LCMS Sick, Dying, And Badly In Need Of A Doctor

Sumbuddy has sum 'splainin' to do!

I'll leave it to any LCMS person to explain how the LCMS is still orthodox, due to it's inability to recognize heresy. If you can't point out and reject heresy, I don't think you are orthodox.

The following is yet another reason why I refer to the LCMS as the LCMesS. Because it is doing the tango with heterodoxy. Which is like doing the tango with eggs stuffed in one's shirt. Just ask Lucy Ricardo what that's like.

Here are two questions that baffle the LCMS leadership:
Is Christ truly and fully God? And with that question, is a person that denies Christ is truly and fully God a heretic?

That one should be a meatball hanging over the plate, easy to hit out of the park, a la Pujols' 2005 game 5 NLCS jack. But the LCMS doesn't seem to know what to do with these questions.

Is that sad, or what?

I am with those that insist Christ is fully and truly God, and if Christ is not fully and truly God, we're all in trouble.

And if He is not, St. Paul was wrong to say in Col. 2:9: ‘For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.’(NIV).

What is so difficult about this question? Like, are y'all orthodox or heterodox? Scary stuff.

Wake up, all you LCMS people who are asleep. The LCMS is NOT the church. Get out. Stand with those of us who have left. Don't put up with this. Get away from these people. Don't be counted with them.

And if I'm wrong, show me where I am, that you may win a brother .

From Reclaim News:

""LCMS Not Sure If John Baptized God in Christ 2000 Years Ago"

Was that man that John the Baptist baptized, 2000 years ago, the entire, whole, complete God in the flesh; was He a part of God; or did John only baptize the human Jesus?

The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has been struggling with this any (sic) many other questions about the Trinity and the Person of Christ since June of 2001.

In May of 2001, Reverend Jack Cascione declared that Dr. Waldo Werning’s book, "Health and Healing for the LCMS,” which was sent to every 2001 LCMS Convention delegate, rejected the correct doctrine of the Trinity and the Two Natures of Christ.

In his book, Werning proclaims that “God revealed Himself in three ways” (pages 33-34) and that Christians, “experience God in a three-fold manner,” and that God has “three manners of being.” With this heresy, Werning denies that any Person of the Trinity, in particular, Jesus Christ, is the entire, whole, complete God apart from whom there is no other God.

Modalism is that false doctrine that teaches that one God appears in different ways or manners. Tritheism is that false doctrine with teaches that there are three separate Gods.

Werning promptly filed charges against Cascione.

The South Wisconsin District President, Dr. Ronald E. Meyer, Vice president Rev. Paul Borgman, and Rev. Ronald Krug promptly wrote letters defending Werning’s book as the correct doctrine of the LCMS and wrote that Cascione had slandered Werning. Also, Dr. Paul Maier, second vice President of the LCMS, wrote for the LCMS Praesdium that Werning had been slandered and could file charges against Cascione.

Former Michigan District President Dr. John Heins, Rev. Wayne Pohl, Rev. John Reusch, and Michigan District First Vice President Rev. Toshio Okamoto, also appeared as silent witnesses for Werning in 2002. Heins also took minutes of the meeting for Werning.

LCMS President, Dr. Gerald Kieschnick, also wrote a paper defending Werning’s position. Kieschnick declared that saying “Jesus is the entire, whole, complete God” is “confusing” and “misleading.”

So, who did John the Baptist baptize 2000 years ago by the River Jordan? All the above clergy support Werning’s teaching on the Trinity by agreeing with him that Jesus is not the “entire, whole, complete God apart from whom there is no other God.” In other words, they don’t agree that God was baptized in Christ, unless of course they think God has parts.

During a formal LCMS dispute resolution panel meeting in Chicago in August of 2004, Werning continued to explain his heretical teaching on the Trinity and the Two Natures of Christ. He also announced that Kieschnick pleaded with him to file charges against Cascione.

Werning also explained that Acts 20:28 is not talking about Jesus Christ when it speaks about God’s blood, that Luther is wrong in writing, "and there's none other God" (TLH) about Jesus Christ in verse two of "A Mighty Fortress;" and the words, “when God the Might Maker died” are wrong in verse three of “Alas and Did My Savior Bleed” (TLH).

On December 6, 2005, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Secretary, Doctor Raymond Hartwig wrote in a letter to Dr. Waldo Werning that the LCMS would attempt to resolve the charges that Werning filed against Rev. Jack Cascione. Cascione was removed from the LCMS clergy roster by LCMS President of the Council of District Presidents, Dr. William Hoesman, on December 20, 2004.

In October of 2005, Cascione offered $2,000 to any LCMS Pastor who can get Werning to agree that God’s blood is Jesus Christ’s blood in Acts 20:28; that Luther is correct in the second verse of “A Mighty Fortress;” and that Jesus Christ is the entire, whole, complete God, apart from whom there is no other God.

No South Wisconsin District pastors accepted the challenge to collect the bounty. These pastors can’t be paid to confess what they are supposed to confess of their own free will.

We read in Luke 3:21-22, “Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, 22 And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.”

This is what Luther says about these verses:

“Of this Man [Jesus Christ] you cannot say: That is God the Father or that is God the Holy Spirit; but you must say: That is God the Son, although God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one God, and although you can say very correctly of the Man: That is God, and there is no other god beside Him. And yet it would be incorrect to say: That is God the Father or God the Holy Spirit. No, you must say: That is God the Son, as St. Paul declares in Col. 2:9: ‘For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.’ And yet the Father and the Holy Spirit are not thereby deprived of their Godhead but are one God together with the Son and Man Christ. Here you observe how the three Persons are to be believed as distinct within the Godhead and are not to be jumbled together into one Person and that, for all of that, the divine essence is not to be divided to make three gods. Viewed from without, from the point of view of the creature, there is but one Creator, so completely one that even the creature forms which the three Persons individually take are the single work of all three Persons of the one God.” (Luther’s Works Vol. 15, Page 305)

It has been 4½ years since Werning filed charges against Cascione. The Chicago Dispute Resolution Panel attempted to make a decision in the case in April of 2005. However, when Cascione pointed out that the ruling from the Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR), favoring Werning, was written before the panel met in August of 2004, the Panel has remained silent. In other words, the Synod decided the case before it was heard.

Werning wants a final answer from the Synod certifying that his false doctrine of the Trinity and the Two Natures of Christ is the correct doctrine of the Synod.

Werning appealed to the LCMS Commission on Constitutional Matters (CCM) that the Synod was not following the Handbook by taking all this time to come to a formal decision in his charges against Cascione. LCMS Secretary Hartwig assures Werning there will be a decision in 2006.

Perhaps then, the LCMS will officially decide who was baptized by John the Baptist in the River Jordan 2000 years ago.

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