Posted on 08/27/2009 6:13:07 PM PDT by lightman
Yes, I do know that there is more than one Lutheran Church. So, this means that a person who is Lutheran can stay in the religion, simply switch to a different Lutheran church?
When I joined the Missouri Synod, I had to complete about a ten week course dealing with the Lutheran Confessions. While many ELCA congregations remain true to the foundational Confessions, the synod as a whole doesn't and individual Lutherans are expected to study the orthodox Lutheran faith prior to becoming LCMS members.
The LCMS doesn't recognize the ELCA as being an orthodox Lutheran church.
OK, OK.........don't leave us hanging...........and the name of the Church is..........????
Yes ma'am........we're on the job. Note the recent instruction on homosexuals in the priesthood, the visitation of seminaries and the recent "outing" of many members of the lavender mafia.
In one sense, however, the Church will never be cleaned up. There will always be scandals and crises. Since the time of Judas, the Church has been continually beset by one form of scandal or another. It goes with the job and Jesus promised us as much.
If it isn't shirtlifters, it'll be heretics or money changers.
That is a loaded phrase. What does it mean to you?
I'm just am asking for clarity.
Does it mean the same as if I were to say "true Lutheran" one that preaches the word.
I try not to talk that way but it still happens.
(chuckling)
You’re absolutely right. The wheat and the tares grow together in the same field. I pray all churches will work to get rid of the tares in their midst.
They’re more fundamental type churches that do a good job of preaching the word but don’t believe much in the Holy Spirit working today and He always has. They don’t delve much into the gifts, etc.
Oh, man...when Christ said, "Feed my Sheep," he wasn't talking about world hunger!
See also, "Where there is no vision, the people perish."
This is why my church is in trouble.
Thank you for the info.
The ELCA has become over some time polluted by a sect of idolaters veiled in humanitarianism driven by an extremely politically left secular culture.
The recent convention was stacked with political activists and they out numbered the true Christians.
Now these radicals have taken a huge stride in their own minds and furthering God's Kingdom has become a lower priority.
Love of self and worldly recognition rules their hearts.
God has been lowered to the level of a stage prop as another freeper told me.
God revels in these situations his glory is soon to be revealed in this.
Just a side note.
They don’t even know they are radicals because they are spiritually blind.
Into the pit they go.
As to Lutheran's from the ELCA joining the Roman Catholic Church, while I know that some will, I will repeat what one ELCA friend told me.
I asked him where he would go, and listed a few possibilities (for him personally the LCMS isn't one). He said he could not be a Catholic, since that would put him in a similar situation as he is in now. In short, he doesn't trust that the Catholic Church in the US will remain faithful to the Gospel.
The Catholic Church in the US will split sooner or later.
In our case, however, the split will be between those who choose to obey the authority of the Church and those who seek their own way. I predict that within the next few years a renegade group of bishops and congregations will break with that authority and form a new, democratically-run, “American catholic church”, and that this “church” will receive the blessings, endorsements, and financial support of the U.S. government, large corporations, and Hollywood. This new “church” will proclaim itself the true Catholic Church and will be recognized as such by all the major global religious bodies. Females and homosexuals will be ordained to its priesthood and college of bishops; abortion, contraception, euthanasia, and homosexual “marriage” will be celebrated as sacraments; and its worship will be joyful, participatory, and sensual.
Many FReepers, including many current FReeper Catholics, will join this new Church, because it “it just feels right” and because of its permissive attitudes toward sex outside of marriage, divorce and remarriage, and the accumulation of wealth. (And of course there are more than a few non-Catholic FReepers out there who are sharpening their knives for the kill even as we speak.) Eventually, the opinion of the average American (including many of you reading this post right now) will become openly hostile towards the “old Catholic Church”, which will be increasingly depicted in the news and entertainment media as something like the Ku Klux Klan. There will probably be some abortion clinic bombings or other acts of “Catholic fundamentalism” to drive the point home. And, after one or two abortion doctors get capped, the government will heed the voice of the people and the international community and begin to legally persecute the Church as a sponsor of terrorism.
But it won’t matter. No matter what the Bad Guys do, the Catholic Church will remain, surviving and spreading the Gospel as it always has. There will always be those of us who refuse to betray the teaching handed down by the apostles to the Pope and the bishops in union with him in favor of the Prosperity Gospel or the Happy-Clappy Church of What’s Heppening Now or, God help us, the American Catholic Church. Even if they kill us all, nuke the Vatican, and bulldoze every Catholic church in the world, they can’t prevail against the Church; if we die, the rocks and stones (intelligent computers?) will sing in our places.
Tell your friend not to worry. He should find a bishop who refuses to yield one inch to the forces of the enemy and stick with him. Such bishops are easy to find: just look for the ones the media hates the most and you can’t go wrong.
As for Team Chan, we’re sticking with the Pope and the Lord that he represents here on Earth no matter how many people go over to the Enemy.
His fears are just what you said.
See, in the ELCA there is a remnant that remains faithful. He doesn’t want to join the RCC only to have the same situation
Re, #53. You, my friend, are a prophet.
Christ, I hope not.
And I mean that as a prayer, not as blasphemy.
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