Saturday, December 30, 2017

What Really Matters at the End? Blog Averaging 3,000 Views a Day.


We teach what believe, unless the two clash, which can only be bad for individual. The SynCon leaders continue this farce, each one acting superior to the others in the LCMS-WELS-ELS configuration - and to ELCA! -  but in full agreement about their hostility to Luther's Biblical doctrine and work with ELCA.

The issue is not Luther as an authority, but the doctrine itself. The LCMS-WELS-ELS leaders remind me of the Goths who liked to hang around the computer lab at the community college in Phoenix. The Goths enjoyed wearing bicycle chains and locks around their necks, black lipstick, and bizarre clothing - and those were guys. I said to one of my students in their midst, "Ditch these losers." The Goths smirked and twittered among themselves.

So LCMS-WELS-ELS says, "Try and stop us." They have the properties, the endowments, the funding - everything except Biblical doctrine. Now they must feel trapped under heavy blankets, unable to breathe. They are just behind ELCA in finessing a downsizing of all their schools and seminaries. Just as ELCA could get by on Luther and another seminary, so WELS-ELS-LCMS could do well with one seminary instead of four.

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This Little Blog
Ever since we rolled over the 6 million views mark, this little blog has averaged 3,000 views per day. Overnight the views are 1500 or more and accumulate another 1500 or more during the day.

Since many ask, yes I do get positive responses from all over. However, the negative comments have stopped almost completely. Someone needs to join ELDONA for a feast of hostility and name-calling among their loyalists and readers, as hosted by TableTalk@cat41.org - and I quote -

ELDONA:
For Ron Roland and the rest of you lying LCMS pansy=pastors who want to say that *I* am the reason you won’t join ELDoNA, I make you this offer: COLLOQUIZE AND I WILL OFFER THE BISHOP MY RESIGNATION. If I’ve actually done something evil enough to keep you from BEING A CHRISTIAN and confessing the faith by leaving your heterodox body to join an orthodox body, I’m pretty sure that he will already have given me word to repent or be gone before it would ever get to my resigning, anyway.

Do I miss arguing with those who defend the indefensible?

No, I don’t.

Ron Roland: take a hike. When you’re dead and gone that congregation you ‘fixed’ to remain in Missouri will become whatever Missouri becomes, and the Lord can say, “Thank you for caring for only one generation of people and letting their children and grandchildren instead be led into Hell.”
end of quotation

 The above is from a group, ELDONA, that argued for Universalism (UOJ) and worked with the Rolf Preus UOJ Sect for years. And yes, that is the normal ELDONUT level of hostility aimed at anyone who has the misfortune of knowing them. They even hate getting free books and Bibles. One might as well offer them tissues samples from a leper colony. "Make these disappear!"

 ELDONA and the Rolf Preus Synod,
currently pastors of ELDONA, ELS, and the LCMS.

So, if the Rolf Preus Synod was so close to ELDONA that they met with them, studied with them, perhaps even worshiped with them, how is it that no one brought up Rolf's allegiance to UOJ, as communicated on LutherQuest (sic), his website, and everywhere else except his father's last book, Justification and Rome?

What Really Matters
As one of my favorite authors wrote, what really matters in the end is what we believe, teach, and practice.

We should always be learning and studying the Word, always eager to gain more insights from Luther and the Book of Concord.

There is a big world outside the dying Synodical Conference. A reader took it on himself to provide a library of classics from that world.

Keep track of the Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry, which is featured near the top of the left-hand column.

 Some Questions for the WELS-ELS-LCMS leaders.

Posted by Ichabod the Glory Has Departed at 5:54 AM
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Friday, December 29, 2017

Some Questions for Matt the Fatt, Mirthless Mark, and Pope John the Malefactor

 Not if they work with ELCA via Thrivent programs.
Not if they reject the Chief Article - Justification by Faith.
 This work of blasphemy has been in print and used by ELCA schools for about 30 years. ELCA used to deny using it - but no longer. Some consider this a conservative effort to emphasize that theology still matters. No really, they do.

Given the plummeting value of ELCA, why are the SynCon presidents so eager to be part of the UniSynod and go down the sinkhole with mainline radicalism?


The Most Basic Questions

  • If ELCA is as bad as they say - and these leaders should know - then why do they continue to work with them?
  • Since Braaten-Jenson's Dogmatics denies Creation, the Virgin Birth, the Trinity, the Atonement and Resurrection, and the Dogmatics have been used for about 30 years in ELCA schools - how can Matt, Mark, and Pope John associate with them?
  • If LCMS-WELS-ELS are critical of Church Growth (stop giggling in the corner), then why have they worked with ELCA via Thrivent on many Church Growth mega-programs, starting with Snowbird and the Church Growth Initiative?
  • The Thrivent system is disgraceful, since everyone must accept the dominance, lifestyle choices, and dogma of ELCA, so why should Matt, Mark, and Pope John go along with the corruption?
  • ELCA enforces the ordination of everyone who flouts traditional marriage, so why would Matt, Mark, and Pope John want to be in the same organization and conferences with them?
  • ELCA's health insurance pays for abortion for any reason, so how can Matt, Mark, and Pope John pretend to be pro-life while overlooking America's own genocide of the innocent?
  • Thrivent has funded Planned Parenthood with matching funds and probably continues this practice for its staff, so where is the outrage? Instead, we only see synodical trotters and snouts in the feeding trough of the insurance company.
  • Mark Jeske is supposed to be a WELS pastor, since Grandma married a Pieper, so why is he on the Thrivent board and hosting ELCA-LCMS-WELS-ELS conferences?
 WELS pastor Mark Jeske is in the back row and apparently on the money committee. Whooda guessed that?

 Jeske's lopsided grin appeared on the LCMS website,
but his heart belongs to ELCA and women's ordination.

 Nobody has lost weight since this photo was taken.

 ELCA says, "Come on in. The water's fine."
The Garasene swine of Lutherdom stampede.
Posted by Ichabod the Glory Has Departed at 10:19 PM
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Let's Visit Another Lutheran Seminary That Couldn't - Trinity ELCA in Columbus

 Kathryn Kit Kleinhans just moved from Wartburg Seminary,
relieving them of a big salary and benefits package.
She is a Seminex graduate, a sure way to leverage
one's career in ELCA.

People around Columbus, Ohio identify Trinity (Cap Seminary) with Capital University, The ALC school, so it seems puzzling at first that they announced a grand new structure - Trinity Seminary at Capital University. What are we missing here?

The same thing has been going on with various ELCA seminaries short of funds, students, and grassroots support. Southern Seminary became part of a college, just as Pacific Seminary did. Trinity Seminary is losing a president but gaining a dean. Some might call it downsizing, just as Hartford Seminary in Connecticut became the Hartford Foundation for lack of students but a juicy endowment.

A God Who Engages the World?
The Rev. Dr. Stanley Olson, interim president of Trinity Lutheran Seminary, has known Kleinhans for many years, including his work with her during his days as president of Wartburg Theological Seminary. He described her as “one of our most-gifted advocates for seeing life as vocation.” 

“Kit is intrigued with a God who engages the world – and with the world that God engages,” Olson said. “She has a heart for students, and will provide visionary and collaborative leadership for Trinity and Capital as they discover continuities and newness in their linked missions.”

Some readers will remember Stan Olson from serving as president of Wartburg Seminary for a short time and being my classmate at Yale for an even shorter time.

 Stan Olson is the president of Capital seminary for five months, following the resignation of the previous president and preceding the enthronement of the new dean from Seminex.

I am looking for some "thrilled and excited" news releases about Trinity Seminary. When leaders come and go so quickly, they are routinely thrilled and excited.

The news releases will never reveal the reason the ELCA seminaries are sinking faster than NFL ratings. Thirty years ago, Trinity Seminary took a lead in advising graduates about how to mislead examination committees about the issue.

Olson played a leading role in starting joint communion with the Reformed and changing the ELCA's watered-down Biblical standards for ordination and marriage to the extremes of the Left: at the 2009 ELCA convention. Even the retired ELCA bishops - six of them - left ELCA to start their own denomination.

Tuition at Trinity!!



TRINITY: COST OF ATTENDANCE 2017-18

 
EXPENSEON CAMPUSOFF CAMPUS
$37,170$20,840
Tuition$17,640*$8,820*
Books900450
Fee800 (estimate)400 (estimate)
Transportation3,1984,263
Personal/Misc5,1726,896
Room/Board9,449
Loan fee estimate1111


* Tuition for Trinity Lutheran Seminary is $588 an hour. Many full-time students will take 30 hours in 9 months which will be $17,640.

The living expense budget is based on the college board moderate student expense budget for Cleveland-Elyria-Menter (sic - Mentor) OH.
Posted by Ichabod the Glory Has Departed at 10:09 PM
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NWA editorial: No place for games | NWADG





NWA editorial: No place for games | NWADG:



"Former State Rep. Micah Neal of Springdale shocked and saddened his supporters last January with a guilty plea in federal court to allegations he accepted kickbacks in exchange for directing state grant money to Ecclesia College in Springdale. Woods, Ecclesia President Oren Paris III and Randell Shelton Jr., a consultant, each face trial next year in an alleged scheme involving about $600,000 in state grants.

Now, back to the FBI involvement. The Woods/Paris/Shelton trial was slated to begin this month but has been delayed to April in part because of questions over the handling of 79 conversations recorded by Neal. Some recordings had been turned over to defense attorneys, but not those. Defense attorneys figured that out and wanted to know what explained the discrepancy. Such discrepancies have a way of damaging prosecution cases."



'via Blog this'
Posted by Ichabod the Glory Has Departed at 4:34 PM
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ELCA Watching Her Seminaries Disappear - But Fund-Raising Continues Unabated

Louise Johnson is the new president of Wartburg Seminary,
which was founded by Loehe. ELCA has far too many
seminaries and too few divinity students.
Top mafia boss Liz Eaton has one goal in higher education -
put her lady supporters in positions of power, whether qualified or not, especially when not qualified - like Louise Johnson.


From: "Rev. Dr. Craig L. Nessan, Academic Dean of Wartburg Theological Seminary" <development@wartburgseminary.edu>
Date: December 29, 2017 6:15:41 AM CST
Subject: The Sent Shepherd



“The people were scattered like sheep without shepherds.
How can we ignore their need?"
Dear Dr. Ichabod, 
How can we ignore their need? This was the plea that caught the attention of Wartburg Seminary founder Wilhelm Loehe to address the emergency need for leaders in the United States over 160 years ago. From this legacy, the power of God's call through the Gospel of Jesus Christ has transformed the world through hundreds of graduates sent in to ministry as pastors and deacons.
Loehe, like the shepherds of Luke's retelling, responded to God’s call to share the Gospel. Extending the invitation to those who have gifts to serve the church as leaders remains one of our most urgent callings.
Because of you we have been able to walk alongside so many future leaders with exciting innovation for a new day.
Leaders who are sent as disciples in Jesus’ name to make disciples in Jesus’ name. Sent to hear the name of Jesus as the promise of your own belovedness. Sent to speak the name of Jesus to others to tell them of their belovedness. Sent to teach in Jesus' name everything Jesus has commanded. 
Thank you for your vital partnership in our ever-urgent mission to form and send leaders to meet the needs of our church. Will you join us yet again in this shared call? We are grateful for partners old and new with whom we travel this road! 
GIVE TODAY

Shalom,

Rev. Dr. Craig L. Nessan
Academic Dean, Wartburg Theological Seminary 
P.S. Your gift enables us to send leaders into congregations year after year. Will you accompany these students with your prayers and financial support?

***

GJ - Loehe also founded Ft. Wayne. CFW Walther asked Loehe to give him the Ft. Wayne property for free and keep up his financial support of the school.

Loehe started the LCMS - not the other way around. His pastors invited the Perrysville, Missouri Lutherans to join them, but Loehe conveniently became a bad guy and Walther absorbed the glory for himself.

Most of us know little about the Loehe pastors and the Iowa Synod, which became part of the old American Lutheran Church in 1930 and in 1960 The American Lutheran Church.

 Reu became more conservative in his career, and the
liberals have never forgiven him for his falling away from their goals.


Reu was a genius scholar, someone who made himself an expert in German catechisms and earned an honorary doctorate in Germany for his labors. His lectures on unionism, quoted in the graphic are especially relevant today.

Wartburg Seminary named their library after Reu, which reminds me of Capital Seminary (now Trinity) naming a room the Lenski room but not selling his books in their own student bookstore. Cap/Trinity Seminary is being absorbed into the university, a polite way of saying goodbye (ditto Pacific and Southern seminaries).

The old conservative Lutherans kept working, praying, and worshiping with the apostates until no one was left to look back at their history and ask, "Where did we go wrong?"

 "Pass the popcorn" has great significance in the
soda and snack congregations of WELS.
Posted by Ichabod the Glory Has Departed at 7:34 AM
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Thursday, December 28, 2017

Churches And Sects Of Christendom by J. L. Neve - Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry



Neve was highly respected in his field.

Churches And Sects Of Christendom by J. L. Neve - Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry:



"Neve on the difference between a Church and a Sect
The historical churches are results of the very great, epoch-making events in the Church’s history. Each of them has a theology of its own, which is marked by historicity and by a deep-going organic consistency in doctrine and practice. They claim that their baptized children are under the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit through the influence of the Word and Sacrament. There will be cases where the necessity of a special conversion must be stressed, in the process of which the powers of regeneration will then function. But the “church” will reject the idea that the individual is supposed to have received no grace before such a “conversion” has taken place. Just as the prodigal son knew of a time when he was yet a child in his father’s house, so the sermons and all the pastoral work of a church will remind men of that relation once established in holy baptism. Under normal conditions this relation simply needs to be kept up under careful nursing with the Word of God, and the result then can be expected as described in Mark 4:26-28: “So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” This description gives us the character of a church in distinction from that of a sect.

Download the eBook
PDF

Kindle Book

Adobe EPUB eBook"



'via Blog this'
Posted by Ichabod the Glory Has Departed at 4:40 PM
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A Juicy Issue of Christian News - Finally:
Creation, UOJist Alarm, Braaten-Jenson Reveries.
Dale Meyer, Didja Know?

 The entire faculty of Concordia Seminary opened a can of Eighth Commandment on two LCMS districts. Does anyone read Luther's Large Catechism today?
I began reading the new issue of Christian News yesterday and thought of responding, but I said to myself, "This requires two mugs of pour-over coffee in the morning." January 1, 2018 issue.

What is the issue? St. Louis supports a nuanced (fuzzy) view of Creation, with variations on the meaning of day and a young earth.

The real issue, based on the Book of Concord, Smalcald Articles, and basic Biblical teaching is - the seminary's denial of the efficacy of the Word.

All issues are founded on the Biblical efficacy of the Word, which is always united with the power of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, the Holy Spirit never works apart from the Word.

All false doctrine comes from Enthusiasm, separating the Word from the Spirit. When the LCMS-WELS-ELS-ELCA-CLC (sic) blockheads claim God absolved the entire world of sin and saved all people, apart from faith, that dogma is Enthusiasm. Nothing in Scripture reveals that dogma, although it is found in Halle Pietism and mainline liberal apostasy.

I doubt whether the LCMS will resolve this Creation issue, because it involves the bad guys (UOJ Concordia faculty) versus the bad guys (UOJ Bronze Agers).

Both sides reject Justification by Faith, so they are apostates. I dislike the term liberal, because that suggests someone might be just a little bit off in doctrine. Apostates are those who once believed the Scriptures and now live in a dogmatic world they have created for themselves.

 Like the recent popes, Dale Meyer includes Jesus in his message about Mary. Notice how LCMS leaders are sinuflecting toward Rome. Mary, didja know?

UOJ Apostates
Like the Kloha issue (cafeteria text of the Bible), Otten has his valiant heroes lined up against the forces of darkness in the LCMS.

But if one wants to be a Biblical teacher, he has to enter the fray with clean hands.

The LCMS, WELS, ELS, and ELDONUTs have made the Biblical text an adiaphoron, a matter of indifference. They all go along with the Tischendorfians playing with the text in the NIV, ESV, and other money-makers. Not only that, they are fine with the dynamic equivalence paraphrasing that began with the arch-heretic and unbeliever Eugene Nida.

Google that name Eugene Nida. Here - I did it for you: Eugene Nida Googled.

In a few words, Nida influenced almost everyone to abandon precise translation for anything goes translation - RSV and its cousin ESV, Good News, Classic NIV (gone), New NIV (worse than ever), The Message.

Between voting on the text of the New Testament (Nestle-Aland text gang) and constantly changing the translation, the mainline apostates have deliberately confused the message of the Bible. What flavor do you want? Willow Creek demanded feminist Bibles and got them. The SynCons and ELCA itched for Universalism and got an "all" added to Romans 3. Soon all the new translations will say "all are justified," with pinhead pastors screaming at laity - "The translations all agree, and I do too. I STUDIED GREEK!"


 Braaten and Jenson, and Lies - Oh My! Braaten and Jenson, and Lies - Oh My! Braaten and Jenson, and Lies - Oh My!

 The new issue devotes space to Carl Braaten praising Jenson, his co-conspirator in the Braaten-Jenson Christian Dogmatics. They gathered that epic pile of compost because the LCA-ALC seminaries were abandoning theology altogether. They included Forde, who is hotter than Georgia asphalt in the LCMS, from what I hear.

 I forgot to buy Luther trinkets from Concordia Publishing House. This one must be an antidote to Church Growth Eyes - a bizarre concept that Waldo Werning promoted heavily in the LCMS-ELS-WELS.

 Braaten-Jenson denies all the articles of faith - Creation, the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the miracles, the Atonement, the resurrection. Remind me again - why did they impose this effluence on a dying ALC-LCA.

Braaten is still around, an old 88, and promoting Robert Jenson, who just died.

The Braaten-Jenson epic compost pile was scraped together for this reason -

 ‘Seminaries of the ELCA are now institutions emphatically inhospitable to theological work and instruction, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.’ After one particularly long, exasperating faculty meeting I had had enough of the politically correct shenanigans at the seminary. The arrival of the Seminex faculty – ten former professors of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis – had made things worse” (13). Christian News, 1-1-18, p. 17.

Braaten and Jenson created the mess they complained about. They romped about the ALC-LCA for decades, getting enormous grants and salaries to be theological experts, closet Unitarians, sanctimonious frauds.

The sleepy LCMS, spineless WELS, and disappearing ELS have all contributed to the decline. Now the leaders are merely rats fighting to get the best seat on on the lifeboat.

 Does anyone doubt this enormous $90 two-volume work
teaches Universal Objective Justification? The ELS-WELS-LCMS reps said they all agreed with this UOJ apostasy and with ELCA on this topic.
They did not mention ELCA, of course, but I just did.

Posted by Ichabod the Glory Has Departed at 9:47 AM
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