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.
No kidding. Keep that axe ground. Read the pdf at LCMS.org, or not, that references ML's 'anti-semitism'.
About as much relevance as Judaism with the Protocols of Zion. Uh huh uh huh.
“First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them.”
—Martin Luther, “On The Jews and Their Lies”
Yep. Nothin’ to see there, move along and “Put the best possible construction” on the oven fires.
This is ghastly language, and no Christian hoping to share the gospel with the Jews would use it today, but please keep in mind (1) some Old Testament biblical language speaking of disaster awaiting disobedient Hebrews is equally ghastly and (2) this is the same man that said people who could not abide church music should be doomed to a prison in a silent wilderness.
Ok, so you claim this is Lutheran theology I guess? Or a Lutheran doctrine? Contained in the Book of Concord? It isn't, which is why there isn't a LCMS paper on it, they deal with doctrinal issues.
LCMS has Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Luther 'anti-semitism', but one would know that if they went to the page and looked as outlined above. Or stay an uninformed and foolish looking troll re-fighting 16th century slights.
on the oven fires
Luther had oven fires? Pathetic.
Chapter 11
What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must practice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengeance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice:
First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly_and I myself was unaware of it_will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know....
http://www.colchestercollection.com/titles/chunk/O/on-the-jews/chapter11.html
[they have been blood thirsty bloodhounds and murderers of all Christendom for more than fourteen hundred years in their intentions, and would undoubtedly prefer to be such with their deeds. Thus they have been accused of poisoning water and wells, of kidnaping children, of piercing them through with an awl, of hacking them in pieces, and in that way secretly cooling their wrath with the blood of Christians, for all of which they have often been condemned to death by fire.][For these Jews are much holier than were those in the Babylonian captivity, who did not curse, who did not secretly shed the blood of children, nor poison the water, but who rather as Jeremiah had instructed them [Jer. 29:7] prayed for their captors, the Babylonians. The reason is that they were not as holy as the present-day Jews, nor did they have such smart rabbis as the present-day Jews have; for Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel were big fools to teach this. They would, I suppose, be torn to shreds by the teeth of today's Jews.]
["not as holy as the present-day Jews"]
[the unjust God lets such holy people curse (I wanted to say "pray") so vehemently in vain against our Messiahand all Christians. He does not care to see or have anything to do either with them or with their pious conduct, which is so thickly, thickly, heavily, heavily coated with the blood of the Messiah and his Christians.]
Also (3) please note that Martin Luther had a lot of official Roman Catholic cultural baggage that he never shed, or only shed late in his life. Part of this baggage was a gratuitous enmity towards the Jewish people. With that ingrained bias, the already irascible Luther found it hard not to view them as half demon, rather than as other sinners whom, but for the grace of God, he would be in the same boat as. Old biases are not easily shed, though they can be shed with diligence.
Anyhow, modern Lutherans of virtually any variation do not concur in Luther’s hateful wishes towards the Jews, because they have gained a better vision of Jesus Christ who came to save all souls possible.
Luther had a damnation-mentality problem. This carried over from his Roman Catholic background, where religious leaders soon found that the more they could hold over a sinner’s head, the more power they had.
This is not just a Christian problem, by the way!
Resolved, That we avoid the recurring pitfall of recrimination (as illustrated by the remarks of Luther and many of the early church fathers) against those who do not respond positively to our evangelistic efforts; and be it finally
Resolved, That, in that light, we personally and individually adopt Luther's final attitude toward the Jewish people, as evidenced in his last sermon: "We want to treat them with Christian love and to pray for them, so that they may become converted and would receive the Lord."(Weimar editon, Vol 51, Pg 195)
You might also wish to note that it’s in large part through the heritage of the Christian reformers (Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli) whose rivalry was often fierce yet whose legacy ultimately blended to produce a strong branch of Christendom independent of Roman Catholic domination, that the modern country of Israel was helped to be founded. This wouldn’t be the first time in history that God used a klutz with hate problems as a vessel to ultimately carry out His blessings, and it may be a mercy that we don’t have a lot on many early biblical characters other than what was recorded in the bible — the warts might throw us off badly.
Luther wasn’t the first man of God to really stick his foot into things badly at the start. By the time he knew better he wouldn’t have been able to get rid of all those books any more than he could have collected the contents of a feather pillow shaken into the wind.
This is ghastly language,
It’s a ghastly subject that shouldn’t be swept under the rug.
The LCMS typically does a good job of vigorously examining related subjects:
But on “The Jews and Their Lies” — often used as propaganda by organizations similar to the Christian Identify Movement, the LCMS is strangely silent; and that silence is compounded by the seemingly very different version published by Concordia, 10 years after the version published by the “Christian Nationalist Crusade”.
Which is the authentic translation?
No, I’m saying that Luther’s language in this relatively early work of his is ghastly. He became far more conciliatory in his final years but that wicked horse he bred had already long fled the barn.
No it should not be ignored, nor should its vicious use today be ignored. It is a tragic lesson on where sin can lead.
No it should not be an everlasting shackle upon Luther any more than Moses’ killing of the Egyptian before God’s time should be an everlasting shackle upon Moses.
And even more to the point... what do YOU think of the golden rule? If it’s wrong to tar the Jewish people for the obscene, angry rejection of the Savior, a rejection which the Christian bible itself says will not last forever (and certainly Jesus himself is on record as begging for their pardon, which should be the 500 ton elephant in the theological room) then shouldn’t it be wrong to tar Luther for flying off the handle like this too?
>>So, you refuse to go and read.
Oh I’ve read it before, and I just read it again — and it STILL fails to acknowledge and explain the contraction rendered by disparate translations of The Jews and Their Lies published by Concordia and other versions published 10 years earlier by organizations such as “The Christian Nationalist Crusade”.
Furthermore, it seems a little disingenuous of LCMS Lutherans to quack about the Christian Identify Movement...
http://www.lcms.org/Document.fdoc?src=lcm&id=371
...without acknowledging that a significant source of propaganda used by such groups is:
“On The Jews and Their Lies”
—By Martin Luther
http://www.resist.com/Instauration/OtherPubs-20120723/TheJewsAndTheirLies-Luther.pdf
[shouldn’t it be wrong to tar Luther for flying off the handle like this too?]
I’m not taring Luther, just the LCMS (or what’s calling itself the LCMS these days).
When I attended LCMS elementary school, the teachers there made it very clear that we should beware of man-made religious institutions and those who inhabit them.
Those schools and teachers are long gone — and replaced by a cadre of tolerant L.I.F.E.R. Wolves who assume dominion over the faith of others.
I have shaken the LCMS dust from my shoes and “I HAVE SWORN UPON THE ALTAR OF GOD ETERNAL HOSTILITY TO EVERY FORM OF TYRANNY OVER THE MIND OF MAN”, in response to their ilk.
>>This is not just a Christian problem, by the way!
Meet the New Ba’al, same as the Old Ba’al
—The Who?
Got state-establishment?
Only to someone with a similar outlook demonstrated tonight. I was unaware that LCMS doctrine had “On The Jews and Their Lies” in it, was that in Scripture or the Lutheran Confessions? But then we get most of our propaganda from those other sources.
I'm pleased you seem to have managed navigation of the LCMS.org website. Read more and report back, learn more about them there LCMS Luterans.
Which version of “The Jews and Their Lies” does the LCMS assert is authentic?
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