Pastor's Pen 05/18/2022

Details

Published: 22 May 2022 22 May 2022

Last Updated: 22 May 2022 22 May 2022

Pastor's Pen 05/04/2022

Details

Published: 22 May 2022 22 May 2022

Last Updated: 22 May 2022 22 May 2022

Power for Forgiveness

A Message from Pastor Hale

Many of those who make up the younger generations today know of Christianity, or think they do at least. There is a pre-conception of Jesus and the Bible, but they often do not know Him or His purpose. Raised with superficial or non-existent doctrinal substance (likely in Christian-named institutions), they do not really understand its absolute claims. This leads to worldly assumptions taking root which mischaracterize the whole nature of the revealed truth of Christ, the true God who took on our humanity to save us.

After decades of lousy doctrinal teaching and undue emphasis on emotion, numbers, and worldly success, the result is a barely recognizable caricature of the Christian truth – one that is completely at odds with the Holy Scriptures. The idea of Jesus and His death only brings guilt. Even being in a church building is a traumatic experience for those who once were taught that Christianity is the way to God. Many are already atheistic (literally meaning “against God”) or agnostic at best – assuming we can’t really know God or His will, so they make human assumptions about Christianity. 

But the replacements for religion are in place and deeply ingrained. Forms of cultural Marxism, tinged with “holy” political activism, put the focus on the here and now – trying to make the cursed earth into a man-made heavenly utopia, thinking government will fix all our problems. This worldly thinking rules out taking Christianity’s claims seriously, because it assumes there is only the material world – thanks to evolution on Freud’s assumption that guilt itself is bad – denying the spiritual and divine side of mankind.

The fruits of this are everywhere. I was struck by this quote on an internet forum regarding critical race theory being encouraged and taught in schools (even some of our Concordia colleges): “human interactions are much more nuanced than just power differentials and even power differentials are much more diverse and complex than just race.” This shows the error of applying a simplistic intellectual theory to all human ties – it denies the very possibility of love and reconciliation.

If earthly justice (essentially punishment and the re-arranging of the social order) is all there is (which is the theoretical assumption), then there is no place for true love and forgiveness. But this is due to not taking Scripture seriously in the first place.

Many so-called Christians are actually pagans when it comes to their most cherished assumptions about themselves and this world (even if they attend church regularly). They have learned from friends, entertainment, and social media radical enlightenment-tinged theory – rather than God’s truth. One example is the idea of love that has demolished respect for the institution of marriage and the family order. Scripture says we have no love without knowing God’s love in Christ: “We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 Jn. 4). We are sinners through and through, unable to love and be holy, even if we can resist the grossest outward manifestations to some extent. 

The very idea of sinfulness and man’s corruption has been lost to a generation for self-esteemers and self-lovers – the “self” has replaced God. So the pagan idea of falling in and out of love, as if it were an invisible and unpreventable disease, like Covid, that comes and does whatever it wants to, without our consent, is worshipped. Love in Christianity, though, is a decisive, consistent, fatherly action, commitment and decision, that often means physical suffering and the denial of one’s own will.

So the high morality of Christianity is used against Christians, because they know nothing of the forgiveness offered in Christ. It is used to dismiss the very idea of there being truth. The absolution of the Lord offered in His resurrection from the dead is denied implicitly. Everything is simply power – getting what one wants, pleasing the flesh, and pure worldly success.

These pagan intellectual ideas have become truly religious in nature. They have caused non-Christians to evangelize loudly about the planet and climate – rather than accepting what we have been given (though cursed) in gratitude to our Maker.

People crusade for worldly changes –using laws and government force while families are increasingly disintegrating and children are increasingly at odds with the body God created for them due to wrong intellectual theories. Legal and political force is all there is to the pagan. 

Christians are told by Christ to submit to the governing authorities, but not worship them as above the God who instituted them. I seem to hear more talk of the U.S. constitution and Bill of Rights, even among Christians, than divine words of Scripture, as if they were more inspired and inerrant, which is not true. They, like our nation, are products of sinful men that have been edited and re-written, unlike God’s Word which is not taken very seriously. The Bible is assumed to be old and therefore fallible and contradictory, like everything else, without taking its words and claims seriously. It is hard to evangelize someone who already thinks they know the errors of Christianity, and are prejudiced against it. They might even consider themselves Christian in their own minds, though not thinking in doctrinal terms. 

There is, of course, a lot of injustice in the world. In fact, evil is quite real – it is much worse than the unbeliever thinks. All children of Adam are sinners and guilty of trespassing God’s holy law. But guilt is not just a tool to manipulate others and achieve earthly change. It is in-built due to God’s law being written on our hearts. This divine guilt magnified by the law is forgiven by Christ. We do not re-make the world in purity with our voting or civil ordinances, rather Christ will remake it and our bodies in righteousness by His own power at the Last Day instantly. Power does not bring hope, peace, and love. Though we have much in the way of material things, the most essential necessities for living under God and with other sinners have been largely forgotten. Man is a spiritual-physical being and the body is not to be worshipped or modified to fit out desires - it is God’s own creation.

Even if we forget the Lord, Christ does not forget us. We may lose the Word – its status and respect in the world does fade at times – but Christ does not leave us. Our Lord who died and rose over all sin does not need to be brought to us by force, He has promised to be with the smallest of groups in grace: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matt. 18:20). His Word has the power to forgive. This divine power is greater than any human power. It generates, by the Holy Spirit, love in us to bear with one another, under our Lord and Head, Jesus Christ. His power is not oppressive or evil. God uses His power in love for our good. Amen.

Details

Published: 30 April 2022 30 April 2022

Last Updated: 30 April 2022 30 April 2022

Pastor's Pen 04/20/2022

Details

Published: 30 April 2022 30 April 2022

Last Updated: 30 April 2022 30 April 2022

Pastor's Pen 04/06/2022

Details

Published: 30 April 2022 30 April 2022

Last Updated: 30 April 2022 30 April 2022

Why the World does not Believe in Evolution

A Message from Pastor Hale

That may seem like a strange title, since evolution seems to be the foundational idea for the unbeliever. The heresy of attributing mankind and our world to randomness, in other words, anything but a personal God we are accountable to, is paramount. But it is really just an excuse, a justification, a convenient mess of scientific mumbo-jumbo to explain away immorality, harshness, arrogance, and decadence. It explains nothing and certainly does not drive its adherents to further the supposed aims of evolution. 

“The survival of the strongest” and “the will to reproduce” are used to explain away the harshness of man, his lust and sexual immorality, violence, and this entire world mired in sin and Adam’s curse, but it is not really followed or uplifted. This theory simply accepts the cursed state of things as good or at least necessary. But this last two years of pandemic reactions shows very clearly that death is not good, nor does evolution give tangible hope. The most atheistic and ungodly, the people in love with the idea of evolution, have been the most tyrannical in trying to prevent death by heavy-handed laws, betraying their beloved dogma.

Preventing deaths of a small minority is not what evolution suggests. Instead, it urges we should let the weak succumb to their inevitable fate, so that the species, as a whole, will survive and become stronger. As a narrative it is useful to the unbeliever in dismissing religion and the consequences of our actions, but when it comes to one’s own family and body – death is an evil to be avoided at all costs. Evolution glorifies death itself, dismissing the single entity, so that it promotes the general good – adaptation and improvement. The unfit must make way for the fit, we are told, in the acceptance of death.

But Covid reactions have been quite the opposite. Some countries, even China still, have had zero tolerance for sickness and its spread – as if we could control and defeat what sin has brought into the world. But governments do not have power over death. It has been allowed in abortion and euthanasia, making death a blessing in some circumstances. But this new unchosen, unpredictable type of death – God’s plague of punishment – was not welcomed. 

Notice how the narrative has changed: “we must do everything, even cease living, to possibly save a life out of love.” But love is not strength or worldly might, nor does Christian love demand and work through universal mandates enforced. There is no place for love in evolution, in randomness, or praising the concept of death. Moral arguments have no weight when it comes to strength and surviving a bit longer. Human love and government law cannot overcome death. Death, which civilization has accepted so blithely in evolutionary assumptions, suddenly became the thing most feared and to be avoided. What a turn-around! 

So what is said to be helpful and good – a fruitless, pointless death for most – has become a moral enemy, despite the fact that we know all will die and death cannot be prevented. In fact, we have almost seen the opposition of evolution: mandating with penalty the smallest behaviors that have no real likelihood of guaranteeing or diminishing survival. The fittest have been responsible for death, by our very living. The healthy have been said to be the problem – not the ones most unfit to survive a virus fighting for its own survival. Of course, humans do not have priority over animals, and even viruses, in evolutionary thinking. 

But the elderly have also been hurt in these recent drastic measures, because we are not just physical, material robots. Death is not our only problem. We should care for the weak, but the aged know, especially the Christian, that death is coming and cannot be avoided. Living out one’s last days alone views the person as a machine – as if a beating heart and functioning lungs is enough. But without human contact – enacted with government force – there is no tangible love shown. The Word of God heard in person, real people, and human interaction give a richness to living that evolution cannot give. I heard no expert boasting about how evolution would sort this mess out just fine, without our help or medical interventions.

A virtual love and internet visitation is not the same. That has been the greatest tragedy foisted upon society by the young and godless. Those who depend on evolution for meaning and justifying an immoral life thought to themselves: we cannot accept death. Even though death and the evolutionary principle that those who are weak are justifiable losers have been glorified. Love has no place in the great competition of survival. The death that was formerly seen as wholesome and beneficial became the enemy – to be avoided at all costs. The arrogance displayed in thinking that death could be overcome was massive. 

We could not simply live with death as a society, despite the fact that every individual must do exactly that – face death himself in hope or despair. But physical death is not the problem, we know. Eternal punishment and death cannot be staved off by not leaving our house. The problem is not physical, but spiritual. Humanity and its bonds is not the problem, nor governments the solution to death. 

The world’s harshness and the universal verdict of death upon sinners has been accepted – that is just the cycle of life, we have been told. For other people that has been fine, in general, but not recently for the unbeliever in pandemic times. But we are always in danger. Life in evolutionary bliss is a happy-go-lucky experiment with no ultimate meaning or purpose. 

Why do lives matter to the pagan? They certainly do not in abortion, and because babies are weak, they don’t fight back against their murdering mothers and fathers. That is evolution-friendly. But overwhelmed by the prospect of personal death, by a virulent virus, evolution is anything but comforting. One cannot believe in evolution, because it offers not one shred of hope. A species’ survival is not a comforting funeral sermon theme for your friend or loved one. After all, reproduction, the supposed “aim” of humanity has been so frustrated and limited – it has become a modern evil to be avoided, which is very much against the stated “purpose” of evolution: to survive and propagate. Yet this is not hope in itself either.

When death threatens all, the excuse of evolution is dropped. In death, we are all weak – there are no strong. The individual needs real, personal hope, not vague mantras about generic humanity or the species. We all must face death, but in Christ who died for sinners, we do not face it alone. We cannot outlaw death or all that could bring it upon our heads. But when sin is forgiven by the Father, the divine consequences of death are taken away and heaven is opened. Death itself is no happy accident, it is just punishment. It was never good or intended by God. Don’t accept it, but overcome it in faith in Christ who already died for you. 

True love is not avoiding people or playing the medical percentages, but is found in God the Father who gives us the Spirit in the Word, to live for God, in whom we cannot die. We overcome death in God’s grace, the removal of guilt, which is freeing, not restrictive, like laws. The pandemic lockdowns tried to short-circuit death – the prime mover of evolution – but that was futile. We always live in the midst of death as sinners. But in God’s love, we do not have to fear or change everything because of a new disease. We have a peace greater than seeing so much death and destruction and evil. Even the weakest life has value in our Lord’s submitting to death to save humanity. We care for all life, especially the smallest and weakest, because we do not accept death – we have overcome it in Jesus’ life.

Death is not something to be worshipped as holy. It was never good. Evolution glorifies and accepts what Christ died to give us victory over – God’s verdict of condemnation. Evolution is exposed as a brutal doctrine, with no hope or purpose for the individual. 

Yes, babies are given as a gift, and all will die, but God loves each one and calls all in Baptism to live with Christ forever. Death is neither the savior in humanity’s improvement, nor the greatest enemy to sacrifice all in avoiding – evolutionary explanations and zero-death Covid polices both miss the mark. Hell has been defeated and God is appeased in the sacrifice of Christ, so live above death, not in fear of it. Your righteousness is safe with Christ in heaven.

The animals around us lived (and died) unaffected by the all-consuming pandemic news cycle and induced panic. But humans have tried to circumvent what is unavoidable – because death is seen as very bad – only if it can happen to me and my family in a certain way! 

Love is not unyielding submission to civil authorities, supposed medical gods, or quick-canceling popular opinion. It is rather personal and relational – not a matter of ordinances, laws, and universal polices. Love has real purpose and must have solid meaning – and God is love, not politicians or possibly delaying another’s death. 

Every life matters, even the weakest and most fragile. We give them more care, not less. The strong have the duty and obligation to care for the weak, because death is not what we were made for. How we treat babies should not be based on the thought that death is good for them. Yes, we know they will die, but Christ has a better place than this valley of sorrow prepared for them. We baptize and raise them in hope – not just so most of our genetic code will last another generation. Hope in Jesus is greater than fear.

Physical death is not an idea, or our ultimate fate, but a physical door we must all enter through. In Christ, who died, we do not face death forever in hell, since it has been defeated and made temporary in the resurrection to come. Satan does not win. We are reassured in the Word of forgiveness that the death we all experience is not the profoundest meaning on earth. Evolution is Satan’s lie that death is not a real problem. Rather, we are called to love Christ who is greater than death, weakness, and dying, because we have a heavenly righteousness in our Lord.

It is our meaning and place in relation to God – beyond death – that matters most. Accepting death is not a hopeful or loving enterprise, as the world has been so painfully taught. So turn from sin and loving death, to the God who loved us enough to die in our place: Jesus Christ. 

Impending death reveals our God. Being faced with the fact that we must die has caused some to completely overreact and be anti-evolutionary – to do the very opposite of what they claim to profess, accept, and bless: death as progress. But morals and values and every individual matters. Accepting death and pure materialism is not a good religion. Simply stating that death is a fact of life does not work on the personal level, nor for all humanity, despite those who speak so glowingly about evolution in the grand scheme. The Gospel is the universal truth of hope, offering God’s pure righteousness to sinners caught in a web of sin and death they have perpetuated. 

Evolution is a harsh, hopeless doctrine. It cannot be believed, because it offers nothing personal to believe – it says nothing to the solitary individual caught up in the great machine of death and momentary reproduction and then more death – and finally, only death for all things. It only offers death in the end, nothing else. Death is not good news. Only God’s resurrection over death gives us strength to face physical death daily. 

Christ offered His death in our cursed place, relieving us of the punishment death reveals with true life. God’s death is better news than accepting death as natural and normal. Death is not life. Jesus is life for the dying. God Himself broke the cycle of death. Do not trust in potentially slightly better DNA for your children, rather trust in Christ who rose from the dead to give all life. Believing in His Word, giving us victory in the life-giving flesh of Jesus, we have hope at the most personal level – not just the species or government plane. God the Father offers us life in the Word of Christ to fill us with His Spirit to love, not to blindly and sullenly accept death.

You are more than fodder for natural selection. You were chosen to be God’s child to live – not just a few years – but in His kingdom forever, giving you eternal purpose and value, and righteous purposes right now. Holiness is your calling. Do not accept this world’s version of death as gospel news. 

We do not fear or worship death. We have a real, personal hope in Jesus to believe and live in – despite the veil of death that covers all things for now. But the minds of evolutionists are hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, and teach their evolutionist religion of brutality and death, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. (2 Cor. 3:14). 

Details

Published: 07 April 2022 07 April 2022

Last Updated: 07 April 2022 07 April 2022

Pastor's Pen 03/23/2022

Details

Published: 24 March 2022 24 March 2022

Last Updated: 24 March 2022 24 March 2022

New Bible Translations

A Message from Pastor Hale

There are many Bible translations and more each day. Not all the books that say "Holy Bible" on them, treat the words the same though. Many modern translations have an agenda, especially in regard to specific language which is considered impolite, offensive, or even hate speech today. So there is a version made to suit each type of sinner. Many translations are decent, though none are inspired translations, which is a fact to keep in mind.

The LCMS had to move away from the NIV in 2011, due to revisions made to the 1981 edition. There is no easy way to tell – the name was not changed. Only the copyright changed, which is somewhat deliberately confusing. God does not change. Yet, language does. Many appreciate the KJV, which is a good translation, but it is not perfect. The real problem with it is not the translating in it, but the way the English has changed. We don't speak as we pray the Lord's Prayer anymore. Many words have changed meaning, so that unless one was raised on it or knows it well, the KJV is difficult to parse and understand.

All of us must work with translations, and we can have confidence in a good translation. God's Word is the power for salvation to all who believe. The Bible is God’s Word. But translations can be done poorly or well. Not all are faithful to the Word as the Spirit gave it. If a Bible translation seeks to accommodate God’s inspired language to the secular sensitivities of sinners, it is not faithful or as useful. This is the attempt to make God’s Word on the same level as man’s word.

If the Bible only seeks to give a perspective adjustment – it is not seen as an authority. We are to be under God’s Word – because He speaks to us in it. To change the text, as we best know it, based on what the reader expects – rather than furthering understandability – is a heinous sin. We are to submit to the Word, not change it to fit with us. 

Details

Published: 22 March 2022 22 March 2022

Last Updated: 22 March 2022 22 March 2022

Pastor's Pen 03/09/2022

Details

Published: 22 March 2022 22 March 2022

Last Updated: 22 March 2022 22 March 2022

Pastor's Pen 02/16/2022

Details

Published: 22 February 2022 22 February 2022

Last Updated: 22 February 2022 22 February 2022