Walther, The American Calvin: A Synod Built on Felonies Has Been Sent to WELS-ELS-LCMS Seminaries

Some services take a photo of the delivery and send it to me, so keep your porches clean! WELS, LCMS Concordias, the Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie, and Lutheran School of Chicago in Chicago got copies. Christian News received or will receive two copies of Walther, The American Calvin: A Synod Built on Felonies. Galatians was locked up or thrown away at CN formerly Lutheran News.
I am glad to send free review copies to anyone who actually reviews a book. One WELS pastor asked for a free review copy of Thy Strong Word, kept it, denounced me, and wrote no review. That is what WELS friends are like - imagine the enemies in that sect!

Walther, The American Calvin: A Synod Built on Felonies

"Justified before we were born!" - Edward Preuss. The Objective Justification Enthusiasts eat that up. Walther thought that little book by Preuss was way cool, and the Synodical Conference still adores it, even thought that passage - cited by Dr. Robert Preus - is so close to Calvinism that you can taste the sulfur.
Walther, The American Calvin: A Synod Built on Felonies

Two Reviews - Understanding Luther's Galatians and Walther, The American Calvin: A Synod Built on Felonies

Understanding Luther's Galatians can be found here on Amazon.

Top review from the United States

Amazon Customer

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent re-issue of Graebner's shorter translation of Luther's Commentary on Galatians

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2021

Verified Purchase

This book is a re-issue of Dr. Theodore Graebner’s shorter translation of Martin Luther's “Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians.”

In his forward, Dr. Graebner expressed his reason for his translation of Martin Luther's work:

“The importance of this commentary on Galatians for the history of Protestantism is very great. It presents, like no other of Luther's writings, the central thought of Christianity, the justification of the sinner for the sake of Christ's merits alone.”

Dr. Gregory L. Jackson added an introduction along with comments, which he embedded within the text. He enclosed his comments within boxes, in order to separate them from Luther's words.

In his introduction, Dr. Jackson wrote that:

“By stealth, Lutherans have steadily eroded the Biblical doctrine of the Reformation (justification by faith alone), which established them as Evangelicals and Protestants, by now allowing others to use those names and surrendering to the worst inclinations of Calvinists, Pietists, and Roman Catholics. The uniting cause, to soothe every worldly conscience, is to declare that God in his grace has already declared the entire world absolved of all sins. … God declared the world righteous through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus…”.

Dr. Jackson quoted from the work of the 18th century theologian Georg Christian Knapp to show the false doctrine that flowed from universal absolution without regard to faith.

“This is conveniently expressed by the terms Objective and Subjective Justification. Objective Justification is the act of God by which he proffers pardon to all through Christ. Subjective Justification is the act of man by which he accepts the pardon freely offered in the Gospel.”

In a comment on page 56, Dr. Jackson succinctly elucidated the error of those who adhere to the doctrines of Objective and Subjective Justification:

“The false teachers reverse what Paul and Luther taught. The Objective Justification fanatics lay hold of universal forgiveness and make faith in Jesus irrelevant. Faith in Christ has nothing to do with their divine declaration of forgiveness. Secondly, their subjective justification is not faith in Christ, but rather trust in the truth of universal forgiveness.”

As a Lutheran layman, I know that the idea that God forgave the sins of every member of the human race upon the death or resurrection of Christ and this made them righteous is not what Paul taught. Rather, he taught that God declares a person righteous after God imputes the person's sins to Christ, and he imputes the merits of Christ’s sinless life and perfect obedience to the person. Faith is the means by which a person receives righteousness. Is righteousness simply the forgiving of sins, as the Objective justification proponents claim? No. Righteousness requires God to impute the sins of the sinner to Christ, and the merits of Christ's sinless life and perfect obedience to the sinner. Only after this double imputation is a sinner righteous in God's sight.

The idea that “we need to accept the pardon offered by God” is not found in Paul's teaching. It brings to mind the famous Arminian preacher Billy Graham and his call to “Make a decision for Christ.”

I would recommend this book to someone who wishes a read a condensed version of Luther's Commentary on Galatians. It is an excellent introduction for someone who is unfamiliar with the Apostle Paul's doctrine on justification by faith alone. Dr. Jackson's comments highlight key doctrinal points in the text. His comments also illustrate the degree to which the doctrines of present-day confessional Lutheran churches have diverged from the plain teachings of the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther.

Dr Jackson discusses the problems of present day Christian denominations on his internet blog. Google ichabodthegloryhasdeparted for the URL. He conducts a weekly traditional Lutheran worship service via the internet, the blog has a link to the broadcast site which also has archived broadcasts.

Bethany Lutheran Worship 

 Walther, the American Calvin: A Synod Built on Felonies

Mic

5.0 out of 5 stars A shot across the bow

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2021

This is an epiphany for lovers of alternative church history. The author connects the dots and reveals many inconvenient details that he deduced from his careful reading of contemporaneous sources. The ball is now in the court of his detractors. Will they respond?

I am not holding my breath.

Walther, the American Calvin: A Synod Built on Felonies

Arriving - Walther, The American Calvin - at Many Doorsteps

Walther, The American Calvin - print and Kindle.

The preliminary orders are starting to arrive. South Carolina won the race. I have a photo of it delivered. That happens in other places, too, but SC was first.

The print copy is full color but reasonable - only $10 retail. I have made all books non-profit. The Kindle is only 99 cents, but CPH (Conrcordia Publishes Heretics) is charging $40 per Kindle. 

Compare and contrast - the Chief Article of Christianity versus the Calvinist Objective Justification of the Pietists, justified before birth!

Every time you click on a Walther link, an angel gets his wings.
Every time you review a book from Martin Chemnitz Press, the senior editor of the Book of Concord gets a cheer.

"Thanks for remembering me, folks."

Now Available - Walther, The American Calvin:A Synod Built on Felonies

Click here for the print and Kindle version of
Walther, The American Calvin: A Synod Built on Felonies

The early copies of Walther, The American Calvin, have gone out. I have not seen the printed copy yet.

The free PDF will be posted soon.

You can just offer a couple of sentences for a review, such as the need for a more honest view of Missouri's history. Bad reviews are welcome, too. 

Gratuitous kitten photo

"Whatever you do, mein brethren, forget the early years of the Missouri Synod."

Plans for the Walther Book

The Missouri Synod's only humor book can fill the parsonage with laughter, if only by comparing the solemn declarations of the Great Walther to his behavior. 

Walther the American Calvin - 

A Synod Built on Felonies and False Doctrine

I appreciate the interest being shown as the rough drafts are being published. The last section of the book will deal with Walther's Election without Faith, which he used to break up the Olde Synodical Conference. Not to worry, the genius leaders today have stitched together a new union, based by Walther's confused and anti-Biblical Objective Justification.

In brief, Walther could not convince his own sect to make OJ official, so his gambit included two assaults on the truth. One was to manipulate Missouri into hiring Francis Pieper as his successor, to parrot his OJ just as he parroted Stephan's - and that worked well, albeit slowly. The second assault was his promotion of Calvin's double-predestination, Election without Faith, to drive out anyone who disagreed with his Easter absolution of the World (OJ) nonsense.

These three are more difficult to remove than a grease spot after a McDonalds meal in the car. The most alarming fact is that the next bunch of SPs will be even worse, just as these false prophets have shown themselves to be even more determined than their predecessors. 

After the Walther Book Is Done

 My first Greek New Testament was a Hort-Wescott.

A conversation with an MDiv made me consider the book to be written after Walther the American Calvin. I realized that a detective novel that I once planned was already on my bookshelves, ready to be written and released. The plot is simple - three men with a hidden agenda plot to get rid of the King James Version of the Bible and its text. Their labors were long, difficult, and packed with intrigues, lies, and Romanism. But they were not quite successful - Attempted Murder! - they longed to kill the traditional text of the Bible and its translation. They broke the foundations of Biblical understanding - as rationalists with chips on their stooped shoulders - and that provided the path for corrupt translations. Thus -

Attempted Murder: Broken Biblical Foundations and Corrupt Translations

The challenge is to gather information from my books on text criticism and translations. Next I need to explain matters so they make sense for those with little or no Greek and Hebrew - that is - the typical WELS-LCMS-ELS pastor.

My preference is always the King James Version, so I would like to see clergy and congregations move entirely away from the NIV-ESV broken Bibles. The text is the first, foundational issue for the Bible. If the text is butchered, as it is in the NIV-ESV, then the translation is an adiaphoron. Those heavily promoted and over-priced versions present a damaged product that reminds us of what the Bible once was. They are like Hollywood stars who have undergone far too many plastic surgery operations.

The evidence is there in black and white. The criminals let their laughable theories and fables remain in the archives, so the crime scene remains fresh and easy to examine.

This is just a sample. There is nothing wrong with the concept of text criticism, sometimes called Lower Criticism. The next stage was Higher Criticism, where the new ideas provided a basis for questioning the meaning of the Bible.

Text criticism looks for the best possible text. In the course of copying, there are easy to understand mistakes. Other mistakes come from careless copyists. Still other errors come from those with an agenda.

Wescott and Hort chose the worst sources for their Greek New Testament. As Bishop Wordsworth wrote, the two men changed 50 times as much as the project needed. What the pair loved most were the worst manuscripts, a tiny fraction of the thousands existing from ancient times. The overwhelming majority of texts are in complete agreement (minus the typos, or writos). Hort scorned them at the beginning and invented silly "laws" to explain his pernicious changes. Like arsenic, the poison was not immediately fatal but was slow acting.

Hort has his way now. Very few denominations allow the King James (and modern King James updates) to be discussed, let alone used. The Hort completely dominates all seminaries under the name Nestle-Aland edition - same style, same prejudice, same blunders, different brand.

Hence all translations begin with corruption.