The Nihil Rule

"my boy" "massacred"

 "Just as scripture teaches a general, gracious will of God for the salvation of all men, so also it certainly teaches the special election of individuals to salvation. The eternal election of God is the cause of faith in the elect, however election did not happen in view of the faith of the elect. One may ask, can you make sense of that for yourself? What then? God wants to save all, but again he has elected only a few who alone are saved? No, I can't make sense of that for myself, however, has God revealed his truth to us, so that we should make sense of it for ourselves? No, exactly the opposite. We believe it as he has revealed it to us." -Adolf Hoenecke,  The Election Controversy (nph.net)

The Internet is fundamentally different from previous technologies. Books gathered. Radio gathered. Internet scatters. When a book was written by an author it carried the intonation of the author, the intention of the author. A few authors publish a few books read by an audience orders of magnitude larger than the authorship base. Readership is a communal experience which brought people a disparate distances together - intellectually, relationally, theologically. Families gathered around the radio to have a shared experience with millions of other families across nations and the world - again, gathering. The Internet is a scattering experience. We have a billion voices saying a billion things to a billion people, and many of those "voices" aren't human. The digital experience approaches the digital version of an uncanny valley - the idea that a computer generated person can be so close to appearing human, yet there is an element that places a space between us and it - lik

"There are few things that express, and also catechise in the unity of the Christian faith, more than hymnody." -Pr. Peter Bender Sing good Lutheran hymns  and sing the words of Scripture . 

  From  Pastor Peters at Pastoral Meanderings: "How odd it is that we take the requirements of the temple worship of the Old Covenant literally and then take Revelation symbolically as if it were but imagery to describe an otherworldly version of a big box evangelical style worship space we have on earth.  Lutherans take note.  In Revelation we encounter not an abstract painting for the imagination but the practical stuff of worship.  There we learn which elements of Old Covenant worship should be retained in the New Covenant, since the heavenly liturgy we anticipate on earth both  concludes  and  includes  the old.  We learn from Revelation that the Church is not simply allowed but encouraged to buildings, ministers, candlesticks, chalices, incense, and vestments -- the worship of the Church is both derived from and directed to Jesus Christ.  Jesus was every bit the center, though hidden, in the worship of the Temple.  Indeed, He is the perfection of all that was -- whose symbols

 

 

  Bathsheba's #MeToo Moment / Except in the case of Uriah the Hittite

"That means we are creationists, opposite-sex monogamists, we are pro-Life from conception to natural death, and we believe in private property. We do not believe in macro-evolution, homosexual marriage, abortion, and socialism. And we will not compromise on these issues. " Beware of lukewarm Lutherans - Gottesdienst