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.
I began publishing Daily Luther Sermon Quotes so I would read more Luther, mark his best passages, and remember them. Today's 1 Corinthians 10 Epistle Sermon is a perfect example of the ELCA and the Faithless Walther Four - mocking one another and yet being very chummy at Fuller Seminary, Trinity Seminary, Willow Creek, and Snowbird.
Everyone one is the same, but they have exquisite laws to make sure their inbreeding is kept as closely knit as their perks from Thrivent, Schwan, and other secular disasters.
I know that the WELS in-breds huddled together to form Church and Change, with synodical money (yours) to send people around for free and spend money copying whatever they coveted from the previously mentioned House of Ill Repute locations.
The facts on Ichabod have made them howl with rage, deny everything, and carry on looting and corrupting what they had. The LCMS is no different, just larger and falling with thunder, dust, and insolvencies.
Forgetting ELCA, the Walther Faithless Four have
Short chats rather than sermons;
Terrible music;
Worship plagiarized from Robert Schuller and Bill Hybels;
No faith at all, unless prostituted by their precious Faithless Objective Justification.
Absolute terror, because the Word is tearing down their pagan temples.
They have no grace because they openly deny faith in Jesus Christ.
Get this newcomers - they were all declared forgiven, 2,000 years ago, guilt-free saints in Hell.
The Faithless Five - ELCA-LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC (sic) - are openly revealed by their precious synods through this Luther sermon. Do you wonder why there is an abyss between the Lutheran fakes and Luther himself?
Here is a little test from LutherQuest, an ironic approach to faith in the New Testament. Perhaps too much Luther has been quoted on Ichabod with clarity. There is no Luther in LutherQuest. The Objective Faithless Justification heroes steadfastly promote the most dense and stupefying declarations, in harmony with CFW Walther and his chosen toadies. No wonder the Queasies hide from the criminal actions and cover-ups of Bishop Martin Stephan STD and the Great Walther.
The ALPB Forum Ovaltines are just as bad, similar to the LutherQueasies. Both groups flounder in their despair.
The King James Version and Luther's Sermons
Readers only need the KJV Bible for clarity and Luther's Sermons for explanations. Melanchthon and Chemnitz are also great helps in this Age of Apostasy. These four sources are not only ignored by the Faithless Five - they are also ridiculed, rejected, and given the ignominy of faint praise.
2. Paul’s occasion and meaning in writing this epistle was the security of the Corinthians. Conscious of their privileged enjoyment of Christ, of baptism and the Sacrament, they thought they lacked nothing and fell to creating sects and schisms among themselves. Forgetting charity, they despised one another.
8. But with the great mass of the people, how long did faith last? No longer than until they came into the wilderness. There they began to despise God’s Word, to murmur against Moses and against God and to fall into idolatry.
9. Their punishment was wholly the result of their odious arrogance in boasting in the face of God’s Word, of their privileges as the people of God, upon whom he daily bestowed great kindness. “Do you not recognize,” they bragged, “the holiness of this entire congregation, among whom God dwells, daily performing his marvelous wonders?”
13. Truly it is but lusting after the wrath and punishment of God when, in forgetfulness of and ingratitude for his grace and goodness we seek something new. The world is coming to be filled with the spirit of concupiscence, for the multitude is weary of the Gospel. Particularly are they dissatisfied with it because it profits not the flesh; contributes not to power, wealth and luxury. Men desire again the old and formal things of popery, notwithstanding they suffered therein extreme oppression and were burdened not less than were the people of Israel in Egypt. But they will eventually have to pay a grievous penalty for their concupiscence.
15. Where the Word of God is lacking or disregarded, human wisdom makes-for itself a worship. It will find its pleasure in the thing of its own construction and regard it something to be prized, though it may be imperatively forbidden in God’s Word, perhaps even an abomination before him. Human reason thinks it may handle divine matters according to its own judgment; that God must be pleased with what suits its pleasure. Accordingly, to sanction idolatry, it appropriates the name of the Word of God. The Word must be forced into harmony with the false worship to give the latter an admirable appearance, notwithstanding the worship is essentially the reverse of what it is made to appear. Similarly popery set off its abominations of the mass, of monkery and the worship of saints; and the world in turn seeks to set off that idolatry to make it stand before God’s Word.
23. This last point is akin to the one preceding. Paul defines murmuring against God as an open revolt actuated by unbelief in the Word, a manifestation of anger and impatience, an unwillingness to obey when events are not ordered according to the pleasure of flesh and blood, and a readiness instantly to see God as hating and unwilling to help.
For should Satan get hold of you in earnest with his false doctrine and spiritual delusions, his strong temptations of the soul — contempt of God, for instance — such as assailed Peter and many others of the saints, you could not stand. You are yet weak; you are new and untried Christians.
21. Notice, Paul in speaking of how they tempted God says, “They tempted Christ,” pointing to the fact that the eternal Son of God was from the beginning with his Church and with the people who received from the ancient fathers the promise of his coming in the form of man. They believed as we do that Christ — to use Paul’s words in the beginning — was the rock that followed them.
Therefore the apostle gives us to understand, the point of the Israelites’ insult was directed against faith in Christ, against the promise concerning him. Moses was compelled to hear them protest after this manner: “Yes, you boast about a Messiah who is one with God, and who is with us to lead us; one revealed to the fathers and promised to be born unto us of our flesh and blood, to redeem us and bring relief to all men; a Messiah who for that reason adopts us for his own people, to bring us into the land; but where is he? This is a fine way he relieves us! Is our God one to permit us to wander for forty years in the wilderness until we all perish?”
22. That such sin and blasphemy was the real meaning of their murmurings is indicated by the fact that Moses afterward, in the terrible punishment of the fiery serpents by which the people were bitten and died, erected at God’s command a brazen serpent and whoever looked upon it lived. It was to them a sign of Christ who was to be offered for the salvation of sinners.
It taught the people they had blasphemed against God, incurred his wrath and deserved punishment, and therefore in order to be saved from wrath and condemnation, they had no possible alternative but to believe again in Christ.
MURMURING AGAINST GOD OPEN REVOLT.
23. This last point is akin to the one preceding. Paul defines murmuring against God as an open revolt actuated by unbelief in the Word, a manifestation of anger and impatience, an unwillingness to obey when events are not ordered according to the pleasure of flesh and blood, and a readiness instantly to see God as hating and unwilling to help. Just so the Jews persistently behaved, despite Moses’ efforts to reconcile. Being also continually punished for their perversity, they ought prudently to have abandoned their murmurings; but they only murmured the more.
24. The apostle’s intent in the narration is to warn all who profess to be Christians, or people of God, as we shall hear later. He holds that the example of the Israelites ought deeply to impress us, teaching us to continue in the fear of God and to be conscious of it, and to guard against self-confidence. For God by the punishments mentioned shows forcibly enough to the world that he will not trifle with, nor excuse, our sin — as the world and our own flesh fondly imagine — if we, under cover of his high and sacred name, dare despise and pervert his Word; if we, actuated by presumptuous confidence in our own wisdom, our own holiness and the gifts of God, follow our private opinions, our own judgment and inclinations, and vainly satisfy ourselves with the delusion: “God is not angry with me, one so meritorious, so superior, in his sight.”
25. You learn here that God spared none of the great throng from Egypt, among whom were many worthy and eminent individuals, even the progenitors of Christ in the tribe of Judah. He visited terrible punishment upon the distinguished princes and the leaders among the priesthood and other classes, and that in the sight of the entire people among whom he had performed so many marvelous wonders. Having by Moses delivered them from temporal bondage in Egypt, and through his office spiritually baptized and sanctified them; having given Christ, to speak with, lead, defend and help them; having dealt kindly with them as would a father with his children: yet he visits terrible destruction upon these Jews because they have abused his grace and brought forth no fruits of faith, and have become proud, boasting themselves the people of God, children of Abraham and circumcised, sole possessors of the promise of a Messiah, and consequently sure of participating in the kingdom of God and enjoying his grace.
26. Now, as Paul teaches, if terrible judgment and awful punishment came upon these illustrious and good people, let us not be proud and presumptuous. We are far inferior to them and cannot hope, in these last ages of the world, to know gifts and wonders as great and glorious as they knew. Let us see ourselves mirrored in them and profit by their example, being mindful that while we are privileged to glory in Christ, in the forgiveness of sins and the grace of God, we must be faithfully careful not to lose what we have received and fall into the same condemnation and punishment before God which was the fate of this people. For we have not yet completed our pilgrimage; we have not arrived at the place toward which we journey. We are still on the way and must constantly go forward in the undertaking, in spite of dangers and hindrances that may assail. The work of salvation is indeed begun in us, but as yet is incomplete. We have come out of Egypt and have passed through the Red Sea; that is, have been led out of the devil’s dominion into the kingdom of God, through Christian baptism. But we are not yet through the wilderness and in the promised land. There is a possibility of our still wandering from the way, into defeat, and missing salvation.
27. Nothing is lacking on God’s part; he has given us his Word and the Sacraments, has bestowed the Spirit, given grace and the necessary gifts, and is willing to help us even further. It rests with ourselves not to fall from grace, not to thrust it from us through unbelief, ingratitude, disobedience and contempt of God’s Word. For salvation is not to him who only begins well, but, as Christ says (Matthew 24:13), “He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.” But the apostle continues: “Now these things happened unto them by way of example; and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.”
Martin Luther was trained in Biblical studies and Medieval theology. When he taught the Gospels and criticized The (Visible) Church, the Pope excommunicated him - damned Luther to Hell.
The threat of Muslim armies led the Catholic emperor to work with the excellent German soldiers to hold back the invasion, which was finally stopped at Vienna, where the coffee tradition was established...and spread.
Today?
Christendom is bloated and shrinking at the same time, trapped by numbers, graphs, and rejection of faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Luther is especially relevant because he trusted only in the Scriptures and used the Word to criticize the Church of Rome, the opposite to the Scriptures.
The effective Word taught Luther to reject the Medieval errors that became toxic to all of Europe. The printing press spread across Europe in various languages.
Relevant
Many Lutheran clergy long to become Roman Catholic priests, and most denominations are enchanted by numbers rather than relying on the Word of God. Luther warned people about the Antichrist and little Antichrists who support their Father Below.
KJV 2 Thessalonians 2
2.1 Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,
2 That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.
3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away (apostasy) first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
5 Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?
6 And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.
7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:
9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
13 But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:
14 Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
15 Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.
16 Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace,
17 Comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work.
Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
I am using this photo in the video to offer the Big Picture in nutrition.
YouTube
This version will have two parts, the first one offering a simple recipe, thanks to my vegetable and spice consultant. The second part has a lot of material about the advantages of the ingredients, good sources to follow, and research - thoughtful food or food for thought. My regular trips to Walmart convince me that 95% of the food offered is bad and will shorten one's life. The pharmacy and over-the-counter sections are 99% ineffective and often dangerous. I tell the pharm-techs, "My medicine is from produce and the frozen vegetables. Your section is only good for symptoms, not cures." Sometimes they agree.
I talk to cashiers often. One of them said, "How are you eating all this?" I said, in reference to my stash of frozen greens, fresh bananas and apples and blueberries, chickpeas, tomato paste, chopped frozen greens and vegetables - "I changed my habits which made me diabetic and I lost 42 pounds from eating these nutritious , healing foods."
add vegetables and spices, which can be medicinal:
turmeric (wild ginger, reduces pain)
black pepper (enhances turmeric)
Italian seasoning
allspice
cardamom
cumin
mustard (activates blanched kale and other cruciferous vegetables)
curry powder
chopped green/red peppers/onions
tomato paste
seeds have unusual benefits
Bad Food Categories
Milk and cheese products are fat-centric and lead to brittle bones.
Eggs are fat and provide choline, both bad.
Juices are primarily colorful sweeteners with no fiber.
Bread bellies are self-evident, not very nutritious.
Processed foods? - easy expensive eating from the high cost of salt, fats, sugars.
Habits are skewed on the side of milk, eggs, fats, salt and meat overloads.
Nutrition Based on God's Creation, Compared to Processed Foods
Greens
Beans
Vegetables
Fruit
Seeds
The Standard American Diet (SAD) is based on fast foods (sugars, salt, fat, white bread), desserts, and snacks. Delivered fast foods and frozen foods are more of the same. The grocery stores glorify SAD and add enormous displays of candy, chocolate, chips, and fruit juices. In short, processed foods are easy and addicting to eat, but short on nutrition and good health.
Chopped frozen greens - kale, spinach, turnip greens, collards - are very high in nutrition, loaded with nutrition, filling, low in calories, and easy to blend in the stew.
They offer a delicious and ever-changing combination of herbs, spices, and mixtures of peas, beans, cauliflower, broccoli, onions, peppers, and mushrooms (a delicious fungus).
Fruits Replace Candy, Ice Creams, and Lame Excuses
Apples, oranges, bananas, watermelon, grapes are often bought as a side dish but should be considered a complete and healthy substitute for the Diabetes Derby (where nobody wins).
Two Nutrition Experts -
Dr. Joel Fuhrman and Dr. Michael Greger
When I got my blood panel after Christina died, I was shocked into eating differently. Fuhrman's Eat To Livecheckmated my live to eat. I found the book in my own library and began reading it over and over.
Internet searches and videos got me interested in the work and studies of Dr. Michael Greger. One special advantage of Greger is his free connection to his essays and videos.
17. Such is the usual course of idolatry. Refusing to be considered a sin, it presumes to merit grace and boasts of the liberty of the people of God. It continues unrepentant and self-assured, even in the practice of open vice, imagining every offense to be forgiven before God for the sake of its holy worship. Thus have the priestly rabble of popery been doing hitherto; and they still adorn — yes, strengthen and defend — their shameful adultery, unchastity and all vices, with the name of the Church, the holy worship, the mass, and so on.
ISRAEL’S TRIAL OF GOD.
18. In the fourth admonition, the apostle says, “Neither let us make trial of the Lord, as some of them made trial, and perished by the serpents.” This, too, is a heinous sin, as is proven by the terrible punishment. In Numbers 21 we read that after the people had journeyed for forty years in the wilderness and God had brought them through all their difficulties and given them victory over their enemies, as they drew near to the promised land, they became dissatisfied and impatient. They were setting out to go around the land of the Edomites, who refused them a passage through their country, when they began to murmur against God and Moses for leading them out of Egypt. Thereupon God sent among them fiery serpents and they were bitten, a multitude of the people perishing.
Complaining against God is here called tempting him. Men set themselves against the Word of God and blaspheme as if God and his Word were utterly insignificant, because his disposing is not as they desire. Properly speaking, it is tempting God when we not only disbelieve him but oppose him, refusing to accept what he says as true and desiring that our own wisdom rule. That is boasting ourselves against him. Paul says in Corinthians 10:22: “Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?”
19. Such was the conduct of the Jews. Notwithstanding God’s promise to be their God, to remain with them and to preserve them in trouble, if only they would believe in him and trust him; and notwithstanding he proved his care by daily providences expressed as special blessings and strange wonders, yet all these things availed not to save them from murmuring.
When the ordering of events accorded not exactly with their wisdom or desire, or when, perhaps, disaster or failure threatened, immediately they began to make outcry against Moses; in other words, against his God-given office and message. “Why have you led us out of Egypt?” they would complain, meaning: “If you bore, as you say you do, the word and command of God and if he truly designed to work such marvels with us, he would not permit us to suffer want like this.” In fact, they could not believe God’s dealings with them were in accord with his promise and design.
They insisted that he should, through Moses, perform what they dictated; otherwise he should not be their God.
At the outset, when they entered the wilderness, after having come out of Egypt and having experienced God’s wonderful preservation of them in the Red Sea and his deliverance from their enemy, and having received from him bread and flesh, they immediately began to murmur against Moses and Aaron and to chide them for leading into the wilderness where no water was. “Is Jehovah among us, or not?” they burst forth. Exodus 17:7.
This was, indeed, as our text says, tempting God; for abundantly as his word and his wonders had been revealed to them, they refused to believe unless he should fulfill their desires.
20. And they persisted in so opposing and tempting God as long as they were in the wilderness, unto the fortieth year; to which God testifies when he says to Moses: “Because all those men that have seen my glory, and my signs, which I wrought in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have tempted me these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice,” etc., Numbers 14:22. It was in the second year after the departure from Egypt that the Jews murmured about the water, and now in the fortieth year, when they should have been humbled after so long experience, and when they whose lives covered that period ought to have been conscious of the wonderful deliverances they had experienced in not being destroyed with others of their number, but being brought safely to the promised land — now they begin anew to complain with great impatience and bitterness: “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” Or, in other words: “You often remind us you represent God’s command, and you have promised us great things. This is a fine way you take to lead us into the land when here we have yet farther to journey and are all going to die in the wilderness !”
And taketh he himself unto Fuller Seminary and saith, "We ran out of Germans. We must fashion for ourselves a golden truck of frozen foods, so we may sit down to eat and rise up to play." And it was so.
12. Proceeding, Paul recounts the vices which occasioned God’s punishment and overthrow of the people in the wilderness. First, he says, they lusted after evil things. In the second year from the departure, when they actually had come into Canaan, they forgot God’s kindness and wonderful works in their behalf and, becoming dissatisfied, longed to be back in Egypt to sit by the flesh-pots. They murmured against God and Moses until God was forced summarily to stop them with fire from heaven.
Many of the people were consumed and a multitude more were smitten with a great plague while yet they ate of the flesh they craved; therefore the place of the camp was named the “Graves of Lust.” Numbers 11. Such was the reward of their concupiscence, which Paul here aptly explains as “lusting after evil things.”
13. Truly it is but lusting after the wrath and punishment of God when, in forgetfulness of and ingratitude for his grace and goodness we seek something new. The world is coming to be filled with the spirit of concupiscence, for the multitude is weary of the Gospel. Particularly are they dissatisfied with it because it profits not the flesh; contributes not to power, wealth and luxury. Men desire again the old and formal things of popery, notwithstanding they suffered therein extreme oppression and were burdened not less than were the people of Israel in Egypt. But they will eventually have to pay a grievous penalty for their concupiscence.
14. In the third place, the apostle mentions the great sin — idolatry. “Neither be ye idolaters,” he counsels, “as were some of them.” Not simply the lower class of people were guilty in this respect, but the leaders and examples. As they led, the multitude followed. Even Aaron, the brother of Moses, himself high-priest, swayed by the influential ones, yielded and set up the golden calf (Exodus 32:4) while Moses tarried in the mount. We are astounded that those eminently worthy individuals, having heard God’s Word and seen his wonders liberally displayed, should so soon fall unrestrainedly into the false worship of idolatry, as if they were heathen and possessed not the Word. Much less need we wonder that the blind world always is entangled with idol-worship.
15. Where the Word of God is lacking or disregarded, human wisdom makes for itself a worship. It will find its pleasure in the thing of its own construction and regard it something to be prized, though it may be imperatively forbidden in God’s Word, perhaps even an abomination before him. Human reason thinks it may handle divine matters according to its own judgment; that God must be pleased with what suits its pleasure.
Accordingly, to sanction idolatry, it appropriates the name of the Word of God. The Word must be forced into harmony with the false worship to give the latter an admirable appearance, notwithstanding the worship is essentially the reverse of what it is made to appear. Similarly popery set off its abominations of the mass, of monkery and the worship of saints; and the world in turn seeks to set off that idolatry to make it stand before God’s Word.
Such is the conduct of the eminent Aaron when he makes for the people the golden calf (Exodus 32:5-6), an image or sign of their offerings and worship. He builds an altar to it and causes to be proclaimed a feast to the Lord who has led them out of the land of Egypt. They must imitate the worship of the true God, a worship of sincere devotion and honest intention, with their offering, the calf, in the attempt to introduce a refined and ennobling worship.
16. Thereupon follows what is recorded in Exodus 32:6, to which Paul here refers: “And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.” That is, they rejoiced and were well pleased with themselves, content to have performed such worship, and deemed they had done well. Next they proceed to their own pleasure, as if having provided against God’s anger. Thenceforth they would live according to their inclinations, wholly unrestrained and unreproved by the Word of God; for, as they said, Aaron made the people free.
