O Word of God Incarnate

1. O Word of God Incarnate, O Wisdom from on high,
O Truth unchanged, unchanging, O Light of our dark sky,
We praise Thee for the radiance That from the hallowed page,
A lantern to our footsteps Shines on from age to age.

2. The Church from her dear Master Received the gift divine,
And still that light she lifteth O'er all the earth to shine.
It is the golden casket Where gems of truth are stored;
It is the heaven-drawn picture Of Christ, the living Word.

 3 It floateth like a banner Before God’s host unfurled
It shineth like a beacon Above the darkling world;
It is the chart and compass That o’er life surging sea,
Mid mists and rocks and quicksands Still guides, O Christ, to Thee.

 4 Oh, make Thy Church, dear Savior, A lamp of burnished gold
To bear before the nations Thy true light as of old!
Oh, teach Thy wand’ring pilgrims By this their path to trace
Till, clouds and darkness ended, They see Thee fact to face!

William W. How, Anglican Bishop, wrote:
O Word of God Incarnate,
For All the Saints,
Jesus Name of Wondrous Love,
We Give Thee But Thine Own.

Source for Lutheran Hymn Writer Biographies and Pictures

Lutheran mom reacts to church promoting their Money Business.

I decided to feature this blog for a time, because the author (a member of the ever-growing Preus clan) has so much information about Lutheran hymn-writers. Look at the right column of that blog and read how many are featured.

Hymns are often confessions of faith written during a time of crisis. For that reason, the most significant verses are often butchered or omitted. "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" was changed by liberal editors so that people no long sang "offspring of the Virgin's womb." The new words, still found in many print editions, became "offspring of the chosen one." Methodists did that to their own founder's hymn.

Lutherans would never omit or change hymns by Lutherans, would they? WELS did that in spades, especially with doctrinal verses. Compare the great old hymns with the Christian Worship version. I guess CW was DUI - Designed Under the Influence.

The notorious Iver Johnson was another big asset on the CW team, in case they needed special hymns for The Counseling Shepherd, like "Embracable Ewe."

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Narrow-minded Lutheran has left a new comment on your post "Source for Lutheran Hymn Writer Biographies and Pi...":

"Now Praise We Christ the Holy One" (TLH #104)is missing from the LSB. Too bad, because it's a beautiful hymn. We wouldn't want too many hymns by Luther in a Lutheran hymnal.

Narrow-minded Lutheran has left a new comment on your post "Source for Lutheran Hymn Writer Biographies and Pi...":

I have to issue a semi-correction. TLH #104 didn't make the cut for the intermediate LW either.


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Daniel Baker has left a new comment on your post "Source for Lutheran Hymn Writer Biographies and Pi...":

The one that upsets me the most in CW is "What is the World to Me?" They took out the best verses of the hymn.

"Jerusalem the Golden" is also missing about 80 verses, but that started in TLH, so you can't really blame CW as much.

Radical for Today - Explanation of the Common Service

This information is provided by Bethany Lutheran Chapel, Bella Vista.
This is our WEF.



The book can be found here, and converting to text will make it easy to kelm.

Please Ignore Gerhardt's Anniversary...Thank You!

Paul Gerhardt is likely the most favored hymn-writer of the Christian Church. His hymns are used more often by more denominations than any other writer, more than Luther. That is what one source claims. I have not done my own research on this because I hate to wade through piles of Holy-Spirit-drenched praise hymnals to find out.

Below are Gerhardt hymns in the new LCMS hymnal:

1. O Lord, How Shall I Meet You
   
2. All My Heart Again Rejoices
   
3. O Jesus Christ, Thy Manger Is
   
4. Come, Your Hearts and Voices Raising
   
5. A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth
   
6. O Sacred Head, Now Wounded
   
7. Upon the Cross Extended
   
8. Awake, My Heart, with Gladness
   
9. All Christians Who Have Been Baptized
   
10. Jesus, Thy Boundless Love to Me
    
11. If God Himself Be for Me
    
12. Evening and Morning
    
13. Rejoice, My Heart, Be Glad and Sing
    
14. Entrust Your Days and Burdens
    
15. Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me
    
16. Now Rest beneath Night's Shadow
    
17. I Will Sing My Maker's Praises

The synods falling over each other to celebrate Paul Gerhardt's 400th anniversary should hide away in shame. They should run away from Gerhardt as much as they shun Luther, Chemnitz, and J. Gerhard.

Short Bio

Students of Lutheran doctrine and worship should remember three things about Gerhardt. First of all, he tutored children well into his adult life (age 45), enhancing his ability to communicate with vivid and concrete images. Second, he was resolute in opposing Calvinism, but mild in his overall manner. Calvinists loved his services and his hymns. Nevertheless, he was kicked out of his congreation in Berlin and forced out of the city. The rest of his life was very difficult because he would not compromise his doctrinal standards. Third, he lost all of his children except his son and then lost his wife as well.

Please Stop This at Once!
The Little Sect on the Prairie will celebrate Gerhardt's life with the Bethany lectures. Gaylin Schmeling, STM (Nashotah House) will be one lecturer. Once upon a time, the Bethany lectures were given by known scholars, not by the staff. The other lecturer, Carlos Messerli, seems to be LCMS or ELCA. The information is difficult to track down. All his publishing credits seem to be ELCA. He was connected to the hideous Liberal Book of Weirdness and seems to think it was a good hymnal. That was the first feminist Lutheran hymnal but not as bad as WELS' Charismatic Worship.

Kieschnick's LCMS has a URL devoted to Gerhardt. Have the Missouri pastors noted the irony of this veneration?

The Sausage Factory, also known as Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, noticed Gerhardt as well. And yet the offical WELS line goes like this, "We can learn from Fuller Seminary because we are spoiling the Egyptians."

I ran into this article, which is appropriate, comparing "Elvis" singing leading a church in singing How Great Thou Art to the life and work of Paul Gerhardt. The article suggested the next step in WELS-ELS-LCMS Seeker Services, aka Friendship Sunday.

Why Ignore the Anniversary?

The "conservative" synods are really apostate synods. They are more unionistic than the ruler who deposed Gerhardt. For 30 years the old Synodical Conference--hand in claw with ELCA--has promoted Reformed doctrine, Reformed worship, and the elimination of the Creeds. The Book of Concord is a joke to these people, all the more because they pretend to have some respect for the document.

Why praise Gerhardt when the District Popes fire pastors right and left for being faithful? Pope John the Malefactor (Little Sect on the Prairie) set a record in the percentage of pastors and congregations he defenestrated.

The micro-mini sects are even worse.

Are Any Solutions in Sight?

Doctrinal apostasy is now so obvious that people are taking notice. More men will be kicked out, but the synods will still collapse from their own incompetence and top-heavy costs.

I will brag about two women who decided to spoil the Egyptians on their own. They went to a Reformed bookstore in Grand Rapids and bought the fabulous 8-volume Lenker set of Luther's sermons.

Lutheran Service Book (LCMS)

Lutheran Forum on the new LCMS and ELCA worship books:

Reforming the Daily Office: Examining Two New Lutheran Books
by Philip H. Pfatteicher — August 31, 2007

The creation of Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW) by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, as I understand it, was generated by the convergence of two factors. One was the fervent desire on the part of a relative minority in the church to end the use of masculine pronouns (“he,” “him,” “his”) to refer to God. The other was the increasingly serious financial situation of the church’s publishing house, Augsburg Fortress...

The creation of Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW) by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, as I understand it, was generated by the convergence of two factors. One was the fervent desire on the part of a relative minority in the church to end the use of masculine pronouns (“he,” “him,” “his”) to refer to God. The other was the increasingly serious financial situation of the church’s publishing house, Augsburg Fortress. A new worship book would make congregations pray and talk about God in ways that the influential minority considered essential and would at the same time be a big seller to bail out the publisher. And so it has happened.

Concordia, the publishing house of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, also with a keen eye to marketing, could not countenance a book that could possibly draw off some of its own source of income, and so the 2004 convention of that church approved a “new hymnal,” Lutheran Service Book (LSB)...

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GJ - Someone questioned whether a new hymnal could bail out a Lutheran publishing house. I read elsewhere that ELCA's Augsburg-Fortress finally got out of the red when the new hymnal began selling.

I have experienced the new LSB twice. It is probably the best new Lutheran hymnal. WELS' CW (Charismatic Worship) is doubtless the worst. CW is also the only new hymnal to avoid the word Lutheran. The national magazine of WELS defenestrated Lutheran from its title years ago. Now people see nothing wrong with avoiding almost any connection with Lutheran.