1959 – A Call for Decision……………………………………………p. 4
Another Memorial…………………………………………………….p. 6
A Report in Questions and Answers………………………………….p. 8
Before, During, and After……………………………………………p. 11
Christmas Devotion………………………………………………….p. 16
Short History of Our Synod…………………………………………p. 19
From the Bookshelves……………………………………………….p. 26

Fifty years ago, in 1959, the Wisconsin Synod convention was held to which the memorial, “A Call for Decision,” signed by 30 individuals, was submitted. This important document we reprint here from the proceedings, pp. 209-211. The floor committee’s report that was adopted by the convention included this: “Resolved, That the synod disavow the serious and repeated charges made in ‘A Call for Decision’ ….” After this convention, there were additional withdrawals from the synod.
Of the eight similar memorials printed on pp. 180-93 of the proceedings, including one from St. Paul’s of Austin, Minn. (L.W. Schierenbeck pastor) we also reprint the one that also has 30 signatures.
The document appearing on pp. 8-10 was prepared for his congregation in Nicollet, Minn., under date of Aug. 21, 1959, by Pastor Egbert Schaller. A copy was kindly provided to us from the archives of the Church of the Lutheran Confession by the former archivist; permission to reprint it in these pages was kindly granted by the current archivist. We are most deeply appreciative of these actions, which enable us to present to our readers two generations later this fine summary of the state of affairs after the 1959 WELS convention.
May the reminder of the stand taken by our fathers serve to create in us renewed dedication to God’s saving truth, for Jesus’ sake. RW

The current staff of this bimonthly publication of the RLC is R.E. Wehrwein (editor), Derek Wehrwein, and Shannon Steensma. Subscriptions are $10 per year, payable to the Reformation Lutheran Conference. The editor’s addresses are 1121 S. Jefferson St., New Ulm, MN 56073; [email protected]

www.reformationlutheranconference.org

Brethren:
Under date of June 27, 1958, a letter signed by the members of the Protest Committee, Wisconsin Synod, was addressed to “The Protesting Brethren of the Ev. Luth. Joint Synod of Wisconsin and Other States.”
The letter was in large part based upon, and contained an endorsement of, a document which accompanied it and which was subsequently sent to all pastors and teachers of our synod under the title, A Report to the Protest Committee.
The latter document, under Section II, third paragraph, page four in our copy, the following sentence appeared: “Termination of church fellowship is called for when you have reached the conviction that admonition is of no further avail and that the erring brother or church body demands recognition for their error.”
This statement is basic to the entire issue which called forth the document. We hold that it is false and unscriptural, and that the argument based upon it is rationalistic and untenable. We ask the synod to disavow it.
For the purpose of clarifying our objection, we submit the following as a true and correct statement of the doctrinal issue involved: Termination of church fellowship is called for when scriptural correction has been offered and rejected and the erring brother or church body have continued in their error despite admonition. This is the persistence which distinguishes an errorist (Rom. 16:17-18) from an erring brother (Gal. 2:11-14).

We reject as unscriptural any interpretation or application of Rom. 16:17-18 which expressly or by implication equates the action required by this passage with that enjoined in Mt 18:17; I Cor. 5:11-13, or any other passage of Holy Writ dealing with excommunication. The persistence implicitly defined in Rom. 16:17 is not to be measured by the impenitence of those who persist, but by the fact of their persisting; and the word “avoid” is not identical in meaning, scope, or direction with the term “excommunicate.” It is manifest that one cannot excommunicate an entire church body, or declare it to be impenitent.
In consequence, we also reject the principle which accords to human judgment the task of determining when Rom. 16:17-18 applies “conclusively” to an individual or a church body, and requires “a conviction that admonition is of no further avail.” No such provision is to be found in the text. It is imported from passages dealing with the gaining of an impenitent sinner and is utterly irrelevant here. To adduce it is in violation of accepted principles of Bible interpretation. In Rom. 16:17-18 the sole responsibility of human reason is to recognize the fact that the erring one continues in his error while rejecting previous admonition.
We reject the notion that the action required by Rom. 16:17 depends upon clairvoyance, namely the ability to determine the future fate of admonition. One who persistently causes divisions and offenses is marked, not when we are convinced “that admonition is of no further avail,” but when the evidence shows that despite admonition the erring has persisted and does persist in holding to his error. The text demands Christian awareness, not divination. “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29).
We affirm that a rejection of admonition is the equivalent of a demand for recognition of error. We disavow as sophistry any effort to restrict the concept of persistence to an instance where a formal demand for acceptance of error is made. The text speaks of cases where, scriptural admonition having been disallowed, the error continues to be propounded and practiced.

We herewith implore our synod to recognize both the scriptural validity of this our confession and the untenable nature of the “termination of fellowship” thesis advanced by the synod’s Protest Committee. We affirm that the document entitled A Report to the Protest Committee is in its nature and content divisive, despite its conciliatory tone, because it does violence to clear Scripture. In its historical presentation, the Report distorts plain, documented facts relative to the action of the Saginaw convention of 1955. We consider this distortion of historical facts to be a lesser offense, however, than the abuse of Scripture upon which it is based. Against this we are bound to contend for the truth.

Dear brethren,
“To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word” (Is. 66:2). God’s Word requires nothing less than implicit obedience.
It was love for the truth of God’s Word and love for the erring brethren that moved our synod to “reprove, rebuke, and exhort” the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod “with all longsuffering and doctrine,” for departing from the scriptural position it shared with us for years. This admonition continued for many years. Our synod properly employed Rom. 16:17-18, stating in unmistakable words that the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod had “created divisions and offenses not in accord with Scripture,” and continues to do so. The Saginaw indictment of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is as clear as language can make it, and no subsequent interpretations of the resolution that followed can affect it.
Synod, however, failed to follow through with the injunction to “avoid,” even after having declared in 1953 that the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod had “by its persistent adherence to unionistic practices … brought about the present break in relations” (Proc. 1953, p. 104). Our synod failed in 1955, after declaring that “The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod had by its official resolution[s?], policies, and practices created divisions and offenses” (Proc. 1955, p. 85). Also in 1957, our synod failed to follow through with the injunction of Scripture to “avoid,” when it spoke of “… the continuation of offenses, with which we have charged the sister synod, Rom. 16:17-18,” the appended “Note” to the contrary notwithstanding (Proc. 1957, p. 144). Three successive times, therefore, synod chose to go the way human policy dictated – not God’s way.
For the sake of the unity in the Wisconsin Synod on the basis of the Word of God, we, the undersigned, therefore, plead that synod recognize that further discussion in the Joint Union Committee constitutes a denial of the truth in view of the fact that the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod continues in the offenses and has never acknowledged that the issues are divisive. Discussion under these circumstances cannot be termed admonition but at best negotiation. Such negotiating on a fellowship basis is nothing less than disobedience to God’s Word.
We further plead that, in obedience to God’s Word, synod sever fellowship with the Lutheran Church-Missouri synod as required under the circumstances by Rom. 16:17-18. Our failure to do so in the past has had this twofold effect: The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has been encouraged to continue in the offenses, and we have grievous dissension in our own midst. This dissension can only become more serious unless we implicitly obey the Word of God.
It is our fervent hope and prayer that our Wisconsin Synod will speedily return to a firm scriptural stand, where all of us will again speak the same thing, where there will be no divisions among us, and where we will be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. I Cor. 1:10.
We take for granted that our synodical representatives be ready to discuss these issues with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod as soon as it recognizes them as divisive, in the hope of re-establishing unity in doctrine and practice.
Finally, we wish to have it known that we subscribe to the doctrinal statement on this issue that is being submitted in another memorial, viz., “Termination of church fellowship is called for when scriptural correction has been offered and rejected and the erring brother or church body have continued in their error despite admonition. This is the persistence which distinguishes an errorist (Rom. 16:17-18) from an erring brother (Gal. 2:11-14).”

Quotations of interest

From still another memorial (1959 convention proceedings, p.183): “To this end we plead that there be no limitation of discussion which is to the point, and that in regard to statements that are misleading or that are contrary to Scriptures or contrary to facts, made in essays or on the floor of the convention, permission be granted immediately to correct such statements.”
“From another direction it has been argued, rather naively, that synod could not have intended to find Missouri guilty in the sense of Rom. 16:17 as of then because, had that been the meaning, synod would have sinned in deferring suitable action. Naturally this begs the question. … The hidden premise that synod could not have sinned is pre-sumptuous.” (Booklet #3 of The Writings of Prof. Egbert Schaller (“The ‘Status Controversiae’ Within the Synodical Conference,” 1958), p. 35)

Question 1: What did the Wisconsin Synod, at its recent convention in Saginaw, Mich., decide about its relations with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod?
Answer: The synod decided, by majority vote, to continue in fellowship relations with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and to continue the discussions being carried on by a committee of each synod concerning the issues that divide us, “until agreement on doctrine and practice has been reached.” (No time limit was set.)
Question 2: Does this action of the synod mean that the unscriptural policies and practices of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (against which our synod has protested during the past 20 years) have been put aside and discontinued?
Answer: No, it does not mean that. For the convention also admitted that “many offenses of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which have brought about the troubled conditions in the Synodical Conference, have not been removed and have been aggravated by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod’s reaffirmation of their position on Scouting ….”
Question 3: Is Scouting the only offense of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod which is continuing and has been aggravated (made worse)?
Answer: No. At its San Francisco convention in June the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod not only reaffirmed its wrong position on Scouting, but also its false doctrine of Antichrist. It also declared that the Common Confession is to be one of the confessional statements of the church that must guide its pastors and teachers in their teaching and preaching. And by encouraging the work of its Armed Services Commission, it reaffirmed its offensive Chaplaincy practice.
Question 4: Why, then, did our synod determine to continue in fellowship relations with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and what reasons did it give to justify such continuance?
Answer: The reasons given were that “the Missouri Synod Doctrinal Unity Committee has shown a receptive attitude toward our testimony”; that the Missouri committee has with our committee approved a correct statement on Holy Scripture and one on the doctrine of Antichrist; and that disciplinary action has been taken against certain professors in the Missouri Synod accused of teaching error.
Question 5: Are these things really so, and are they good?
Answer: We may believe them to be true, and find in them cause for thanksgiving. We can and should rejoice whenever any Christian church body does or says something that is in accord with the truth.
But it must be noted, for instance, that a correct doctrinal statement on Antichrist was accepted only by the doctrinal committee, and not acted upon by the synod. Instead, the convention at San Francisco reaffirmed the false doctrine of Antichrist adopted three years ago.
Doctrinal discipline may be in action against certain false teachers within the Missouri Synod. But we have seen no public correction or retraction, thus far, of their errors.
It should also be remembered that our synod has never raised public charges against the errors of individuals within the Missouri Synod. Our synod has only protested public offenses against pure doctrine and practice caused by the Missouri Synod itself, and approved by it. Which of these has been admitted, corrected, or set aside?
Question 6: Do the good things that are listed, insofar as they have really taken place, justify our synod in continuing in fellowship relations with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod?
Answer: Again we must repeat what our synod itself said at its convention, namely, that “many offenses of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod … have not been removed and have been aggravated ….”
Because of these same offenses, our Standing Committee on Church Union told the convention of our synod, held four years ago, in 1955: “In our dealings with our sister synod (Missouri) we have been earnestly endeavoring to heed the scriptural exhortations to patience and forbearance in love. We have, however, arrived at the firm conviction that, because of the divisions and offenses that have been caused, and which have until now not been removed, further postponement of a decision would be a violation of the apostolic injunction of Rom. 16:17 (I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them).”
This statement of our Committee on Church Union, made in 1955, was true and correct. It was scriptural. However, the convention of 1955 refused to follow that direction; and the synod has refused to follow it ever since.
Question 7: What has been done about this?
Answer: In the past four years, many members of synod have tried in every way to admonish the synod to obey the clear Word of God that deals with this matter. More than 50 pastors, teachers, and professors of synod, including your own pastor, as well as some congregations and laymen, had again written to the leaders and delegates at the convention this year, pleading that the synod return to the principles of Scripture and sever fellowship relations with the synod that is causing divisions and offenses. But these urgings were not heeded by the majority.
Question 8: How was the convention able to resist such requests?
Answer: The official representatives of synod had voiced a different rule in regard to fellowship relations with other church bodies. Their position can be summed up in their own words: “Termination of church fellowship is called for when you have reached the conviction that admonition is of no further avail and that the erring brother or church body demands recognition for their error.” This principle the convention adopted. It is false and unscriptural.
Question 9: Why is it false and unscriptural?
Answer: Because in teaching us when to avoid erring church bodies, Scripture says nothing about “reaching the conviction that admonition is of no further avail.” Therefore also the Standing Committee in 1955, as above shown, did not mention that, but declared that when divisions and offenses continue after the erring has been admonished, it is time to avoid. It is not our business to reach a conviction about whether more admonition would be profitable or might accomplish the purpose. Nor is it our business to stop admonishing after we have terminated fellowship relations. But it is our duty to terminate fellowship when the erring has been corrected and does not stop giving offense with his error.
Question 10: Was all this brought to the attention of the convention?
Answer: It was, in writing and by word of mouth. It has been repeatedly explained through the years since 1955. But the synod, under its present leadership, did not heed it. Indeed, there is evidence that many were impatient and resentful of scriptural correction and made no effort to give it a full hearing.
Question 11: What is the result?
Answer: The result is that the synod, by continuing in fellowship with a persistently erring church body, in spite of admonition, has itself become guilty of persisting in causing divisions and offenses contrary to the truth.
—

BEFORE To remind ourselves of the atmosphere of Wisconsin Synod z conventions in the 1950s, here are excerpts from reports in the Northwestern Lutheran, beginning with the 1953 convention in Watertown, Wis.

“As word had been passed around previously that the committee would report, the auditorium of the gym was crowded with visitors, and the atmosphere was tense. … The committee’s recommendations were debated heatedly for the next three and one-half sessions, including an evening session. Judging from the general tenor of the remarks made, one would say that there was virtual agreement that Missouri had indeed brought friendly relations between the synods to the breaking point by her liberalism. … After a day and a half of discussion a motion prevailed to refer the question of church union to a special convention this fall.” (Sept. 6, 1953; pp. 280-81)

At the special convention in Milwaukee on Oct. 8-9, 1953, the synod resolved to declare “that the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod … has brought about the present break in relations that is threatening the existence of the Synodical Conference and the continuance of our affiliation with the sister synod.” The accompanying explanation of this and other resolutions provided by E.E. Kowalke and E. Reim includes this: “By resolution the synod approved the protest of our representatives made after the 1952 convention of the Synodical Conference. It also said that during this period of waiting ‘we remain in a state of confession.’” (Nov. 1, 1953; p. 344. Some information about this state of confession, including a document by E. Schaller proposing taking the action described in II Thess. 3:6-15, is contained in the 1996-4 issue of the LCCF Newsletter. See p. 25 below for a brief excerpt.)

The 1955 convention in Saginaw, Mich., deferred action on termination until 1956. “The convention’s floor committee of 22 members studied all pertinent reports and memorials. It held open hearings at which all interested persons could offer suggestions and state viewpoints. At one such hearing 183 people were in attendance. After seven days and nights of work the floor committee presented its report consisting of a historical summary, a preamble, and a set of resolutions. Before floor debate began, delegates were given an evening to weigh the report in private deliberation and informal discussion. For a full morning and afternoon the convention considered the matter. When finally the list of speakers was fully covered, the major item of the report … [deferring until 1956 action on a resolution to terminate fellowship with Missouri] was adopted by a vote of 94 to 47.
“The saddest minutes of the convention came when, following this vote, some 40 delegates and visitors recorded their dissent, among them certain influential men in synod. Those in dissent protested against the time lapse before action on terminating fellowship and voiced their conviction that such action should be taken immediately. A similar dissent had been registered by seven members of the floor committee. Such disagreement in a matter of major importance cannot but grieve all members of synod. That was already obvious from the serious and sad tones in which the dissents were voiced and from the heavy hearts and depressed spirits with which they were received.” (Sept. 4, 1955; pp. 277-78)

The 1956 recessed convention held in abeyance until 1957 the 1955 judgment that divisions and offenses caused by Missouri necessitated termination of fellowship. “In addition to district resolutions and majority and minority reports a from the Standing Committee on Matters of Church Union, the Watertown [Wis.] convention had at hand numerous communications, memorials, and protests dealing with the problem it was considering. These materials were reviewed by a floor committee of 22 members in a lengthy open hearing and frequent executive sessions. On the third and last day of the meeting shortly before the noon recess, this committee’s report was presented. It was discussed a full afternoon and evening. At midnight a vote by roll call was taken. The amended report was adopted by a vote of 108 to 19, with 38 delegates either absent or abstaining and with several advisory delegates recording their dissent.” One of the resolutions was that “our fellowship with The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod be one of vigorously protesting fellowship to be practiced, where necessary, in the light of II Thess. 3:14-15.” (Sept. 16, 1956; p. 294)

1957: “The delegates’ interest in the open meeting of floor committee no. 2, which was appointed to present a report on the matter of church union to the convention, indicated the degree of their concern with the problem. The large meeting room was crowded, and other delegates gathered in the hall outside the room to hear the discussion.
“By Monday hundreds of visitors had reached New Ulm [Minn.]. At the close of the evening session, the long-awaited report of the floor committee reached the convention floor. As the chairman, Pastor Walter Pankow of New London, Wis., read the report in calm, measured tones, there was an intent silence in the hall. When the reading was finished, there was a hush as each listener weighed the committee recommendation – a break with The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
“Part of Tuesday morning was devoted to a discussion of the report. The discussion was resumed during the Wednesday morning session; throughout the afternoon and evening there was a lively debate on the committee recommendation. At the afternoon recess there was a waiting list of 24 speakers, even though the five-minute limit had been imposed on each speaker prior to this time. Several hours later there were still 24 waiting for their opportunity to express their views to the convention. After supper a two-minute limit was put into effect. Yet the succession of speakers moving over to the microphones continued until 10 o’clock. Then the convention felt that the matter had been thoroughly discussed. No one was requesting a chance to be heard. The convention had talked itself out.
“When the standing vote of the delegates had been taken, the count showed 61 in favor of a break with the Missouri Synod at this time; 77 opposed it. There were eight who abstained from voting. …
“During the next two years our fellowship with the Missouri Synod is, by resolution of the convention, to remain one of vigorous protest ….” (Sept. 1, 1957; pp. 284-85)

The report in 1959 no longer conveys the same sense of crisis. The action is summarized as follows: “Thus our relationship to The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod remains what it has been the past few years: a fellowship in the Synodical Conference but on a vigorously protesting basis.” (Sept. 13, 1959; p. 300) Even in E.C. Fredrichs’ The Wisconsin Synod Lutherans and Mark Braun’s A Tale of Two Synods, there is quite little about the 1959 convention. (The former, by the way, in its account of the 1955 convention, reports that “some 50 convention delegates formally protested the vote postponement to a special convention to be held in 1956 after Missouri’s had met,” p. 204.)
DURING “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark those who, contrary z to the doctrine which you learned, cause divisions and offenses ….” Is Rom. 16:17 perhaps to be translated and understood in that way? So some have argued, often proceeding to limit in some way the divisions and offenses whose causers are to be avoided.

That the answer to this is no is demonstrated in detail in a magnificent 32-page booklet that provides us with a model of careful and penetrating grammatical analysis and that received wide distribution in the Synodical Conference around the middle of the previous century. Written by Prof. Robert G. Hoerber, it is entitled “A Grammatical Study of Romans 16:17” (first edition, 1947; second printing, 1963; published by the Lutheran Synod Book Company, Mankato, Minn.). After showing that the phrase beginning with “contrary” is to be linked, not with the causing (which would make it an adverbial phrase), but with the divisions and offenses (which makes it an adjectival phrase), Hoerber writes in his conclusion (p. 31): “St. Paul is admonishing the Christians at Rome to avoid, not all who cause divisions and offenses, but those who cause the divisions and offenses contrary to the teaching – not contrary to any teaching, but to the teaching which they learned from him and the other apostles.”

That this booklet is still known in some quarters is evident from the reference made to it in footnote 39 of a 1999 Missouri Synod document on admission to the Lord’s Supper. And we have heard of Lutherans in Australia who have given it close attention. But we have also encountered a case or two suggesting that familiarity with it is not as widespread anymore as might be wished. It is truly a gem; if you should ever run across a copy, by all means snap it up.

AFTER A study of subsequent interactions between the CLC and
z the WELS and ELS would doubtless be a worthwhile undertaking. Possibly further comment on them can eventually be offered in these pages. At the moment we will simply mention that Prof. em. John Lau, for many years writer, managing editor, and then editor-in-chief of the CLC’s Journal of Theology, has published a collection of his writings in a book titled Apologia (undated). Included are the numerous articles he wrote on the difference between the CLC and WELS, including those written during and after the series of meetings from 1987-1990 between representatives of the CLC and the WELS and ELS. Another book of interest, expected to be available in 2010, is a history of the CLC by Prof. em. David Lau. We learned of this from p. 11 of the 2009-1 issue of the Journal of Theology, a CLC publication that is offering introductory chapters of that work in this year’s issues.

Along with mention of those two books, we offer two quotations of special interest from WELS sources. The first, a candid admission of lack of unity, is from an essay by Forward in Christ editor, John Braun, that was published in the 2006-2 issue of the Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly (p. 109): “We have a tension created by differences of opinion concerning these matters and we have a tension involved with the discussion and resolution of these issues. I sense two opposing forces marshalling for some future showdown.”

In further illustration of this situation, we have the unmistakable and well-aimed finger-pointing in the following remarks at the conclusion of Pastor James Langebartels’ introduction to his translation of Heinrich Schmid’s History of Pietism, published by NPH in 2007. “In the 1570s, the hidden Reformed roots had to be concealed, for as soon as they were exposed, the controversy was at an end; hence Crypto-Calvinism. Much less concealment was practiced in the case of Pietism. Reformed books and practices were openly recommended. Today we have advanced to such an extent that we can use Reformed materials, principles, and practices without harming our Lutheranism – or so we think. We think we can ‘spoil the Egyptians’ of their useful practices while retaining a Lutheran emphasis on ‘using the gospel.’ Hence this study of Pietism is necessary and useful and practical also today.”

In these quotations is striking evidence of what the heart of the problem has been in WELS for half a century: They did not have to separate from error.

Also of special interest is the following remark in an article by Pastor Daniel Fleischer currently on the website of the CLC congregation in Corpus Christi, Texas, that gives an overview of dealings between the CLC and WELS: “The CLC encourages and works with members [emphasis added] to help them out of the ‘faith-based’ organization that Thrivent claims it is. The WELS does not.”

The afternoon sun shines gray upon the shallow spot in the Jordan where the road fords the river before dividing into two branches. Mary’s eyes follow the curving path as it leaves the main Jerusalem route to turn southward, bypassing the great city. In all likelihood this would be the way that Joseph chose. Not through the swarming streets of Jerusalem, not through its teeming markets and busy gates, but along the forbidding valley of Jehoshaphat beneath the eastern walls of the city the Virgin rides upon her patient beast. She is not well, and Bethlehem lies seven long miles beyond. She seeks no public acclaim; her search is for journey’s end, for rest and seclusion.

The night has fallen now, and Joseph knocks at the door of the inn. Candle light gleams through the shutters, and in the opened door there is a voice – an impatient, uninterested voice. No room! Back to Jerusalem, then? No. Better the warm stable, the straw and hay, for the hour is come. It is the greatest hour the Church has known, in which her King comes to her. As the life of the world rumbles faintly by outside, the Light of the world is born. And the only publicity accorded the event comes from the sweet spirits of a heavenly chorus and from the astonished lips of simple shepherds who later “made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.” Rather poor, inexpert publicity – but eventually the news got around quite well, didn’t it?

Many years later there was a young man of note living in Nazareth. Since He was “the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power,” His mother might have felt justified in planning to call in the representatives

*Under the heading, “From a Wider Field,” this article by Egbert Schaller, reserved for this year-end issue as explained on p. 2 of our 2009-1 issue, appeared in the Dec. 18, 1949, issue of the Northwestern Lutheran. We are profoundly grateful for the kind permission of Northwestern Publishing House to reprint this, as well as the articles by Schaller that follow it in this issue.
of church and world for an interview. But again there is only a solitary voice – “of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” God chose His herald to announce the redeeming ministry of His Son, and He would have no other. The men of the world were not asked for a testimonial, nor did the Most High request free advertising. The Person and Message of God’s Son must make their own way. Nobody thought of offering publicity, either, until Pilate one Friday morning hung a sign on the Cross. He did it disdainfully, spitefully.

–
And then came Resurrection Day. The world had its reporters on hand in the person of soldiers guarding the tomb, who promptly went into a huddle with the chief priests and came up with a sort of press release which said: “His disciples came by night, and stole Him away while we slept.” That was the extent of the world’s bulletin service on the second supreme event of the century; and of course it was a garbled, false report. It did not require or deserve a counter-communique.

As usual, God addressed the world only through the mouth of faithful witnesses who could not help “but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” So “they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the Word with signs following. Amen.” (Mark 16:20) The wholesome growth of the Church resulted; in a world otherwise totally uninformed and undisturbed by any ecclesiastical press-agentry, the true Church grew, and thus it will continue to grow today.
–

When we review the written evidence upon which our knowledge of New Testament history rests, we are startled to find that the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists, namely the Holy Scriptures, are the only real sources of information we possess regarding the historic facts and deeds of God’s work of redemption. So far as we know, not even a real effort was made by worldly writers of the first century to record the beginnings of the Christian Church or its meaning to the world. Nor was any effort needed.

Dr. W. Arndt, in his New Testament history, puts it thus: “We see that Christ and His apostles did not have startling publicity when the Church was founded. No pamphlets were written by famous publicists and spread far and wide in the whole civilized world announcing that now a new era had begun and the great work of redemption had just been performed. And when the world could no longer afford to ignore the Christian religion, its remarks about were largely contemptuous sneers and ridicule. The Gospel, it is important to remember, made its way through the power of God, which is inherent in it.” That is indeed well said, and often too poorly remembered and applied in our day.
–

The Kingdom of God in its greatest era never had the kind of publicity which in some circles is today mistakenly regarded as essential to the work and welfare of the Church. Modern publicity campaigns of religious groups which enlist the high-pressure facilities and cooperation of the world seem designed chiefly to maintain public interest in a certain church body, rather than in the Church. And shouting of that kind may reflect an inner weakness.

If we have an impulse to shout, let us harness our voice to the glad tidings of God, the hidden wisdom of Christ, the blessed Gospel. Our command is to preach from the housetops. The advertising modeled after the world’s garish tastes tends only to glorify men and breeds notoriety; the advertising done by preaching the Gospel simply and without fanfare produces Christians and populates the Church, which is so designed that it develops in inconspicuous silence, even as the Savior Himself declared, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.” Mt. 13:33.

The finest Church promotion campaign on earth is both defined and instituted by the words of the General Prayer in our Order of Morning Service: “We beseech Thee, O Lord, to preserve and extend Thy kingdom of grace and to grant unto Thy holy Church throughout the world purity of doctrine and faithful pastors, who shall preach Thy Word with power; and help all who hear rightly to understand and truly to believe it.”

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THE FIRST BEGINNINGS They were missionaries three who came z to America to preach the Gospel; and none of them remained here very long after they had founded the Wisconsin Synod. The first perished at sea in 1858; the second died in Milwaukee in 1867; and the third shortly returned to his native Germany. But in the years of our Lord 1849 and 1850 they joined hands and congregations, creating the new church body which today publishes this centennial issue to commemorate its first beginnings. And this is how it was:

At Barmen, one of the many missionary institutes which flourished in Germany at the time, Johann Weinmann was doing post-graduate work; and Candidate of Theology W. Wrede of Magdeburg, having completed his training, was serving a congregation in Pomerania, when the Langenburg Mission Society for the Germans in America decided to send a detachment of three missionaries abroad. Weinmann and Wrede were persuaded to accept such a commission and left from the docks of Bremen on July 9, 1846.

A dispatch from Barmen, meanwhile, had advised Johann Muehlhaeuser, a considerably older and more experienced Barmen worker in New York, of the imminent arrival of the new missionary contingent. Muehlhaeuser met the voyagers and provided for them. But soon duty separated the three. Wrede accepted a call to Callicoon, New York, while Weinmann, in answer to a pleading letter, came to the territory of Wisconsin. Here, at Oakwood near Milwaukee, a Lutheran congregation had been left without a shepherd after their pastor had disgraced his office by a shameful life. The group of 300 souls happily

*Under this heading, six articles appear in the May 21, 1950, issue of the Northwestern Lutheran. In addition to the three (the first, second, and fifth of the six) by Egbert Schaller that appear here as tying in, because of their historical content and concluding ringing appeal for steadfastness, with this issues’s material on 1959, there are also: “Great Difficulties,” “The Mission Zeal of the Fathers,” and “1850: The Organization of Our Synod 1850: The Setting, The Heritage.”
welcomed Weinmann as a gift of God, and he settled down as overseer of this flock, which later held the distinction of being the oldest congregation of the Wisconsin Synod.

Then came Muehlhaeuser. Weinmann prevailed upon his new friend to leave New York State and resume his calling as a traveling missionary in the Milwaukee area, where, beginning in the summer of 1848, he went about with Bibles and tracts until illness forbade further strenuous travel. Encouraged by two English sectarian clergymen, a Presbyterian and a Congregationalist, Muehlhaeuser began to serve the Germans in a section of Milwaukee. A hall was rented, and a new Lutheran congregation established in October of 1848. Incorporated in the following year, it was called, and still is known today as, the “Gnadengemeinde,” or Grace Church, of the Wisconsin synod.

The reader will now be waiting for the third man to appear on the scene; and the wish is herewith gratified. Pastor Wrede arrived from Callicoon, New York, in 1849 and accepted the pastorate of an established congregation at Granville, five miles north of Milwaukee.

The three friends were neighbors, drawn together by their common origin and the needs of men laboring with the Gospel in a pioneer age and area. What was more natural than that they should work together, consolidate their strength, and seek to rivet their congregations in the same bond which united them? The meeting which they finally arranged at Grace Church on Dec. 8, 1849, was certainly an event that seemed of very little importance either to the world or to the Church; yet it was on that day, in that place, that the Wisconsin Synod was born. In its organization the manpower supply became totally exhausted: Muehlhaeuser was elected president, Weinmann secretary, Wrede treasurer. This little synod planned for its full and formal organization by arranging a convention for May 27th of the coming year at Granville.

In the ensuing five months, a Pastor Paul Meiss of Schlesingerville, with seven congregations in his parish, and Kaspar Pluess of Sheboygan with four congregations, sought admission to the synod. Meanwhile, Muehlhaeuser was serving a second small congregation, Weinmann also, and Wrede had three. So that, when the brethren came to Granville, five pastors and 18 congregations were represented in the adoption of the constitution which Pastor Muehlhaeuser had prepared. As President Bading would say, 25 years later: “In humble unpretentiousness this work originated, through difficult and dangerous times it had to pass; yet it is established among us unto this day.”

STRIVING FOR In the year that found the young synod DOCTRINAL PURITY mourning the death of its most cherished zzz founding father Muehlhaeuser, the con-vention of 1868 heard its president, John Bading, address the delegates in serious words which set forth as in a summary the record of our synod’s early striving toward the full light of a purity in doctrine and practice which was not hers at the beginning. President Bading said:

“For years we suffered the accusations of strict confessional Lutherans who, because of our connection with friends of the Union (united church in Germany), charged us with harboring a unionistic attitude. Our confessional faithfulness was questioned, our synod was designated as unLutheran, and everything was done to challenge our right of existence as a Lutheran body.

“Let us openly and frankly confess that, while many of the reproaches heaped upon us were extreme, unjust, hateful, and not according to the love which edifies, some were undeniably justified. It is true that for some time our position was a vacillating one. On the one hand, there was our declaration of unqualified adherence to all the confessional writings of the Lutheran Church, as expressed by synod almost annually; on the other hand, there was our connection with associations which operated within the United Church and which regard that body as a good thing …. Especially did the sense of obligation for help received (from those German mission associations) prevent the synod from giving adequate public expression of her inner confessional fidelity and from refuting charges of unionistic inclinations by unequivocal testimony against all unionism in doctrine and practice. These inconsistencies, worthy brethren of the ministry and of faith, must come to an end.”

This call to confessional stability suggests the inner struggles which gripped the young synod in its infant years. The founders had been men trained in Germany, where in those days Lutheranism suffered under the blight of the Union by which people of Reformed and Lutheran convictions were compelled to worship together and to tolerate one another’s doctrines.

Taught to regard the rationalistic unbelief and the ever militant Roman Catholicism as the dangerous enemies of the truth, men like Muehlhaeuser and his companions failed to recognize the seriousness of the errors of the Reformed Churches and did not hesitate to cooperate with Methodists, Congregationalists, and others in church work or to recognize them as brethren. This weakness in confessionalism, then, naturally became the weakness also of the synod which they founded. Though it professed adherence to the Word of God and the Lutheran Confessions, in practice it departed from them and tolerated fellowship with errorists. As a result, the sound, orthodox Lutherans of that day, chiefly those of the Missouri Synod, refused to accept our synod as a true Lutheran body.

But by God’s gracious guidance and intervention, the testimony of sound doctrine and practice became ever more loud and insistent within the growing synod. When Pastor Weinmann, who had meanwhile been called to Baltimore, addressed the synod by letter in 1854, he asked some pointed questions and requested the body to decide them. May a Lutheran pastor, in charge of a congregation of his own, administer the Lord’s Supper to a Methodist congregation? Is it right for him to lecture occasionally to such a congregation and thus to identify himself doctrinally with it?

These questions indicate in some measure how seriously the sin of unionism was impairing the spiritual health and undermining the Lutheranism of synod; but they also show that men were searching and groping toward confessional purity. And while in 1854 the synod could still not agree on the proper answers to Weinmann’s questions, while indeed the majority still held to a unionistic position, a ferment was in process which drove men to a re-appraisal of their position in the light of Scripture and Confessions.

As the synod grew numerically, it gained into membership a group of men who labored with ever increasing determination for the cause of sound Lutheranism; and their influence through the Word of God gradually became dominant. It was not an easy or a painless advance. There were bitter controversies and sad separations. But it is only so, by the surgery of discipline and the conviction of gainsayers, that the cancer of unionism can be rooted out and the church enjoy a healthy growth. Eventually, as President Bading insisted they must, “those inconsistencies” came to an end. But let us be mindful of the pain and labor by which our fathers in Christ wrought for us the goodly heritage of confessional purity which we today enjoy, and against the loss of which we owe the dedication of our best energies and earnest prayers.

OUR SYNOD TODAY From small beginnings and through many zzzz adversities, the Wisconsin Synod has grown to its present stature under the gracious care of its Master. With 297,922 souls listed in its records as of Jan. 1, 1949, when the latest statistics were compiled, synod carries on its work through the support of 211,030 communicant members who are assembled in 833 congregations and served by 620 pastors. As of last year, within 14 states of the union, Canada, and Germany, synod was maintaining 239 mission parishes and 155 missionaries. Approximately 6½ million dollars a year are contributed by our Christians for all church purposes.

A consistent interest of synod in the work of Christian education has resulted through the years in the present system of educational facilities by which the faith of many hearts has been and is being established upon a firm foundation. Within our body, 444 teachers are now serving the 14,928 children enrolled in 204 day schools. Christian high schools are available to our youth in a number of areas. Expansion programs now underway are designed to increase the flow of trained teachers as well as pastors into the Lord’s service. Dr. Martin Luther College of New Ulm, Minn., will house over 400 students next year, many of whom will devote themselves to the teaching and preaching ministry. Ours is the only synod of the Synodical Conference maintaining an institution where the full college course is available; graduates of Northwestern College, Watertown, Wis., receive a B.A. degree. Within two years the Normal Department at New Ulm will offer a four-year course and a degree of B.E. to the graduate.

The constantly expanding field of synod’s mission endeavor is an indication of spiritual health. Today, more than ever, synod is engaged in enlarging its borders, both at home and abroad. Foreign missions, it is true, are still limited largely to the work being done in Nigeria and to the picking up of the threads of the former Poland field among the displaced persons in Germany. The modest size of synod as compared with that of other bodies indicates the reason for its restricted program of foreign work. Yet new African and Mexican mission projects are under discussion and our missionaries are beginning to appear in states heretofore not touched by our efforts.

It is difficult to rid the human mind of the superstition that size is the measure of greatness; and thus, to many, our synod is an unimpressive body which at its hundredth anniversary merits less than a passing glance. We, however, think of our synod in different terms and measure it by a different standard. Though there be many defects and sins, both of omission and of commission, in the record of its past, though its present spirit of devotion leaves much to be desired because of fleshly weakness, yes, because of attacks of pride and lovelessness, though it has not always dealt in consistent faithfulness with its Lord or its brethren, synod stands with penitent heart in the Word and accepts with uncompromising firmness the grace by which it has been entrusted with the unchangeable truth of the Gospel.

For to this our synod, unworthy though it be, has been called and led. In an age of utmost apostasy, of blatant indifference toward purity of doctrine and hostility toward those who hold to an inflexible form of sound words, the Wisconsin Synod lifts its voice with the Formula of Concord and declares, saying: “We have no intention of yielding ought of the eternal, immutable truth of God for the sake of temporal peace, tranquility, and unity.” This, as we are well aware, is an invitation to conflict; for the eternal truth of God is ever an embattled citadel to be defended at enormous cost. But it is also the way of true peace. Our synod realizes that the truth is not of her making; it belongs to Christ the Redeemer, in whose service we stand. But to continue in it with unfailing, even reckless, devotion is to preserve the quietness of conscience which makes our service in this vale of tears a privilege of priceless worth.

To whom much is given, of him will much be required. We confess our wealth, and our responsibility. Synod, in view of its doctrinal position, stands committed to a twofold trust. First of all, it must face the compelling responsibility of lifting its voice with ever increasing power in the testimony of the everlasting Gospel which it confesses with unadulterated purity. Preaching is synod’s first concern, witnessing its most joyful duty; and in that campaign to win and save souls there is no discharge. Secondarily, however, the pure Gospel must be defended against all gainsayers; and error must be refuted with consistent and implacable determination. The temptation to yield the slightest ground must be met with the answer of consciences so bound in Scripture and the Confessions that they will defer to no man, no group of men, no pressure, to no proposal of outward peace and amity at the cost of compromising one jot or tittle of the precious truth. For only in such steadfastness can our synod, as handmaiden of the Gospel, find and hold its place under the approving eyes of God in a world swiftly declining toward the darkness of the end.

On II Thess. 3:6-15

“There comes a time, in dealing with those who hold to false doctrine and practice, when we must declare to them a severance of fraternal relations, refuse them fellowship at the Lord’s Table, and yet thereafter continue to admonish the erring as brethren. This order of dealing seems impossible to some; yet the Apostle Paul requires it.”

“Then I say: If God regarded even such a social misdemeanor as so serious that it must be dealt with by withdrawal, must not Missouri’s sins demand such action even more emphatically? That is a real status confessionis. Here is a scriptural basis for it. And if we had announced ourselves thus, it would have signified an advance commensurate with what has happened.”

(From two documents by Egbert Schaller on this passage dating from the early 1950s. As explained in the introductory material to Booklet #3 in The Writings of Prof. Egbert Schaller (containing his 1958 paper on the point at issue in the Synodical Conference), the first of these documents was published in the 1988-3 issue of the LCCF Newsletter, and the second in the 1996-4 issue of the same publication.)

Near the end of his explanation of the Third Article in his Large Catechism, Luther writes: “For all outside of Christianity, whether heathen, Turks, Jews, or false Christians and hypocrites, although they believe in, and worship, only one true God, yet know not what His mind towards them is, and cannot expect any love or blessing from Him; therefore they abide in eternal wrath and damnation.” (Triglot, p. 697, par. 66)
This passage in our Confessions became the focus of a great deal of attention in the wake of participation by David Benke, president of the Atlantic District of the Missouri Synod, in the Yankee Stadium service on September 23, 2001. It was argued by some that Luther in this passage affirms that one does not need to be a Christian to have and worship the one true God. This argument is dealt with and thoroughly refuted by Edward Engelbrecht in a splendid little book published by CPH in 2007: One True God – Understanding Large Catechism II.66. Engelbrecht shows that Luther made frequent use of concessive clauses in which he proceeds on the supposition that something is true, even though he himself does not regard it as true. An example is a comment on John 1:16 that Martin Bertram translated as follows: “But even if we were to concede that they were full of grace, they would still be unable to impart any of it to me.” A very familiar example is the line in Hymn 262: “Though devils all the world should fill.”
The conclusion is that the translation of the new edition of the Book of Concord, Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions (2005) is correct: “Even if we were to concede that everyone outside Christianity – whether heathen, Turks, Jews, or false Christians and hypocrites – believe in and worship only one true God, it would still be true that they do not know what His mind toward them is and cannot expect any love or blessing from Him. Therefore they abide in eternal wrath and damnation.”
The author and publishing house have rendered a great service in producing this book.

Welcome information:
Vol. VII of Selected Sermons of E. Schaller is now available. The cost is $8 plus postage. Order from Paul R. Koch, 3425 Morgan Ave., Eau Claire, Wis. 54701-7023; [email protected]

The well-known book by Lutheran Hour speaker, Walter A. Maier, For Better, Not for Worse – A Manual of Christian Matrimony (CPH; second edition, 1936), has 551 pages, not counting the index. It is therefore perhaps a little surprising that despite this length and even though the number of subheadings in the table of contents exceeds 200, only two of them have the word “father” in it. One of these headings quotes the Fourth Commandment and deals with obedience. The other heading is “Father, Key-Man of Our Social Order,” but is less than four pages long. The index entry on parents is about half a column long, but the entry on fathers has only seven lines and nine references to pages, of which six are to pages – a couple of them more than once – in the four-page section just mentioned. A current check, made mainly by consulting others who are much better versed in this area than we are, brought a similarly surprising result: When it comes to sound Lutheran material dealing with the Christian father, the pickings today are quite slim. Judging by a quick glance into the indexes of some Lutheran periodicals, even they have not devoted much space to the topic. Perhaps the following quotations and references might therefore be of some use.

Having mentioned Maier, let us begin with him. “We must remember that, according to divine social standards, fathers, not mothers alone, are given the command to bring up their children ‘in the nurture and admonition of the Lord’ (Eph. 4:6 [sic; should be 6:4]).” “ … The great Reformer insisted: ‘No one should become a father unless he is able to instruct his children in the Ten Commandments and in the Gospel, so that he may bring up true Christians.” “Fathers must retain a sympathetic feeling for their children’s activities and find time to develop a happy companionship with their children. We are not, however, in favor of a loose familiarity. On the contrary, we agree wholeheartedly with Judge Aarons of Milwaukee: ‘Fathers are overdoing this pal stuff.’” (pp. 289-90)

Gen. 18:19: Two of the six sections of August Pieper’s 1923-24 article, “Anniversary Reflections,” were not included when this article was published in Vol. III of The Wauwatosa Theology (NPH, 1997). While commenting on the church’s responsibility to its children in one of these sections, Pieper wrote: “We have God’s own Word. In the very first book of the Bible, Abraham is held before our eyes. Of him the Lord says that He has appointed him the father and the pattern of all believers of the Old Covenant and of the New, not as Luther most unfortunately has rendered it, ‘I know that he will command his children,’ etc., but, ‘For I have chosen him, so that (in order that, for this purpose, that) he may command his children and his household after him, to keep the ways of the Lord.’ The training of his descendants was thus an essential part of Abraham’s election and call, and all the promises that he received are bound to the fulfillment of this call and depend on that.” (Floyd Brand’s translation in Faith-Life, 1996-4, p. 13)

Eli: On the warning for us in his example, see Egbert Schaller’s sermon series, “From Ichabod to Ebenezer” (Booklet #12 in the under-signed’s The Writings of Prof. Egbert Schaller, pp. 16 & 20). “Our concern is occasioned by the ever-growing number of homes in which parents guide and rule their children as Eli did – with whining words, with empty scoldings, with inconsistency that betrays a lack of fixed standards. … Those who have said that there are no problem children, only problem parents, are significantly approximating the truth. … Though children may have learned the catechism by heart, this offers little assurance if homes fail by correct training to teach the children how to know and love their Savior. … Eli was an old man, it is true; but by no means too old to get up, bind his priestly garments about his loins, march out, and clean house. The day was far spent; but there was time to deal with the corruption that had begun in his own home, yea, in his own heart. It would not be as easy as it might have been had he taken steps much sooner. The cost of repentance always grows as it is put off.”

Psalm 78: “I have been telling Eugene [Alfred Rehwinkel’s son] Bible history stories for some time. He enjoys them very much and is keenly interested. Every evening after supper he comes with his Bible history and says, ‘Daddy, we haven’t had our Bible history lesson yet.’ He listens with rapt attention and his face vividly reflects the emotions he experiences. At times tears come to his eyes, and when the story is over he always says, ‘Daddy, is that all? That story is too short.’” (From the diary of Alfred Rehwinkel, as quoted on p. 124 of Salt, Light, and Signs of the Times by Ronald Stelzer)
Without denying the existence of situations such as that portrayed in Acts 18:24-26, where Apollos learned from Priscilla, we note how I Cor. 14:35 sets forth the scope of the activity of men as teachers. The responsibility to teach does not extend just to the children.

Eph. 6:1-4: From Egbert Schaller’s sermon on this text in Vol. II of his selected sermons, which should be digested in its entirety, we take the following (p. 143): “Obedient children are planted in Christ and draw their obedience out of Him. This duty is laid upon the parents, and nobody else is responsible – not the state, not the church, not the pastor. ‘Ye fathers,’ says the apostle, laying the burden directly where it belongs, upon the shoulders of the head of the house. He who is called upon to provide for the bodily support of his family through honest labor is also the one to whom the children must look for their ‘nurture and admonition in the Lord.’ Let no father shirk this responsibility, and let no one idly say that it is unfair to leave the mother out, because she is not left out. As the help-meet of the husband, she finds her share of the task of keeping a Christian home if the father leads the way. You fathers, the very existence of your Christian home depends upon your children [being?] obedient in the Lord through your bringing them up ‘in the Lord.’ It is your task to see that they not only learn to know Jesus and His Word, but to live in Him, drawing nourishment for their souls out of His Word, turning to His light for guidance as flowers turn their faces to the sun.”

Eph. 5:22-31: “The section from Eph. 5 has been more abused by husbands than misunderstood by wives. The Lord has a word for husbands and a word for wives. His word to husbands is to love, not to force their wives to obey. The Lord is not setting up dictatorships. He is interested in what husbands are willing to give up for their marriage, which is different from giving in. Husbands are inclined to blame their wives for the lack of love in their home. The Lord expects wives to love, and as Christians they certainly would be doing so. … [But?] in the family the Lord makes husbands responsible for love. ‘Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.’ (Col. 3:19) … For husbands the model of love is the one exemplified by Jesus, who was willing to, and did, sacrifice Himself for the benefit of His bride, the Church. So are Christian husbands willing to give of themselves for the benefit of their marriage. ‘Leadership without love is tyranny; love without leadership is sentimentality.’” (Michael Sydow, “A Lamb for Each Household,” 1981 paper, p. 14) As Schaller put it in the sermon referred to above: “The communion of saints and the Christian family are twin sisters.”

A book of unusual insight, candor, and sensitivity that deals at length with the truths in this Ephesians passage is He Her Honour and She His Glory by V.S. Grieger (published by the author; 3rd revised edition, September 1994). “In his admonition to husbands St. Paul does not even mention their headship, let alone imply that they should be concerned about it and insist on due respect and honour on account of it. His headship is expressed and shows itself rather in demonstrating that sort of love for his wife that makes itself fully responsible for all her needs and wants, and which is determined to have her presented before him in her fullest glory, as Christ does for his Church.” (p. 47)

On the website of the Hausvater project (hausvater.org) is a review of Emerson Eggerichs’ book, Love and Respect: The Love She Most Desires, the Respect He desperately Needs. According to the review, the book explains that the wife tends to react without respect if not loved, and that the husband tends to react without love if not respected. On the other hand, the husband’s love motivates the wife’s respect, and her respect motivates his love. As Grieger put it at one point (p. 103): “Someone has said, a woman needs to be loved, but a man needs to be admired.”

I Peter 3:7: “But the husband should also see to it that he treats his wife with kindness and consideration. He should be tender, and he should honor her as God’s weakest vessel. … She is weaker physically and also more timid and downhearted in spirit. Therefore you should deal with her and treat her in such a way that she can bear it. … Now it is impossible to give a rule for this. God leaves it to everyone to treat his wife considerately according to each wife’s nature. You must not use your authority arbitrarily; for you are her husband to help, support, and protect her, not to harm her. It is impossible to set specific bounds for you. Here you yourself must know how to proceed thoughtfully.” (American Edition of Luther’s Woks, Vol. 30, pp. 91-92) Regarding the statement about prayers not being hindered: How can a husband pray confidently for any gifts from God if he is setting God at naught by living in ingratitude for His wonderful gift of a wife through inconsiderate treatment of her?

Gilbert Sydow’s article, “Is Education the Solution to Our Problems – Or Is the Solution our Problem?” (Journal of Theology, 1988-3), has much to offer. To a considerable extent, it repeats and builds on thoughts Sydow had expressed in two articles in the Lutheran Spokesman. The first, dealing with the command, “Provoke not your children to anger,” is on pp. 2-4 of the June 1971 issue. “The flesh is not only inclined to disobedience, it is also inclined to tyrannize. … We adults should watch ourselves and examine whether as we grow older we tend to drift into arbitrary ways of dealing with the young. We have observed a tendency on the part of some to react with an immediate ‘No!’ to the wishes and suggestions of children. It almost appears as if pride comes into the picture because the idea didn’t originate with the parents.” The other article is on pp. 8-10 of the July 1972 issue. “But we do have serious misgivings about any method of education and training that leaves too much up to the whims and fancies of the flesh, knowing full well which way it goes. When the thought of discipline is introduced the objection might arise that this forces a harsh and joyless existence on a child. We dissent. The kind of discipline we have in mind has quite the opposite effect and leads toward happiness and contentment. It starts with an imposed discipline and seeks to develop a self-discipline …. It goes this way: As one’s self-discipline increases, so also does his sense of freedom and his feeling of happiness.”

Nor can we forbear quoting this: “We have but one course to pursue: to trust implicitly in the absolute power of Christ to drive out devils and to bring this Christ with His authority and love to the hearts of the children. Simply put Christ and a child together and keep them together by the Word, and regard the result as a foregone conclusion. If we short-circuit the mighty grace of the Redeemer by grounding it in our personal effectiveness, we exhibit the unbelief that results in failure even under the most favorable circumstances. …We have no child-problems. We have only personal problems: to adopt the best methods of work as God makes them available to us, and to be altogether faithful in the use of them; but above all, to believe without qualification, to believe implicitly and utterly, that Christ can and will put to rout the kingdom of darkness in the hearts of our youth and set up His rule of grace in them, under all conditions and by any methods, if we but faithfully speak and live the Gospel of Him before their ears and eyes in season and out of season.” (Conclusion of Egbert Schaller’s article, “The Failure of Unbelief – Mt. 17:1-20,” Booklet #19)

Aspects of family life are treated in the last four sermons in The Lutheran Hour by Walter A. Maier (CPH, 1931). Pp. 262-264 in Ewald Plass’s This Is Luther are relevant, as is the section on parents in his What Luther Says. George Gilder’s book, Men and Marriage, has been recommended to us. The book, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood – A Response to Evangelical Feminism, by John Piper and Wayne Grudem (1991), and the monthly periodical, The Family in America, are also deserving of mention. The latter, founded in 1987, is also available on the Internet. John Parcher frequently addressed family issues in his columns, as can be seen even from the few that we have already previously reprinted. Two articles by Pastor Fossum, “As a Father” and “Duties of Fathers in the Christian Home,” should most definitely not be forgotten. Originally published in the LCCF Newsletter in 1990 and 1991, they are readily available, along with other edifying material, in the booklet, “In the Nurture and Admonition of the Lord.”

May our fathers, knowing their own great weakness, boldly seek and thankfully obtain from their Heavenly Father the strength and wisdom to carry out their high calling in a way that will glorify Jesus’ saving name.

Also from Grieger’s book: “Deep down in the heart of every woman, unless it has been cruelly suppressed, by brainwashing through the media, or by bitter abuse in life, is a deep feeling and conviction that she really does not want to be the head ….” (p. 144)
“It is more likely that something has happened in the process of their [some women] becoming highly educated and qualified academically which spoils their chances of marriage. Other things being equal, it would seem that this finally has got to be related to what man needs and looks for in a wife. It has got to be related to a woman’s willingness to giver herself to a man in self-surrendering love. In some subtle way this charming feminine quality has probably been compromised or reduced, so that, while man generally may respect her, yet she does not appeal to him as a wife.” (p. 93)

PATRIOTIC SERVICE David Murry spent a lifetime studying the X various cultures around the world. He says that women tend to domesticate the men they marry. The word “groom,” as in “bridegroom,” comes from the word “guma,” which means “servant.”
But Murry’s chief premise is: “Cultures differ in many ways, but all societies that survive are built on marriage.”
Wedding ceremonies may vary from place to place, customs of courtship and notions of beauty, but the basic building block of society does not change.
That is not surprising. Marriage is not the result of social engineering or sexual experiment; it is no accident of convenience or coincidence.
God set it up that way: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.”
What got Murry into academic trouble was the conclusion he drew from his findings. He lambasted the substitutes.
We’re wasting our time on better child care and health care, improved educational programs, more cops, and courts, and jails, and social workers.
If we’re not going to take care of first things first, then all the secondary things won’t make a bit of difference.
Then we’re just fooling around with symptoms instead of treating the disease which is poisoning the body of society.
A simple marriage and home don’t seem like much compared to grandiose government agendas and vast schemes of social restructuring.
The plainest couple on earth, if they can hold together, accomplish something that multiplied billions in money cannot buy.
The poorest pair who outlast the stormy seas of matrimony are serving their country better than all the experts put together.
The smallest child who helps make his own home work outshines all the geniuses of his generation.
It is so easily overlooked, but the family is still the original Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
The teachings of the Bible are wonderfully encouraging to folks struggling to live out their relationship according to the original blueprint.
Better than doing it for each other and our country, it’s our nearest and best chance of doing something beautiful for God.

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES “If you are a single parent, you are z as capable as any two parents of raising healthy, happy children.” So says the popular columnist John Rosemond in his book Parent Power. The man often hits the nail on the head, but not this time. In an excellent article, Ken Cherney of Louisiana strongly disagrees.
“The results are in,” Cherney says. “John Rosemond, and others like him, are dead wrong, and a nation that believes them is in denial.”
“Single parenting” is usually a euphemism for a home with no father, Cherney says, and the results are fairly predictable.
They include every sorry feature you would expect when the legitimate, built-in “authority figure” is removed from a child’s life.
In fact, the best indicator of a community’s crime rate is the number of single-parent homes, regardless of predominant race or income levels.
Cherney is only saying what, until recently, everybody already knew. A “family” is a mother and a father who are married and rearing their children together.
Trouble is, if you say this out loud, people complain: “What are you trying to do? Single parents need help, and not guilt trips.”
They most certainly do! Single parents and the children they are trying to raise need all the support they can get, and we can give. Their wounds are already painful enough, and nobody gains by rubbing salt in them.
But perpetuating the lie, and trashing the Bible precepts in the process, only aggravates the wounds.
Pretending there’s a substitute in a child’s life for a “mama” and a “daddy,” or that divorce turns spouses into better parents, is a lie.
How is a child helped when a father is replaced by a slice of his paycheck, or by a relative, or by some government agency?
A family is not what society says it is, nor is it one of many “alternative lifestyles.” It is God’s creation, and what He meant it to be.
There’s His blueprint, and the world’s, which has mother and child and a string of men who come and go in and out of their lives.
You make the call. We are free to make a choice. But we are most assuredly not free to choose the consequences.
NATURAL AFFECTIONS The local newspaper recently ran a zzzz series of articles which stirred up a hornets’ nest. The series featured excerpts from a newly published book by a homosexual congressman who proudly “came out of the closet.”
It wasn’t for literary value that this book, of the thousands published each year, was reviewed as extolling the sodomist lifestyle. The percentage is small of those who “exchange natural relations for unnatural ones … and receive in themselves the due penalty for their perversion,” Rom. 1.
Another series appeared this summer which was even more shocking, and tragic in its long-range consequences. And scarcely anyone raised an eyebrow! The articles focused on the staggering number of parents in the county who orphan, abandon, and dump their children in the name of “Day Care.”
The series wasn’t about single parents who, through no fault of their own, struggle each day to keep body and soul and family together.
These parents are searching for “quality care” when they are not willing to give either “quality” or “care” to their own children. Brother, are they vocal and demanding about the “handling” and “attention” and “needs” that somebody else is supposed to supply their child!
Over and over again they sound the egotistical lament: “Too much stress at home … I like the intellectual stimulation of adults … We just bought a house ….”
“Honor thy father and thy mother” is part of it, as well as, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord.” The other part is children must have parents who are there for them to honor and obey.
Samuel Sava is a teacher, and he is only echoing the principles of the Scriptures when he says: “It’s not better teachers, texts, or curricula that our children need most; it’s better childhoods.
“And we will never see lasting school reform until we first see parent reform!”
The buck still stops where it ever has: “Ye fathers, bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”
Churches may get into the act, relieving parents of their responsibilities and giving the self-centered what they want. But that dog won’t hunt.
“If any provide not for his own, especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.”
THE NON-MEMORIES A woman tells about shopping in a large zz OF MOM store when she heard a wee voice shriek, zzz “MOM!” She turned around at once, and the thing was, she said, other women reacted the same way to the helpless little voice.
Her own children were gone, but she would never outlive the response to “Mom,” or the accusatory “Mo-hom,” or the exasperated sigh, “Oh Maawwwm.”
Grown children have a knack for recalling stories from childhood, and stunts they pulled – some they got away with and some they didn’t.
But they don’t remember the truly sacrificial things at all. An infant daughter of ours, for example, had the colic. We took turns walking the floor with her night after weary night, burping her, rocking, singing, humming, and praying – and still she wailed and wailed.
She ate and grew in spite of it all, and one day the colic simply stopped. But today the daughter doesn’t remember a bit of it.
Did I scream in bad dreams at night, throw temper tantrums and food from a highchair, and cry from skinned knees, pinched fingers, and earaches? I must have. But only Mom would know because she was there, and I don’t remember it at all.
A child, in the crawling stage, will creep toward his mother on his own. Ten times. In an hour. If she is there. A five-year-old will speak 15,000 words to his mother. In one day’s time. If she is there.
Child psychologists are almost frightening when they tell us what is going on during the first three years of a child’s life.
Yet today’s child care culture, in the name of economic “enhancement” and “self-fulfillment,” recklessly entrusts children to total strangers.
They demand “quality care” when they are not willing to give “quality” or “care” to their very own children.
The Spanish painter Goya charged as much to paint the hands as the face, because the hands are so difficult to paint. Delsarte got so good at it, he could sit in a park and tell whether a baby was held by a maid or by its mother by the tension in the hands.
If you had a mother in whose arms you were entirely loved and secure, you received all kinds of priceless gifts you do not even remember.
“Her children rise up and call her blessed,” the Lord has so designed it, even though they may not remember exactly why.

I Samuel 18:1-16

When we study the account of David’s encounter with Goliath, we see that Saul is ineffective, even paralyzed, because he focuses on himself. The name and glory of God mean less to him than his own name and glory. But David is wonderfully effective and successful because he is not interested in his own glory and achievements, but solely in the wonderful saving name of his God. In considering the first part of the next chapter, we will focus on two thoughts: 1) Evil is always closer than we think. 2) Help is always closer than we deserve.

1.

One of Luther’s more interesting writings, directed to the Elector Frederick of Saxony when he was quite ill, is entitled “The Fourteen of Consolation.” Following a medieval pattern, it discusses seven kinds of evil and seven kinds of good. Six of the evils Luther discusses are the evil in front of us, the evil behind us, the evil to the left, the evil to the right, and the evils above and below us. And what is the remaining evil in the list? The evil within us.

There is indeed great evil within us. “Behold,” the psalmist says, “I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me,” Ps. 51:5. The tide of evil in the world waxes and wanes to some extent. But even in times – and don’t we yearn for such – that are not characterized by the plunges into the depths of wickedness that so appall us today, each of us must still reckon with a force that does not change: our sinful nature.

One aspect of this evil is envy, the envy that we see at work in Saul as he watches David’s success and hears the refrain sung by Israel’s women: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.” We all know that Saul ultimately suffered spiritual shipwreck. Are we all aware that there was really nothing singular about what brought this about? Are we aware that what was at work in him is also at work in us? Do we realize that the evil that was so close to Saul is also close to us? Can we deny that we often experience feelings of envy?
When man acts in envy – a force that, left unchecked, can ravage a society – he is acting in perfect harmony with his essential nature. Envy is not transplanted in with great effort from the outside. It springs up naturally from the soil of man’s selfishness, which wants all for self and which will not allow to others what they have. So it is always closer than we think. And if we do not suppress it, it will grow stronger and stronger and make firmer and firmer its grip upon us, just as it did with Saul. Much activity in the political realm has its roots in envy.

At one point, Saul thinks to himself: “What more can he [David] get but the kingdom?” How badly do you suppose David wanted the kingdom? That question is answered as soon as we realize how fully David was aware that as a child of God by faith in the promised Savior, he already possessed all things. David exulted, no less than we do, in a salvation effected through Jesus, “who was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification,” Rom. 4:25. He knew that he was an heir of everlasting life. And he was happy to serve His Savior God in any capacity in this life. So what difference did it make whether he was king or not? See I Cor. 7:21-22 & 29-31.

But Saul imputes his own evil way of thinking to David. And he cannot let go of something God has resolved to take from him: the kingdom. But if we quarrel with God in His taking, how much sovereignty will we allow Him in His giving? How much wisdom is there in adopting a stance of disputing with God when God is the ultimate and supreme Giver? How much wisdom is there in being at odds with Him who poured out the blood and offered up the life of His only-begotten Son to effect salvation for undeserving sinners?

No, a child of God is content to let God be sovereign – whether in giving or in taking. And if, in the matters of lesser importance, God withholds from us and gives to others, we are content. We rejoice in whatever happiness and good fortune are enjoyed by others. These things we learn from the Holy Spirit, who overcomes the evil within.

2.

Is there, then, no remedy for Saul? Is there no hope of any turning back? Our text also directs our attention to this truth: Help is always closer than we deserve.

Ultimately, of course, there is only one real source of help whenever the matter of sin is concerned: the blood of Jesus Christ, which cleanses us from all sin. There is no stain so deep and dark that it has not been washed away and made white by Christ’s atoning suffering and death. There is no evil so close that it has not been buried with Christ and sealed in oblivion by the Father’s raising of Him from the dead.

But another person’s example can be used by God to lead us to repentance, and it is of that kind of example that the beginning of I Samuel 18 speaks when it tells of Jonathan’s covenant with David. Here is the man who stands to lose the throne because of the anointing of David, and yet we read of Jonathan: “He loved him [David] as himself.”

Consider the terrible isolation into which Saul is more and more locking himself. He has the most splendid example within his own household to rebuke him for his envy. But he pays no attention to it. How often this happens. How many there are who do not do much better when it comes to using undeserved help that is close to us. Wholesome counsel and healing are as close to us as our own family members as well as the wider family we have in our Christian brothers and sisters. When the varied and sharp pressures of daily existence bring out the evil within and trap us into responses that are not God-pleasing, do we draw on this resource? Or do we, pridefully, withdraw into isolation, and erect barriers? If we talk to God, can we not talk to men? If we are open with Him, can we not be with men? If we are humble before God, recognizing that all depends on His helping us, shall we not also swallow our pride when it keeps us from seeking help in the example of others?

Saul will soon direct his hatred beyond David to the one who befriended him, Jonathan. He will refer to Jonathan’s mother as a “perverse and rebellious woman” (I Sam. 20:30). Meanwhile, separating himself more and more from wholesome company, he will keep sinister company with a weapon: that spear. It is not to be passed over as meaningless when the Holy Spirit calls our attention to it on repeated occasions (19:9-10, 20:33, 26:7).
Help was also very close to Saul in the form of a striking example recorded previously in the pages of Holy Scripture. If ever a man was in a position to experience bitter envy, it was Moses. God had taken a privilege from him, the privilege of seeing the promised land. This was because of the sin of striking the rock in anger when directed to speak to it. But the Children of Israel were not at all free of guilt in this: “By the waters of Meribah they angered the Lord, and trouble came to Moses because of them; for they rebelled against the Spirit of God, and rash words came from Moses’ lips,” Ps. 106:32-33. Moses alluded to this when addressing the Children of Israel: “Because of you the Lord became angry with me also and said, ‘You shall not enter it, either,’” Deut. 1:37. Cf. also Deut. 3:23-29. But though Moses felt the loss severely, and pleaded with God about the matter, he accepted God’s will.

A post-Easter introit utilizes the verse from Peter: “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word.” Saul failed to drink of the milk of the Word to counteract the evil within. May God, for Jesus’ sake, graciously preserve us from that grievous error.

We gratefully acknowledge the kind permission of Northwestern Publishing House of the Wisconsin Synod to reprint the articles that Prof. Schaller wrote for the Northwestern Lutheran. This, the first of a number of editorials appearing over his initials in 1950, was published in the April 23, 1950, issue.

We have reason to be deeply gratified, to thank and praise God for the steady, unwavering course which our church has pursued over a period of many years in fulfilling its divine calling under the Gospel.

This is impressed upon us when we note the confusion in which the Protestant world flounders to the right and left of the God-given directive. A recent article in a liberal church periodical calls attention to the report that of late the young pastors and students of theology are no longer greatly interested in social issues, but are turning more to theology, doctrinal study, and cultivation of a devotional life. The article points out that, a generation ago, churches were sold on the belief that the well-being of the world could be effected through social action in accordance with Christian teachings. That means, in effect: Teach people their social obligations, the observation of the royal law of love, pacifism and cooperation, and the church has resolved the world’s difficulties. We well recall the days when any church whose message was not studded with socialistic phrases and political economics was considered dead and worthless.

But gradually, we are now told, it became clear that socialism was not the cure for the world’s ills. Now the emphasis is shifting to the problem of bringing the individual to reform himself from within. Young preachers are speaking more of the evil of sin and seeking the goal of a better world through individual inner improvement, a sort of spiritual redemption.

All of which, of course, is quite a hopeless babble of confusion. So long as men conceive the duty of the church and the hope of the world as lying in a solution of “the perplexing problems of society – economic justice, racial brotherhood, world peace,” it makes little difference whether the professed leaders are advocates of “a change from without” or “a change from within”; there will not be any change except for the worse. A great proportion of the Protestant church is wandering hopelessly in a labyrinth of human philosophies. The Gospel of Jesus Christ remains a great mystery to them. That is the major reason for the increasing darkness upon the land.

It can be stated very simply: Unless we begin with the doctrine of sin and grace, sin which damns eternally every soul conceived and born therein, and grace which forgives sin, which persuades men to throw themselves unconditionally upon the mercy of God and accept the sacrifice of his Son who atoned for all sin, being raised again for our justification – and unless we end our program as a church with the proclamation of that gospel and its entire body of doctrine, we contribute nothing to the cause of saving the world. It is to this proposition that our church is dedicated and to which it has hitherto held.

—

You Fathers……………………………………………………………p. 4
To the Point!
Patriotic Service……………………………………………………p. 10
Truth or Consequences……………………………………………p. 11
Natural Affections………………………………………………..p. 12
The Non-Memories of Mom………………………………….….p. 13
We gratefully acknowledge the kind permission of
John Parcher to reprint, from Christian News, columns
that he originally wrote for his church bulletin.
Meditating Day and Night …………………..…………….…………p. 14
Utter Confusion………………………..………………………………p. 17

In connection with the emphasis in this issue, we should like to call attention to the website, parentalrights.org, which explains that parental rights are indeed “hanging by a thread,” and to point out that one of the topics at an annual homeschooling conference this April in Minnesota is “Parental Rights: It’s Now or Never!” As this is being prepared for publication (in March), phrases like “cradle to career” and “zero to five,” to our dismay but hardly to our surprise, are being used in connection with the never-ceasing expansion of governmental control of education. The highest office in the land is occupied by someone who, if he had his way, as can be seen from his support of the Freedom of Choice Act, would not give people the option to refuse to commit a heinous act of murder. Something more antithetical to the very existence of society itself could hardly be imagined. But instead of being restricted from having any impact on society, as would be appropriate in the case of anyone of such a way of thinking, he has now been made chief executive by the American people, a position through which he may well be able to extend even further the government’s already frightful measure of control over the nation’s children. May our Heavenly Father, for Jesus’ sake, graciously thwart those working for still more state usurpation of parental prerogatives. RW

The current staff of this bimonthly publication of the RLC is R.E. Wehrwein (editor), Derek Wehrwein, and Shannon Steensma. Subscriptions are $10 per year, payable to the Reformation Lutheran Conference. The editor’s addresses are 1121 S. Jefferson St., New Ulm, MN 56073; [email protected]

— www.reformationlutheranconference.org –

Meditating Day and Night…………………………………….…….…p. 3
A sermon on Jesus’ transfiguration

To the Point! …………………………………………..……………..…p. 7
1. Common Sense of Christ
2. Home, Sweet Home

From the Bookshelves ………….…………………………..… ……..p. 9
1. What the Bible Says About Parenting
2. The Theology of the Cross

Thirteen dead horses: “The messenger galloping home to Venice with the news from Paris rode thirteen horses to death in his haste.” So reports David Boyle on p. 229 of Toward the Setting Sun. What news was so important? King Charles VIII of France had died (in 1498).
It has been well said that the Christian life is not a dash but a marathon. Still, we have the most important news of all, and a sense of urgency about getting the word out is nowhere more appropriate than in a Christian. Sin, death, and damnation have died, executed by Christ.
Mt. 28:7-8: “And go quickly …. And they departed quickly from the tomb … and ran ….”

Without parental knowledge: In an on-line discussion group on education, one parent recently reported that William Ayers spoke at the public high school that his son attends – without any advance notice having been given to parents.

The current staff of this bimonthly publication of the RLC is R.E. Wehrwein (editor), Derek Wehrwein, and Shannon Steensma. Subscriptions are $10 per year. The editor’s addresses are 1121 S. Jefferson St., New Ulm, MN 56073; [email protected]

— www.reformationlutheranconference.org –

Luke 9:30-31: “Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about His departure, which He was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.”

It is common to consider the Holy Spirit’s account of Jesus’ transfiguration as we move from the season of Epiphany to the season of Lent. On that occasion, when Jesus revealed His divine glory, we are at a point of transition. With the bulk of His public ministry behind Him, our Savior prepares to head for Jerusalem. There is therefore so much to think about as we look back, and ahead. Added to this is the appearance of two very prominent Old Testament figures, Moses and Elijah. What memories their names bring back as we recall all that is recorded of them; to what further reflections we are led as we keep in mind the offices of lawgiver and prophet represented by these two men. Indeed, the disciples themselves could not have been more dazzled by the divine glory that shone forth in and through Jesus’ humanity than we are dazzled by everything offered for our meditation by this precious account God has given to us.

Since we must, therefore, be very selective, we will focus on this fact, that Moses and Elijah were not of a mind to discuss all that had transpired during their earthly lives, nor even to discuss the glories of eternal life, but had nothing else to discuss than Jesus’ death. So we consider why we too finally have nothing else to think and talk about than Jesus’ departure.

1. Because we have contributed our full share
to the wreckage filling this world.

The wreckage of which we are speaking is not that of lost civilizations, on which archaeologists expend such vast resources; rather, it is the wreckage described, first of all, in Ex. 32:19: “When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain.”
Let no one say that this is merely one isolated location, and that a couple of stone tablets are of little or no consequence. For the tablets take us back to God Himself. And as surely as there was wreckage at the foot of Mt. Sinai, so surely wreckage fills the entire world.

The tablets take us back to the perfect and supremely holy God because they were written by Him. “The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets,” Ex. 32:16. Behind them is the One who, by His very nature, must forever drive all evil from His sight. The fire of His holiness can do nothing else. Since the Ten Commandments written on these stone tablets come from the holy God, their content is perfect. “So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good,” Rom. 7:12.

It being impossible for God to permit Himself to be displaced, He naturally requires that He be acknowledged, worshiped, and honored as the one true God. This is expressed in the first table of the Law. Furthermore, the amazing gifts that God has poured out upon mankind – the gift of His own representatives, of life, of marriage, of property, of a good name – are protected through the sacred commands of the second table of the Law. And holy desires are the object of exclusive focus in the last two commandments.

Alas, what a tragedy that this supremely holy will of God is wantonly violated and attacked, so that its embodiment on stone lies shattered, broken, a heap of wreckage.

Such is the fate of God’s Law throughout the length and breadth of this world. And we, yes, you and I, have contributed our full share to this worldwide wreckage. “We have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. … We have not obeyed the Lord our God or kept the laws He gave us through His servants the prophets. All Israel has transgressed your law and turned away, refusing to obey you,” Daniel 9:5,6,10,11. “All have sinned!” If we attempt to excuse ourselves for responsibility for shattering God’s commands along with the Children of Israel, then we are guilty of the great sin of pride.
But our view of the wreckage is not yet complete. “He [Elijah] replied, ‘I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword,’” I Kings 19:10. See also v. 14. More wreckage – the wreckage of the very altars constructed to worship the true God. A smashing of the First Commandment, fountainhead of all the rest. Worship of the Golden Calf on a large scale, as it were. An attack upon God as Savior just as erection of the Golden Calf at Sinai was an attack upon the God who had rescued Israel from Egypt.

Who can ever truly take the measure of the wreckage that comes into view when our thoughts trace out the connections suggested by the appearance on the mount of transfiguration of: 1) Moses; and 2) Elijah.

2. Because in that departure alone, and in nothing else,
there was a new kind of breaking through which
everything was put back together.

What then shall descend upon this world, which has broken God’s commands? We know very well what descended. God Himself descended. He acted in holy vengeance. He picked up instruments of cruel punishment. He wielded them mightily, one after the other. The cruel scourge. The crown of thorns. That horrible instrument of the ultimate in a tortured death – the cross, with regard to which He Himself had declared: “Cursed is every one who hangs on a tree.” He did inflict mankind’s punishment. He did extract the utmost price for mankind’s sin. He did slam shut the door of heaven, and open wide the door of hell. He did drive the evil out of His sight, expelling it into outer darkness.

But none of us can say that we felt this. None of us, ranging over the length and breadth of the world, or over its past and future, can turn up any sinner who experienced this punishment. For it was the holy, innocent Son of God, Jesus, who bore this punishment, fulfilling those wonderful words of Isaiah 53: “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.”

When Moses came down from his Old Testament mountain, what faces us is broken commandmenets. When Elijah came down from his Old Testament mountain, Carmel, we have facing us broken altars. But when Jesus came down from His mount of transfiguration, there is a very different kind of breaking: His own body is broken as He steps into our place, becoming the victim of God’s wrath in our stead. Yes, since Jesus is God, we may say that the descent from this mount leads us to the breaking of God.

It is this new kind of breaking to which we cling when we take up the words of Paul Gerhardt: “The joy can ne’er be spoken, Above all joys beside, When in Thy body broken I thus with safety hide.” (LH: 172-7)

What was the outcome of this new kind of breaking? As our sin shattered the tables of stone, so the righteousness of Jesus, brought to completion when He obediently gave Himself into that sacrificial death, put them back together. What we never could have begun, Jesus did: He pieced everything flawlessly back into perfect form. That which was broken is whole again. Once again the commandments are in one piece. Once again they exist, inviolate, exactly as they came forth from the mouth and hand of God. Once again there is not a mark or scratch to be found upon them. By being broken Himself, Jesus completed the course of perfect obedience through which the wreckage disappears and the tables of the Law are presented unbroken to the Father on behalf of the world. It is as impossible to disfigure them as it is impossible to go back and eradicate the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. The devil himself can only rage in impotent fury as the world is blanketed in righteousness.

But let no one think that he has numerous options. Peter declared concerning the risen Christ: “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name, under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved,” Acts 4:12. It is in Jesus’ departure, and in that alone, that there is a new kind of breaking through which everything was put back together.

God grant, then, that we may always join Moses and Elijah in understanding that the one subject of surpassing importance was, is, and always will be, the death that Jesus accomplished in Jerusalem. Amen.

We gratefully acknowledge the kind permission of John Parcher to reprint, from Christian News, columns that he originally wrote for his church bulletin.

COMMON SENSE Timothy Richard spent years among the
OF CHRIST desperate and famine-stricken people of
x China. He tells how he was hampered in his efforts to distribute food and clothing to the masses. The starving crowds were simply unmanageable.
Till one day in his morning Bible reading, Richard came across the verse in which Jesus said: “Make the people sit down.”
In a flash, he saw the solution. Sitting people do not push and shove and trample one another. Ever after, he said, he had the highest opinion of “the common sense of Christ.”
How often doesn’t it happen? Good and gifted people often fail in their purpose because they lack common sense.
Jesus had a good measure of it. He fed 5,000 hungry souls that day. “Make the people sit down.”
The man Jairus and his wife were so startled to see their daughter raised to life that they stood there and did nothing. Only Christ saw the common-sense thing to do. “Give her something to eat,” He said.
He did it again Easter evening. At the sight of the risen Christ, the frightened disciples did not believe their eyes. They thought their nerves were playing tricks on them, till Jesus told them something that made good sense: “Handle Me and see!” He was not at all afraid of the experiment. He challenged them to make the test: “Handle Me and see!” Prove it for yourself, once and for all. Do the common sense thing to answer your doubts and questions.
He allows Himself to be handled critically, roughly, and even cruelly. They found out He was no fantasy, no ghost or apparition. He knows that we are children of our times, prejudiced and skeptical. “Handle me and see!”
Begin right where you are and with what you have. Lay hold of any word or promise of His. Dare to test Him out. “Handle Me and see!” You will find that His offer makes the best common sense in the world.

HOME, SWEET HOME The U. S. Congress has passed the
Defense of Marriage Act. The bill was sponsored in the House by Bob Barr (three marriages), endorsed by then Senator Dole (two marriages), and signed by the president (he of the colorful personal life).
Which led one person to remark, “If marriage needs Congress to defend it, then we know we are in serious trouble.”
Part of the problem is the pro-family group itself. These folks paint a hopelessly unrealistic picture of family life. Their argument usually is: In the stress and strain of modern life, the family is a haven of peace, and pleasantry, and unity.
G.K. Chesterton says that the honest defense of the home would be: Family life is not peaceful, not pleasant, and not unified. It takes a heap of divine grace and hard work, and a shared faith and vision to hold a family together and make it worth the effort.
It is difficult for any man, who has lived largely by himself and for himself, to commit himself to the well-being of another person. There is a grinding of gears to change a vocabulary of “I” and “me” and “mine” to a mindset of “you” and “yours” and “ours.”
It’s hard for a woman, the center of attention herself, to give full attention to an infant; from perfumed lover to smelling like a baby.
Any child with a will of its own rebels against each command with the cry, “I don’t want to.” Outside with others, the same child will say, “Now I will be the mother, and you must do what I say.” To which the others will respond, “I don’t want to.”
In realistic fashion Scripture describes the home life of Jacob, and Samuel, and the prodigal son.
Like any extended family, the Christian Church is made up of every imaginable personality type, age, race, and social status. And yet, in Christ what holds us together is always stronger than what pulls us apart. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.”
There is always hope, where Christ is forever making new personalities out of old, and forging new possibilities out of worn-out relationships.

—

THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY John MacArthur’s book, What the Bible z Says About Parenting – God’s Plan for Rearing Your Child (Thomas Nelson, 2000) was procured because of a request to include comments on it in Grace Congregation’s Bible Class discussion of the Christian family. A pair of minor quibbles can be disposed of right away: 1) “Parent” still doesn’t seem to me to be a legitimate verb. 2) Nor can we dispel some lingering reservations about the author’s frequent references to children as “kids.”

Worthy of note is this pair of statements on p. xi: “Politicians seem more and more intent on usurping the parental role. And parents seem more and more willing to abdicate that role to others.” Members of Grace will recall how some stressed one of these evils, and others the other, in a previous Bible Class discussion of education. (Here we can also include the fine statement on p. 19: “Parents must involve themselves in their children’s lives enough to insure that no other influence takes precedence.”) Another of many excellent statements is this on p. 7: “It appears that the village Mrs. Clinton envisions is a morass of federally-funded programs designed to indoctrinate children with whatever values the state deems acceptable. And if anything has been made clear over the past half century, it is that biblical values are certainly not deemed acceptable in any government-sponsored program in America, so Mrs. Clinton’s village would no doubt indoctrinate children with secular humanism instead.”

But that passage also contains a phrase that puts one on the alert: “biblical values.” What does this mean? One’s apprehensions are not lessened by this on p. 9: “All taboos are systematically being abolished and replaced with one new taboo: Absolute moral standards, instituted by God and revealed in the Bible, should govern all human behavior.” You can see the problem; you are used to seeing it everywhere. Natural law is obliterated. Moral standards are assumed to be connected exclusively with Scripture. A concept that should be attached to Gospel truths, “revealed,” is used to refer to something that, though it is reaffirmed in Scripture, is originally written on the heart (natural law). Most alarmingly, the stage is thus set to treat the Bible as nothing more than a book of Law, thus robbing us of our salvation. May we never cease being horrified beyond measure at such satanic error. No, we are not saying that this book has no Gospel. We are showing the error implicit in this particular way of stating things. Note also the sentence on top of this same page: “Therefore the future of the family in our society hinges on the success of those who are committed to the truth of Scripture.” Is this not going too far? Does it not imply denial of the “natural affection” of which the Bible itself speaks (Rom. 1:31; II Tim. 3:3)? Leaving the strictly spiritual aside, are there not wonderful marriages and is there not a great deal of wholesome family life also among those who are not Christians?

A striking statement early in the second chapter (p. 28) is this: “Scripture never portrays parenting as an obstacle course beset with potentially deadly pitfalls.” But the transition is then made to the “one gigantic pitfall that is too often overlooked by Christian parents.” That is “the child’s inborn inclination toward evil.” And indeed, this chapter deserves high marks for its presentation of original sin and its consequences, and for denouncing the foolishness of the philosophy of self-esteem. One applauds this on p. 32: “The truth is that such people are not a product of something their parents did to them. They are products of what their parents did not do to them.” But we are not surprised to find that regeneration is not treated as well.

That brings us to the crucial third chapter, “Good News for Your Kids,” which opens: “The one practical question I am most commonly asked by parents is this: How should I present the gospel to my children?” And we in turn have learned from experience to ask: Will the Gospel now actually be presented and set forth, or will it be conspicuous by its absence though the word itself is used repeatedly? The answer to whether it is presented is a qualified yes. The Gospel is proclaimed – this we are very happy to say. For numerous passages are quoted that set forth the perfect finished saving work of Jesus Christ. But in the author’s own statements, do we find ringing affirmation of objective justification? No. “His righteousness is imputed to those who trust Him. … Thus He freely justifies all who trust in Him.” (p. 59) Is the sharp distinction between Law and Gospel upheld? No. “Real saving faith cannot be ignorant of essential gospel concepts such as good and evil, sin and punishment, repentance and faith, God’s holiness and His wrath against sin ….” (p. 49) One has difficulty putting a good construction on this on p. 52: “No single formula can possibly meet the needs of every unregenerate person anyway.” Will not this do: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel!” (Mk. 1:15) This is an example of how faith seems to be intellectualized. The wonder of Christ’s immeasurable love in being willing to suffer so terribly for us sinners does not come through clearly.

To these weaknesses in presenting what Christ has done (Second Article) must be added what is probably an even greater failure when it comes to the work of the Holy Spirit (Third Article). Very simply, the concept of the Means of Grace is scarcely to be discerned. The true glory of the Word and Sacraments as the divinely chosen tools that create faith, kill the old man, bring the new birth, snatch us from death and damnation, unite us to Christ, enable us to call out to our Heavenly Father with limitless confidence, overcome the devil, bring peace to the heart, bestow absolute certainty of salvation, and preserve us unto heaven – none of this is distinctly and forcefully set forth. “Baptism” is not to be found in the index. (Neither is “Gospel,” although “Law” is.) Not unexpectedly, the intimate connection we always want to see made between all good works and what we have received from Christ (“We love because He first loved us”) is not clearly made. At about the half-way point in reading the book, it was our impression that the abundant use of Scripture throughout the book, and even the occasional eloquent passage on the use of the Word (e.g., pp. 124-25), are not properly set in the framework of an overall outlook in which the Gospel always remains the overriding consideration.

The usual deficiencies of Reformed theology are thus indeed on display in this book. Rather than expand further on such matters, however, we will focus on what can be commended in the remaining five chapters of the book.

The fourth chapter is the longest of the eight chapters. Quotations from Proverbs abound here. There is much to vigorously applaud. “From the very earliest age, teach your children that sin is a capital offense against a holy God.” (p. 80) “Drugs have thus replaced discipline for millions of parents.” (p. 87) “Teach your children to select their companions wisely.” (p. 88) In the fifth chapter, dealing with obedience, we find this: “Your kids will be good at disobedience; you won’t have to teach them that. No one ever had to explain to a child how to disobey. No parents have ever said to a toddler, ‘Let’s do a little role playing so I can show you how to disobey.’ They have disobedience down very well; it comes naturally to them. They are experts in it from the very beginning. But obedience is something they must learn.” (p. 114)

Ch. 6, which has much on provoking to anger, is outstanding. “But let’s remember that parents are depraved, too.” (p. 131) The discussion in ch. 7 of the father’s role is similarly outstanding. These chapters might well warrant purchase of the book. (They also lead to some second thoughts about criticisms expressed in earlier paragraphs of this review.) And the high quality of material is sustained in the concluding chapter on the mother’s role, though the scope of I Cor. 11:8-9 (wrongly referred to as 14:8-9) seems unduly limited by the author on p. 196: “The Apostle Paul, calling for women to display submissive attitudes in public worship [our emphasis] wrote: ‘For man is not from woman, but woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man.’” The same thing is evident on p. 220, in the appendix giving answers to some key questions about the family, where, after I Cor. 11:3 is quoted, a subsequent sentences narrows the scope from man and woman to husband and wife.

Especially striking passages from the last part of the book are these: “I like to sum up the sacrificial nature of the husband’s love with these three words: Consideration. … Often it boils down to listening. The husband must understand his wife’s heart. … Chivalry. … Communion.” (pp. 168-69) “When a physical body does not respond correctly to its own head, the result is either an incapacitating paralysis or uncontrolled seizures. Either way, it is debilitating to the body.” (p. 197) “Nothing makes the truth more distasteful to a child than to have a hypocritical or spiritually shallow parent who affirms the truth publicly but denies it in the home.” (p. 233)

Although there is much more that invites comment, we will confine ourselves to the mention of two more points. On p. 13, “a man from the Lord” is accepted as the correct translation in Gen. 4:1, instead of “a man, the Lord.” On p. 20, MacArthur denounces the contents of Judith Rich Harris’s book, The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do.” This is the very book treated in John Parcher’s column on p. 16 of the 2008-6 issue of Always Abounding.

Worthy of note: The index of Henry Meeter’s book, The Basic Ideas of Calvinism (fifth edition, revised; 1975 Baker Book House reprint), has an entry on the Law of God as well as major entries on government and state, but no entry for either Gospel or salvation. Furthermore, the entry for war is significantly longer than the entry for Christ.
For an outstanding delineation of the fundamental theological weaknesses in what passes for a magnificent religious book today, go to the SoundWitness website and locate the lengthy article reviewing Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life. http://www.soundwitness.org/evangel/purpose_driven_life.htm
(Speaking of Rick Warren: For an explanation of how his inauguration prayer made nods to Judaism and especially to Islam, see Aaron Wolf’s article on p. 8 of the March 2009 issue of Chronicles Magazine.)
Our readers might also want to be aware of the recently formed Hausvater Project and to make use of what appears on its website, Hausvater.org.

THE THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS The first thing that comes to Reflections on His Cross and Ours mind in embarking on some zzzzz comments on this book by Daniel Deutschlander (NPH, 2008) is something that Egbert Schaller said in the introduction to a sermon he preached on Mt. 10:24-27: “After studying [the text] prayerfully for days, I have decided that it is going to be difficult to preach this sermon. It will either be too short or much too long.” (Selected Sermons of E. Schaller, first volume; p. 126 in the second edition; p. 130 in the third edition)

Another thing that comes to mind is the opportunity we had of auditing a presentation that the author, a professor of German, history, and religion at Martin Luther College in New Ulm, Minn., who ended up losing his position there because of cutbacks caused by budget constraints, made during a return visit to the college. In no uncertain terms, he explained that worship is not entertainment, adding, to our considerable surprise at his freedom from inhibitions, considering the circumstances, that that pernicious misconception had made inroads also into the Wisconsin Synod (his own fellowship and that of his audience). The book under review here repeatedly takes aim at that view, and something else that he said when speaking of dealing with the spiritual problems of the young appears exactly as we remember it on p. 173 of this book. “Just something as simple as this may make the guilty aware of the gospel in a way that they never were before: ‘Just think, when Jesus was hanging on the cross, and all around him said, ‘Come down!” he refused. And why? Because he thought of you at this very moment in your life. Thinking of you, he refused to come down. He insisted that he would stay and bear all the guilt that is yours and its eternal punishment. That’s how much he loved you! He didn’t suffer hell and die for a nameless, faceless blob of humanity. He suffered hell and died thinking of you!’”

Still another thing that comes to mind was learning during our years of seminary study that it had been said of C.F.W. Walther’s book on Law and Gospel that it was so good that pastors ought to read it once a year. We have long wondered whether even the greatest of books – and Walther’s is certainly one of them – should be viewed in quite that way, since one should be able to absorb the essence of its content without that many rereadings and since one by such a practice greatly limits the amount of time available for reading other excellent things. But the point here is that Deutschlander’s book is well-deserving of similar praise as a superlative book, with one difference: It was not written specifically for those studying for the ministry. Leaving aside basic devotional and doctrinal material – whether hymnal, catechism, Plass’s What Luther Says, etc. – as well as the six volumes (so far) of Egbert Schaller’s sermons plus Bible-study aids and a book or two on Luther, I think that if I were to restrict myself to just a dozen books that I would urge laymen, one and all, to read, this book might well be on that list.

The diet of scriptural theology is wonderfully rich and edifying. The material is practical and relevant throughout, with no aura of the study or the ivory tower about it. The voice of authentic Christian experience is heard throughout; the throbbing of a heart filled with a love for souls is felt on every page. And the writing is of the very highest quality, characterized both by irresistible forward movement and by innumerable memorable verbal zingers. Those whose profession calls for much work with books may have occasion to read in or become somewhat acquainted with dozens upon dozens of books without reading any of them cover to cover. Except at this point for two appendices, this is a book I’ve read cover to cover. You will have no trouble doing the same if you but pick it up. And you will probably soon be thinking of others to whom you want to give the book.
“So we come again to the question,” Deutschlander writes in the preface, “Could the theology of the cross be the litmus test of genuine Christianity in our day? The corrupt and the counterfeit push aside the whole concept of cross bearing in favor of a joy without it. Fake Christianity offers the Christian an imitation of Christ’s glory in heaven, not of his humiliation on earth. The phony and the artificial church turns worship into a spiritual happy hour devoid of repentance, with cheap absolution, with no thought of taking God seriously in either the law or the gospel. And people love it. They still get to be their own god, their own bible, their own source of ultimate truth and salvation. In the pages that follow, we will search the mind of God, as he has revealed it in his holy and inerrant Word, for his definition of Christian faith and life under the cross, under his cross and ours. We will wrestle with the seeming contradiction of the necessity of cross bearing and rejoicing at the same time. We will strive to bend our minds and hearts and souls beneath his cross and our own. Then we will rise under the healing balm of the gospel in his Word and sacraments to rejoice evermore in his cross and ours, until he takes us from the imitation of his cross to the enjoyment of his glory in heaven.”

The preliminary work for this review consisted in typing out about a dozen especially good brief quotations from the book. Except for what fits here, that has been deleted. It will be much better for each of you to make your own list.

“So cleverly have these vices been inserted into the soul that the called worker has not even noticed them. He has become a robed worldling. He is comfortable with the world and does not want the bother of opposing the devil and the world in himself, much less in anyone else. The sliver on the cross may even be the noble-sounding goal of winning souls for Christ but only with part of God’s Word, a Word stripped of anything that might offend the flesh and therefore keep the church from growing fast enough.” (p. 79) “Forgiveness is used as a license to sin and a wonderful and so sanctified-sounding way of escaping the cross! Should the conscience occasionally be troubled during the sermon, Rev. Sloth mounts the devil’s pulpit and soothes away the trouble: ‘Don’t be concerned about the sins the sermon rebukes; before he is done, he will tell you again that all is forgiven! Good thing too! After all, the cross hurts, it’s hard to carry it, and the sins are dear.’” (p. 83)

THE SOWER The perennial appeal of gardening is shown by two zzzzz surprising historical events. The mighty potentate before whom Martin Luther stood in 1521 at the Diet of Worms, Emperor Charles V, abdicated his throne in 1555. One of his favorite retirement pursuits was gardening. One thousand two hundred fifty years earlier, the emperor who launched the last of the Roman persecutions of Christians, Diocletian, also abdicated (in 305), and devoted himself to raising cabbages.

To garden is common enough. But the events just mentioned are hardly common. Indeed, they strike us as quite incongruous. From palace to cabbage patch? Do not rulers preside over armies, over courts, over governmental agencies? Are they not far removed from common tasks and occupations? Do they not often dominate and oppress the ordinary people, even laying claim to their possessions? Have kings and nobility not been known to hunt wherever they choose to hunt, regardless of whose property they damage in the process? Are not the fruits of the farmers’ labors at times confiscated to support the king’s martial undertakings?

Thus we see that Jesus was taking very careful aim in his parables at the Jews’ earthly concept of the kingdom of God. For we do not hear of kings, weapons, and soldiers. What do we hear? “Behold, the sower went out to sow” (Mt.13:3). Can you imagine trying to make sense of that if you thought the Messiah would put the hated Romans in their place? The message of Jesus was loud and clear: My kingdom is not what you think it will be.

LUKE 16 Luke 16 is an excellent example of what can be gained zzzz by relating portions of Scripture to each other, instead of treating them in isolation. The parable of the steward teaches us to use our earthly resources with eternity in view. The words of Jesus between that parable and the next one may puzzle us at first. How do the various statements relate to each other? What exactly is the course of thought?
After the indictment of the Pharisees for being concerned only about what can be seen by men while ignoring God’s knowledge of the heart, Jesus focuses on their rejection of God’s Word. They would have nothing of the preaching of John the Baptist, nor of Jesus’ preaching of the Gospel. (Cp. Luke 7:29-30, Mt. 11:7-19, 12:24ff., 21:28-32.) Their rejection also of Old Testament Scripture, which never loses its character as God’s Word even when the era of fulfillment has arrived, is also addressed by Jesus. (The background for v. 18 here, as well as for other verses in the New Testament, is probably the notorious activities at that time of Herod Antipas, about which the Pharisees were keeping silent. He had married Herodias, who had divorced her husband, Herod’s half-brother Philip, and then divorced his own wife. The Greek form in the last part of v. 18, “is divorced from a husband,” does not have to be taken as a passive. The initiative can lie with the divorced person: one who herself divorces, one who secures a divorce.)

Jesus thus deals in a general way with the Pharisees’ reaction (reported in v. 14) to his previous parable. But that reaction represented a specific rejection of the parable in addition to a general rejection of God’s Word. The connection between the two parables in this chapter is clear when we realize that the rich man in the parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus stands in the place of the steward in the preceding parable. But does he use his resources with eternity in view? Just the opposite. He shows less pity even than animals, day after day completely ignoring the needy individual positioned at his gate while devoting himself to luxurious living. In hell, when the tables are turned and he is the needy one, he suddenly calls for emergency action. There has been no welcome for him when he left this life of the kind described by Jesus in v. 9. There is not even momentary relief for his agony in the flame. Don’t we see what Jesus is doing? He is telling the Pharisees who had scoffed at his teaching about use of resources that their attitude will place them in the position of the rich man in hell.

But the parable is not yet finished. It has an addendum. With great interest, we note what additional point Jesus wishes to make with this unusual device. And we find him returning to the topic of one’s view of and use of God’s Word. Just as the first part of the parable answers to vv. 1-13, so the second part of the parable answers to vv. 15-18.

WHAT WOULD A devout elderly lady once asked me in Bible YOUR ANSWER BE? Class to explain Mt. 24:19-20. Her puzzle-zzzz ment arose from her assumption that Mt. 24 is a chapter dealing entirely with the end of the world. Let us suppose that you are called upon to deal with this lady’s concern. How would you answer her?

The larger question involved is the relationship between the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD and the end of the world. Obviously, if Mt. 24 does deal with Jesus’ second coming at some point, it is not doing so in these verses, which can pertain only to Jerusalem. But vv. 36-51 do indeed unmistakably refer to Jesus’ second coming, and to that alone. In addition, then, to verses that refer only to the destruction of Jerusalem and verses that refer only to the end of the world, are there verses in this chapter that refer to both? The common assumption that there are should not go unexamined, especially since things that can be observed in connection with the approaching destruction of Jerusalem are most emphatically excluded once you get to v. 36. There is a very marked switch from emphasis upon signs to exclusion of signs. Indeed, it is not at all easy to reconcile the concept of “signs” of Jesus’ coming with the comparison of that coming to the coming of a thief in the night.

Leaving aside v. 31 for the moment, let us work backward from v. 36 to see whether we are dealing with the destruction of Jerusalem, the end of the world, or both.

V. 34: The natural way to understand “generation” is as referring to the people living at that time. See the earlier occurrences in Matthew: 11:16; 12:39,41,42,45; 16:4; 17:17; 23:36. This is a weighty argument that everything up to this point is still referring exclusively to the destruction of Jerusalem. (V. 27 simply stresses that when Jesus does come, it will not be a merely local occurrence.)

Vv. 32-33: If these words refer to Jesus’ second coming, they would indicate that one can infer the timing thereof from certain signs. How does one reconcile this with I Thess. 5:2? (Note that what is “near” is not specified here, since the Greek allows either a personal pronoun (he, she) or an impersonal pronoun (it) as a translation, but it is specified in Luke 21:31. And remember that “kingdom” in the Gospel accounts is ordinarily not directly connected to Jesus’ second coming.)

V. 30: The quotation is from Daniel 7:13-14, which deals, not with Jesus’ second coming, but with His glorious ascension into heaven. The word translated “earth” can also be translated “land.” At the end of the world, we will see Jesus, not a sign of Him. The opening words can be translated: “Then will appear the sign [or indication, proof, evidence] that the Son of Man is in heaven.” The destruction of Jerusalem can certainly be understood as that sign, since the Romans were Jesus’ agents, whom He was then using very effectively against the Jews just as they had once used them against Jesus at the crucifixion. The thought would be: The destruction of Jerusalem as judgment upon the unbelieving nation is proof that, as indicated in the scene depicted in Daniel 7, Jesus is ruling in glory from heaven – the one they had rejected and crucified (cp. Acts 2:36). Yes, the tribes of the land would then mourn.

V. 29: Here many are victimized by not being aware of how commonly the Bible employs figurative language. (A few obvious examples are Ps. 96:12, Is. 55:12, and Jer. 7:25.) In how many of the following verses is literal language being used? Is. 13:10; Joel 2:10, 2:31, 3:15; Ez. 32:7-8; Is. 34:4. Who does not see that language concerning darkening of what is bright and glorious and falling of what is lofty and apparently secure is effectively used to portray the collapse of earthly kingdoms? And could not such language now be most fittingly applied to the chosen nation itself when the Romans deal decisively with its revolt? Remember how frequently Scripture refers to the destruction of Jerusalem. Is. 66:6; Amos 9:1; Daniel 9:24-27; Luke 19:41-44, 23:28-31; Mt. 22:7, 23:33ff.; I Th. 2:16. Note also the references to Jesus and Jerusalem’s pending destruction in Mt. 10:23, 26:64, and perhaps also 16:28.

That leaves v. 31. At first glance, it appears that this surely cannot apply to the destruction of Jerusalem. It is to be noted, however, that in other verses that speak of what the angels do at the end of the world, they do more than gather. They also separate. Cf. Mt. 13:41-42,49-50. Here they only gather. And in Greek there are not separate words for “angels” and “messengers.” The same word can have both meanings. Can a good sense be obtained if we think here of human messengers instead of angels? Yes. The destruction of the temple removed a roadblock to the spread of the Gospel. The trumpet, connected as it was with the year of Jubilee, marks the fullness of freedom we have in Christ in the New Testament period of fulfillment, when the Old Testament ceremonial law, including what took place in the temple, is permanently eclipsed. As God removes that temple with all that it represented, He sends forth His Gospel messengers throughout the world to gather the elect into His Church.

Thus the assumption that vv. 29-31 simply cannot be applied to the destruction of Jerusalem is seen to be without foundation. That opens the door for a very attractive way to understand Mt. 24, and a very simple answer to the lady’s Bible Class question. Jesus has given a very organized response to the two questions of His disciples in v. 3. The destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, though most certainly comparable in some ways, are not here merged; they are separated from one another. The very wording of v. 36 indicates a switch in topic; the second question of the disciples – the one about the end of the age – will now receive its answer. No longer need we try to understand how there can be signs of an event that will not be preceded by any signs. No longer need we deal with an apparent contradiction to the various passages of Scripture that stress the need for constant readiness for Christ’s coming since nothing will take place to mark it as about to happen, or even as particularly close. Mt. 24:36 – 25:13; Luke 12:40; Luke 17:26ff.; I Thess. 5:2; II Peter 3:10; Rev. 16:15. These passages disallow any distinctions in degrees either of nearness or of readiness.

Let us, under two headings, glance into some of the pertinent literature on this.

HOW HELPFUL May we see in earthquakes and similar disastrous IS THIS? phenomena reminders of the end of all things? zzz Most certainly. But it is a totally different thing to speak of signs as things indicating a temporal nearness of Christ’s coming that could not be inferred in the absence of those signs.

An example of obscuring this critical distinction may be found in Lesson 40 of the worksheets for the Advanced Bible History, once very commonly used in our circles in teaching Bible history to the young. Question 3 calls for the student to “list five signs of the end of the world.” But in Question 4 we find this: “These signs have always been with us. When we see them we should let them remind us [emphasis added] that this world will end. Give at least three examples of times when these signs have occurred.” (Not to be overlooked is this very unfortunate statement in Question 12: “By ‘this generation’ Jesus means the Jewish people.”)

A glance into F. Rupprecht’s Bible History References (CPH) also turns up something troubling. There, in Lesson 40 (“The Signs of Christ’s Coming Luke 21:25-36”), there is a statement that “Jesus mentioned certain signs that will precede His appearing in the clouds of heaven.” This is followed by a listing of five items under the heading, “Signs Pointing to the End.” “And there shall be signs – Certain occurrences, unusual or otherwise, that foretoken a great event; here: the coming of the Last Day. 1) In the sun and in the moon and in the stars – ‘The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven,’ Matt. 24:29.” A passage from Kretzmann’s commentary is then quoted. No. 3 is “more than ordinary tempests and gales on the great bodies of water all over the world.” No. 5, which includes another quotation from Kretzmann (“The very powers of the heavens that hold the machinery of the vast sky in place will be moved and shaken”), is that “sun, moon, and stars will leave their wonted orbits and in utter confusion will be thrust hither and thither.”

Let’s follow Rupprecht’s lead and see what we find in Kretzmann’s commentary. “When the day which is destined to be the last day of this world dawns, most unusual and terrible signs will appear. The sun will be darkened, the moon will lose her splendor, the stars will fall from the sky, the powers which control the heavens will be agitated, all the laws of nature will be overthrown. No ordinary eclipses, shooting stars, meteors here, that are merely acting in accordance with nature’s law; here is chaos, here is the subverting of all the powers that have held the universe in its accustomed path.” Does this sound like signs of the end, or the end itself; like something that is coming, or something that has arrived?

Those are comments on Mt. 24:29-31. Kretzmann makes very similar statements in his comments on Mark 13. Of interest, because of the contradiction it contains, is this: “As Jesus looks forward, according to His omniscience, the earlier calamity will merge into the later, the judgment upon Jerusalem is carried out only on a greater scale in the final judgment of the world. There will be no interval of a happy, sinless reign, no millennium. With no respite and without extensive previous warning [emphasis added] the Day of the Lord will dawn, it will burst upon the world with great suddenness [emphasis added].” The treatment of Luke 21:25-27 begins: “Here some of the signs that will usher in the great Day of Judgment are enumerated.” The context seems to indicate that the “signs” are viewed as the actual end of the world.

Thus, though Rupprecht is setting forth a dramatically different view from that of Kretzmann – “signs pointing to the end” rather than events of the end – he makes it appear that Kretzmann is an advocate of his (Rupprecht’s) view.

The inability to state clearly what is actually happening according to the common view of Mt. 24:29 is also illustrated in this striking quotation on p. 614 from The Gospels by John Ylvisaker: “When the last tribulations have reached their climax, the advent of the Lord shall take place, heralded and attended [emphasis added] by appalling cataclysms in nature: the sun shall be darkened …. … Nature, both in heaven and on earth, shall pass through such an organic change that it must be obvious to every one that the end is at hand. The forces of nature shall be transformed so thoroughly that it will be plainly apparent that the old order of things is in the process of dissolution.” Here, in the underlined three-word phrase, we have the two fundamentally contradictory positions represented: the position of Rupprecht in the word “heralded,” and the position of Kretzmann in the word “attended.”

Other baffling passages have been discovered in literature from which we would expect to obtain help. “By the presence of the vultures you can know the presence of the carcass. So shall it be at the end. By the signs I am giving you shall my sheep know that the death of the world is at hand. Like vultures these signs of the times shall fly about, and ye shall know in spite of the fearfulness of this great dying of the world, that the end is at hand. And it is indeed not hard to understand, for He has made for us the end of Jerusalem as a type. As it was with Jerusalem’s end, so shall it be at the end of the world. … Indeed they are flying about, the signs of the times, the vultures over a dying world.” (Sermon by Winfred Schaller Sr. on Mt. 24:15-28, preached Nov. 18, 1945. If the vultures represent signs, and the end of the world is its death, shouldn’t that end precede the signs, rather than vice versa? And shouldn’t the signs then proceed to devour the dead world?)

Or: “We are not unduly belaboring a point when we again caution the reader to understand the words, ‘near, right at the door’ [in Mt. 22:33] correctly. … To him what we call ‘near’ in time can be 10,000 or more years in the future.” (W. Franzmann, Bible History Commentary, NT-1, p. 677) On the other hand, A.T. Robertson candidly acknowledges (in commenting on Mt. 24:29 in his Word Pictures of the New Testament, I, pp. 192-93): “This word [immediately] … gives trouble if one stresses the time element.”

On p. 447 (Lesson 74) in Bible History (NPH, 1982; 2nd printing 1989; labeled for Grades 5-6), there is a picture of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the Bible references are Mt. 24:1-29, Mark 13:1-37, and Luke 21:5-38. But the title of the lesson is “Christ’s Second Coming.”

Finally, mention should be made of the article, “Heed the Signs,” on pp. 16-17 of the January 2008 issue of the Wisconsin Synod’s Forward in Christ. In addition to other problems, including a reference to the existence of signs before the Flood, there is a setting forth of two incompatible positions. “Notably, Scripture offers three different signs to remind us [emphasis added] that his return will be ‘soon’ (Revelation 22:7,12,20).” That is acceptable, though “signs” is a misleading word. “Immediately before our Lord’s return there will also be astrological events.” What does that leave of the concept of a “thief in the night” and of the need to be ready at all times?

BUT FOR THIS WE CAN The 2004-3 issue of the Journal of BE VERY THANKFUL Theology (CLC) is an excellent zzzzzzzz launching pad for additional study of Mt. 24. That issue contains a book review in which Prof. David Lau lists the various earlier issues of the JT in which Pastor Paul F. Nolting had written on this chapter. During the last quarter of the previous century, Nolting had made the CLC aware of the alternative understanding of this chapter in papers, articles, and sermons. We might also mention his Ministry by Mail sermon of 30 years ago, the one dated Dec. 3, 1978. Because of how accustomed we are to a different understanding of v. 31, we quote Pastor Nolting’s helpful comments on that verse.

“So also the sound of the trumpet is not just used in Scripture to signal the end of time. It was also used to signal the Year of Jubilee in which liberty from debts, liberty from slavery, and liberty from all kinds of obligations was proclaimed. … As long as the temple, the Old Testament priesthood, the sacrifices, and all the rituals still remained, the preaching of the Gospel was hindered because pressure would be placed upon converts to become Jewish first so that they could become Christian. … Once all was swept away, as it was after 70 A.D., the way was cleared for messengers of the Gospel to go to the four corners of the earth and proclaim the liberty of the Gospel – liberty from the law, liberty from sin, liberty from Satan, and liberty from death itself through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Jerusalem and Parousia – Jesus’ Eschatological Discourse in Matthew’s Gospel by Prof. Jeffrey Gibbs (CPH, 2000; “parousia” is the Greek word commonly used to refer to Jesus’ second coming, and “eschatological” means “having to do with the last things”) is the book treated in Lau’s very favorable nine-page review. We limit ourselves to three brief quotations from this magnificent study. “The allusions in Matt 24:29 to Isa 13:10 and passages like it are not excessively subtle.” “The sequence of events in 24:29-31 parallels the salvation-historical sequence found in the parables of the Wicked Tenants (21:33-46) and the Wedding Feast (22:1-13), namely (1) judgment upon the nation of Israel whose leaders and crowds rejected Jesus as Christ and Son of God, followed by (2) the turning of invitation and outreach to the Gentiles.” “The sequence of ‘judgment on Jerusalem followed by mission to the Gentiles’ is precisely that which occurs in the parables of the Wicked Tenants and the Wedding Feast.” (pp. 195, 174-75, 202)

One important point of difference between Nolting and Gibbs should be noted. It concerns the question of how to understand “end” in 24:6 & 14. In view of Col. 1:6,23 (note also Acts 2:8-11 and Rom. 1:8, 10:18, 15:24), a reference to the destruction of the temple and city is certainly possible, and that is how Nolting takes it, at least in v. 6. (The promised continuation of this Journal series on the Olivet Discourse unfortunately never came; the treatment thus does not get beyond 24:8.) In the section on 24:4-8 (JT, 1988-2, pp. 37,39,40). Nolting writes: “The end of what? The end of the temple, its destruction, and so the end of the Nation of Israel in its covenant relationship to the Lord.” “Secular history reports a plethora of earthquakes in the years preceding AD 70 – in Crete, Smyrna, Miletus, Chios, Samos, Laodicea, Hierapolis, Campania, Rome, and Judea. It was as though the Lord was making every effort to gain the attention of Jews before judgment would fall upon their nation.” “What we are protesting against is the view that our Lord, in responding to the questions of His disciples concerning His prophecy of the destruction of the temple, began by warning them about deceptions that would confront disciples living hundreds of years later.” Gibbs, however, understands it as referring to the end of the world. Cf. pp. 181-82, 196, and 229.

To answer a question that might arise concerning Mt. 24:22, we also offer the explanation given on p. 120 of An Eschatology of Victory by J. Marcellus Kik (1971): “It was out of mercy that God decreed a limit to the terrible siege. … If the siege had continued for long the war would have spread throughout Palestine and even the Christians would have suffered.”

MAIER A welcome collection of interesting material both about and z by Walter A. Maier, Missouri Synod seminary professor, author, and Lutheran Hour speaker who lived from 1893 to 1950, a collection produced by Herman Otten, was published earlier this year by Lutheran News, Inc. It is entitled Walter A. Maier Still Speaks – Missouri and the World Should Listen. Many may remember Maier as the author of For Better, Not For Worse. He also wrote a scholarly commentary on the book of Nahum. In the table of contents, there is some improper alignment of chapter headings with page numbers.

PIEPER Mention Friday evening lectures and we may immediately zz think of C.F.W. Walther’s book on Law and Gospel, the contents of which were first delivered to students at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, in the “Luther Hour” on Friday evenings. Two sets of such lectures by Walther’s successor, Francis Pieper, are now available in English as a result of the translation labors of Dr. O. Marc Tangner. These are the lectures on justification, and the lectures on the true visible church. The two sets of lectures were published in 2007 by The Luther Academy under the title, The Church and Her Treasure.

Dr. Tangner, an adult convert who had once been a Marxist, and a one-time college German professor, is known and dear to us in the RLC as the translator of J.P. Meyer’s articles on the kingdom of Christ. We are delighted that he has been enabled, despite advancing age, to make this valuable material accessible in a fluent English translation. The Antichrist, the clarity and authority of Scripture, the distinction between Law and Gospel – these are but a few of the many topics that the reader will find treated in a most devout, edifying, and down-to-earth manner in these pages. A number of members of Grace Congregation have read, with great profit, the copy that has been placed in their church library.

Dr. Tangner thanks Pastor Bryce Winter of Australia for calling his attention to one set of these lectures. English translations of other sets of Pieper’s Luther Hour lectures appear in the 1998-1 issue of The Faithful Word of the Lutheran Churches of the Reformation, where spiritual life is the topic, and in the 2002-1 issue of that same publication, where the proper preaching of God’s Word is the topic.

SCHALLER The lead article in the October 2002 Lutheran Spokesman z (CLC) is a portion of a Reformation sermon on I Kings 18:36-41 by Egbert Schaller. The reprinting of this in the Oct. 28, 2002, issue of Christian News elicited a letter from Joel Gerlach, one-time member of the Wisconsin Synod’s seminary faculty. Here is part of that letter, which was published on p. 24 of the Nov. 18, 2002, issue. “They [the sermons by Schaller contained in the first two volumes published by Prof. em. Paul Koch (it was the next and third volume that included the afore-mentioned Reformation sermon)] represent Lutheran preaching at its best. My wife and I use them for our family devotions, and I never cease to be amazed at what Schaller could find in a text and apply to our lives. If I were still teaching homiletics, I would require every student to acquire copies of the two booklets for the purpose of analyzing sermon structure and learning how to properly distinguish and preach Law and Gospel.” We resurrect this ringing recommendation at a time when we can joyfully announce that with publication a couple of months ago of another collection, the number of published volumes of Prof. Schaller’s sermons has reached six. Order from Paul R. Koch, 3425 Morgan Ave., Eau Claire, Wis. 54701-7023; phone 715-835-5083; [email protected] The cost is $8 per copy plus postage.

FOUNDERS Between hearing from one side that our founding fathers z were not all that different from today’s secularists, and from the other side that they were ardent Christians if not even theocrats, we have perhaps wondered just exactly where the truth really lies, and where a correct version of things can conveniently be found. One answer that can now be given is: in the pages of Founding Faith by Steven Waldman (2008). We heartily recommend its reading, and even its purchase, by any seeking, from someone not grinding an ax, an accurate and readable account of the emergence of religious liberty at our country’s founding. This is welcome and wonderful reading.

JULIAN Emperor Julian (361-363) sought to revive paganism in the z Roman Empire. What he did in turning his attention to education is of great interest. Here are quotations from pp. 83-84 of G.W. Bowersock’s 1978 book, Julian the Apostate. “… Julian did not advocate illegality or open persecution as a means of wiping out the Christians. He preferred subtler means, especially inducements to recant and the purification of the younger generation. … No Christian, in his view, would qualify as a teacher because he was automatically deficient in character (mores). Accordingly by a single stroke Julian forbade Christians to teach grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. … Julian knew perfectly well what he was doing. Within little more than a generation the educated elite of the empire would be pagan. … Meanwhile, Julian announced that the Christians had to be cured of their disease like madmen, against their will. ‘In my opinion,’ he declared, ‘one does not punish but instruct the insane.’”

LUTHER Beginning with a volume scheduled to come out a year from z now, Concordia Publishing House is embarking on a major project: translating and publishing more of Luther’s works in 20 volumes that will be added to the current 55 volumes of the American Edition of Luther’s works as volumes 56-75.

We gratefully acknowledge the kind permission of John Parcher to reprint, from Christian News, columns that he originally wrote for his church bulletin.

A DEADBEAT’S BIBLE The old curfew warning said, “It’s 10 zzzzz o’clock p.m. Do you know where your children are?” Authorities have modified the warning for parents of today’s latchkey kids: “It’s 4 o’clock p.m. Do you know where your children are?”
The cops know, even if parents do not, that unsupervised children are not capable of supervising themselves.
But the can’t-be-bothered parent has a heroine in Judith Rich Harris, whose best-selling book has a title which pretty much says it all: “The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do; Parents Matter Less Than You Think and Peers Matter More.”
Nothing parents do, Harris argues, affects a child’s behavior, relationships, personality, sense of self-worth, mental health, or abilities. Virtually nothing the parent says or does – not kind words, slaps, or hugs; neither laxity nor firmness – makes a smidgen of difference in a child’s life.
Parents get no credit or blame, if they rear children well or abuse them, Harris says, because parents simply don’t matter.
Well then, does anything matter? Yes, Harris says: “The world that children live in with their peers determines how they grow up.” She means: Spend lots of money on a nice home in a swank neighborhood, for fashionable clothes, orthodontia, and if need be, plastic surgery.
Harris just put another book in the bible of pop psychology which says, “Everything bad that happens is somebody else’s fault.”
The real Bible teaches personal responsibility; behavior does matter; and, like it or not, there are always consequences. Why “Honor thy father and thy mother,” if they don’t matter anyway? Why should fathers “bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” if fathers are irrelevant to start with?
Does any sane person really believe Harris’ psychobabble on child rearing? An old friend of ours used to say, “If you’re going to train a dog, you’ve got to be smarter than the dog.” Solomon agrees in a famous Bible proverb [22:6]: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Note the phrase, “way he should go,” and not the “way he wants to go.” Solomon assumed a real parent would know the difference.

DOCTORED PRIORITIES Ronald Glasser, M.D. and a Minneapolis z pediatrician, is an even-tempered man. He’s mad and he stays mad. He says his doctor’s office today is little more than an insurance company’s waiting room. Glasser claims America’s doctors are held hostage to corporate health-care systems that are more interested in making money than caring for the sick.
He cites a manifesto, signed last year by 2,300 Massachusetts physicians, protesting the threats and bribes to shun the sickest patients as “unprofitable.” They risk being fired or “delisted” for giving, or even discussing, expensive procedures and are offered “bonuses” for minimizing health care.
And Doc Glasser names names: Women with breast cancer who have to hire lawyers to get their health plans to pay for treatment. Managed-care companies that deny wheelchairs to children who pass a “utilization test” by staggering 25 feet with the help of a walker.
Sadly, Doc says, this is occurring at a time when new medical procedures are developed every day that are nothing short of miraculous.
There are a whole lot of school teachers out there who know exactly what Dr. Glasser is talking about and understand his frustration. Most got into teaching to equip children with the basics and enrich their lives with a mastery of history, math, and literature. Instead, they find they are supposed to stem the tide of broken homes, drug abuse, venereal disease, gang violence, and racial prejudice.
The good folks in Onalaska [Wis.] recently debated the merits of all-day kindergarten sessions. Many quite honestly favored the idea because it would spare them the expense of day care.
So now we can add babysitting to the list of feeding, medicating, entertaining, chaperoning, and disciplining American school children.
And the end is nowhere in sight. Check any school office for the non-educational baggage educators are saddled with. And people wonder why Johnny can’t read? Or figure his change from a one-dollar bill?
It’s hard to go up against a $952-billion-a-year health-care system. But it is possible for parents to refocus attention, away from themselves, and back on the offspring they brought into this world.

We in the RLC have now enjoyed nearly nine years of joint work. This wonderful blessing our Heavenly Father has granted to us for Jesus’ sake, despite our great unworthiness.

The first of our two conference meetings this past year was held April 5th in Austin, Minn. The four congregations had made preparations for participating in a discussion regarding the best way to spend our time at meetings and the best way to work together more efficiently. Detailed proposals that had been submitted by St. Peter’s of Austin were discussed at some length, with the result that one of them – the proposal to start a publication – was adopted. (The other proposal was to establish a committee to deal with all aspects of our organization and joint work.) Pastor Dommer began a discussion of the liturgy.

Pastor Dommer continued this presentation during the first part of our other meeting this year, which was held at St. Mark’s in Onalaska on Sept. 15th. A topic by Pastor Wehrwein on Psalm 82 and government that had been started at the April 21, 2007, meeting was completed. Considerable discussion on the subject of education attended this topic. Discussion of our joint work was then resumed. Although inconclusive, this discussion did bring before everyone the question of why we have not made a systematic, concerted effort to determine where we should be focusing our time, efforts, and resources.

“Love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth,” I Cor. 13:4-6. “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor. … Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation,” Rom. 12:10,16. “To sum up, let all be harmonious, sympathetic, kind-hearted, and humble in spirit,” I Peter 3:8. “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself,” Phil. 2:3. “I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth,” III John 4.

God’s Executioner? by R.E. Wehrwein……………………………..…p. 4

Wisdom and Foolishness by Lester Wehrwein…………………..……p. 7

Scripture vs. Rapture by R.E. Wehrwein …………………………….p. 12

Descent While Dead? by R.E. Wehrwein ……………..…………….p. 15

From a Wider Field by Egbert Schaller…………..………………….p. 17

At its meeting this past April, the conference designated these months, July-August, as the latest that the first issue of this publication was to appear. Now, after three special issues, the staff of Always Abounding – R.E. Wehrwein, Derek Wehrwein, Shannon Steensma – is finally publishing an issue that comes much closer to what it expects will be typical issues in the future.

The article on wisdom and foolishness was originally published in the Nov.-Dec. 1990 issue of the LCCF Newsletter. In view of the author’s entrance on July 19th into his heavenly home at the age of 93, it was thought appropriate to include something from his pen.

The material on the last pages consists, not of an entire article, but of brief samples from a number of columns to show the high quality of material that will be coming to you as we, acting on the kind permission of Northwestern Publishing House, continue to reprint these excellent columns of 50-60 years ago from the Northwestern Lutheran. You will notice two words added in brackets. These were, after considerable hesitation, supplied by the undersigned in order to yield a good sense.

The very last quotation is from a different source. It is added as something that can also be well applied to our RLC meetings, in keeping with what delegates are voicing more and more – that the more advance preparation we put into our meetings, the better they will go. RW

Evaluating Luther’s view
of Satan’s role in disasters

When we consider what to acquire for our personal theological library beyond such basics as Bible(s), hymnal(s), and catechism(s), Ewald Plass’s anthology, What Luther Says, deserves a place near or perhaps even at the top of the list. This is a magnificent treasure-trove of quotations from Luther on a host of topics, beginning with “absolution” and ending with “zeal.”

When we turn to the topic of the devil, we are treated, on the one hand, to the fruits of Luther’s own intense personal struggles with the devil, for example the advice to treat him with contempt, mockery, and ridicule. On the other hand, there is also the word of caution from Plass that “as a son of his times Luther naturally held, and in part continued to hold, views concerning the devil and his activities which went far beyond anything that Scripture tells us on the subject. …”

The question we should like to explore here for a moment is whether there is scriptural support for Luther’s view that the devil is “God’s executioner,” that is, that when God sends misfortune, He does it through the devil. Key quotations from Luther would include Nos. 1183 and 1184 in What Luther Says.

Does the case of Job support Luther’s generalization? Hardly. Here we have a particular case in which God specifically grants permission to Satan to afflict Job exactly as far as, and not one whit further than, God permits. We are assured of God’s absolute sovereignty over the devil, and of the gracious purpose He carries out in permitting His own to undergo severe trials. See James 5:11. II Cor. 12:7 likewise refers to a particular case.

But what about Luke 13:10-17?

In his This Is Luther, Ewald Plass quotes from a letter that Luther wrote to Wenzel Link: “Physicians may attribute such things to natural causes and sometimes partly cure them by medicine, but they are ignorant of the power of devils. Christ did not hesitate to say in the gospel that the old woman bowed down with infirmity was bound by Satan [Luke 13:16] … so I am forced to believe that many are made dumb, deaf, and lame by Satan’s malice, nor can I doubt that pestilence, fever, and other severe illnesses are caused by devils, who also bring on tempests, conflagrations, and blights in fruit and grain. What wonder if these wicked angels scourge the human race with all kinds of harm and peril as much as God permits! If some are cured by herbs and other natural remedies, it is by God’s mercy.” (pp. 109-110)

The case referred to by Luther is variously treated by commentaries. This is hardly surprising inasmuch as it seems to be neither normal illness, since a “spirit” is mentioned and since Jesus explicitly ascribes her condition to Satan (v. 16), nor demon possession, since things that demon possession usually entailed are conspicuous by their absence.

Theodor Zahn, in taking the view that the woman was ill, refers to Acts 10:38 and II Cor. 12:7 as proof that sickness generally is to be ascribed to the devil. Lenski, on the other hand, argues for possession, and dismisses Acts 10:38 and II Cor. 12:7 as inadequate proof for Zahn’s view. Others, very sensibly, it seems to me, recognize another category. The footnote on p. 50 of Vol. IV of Rudolf Stier’s The Words of the Lord Jesus (1856) has this: “Braune thinks it [‘spirit of infirmity’] a ‘strange expression’; but it is perfectly in accordance with a condition, which was neither natural sickness nor the customary possession. The Lord never laid His hands upon the actually possessed, as here, ver. 13.” In his volume on Luke in the Concordia Commentary, Arthur Just refers to “the evil spirit causing weakness” (p. 540). “Influence” rather than “possession” is spoken of by some commentators: “Through the influence of an evil spirit of infirmity” is the wording used by Norval Geldenhuys (New International Commentary on the New Testament).

Thus this verse also is not necessarily legitimately used as evidence that, as a general rule, God sends sickness, or other types of misfortune, through the devil.

On the other hand, passages that actually militate against this view include not only the many accounts of evils being attributed directly to God Himself, but also such passages as Is. 45:7 and Amos 3:6. “The One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these.” “If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people tremble? If a calamity occurs in a city, has not the Lord done it?”

NOTES:

There is no treatment of Luke 13:10-17 in Werner Franzmann’s three-volume Bible history commentary. Our surprise upon discovering this prompted us to inquire, with the result that we learned that Franzmann’s original assignment was to comment on what was treated in the WELS Bible History course. The freedom he had to go beyond that, which he used many times, was evidently not used in this case.

A passage of interest in connection with this topic is I Thess. 2:18 (“and yet Satan thwarted us”). How much can we safely infer from this particular case about a general agency of the devil in disrupting travel plans?

Lenski takes the phrase in Acts 10:38, “all who were oppressed by the devil,” narrowly, as referring only to cases of demon possession, whereas others (e.g., Zahn), take it as including all sickness. Luther is also quoted in support of that view: “Luther: ‘All whom Jesus healed were oppressed by the devil.’” (Richard C. Jahn, “The Doctrine of the Angels,” The Abiding Word, Vol. III, p. 211. Jahn provides much interesting information, but, incredibly, he also expresses the view that Paul (II Cor. 12:7) and Job were victims of bodily possession (p. 213).)

* * * * * * * *

Sometime after the birth of Christ, a group of wise men “from the East” arrived in Jerusalem, looking for Him who had been born “King of the Jews.” Just where had they come from? According to J. Ylvisaker, in his The Gospels, some early church fathers as well as later scholars believed they came from Arabia. Others have placed their starting point in the regions of the Euphrates River, and Ylvisaker considers this to be the more reasonable conjecture.

He writes (p. 93): “The magi might have learned of the hope of Israel in these regions, especially from the traditions that still lingered after the Babylonian captivity. … Ezekiel, who had been carried off in bondage, 598 B.C., had prophesied chiefly for and among the Jews, although some of the seed must have lodged in Gentile soil. Ezekiel was succeeded by Daniel, who was a person of influence at the Babylonian, and, later, at the Persian court. The wise men may have learned of the hope of Israel through the Septuagint, which was easily accessible in the homes of the many Jews dwelling in those regions. They declare that they had seen the star of the newborn King in the East. They were awaiting the arrival of a new King in Judea, who should belong also to the Gentiles.”

It seems reasonable to assume that they had indeed come from Babylon. What a long and tedious journey this must have involved. It must have required months, the means of transportation undoubtedly being camels. And what was the object of their trip and their search? An infant, born in the most lowly and humble circumstances imaginable. And when they finally found Him, they bowed down and worshiped Him. Could these men actually be considered wise? Was it not rather the depth of foolishness to make such an arduous journey just to find a baby belonging to one of the poorest families in the land, and then to fall down and worship it?

Ah, no. It was a display of the highest wisdom. By the grace of God, these Gentiles discerned in the Child their savior, and they must have rejoiced greatly when they found Him and were privileged to worship Him and give gifts to Him. Let us spend a few moments considering how different their wisdom was from the wisdom of this world.

The wisdom of this world comes in a variety of forms. Different classes of people have different ideas of what constitutes wisdom. Some think it consists in pursuing an abundance of earthly possessions, in getting rich and storing up treasure on earth in the form of huge bank accounts, stocks and bonds, and various kinds of property, and then in luxuriously enjoying their accumulated wealth. What fools they are! Ultimately it will all go up in smoke. And those governed by such “wisdom” will even lose their own souls.

The wisdom of others consists in extracting as much pleasure out of life as possible, in gratifying the lust of the eyes, in indulging in the lusts of the flesh (I John 2:16), in eating and drinking and partying and carousing. Such are indeed to be pitied. Those who sow to the flesh shall reap corruption (Gal. 6:8).

Then there are those who think that the highest wisdom consists in gaining praise and honor and glory and fame, in being highly esteemed among men, in making a “success” out of life, and in being able to boast of their accomplishments, and who then bask in the adulation received. For these proud ones God has nothing but loathing. “The Lord detests all the proud of heart,” Prov. 16:5.

Of a slightly different stripe are those who, in their self-righteousness and exalted opinion of themselves, want to try to make the world a better place in which to live by “doing good” and helping the “poor.” In self-conceit, they presume to uplift others (whether they want to be “uplifted” or not), to manipulate others, and to be others’ keepers. Then they take pride in what they flatter themselves that they have all done. They are totally ignorant of the fact that anything that is not done out of faith in Jesus Christ is sin, and would be highly offended if they were told this.

Many believe that there is nothing wiser than to live what they imagine to be a moral and upright life. They take pride in the fact that they never killed anyone, never committed the act of adultery, never robbed anyone, never got drunk, etc., and that they pay their bills and contribute to their church and to charity. They take no account of the filth and corruption in their hearts. Do they think that because other people can’t see into their minds and hearts that God can’t either? They are confident that their outwardly upstanding life and their imagined sterling character deserve to be richly rewarded by God. There are as many of these pharisees today as there were in the time of Christ. What an unutterably great shock is in store for them!

Then there are those, known as philosophers, who, on the strength of their own reason, try to delve into questions of the origin, meaning, and destiny of all things. They set up elaborate systems of thought, trying to explain things that are beyond the grasp of the human intellect, while rejecting the only source that has the true explanation for everything. We are well aware from all the evolutionary propaganda with which we are surrounded how preposterous and totally contrary to common sense are some of the ideas that these thinkers propose. Professing themselves to be wise, they have become fools (Rom. 1:22).

Finally, let us glance at the modern “theologians,” who evidently consider themselves supremely wise, wiser even than God, and who set themselves up as judges over His Word, arrogantly deciding what is truth and what is myth and fable. To them the incarnation, the virgin birth, the miracles, salvation by grace through faith in the atonement accomplished by Christ on the cross, the resurrection, and the ascension are inventions and not worthy to be considered true by modern-day scholarship. To them the message of the cross is foolishness. But the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom. God has made foolish the wisdom of the world, and by the foolishness of the preaching of Christ crucified He saves those who believe (I Cor. 1:18-31).

All such highly vaunted wisdom of the world originates in the erring and depraved minds of the children of the devil; it leads to eternal separation from God. But true wisdom, despised and rejected by the haughty and self-righteous, originates in the mind of God and leads to eternal fellowship with Him. It is not the product of our own ingenuity.

This wisdom from above consists in humility, in knowing our limitations, in knowing that “we know nothing until we know nothing” (G.K. Chesterton), in trusting in the Lord with all our heart and not relying on our own understanding (Prov. 3:5). It consists in not setting ourselves up above others, in esteeming others better than ourselves, in serving and helping our neighbor instead of trying to lord it over him. It “is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere,” James 3:17 (see the context of this verse for its discussion of two kinds of wisdom). The smaller we become in our own sight, the greater we become in the sight of God.

True wisdom is shown in submitting ourselves to God and His Word, in acknowledging our utter sinfulness and unworthiness, and in falling down at the foot of the cross, thankfully accepting the cure there provided for our loathsome disease. It results in storing up treasure in heaven instead of on earth, and in cultivating a childlike trust in our Heavenly Father to take care of us and provide us with everything we need. It is characterized by living unto Him who gave Himself for us, by refusing to join the world in its sinful pleasures, and by being willing because of that to be considered a fool (I Peter 4:2-4).

True wisdom, in short, is the reverse of so much that the world believes to be wisdom. And it begins with joining the wise men, putting aside everything else, and worshiping the Child born in Bethlehem.

For here is the One through whom the all-wise God’s plan of salvation was effected. Here is the One who is Himself endowed with the wisdom sufficient to bring the enormous task to completion. “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him – the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,” Is. 11:2. Here is the One who is greater, also in wisdom, than that wisest of men, King Solomon. “For she [the Queen of Sheba] came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here,” Luke 11:31.

At the wisdom of Jesus (which was manifest already in youth: “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature,” Luke 2:52), many were absolutely astounded. Mt. 13:54: “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” John 7:15: “The Jews were amazed and asked, ‘How did this man get such learning without having studied?’” John 7:46: “’No one ever spoke the way this man does,’ the guards declared.”

One has to marvel at the wisdom of Jesus in the way He confounded the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees in their repeated efforts to entrap Him. These well-known attempts at trickery include such questions as whether to pay taxes to Caesar, which of the seven husbands that a certain woman had on earth she would be married to in heaven, whether it was permitted to heal on the Sabbath, what to do with the woman taken in adultery, and others.

Finally, after He had turned the tables with the question, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” (Mt. 22:41), “No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask Him any more questions,” v. 46. Anyone today who, after reading all such accounts, still rejects the claim of Jesus to divinity is manifesting a blindness and hardness similar to that of the Jews who finally managed to get Him crucified. The day will come when they will realize, with horror, what fools they were.

We cannot sufficiently thank God for granting unto us the wisdom that He gave to the wise men. “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by My Father in heaven,” Mt. 16:17. Nor can we sufficiently thank that Heavenly Father for being ready to respond bountifully and unstintingly when we ask for wisdom in its various forms. When Solomon, turning away from various attractive things, appealed to God for wisdom in serving as king of God’s people, did he not receive it in extraordinary measure? And did not James write as follows to all who need wisdom in connection with undergoing trials? “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him” (1:5).

May we, with the confidence born of possession, by grace, of the gift of Christ and His salvation, ever have recourse to our Heavenly Father, and to nothing or no one else, for the wisdom necessary to complete safely our walk through this benighted world. May our journey be carried on, from beginning to end, on our knees, in adoration of Christ. May we, holding ourselves aloof from the world’s foolishness, thus show the way whereby others may come into possession of true wisdom.

• * * * * *
•

1) The overriding theme of Old Testament prophecy, right from the beginning (Gen. 3:15), is the coming of the Savior. Num. 24:17; Is. 7:14; Is. 53; Micah 5:2.

2) The line of the Savior is thus kept constantly before our eyes. Note especially the promise to David and the assurances of the permanence of his house. II Sam. 7; Ps. 89; I Kings 11:34; II Chron. 21:7; Is. 37:35.

3) While it is well known that the people of the Savior, the Children of Israel, is the subject of virtually all of Old Testament Bible history, the manner in which this people is treated in prophecy is commonly overlooked or distorted. Very simply, the true people of God is spiritual, not fleshly, even as Isaac was a child, not of the flesh, but of promise. Rom. 2:28-29, 9:6ff.; Gal. 3:7 & 29, 4:28; Phil. 3:3.

4) Thus, on the one hand, the end of the physical nation of Israel is repeatedly the subject of prophecy. This includes the end of its law, the razing of its temple, and the destruction of its capital city. Is. 66:6; Amos 9:1; II Cor. 3:11ff.; Mt. 27:51; Luke 19:41-44; Mt. 22:7, 23:33ff., 24:2, 26:64; Luke 21:20ff., 23:28-31; I Thess. 2:16.

5) On the other hand, passage after passage dwells on the new and glorious people from across the world that replaces the Old Testament nation of Israel. Is. 54:1-3, 60:1-9, 65:1, 66:7-8; Hosea 1:10; Amos 9:11-12; Acts 15:14ff.; Eph. 2-3; Rom. 9-11; Acts 13:46-48; Mt. 21:43.

6) Nothing in Scripture equals Daniel 9:24-27 in its concise and powerful statement both of the arrival and work of the Savior, which is the great goal of the existence of the earthly nation of Israel, and of the fearful judgment to fall upon the people and its city at about that time.

7) Since God kept sparing Israel solely for the sake of the coming Savior, to teach Israel’s continued existence as God’s chosen people is to teach that the Savior has not yet come.

Of the many end-time scenarios with their almost infinite variations that have been proposed to our bewildered view today, perhaps the most prominent and popular is the following:

Prior to the 70th week of Daniel, the “rapture” of the church will take place. That is, all believers will be snatched out of this world. Then will follow a seven-year period at the midpoint of which the antichrist will break the covenant he had previously made with the Jews. The indescribable destruction and persecution portrayed in Revelation and elsewhere will then be unleashed in the final three and a half years, leading to the battle of Armageddon and the return of Christ for his thousand-year earthly rule.

This view shatters on the following truths:

1) The Bible does not teach a rapture. (Nor does it even teach a thousand-year earthly rule of Christ.) The “proof” passage, I Thess. 4:15-17, deals exclusively with the end of the world, and does not separate the joining of the saints with their Lord Jesus from His second and final coming. (Note the following from Dictionary of Christianity in America, under “Rapture of the Church”: “All premillennialists trace the doctrine to the same passage (I Thess. 4:15-17) but disagree on when it will occur in relation to the tribulation period, which they identify as the ‘seventieth week’ of Daniel 9:24-27.”)

2) It is an act of unspeakable violence to Holy Scripture to tear Daniel 9:27 from its context, as the advocates of this view do, and take it as referring to events centuries, even millennia, later than the period of time under discussion in the context.

3) At His first coming, Christ succeeded most wonderfully and perfectly in completing His missions of destroying the devil’s kingdom (by His death on the cross, through which He atoned for the sins of the world, and by His triumphant resurrection) and also, upon ascending into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father and to assume rule over all things, of establishing His New Testament Church (pouring out the Holy Spirit on Pentecost). “To do whatever Thy hand and Thy purpose predestined to occur,” Acts 4:28.

But according to the rapture view, Christ actually failed in His mission at His first coming, resulting in the prolonged parenthetical period of the church before the projected successful coming to establish His kingdom. Thus what God greatly magnifies in His Word – the events of Christ’s first coming – man minimizes. Indeed, the preoccupation with the alleged sequence of end-time events is alone enough to sideline and withdraw from our view the saving work accomplished by Christ at His first coming. This alone marks the rapture view as satanic in its effects.

4) The Antichrist is a religious entity, not a political one, as it is in the rapture scenario. Dn. 7:20-25; II Thess. 2:1-12; Rev. 13:11ff. More generally: According to Scripture, Christ’s work and His true people and His great opponent (Antichrist) are all spiritual. Christ’s work is necessarily externalized, and thus destroyed, not only directly by teaching an earthly rule, but also indirectly by externalizing either His true people, or His great opponent, or both.

“For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified,” I Cor. 2:2. “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?”, Gal. 3:1.

For important information
on the history and
promotion of the
rapture view, see the
books and articles by
Dave MacPherson,
including The Incredible Cover-Up and
The Rapture Plot.

Examining The People’s Bible and I Peter 3:18

In a splendid article first published in the July 1979 issue of the Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly and subsequently included in the 1991 NPH anthology, Our Great Heritage (Vol. II, pp. 555-570), Prof. Siegbert Becker explained that in Rom. 1:3, I Tim. 3:16, and I Peter 3:18, “flesh” refers essentially to Jesus’ state of humiliation and “spirit” to His state of exaltation. Thus, Becker writes of I Peter 3:18: “We are now … prepared to define what Peter meant when he said that Christ was made alive ‘in spirit.’ It does not mean that somehow he was now divorced from flesh, or from his body. But he was raised in that spiritual state in which his body was no longer subject to the natural laws that govern all material things nor to all the natural ills to which the flesh is heir because of the fall into sin. … In this new state, or mode of existence, he then descended into hell to preach to the spirits in prison” (pp. 561-62).

A different view is presented in Pastor Mark Jeske’s volume on I Peter in The People’s Bible of the Wisconsin Synod. “The NIV’s footnote, however, probably provides a better way to translate the verses [I Peter 3:18-19]: ‘He was put to death in the body but made alive in the spirit, through which he went and preached ….’ This would show that Christ’s descent into hell occurred before the resurrection of his body and was a descent in spirit.” What is one to think of this?

The death that Jesus suffered was, as our physical death will be, a separation of soul and body. Jesus’ soul did not die. He Himself said: “Father, into your hands I commend My spirit.” The dead body was placed into the tomb.

But the very fact that we acknowledge that Jesus’ spirit never died makes it nonsensical to speak, as the commentary does, of being made alive in that spirit. To make alive must involve what was dead – the body. The spirit didn’t need to be made alive. The body needed to be made alive through reunion with the spirit.

But what is really astounding is that we are thus left with a descent into hell carried out by Jesus when his body was in the grave. What kind of victory can be proclaimed under those circumstances? “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins,” I Cor. 15:17. Though it doesn’t use those exact words, it seems undeniable that a WELS commentary sets forth the view that Jesus descended into hell when He was dead.

NOTES:

“Why did our Lord descend into hell? To proclaim His victory over sin, death, Satan, and hell. He did that after He rose but before He appeared on earth; that is why the descent is mentioned before the resurrection in the Creed.” (Dr. John Drickamer, The Echo of Truth – A Handbook of Christian Teaching, 1997; p. 22)
“We believe that the unnamed writer of the article on ‘Christ’s Descent into Hell’ in the Concordia Cyclopedia of 1927 made a very cogent point when he reasons: ‘If Christ had made the descent while his body was in the power of death, it could not have been a triumphant descent’ (emphases ours).” (Our Great Heritage, Vol. II, p. 576; the essay from which this is taken, “Christ’s Descent into Hell,” by Pastor Gerhard Struck, was delivered at a Michigan pastoral conference and then published in Nos. 2-3 of the 1960 Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly before being included in Our Great Heritage.)
A detailed discussion of the sermon by Luther on Christ’s descent into hell that is referred to by our Formula of Concord in its ninth article, together with a translation of that sermon, appears in the 2003-3 issue of Logia. This is an impressive piece of scholarship. The translators, in their 162 footnotes, take issue at times with the translation of this sermon that appears in Sources and Contexts of the Book of Concord, edited by Robert Kolb and James Nestingen (Augsburg Fortress; 2001).

Our discovery of this passage in The People’s Bible was accidental. Inquiries we have subsequently made of other WELS clergymen have generally brought expressions of disagreement with what Pastor Jeske wrote. We even contacted Pastor Jeske himself, but he did not retreat from what he had written.

Northwestern Lutheran, March 12, 1950, p. 86
A new Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which bodes no good to our country is on its way through the legislative mill at Washington. Under the typically shrill pressure of feminine enthusiasts, it has passed the Senate by a vote of 63 to 19.
Promoted by certain women who ‘want to be persons now because we still are not persons in the Constitution,’ the amendment reads: ‘Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex.’
One would judge that the Amendment as passed really makes more than mere persons of women. For the Senate attached a rider stating that nothing in the amendment would change any ‘rights, benefits or exemptions now or hereafter conferred by law upon persons of the female sex.’ So the status of women would [not?] be that of [mere?] persons, but better. They retain peculiar protection not accorded an ordinary mortal.
Christian citizens, we trust, will through their Representatives resist passage of the Amendment. It is: a) ridiculous; b) a threat of law against the divine order observed in our midst which forbids the right of the woman to speak in the Church (I Cor. 14:34; I Tim. 2:12); c) an insult to the Creator who expressly disavows the ‘equality’ claims of fanatical females. (I Cor. 11:3; Eph. 5:22-24)

April 23, 1950, p. 126
In an Atlantic Monthly article he states that our public schools today are controlled by what he calls academic ‘quackery.’ He takes a very dim view of the average quality of public school instructors, but asserts that the fault lies, not with the teachers, parents or school boards, but with ‘the super-professionals who determine the kind of education to which your child must submit … the professors of education in the larger universities and teachers’ colleges.’ The chief failing which Mr. Lynd sees in public education is the lack of ‘culture,’ both in the pupils and in the teachers. This is allegedly to be attributed to the professors in the schools which train teachers … schools which Mr. Lynd calls ‘intellectual bargain basements.’

Nov. 18, 1951, p. 358
Most men listen to themselves and to other men, and the noise of human chatter fills our air. The quiet hour of meditation with the Bible in hand is so strange an experience that many cannot stand it at all. They never want to be alone with God. They become radio and television addicts because silence is unbearable.

Feb. 24, 1952, p. 52
But such is the Great American Illusion – that the mere acknowledgment of the existence of a Supreme Being constitutes faith in God and is therefore a true rejection of communism and all that it represents. We call it an American illusion, not because it is peculiar to our country, but because here it receives its most vigorous expression and has reached a position of high influence. It is the militant force in lodgery, Scoutism and the unionistic movements among the churches, a force which masquerades as true Christianity but is nursed at the breast of unbelief.

From a 1944 sermon on I Kings 6:7:
I fear that there are some for whom their own treatment begins when they come to Sunday service and ends when they leave. How many of us still prepare ourselves at home for the services? Do we come with repentant hearts to church, or do we expect that here our hearts should quickly be made to repent, perhaps through the sermon? Oh, my friends, it does not actually work that way in life; our hearts should be repentant through the Word that was preached to us last time we were in church or read the Word at home. And when we are here this time, the Word of God is to affect us during the week to come, where God does the grinding and polishing.
How needful that we prepare our hearts to receive the Word before we come to Sunday Services – and after we return to our homes, that we allow the Word to work in us! The danger of Sunday Christians is just this, that they expect all the good work to be done in them on Sunday morning in one hour. If they live by that hope, they will never be fitted into the walls of Zion.
(Vol. III of Selected Sermons of E. Schaller, p. 120)