The Nihil Rule

"Become a Surrogate - Earn $69,000+" Surrogacy is a perversion of God's gift of marriage. God blesses man and woman with the fruit of the womb in a one-flesh union and places a child in the context of that particular mother and a father, because that child needs both a mother and father. But that doesn't mean that a heterosexual Christian couple (but I repeat myself) who can't conceive can rightfully use a surrogate: if God denies you the natural ability to create life, we should seek to live within the parameters our God set for us (the same applies to IVF - even more so given the number of embryos destroyed or indefinitely suspended in the process). A godly option, if you can accept it, would be adoption. But let's be frank - surrogacy is a conduit for creating "fashion accessories" for homosexuals (Lord, have mercy). A quick perusal of SimpleSurrogacy.com shows the last two blog posts feature gay parents playing with a child: The "Intended Pa...

There are always blasphemy laws.  It is simply a matter of who defines them.

“Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven. “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.’ He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it." -Matthew 10:32–39, the appointed Gospel for the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession “Most gracious Emperor, this is a Confession that will even prevail against the gates of hell, with the grace and help of God.” - Grego...

Let's talk about how many of our churches avoid talking about the LGBTQ specifically but other contemporaneous social issues more generally. I think there is a flavor of antinomianism towards issues that would make us unpopular with the culture, even in churches that would staunchly oppose the antinomian spirit in all other circumstances. The article that got me thinking about this is  The Antinomian Captivity of the Church  by Matthew Cochran. He specifically applies antinomianism to the case of Mr. Ryan Turnipseed, but the template has obvious applications elsewhere. Allow me to extract a paragraph: "This restriction they place on God’s Law has consequences for their preaching and teaching. They deliberately avoid teaching on specific sins, lest one who avoids them thinks themselves more righteous than one who hasn’t. All sins are equal in their sight to ensure no one thinks they’re better than their neighbor. They reduce sanctification to nothing more than getting used to j...

Rosaria Butterfield - a former lesbian and now a former advocate of the Christian use of pronouns - writes a compelling article on why not to use transgender pronouns . She correctly identifies the use of preferred pronouns as sin. and debunks the relationship argument we heard from "Pastor Mike" Novotny. 'Transgenderism is satanic. We who once promoted “pronoun hospitality” lent false credibility to a wolfish theology that fails to protect the sheep. Instead, it eats them alive.' I have been told her book is worth reading . 

In a welcome (pri)DEMON(th) surprise, Pastor Tyrel Bramwell reviews Pastor Novotny's equivocation on pronouns .  You should watch the whole thing; the broader discussion starts  around the 14 minute mark with the video review starting  around the 18 minute mark .  A few choice quotes (on evangelism, 23 minutes) "Even confidence is a no-no now, which you can tell from [Novotny's] demeanor in this video" (on sin, 26 minutes) "I'm not looking back at the 50s with any rose-colored glasses, I know there was just as much sin as there is now, but there was also repentance then that is completely absent now. Now, there is an intentional queering of God's norm, His order going on so much so that we even see pastors buying into the language and trying to work within the Godless structure and vocabulary..." Bramwell's arguments rest on two points. The first is that the Devil wants to trick us into thinking we have time, that there is no particularly urgenc...

  The Church Among the Deathworks | Carl R. Trueman Long ago, Nietzsche’s Madman asked the rhetorical question, “What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?” Sadly, it seems that too many of the gravediggers these days are members of the clergy. "Deathworks" is a term which Carl Trueman introduces in his book " The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self ." The term was coined by sociologist Philip Rieff as "the act of using the sacred symbols of a previous era in order to subvert, then destroy, their original significance and purpose." While there are many deathworks among us none are as vibrant or forceful as those of the LGBTQ and the inroads they have made into the Church. This article is a quick introduction to the idea with application; if you enjoy his writing, I do recommend his book as an expansive discussion of what is wrong with modern man.

The WELS Conference of Presidents published a Statement on Human Sexuality, Personhood, Identity, and the Historic Christian Faith in October of 2019. It's quite good; I encourage you to read the whole thing and I'll make a few observations here. First, this statement is not held to the same standards as a doctrinal statement, so while it is considered pure doctrine and provides guidance for pastors and laity it is not "enforceable" per see.  Second, the document references similar statements by the ELS and the  LCMS . The ELS document is a single paragraph with fourteen Scripture references. It is incredibly concise but provides no specific guidance. The LCMS document spends its first third discussing the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defining terms and getting a secular perspective and noting the changes from release IV to 5, where the views on transgenderism started to liberalize. The next third bring Scripture to bear, noting that Jesus...

  "No Christian churchman should dream of complaining when Truth is given precedence over Love, or, more accurately, love for God and His Word over love for man." -Kurt Marquart, The Question of Procedure in Theological Controversies (note the obvious application to affirming pronouns, etc.)

  Pride month is upon us, and it is a doctrine of demons. Many of us will not hear anything of it from our pulpits this month. Some might get vague references curbed by the caveats that "all sins are equal" and "look at the plank in your own eye before the spec in theirs." Very few will have a Pastor willing to speak against these sins as being distinctively evil and damaging to both body and soul.  This month I intend to be being laser-focused on the cultural sins of our age because I fall in the former camp - my pastor will not touch these things with a ten-foot pole even when he is given encouragement to do so.  To start - let us make it abundantly clear that pride month is a doctrine of demons. Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:9 calls out both the "active" and "passive" participants in homosexual relationships, using the sexual slang of his day. A chapter earlier he tells the Corinthian congregation to "deliver over to Satan" a man in the co...