Martin Luther College will make a fine prison, with a hilltop view of New Ulm, various upgrades, and refinements.
WELS bought Prairie, a failed Catholic school,
in an emergency session,
poured millions into it,
including a last-minute music building.
The prisoners at Martin Luther Correctional will appreciate
an $8 million chapel.
Lutheran Pietists got their rules on shunning from the Mennonites, who invented them and really tore up families with their notions.
Some of the Syn Conference Lutherans think they are more orthodox because they shun more actively. Here is an insight. Right now the ELCA leaders are shunning anyone who disagrees with their homosexual ordination ideas. On ALPB, ELCA pastors are saying the dissenters deserve being treated like dirt because "they do not agree with ELCA."
Does that remind you of your synod? Recall on the Intrepid (
sic) Lutherans site when Marcus Montey (Brenner by marriage) said, "I am surprised that people are confused about
the clear teachings of our synod." Notice what trumps the Bible and the Book of Concord? Whatever
Holy Mother Synod teaches is the
norma normans.
The Intrepids (
sic) immediately did a 180 and had Jay Webber do their dance around the grave errors of UOJ. That is like having an LPN perform heart surgery.
When David Valleskey gave his odious essay on the joys of Church Growth, at an Ohio Conference meeting, the Ohio Conference pastors began shunning me in the next few hours. I was quite familiar with Mennonite shunning, since I studied with them in seminary, preached at one of their churches, and counseled with their families about depression caused by their culture of conformity.
That shunning is what gives away WELS and the ELS as mind-control cults. The pastors and laity think there is no salvation outside their cult. They fear the shunning of relatives. This sickness is used to divide husband against wife, parents against children.
We are talking about UOJville, where the Ten Commandments do not exist. Clergy adultery? Never happened - unless it was a dissenter. Clergy murder - never proven. Proven murder - no, he said he was innocent. Millions of dollars disappear - silence. Millions spent to promote false doctrine - no reply. Asking questions - that is slander.
Nothing good will happen until people see the mind-control cult actions for what they are. The silence and secrecy promote the corruption. That is also why WELS/ELS pastors are almost hopeless in discussing doctrine. The intellectual tools are left in the drawer to rust and the only rules are pray, pay, and obey.
Doctrinal Discernment Distinction
Doctrinal discernment is commanded by the Word of God and those obsolete, boring confessions of faith we call the Book of Concord.
The Bereans are the example, in Acts, comparing the Scriptures with the teaching of the Apostles.
When a layman does this today, synod officials send comments to me,
ad hominem about the individual. What the leaders should appreciate is depreciated instead. That should tell people all they need to know about their leaders.
Paul said that doctrinal division must happen, to reveal the true doctrine.
KJV 1 Corinthians 11:18 For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it. 19 For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.
The Scriptures denounce doctrinal error in the strongest possible terms, but the synods denounce non-conformity. And they enforce it. Those feeble looking, gosh friendly, get along-go along DPs will bite through 12 penny nails and tear up trees in their wrath, when someone asks them important questions. See for yourself the next time you are kissing Pope John's ring or kneeling at His feet.
People are encouraged to vote "for the right person" and support "our guy" in his error. The apostates adore this approach, because they know there are no survivors from the last 35 years of doctrinal genocide. There are faithful pastors, but they have kept their heads down or have found themselves moved to Buffalo Chip Flats. The ambitious have neutered themselves for the sake of Holy Mother Synod (not the Kingdom) and can be managed.
Instead of fearing the synod, pastors and laity should be fearing the Word of God, which does last forever, unlike synods and schools. Melanchthon Synod anyone? Olive Branch Synod?
The Large Catechism, Preface
10] Besides, it is an exceedingly effectual help against the devil, the world, and the flesh and all evil thoughts to be occupied with the Word of God, and to speak of it, and meditate upon it, so that the First Psalm declares those blessed who meditate upon the Law of God day and night. Undoubtedly, you will not start a stronger incense or other fumigation against the devil than by being engaged upon God's commandments and words, and speaking, singing, or thinking of them. For this is indeed the true holy water and holy sign from which he flees, and by which he may be driven away.
12] And what need is there of many words? If I were to recount all the profit and fruit which God's Word produces, whence would I get enough paper and time? The devil is called the master of a thousand arts. But what shall we call God's Word, which drives away and brings to naught this master of a thousand arts with all his arts and power? It must indeed be the master of more than a hundred thousand arts. 13] And shall we frivolously despise such power, profit, strength, and fruit-we, especially, who claim to be pastors and preachers?
If so, we should not only have nothing given us to eat, but be driven out, being baited with dogs, and pelted with dung, because we not only need all this every day as we need our daily bread, but must also daily use it against the daily and unabated attacks and lurking of the devil, the master of a thousand arts.
***
GJ - How is Pietistic shunning different from what the Bible says? First of all, it is so hypocritical. WELS shunned pastors out of the ministry for questioning Church Growth while promoting an adulterous, divorced pastor who did not even know what Lutheran doctrine was. He was also supported by those same WELS leaders to serve in the ministry again, even though he was unqualified. Add to that the additional efforts to get him into the WELS ministerium and to make him a quasi-ELS pastor - thanks to John Shep, Roger Kovaciny, and Jay Webber.
The WELS/ELS formula is "Shun sound doctrine, embrace false doctrine." That is the mark of apostasy. When I pointed that out many years ago, Oscar Naumann's son walked out of the room. (He is on the praesidium of the shrinking Michigan District, WELS.)
The ELS Little Seminary on the Prairie marched in a religious procession with a Roman Catholic theologian, but treated
B. W. Teigen like dirt for teaching the Biblical doctrine of the Real Presence, consecration by the Word.
"Conservative" Lutheran shunning is based on political expediency. They do not mark and avoid false teachers. They do not find a pastor's adultery and having his own child aborted abhorrent. Look at how they work with ELCA while clucking their forked tongues!
Larry Olson's career has been based on his drive-by DMin from Fuller Seminary, and now they want to inflict him on India. Their previous seminary president studied at Fuller and gushed about it to everyone but me, but they dare talk about fellowship principles?
