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.
"A Northrop pastor is facing a felony charge of possessing child pornography.
According to the criminal complaint, Robert Cairl Trueblood, the pastor at St. James Lutheran Church, is charged with possessing pornographic material involving a minor on a work computer - a felony charge that carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and/or a $5,000 fine.
The complaint states that on March 7, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Internet Crimes Against Children Unit received a tip from the company Chatstep stating that a user identified as "PervyPastor" had accessed a chat room through the service and uploaded an image identified by company representatives as being consistent with child pornography."
Creation Gardening is an easy book to give away. The author's price (write to me) is only $5 plus shipping.
Mrs. Ichabod had a doctor's visit, and we began talking with him about various things at the end. He mentioned going to seminary and then talked about God's Creation through the Word. I said, "I teach that." He asked, "You do and in...?" I finished, "Yes, six days - through the Word."
He was a bit startled about the idea of a Creation Garden, which made him smile. The next visit will mean roses and a book or two. I enjoy telling people that the flawless roses were grown without sprays and chemical fertilizer, which hails back to "If you do not believe the Word, at least believe because of the signs (miracles)" in John.
Diabetic Shock
Our son sees the same diabetic specialist that Mrs. Ichabod visits. She just received her copy of Creation Gardening before she saw him. LI said, "She was still disturbed by your roses when I saw her." By the way, she really adores roses, which we give her, so this news was intriguing.
Gabe Brown, Regenerative Farmer
Someone directed me to a video, which I will place at the bottom of this post. The initial video led me to a series created by Gabe Brown, regenerative farmer from North Dakota.
Those who are interested in this might want to investigate the theories of the soil-food-web, another general term for these practice.
Agricultural videos bring out the inner farmer in me, since both my grandfathers owned farms until the Great Depression.
Four Disastrous Years Taught Brown
My brief description - Gabe Brown began on a huge farm which he was buying from his in-laws. However, they had four years in a row which were a total wipe-out of the crops, due to natural disasters like drought and hail. They had no cash. He planted each year but had nothing to harvest, so the soil noticeably improved because the soil absorbed the destroyed crops.
Farmer Brown learned that he needed to focus on the health of the soil to have good crops and preserve his greatest asset - the land.
Chemical and plowing practices (tillage on the tape) have the following bad effects:
Plowing creates a hardpan that the roots cannot break through. Bigger, deeper plows push the hardpan layer down but do not solve the problem.
Plowing also reduces the carbon in the soil, which diminishes what the soil can do.
Chemical fertilizers do not reduce these problems, but make them worse.
Rainwater, which is often sparse, runs off and causes soil erosion, when the soil surface is hard and non-porous.
Did an earthworm take this photo of Gabe Brown and his son Paul?
Brown's main emphasis is upon diverse cover crops, which keep most weeds down, soften the soil, and attract beneficial insects that devour the pests. Animal life of all types also eat weed seeds at a prodigious rate.
I had similar problems. I began gardening in shock - I could afford the chemicals. I had the almost-infinite resources of the Grace Dow library in Midland, so I read every gardening book (adult and juvenile sections) I could find. The juvenile books were often the best ones.
I softened clay by placing wheelbarrows of finished compost on top of it. The soil creatures did the plowing, mixing, and tunneling. Once the soil had digested the organic matter I used, the gardens were always productive. I did not want to spray what we ate, and I had no need for chemical enhancements.
I also created fast compost by putting sod clumps together in a hole I dug for a parsley garden. The soil became jelly-like from all the humus digested in it.
Scarlet Bee Balm is rampant, but this purple Monarda is clumping.
Brown learned from an expert that he needed more than one plant in his cover-crops - he needed a mix of six. This diversity is what I am practicing in the gardens, because I reasoned, "The plants with another agenda can grow next to and among the roses, providing a good rest and feeding station for the beneficial insects." -
Dandelions - a dandy and attractive herb.
Horse, Mountain, and Cat Mints - well-behaved and clumping.
Wild Strawberries, low-growing and planted by the birds.
Clover.
Buckwheat and other plants can be bee-friendly and squeeze out weeds, without becoming a bother.
I pull out future nut and maple trees, but the list above are never-pulls. Big obnoxious weeds can be dug out in some cases and given cardboard-mulch shade in others.
Brown's overall emphasis in his videos -
The soil must be built up, not abused until dead.
Repeated plowing is bad for every aspect of the soil. Organic growing is no good if someone plows that soil all the time. He does not plow at all now.
God mulches (did Brown steal that from me, or did we both steal it from Creation?) He calls cover crops/mulches "the armor of the soil."
Soil is an ocean of life, below ground with too many creatures to name, above ground, with hundreds of beneficial creatures that live from it and benefit us.
Diversity of plant and animal life is natural, based on Creation, and this mix leverages all the outcomes of natural far beyond what we can imagine until we see it. Almost Eden and I see hawks resting and searching on our property - because we have so many creatures living from it.
All the children and Do-It-Yourself fanatics are learning that YouTube covers every topic. I have started to create videos for the classroom. Now I am going to create some for gardening. That will have to wait a bit until I get some other items finished.
“Abraham Calov (1612–86): The Prussian on the Cathedra Lutheri.” In Lives and Writings of the Great Fathers of the Lutheran Church, edited by Timothy Schmeling. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2016.
“Johann Andreas Quenstedt (1617–88): The Consensus Builder.” In Lives and Writings of the Great Fathers of the Lutheran Church, edited by Timothy Schmeling. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2016.
Timothy Schmeling will be installed at Bethany Lutheran College and has already published on Calov and Quenstedt. Bethany has a tradition of the least qualified teaching at the seminary, the better qualified at the college.
If Timothy agrees with Calov and Quenstedt, then he disagrees with Pope John the Malefactor and David Jay Iago Webber. One cannot have Justification without Faith and Justification by Faith in the same stall. That would be unionism. The great and wise in the WELS only teach Justification without Faith, as do the ever-increasing tribe of Preus. As soon as a Preus is in seminary, he starts railing against Luther's doctrine, the Chief Article.
Let's do a little graphical research and see about where the old boys stand.
Calov is quoted and cited by Dr. Robert Preus, who graduated from Bethany Lutheran Seminary before most of the guys (like Moldstand) bothered to do so. Unfortunately, some of the ELS guys (like Gaylin Schmeling) attended Northwestern College (RIP), where criminal hazing was administered with a hanger.
Quenstedt lays out the real issues, so I find it impossible to believe that young Schmeling has missed this on Ichabod. Everyone in the ELS reads and dreads this blog - so I have heard.
WHERE DOES THIS EASTER ABSOLUTION SILLINESS COME FROM?
Oh - now I get it. Halle University promoted the Easter absolution of the entire world. And Bishop Martin Stephan, STD, caught it from Halle. And CFW Walther caught it from Stephan, which made the mob, the threats, the robbery, and kidnapping of the bishop easier to execute. And the Synodical Conference caught UOJ rom Walther and F. Pieper. And Muhlenberg learned his Pietism at Halle. And so did Hoenecke. And that, history fans, is why WELS-ELS-LCMS leaders work so well with ELCA leaders. They all came from Halle, more or less, and they all study at Fuller, if you waterboard them a few hours.
WELS has followed the example of Schuller and Cho, with similar results. Cho's books were sold at one WELS training event - out of a carton of them brought by one of the leaders!
"In 2014, Cho was convicted of embezzling $12 million in church funds. He was given a suspended sentence, but Cho’s son went to jail. Other Protestant leaders have been caught up in sensational scandals too, and as a result, people’s attitudes toward Christian evangelicals have soured.
“The general public in Korean society, they do not trust Christians anymore,” says Jung-Jun Kim, a senior pastor at a small evangelical church in Seoul. "
David Yonggi Cho, 78, founded Yoido FullGospel Church, an Assemblies of God-affiliated denomination that has grown to more than 1 million members. Last year, CT noted how the pastor emeritus faced indictment for an alleged stock scheme with his son.
Last Thursday, the Seoul pastor was convicted of embezzlement as part of a scheme in which he arranged for the church to buy stock from his son Cho Hee-jun at more than three times the market price.
***
Harrison and his UOJ buddy managed to make cheeseheads look bad.
GJ - A little history follows. Robert Schuller correctly calls himself the founder of the Church Growth - really Shrinkage - Movement. He was a short distance from Fuller Seminary, which hired McGavran shortly after they repudiated their mild support of inerrancy.
McGavran and C. Peter Wagner provided the academic salesmanship and Schuller the example of Protestant apostasy. Missouri and WELS - decades later - remain transfixed by the idiotic methods of Schuller, Cho, and Fuller Seminary:
A congregation must have cell groups.
The pastor should establish a personality cult and rule as a dictator.
A denominational name is a great hindrance to a congregation.
Whoopee worship is going to please more people than real hymns and Biblical liturgy.
Replace the Gospel with the idol of success, derived largely through Asian polytheism. Norman Vincent Peal stole this from an occult book and made millions with plagiarism. Schuller stole the same idea and gave his mentor, Peale, credit for it. Cho was even more direct and gave credit to powers of the universe - The Fourth Dimension - waiting to give us everything we demand.
Plagiarism is good. They throw bricks at the first person, money at the second.
Mirthless Mark Schroeder has given free-rein to Jeske's Church and Changers, sour eructations from Fuller and Willowcreek.
Needless to say, all the denominations - even the Church of Rome - have been gaga over Fuller, Willowcreek, and Trinity Divinity School for years. Even the franchise units, like Kent Hunter's business, have made money off this stupidity, paganism, and silliness.
No one should wonder that the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation is being hailed with a repudiation of Luther's doctrine and the Book of Concord. As Luther said, "If someone handles pitch, his hands soon become black." The Lutheran leaders want to promote the Schuller-Cho-Fuller model at every level of their educational units and ministry, then say, "Our hands are clean. That is why we are kicking you out, and kissing them in."
When people read this blog, they realize that my descriptions of WELS, LCMS, ELS, and the micro-minis are not only correct, but far too mild and irenic at the local level. The cover-ups are massive and on-going, from the Love Letter pastor to the child porn dealer at Schroeder's headquarters. The corruptions of doctrine and worship are continuous and gathering momentum.
The leaders lead posh and luxurious lives while draining the resources of their synods, just as the parisitoid insects lay their eggs in the living bodies of other insects. Like the babies of the parisitoids, the children of Lutheran leaders do very well indeed.
In the future, the Lutheran synods will be a fraction of their size today - thanks to Church Growth doctrine and worship - but the trust fund offspring of denominational leaders will be fine.
