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| Walther learned Objective Faithless Justification from his syphilitic bishop, Martin Stephan, and enforced OJ his entire life. |
The big issue today is numbers, not faith. Readers may recall the loss of 500,000 Southern Babtist members in the last year alone, almost triple that in the last few years.
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| Jeske to college students, "We ran out of Germans. Seriously!" |
The denominations have definitely chosen numbers over faith, losing both at the same time. The ironic twist of the century came from Fuller Seminary, which repudiated its weak version of Biblical inerrancy while plowing head with the pro-abortion, liberal activism of Donald McGavran. One WELS pastor had this as his argument for spoiling the Egyptians - "I know all the problems but we need their statistics for world missions."
That reminded me of the pastoral plea to drop Advent/Lenten mid-week services: "Our numbers are too low."
If people seek numbers, accepting any solution to increase those numbers, faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior will steadily diminish. The true Church can only serve one Master.
KJV Matthew 6:24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
I often speed-read the latest from denominations and synods, to see which master is being served. One clue is "The Gospel compels us to..." No one can question this vague Law demand, but it does suggest that there is only one thing to do, involving quotas, shifting budgets items, erasing standards of the past, trying out exciting new excitements. Soon the pastor will sigh and say, "My mission was to close this congregation."
It does not help that most of the Lutheran pastors today are a version of ELCA, having a vision that compels them to follow their leaders down the road to perdition.
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| Jeske was a pioneer in promoting women pastors teaching LCMS-WELS pastors the glory of ELCA. Fashion hint - try sleeves. No, really. |
On the positive side, the actual Gospel - not the WELS-ELCA-LCMS-ELS-CLC-ELDONUT version - works very well. God provides whenever the Gospel is believed and proclaimed, with no shame attached to the Trinity, the Two Natures of Christ, the miracles, walking on the water and raising the dead, atoning for the sins of the world, rising from the grave and ascending to Heaven.
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| Lawrence Otto Olson, DMin Fuller Seminary, could not make any progress with his one and only pastoral call, so WELS made him their Professor Church Growth. All his buddies have participated, one way or another. |
