Posted on 07/13/2013 12:19:30 PM PDT by rhema
Since shortly after its formation in 1988 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has been fixated on deviant sexual behavior, culminating in the endorsement of homosexual pastors in 2009, homosexual “marriage” in 2011, and the election last month of their first homosexual bishop. Dr. James Nestingen, a highly respected scholar and retired ELCA seminary professor, recently concluded that promoting acceptance of deviant sexual behavior has actually replaced the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the primary mission and message of the ELCA.
Those within the ELCA demanding these radical changes asserted it is necessary for the ELCA’s very survival. Supposedly, they simply must move into the 21st century on these issues, or otherwise they will be so out-of-step with modern society that it would mean the demise of their denomination. By the way, this is the same deceptive reasoning behind similar disturbing changes recently in the Boy Scouts of America.
However, the ELCA has now released some startling statistics that show the exact opposite has actually happened:
** When the ELCA was formed in 1988 they had 5.2 million members, but they are now down to only 4 million members–a staggering loss of over 1.2 million members, or 23% of their membership. They have also lost 1,500, or 13%, of their congregations, from approximately 11,000 to 9,500. As they “celebrate” this year the 25th anniversary of the ELCA, the fact is that during that time they have lost more members and congregations than make up many entire denominations!
** Of these losses, over 500,000 members and 1,000 congregations have left the ELCA in just the last four years, triggered by their endorsement of homosexuality beginning in 2009. This is actually the biggest denominational split in American church history, and is directly attributable to that decision.
** Another measure of the ELCA’s decline is that in 1988, 2.1% of all Americans were members of the ELCA, but by 2011 that figure had fallen to 1.3%. The National Council of Churches reports that the ELCA has “the sharpest rate of membership decline” among all mainline Protestant denominations. Like Avis car rental which used to advertise “We’re Number 2–But We Try Harder!” the LCMS has historically always been the second-largest American Lutheran church body. However, at the ELCA’s current rate of losing members–nearly 6% in 2010–in just a decade the LCMS will surpass the ELCA as the largest American Lutheran church body, and a few decades after that the ELCA will cease to exist.
** Even among those congregations remaining in the ELCA average weekly worship attendance from 2003 to 2011 dropped 26%. The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod has 2.3 million members and the similarly conservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod has 300,000 members, yet even with our smaller combined membership of 2.6 million the LCMS and WELS have more people actually sitting in the pews each Sunday than the ELCA with 4 million members.
** Donations to the ELCA on the national level were $88 million in 2008 but plunged to only $40 million in 2011.
** Luther Seminary, the ELCA’s largest seminary, located in St. Paul, Minnesota, announced that last year they had a $6 million operating deficit on a budget of $27 million. This was due largely to a recent sharp decline in donations to the seminary, reportedlyincluding a couple that for many years had given $1 million a year to the seminary but stopped their donations after the ELCA’s endorsement of homosexuality. The seminary was forced to cancel many of its programs and lay off a third of the faculty and staff.
** Since the ELCA’s endorsement of homosexuality, many other Lutheran church bodies around the world have severed their historic ties with the ELCA, and are instead seeking new relationships with the LCMS. This includes many of the largest and fastest-growing Lutheran church bodies in the world, such as the Lutherans in Ethiopia with over 6 million members–nearly as many as all American Lutheran church bodies combined. The center of world Lutheranism is shifting from Europe and America to Africa, Asia, and South America, and the LCMS is becoming the theological leader of these growing Lutheran church bodies. While the ELCA is becoming increasingly isolated in world Lutheranism, at our national convention this month the LCMS will enter into formal fellowship with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Liberia, Siberian Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the Lutheran Church of Togo.
The Lord warns:
“There will be false teachers among you, who will surreptitiously introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them, bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their shameful, licentious ways.” (2 Peter 2:1-2)
“As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you formerly had when you lived in ignorance. Instead, just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written: ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’” (1 Peter 1:14-15)
“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2)
These passages show how misdirected and sinful it is to accommodate the church’s doctrine and practice to the world’s wicked ways. It is also foolish and futile.
On the one hand, the world will never be satisfied–until Christians completely renounce their faith. More importantly, the Lord will never bless such unfaithfulness to Him and His Word.
We see from the sad example of what’s happened to the ELCA–the biggest split in American church history–that whatever churches and other organizations such as the Boy Scouts imagine they will gain by giving in to the world is dwarfed by what they will surely lose.
What does that have to do with the price of marijuana in your city?
You really have a sulphur dipped hobby horse to harp on, if I may mix several metaphors. It’s better to live in a land of sinning believers than to live in a land of NO believers... and once you have believers THEN you concern yourself with getting rid of the remaining sin (which will only be relative... it won’t be completed till the day of Christ Jesus... read your bible).
It has plenty to do with the prostitution of the Church.
What were Christ’s instructions regarding tax exempt status?
You so much want to strain out a gnat that you are willing to swallow the camel through which Satan wants to use little focused hatreds like yours to drive Christendom asunder altogether?
If you come from love, like I am learning to, you won’t be so grouchy. You will be able to appeal to those who are sinning of a better vision.
What were Christ’s instructions regarding tax exempt status?
You so much want to strain out a gnat that you are willing to swallow the camel through which Satan wants to use little focused hatreds like yours to drive Christendom asunder altogether?
If you come from love, like I am learning to, you won’t be so grouchy. You will be able to appeal to those who are sinning of a better vision.
What were Christ’s instructions regarding tax exempt status?
What were Christ’s instructions about “Love one another”? (With no qualifier upon it about whether the other is sinning... in fact you KNOW they are sinning... they will be sinning, though hopefully less and less, until they are complete in the Lord in glory.)
It’s Satan, not Christ, who is urging “hey TArcher! hey TArcher! hate your brethren!”
Perhaps it’s the father of lies who’s deceiving you that asking simple questions is “hate”. I recall Christ drove the money changers off the temple steps with a whip.
What were Christ’s instructions regarding tax exempt status?
Which version of “On the Jews and Their Lies” is the authentic one?
Simply put, don't pay those taxes you don't owe.
Pay those you do owe, but IIRC, there are no instructions in Gods Word to pay more than you owe.
Mark 12:15-17
..But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” 16 They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
17 Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
NIV
No 501c3 exemption required.
You are asking the question IN hate... with a disingenous spirit... I can sense it. You have a history. You do not pop out of nowhere. Tiny agendas do not get grinded (ground) for no motive. Something has obsessed you.
You probably have little to no idea of what love is. How about you go read 1 Cor 13 for starters?
You aren’t worshiping God at all, I fear. You are worshiping a philosophy about God. Men’s philosophy, however noble sounding.
You would be a lot more cautiously spoken if you could actually recognize genuine Christianity.
So why are you so obsessed over this little matter that you completely overlook the fact that genuine Christian love can overcome all such hurdles of sin? If the love is weak... you don’t throw vinegar in their faces to try to make it stronger.
Bub... Satan can’t drive off Satan. If you looked in the mirror of love, then you would see the hate that has overtaken your spirit and driven it into a mad, impotent frenzy over something that isn’t even a danger today! (America is going to be overrun by libertines, not by some hypothetical government-worshiping Christianesque hicks.)
And if you really care that the witness of the American church is being diluted by accepting the exemptions granted in modern America to any and all charitable and religious organizations, how about you first come up yourself even to the level of love that these churches still have? Believe it or not they are not committing the unforgivable sin. You are packing lots of Satanic rage and hate — not Christian love — and trying to drive out flaws with that. It’ll never work, not in a whole eternity. That was never God’s plan. God’s plan is to heal sin with love, if the recipient will be willing to accept it. He never got pleasure out of damning anyone.
“I bear [you] witness that [you] have a zeal for God — but not according to knowledge.”
>>Bub... Satan can’t drive off Satan.
You’re certainly the arrogant proof of that.
Don’t forget to floss.
>>God’s opinion:
Lev 26:30-39
0 I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you. 31 I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of your offerings. 32 I will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled. 33 I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. 34 Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. 35 All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it.
36 “’As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so fearful in the lands of their enemies that the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to flight. They will run as though fleeing from the sword, and they will fall, even though no one is pursuing them. 37 They will stumble over one another as though fleeing from the sword, even though no one is pursuing them. So you will not be able to stand before your enemies. 38 You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you.
NIV
So you’re saying churchs shouldn’t pay any taxes, exemption or not?
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