Question: I have been receiving your newsletter for a couple of months now and am somewhat dismayed ...

Question: I have been receiving your newsletter for a couple of months now and am somewhat dismayed that you have singled out Lutherans as being problematic without regard to what synod you refer to....I am a Missouri Synod [LCMS] Lay Minister who is alarmed at some of the definitely non-Christian elements that the LCA and ELCA have [adopted]. The LCMS has safeguards built in and whenever a church or group does not teach the Word of God as it is rightly divided...that church or group is asked to leave the Synod....Take Seminex for example...[its] instructors were teaching a false gospel...[and] were thrown out of the LCMS. I also want to remind you that the efforts of Dr. Martin Luther resulted in the clean break from the RCC with the Pope making a contract on Luther’s life....In the future make sure you identify which group you are referring to as there are many people in the [Missouri] Synod who do not like the way they have been castigated by you without cause.

Response: Thank you for contacting us. I’m sorry that you felt I misrepresented Lutherans. I hold Luther in high esteem for his stand against Roman Catholicism, but unfortunately he clung to much Catholicism that remains in Lutheranism today.

You referred, I assume, to the August Q&A section. You suggest that I should be careful to identify the synod because yours (the Missouri Synod) does not go along with the heresies of LCA, ELCA, Seminex, et al. In fact, I was not referring to such heretical departures from the Word of God as these hold to, but to heresies (in my opinion) which are held by all Lutherans as taught in Luther’s Small Catechism, which I understand is used in all synods.

Moreover, in that Q&A we identified your synod. We stated the fact that the “Memento and Certificate of Baptism” from which we quoted was “printed by the Missouri Synod’s Concordia Publishing House.” We also noted that it read, “In baptism full salvation has been given unto you; God has become your Father, and you have become His child through this act....” That is not the teaching of the Bible.

Further, in that Q&A we referred to a man who had shown me the letter of excommunication he had received from his Missouri Synod Lutheran Church for having been baptized after getting saved. We then cited many scriptures showing the clear biblical teaching that one is saved only by believing the gospel, and only after that is one to be baptized. Such faith is not possible for infants. Nor does the Bible teach regeneration through baptism for anyone, babe or older person.