# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S888
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

” 388 MISSIONS

elements of the State Church which still desire to be Lutheran,
and for that purpose conferences are being held between the
pastors of our Free Church and the members of the Lutheran
Society, While it is too early to state any definite results from
such conferences, we have the right to hope that the testimony
which is there borne will not be in vain.

Owing to the fact that some of the members of our Free Church
have moved into Switzerland and that there are Lutheran congre-
gations affiliated with the Breslau Free Church of Germany both
in Zurich and Basle, the possibility exists that we may be able to
expand our work into Switzerland. At the moment of writing
nothing definite can be said, but your Board will keep these pos-
sibilities in mind.

C. Belgium

It may be news to most of the members of Synod that there
is in Antwerp, Belgium, a Lutheran free church in affiliation with
us and supported by our Church. This mission is an example of
God’s. providential leading.

Gop Leaps Us rnto Betcrum

The congregation in Antwerp was founded by Pastor Lambert
Hellings. The beginnings and growth of this congregation are
intimately tied to the personal history of this evangelist. Pastor
Hellings, a man of about 58 years of age, was born in the Province
of Limburg, Belgium, and brought up in a pious Roman Catholic
home. During the First World War, while embarking at a British
port for France in order to serve there as a soldier, he received
a Gospel according to St.John in Flemish, his native language.
This little book, which he used as a prayer book throughout the
war, brought him to Christ and weaned him from the work-right-
eousness of his Roman Catholicism, so that when he returned to
his home after the war, he no longer attended Mass. The finding
of a complete New Testament on the street of his native city
opened his eyes still wider, and his whole family began to testify
to friends and neighbors concerning the faith that was in them.
As a result of this testimony he was excommunicated by his church.
In 1921 he came into contact with an evangelical mission of
America in Brussels and attended its Bible school. Later on he
also took courses in the American Methodist Mission in: Brussels.
In the meantime he had moved from his native city and finally
began work as a missionary in Antwerp. He continued to study
his New Testament and came to the conviction that the doctrine
of the Methodist Church on the real presence of Christ’s body and
blood in the Sacrament did not agree with what the New Testa-
ment teaches. For that reason he took his dismission from the