This seems like my kinda place..

[94Preacher]

Greetings my brothers and sisters in Christ!

Figured I'd pop in and say hello, dig around a bit. It's nice to see a place where confessional Lutherans can come together and chat. As for other information about me, I like cars and I hop around on some of the automotive forums. I'm not really interested in ghosts (as I don't believe in them anyways) but more-so learning/researching what makes the new agers tick and seeing first hand the deception that the demonic are capable of when it comes to people operating without faith in a field that so heavily requires it. At some point I hope to put out a book aimed at Lutherans on the topic. New Age in my opinion is the biggest threat to the Church, so I'm sneaking around seeing what they are up to haha.

 

[DaRev]

Greetings my brothers and sisters in Christ!

My name is Bill. I am a Seminary student at Concordia Theological in Fort Wayne IN. I am one of those crazy LC-MS folks. Figured I'd pop in and say hello, dig around a bit. It's nice to see a place where confessional Lutherans can come together and chat. As for other information about me, I like cars and I hop around on some of the automotive forums. I'm also a paranormal researcher and currently working as a Demonologist for a team in Fort Wayne. I'm not really interested in ghosts (as I don't believe in them anyways) but more-so learning/researching what makes the new agers tick and seeing first hand the deception that the demonic are capable of when it comes to people operating without faith in a field that so heavily requires it. At some point I hope to put out a book aimed at Lutherans on the topic. New Age in my opinion is the biggest threat to the Church, so I'm sneaking around seeing what they are up to haha.

Welcome to the forum.

There is a booklet that is floating around that you may be interested in. I believe it was originally written as part of a master's thesis. The writer is Darrell McCulley, a former student at Concordia St. Louis. It's called "The House Swept Clean." I'm not sure how to go about finding one. I think it was originally printed by the CSL print shop and was sold in the campus bookstore. You might try contacting the sem there and see if it can be had. If you do happen to come across a copy, let me know. I'd love to have one.

 

[94Preacher]

Depending upon when it was written it is hard to say if it is out of print or not. I'd assume if it was through Concordia St. Louis it would have been published by Concordia Publishing House. I'll dig around and see if I can find it. I've been reading some stuff from Kurt Koch who was a Lutheran Pastor affiliated with one of the State Churches of Germany. He's pretty sound on Doctrine.

 

[DaRev]

Depending upon when it was written it is hard to say if it is out of print or not. I'd assume if it was through Concordia St. Louis it would have been published by Concordia Publishing House. I'll dig around and see if I can find it. I've been reading some stuff from Kurt Koch who was a Lutheran Pastor affiliated with one of the State Churches of Germany. He's pretty sound on Doctrine.

It wasn't published by CPH. It was written by a student who made copies available for others through the bookstore.

 

[94Preacher]

Well I contacted Rev. McCulley, hunted him down through the amazing powers of the intrawebz. So hopefully we can get our hands on some copies. I'll let you know if he gets back to me.

 

[Studeclunker]

Welcome, Preacher. What kind of cars do you like? I have Studebakers and my roomate/landlord has Land Rovers.

Sometimes it gets a bit chilly here in Fawn Lodge CA:

This is a bit better picture of Bess ('56 Studebaker Parkview):

We're off to work in this one. Well, sort of. Actually, I was getting ready to take the trailer to the DMV to be registered. Bess doesn't actually have the brakes to pull this trailer fully loaded.

and a shot of my best friend:

 

[94Preacher]

Studeclunker, I'm a blue oval kinda guy. I currently own two Ford Thunderbirds. One is a 1994 that I've swapped a 351W into. The other is my daily which is a 97 Thunderbird Lx with the 4.6 V8. I'm a young gun, so my budget is limited to cars from the 90's haha. I had a 98 Mustang for a few years, but that was a cop magnet. Sold it and got into my currently Daily listed above. I'm from Erie PA, so I am aware of your suffering with the winter blues. There have been many occasions that I've had to use a stick to find my car in the snow drifts haha. My father owns a Salvage Yard and repair shop that was built from the ground up by my Grandfather in 1958. So I know my way around an automobile, but Ministy was my calling so I won't be taking over the fam business. He has a 98 Mitsubishi 3000gt, a 1970 AMC Javelin Donahue, 1998 Chevy S-10 with a 415 Motor Swap, 1957 Chevrolet Sedan Delivery that we have been slowly restoring for the past few years, a 2005 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP. My mother owns a 1985 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 with a 350 Swap and a 1999 Ford Mustang. Haha, so yeah.. motor heads to put it lightly.

 

[Studeclunker]

Believe it or not, I'm not a gearhead. George is (LOL), but not me. My first loves are model trains, gardening, Architechture, and writing. The cars were kind of a desparation sort of thing. I had a series of three new cars that were... nice to drive, but lousy cars all round. They were a Merc. and two Dodges. After the Aries, I swore off new cars. Currently I have the luxury (if you must call it that) of living in the Sanford and Son junkyard (LOL). The biggest downside being Matilda the hun and her happy band of barbarians (goats).

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Hi Bill!

Welcome to TCL!

 

[seajoy]

Hi Bill! It's great to have another Pastor in our midst....and a conservative/confessional one to boot. When you hang out here, you get to talk to WELS folks too. Anyway, welcome to the forum....and God's blessings on your time at Sem.

 

[RadMan]

Hello Bill and welcome. Cars and the occult.......interesting. The occult I'll leave alone but the cars I'll stay with.

Dabblin' in cars was a necessity most of my life just to get around. Living in the country I've always needed a back up vehicle. Now I just play with the oldies. One is my 58 Chevy Belair Sports Coupe and the other is a 70 Torino GT convertible. I had another play toy. It was an 09 ZR1 Vette convertible. It was a transformer. It transformed into an 09 Silverado, 1 ton dully crew cab, Duramax diesel, 4X4. More practical. Although the Vette was fun and had a "G" force indicator on the dash to tell how many "Gs" we were getting when we accelerated. It had over 500 HP. When I crushed the accelerator all I could do was hold on.

Can't find a pic of the Torino.

 

[Tangible]

Hi Bill! I'm fairly new here too, and a new Lutheran. I look forward to chatting with you here.

You should come visit the town where I live if you're interested in hauntings and such. Atchison is touted as being the most haunted town in the US, but I think there are others that also claim that title. They have a city-sponsored haunted house tour every year in the fall. Pretty good for the local businesses.

We have a friend who lives next to a purported haunted house who is always updating us on the latest events she thinks are weird. She finds dead birds and bats around her house pretty often. She claims that things inside the house next door change position without being moved and that lights mysteriously turn off and on. She's Catholic and seems to be pretty open to belief in ghosts, etc., but not necessarily fearful of them. It's a Catholic town for that matter, about 75% culturally Catholic, a small Catholic university - we've even got a nunnery!

 

[LutheranChick]

Hi Bill, and Welcome! I'm the lone (I think) ELS'er who haunts this forum. (yep pun intended)

 

[BigNorsk]

Greetings my brothers and sisters in Christ!

My name is Bill. I am a Seminary student at Concordia Theological in Fort Wayne IN. I am one of those crazy LC-MS folks. Figured I'd pop in and say hello, dig around a bit. It's nice to see a place where confessional Lutherans can come together and chat. As for other information about me, I like cars and I hop around on some of the automotive forums. I'm also a paranormal researcher and currently working as a Demonologist for a team in Fort Wayne. I'm not really interested in ghosts (as I don't believe in them anyways) but more-so learning/researching what makes the new agers tick and seeing first hand the deception that the demonic are capable of when it comes to people operating without faith in a field that so heavily requires it. At some point I hope to put out a book aimed at Lutherans on the topic. New Age in my opinion is the biggest threat to the Church, so I'm sneaking around seeing what they are up to haha.

When you say working as a demonologist do you mean someone actually pays you?

As for what are the New Agers up to, they are trying to take over the food production system.

Notice the big growth of "Organic" food. Well the definition of that relies on a new age understanding of life force, which is supposedly destroyed through the production of crop inputs by man.

I notice in Trader Joe's now one of the foundational systems that ultimately produced the organic movement is also becoming more common. That would be diodynamic food. Which uses that life force for it's very name.

Talk to people and many are absolutely convinced that organic food is better and safer. In some cases it might be but that's not the goal.

For instance you can use the "natural" insecticide pyrethrum in organic production. It's not very effective relatively speaking and so relatively large amounts have to be used.

Use a much smaller dosage of a synthetic pyrethroid and you aren't organic.

Here's the kicker. Pyrethrum is a suspected carcinogen, the synthetic pyrethroid is not.

So you can use large amounts of the suspected carcinogen and people scarf it up as all natural and wonderful and non of those man made pesticides. Use a couple of thousands of an ounce of a much more effective and much safer man made product and it become poisonous to listen to them.

I'd be interested what you'd find if you asked your classmates what they thought of organic food? See if any mention the new age roots.

Marv

 

[Tangible]

So I take it, Marv, that your not a crunchy conservative?

 

[BigNorsk]

I'm not sure what you mean, not familiar with the term crunchy conservative.

 

[Tangible]

Crunchy conservative is a term coined by the author/journalist Rod Dreher to describe that tribe of conservatives that are morally, religiously and fiscally conservative, yet believe it is important to be good stewards of the environment, reduce consumption of fossil fuels, trade locally, prefer organically or naturally grown food, etc.

I tend to have Crunchy-Con predilections.

Here are some links if you're interested - given in order of detail and verbosity, least to greatest.

CrunchyCon on National Review Online
Are You a Crunchy Conservative?
What Is a Crunchy Conservative? : NPR

(NPR!?!&! Oh teh Noes!!!!1!!11!!!eleventy-one!!!11)

 

[BigNorsk]

Kind of a strange mix.

My entire professional life is spent taking care of the environment. Some of the biggest problems I have to face is the bunch of wahoos who consider themselves environmentalists and are simply New Agers trying to impose their worship upon others.

Basic tenant of the faith is whatever man does is bad.

Let's say you have a bad wasteland. Very low productivety, poor species diversity.

Their response is keep man out and it will be great.

Well all that does is let a few invasive species take over.

You graze it. Graze it hard. Then pull out the livestock, let it rest a bit, turn them back in, graze it hard again, and keep cycling it. In as little as 10 years you can have a very productive range, with higher productivity, much better resistance to erosion and greater species diversity than before.

Trade locally, I generally like that. I'm all against pumping oil out in the Middle East and sending our cash there. We've got more oil in North Dakota and Montana than Saudi Arabia has. Less than 2 days train ride from any refinery in North America.

I'm quite opposed to the idea though that there's this life force in organic food that nourishes you and if you use man made inputs they don't nourish your life force.

The idea of natural food is a myth, fiction. Because it says this way of producing is natural and that way is unnatural. They are really both the same except for the religion.

And I should note that what the New Agers generally attack is not good stewardship in production, they attack the other false religion that is quite important in food. That is the religion of mammon, money. Rape it and go. Take it because you can.

I'm not for that false religion either.

You can't worship mammon and God, and you can't be bound to idols and God at the same time either.

The next couple of months I'm going to spend them soil testing. Checking the nutrients in the soil so that we use what is needed and not more or less than needed.

Both more and less is more harmful to the environment, and produce less food.

Then along come the yahoos and they just want to tax fertilizer or outlaw it or think we're just up to our eyeballs in manure we are throwing in the rivers and lakes or something. They want to destroy food production based on man is doing it it must be evil.

Organic production of commodities isn't practical or possible in the quantities necessary to not cause a large percentage of the world to starve. Oh sure, some demonstration farms with huge management inputs do okay, but move it out to a large number of farms and production drops and drops significantly.

Most of the things doing well in organic production are things that are sold by the piece, so if people are willing to pay more, having a guy stand there with a hoe works financially.

Or you just buy it from the Chinese, they won't allow inspectors in, but tonnes and tonnes of "organic" food comes flooding out of that country.

So we joke what does it take to become organic in the US? Well three years of transition and thousands of dollars of increased inputs. What does it take to become organic in China? $100.

Marv

 

[Tangible]

FWIW, I've got a BS degree in production horticulture (not that I actually use it ...) so I'm pretty familiar with modern food production methods as well as alternative natural or organic methods. I think that a lot of high-quality food can be produced for the mass market using modern techniques with little harm to the natural environment - but we all know that pesticide runoff and algae blooms can cause serious problems, and there does seem to be legitimate concerns about pesticide residues, antibiotics and hormones in our food supply.

Responsible producers will take precautions to reduce the risks of harm, and the market will reward those who can produce cleaner foods at good prices.

To be quite honest, the vast majority of people I've ever known that prefer naturally produced food are all Christians. They just like the idea that there aren't any unknown pesticide residues on their food, and they know that if they aren't too picky about a few spots on their fruit or veggies, they can grow fresher, better tasting food at home or buy them at the farmer's market from people they know or can get to know if they want to.

I wonder how many people who prefer natural or organically produced foods are really doing it because of some vague New Age religious belief about "life force". Anyway, it seems to me like you're going way overboard on the whole "Organic Food = New Age Religion of Satan" thing.

I mean, what most people are talking about when they say 'organic' is simply using the same kind of low-input production methods that our grandparents used (well, minus the arsenic of course. )

You might also want to read up on a couple of guys named Wendell Berry and Joel Salatin.

[Sorry for the OT discussion. If a mod wants to split out the "Eaters of Organic Foods are Going Straight to Hell" stuff to a new thread, that would be cool with me.]

 

[94Preacher]

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