Roy Rogers and Dale Evans

 

 A message from our sponsor, the KJV

The Triumph of the Weak and Despised, The Doom of the Vindictive Bullies.

The garden is quite the battleground, and so are the gardening spaces along the fences and behind the house. 

Weeds love rich soil and take over as soon as they can. I caught a squirrel burying his food under a rose bush. Someone asked, "Why would they do that?" I said, "Sunshine, water, and a prickly guard will allow his future nut tree to be firmly established  and possibly take over. If I pull the weed tree I will uproot the rose." 

However, the bully plant will show its colors and find itself snipped into exhaustion.

I am reading a classic book about the Roman Catholic persecution and slaughter of Huguenots, Vaudois, and other Protestants. From the beginning, Christianity has grown through those paradoxical methods. At the same time, the establishment of the visible church has meant the deadening and final apostasy of many prosperous church bodies.

The great and wise among Protestants in America and England sought to ditch the KJV and replace it with their Revision of the KJV, which lasted as long as the Hula Hoop.

The current KJV-Never crowd includes WELS-ELDONA-ELCA-LCMS-ELS. They may politely disagree with the Message, the various Livings, but they heap scorn on the masterpiece of all translations, the KJV. To prove their feigned nobility, they treat the KJV with silence, lest a sarcastic face-plant leave them looking like the fools they are.

William Tyndale was not only a brilliant translator, but he also associated with the Lutheran Reformation, printing many of his English Bibles not far from Luther's stronghold. He was murdered for his crime of translating, but soon after, the KJV of 1611 was established by another fluke of history (or was it?) 

That Bible became the Scriptures of the English speaking world - the British Empire and the American Republic.

Sceptics of the past and present - like Mencken and Harvard - acknowledge that nothing compares to the KJV. 

Gardens grow in beauty because the gardener watches for the weeds and gently nurtures the  new plants. In one place I look up at the mighty Joe Pye Weed and wait for the butterflies, hummingbirds, and bees to arrive. In the back I hope for the same plants, new and starving for rain, to survive the scorching sun and establish its roots.

American denominations have nurtured the weeds and rooted up sound doctrine wherever they can. Bishop-for-Life Jim Heiser was frightened of Waldo Werning's power (ha!) and did not publish a review of the great phony's work. Why? It was well known that WW would pursue his critics out of the LCMS and beyond. 

I challenged the lying Waldo on the phone and quoted him as a Fuller agent - from the notes I took in my DayTimer. He flew into a rage but he died a Facebook friend. 

Lots of "conservative" Lutherans have disowned and shunned me. They like to rage anonymously against me, and they respond in horror to what I publish in my own name (not afraid of their Father Below). They give me time and energy to work with those few, those happy few, those band of brothers who find a common cause in the Word of God.

Tyndale and Luther - Or Westcott and Hort?

 Apparently not - but wave some Thrivent money at them and they will nod back - "Yes, ma'm, right away. What were your pronouns?"

 "We never could have accomplished so much without that curious, shadowy stranger who encouraged, praised, and supported us."