This continues from Part 4 (Table of Contents in Part 1), a short series on the Communist persecution of the Baltic Lutheran pastors and teachers. — Although I was not able to obtain Pastor Oskar Schabert's 1921 book that Bente reviewed, I did locate his later 1926, and larger 203 page, book Baltic Martyrs' Book online, where he gives perhaps the greatest analysis of the events surrounding those horrific times of Communist revolution in that part of the world. It gives details that are more than a little disturbing for us in America in the year 2020, as we see unfolding in our time similar patterns among the Socialists as compared to 100 years ago. Particularly chilling is the account of the pastor's confirmands becoming their executioners (p. 73, 92, 126). Schabert's analysis is likely considered to be too sharp for Wikipedia, although it has been used as source material by some of the Wikipedia articles on the martyrs covered in this book.
If the reader finds that 203 pages is too much to read, they should at least read the "Introduction" (pages 11-21) and "Fruit of the Martyrdom" (pages 189-191, 195-197), for they teach as Luther… and the Missourians, with only a few exceptions which will be covered in the concluding Part 6.
Some quotes from this book (by Schabert unless noted):
14: Luther on martyr Leonhard Kaiser: "For I take it to be that we, if we want to be Christians, may not keep silent without sin; such a glorious confession of truth"
17: "Yet the Evangelicals, who are so fond of emphasizing the connection with the old church, have remained alien to this building [martyrdom] and avoided it for the sake of the weeds that the Catholic Church has allowed to grow… We take Luther's side."
19: "To live as a true Christian is more important to the Evangelicals than to die as a martyr."
67: "When the first Bolshevik wave swept over Livonia in 1917, to his great pain, Tchishko saw among the Bolsheviks several of his confirmands, and yet he had just worked with his confirmands"
73: "The confirmand he had reared betrayed Hesse's place of refuge to the Reds and participated in the murder."
84: Traugott Hahn: "I would rather starve a thousand times than be without a Bible."
92: On martyr Bernewitz: "His last word is said to have been, 'Give me time to pray, – Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.' Then the bullet hit him in the heart."
189: "they knew how angry the Bolsheviks persecuted them…, and yet there was no trace of despondency or dejection among them"
195: "For oil wells, coal and cotton, the states know how to wage wars, but what is Christianity and the suffering and dying of Christians?… The Bolshevik persecution of Christians does not excite Christendom"
196: "Bolshevism has brought all the powers of the world to their knees.… it has silenced the press, that great power of our days." [Even the mighty "press" or "media" in America in our day will be silenced or controlled by Socialism/Communism, as it is in many respects already.]
Now, for the first time, an English translation of Pastor Oskar Schabert's greatest writing on the Baltic Lutheran Martyrs:
Translation by BackToLuther, highlighting, hyperlinks, and red text in square brackets [ ] are mine; machine translated by DeepL with some error correction and formatting added; original German text DOCX file here.
[German original text DOCX file here]
I found Schabert's comparison of these Baltic martyrs to the Lutheran martyrs during Reformation times of 400 years earlier to be particularly insightful. It was quite proper to draw on Martin Luther in doing this, as Pastor C. J. Hermann Fick did 70 years earlier in the Missouri Synod. — I have hyperlinked many of the martyrs' names to their German or Baltic Wikipedia websites where one may learn about them further. I prefer Schabert's account in some ways as Wikipedia is not bound by spiritual, Scriptural rules.
In the next Part 6 we find a compliment from Franz Pieper on Pastor Schabert, and a clarification.
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