Zecho

[Hans Fiene 🦬 @HansFiene]

The desire to become righteous before God is something man cannot turn off, no matter how "unchurched" or "secular" he becomes. It animates everything he does. And every self-destructive impulse you see in the western world is the result of people coming up with insane answers to the "what makes me righteous" question after rejecting the answer that Christianity gives.

So when it comes to Muslim rape gangs, why are European leaders and progressives categorically unwilling to address the issue? It's because they believe that "not being racist" makes them righteous. That's what makes them good people, holy, acceptable to whatever concept of God they've cobbled together in their minds.

Present them with the evidence and many will simply ignore it. They will act like you said nothing so they can resume cooing over the beauty of multiculturalism and prove to themselves, and their god, that they are not racist and thus righteous, unlike all the racist people who have such unjustified views towards Islam.

Show the very faces of the girls who were raped to the most devout priests and priestesses of "not being racist" and they will literally laugh in their faces. They will boast of not caring. And they will boast of not caring because the righteousness they get from "not being racist" completely entirely 100% matters more to them than innocent girls being victimized. They would let five million innocents be raped before they would dare admit anything remotely approaching the "racism" that Islam is incompatible with freedom and peace and order and safety. They would let their own daughters be raped for the same reason. If you think I'm overexaggerating, consider how many people throughout history have sacrificed their own children to the gods they believed would favor them for doing so. Those people were made of the same flesh. They carried the same sinful nature. They are on the same quest for righteousness and forged the same dark paths on their journey.

And until you see Jesus as the answer, there is no way to get yourself on safe footing. Until you believe that Jesus Christ is the sacrificial Lamb who won your salvation and gave it to you freely, then you will always be inclined to sacrifice the weak and lowly in order to accomplish whatever you think you need to accomplish to be pleasing in the sight of your god.

So if you aren't a Christian but hate to see what has happened throughout Europe, and what is happening in America, the only way you can build a better future is through faith in Christ. Find a church. Hear the Gospel. Believe it. Understand that the only way to be pleasing to God is through the blood of His Son. The more we all believe that, the more we will all stop turning a blind eye to the blood of the innocent today.

[Hans Fiene 🦬 @HansFiene]

Overwhelmingly, people view children as accessories to add to their lives when they desire rather than as gifts from God and indeed, the very purpose of the sexual union. Even among conservative Christians, this mindset is rampant.

We talk about kids like they're home improvement projects? "Are you guys ready for that, or are you going to keep waiting awhile?"

We talk about them as though they're Pokemon cards that you quit collecting one you have a complete set. "So now that you have a boy and a girl, are you done?"

We often look at large families with the same kind of disdain we have for hoarders. "That's so weird. Why do you need so many of those?"

Likewise, push away all the lamentations about wanting to save your unborn child from a lifetime of suffering and hardship through abortion, and you'll find the true mindset, where we respond to our children having disabilities the way we'd respond to a restaurant giving us the wrong food, something we simply refuse to eat.

"Waiter, I ordered a healthy baby. But you gave me this gross little deformed thing. Throw that away and give me what I actually ordered."

Not everyone will follow this mindset concerning children to such an evil degree. But if we wish to protect ourselves from it, we need to fundamentally change the way we think about children. Which is to say, we need to view parenthood vocationally rather than through a consumeristic lens.

Children are not trinkets. They are human beings, as human as you, and just as worthy of love and honor as you. Likewise, parenthood is not a lifestyle, a hobby, or an era. It's a vocation.

If a child is growing in your womb, God has already given you the vocation of mother. And a mother's vocation is always to protect and love her child, never to kill her child. If your child is growing in a woman's womb, God has already given you the vocation of father. And a father's vocation is always to protect his child, never to kill his child.

If God gives you that vocation when you're poor, fulfill it faithfully and trust that He will give you your daily bread. If God gives you that vocation when you don't feel ready for it, get over yourself and fulfill it faithfully. If God gives you that vocation by giving you a child who seems too difficult to care for, trust that He will also give you the strength to endure the task, and fulfill it faithfully.

May God save our souls and purify our hearts by changing our minds.

[Zecho @PastorZech]

@MZHemingway We average 75 in Clarence Center and had 52, while some congregations closed. Hearty folks.

[Alexandra DeSanctis Marr @xan_desanctis]

The Trump-Vance administration does not deserve the praise or support of the institutional pro-life movement until it uses its executive authority to regulate dangerous chemical-abortion drugs. Full stop. Its current policy position is actively pro-abortion.

[Bishop Robert Barron @BishopBarron]

There was a line from Zohran Mamdani’s inaugural address yesterday that took my breath away. He said he intended to replace “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” Collectivism in its various forms is responsible for the deaths of at least one hundred million people in the last century. Socialist and Communist forms of government around the world today—Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, etc.—are disastrous. Catholic social teaching has consistently condemned socialism and has embraced the market economy, which people like Mayor Mamdani caricature as “rugged individualism.” In fact, it is the economic system that is based upon the rights, freedom, and dignity of the human person. For God’s sake, spare me the “warmth of collectivism.”

[Zecho @PastorZech]

@WmWeedon Amen, well said!

[William Weedon @WmWeedon]

Consequently, our faith in Christ is strengthened, our charity set aflame, and our hope of eternal life is confirmed. We do not believe the saints are gone, but rather gone ahead to the life of the world to come.”Urbanus Rhegius, Confessor at Smalcald, *Preaching the Reformation*

[Wes Huff @WesleyLHuff]

At the very moment that Augustus is making decrees as the ruler of the known world, and Herod is seething in his palace, God enters stage right. Not on the clouds, asserting his power and dominance, not with all the strength and might he rightly has. But in humility. Doing so with a profound statement that he is turning all our preconceived notions completely upside down.

One of the most beautiful, yet often overlooked, components to this story is Mary’s reaction to the news of her Son. In church tradition we call her carol The Magnificat:

“My soul exalts the Lord, and my spirit has begun to rejoice in God my Savior, because he has looked upon the humble state of his servant. 

For from now on all generations will call me blessed, because he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name; from generation to generation he is merciful to those who fear him. 

He has demonstrated power with his arm; he has scattered those whose pride wells up from the sheer arrogance of their hearts. 

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up those of lowly position; he has filled the hungry with good things, and has sent the rich away empty. 

He has helped his servant Israel, remembering his mercy, as he promised to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” (Luke 1:46-55)

Amidst all the interpretations of Christmas that we hear at this time of year from clergy, advertisers, politicians, and journalists, we might benefit from listening to the mother who sits at the centre of it all. According to Mary, Christmas is about God scattering the proud, bringing down unjust rulers, lifting up the humble. It’s about God turning things upside down— which ironically is the right way up to begin with.

And God accomplishes all of this not “from on high,” like the decree of Augustus, or the brutality of Herod; instead, God achieves his purposes from below in the lowliness of a manger. With shepherds, livestock, and foreign magi as the first witnesses. 
Christmas is about God turning things upside down—which ironically is the right way up to begin with. 

Every detail about the Christmas story (and the subsequent life of Jesus as well), states that God will reverse the mess and do so by first getting his own hands dirty. God conquers by humbling himself, he will heal by being wounded, he will save us by sacrificing himself. The manger is a throne, and works as a beacon of how God intends to turn everything upside down.

Grace triumphs over dominance, mercy over force, and Mary’s song will be the world’s song. Joy will pierce through the sorrow and sadness, fully and forever.

[Zecho @PastorZech]

No man, don't do that.
Just browsing another St. Paul (not LCMS) website in my area. Pastor's sermon looked a little suspect, so I ran it through three AI detectors. 88%, 75%, and 70% likely it was written by AI. Please, if you have Rev. next to your name, raise your standards.

[The White House @WhiteHouse]

"With the birth of Jesus, human history turned from night to day. His word and example call us to love one another, to serve one another, and to honor the sacred truth that every child is specially made in the image of God. MERRY CHRISTMAS!" - President Donald J. Trump 🎄

[TheScottishLutheran @TartanLutheran]

People sometimes say, “James teaches we’re saved by works.” But that’s not what James is doing at all. Picture two pastors addressing two very different problems. Paul is preaching to people who think they can earn heaven by being good enough. James is preaching to people who claim to believe but have no interest in actually following Jesus. Paul says, “You can’t earn salvation, Christ gives it freely.” James says, “And that free gift of faith? It’s alive. You can see it breathe.”

When James talks about being “justified by works,” he’s not describing how we become righteous before God, but how genuine faith shows itself in the real world. Just like Abraham trusted God long before he sacrificed Isaac, and that act simply revealed the faith he already had, our works don’t create faith…they testify to it.
In the end, Paul and James stand shoulder to shoulder. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone… and the faith that saves never stays alone. It lives, it moves, and it bears fruit.

From the very beginning, the Church never believed that James was teaching salvation by works. The earliest Christians understood Paul and James as preaching to two different dangers. Clement of Rome, writing before the end of the first century, said clearly that we are justified by faith and not by our own wisdom or effort, yet he also said that the works we do simply reveal the reality of that faith. Origen makes the same point, explaining that Paul combats those who think they can earn salvation, while James addresses those who claim faith but refuse to live it. John Chrysostom says it beautifully: Paul teaches that faith justifies; James teaches that works justify, but the two are not opposed, because works are the “witnesses” that faith is alive. Cyril of Alexandria echoes this, saying that faith alone justifies, yet it is never alone, because it always produces good works like fruit from a living root. Even Ambrosiaster, one of Augustine’s great influences, insists that justification is by faith apart from works and that good works naturally follow as the evidence of a believer’s new life.

Across the early Church, the message is consistent: we are saved by grace through faith, and the works that follow do not earn salvation but bear witness to the faith God has already given.

[William Weedon @WmWeedon]

@TaylorLoy Not even close: https://t.co/5TtW4LFuPJ

[Steve Deace @SteveDeaceShow]

I was permitted to watch Kevin Costner's upcoming special The First Christmas, which is scheduled to air on ABC one week from today. Overall it was well done and goes into both the historicity and theology of The Nativity. He hosts it himself, and it's clear this is personal to him. I would definitely recommend when it comes out next week. America is also going to hear one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history say on network TV that he believes in the Resurrection. That was unthinkable even a couple of years ago.

[Hans Fiene 🦬 @HansFiene]

A devotion on the lesser flood and the greater flood, the saving waters of Holy Baptism:
1 Peter 3:1-22

Before Noah and his family boarded the ark, Genesis 6 tells us that “every intention of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually.” So God drowns the earth, sparing only believing Noah and his family. But strangely, after the flood, God declares that nothing has really changed, saying that He will never again curse the ground because of man or strike down every living creature, despite the fact that “the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”

In other words, the flood drowned the wicked, but it didn’t drown wickedness. The flood drowned evil men, but it didn’t drown the evil in men. In other, other words, Noah’s flood was a promise of the true cleaning that God would deliver, but it wasn’t the true cleansing itself. That true cleansing has now been given to us in the waters of holy baptism, the place where our sinful nature is drowned, and where we come out of those waters with a new nature, where we come out with new life.

Baptism saves you not because the water washes dirt off of your flesh, but because the water joined with the word washes away the filth of your soul. This sacrament saves because it washes away the evil intention of your heart, because it drags the sinner you were into the depths and because it grants you a new heart, a heart forged from the righteousness of Christ, righteousness that gives you the right to live forever.

Noah’s flood didn’t change the nature of man. But the flood of Jesus’ blood, the flood filled with the death and resurrection of your Lord, has changed your nature. It has killed your old nature and given you a new one. And because of this, we can say with all confidence that baptism now saves you indeed.

[Allie Beth Stuckey @conservmillen]

Love your neighbor enough to support strong borders
Love your neighbor enough to oppose Islamic dominance
Love your neighbor enough to be tough on crime
Love your neighbor enough to abolish abortion
Love your neighbor enough to reject trans ideology
Love your neighbor enough to fight for a child’s right to a mom and dad
Love your neighbor enough to advocate for economic prosperity

Love your neighbor enough to work for a more peaceful, orderly, free, safe, & stable nation

[Becoming Lutheran @becomelutheran]

The visuals make this an interesting and helpful resource. Very similar to The Bible Project, which is great art, if not always great theology.
https://t.co/7isqust2gr

[Zecho @PastorZech]

@TeenaBrode @JeffreyPWiesner Except that’s not what Scripture says. “Many among you are sick…”

[Zecho @PastorZech]

@FrMartinFlatman @RevivedThoughts What is the purpose of mass intentions? If not similar to an indulgence, what is it for? If you have assurance of forgiveness, why have a mass intention on behalf of the dead? Honest question; I’m probably misunderstanding.

[Zecho @PastorZech]

@realalexclark @HannahDCox I was going to say the same thing, but you saved me some effort!

[Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 @TRobinsonNewEra]

Nigerian Christians: "Every house was set ablaze and all our grains were burnt down....This morning we buried 29 people"

The world is silent.