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| Zion on the Mississippi - not a hagiography. LutherQueasy - "Walther answers all questions." |
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| The Weaver Messiah set the stage for Pope Walther, an interesting parallel with the short-lived LCS, which morphed into ELDONA. |
Let us meditate on the meaning of the first graphic, created many years ago. The words of Walter Forster ring true, thanks to additional information from the Stephan family and the behavior of the myth-protectors.
Just as Stephan insisted on controlling everything and every body, Walther happened to become the seminary president, dogmatics professor, the synod president, the magazine and book publisher.
If Walther could not get his way, he changed the rules, which is how he maneuvered F. Pieper into replacing him as dogmatics professor. Ludwig Fuerbringer wrote frankly about his uncle Ferdy doing this.
Walther, like his emulator Heiser, trashed anyone who might be a threat to his papacy. CFW was a multiple felon - threatening violence, stealing, and kidnapping at least three people. The professor, F. A. Schmidt, who questioned Walther's Objective Justification was condemned for his motives - does that sound like the Eighth Commandment?
Walther blamed Mrs. Stephan for her husband's promiscuity, apparently anxious to make the bishop a sympathetic figure when that suited His Holiness. A pastor faithful to his call might have said that the bishop -
- leaving his wife and sick children behind,
- traveling to America with his mistress on the same ship, and
- moving his mistress into the same lodging in St. Louis -
created the disharmony, especially when Stephan's wife begged for reconciliation. But no, the mistress reported that Bishop Stephan not only controlled the souls of the members, but also their bodies.
Walther did not want any of the early history of the sect published, and he largely got his way. When Forster published a massive and detailed history of the Stephanite migration, it was condemned as the bitter work of a disgruntled LCMS pastor. Eighth Commandment?
When a member of the Stephan family wrote a memoir of the family, exposing many of the lies in the LCMS mythology, he was condemned for not being a professional historian and not publishing the first name of Walther's initial Pietism guru!
As an example of minor matters, the author writes regarding the candidate who misled Walther into Pietism, “Kuhn is the only name given. No first name is given in any of the literature” (p. 68). But Stephan does not know the literature. In an article by August Suelflow from 1987, we find the name, “Johann Gottlieb Kuehn,” [note also the umlaut that Stephan missed]3 and in Suelflow’s biography of Walther, even more precisely, “H. Johann Gottlieb Kuehn.” [GJ - Schocking!]
