Winter 2023
Winter 2023 (Issue 7)
Sanctified Imagination
Preaching and teaching the Word made flesh liberates the imagination from this world’s false and crippling vision of reality, and once again brings the imagination into an encounter with the one and only true and living God through Immanuel, “God with us.”
Transgenderism and the End of the Church Growth Movement
But on a fundamental level, the reason congregations don’t grow is because people love their sins, hate their Savior, and are not hearing a clear confession that will call them out of the darkness and into God’s marvelous light. The only solution to that problem is the Word of God.
The Disrespect for Marriage Act
Misguided politicians bartered away God’s definition of marriage in return for institutional protections, but not individual protections. In so doing, they agreed to label dissenters as discriminators.
Sanctified Imagination
Preaching and teaching the Word made flesh liberates the imagination from this world’s false and crippling vision of reality, and once again brings the imagination into an encounter with the one and only true and living God through Immanuel, “God with us.”
Transgenderism and the End of the Church Growth Movement
But on a fundamental level, the reason congregations don’t grow is because people love their sins, hate their Savior, and are not hearing a clear confession that will call them out of the darkness and into God’s marvelous light. The only solution to that problem is the Word of God.
The Disrespect for Marriage Act
Misguided politicians bartered away God’s definition of marriage in return for institutional protections, but not individual protections. In so doing, they agreed to label dissenters as discriminators.
A Statement from the Wyoming District of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod For Her Pastors and Congregations, December 5, 2022
The following statement, written by Rev. John Hill, President of the Wyoming District of the LCMS, responds to H.R. 8404, known among us as the “Disrespect for Marriage Act,” which repealed the “Defense of Marriage Act” and rejected God’s definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman for life.
The Children of This World are Shrewder
With our help, in any case through our negligence, the unbelievers have almost exclusively taken the press into their service.
Dear Conscience, Rest! For Thou Art Blessed (Hymn)
Dear conscience, rest! For thou art blessed, / At peace through Jesus’ merit.
Sebastian Schmidt
Sebastian Schmidt (1617–96) was the foremost Hebrew scholar and exegete of the period of Lutheran Orthodoxy. He was a product of and testament to the excellence of classical Lutheran education.
Philipp Nicolai on the Theory and Practice of Eternal Life
Philipp Nicolai received an excellent education. He entered Gymnasium in Dortmund when he was 15 years old and was instructed by the very men who had been first to leave the Roman church in Dortmund and join the Reformation.
Review: My Ántonia
American author Willa Cather would like us to read her 1918 novel My Ántonia with classical eyes. In a revelatory passage, the narrator meditates upon a line from the Georgics, the Roman Virgil’s poem about agriculture and rural living.
Review of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Carl R. Trueman
Why are we at the point that transgenderism, LBGTQ+, and this sexual revolution are so infallibly prominent and protected by federal law such as the Respect For Marriage Act? In The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Carl Trueman correctly shows that this didn’t just happen by chance.
Review: Evening Bells at Bethany
Madson’s sermons are not literary works or academic treatises. They are pastoral. But he shows great facility with the English language. He makes use of literary allusions. Neither flowery nor drab, he preaches in a lively, engaging style.
Excellent Films for the Family: A Child’s Christmas in Wales (1987)
The film captures rootedness in contrast to our shifting world where transience has been deemed necessary, novelty is called virtue, and uprootedness is assumed.
The Pipe Organ: Herald of the Reformation
On October 31, 2017, the pipe organs in the Castle Church at Wittenberg, Germany breathed and lifted their voices heralding the Five-Hundredth Anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation. The organs were in excellent voice, fulfilling their purpose—breathing, singing, and praising Christ with God’s people—as they have done for more than half a millennium.
