3: Even after nearly five hundred years, the church follows Luther’s teachings about personal absolution to a degree that is remarkable, especially considering how little attention it has paid to his writings.
6: The church’s doctrine of conversion by personal absolution has remained consistent for a hundred years, an impressive span of time despite the issues with the first Laestadian conversions.
pp. 131-33
13: The church teaches that its doctrine never changes, yet its founders entered into “living faith” without the benefit of the very proclamation of the forgiveness of sins that is one of its distinguishing characteristics and central doctrines.
30: With the exception of the “keys to the kingdom” passages (which have issues) and one other vague possibility, the Bible contains no teaching or examples of people being converted to or sustained in Christianity by hearing the proclamation of the forgiveness of their sins, not even in Saul’s conversion or the case where it would seem most instructive—Peter’s denial of Christ.
76: The church allows for no other means of forgiveness than the proclamation of absolution, contrary to the Bible’s examples of forgiveness by prayer and baptism, and the teachings of early Christianity and Luther about forgiveness by prayer, baptism, and Communion.
77: The church emphasizes the regular preaching of forgiveness, yet the constant, compulsive absolution on which it has caused its members to depend (previously along with confession, though now less so) has absolutely no biblical or pre-Luther historical precedent.