Balt3: Martyrdom of the Baltic Church— "He preached until the bullet closed his mouth"

      This continues from Part 2 (Table of Contents in Part 1), a series on the Communist persecution and martyrdom of Baltic Lutheran Christians in the early 20th century. — Bente's review of Pastor Oskar Schabert's 1921 book caused me to try to locate full online copies of Pastor Oskar Schabert's books.  Although there seemed to be not many of these, I did find an earlier 1919 book of only 16 pages available from the German National Library that gives more details of the persecutions than in Bente's book review.  Because it was a small pamphlet, it was easily translated, and it is surely the basis of all of  Schabert's many later writings that testify of the persecutions and martyrs.

Some quotes from this pamphlet:

4: Schabert: "I told about what I experienced myself."
5: "The Russian Church… drove 'mission' in its own way. … baptized everything and reported: the matter is settled. …We Evangelical Lutheran pastors could not find ourselves in this kind of mission, testified against it, did not recognize the often forced admission of our parishioners into the Orthodox Church…"
6: "We do not need the Golden Pectoral Cross of the Russian state, we have enough on the cross of Christ."
6: "The radicalism to which the Latvians and Estonians, like all young peoples, were inclined was used by the Latvian socialists to propagate their ideas." [like today's agitators of racial unrest]
8: "The ban on speaking German publicly" (like America during WW I)
10: "In the dark early morning of January 3, 1919, the pastors of Riga… gathered to discuss what to do. Since the majority of the congregations could no longer flee, we pastors decided to persevere with our congregations, commending God's grace to us."
12: "One clung to this hope, even though one… was taken away for execution. And the day came."
13: "Strengthening the comrades from his New Testament, he preached until the bullet closed his mouth."
14: "This fact alone is great: the Lutheran Church has once again received a large number of martyrs. When the first martyrs of the Lutheran Church, Heinrich Voes and Johannes Esch, climbed the stake in Brussels, Luther began to sing his 'New Hymn'."
15: "To us who have stood in suffering it remains incomprehensible how there can be “Christians,” even theologians, who dare to deny the vicarious meaning of innocent suffering for the sake of righteousness, now even of Christ's holy suffering." [see Gerhard O. Forde and J.C.K. von Hofmann]

Some images:

     Pobedonostsev          ——          October Manifesto              ———              Novoe Vremja          ———           Voes and Esch

Translation by BackToLuther, highlighting, hyperlinks, and red text in square brackets [ ] are mine, German original text file here.

 

There is mention made on page 7 of two Baltic Lutheran missionaries who were killed in Africa: Ewald Ovir and Karl Segebrock.  More may be learned of these missionaries from these sources:

• gravesite images here and here
• see this 1897 book by Karl von Schwartz (no preview)
• see this 2003 book With the Gospel to Maasailand by Kim Groop of Finland
• see this 2004 article by D. Koenig of the Church of the Lutheran Confession

In the next Part 4, we present the faces of the Baltic Lutherans who died at the hands of the Communists.  These are not people to be avoided for the tragedy they suffered, but they are rather a source of strength for Christians today, in America.  They certainly are for me.