Wow! I’m floored! Here it is laid out before my eyes — why I left the Lutheran church and never gave it a second thought. People, especially Lutherans, have asked me why I didn’t stay in the Lutheran church.
I received this fundraising letter recently from the Wisconsin Synod Lutheran high school that I graduated from in 1975. In About Jeff Fenske, I mention that there came this time in my life when I realized that I didn’t have love in my heart for all people. And I knew there wasn’t anything I could do in myself to get this love going. I had to be infused with this love from God, Himself.
This was the very high school, being surrounded by Lutheran classmates and faculty, even pastors, where I decided to check out every religion until I received from God the ability to love.
In this letter, notice the theme, in Christ alone. See how they use the term in Christ compared with how Paul uses it in Romans 8:

1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who don’t walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For what the law couldn’t do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh; 4 that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

The Lutheran church doesn’t even offer a legitimate start to be in Christ, for conversions are based mainly on infant baptism and confirmation — confirming something that wasn’t legitimate in the first place. Jesus said we “must be born-again.” Then we’re empowered to be able to not “walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit,” which we need to in order to be truly in Christ and heaven-bound, which I explain in detail in Who-Goes-To-Heaven Scriptures — Narrow is the Way.
(transcription mine)

August 2009

Dear Friend of St. Croix Lutheran High School:

Over the course of five decades, many things have changed at St. Croix Lutheran High School, including the location of the school, the size of the student body, the number of course offerings. But one thing has never changed and unites the more than 2,600 alumni. That one thing was summarized in the choice of the graduation anthem sung by the Class of 2009, In Christ Alone. All graduates of St. Croix from 1962 through 2009 know that their life forever in heaven is secure because of what Jesus has done for them. As long as God grants St. Croix its ministry to young people and their families, may we remain steadfast in educating the total student centered on the knowledge that sure hope is through Christ alone. The theme, In Christ Alone, will be the focus of our daily chapel services at school this year.

…as we well know, education comes at a price. … Your gift…is especially important during these challenging economic times. …

[Signed by St. Croix’s president and missions’ director]

This reminds me of our class song they played as we graduated: “When the Saints Go Marching In.” But how many of us were even really Christians?
This also reminds me of a question I asked the pastor who taught our confirmation class in Wisconsin Synod Lutheran grade school in I think eighth grade.
I asked the pastor if other people would go to heaven besides Lutherans. I still remember clearly the circle he drew on the chalk board. And then he put some dots outside of it. He said everyone in the Wisconsin Synod Lutheran church will be saved (those within the circle) and then there will be a few outside (the dots) who will also be saved.
I hadn’t read the Bible myself yet to know the truth. We had only learned the carefully selected texts taught us through Luther’s Catechism and other Lutheran sources. This indoctrination is actually a type of brainwashing or mind-control, especially considering in the millions of prayers (actually James-3 curses) that family and friends ‘pray,’ insisting that parents baptize the babies and the people believe the doctrine from little on. Thus empowered by religious spirits, the people fulfill the desires of their well-meaning-but-indoctrinated-themselves relatives, ‘pastors,’ and acquaintances.
This is why people feel so strongly about their faith even though they can’t biblically defend it.
But who really goes to heaven? According to history, Luther didn’t get it. He never did understand the way, as I show in my Luther Didn’t Get It posts. He even threw out some of the Bible (especially the book of James, but basically Hebrews, Jude and Revelation too) in order to try to make his grace-plus-nothing theory work. But it wouldn’t even work then, for Jesus, Paul and other New Testament teachers also taught that abiding in Christ, walking in Love is required.
It’s important that we read the Bible for ourselves, which I did, and may I present again my compilation of what it so clearly says: Who-Goes-To-Heaven Scriptures — Narrow is the Way.
May we be ONE by biblically and legitimately all being in Christ Jesus!
Freedom!
Jeff Fenske : )