Portable Efficacy - Blessings of the Holy Spirit

One of the prime benefits of the Holy Spirit is the use of it at any time or place. That by itself is calming and good for understanding matters during the work of the day. That could be resting, considering crucial parts of the Bible, or wondering about doctrine of the Bible.

Thinking is often efficient for learning because the normal distractions are left alone for the blessings of the Holy Spirit instead. Someone can read without paying much attention, but that is not efficient for the reader, the believer, or the one struggling. 

Someone can feel the emphasis when no books are open and it strikes the person - "I would like to spend time on that reading or that significant passage when I get a quiet time and a good source."

People will notice  - or maybe not - that their lives have gone by without depth in Biblical discovering. Clergy are often the worst, even with wall shelves of hundreds of books, all in perfect order and rank. 

The simplest and most profound - even though the wording is plain and clear - is the Gospel of John, 

• ignored by the modernists 
• but loved by the ancients 
• for the fourth Gospel 
• soaring above all the rest.

The Gospel of John should be read thoroughly, honoring the simplicity in the Holy Spirit.

Reformation Seminary Lecture - The Holy Spirit - 11 AM Central Standard

 Link to today's YouTube

Genesis 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Psalm 104:30 Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth.

Mat 3:16  And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:

Mat 4:1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

John 3:5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

John 14:26  But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

15:26  But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:

John 16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

Another Approach - Since the Lutheran Synods and Archdioceses Are Failing Miserably - "Why Not Try Religion?"

 

This is an old journalism story. 

A man wrote to Horace Greeley and said about his congregation - "We have tried everything: cookie sales, bake sales, slave days, gambling night, auctions, and we are still broke. Do you have any suggestions?"

Greeley - "Why not try religion?"

That remains the key to dealing with the sickening dread and foul odors coming from the disciples of Fuller Seminary and Rome. The Liberace clergy robes first came to ELCA, then LCMS, then the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of Malone and Adjoining Counties. Even WELS began replacing their Geneva gowns with albs, in case people noticed their purchase of pop Calvinist hymns. The Fuller-blest marketing gimmicks have all flopped.

The appeal to popularity (in Latin ad stupidos) has left them with nowhere to turn, except for the Greeley solution, which I have updated below.

1. Start with the best Lutheran hymnal, modestly called The Lutheran Hymnal.
2. Mark the best Lutheran hymns by referencing The Bethany Hymnal blog - 44,457 views - illustrated by Norma A. Boeckler. The congregation should know or learn the hymns of Martin Luther, Paul Gerhardt, Matthias Loy, Nicolai, Kingo, and many other greats. They do not have to be Lutheran, but they better be emphasizing the substance of the Reformation, not the be-bop of the latest pop music fad. 
3. Use the constantly changing - within a framework - traditional liturgy. What is different each week? - the hymns, introit, collect, gradual, sermon, and prayers.
4. Emphasize the Means of Grace, the invisible Gospel in preaching and teaching, the visible Gospel in the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.
5. Post, print, email, or blog the entire sermon, because the purpose of the Church is to teach faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Good Shepherd, born of the Virgin Mary, miracle worker and Teacher, Who raised the dead, atoned for our sins on the cross, rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven.
6. Visit the sick, shut-in, and dying. 
7. Use the King James Version, because all the other Bibles brutalize the Apostolic Text, which God has preserved. 

Learning and Teaching a Theme of the Bible

Start with John 16 - or -

Isaiah 55.

If someone can get the dogmatics statements past these two anchor points of the Bible, well done! But the mountain of garbage being foisted on Lutherans today cannot pass the test.

The Holy Spirit passages judge everything written or taught by man.

The neo-quasi-semi-demi Lutherans want to talk about Jesus, but what does Jesus say about sin and forgiveness? The foundation of sin is unbelief. Forgiveness comes through faith in Jesus.

What is the work of the apostles, the Church, the Holy Spirit? Their work is to preach against unbelief. Hold that stick of UOJ-margarine up to the light of the Scriptures, and the faux-spread melts away, looking more like paint than food.

Appeal to their felt needs (Kelm) - No. Gather friends for them (Valleskey) - No. Teach them they were born forgiven (LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC sic) - No.

If we are utterly convinced from the Word that the Spirit is always at work in the Word and never apart from the Word, we know to use the only powerful and effective Shield and Weapon.

The Spirit passages of the Bible are also in harmony with the passages about the Word. Our confidence grows in the Spirit-Word combination when we see its astonishing power. Pious, flabby milquetoast synod officials fly into a rage, and the blind-in-doctrine see. Uncountable blessings follow and so does the cross.

The clergy have been taught and seduced into thinking that blessings will follow their obedience to Holy Mother Sect. I have seen them dart their eyes around in fear when something forbidden was discussed - like apostasy, DP and SP crimes. What if someone hears me? They are afraid of DP Jellybelly but not God! DP Jellybelly will feed him, but God will walk away?

I want all the SPs to be re-elected until their work crumbles around them. No one seeking office will make anything different, but the power of the Spirit in the Word is so great that the Word alone can do what God wills, often in seconds, sometimes over decades and centuries.

Battling the Roman Catholic Lutherans Who Vilify and Betray the Reformation

This single quotation about the Spirit has 103,000 views
far more than any other.

This Sunday's Epistle lesson (historic, not Vatican A-B-C) concerns 1 Corinthians 12, just as the quotation above and the Small Catechism quotation on the template do.

As one reader commented years ago, the battle for Universal Objective Justification Without Faith is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

But first, let's consider how Roman Catholic UOJ is.

• The priestly class is infallible, as long as they agree with the Pope in Rome (or Milwaukee, or Mankato, or St. Louis). 
• These priests are "sons of the Church" as long as they remain in good standing with the Boss. They will be protected, transferred, and promoted - not in spite of their crimes, but because of their felonies. Tis a mutual admiration society - Satan's Handmaiden for Satan's spawn.
• They are the Keepers of the Secret, the Deposit of Faith, handed down by word of mouth, from bishop to bishop. If some dogma seems newly invented - do not be alarmed - it was known long ago but only recently revealed by the Bishop of Rome, Milwaukee, St. Louis, or Mankato.
• Us rubes, us hicks, us hillbillies will never understand the profundities they know, which they do not need to explain. They declare what is given to them, infallibly, and pass it on through their stooges, inerrantly.
• The priests talk about the Scriptures all day long and quote their favorite dynamic paraphrase of the Bible, so dynamic that most people say, "Whaaaaaa?" when they read it.

Here is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit in a few words.

The Holy Spirit teaches us directly through the Word and only works through the Word. Any explanation of God working without the Word is simply an attack on His revelation in the Word.

Isaiah 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:

11 So shall my Word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: 

• it shall not return unto me void, 
• but it shall accomplish that which I please, 
• and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

This passage is not alone, but it is the central explanation of the Spirit at work in the Word and always accomplishing God's purpose.

The unbelievers cannot grasp this. If they promote one of their false teaching pals, they think they have won another fight. They do not imagine that God is punishing their sect with another evildoer.

When they kick out or hate out another pastor, they high-five each other at headquarters, but they do not see they have dug the rotting corpse of a sect even deeper into the soil.

That is why they blabber about the entire world being forgiven - without faith, without the Word, without the Means of Grace. They have no comprehension of the Spirit/Word connection. This connection is so close that many Biblical references to the Spirit can be replaced with the Word, and vice versa. So the Spirit goes out from God, or the Word. They are bound together and never separate.

Jesus described this connection in John 3, teaching Nicodemus. 

John 3:5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

This means - literally - unless a man is water/Spirit born..., based on Greek grammar. Yes, Jesus knew Greek and taught in Greek. Otherwise, the pun on born from above, born again is lost.

In one verse, Jesus described Holy Baptism - water plus the Word. Water is the physical symbol, the Word is the energy of God, the Spirit at work.

But lo - the UOJ Stormtroopers teach the entire world was forgiven by God without the Spirit, without the briefest Biblical mention of this astounding event. They know because Walther said so. Never forget - Walther. Studied. Luther. Ponder that. No one says, "Walther overlooked his bishop's flagrant adultery and the bishop's abandonment of his sick wife and children." 

Walther never asked, "Holy and Venerable Bishop, why did you book your mistress next door to you on the ship and leave your sick wife and kids in Dresden?" Nor did the obedient clergy ask that question. They urged divorce upon any couple where one or the other did not want to leave Europe.

That attitude - hidden from the Lutheran masses - is the evil fruit from a corrupt tree, the evil tree of unbelief (Matthew 7:17). Walther spent his career promoting this dogma. He picked Pieper to canonize it, but justification by faith remained and was taught in the midst of this metastatic UOJ cancer.

Do Missouri loyalists even wonder why Paul McCain, nominal editor at Concordia Publishing House, chose to promote Roman Catholic essays from The Catholic Encyclopedia as his own?

Or ask why the Chaplain to the Court of Matt Harrison is smitten with Mary and Romanism, so much he was ready to pope and run at one point?

Or consider why the LCMS leaders are far more comfortable with ELCA leaders than they are with their faithful pastors?

The favorite word in WELS, Missouri, and the Little Vatican on the Prairie is - control. They have to control everything. Weeds are dominant, my city-slicker friends. Leave them alone and they will take over. Weeds grab the water the sunshine, and the turf. Weed for hours and two weeks later - they are back and sowing or planting themselves as never before.

The Lutheran Church today is an untended, unweeded garden. Some good plants remain and bear fruit, but they are mostly overtaken by the dominant, remorseless false teachers, who proudly say,

"Now, where is he
That shall our speech forbid us?
By right or might we shall prevail;
What we determine cannot fail;
We own no lord and master."
Nothing can be done until the Lutherans return to the Biblical doctrine of the Holy Spirit exclusively at work through the Word. Until then, the palaver about readings, seasons, elections and re-elections will remain cover for the continue decay of sound doctrine.