One reader wondered, in an email, about learning more from the same book of the Bible each time. Luther, the son of a mine owner, compared the study of the Scriptures to mining gold in a place of infinite capacity. The longer one delves, the greater the vein of gold becomes, and yet it is never exhausted. The wealth of spiritual treasures in the Bible is infinite and invulnerable to attacks.
Opposition is one of the best ways to gain from the Scriptures and learn even more. We have to learn the weapons of the opposition, take them away, and defeat them with their own words. That only works with a grasp of the Word, placing that above all human documents. If we start with human claims, to make sure no one in the synod hierarchy is offended, we will become worse than they are. I am sure many of them wink at each other as they repeat the same errors that made them swear an old on their precious dogma.
We are now exhausting the Seminex-Church Growth generation of apostates. Most people think in terms of the LCMS and St. Louis as the Seminex hatchery, but Northwestern College (WELS, RIP) in Watertown has an equal claim in starting Seminex. This will sound familiar. The Seminexers claimed nothing was changing, so they should be left alone. The Church Growthers in WELS said there was no Church Growth in the sect, and if there was, it was being promoted in a Scriptural and Confessional way.
Seminexers marched off to their own seminary, led by ex-WELS professor Richard Jungkuntz and another Watertown WELS martyred professor. The rivals to the Concordia Seminaries soon collapsed and took their gay faculty to the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, doing their best to collapse that school as well. Seminex became a dirty word and nobody sought to untangle their Objective Justification dogma, so everyone jumped onto the Church Growth bandwagon. Seminex called it - The Gospel - everyone is already forgiven because God is so full of grace. Anything else is The Law, works, and condemnation. Those who question this grace are legalists of the worst kind. Seminexers even bragged that they were "Gospel Reductionists" - everyone is already forgiven.
Some realize that these grace-mongers and Gospel Reductionists were packed with anger and condemnation. Fearful that people might counter with the Word, they switched to sociology, which is unprovable but remarkably flexible. The Lutheran Church is failing? So is the Masonic Lodge!
Check out the many Church Growth gurus who mocked Scriptural worship and made singing with a pipe organ hilariously boring. Once they had most clergy allergic to Justification by Faith and traditional worship, they only needed to prod a few more to hand over the keys to the properties, pension funds, and foundation loot.
