Back To Luther... and the old (German) Missouri Synod. Below are thoughts, confessions, quotations from a Missouri Synod Lutheran (born 1952) who came back to his old faith... and found more treasures than he knew existed in the training of his youth. The great Lutheran lineage above: Martin Luther, C.F.W. Walther, Franz Pieper.
Women delegates. — The apostle Paul, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, expressly said: “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; … for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.” (1 Cor. 14:34-35); and again, “But I suffer not a woman to teach” (1 Tim. 2:12). In our advanced times, however, our sects understand this better and in this matter, despite the clear words of God, hold it according to their sinful liking. Several denominations have begun to appoint female preachers, and we already read that at the recent Congregational meeting in Andover [Massachusetts], twelve female delegates were present as representatives of their congregations. Will they have represented their congregations only by “silence among the congregation”? — S. [Sihler? Schaller?]
Foreword of the Editor
to the
Fourteenth Year of Der Lutheraner.
[by C.F.W. Walther]
(concluded from Part 1)
We, the editor of the present paper, were also among the preachers who emigrated from Germany with the Saxons and, after a long time of wandering, obtained with them, through God's gratuitous mercy, that sweet fruit of unspeakably bitter experience, the pure doctrine of our Church, as it soon appears bright as day to him who reads the public confessions of our church and the private writings of its enlightened teachers from its most beautiful days, especially from the time of the Reformation, this time of great divine search for grace, without glasses, without prejudices, with an empty heart thirsting for truth.
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| Der Lutheraner, Volume 1, No. 1 |
For a number of years we sought to establish ourselves ever more deeply in the truth we had discovered. The treasure we had found and our church, in which we had found this treasure and of which we saw that it alone had it, therefore became more and more precious to us. With deep sadness we saw from the few local papers that we read at that time, partly how wrongly the doctrine of our church was portrayed by its enemies and how insolently it was attacked and blasphemed, partly how almost no one punished these lying distortions and repulsed these shameless attacks, partly how wrong even the ideas of many friends of the Lutheran church were about its actual doctrine, partly how we Saxons were still considered to be a Romanizing sect leading a special doctrine.
This, together with several other Lutheran preachers who had emigrated with us, finally brought to maturity the decision in us to publish a leaflet that would serve our dear church under the open, honest name of Der Lutheraner according to the needs here, as much as God would give grace to do so. The prospects for the existence of such a paper were very, very dim. Our immigrant congregations were still very poor and had to make hardly affordable sacrifices in order to be able to enjoy the benefits of well-ordered and well-supplied Lutheran congregations.
From them it was hardly to be expected that they alone would be able to secure the existence of the paper, and otherwise we had almost no acquaintance and connection with preachers and congregations. We only dared to send the paper to two of them, W. [Wyneken] and S. [Sihler], who are at present at the head of the Saxon congregations as synodal officials. Our expectations, or at least our pronouncements, went no further than to bring as many sheets into wider circles as were necessary to give an unmistakable public testimony of what is actually the Lutheran Church and what is actually its doctrine.
With deep shame we look back today on a period of thirteen years in which God has done great things for us, not only increasing our readership from year to year, but also giving us the grace to dig deeper and deeper, supported by more and more vigorous and zealous co-workers, and to bring the pure and truthful teaching of our dear church ever brighter to light. To God, who often chooses and dignifies even the most erring and unworthy sinners, if they repent, to teach through them the transgressors his ways, so that sinners turn to Him, be for this alone all honor and praise and glory of His wonderful mercy.
What has occupied us primarily in recent years is something that we least believed in 1844, when we sent out the first sheets of the Lutheraner, would ever become the subject of our struggle with Lutherans: we mean the doctrine of Church and Ministry. We had thought that we would have nothing to do but to publicly cleanse ourselves from the suspicion of the Lutheran Church, as if we were still devoted to the Romanist direction taken earlier. However, it is not we, but God who prescribes our ways, our work and our struggles, and it is our duty to follow, and we do not want to resist. 2)
2) There is no doubt in our minds that if God, according to his unfathomable mercy, had not taken care of us and had not forcibly opened our eyes to our Romanizing doctrine and practice, then we would not only have worked here to destroy Christianity, but also have finally been lost forever. Without a doubt Satan had no other purpose than that after our awakening he led us on that horrible wrong path and then led us to America, where we had the best opportunity to preach and carry out our errors unhindered. But, O faithful God, what Satan intended to make evil, God intended to make good. Here we first had to be led by our errors to the abyss of temporal and eternal destruction, and then, saved from it by God's intervention without our doing anything, we can say, as burned children, to bear witness all the more immovably against the same errors that appear elsewhere.
If in the last year we were mainly concerned to present the pure Lutheran doctrine of the Church to our readers and to warn and protect them from the false half-Roman, even entirely Roman doctrine of the Church, which now wants to smuggle itself into our church under the name of good Lutheranism, on the other hand, as we have already indicated, we intend in the new year to occupy ourselves primarily with the pure doctrine of the sacred Office of Ministry [or preaching] and with the rejection of an equally false half-Roman, even entirely Roman doctrine of this, which is now again seeking admittance among the inexperienced Lutherans. May then the gracious God, who desires that all men be helped and come to the knowledge of the truth, abundantly grant us His Holy Spirit for such work, and may also our dear readers diligently call upon the Lord, that He may grant us light, strength, and courage for this purpose. Amen!
"Finally we take a look at Walther the editor—one of his most important functions. Through Lehre und Wehre… and Der Lutheraner Walther exerted a strong influence toward orthodox Lutheranism."
Foreword of the Editor
to the
Fourteenth Year of Der Lutheraner.
[by C.F.W. Walther]
In the autumn of 1838, about 800 Lutherans with Lutheran preachers, a certain Pastor Stephan from Dresden at their head, emigrated from Saxony to Missouri and arrived here in January 1839, except some fifty who were lost at sea and found their grave in it. Those Lutherans were under the delusion that they were the most faithful Lutherans, indeed many of them thought that they were the only faithful sons of the Church of the Reformation left in the world, that Germany had fallen and would never rise again, that God's judgments were approaching in this country and that nothing could withstand them any longer, and that the time had therefore come to flee. Matt. 24:15-16. However sincerely these Saxons meant what they said — to a great extent they left everything they held dear in this world and went to a country unknown to them at that time, from which they mostly expected and desired nothing but freedom of conscience and worship — they were themselves, however, without suspecting it, nothing less than true faithful members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
The aforementioned Pastor Stephen was the soul of the whole. He sought the strict Lutheranism in contrast to the unionist, sectarian and enthusiastic nature of the | new faith, in that he thought and taught essentially as a Romanist or rather as a papist, namely of the Church, of the Office [of Ministry], succession, authority, constitution, etc., and exercised a practice in keeping with this. The visible Lutheran church was to him the church apart from which there is no salvation; and since he believed that he and those who followed him alone were the visible Lutheran church, it was considered a foregone conclusion among the Saxons who blindly followed him that whoever wished to be saved must flee with them and gather where the existence of a truly Lutheran church was possible. Those who did not want to leave the fatherland were considered to be, if not already lost, then in the most urgent danger of their souls. Many, therefore, who were in confusion and distress in their consciences, often torn asunder, with bleeding hearts and weeping eyes, the most sacred bonds of natural love, blood, and profession, in order to follow and be with the “emigrating church” only. In like manner as the Romanizing doctrine of the Church, so was the effect of the Romanizing doctrine of the Ministry. The office of preacher stood as a mediator between Christ and the Christians, through which alone all graces and blessedness could be obtained.
The ban of this Office, no matter how arbitrarily it might be imposed, went about the “church” like a speaking ghost with its finger lifted. Unconditional obedience in all things not contrary to God's Word, it was said, was owed by the “layman” to the “spiritual office,” in the face of God's disgrace and danger of eternal salvation. Even the secretly | harboring of misgivings, within the heart, against the officials, against their integrity, or even only against the expediency of their orders in the secular and ecclesiastical spheres, was regarded as a sure sign of a Judas heart. 1)
1) Those who know the teaching and practice of Pastor [J. A. A.] Grabau at Buffalo and of his followers, will grant us that both are by all means nothing more than a second edition and perhaps still more obstinate implementation of Stephanism.
Thus a dark spirit of servile fear and distrust pervaded the community [Gemeinschaft], which even friends no longer dared to exclude. Hundreds felt the heavy pressure that lay upon them, and sighed for redemption, without knowing in what this redemption must consist of. The writings of the old godly fathers were eagerly read, also the confessional writings of our church, but with the glasses of preconceived opinions. [So with today’s LCMS!] The warning and punishing voice resounded everywhere: You are not what you claim to be, true Lutherans, but pilgrims to Rome and servants of men. But because this voice came mostly from those who evidently did not themselves walk faithfully in the footsteps of the fathers of our church, this voice was taken for the voice of temptation. But what happened? — The God who searches the hearts, who knows what is the mind of the spirit, and when we do not know what we should pray for, as is proper, represents us in the best way with inexpressible groaning, this God finally heard the groaning of the wretched for help in the spring of the year 1839, the meaning of which the prayers themselves had mostly not understood. [Page 2] God, then, made the man who stood at the head [Stephan] irrefutably manifest as an unfaithful and dishonest one. Hereby, of course, the foundation fell away for all that had believed on his authority. The natural consequence of this was that the very doctrines which, as was well known, had not been learned from the symbols of the church and from the writings of the old faithful fathers, immediately came into question; and behold! very soon it became evident that these doctrines also contradicted those contained in the confessions of our church [Walther gives credit to the Confessions, not himself] (the credibility of which nothing had been able to shake). In short, it was seen with horror that, in the opinion that they were the right true Lutheran Church, even the only one, they had moved further and further away from its doctrine and — had drawn nearer to Rome. Because of this, and for the sake of all the many sins that had flowed from it, they humbled themselves heartily before God and man, and now took pains to purify themselves more and more in doctrine and life.
"When this principal point is darkened or adulterated, various seductions and errors must follow in other doctrines also and it is difficult for any article of Christian faith to remain pure; or if anything is ever left unadulterated, it is still without all use and power, because the above-mentioned principal source is blocked by false teaching."
Ten Sermons on the Justification of the Sinner Before God. By Dr. Tilemann Heshusius. (Reprinted unchanged from the 1563 edition.) St. Louis, Mo., and Leipzig. 1876.
This book has just been published. It belongs to the many pearls from earlier times, which are worth being brought out of the dust of the past. As the title says, it deals with the central doctrine of our holy Christian faith, with which, as our ancients rightly said, the church stands and falls. Many people now think that even if the various so-called Protestant parties disagree in some important doctrines, they are all united in this main doctrine, the doctrine of justification, and even if there is now often a lack of thorough knowledge of many doctrines among the faithful, no believer lacks knowledge of the doctrine of justification. But this is a serious error. It is precisely the pure doctrine of justification that is most lacking in all the so-called Protestant sects. If they were pure in this doctrine, they would and should have to abandon their other errors as well; for, as Luther so often testifies: “In this article hangs and stands everything, and shows all the others with it, and everything is to be done for this one, so that whoever errs in the others is certainly not right in this one either, and even if he holds the others and does not have this one, it is still all in vain. Again, this article also has the grace, where one perseveres in it with diligence and earnestness, that it does not fall into heresy.” (Tom. VIII, p. 504.) But it is equally erroneous when so many now think that they know at least the doctrine of justification so well that they hardly need further instruction on this point. Just the opposite is the truth. There is no doctrine of the entire Christian religion that a Christian learns less than this one, and anyone who claims to have already learned it proves that he has hardly made a start in this knowledge. The greatest scholars of God have always said that they must remain students of this doctrine until their death. Therefore, not only all preachers, but all Christians who desire to grow in knowledge, should welcome with joy any writing that treats the doctrine of justification in a pure, thorough and experiential way. The present one is indeed such. The author of it, Heshusius, was born on November 3, 1527 in Wesel in the Prussian province of Rhineland, studied in Wittenberg, and died as the first professor of theology in Helmstedt in 1588. His main activity thus falls into the frightening time after Luther's death up to and after the adoption of the Formula of Concord. In this time, when so many fell away from the teachings of the Reformation, our Heshusius was among the few faithful students of Luther. His incorruptible faithfulness also had the consequence that his whole life was almost a constant wandering from place to place. Almost regularly, after a short administration, he was expelled by the enemies of the pure doctrine or of Christian discipline. The most peaceful years of his life were the four years during which he was court preacher to Count Palatine Wolfgang of Zweibrücken in Neuburg on the Danube. It was during this time, in 1568, that he published the Ten Sermons on the Justification of Sinners before God. They deal with this doctrine in a thorough manner and in Heshusius' own, at that time so rare, fluent and granular language. The book, comprising 380 pages in small octavo and bound in pasteboard with gold title, costs $1.00. Postage is 10 cents. It may be obtained at the address of the publisher, F. Dette, 710 Franklin Ave., St. Louis, Mo., in Leipzig von E. Bredt. W. [Walther]
The murder of children in the womb, as almost all newspapers report, has become so common among Americans that Sodom seems like a pious city compared to America (Eze. 16:48, 51). The Illinois state paper, in one of its recent numbers, claims that at least a quarter-million, and probably half a million, children are murdered in the womb every year in the United States. A single female abomination in Boston has confessed that she assisted in 20,000 cases during 17 years. Would it be surprising if the earth were to rise up and America were to sink into the deepest depths? No; it is a miracle of divine long-suffering that America has not long since perished like Sodom and Gomorrah. Do you, dear reader, desire even more terrible signs of the very last time? Luke 17:26-30. W. [Walther]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Infanticide [Kindermord]. The "Christian Ambassador" [Evangelical Association] of Sept. 20 also speaks out about this terrible American sin. He writes:
“It is quite frightening how generally infanticide is practiced in this country. Most of these criminals want to be so 'decent' that they declare it a violation of 'good morals' to call attention to these things. They do not want to hear many addresses of Jesus from the pulpit (because of this). Of course, this is pure hypocrisy. There is a lot of talk in American circles about women's rights, they would better study what women's duties are. The terrible curse from which the American republic suffers is not the ‘disenfranchisement’ of women by men, but their dehumanization by themselves. We know of quite a number who have fallen victim to their murderous handiwork. There are also certain women who pretend to be doctors, go around the country and give lectures about things that are only calculated for women's ears, in which it is taught how fornication can be practiced in a refined way inside and outside of marriage without (as these disgraceful women say) getting into 'misfortune'. We know of cases where English churches were granted to them for this purpose. In this way thousands of hearts are poisoned and many families made unhappy. The condemnation of these child murderers must be terrible.”
We must add: Is it any wonder that in America such more than pagan abominations flood the land, since one sends one's children to such schools where it is forbidden to expose the holy ten commandments of God to them? If there stood in the place of the religionless schools just as many and so frequented Christian parochial schools, America would then certainly not be "given to do that which is not fit" in a perverse sense. (Rom. 1:26-28.) As long as the church in America holds on to the system of religionless state schools, there is no hope for improvement, no help. These schools are the root of the tree of our ruin; to them the species must be taken, or all other measures will be lost. W. [Walther]
“there is no hope for improvement, no help.”
A Mighty Fortress is Our God
(Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott.)
[An essay by “G. B.”] (concluded from Part 1)
Prince Frederick III, Count Palatine, who was asked why he did not build fortresses in his country, answered: “‘A mighty Fortress is our God, A trusty Shield and Weapon’; so we have faithful subjects and, in case of need, a number of warriors who can resist our enemies not only with shields and weapons, but also and especially with prayer.
This is why the noble Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus, resorted to such arms and weapons on the morning of the battle of Leipzig on September 17, 1631, when he was facing Tilly. Before the battle began, he had his entire army sing this song, and when God helped him to victory and he saw the enemy fleeing everywhere, he threw himself on his knees in the midst of the dead and wounded, thanked God and cried out: He must keep the field.
In 1517, Wolfgang, Prince of Anhält, whose name shines under the Augsburg Confession, was declared an outlaw [Acht] by the emperor and his land was given to a Spanish favorite. When the letter banning him arrived, he sat on horseback, rode through the dismayed city and sang this song in a bright voice on the market square as a farewell, especially the lines: Take away our bodies, etc. Afterwards, he hid in a mill for a long time, dressed as a miller, until he was reinstated in possession of his land by the Peace of Passau in 1550.
When Emperor Charles V dismissed the evangelical preachers in Augsburg in 1548 because they did not want to accept the [Augsburg] Interim, and especially the brave theologian [Andreas] Wolfgang Musculus had preached vehemently against it in Augsburg, they came to the imprisoned Elector of Saxony, John Frederick, who was a prisoner in Augsburg at the time, and told him as they were leaving that they had not only been deprived of their service, but that Imperial Majesty had also forbidden them to enter the Roman Empire. At this, the Elector began to weep so that tears flowed down his cheeks to the ground, stood up, went to the window, but soon turned to them again and said:
“Has the Emperor forbidden you the entire Roman Empire?”
“Yes!”
Then he asked again, “Has the emperor also forbidden you heaven?”
“No.”
“Well,” he continued, “there is still no need, the kingdom and heaven must remain with us, then God will also find a land where you can preach His Word.”
He then had his saddlebag brought and said:
“In it is everything I have on earth; from it I will give you money for the journey [Zehrpfennig], which you can divide among your brothers and companions of the cross, even though I am a poor captive prince, God will surely give me something again.”
When the expelled Salzburgers came to Darmstadt in the spring of 1732, they were accompanied by an innumerable crowd into the city church, while they sang this song as their migration passport and all the people joined in.
Tobias Kiessling, the godly merchant of Nuremberg, tells us that he often saw and heard how, for example in Linz, Protestant men and women were dragged and packed onto ships to be taken to the lowest regions of Hungary and Transylvania. The little children were torn from their mothers' breasts and arms and the mothers were left to decide whether they wanted to stay with their children and follow the Catholic faith or to separate from them for life. The mothers wept bitterly, looked up, turned away, hurried to the mobs of other religious fighters who were being led away into exile, and sang heartbreakingly: “Take they our life, goods, fame, child, and wife, etc.”
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| St. Bartholomew's Day massacre |
This psalm was also the Huguenots' daily song of strength in those bloody wars and persecutions that came upon them in 1560-72; even when they were executed by fire and sword, they died joyfully with this song without denying their faith. A noble Catholic count who came to Germany with Charles V in 1547 once heard the Lutheran psalm sung: Ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress is Our God); and he said, “I will help to destroy this fortress, or I will not live.” But he suddenly fell ill on the third day afterwards and came to a terrible end.
