Gottesblog

It won't be lions in amphitheaters and certainly won't be incense and the genius Caesaris. It will be more like the Human Rights Commission of Canada pulling Mark Steyn in for thought crime. Or Australian pastors getting dragged to court for saying unnice things about Islam.

Old school Lutherans, that is. Like Chemnitz and Andrae who wrote Church Orders that mandated fixed liturgical forms, prayers, readings, vestments, times of service, etc. If you refused to follow the Church Order, then you were ousted from your parish. This is how Lutheranism worked at the time of the Reformation and in the generations afterward.

Ecclesia semper reformanda est - I don't know who coined that phrase, but it's ever so true. And always has been - see Galatians. In this sense, there has never been a golden age and we should not be disheartened by the mess our little patch of the una sancta finds herself in. The Missouri Synod is indeed by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed: the worship wars, Seminary Lite (SMP), a few charismatics here, a few would be women-ordainers there, usw.

In the Tabernacle the Holy of Holies with the Ark was in the western part of the building. The altar of sacrifice was outside the Holy of Holies in the eastern part of the courtyard. In the NT, our Churches have, as it were, moved the Holy of Holies to the East and enveloped the Altar.