WELS Got Way Ahead of the Liberal Evangelicals - Billy Graham's Unrepentant Grandson Filing for Divorce and in a New Call

The LCMS kicked Floyd Luther Stolzenberg out of his call - for cause.
WELS soon made him a highly paid Church Growth Consultant
and allowed him to play the role of a pastor in Columbus,
then endorsed him for a new call.
Jay Webber, Paul Kuske, DP Robert Mueller, Kovo, Wally Oelhafen,
and the Michigan District pastors went along with this farce.

Church Unstoppable

Shameful: Tchividjian is on staff at a PCA church in Central FL. This has been verified by multiple sources.

Source: http://www.willowcreekchurch.org/our-staff

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GJ - Does anyone wonder why WELS is shrinking faster than Clinton/Bush prospects for the presidency?

Our boy Tullian blamed his adultery on his wife's adultery, a fine example of clergy deception and lack of repentance.

The WELS clergy in Columbus told everyone that Floyd Luther had a "Scriptural divorce," which was a bald-faced lie. Jack Preus said that was not true. Herman Otten said it was not true, and another well known LCMS leader said it was not true. Floyd's associate at Salem in Blackjack, Missouri said the congregation would have blown apart if all the husbands and fathers knew the truth.

Of course, Marvin Schwan also had a "Scriptural divorce," which I asked to have explained to me. I said, "Is that like Scriptural murder?"

Adultery seems to be the default mode of the WELS clergy, from many reports. The leaders only object when it gets out into the open and makes them look as stupid, corrupt, and degenerate as they actually are.

The congregations know how bad it is, at least in their little territories. For some, it is a delight to have the clergy and teachers as loose as they are - in the name of sinning more that grace may abound. For others, it is the final reason for leaving.

Marvin Schwan divorced his wife to marry the
wife of one of his executives.
His cruelty led to his first wife's suicide.
No wonder the WELS leaders were pawing the ground
for the New NIV.

From 2007 - Pope John the Malefactor and the ELS Meltdown

Pope John the Malefactor was born John Moldstad, Jr. When the Evangelical Lutheran Synod threatened to slip away from the consecrated and consecrating hands of WELS, the insiders voted out the First VP, who would have replaced Pope George the Malleable. Moldstad was voted in. Kincaid Smith boasted about this accomplishment, which made its way into Christian News. Moldstad's previous boast was becoming a Bethany Seminary professor without graduating from college.

Pope John has been kicking men and congregations out of the ELS, albeit with great sadness expressed. Observers doubt the melancholy nature of the act since John does this so often and with such alacrity. In each case the congregation could have stayed while issues were worked out. His Grace, Bishop John Shep, kicked out of Thoughts of Faith and the Ukraine, told me a few years ago, "John is a walk-the-plank type of guy. Just wait."

The most famous case involves River Heights, Minnesota, where Rolf Preus (son of Robert Preus) was the pastor. Rolf criticized the ELS attempts under Orvick to adopt the Wisconsin Synod's false doctrine about the ministry. When Pope John the Malefactor replaced Orvick, he went to the River Heights congregation and issued an ultimatum. The congregation must leave the ELS, suspend Preus, or fire him. Threatened as they were, the congregation suspended Preus. Moldstad maneuvered until Preus was fired after that. The Antichrist in Rome has that kind of power, but no congregation should hand their power to call over to an official.

Several other pastors were forced out by Moldstad, according to ELS Bad Boy:

1. Immanuel, Audubon, Minnesota. Pastor forced out.
2. Cottage Grove, Wisconsin. Pastor forced out.
3. Fertile, Minnesota - congregation left the ELS. Served by Rolf Preus.
4. Crookston, Minnestoa - congregation left the ELS. Served by Rolf Preus.
5. Faith in Litchfield left the ELS with its pastor.
6. Brockdorf was suspended, then left the ELS with his congregation.
7. Lanier was suspended. He left the ELS with his congregation.
8. Lawson Jr. was suspended. He left the ELS with his congregation.
9. Williamsburg, Iowa, was kicked out with its pastor, for opposing Moldstad.
10. Pastor Lehenbauer resigned from the ELS roster because of his opposition to false doctrine in the ELS.

Add to this list a few closings for various reasons. The ELS is tiny, so the ejection of so many pastors and congregations must be alarming to the survivors. Another pastor is in the Moldstad crosshairs, so that would probably mean another congregation. ELS Bad Boy says that Moldstad would look like a chicken and smell like a roof if he showed up at some congregations.

One reader asked, "When will they vote Moldstad out?"

Another one wondered, "Why didn't Moldstad make any noise when Roman Archbishop Weakland was an honored speaker at Wisconsin Lutheran College?" Answer - Professional courtesy.

The good news is that the congregations freed from the embrace of WELS/ELS/Fuller will have a chance to proclaim the Gospel through the Means of Grace.

Parsing the Moldstad Deception - All UOJ Advocates Are Liars - So Do Not Act Shocked

Gregory JacksonApril 17, 2013 at 3:40 PM

Is the error going to be publicly retracted and repudiated? Until then, this faux-apology means nothing. After all, this is the second time this deception has been published in the Little Sect on the Prairie.

Don Moldstad, Chaplain said...
This is Chaplain Don Moldstad responding: I do apologize for not being more accurate with my source. I was simply attempting to show how the Confessional Lutheran church has confessed this blessed truth in contrast to Rome. Thank you for your attention to detail. My apologies.

***

The fake, dishonest "Luther" statement below
teaches contrary to the Augsburg Confession.

GJ - Ecclesia Augustana first exposed this deception, which had already been aired in its earlier form on Intrepid Lutherans.  Here is the update from Intrepid Lutherans - on the Moldstad lies.

Don Moldstad's statement has been reported as an apology, but it was just the opposite of an apology. He did not retract his falsehood - he supported it as "confessional"  and as a "blessed truth." It was just a little thing about "detail." How much more arrogant can Pope-Brother be?

What exactly was his source? Is he so ignorant of Luther's Small Catechism that he calls this drivel Luther's? Notice the quotation marks, created to make us think this is some version of the Small Catechism we have never seen before.

I know Pope John the Malefactor did the same thing, turning a question about UOJ into someone asking, "How can critics of UOJ even call themselves Christian?" That was published in the unheralded and largely unread ELS magazine of record. 

I know Pope John pulled this deception off, because I corresponded with the letter-writer and his family, and we met them...at Kokomo. That is the place you want to go, if you want to find out about WELS/ELS duplicity.

Now let us ponder the faux-quotation from pseudo-Luther (aka the Moldstad brothers).

I believe in the forgiveness of sins because the Bible assures me that God the Father has by grace forgiven all sinners and declared them righteous. [Moldstad brothers]

What does this mean?

GJ - This is UOJ code talk. Faith is not mentioned because "forgiven all sinners" means forgiven without faith. Just to make sure no one misses the UOJ content, this phrase is added "and declared them righteous." The two errors are synonymous. God does indeed forgive sinners, since He has no reason to forgive non-sinners. However, ever since Walther, Preuss, and the SynCons, "forgiven all sinners" has been used to argue that the entire world is absolved without faith.

UOJ places  a great emphasis upon "without faith."

"Declared them righteous" is a second attempt to say the same thing, avoiding justification, perhaps because justification always means justification by faith in the Scriptures, in the Book of Concord, in Luther, Melanchthon, Chemnitz, Gerhard, Calov, Quensted, Andreae, and many more.

God can declare sinners righteous because, on the redemptive work of Christ, He has aquitted (sic) of the guilt and punishment of their sins, and has imputed to them the righteousness of Christ. He therefore regards them in Christ as though they had never sinned. [Moldstad brothers, with Jay Webber's in Christ added]

What does this mean?

GJ - This section features bad spelling and atrocious English. I wonder if they meant to use some different words or omitted a word or two.

This is also boasting that God has forgiven the entire world, without faith, without grace, without the Word, without the Means of Grace. Where is this fantasy recorded? Not in Luther and not in the Book of Concord. I can find it in the notorious false teacher named Samuel Huber. Two orthodox Lutheran theologians refuted Huber, who had been a Calvinist and accused justification by faith Lutherans as "Calvinists." Sound familiar?

Once again - nothing is said about faith. Imputation and faith are always used together in the New Testament. This imputation relates to Abraham who was justified by faith in Genesis 15, as argued again in Romans 4 and repeated in Galatians. Imputation is our fancy word for "count." We are counted as righteous when we believe in the atoning death of Christ.

KJV Romans 4:24 But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; 25 Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. 

5:1 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:

2 By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

No one is "in Christ" without faith in the Savior, and that faith is created and sustained by the Holy Spirit at work in the Word.

I receive this justification when the Holy Ghost through the means of grace, leads me, the sinner, to believe that God has forgiven all my sins for Christ's sake. [Moldstad brothers, ELS]

What does this mean?

GJ - In other words, faith in the absolution of the world (without faith) is necessary for this absolution to be true. What a mish-mash of rationalism, Pietism, and mainline gibberish.

This is not faith in Christ but faith in UOJ, exactly as Walther learned it from his syphilitic bishop, Martin Stephan, who learned it from Georg Christian Knapp at Halle University, the center of Pietism in Europe.

The Pietist Rambach also taught this, as Samuel Huber--the repudiated heretic--did.

But today, people call themselves "confessional Lutherans" while repudiating the Lutheran Confessions, then bragging that their amalgam of Pietism and Rationalism is the true faith.

P. Leyser was one of the lesser known editors of the Book of Concord.
Who is confessional - Leyser or Huber and his ELS clones?

Student take on growing debt loads | The Jamestown Sun | Jamestown, North Dakota

Student take on growing debt loads | The Jamestown Sun | Jamestown, North Dakota:


MOORHEAD, Minn. — When Sarah Altmann received her acceptance letter from Bethany Lutheran College in 1999, she was excited to get in — and didn’t think too hard about the price tag.

“I was fresh out of high school, they accepted me, and I didn’t even think about long term,” she said. She didn’t come from money, so she paid for school primarily through loans.

More than a decade later, she’s still paying for it.

Altmann, who later transferred to Minnesota State University Moorhead and is close to finishing a degree in computer science after chipping away off and on for years, still carries about $30,000 in student loan debt. Most of it is from her time at Bethany Lutheran, a small private school in Mankato, Minn.

She doesn’t regret her time there, and doesn’t see the loans as an albatross. Instead, it’s just a persistent reality for her and a generation of college graduates who leave school carrying a heavy debt burden.

Two-thirds of four-year college graduates last year accumulated college debt, according to FinAid.org, an online financial aid resource center. Graduates in debt owed an average of $34,000 — a figure that’s more than tripled in the past two decades.

The local picture isn’t much different:

* At North Dakota State University, about 74 percent of 2011 graduates carried college debt. They owed an average of $28,689.

* At MSUM, about 68 percent of last year’s graduates owed an average of $30,036.

* At Concordia, about 79 percent of students from the 2010 graduating class — the most recent year for which data was available — owed an average of $32,271.


'via Blog this'

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GJ - This astonishes me. The greedy Synodical Conference leaders took all the Schwan loot and put it into wild hair projects, including many new glamorous buildings at schools - Concordia, St. Louis; Martin Luther College; Bethany Lutheran College. Meanwhile they saddled everyone with enormous student loan debts.

Why was nothing done to keep tuition costs reasonable?

Thrivent also pumped hundreds of millions into more projects besides.

Open Thread - Emmaus Conference

Last year's conference.

Post comments to this thread and I will copy and paste them into the main part.


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Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Open Thread - Emmaus Conference":

Leaving for the Conference. I have 50 copies of Justification by Faith, 40 copies of Jesus Priceless Treasure, 20 copies of Jesus Lord of Creation (attempting to offset CPH's promotion of evolution), 50 UOJ vs. BOC and Scripture printouts, 50 Catechism comparison printouts.

Emmaus Conference

Emmaus Conference:


February 9-10, 2012
Lecturer: President, The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, St. Louis, Missouri Assistant Pastor, Village Lutheran Church, Ladue, Missouri.

The Reverend Matthew C. Harrison is the 13th person to serve as president of the 2.3-million-member Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Before becoming president, Harrison served for nine years as the executive director of LCMS World Relief and Human Care. He has also served as a parish pastor at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Westgate, Iowa, and Zion Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He later founded the National Lutheran Housing Support Corp. - a faith-based housing organization that helps revitalize communities and renew neighborhoods across the country.

Harrison and his wife Kathy spent a year as missionaries in a remote Canadian Cree Indian village with the Lutheran Association of Missionaries and Pilots. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind., and a Master of Sacred Theology degree from the same institution. He has authored, edited and translated several articles and books, including The Lonely Way: Selected Essays and Letters by Hermann Sasse; At Home in the House of My Fathers; A Little Book on Joy; and Christ Have Mercy: How to Put Your Faith in Action. Harrison and his wife live in Ballwin, Mo., and are members of Village Lutheran Church in Ladue, Mo., where he also serves as assistant pastor. They have two sons.

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