Monday, August 27, 2018

Quotation on Apostasy - From Luther's Sermons

Take the Justification Quiz - you may qualify for a teaching position in any of these synods - LCMS-ELCA-WELS-ELS-CLC (sic).

Therefore we also should let this sermon of Christ be an admonition and warning to us. For we also, through the preaching of the gospel, hear this voice of John the Baptist, which directs unto this Savior, Christ, and says: This is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world. To Him you should cling in faith and confession, and thank God that He has given you this knowledge, and this sermon and direction of John the Baptist shall endure to eternity. But now it depends upon this too, whether we are people who receive the testimony. For if, like the greater part of the Jews, and as, alas! is always the case in the world, we let it pass by, we will share the same fate with them and others. Factions and sects will come afterwards, through which the pure doctrine and God's Word will be darkened among us, and go out altogether. Then will they begin to seek Christ, and will be unable to find Him, just as was formerly done in the darkness of the papacy. For no one can give any other doctrine unto salvation than this, as Peter says, Acts 4: There is no other name nor doctrine, whereby we can be saved. If we neglect this, it is all over with us, as it is now with the Jews and Turks. There will be no lack of teachers; we will have enough of these, as the Jews and Turks also have, who will preach much and want to show the way to heaven, and every one will show diligence in seeking, as the Jews now also seek their Messiah; but, alas! it is a seeking always in vain, and never any finding. For He made all depend only on this His messenger who pointed Him out with his voice and finger, that we might know where to find Him; else it would end in nothing, and our seeking would ever be in vain.

 Quotation courtesy of Alec Satin's Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry

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GJ - "There will be no lack of teachers." What do the false teachers do? They only want to improve, clarify, and help, so they set up their own conferences and academies to supplant sound doctrine. They are not against sound doctrine - oh no! - they can repeat all the formulas they covertly reject. They only want to gradually replace some of that stuffy and outmoded stuff with their brilliance.

In WELS, Mark Jeske, John Lawrenz, Steve Witte, and others copied what Kent Hunter and Waldo Werning did in the LCMS. There were so many clever thieves spoiling the Egyptians at Fuller and Willow Creek, scarcely any treasure remains.

To celebrate the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation, the LCMS brought out two Objective Justification farces - their Dogmatanic and their Babylonian Talmud Catechism. WELS went easy on their new Catechism, putting the odious terms OJ/SJ only in the index.

However, their Holey of Holeys, the WELS Essay File, has 60 hilariously ponderous treatments of Objective Justification - not one about the Chief Article.

Oh wait! Mistake, mistake! Two essays call Objective Justification the Chief Article - Mark Zarling's diamond debacle and Frosty Bivens plagiarized version of the same. But that does not count. Being dead wrong and felony stupid do not add credibilty to false claims, even if the authors have MDiv degrees from Mordor in Mequon.

 John Maxwell's bromides are served up by Lawrence Otto Olson, DMin, Fuller Seminary - the Waldo Werning Professor of Church Growth at Martin Luther College, WELS (irony noted). They have so much in common. No, John has a personality. But John too has purchased a Drive-Buy DMin from Fuller Seminary. Olson has helped to lead WELS into the abyss, so he deserves some plaques, medals, and hororary doctorates from people who market those coveted items.