, as president of the Ft. Wayne seminary, denounces you to the entire LCMS, using the most ridiculous arguments for UOJ, even citing the UOJist who left teaching in the LCMS to be a Roman Catholic editor! That was Edward Preuss of precious memory, still quoted with a school-girl's sigh.
• Instead of being the leading candidate for LCMS synod president, a big effort is mounted to deny you any votes because (wave the magic wands) both Preus brothers have unethically and illegally denounced you as a false teacher. And yes, that is indeed slander.
• Ralph Bohlmann becomes the LCMS president, promotes Church Growth, and sees his daughter ordained as a UCC pastor and married to another woman.
• Herman Otten, a supposed Maier friend, backs UOJ to the hilt, essentially agreeing with the Preus brothers. It took another magician, Paul Rodham McCain, to equal this level of hypocrisy and back-stabbing. Otten sells books against Luther, praises a Roman Catholic author for publishing the obvious, and specializes in promoting the thralls of UOJ.

The irony of this Preus team is that neither Preus brother earned an Ivy league degree or engaged in Biblical scholarship, as Walter A. Maier, WAM II, and WAM III did. Jack and Bob both studied Latin scholasticism at the University of Minnesota - the Icey League. Academic achievement in the Preus family stopped there. As The Right Reverend Bishop James Heiser said to me, "The Preus children are not known for their theological acumen."

The Preus brothers used the weakness of CFW Walther's education to their advantage, calling up the ghost of Stephan's thrall to pound WAM II into the ground. The weakness of LCMS clergy and laity always comes through when they line up like iron filings around the magnetic personality of their first pope, professor, publisher, and political expert, CFW Walther, BA.

The answer does not come from inane theses that beg the question, like Valleskey on Fuller and Church Growth. The answer comes from careful study of the Biblical text. Anyone can do that, but few take the trouble.

I am happy to say that the younger generations of men are willing to address what the Boomer men ignored.

 According to this former editor of Steadfast Lutherans,
Dr. Maier was "a moron" for teaching Justification by Faith.

Daily Luther Sermon Quote - Trinity 3 - "Christ is both the shepherd and the woman; for he has lighted the lamp, that is, the Gospel, and he goes about in the desert, that is, the world. He sweeps the house, and seeks the lost sheep and lost piece of silver, when he comes with his Word and proclaims to us, first our sins, and then his grace and mercy. Christ’s declaration, that he is the shepherd and has laid our sins upon his back or shoulders, makes us trust in him fully, and makes publicans and other sinners run after him. These would not have come unto him thus, had they regarded him as a hard and wrathful judge; for they had previously acknowledged themselves to be sinners and in need of his grace."

 

Tom Fisher's lambs

Luther's Sermons - Luke 15:1-10.
Third Sunday after Trinity

Then Samuel, among other things, said unto them: “Far be it from me that I should sin against Jehovah in ceasing to pray for you; but I will instruct you in the good and right way. Only fear Jehovah, and serve him in truth with all your heart, for consider how great things he hath done for you.” 1 Samuel 12:19-24.

12. David also acted thus. When the Lord inflicted the plagues upon Israel he spake unto the Lord and said: “Lo, I have sinned, and I have done perversely; but these sheep, what have they done? Let thy hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my father’s house.”

13. Such should be your bearing toward sinners; inwardly the heart in service, outwardly the tongue in earnest. God requires this of us; and this is what Christ, our Captain, has manifested in himself, as Paul says to the Philippians 2:4-9: “Not looking each of you to his own things, but each of you also to the things of others. Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross.”

14. Christ was filled with all righteousness, and might justly have condemned us all as sinners. But he did not do so. What did he do, then?

He gave himself to be our Servant. His righteousness has served for our sins, his fullness for our feebleness, his life for our death. This we find illustrated, for our example, in the Gospel before us, where he bears himself with such friendliness toward sinners that the Pharisees murmur.

The Lord therefore sets before them the following parables in order to teach how they are to receive sinners and be of service to them, saying: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, and having lost one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it, etc. Or what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a lamp, and sweep the house, and seek diligently until she find it?”

15. Christ is both the shepherd and the woman; for he has lighted the lamp, that is, the Gospel, and he goes about in the desert, that is, the world. He sweeps the house, and seeks the lost sheep and lost piece of silver, when he comes with his Word and proclaims to us, first our sins, and then his grace and mercy. Christ’s declaration, that he is the shepherd and has laid our sins upon his back or shoulders, makes us trust in him fully, and makes publicans and other sinners run after him. These would not have come unto him thus, had they regarded him as a hard and wrathful judge; for they had previously acknowledged themselves to be sinners and in need of his grace.

And so they were drawn to him when they heard his loving doctrine. Here comes the sheep out of the wilderness, and here the lost piece of silver is found.