Friday, June 17, 2016

The Finishing Editor Is Done with Thy Strong Word:
The Efficacy of the Word in the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions



Is it safe to stick my head outside the trench?

I am currently anathematized by ELCA, WELS, the Little Sect on the Prairie, the CLC (sic), Christian News, the LCMS, Steadfast Lutherans (sic), SpenerQuest, and the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of Malone, Texas and Adjoining Counties.

Ever since 2000, Thy Strong Word has been steadfastly ignored and kept off the Lutheran sect radar screens, but the book has been read and used by many laity. Ironically, Jim Heiser admitted to rejecting UOJ after reading Thy Strong Word, a book he sold from his website.

Logia refused to advertise the book, but that did not matter. Once some laymen asked for a case of them. Later the book was edited for the English only edition. This edition is for Amazon and Kindle. I will keep the PDF on the blog so people can easily search it with control-F.

Kindle is great for low cost, searching, and quoting with the citation. That may not be the best way to read, but it is the fastest way to quote. I have both versions of my favorite books, such as Walliser's Attracting Beneficial Bugs, Luther on Galatians, and Lowenfel's Teaming with Microbes.

The Amazon version should be very inexpensive in the author's version, so people can order multiple copies through me for very little. Details will emerge once I leave my secure, undisclosed location.

Mishmash 19: They’re not opponents, you know | While it's yet day

"We have the biggest, grandest church building in Milwaukee,
and we are WELS!

Thank you President Mark Schroeder!"




Mishmash 19: They’re not opponents, you know | While it's yet day:



Overheard on Facebook:
Leonard Sweet: Baptism is one’s ordination into ministry. If you won’t ordain women, why do you baptize them?
Commenter 1: I would check with St. Paul about this.
Commenter 2: How about checking with Jesus?
Commenter 1: They were not opponents, you know.
T
hose of us who care about the good news God revealed to us in human language in his Word get pulled into battles. It’s necessary. If we don’t defend the truth, aren’t we acquiescing to those who have real plans to remake the visible church and devour as many Christians as they can?
The crazy things going on in Christendom are all part of an historic change. They are a unified movement, no matter how different the issues and false teachers seem to be.
Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; (1 Timothy 4:1)
Timothy calls this departure from the faith. The pseudo-Christian teachings are doctrines of devils. The people who try to convert others to these beliefs are hypocritical liars. Let’s use the Biblical term. This isapostasy.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away [their] ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)


It doesn’t matter who calls herself a Christian. If she refuses sound doctrine, hears God through private dreams and visions, and calls the Bible a dead book, she’s to be considered an apostate rather than a sister in the Lord.


'via Blog this'

Edmunds Roses - Free Replacements Came.
Marvels Beneath the Cardboard Mulch


Europeana is spectacular.


I told my neighbor, Mrs. Gardener, who was gardening, that I just planted more roses. She looked shocked, "Isn't it too late?" The rose buying season is over early, but people can plant roses anytime. Late is a best time to buy bargain roses, especially when trying out unknown names. Getting them via Gurney's - through Weeks Roses - has given me a chance to grow mystery roses and find new, great roses to enjoy:

  • Purple Splash
  • Bride's Dream
  • Falling in Love
  • Europeana (known, but never grown before)
  • Hot Cocoa
  • Easy Does It.

Edmunds Roses were my favorites long ago, because the company carried many varieties rather than just the newest and most expensive ones, like Jackson and Perkins. I phoned a request to replace four roses that did not come out of dormancy. Edmunds sent seven free replacements, and one non-growing rose decided to begin during the wait.

I replaced three roses in the main rose garden, watered, and pruned. I needed more space where I could plant four more without fighting roots and dry soil, so I scouted the Wild Garden for some sun. We had 100 degree real feel weather, so that drained my ambition to dig a lot. That may be the key to the rose buying season, heat and humidity convincing gardeners to wait another year.

Falling in Love is now the most planted
at the Jackson Rose Farm.


The Backyard and Wild Garden
I already spread the Rugosa old-fashioned roses across the middle section, where they would catch more light, but that left the front row with the most sunlight. I had four roses left - three Falling in Love and one Peace. Last year I had roses in great sunlight in the back - the extra ones - but the other growth crowded them and hid their beauty.

The Wild Garden was covered with cardboard last fall and then with 60+ bags of autumn leaves.

Farthest back - the Western fence, Triple Crown Blackberries, and a variety of opportunistic vines and bushes. Pokeweed grows in abundance because of the birds roosting in the trees.

Two Bonnie Butterfly Bushes are a little closer. I planted those as a screen, because they can grow 12 feet tall. They are not that tall yet, but they are blooming with purple flowers.

Next closer is the dappled Willow row, designed to be the ultimate solution for improving the view. Almost Eden looked at the row and the back alley view behind it, saying, "I can see why you wanted to block the view."

Then the Rugosa row and a Chaste Tree.

Finally, along the rustic fence, in the center where the sunlight is best, the four hybrid tea roses.

Outside our bedroom window, looking West, two Butterfly Bushes make the best screen of all, one already nine feet tall and blooming White Profusion. Birds eat from four feeders, splash below in the children's pool, and use the large bush to rest.

Bride's Dream


Digging in the Wild Garden
Last year the Wild Garden area was lawn. I had decided to expand the initial Wild Garden area, so we moved the rustic fence halfway toward the house. Later I learned that replacing grass with gardens is now a big deal.

What is it like, under cardboard and leaves, after nine months? The lawn was completely composted, with no mass of grass roots or weeds. Red wiggler earthworms, from Uncle Jims Worm Farm, were moving just under the cardboard.

The clay soil was moist and easy to dig, until I got near a tree. Digging four holes for hybrid tea roses was easy and fast. The Rugosa roses will get more attention with the hybrid teas in the front row.

All roses form seed pods (hips)
but Rugosa rose hips are large and appealing,
both to birds and people.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Prophetic - Patterson's Face on Ski's The Core - In 2009.
Kudu Don Upgraded from VP to DP,
And Ski Moved Next Door after Being Fired Again

The Church and Change Candidate -
like Jim Huebner and Mark Schroeder.



Facebook friends.




Free vicars from synod funds,
so he can go to Africa and shoot kudu deer.
His email address was kududon when he
wrote to call me a fool and a liar. 

From the Genius Admired Most by WELS - Leonard Sweet


Baptism is one's ordination into ministry. If you won't ordain women, why do you baptize them?


Gregory L. Jackson I would check with St. Paul about this.
LikeReply21 hr
Linda Elam Young How about checking with Jesus?
LikeReply41 hr
Gregory L. Jackson They were not opponents, you know.
LikeReply53 mins




The Garden at Night

No photo does justice to a rose - this is Falling in Love.
The white in the petals creates an unearthly glow.

Sometimes I feel like the character in the film Honey I Shrunk the Kids, where Rick Moranis was suspended from a crane as he looked for his children, made tiny by his newest invention. I go out after dark or before dawn to see how the plants are doing.

Last year I wanted to know what was eating the roses, so I saw them at work on the blooms at night, brassy insects that dared to glare at me in the beam of the flashlight. I also saw where the slugs were abundant and how they died at my beer parties.

The roses were fixed by my refusal to use any pesticides and the gracious intervention of beneficial bugs. The next round of blooms were almost completely protected by the bugs and spiders that live off pests and need those pest to feed their young.

In a well-managed (by God) garden, the pests attract pest-eaters:

  1. Ladybugs
  2. Toads
  3. Spiders
  4. Beetles
  5. Birds
  6. Moles - they eat grubs
  7. Flower Flies 
  8. Tachinid Flies
  9. Ichneumon Wasps
  10. Wasps, Hornets.
If I interfere with pesticides, the beneficial creatures lose their food supply and sicken from the poison, a double whammy that makes the helpful gardening center say, "You need more pesticides."

As I mentioned several times before, many tricks of rose-planting are counter-productive in the same way:
  • Soak the roses in a solution of man-made fertilizer. That blocks the natural creation of the fungal networks that feed the roots.
  • Put fertilizer in the hole where the roses will go. That is more of the same.
  • Use systemic pesticide on the roses. That will kill any insect or spider on the rose and add toxins to the soil. More grief.
  • Spray fungicide on Black Spot. That is a money-maker for the hardware store but it will never end the minor problem of Black Spot.
Large, plum, velvety looking, deep red and keeping its color -
Veterans Honor is the ultimate new red rose.

I asked, via a reader, what a Master Gardener thought about Falling in Love roses. She responded, "Roses are too much trouble. I do not grow them." I thought - Aha, another victim of rose experts from the past - making roses difficult and expensive to grow. 

The Creation recipe is simple:
  1. Dig a hole in the lawn or garden - allow plenty of room for each rose.
  2. Plant the rose after soaking it.
  3. Fill the hole in and water generously.
  4. Mulch and earthworm the rose.
  5. Prune regularly - which means "cut roses from the plant to increase production and growth."
  6. Foster the growth of beneficial bugs and spiders with mulch a  diverse planting.
  7. Store water to evaporate out the chlorine and use rainwater whenever possible.
Large rose gardens and Queen Elizabeth herself use all natural methods for pest control and fertilizer. The Queen's private gardens even go to the trouble of fostering fungi growth, as I do, with rotten wood left in place. I even drag pieces home or grab them to haul back in the trunk.

We pounced on the logs from across the street - our helper and I - and built a rustic fence in the main rose garden. Almost Eden said, "Where did you get that fence?" I said, "From across the street." Ideas generate easy, free solutions and the results are fun to enjoy. We even have two stumps in the rose garden as seats and perches for the birds. I think the birds have claimed the territory all too abundantly and no one will sit on their whitened platforms. 

Pink Peace is one of my favorites, because
the plant suddenly bursts full of intense, pink, large blooms.
Gardening writers are quite opinionated, and I enjoy their remarks. One book described Tropicana as "a great rose if you like them dinner plate sized, Day-Glo in color, and easily recognized from 100 yards away." And that rose remains one of my favorites. I was not offended and did not demand a retraction and apology.

We take roses everywhere, including the Farmers' Market, where a friend works. His wife is wild about roses. Without except, roses drive people into a state of ecstasy. They often look like this, "Are you sure you want to fill my pockets with gold coins?" They are perplexed at the abundance. I cut the best blooms of the crop, so any bouquet from our Creation Garden makes the florist shop roses look like dandelions in comparison. 

Veterans Honor blooms had to be removed from an older bunch and were in the backyard for days looks like props from a Hollywood movie, glowing red and plump against the grass.

The roses are not in full production yet. The new ones are just starting to bloom for the first time. I scout the two rose gardens for blooms so someone can enjoy them at work or in their homes. We never get the least bit weary of the rose fragrance greeting us as we leave on errands or return home. 

Bride's Dream is so pale that it looks white from a distance.


Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Breaking News - WELS Takes in All-Gay Congregation - And ELCA Pastor.
The Same Parish They Kicked Out.
Martin Luther College Will Be So Pleased.
SE Wisconsin WELS District

This is a win/win for Gay Pride Month.
Every day WELS is another step closer to ELCA,
under the leadership of SP Mark Schroeder.


The vindictive District President kicked Pastor Kevin Hastings out of WELS, but the congregation did not go along with the defenestration.

Hastings engaged in some silly vandalism, apologized, and paid for the damages.

So the DP kicked the congregation out of WELS.

The rest of the story is here - about Jeske clergy pals and two gay men taking over the property, grabbing the endowment, and locking out Pastor Hastings.

Here are more details from Tim Niedfeldt, a sorely missed layman who died when a truck driver hit him from behind. 


March, 2013 - The Jeske gang helped seize the church
and endowment and shut down services planned for Easter Sunday.

The late Tim Niedfelt wrote about the theft.

Basic Facts Here - About the Theft of St. John's in Milwaukee via the Jeske Mob

WELS Discussions


When I was quietly left out of the ministry after two years, I had just been through two of the toughest years of my life. I was young, and I figured I had made a lot of mistakes. I was asked to sit out a year, and, for my own health, I did. That I was never spoken to again is another story. After two years or service, I had hardly proven myself.
But there are many, many others out there with proven track records and 25 or 30 years of service, who have also been summarily dismissed from the WELS consciousness. These people labored long and faithfully, often with little encouragement and less compensation, and received not the rewards to which the laborer is entitled. What they did receive was nothing, absolutely nothing, no explanations, not compensations, no thanks for service rendered, only a cold shoulder.
For 27 years now, I have watched while others much more approved for ministry and arguably much more talented and faithful than I have receive ghastly treatment with no so much as a raised eyebrow. And yet, we now wonder why we can't seem to find enough qualified candidates to be pastors in the WELS.
In 1996, St. John's Congregation, Vliet Street, Milwaukee, one of the very earliest and most historically significant churches of the WELS, voted to leave the WELS. Kevin Hastings, then ten years into his ministry, decided to stay with the church and soldier on, often taking half his meager salary and even more often putting his own hands to do the repair work necessary to keep the doors open for worship. Kevin, unfortunately, was sent to a doomed congregation of aging members who could not attract younger members. Because of unfortunately liberal politics that surrounded St. John's with housing projects that served to surround the church with transients of a decidedly Southern Baptist bent, all efforts to grow St. John's from the community were fruitless.
I'm not here to tell you that St. John's deserved the WELS to step in and save it in some way. I do think that the fact of its leaving the WELS received not even a mention speaks to how the WELS is ready to forsake all things old in search of the new. Perhaps this explains why the WELS loses people out the back door faster than they can get them in through the front door.
What I am decided needs to be addressed, however, is how Kevin Hastings, faithful servant of God, deserved to be curtly dismissed of his duties via letter, deprived of his personal effects, and how certain WELS pastors could have been complicit in this matter. I would especially like to know how these pastors were involved when they don't even reside, in some cases, within 400 miles of Milwaukee. And I finally would like to know why WELS pastors and other members have been applauding a former WELS pastor, turn ELCA pastor, taking over the church which is now lead by openly gay men.
There is certainly a time to say nothing to besmirch the character of certain people which would break the eighth commandment. But, in this case, the character of the person with no fault, Kevin, had been besmirched, while those openly living in sin have been applauded.
There is a growing undercurrent of mistrust and disgust with things happening in the WELS and being swept under the table. We had better start addressing these wrongs, making confessions where applicable, and making serious attempts at rectifying them, because the volcano of unspoken unrest is about to explode. The time to be silent on such things is no more.

  • Steven E. Anderson "And I finally would like to know why WELS pastors and other members have been applauding a former WELS pastor, turn ELCA pastor, taking over the church which is now lead by openly gay men."

    I don't quite understand the connection between WELS and ELCA. Who is supporting homosexual leadership in which synod and church?
    7 hrs · Like
  • Paul Birsching St. Johns dwindled to a very few members. At some point, the leadership came out. Shortly thereafter they issued a dismissal by letter to Pastor Hastings. After this, they invited a former WELS pastor who, for various reasons, became ELCA. Since he...See More
    7 hrs · Like
  • Paul Birsching And the new pastor has personally slandered both Pastor Hastings and former Pastor Brenner to me with absolute lies.


  • Paul Birsching I'm sure that there are a lot of financial factors that are different today, Paul A. And I'm also sure that we lack the faith of our forebears, mostly because the media plays upon our fears and we listen. But fear had nothing to do with this particular instance. Nor did economics. If Kevin hadn't bent over backwards to keep the church going, it would have failed a long time ago. No, this was a dastardly deed, one which defies explanation. And, again, I'm not saying it was a good situation in any sense, but the WAY in which this was done and the WAY everyone looked the other way are quite disturbing. And also the way that so many have been duped into thinking that all is now well. A lot of people spend a lot of time talking hypothetically. Here is a real live case, and none of the hypothetical champions for the truth ever became real ones. Where are the dogmaticians on this one?

The altar at Historic St. John, 8th and Vliet, Milwaukee.
***

GJ - I knew this was coming, about six months in advance, when Pastor Kevin Hastings told me this - His friend, one of the WELS pastor, told him to have an exit strategy. I advised him that WELS was going to steal the congregation. He should get an attorney pronto.

Hastings did not act until after the congregation was stolen and the two men had him locked out, with their hands on the endowment, one in the parsonage, his personal belongings stolen for the time being. Got a problem with this? Talk to our law firm.

The episode reminded me of the Menendez brothers, who shotgunned their parents to death and used the estate cash to pay for their criminal defense.

One WELS laymen wrote me lately that my blogging about this shameful episode  is the only record of anything happening.

The account above is another perspective, from someone I do not know and with whom I have had no contact.

Synod President Mark Schroeder did nothing and said nothing, as far as anyone can tell.

Mark Jeske has organized many Thrivent events, starring Mark Jeske, sharing the limelight with ELCA pastors. He is also on the board of Thrivent, so he has no qualms about financing abortion on demand through Planned Parenthood grants, no compunction about ELCA's pansexual views on ordination.

No one in the Synodical Conference should be shocked, because this is exactly how CFW Walther got his start in the papacy. Instead of meeting with Bishop Stephan about the man's adultery and syphilis, Walther organized a mob of his supporters only, came down to Perryville, threatened Stephan's life, robbed him of his gold, land, and books, and kidnapped him at gunpoint, forcing him over to Illinois. The Perryville-St. Louis mob profited greatly from these criminal acts, covered them up, and wrote themselves up as heroes.

---

The district has taken the congregation back into WELS. The current pastor is ELCA and the only two members are the gay men who took over the property and endowment.