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Three readers stand up for truth and correct falsehoods published by the ELCA's official magazine saying -
- "There is a way to God I strongly disagree with the Rev. Dave Daubert's statement that 'there is no way to God' (October, page 28). In John 14:6, Jesus clearly states that he is the way. Ephesians 2:8 reminds us that we are saved by grace through faith. The faith response is absolutely essential — that is 'the way.' That may take the form of baptism, confirmation or a simple prayer expressing faith ('Lord, I believe, help my unbelief') and so on. Everyone's faith journey is unique and there is no set 'formula,' but there has to be a commitment to an ongoing relationship with our Lord. To say that we don't have a part in the equation takes away the personal responsibility we all have and dangerously implies we can just sit back, do nothing and all is OK. Dave Gale Auburn, Wash.” - "Inconsistent ethic The Rev. Bernard K. Kern's article about the death penalty (September, page 49) was well written and logical. But it is hard to get motivated on that subject while we continue to kill our children at a rate of about 23,000 per week. The sin of silence in the ELCA on abortion is very grievous. Dave Nelson Billings, Mont.” - “More than social work The study guide “Activism: 'Doing church' a new way" (November, page 26) seems to be saying that social work can be the main purpose of the church. The church is not just another social service agency. Its main purpose is to praise God, which is both our duty and our joy. It is also there to bring up children in the faith through baptism, Sunday school, worship services, communion, confirmation and youth groups, and to evangelize, as well as to do good works in the community and the world. If you get the faith right, it will produce good works, which is the evidence of faith. If works isn't there, go back and look at the faith of the church. It doesn't work the other way around — works doesn't lead to faith. Richard N. Bergesen West Chester, Pa.” (read here) The leadership of the ELCA ignores and maligns the Word of God. The above three readers expose this truth. As the evidence of a great deal of research within the work and writings of Exposing the ELCA reveals, those in leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America lack the ability to lead a Christ-following church. We want to acknowledge the challenging work of those, like the contributors above, who have spoken out courageously!
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Shared this last Christmas, but it is so good I need to share it again. Merry Christmas everyone - And this one just for fun - The ELCA must worship a God that has no power. A God that can not do miracles. A God that has to make up a birth story of His Son to make people believe He is special. A God that can not create a child in the womb of a virgin. That is the powerless, lying god of the ELCA.
Here is what the ELCA and many ELCA leaders are saying about the details of the birth of Christ -
A Pew Research Poll this week reports that "Roughly three-quarters of adults (73%) say they believe Jesus was born of a virgin.” (read here) But the people who are suppose to disciple us do not believe what God tells us in the Bible? Something is wrong here folks! Denying Scripture is not just an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America problem, just look to the ELCA's liberal Lutheran twin to the north. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) pastor Dawn Hutchings has this to say about the Nativity account, "For this story is a parable and like all parable’s it represents a truth that cannot be fully expressed in words. Like all good parables the truth is not to be found in the details, but rather in the Spirit of God that breathed life into the parable. " (read here) Not believing the virgin birth account, Pastor Hutchings speculates that Jesus was the result of Mary being raped. She writes, “Some say the evidence is clear, if you’re willing to see it. After all there was a large cohort of Roman soldiers encamped near Nazareth. The people of Nazareth had participated in an uprising against their oppressors and the Roman’s had raided Nazareth in retaliation. There are numerous Jewish accounts of Roman raids that include details of strategic rapes. Could our young heroine be the victim of such a rape?” (read here) This Christmas (and beyond) please, please stay clear of these Bible-denying Lutheran denominations. Martin Luther - If you are in the ministry and see that you have rascals and knaves, fornicators, adulterers, and robbers in your parish, you must say: “Since this is my duty, I will point out sins to peasants, burghers, and noblemen, and rebuke them for these without paying attention to their complaints when they say: ‘Look here, you are defaming me!’ ” For if I held back, I would make myself guilty of your sin. And why should I go to hell for you? They might retort: “Well, I am not asking you to do this; I am not forcing you.” Yes, this may be true. Still you do not want me to reprove you, and you refuse to let me upbraid you for your vices. You expect me to hold my peace, although I occupy an office which requires me to reprove sin, as the prophet Ezekiel does in chapters three and thirty-three, when he declares: “So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel. If I say to the wicked to turn from his way, and you give him no warning or speak to warn him, to save his life, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand” (Ezek. 3:17 ff.; 33:7 ff.). Do you suppose it is a small matter to burden a ruler with such a responsibility? This burden has been imposed on the poor preachers, as it has on all who hold other offices, such as burgomasters, princes, and government officials. They should not keep silence in the presence of sin; nor should they themselves sin. For if I see adultery or other sins in people and neglect to take the sinners to task, God will visit their sins on me. We members of the secular and of the ecclesiastical realm have been ordered to punish wrongdoing. But no one does so. What is going to become of you, great kings and teachers in the church, who hear and see so much crime and sin but hush it up and do not punish it? Thus many people go to hell for the sins of others. I read this quote from Martin Luther in a blog titled “Preachers Who Are in Hell For Other People's Sins: The Real Cost of Remaining Silent in the Face of Sin & Heresy.” Please check it out here. --- I need your help. I will be writing a blog in the coming weeks addressing leaders in the ELCA teaching that the virgin birth and other events surrounding Christ's birth are myths. I also will be writing a blog about leaders in the ELCA teaching that hell and Satan are not real. If you have come across articles, blogs, etc. of ELCA pastors, teachers, seminary professors or bishops teaching these things please send the information and the links to me so I can include them in my research. Thank you! --- 2014 is drawing near, what better time for a new motto for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The current ELCA motto is "God's Work. Our Hands." Post some of your suggestions for a new ELCA motto. Here are some of mine:
ELCA pastor and author Nadia Bolz-Weber is held in high esteem among the leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She is asked to speak at many large denominational gatherings and high-profile ELCA services indicating how she is revered in the denomination. The ELCA's Metropolitan New York Synod posted on Facebook that “Pastor Nadia is the closest thing the ELCA has to a rock star.”
Rev. Bolz-Weber was involved in Wicca before going to an ELCA seminary to become a pastor. On a Bolz-Weber book publicity tour, Nadia read to the audience from her memoir about this time of her life saying, “I had never stopped believing in God, not really. But I did have to go hang out with His aunt for awhile. She is called the goddess. My first experience with Wicca . . .” The ELCA 'rock star' goes on - “The goddess we spoke of never felt to me like a substitute for God but simply another aspect of the divine, like God's aunt or something. When I tell other Christians of my time with the goddess I think they expect me to characterize it as a period in my life when I was misguided and that now thankfully I have come back to both Jesus and my senses. But it's not like that. I can't imagine that the God of the universe is limited to our ideas of God. I can't image that God doesn't reveal Godself in countless ways outside of the simple system of Christianity. And in a way I need a god who is bigger and more nimble and more mysterious than what I could understand or contrive.” “In fact, I felt guided by god the whole time I sojourned outside of the church. The divine source of my life and my identity perhaps knew that I needed to bask in the female face of god for a good long while outside the church before I could ever return to it whole and able to see the divine feminine in my own traditional.” (see here) Wicca is a religion of witches, witchcraft and pentagrams. The Christian Bible is not God's Word, according to this idolatrous religion, and they do not worship the Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Wiccan deity is completely different from the God of the Bible. Yet the ELCA's “rock star” believes that the goddess worshipped by witches is just another dimension or persona of the God of the Bible. The female side of Him. Christians know Jesus as God's Son, but according to Bolz-Weber, the Wiccan goddess is his close relative. Another aspect of God. Like the fourth member of the Trinity? This is heresy. Bolz-Weber is a heretic. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America lifts up this pastor as a leading teacher in the denomination. How could they do this? It's easy really; this is an acceptable teaching in the ELCA. The current issue of the official magazine of the ELCA, The Lutheran, states this clearly: “And sometimes we’d wonder just what God was up to in this religiously plural world. Perhaps — here’s a specifically Christian way of putting it — our learning from our neighbors of other faiths might just be giving us glimpses into dimensions of Christ’s lordship, and the saving activity of God the Trinity, that we hadn’t been expecting.” (read here) ----- Read more about the life and teachings of ELCA pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber (click here and scroll down). The Director of Justice for Women of the ELCA (WELCA), Inez Torres Davis, doesn't like abstinence education. In a WELCA blog posted on their website she states, “there has been no evidence that abstinence-only sex education is effective for much of anything but making girls feel badly about themselves.” The studies show that she is wrong (see here).
Then, in complete disregard for what God has said, Inez Torres Davis writes: “I have no quarrel with the idea we should encourage our children to abstain from sexual activity until they reach a certain age or marriage. . .” Notice she says abstain “until they reach a certain age.” Really? Is that what the ELCA is teaching? Sex before marriage is okay? It wouldn't surprise me since the ELCA is fine with homosexual couples engaging in sex. Question: when was the last time you heard an ELCA leader say it is a sin for non-married individuals to be sexually active? Inez Torres Davis goes on to say, “that is how I raised my two daughters. They also received good sex education in their public school. But, I did not teach them that their remaining virgins would define their worth as a young woman. I did not teach them that keeping their virginity was more important than using their heads as well as their hearts.” Inez Torres Davis ends with this, “I believe we should all just say no! We should all just say no to abstinence-only sex education as it does nothing to protect the health of youth. On the contrary, it attacks the mental health of our youth and sends an oppressive message to both young women and men. Just say no!” (see here) In other words, WELCA is telling people, and at the very least endorsing the message, to “just say no” to God and His teaching. God says: 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 - For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; Here are two more blogs by Exposing the ELCA featuring Inez Torres Davis (here and here). |
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
1 Thessalonians 5:21 Dan Skogen
Former ELCA seminary student and former ELCA member who is fed up with the ELCA's consistent mockery of God's Word. If you have been helped and blessed by Exposing the ELCA's ministry, please help us continue to proclaim the truth of God's Word to ELCA members who need to hear it.
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Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. - Ephesians 5:11
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