# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S605
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

PUBLICATION MATTERS 605

Why are the pages in our periodicals, which should be used for
the defense of the truth, used so largely for fencing about harmless
changes which are to be found in the RSV as they are in other
modern translations?

While there is much praise of the RSV, we refuse to do any-
thing about a better translation, because “we must not let our
people think that we are competing with the RSV.” If it is to be
a principle with us that the RSV must have no competitor, then
we are not giving our church a chance to choose anything better.
Then we are compelling our Christians to vote a one-candidate
ticket. That is no healthier in our church than it is in Russia.

Every sound Lutheran is convinced that the Bible which we
use in our services, in our Bible classes, in Sunday school, and
in our instructions must have no Modernism in it. Anyone who
is trying to lead us to think differently is betraying our trust and
should not lead our church. Anyone who feels indifferent about
the Modernism in a Bible which we use is indifferent about the
truth of Christ. Such indifference in regard to the heart of our
faith is certain to spread to every other conviction of our church
and will paralyze it in spite of every outward success. If we stop
loving the truth, we lose it. God Himself will take it away from us.

In our church there is still a lively conscience in this matter.
Many of our Christians are deeply troubled. They are crying to
God for a way out. We must not let that conscience of our church
be lulled to sleep. We are facing one of the gravest problems which
we have ever faced. That some men smile at it makes it all the
more threatening. When the Word of our God is under constant
bombardment, we must not fail to be alert in regard to this price-
less treasure, which God has entrusted to us. In the church of
Luther there is no room for apathy in regard to a sound Bible
in the language of the people; nor is there room for an abject
dependence on Modernists to give us the translation which we
need. Let us, then, in the church of Luther, for the love of God
and of His truth, do something before it is too late.

Our Christian parents who read the Bible to their children
and our Sunday school teachers who teach their children are
struggling with difficulties which they cannot solve by themselves.
Now, if we give them a Bible which they cannot trust and which
(the RSV) does not really speak their language, we are unsettling
their faith and not helping them. If we want to work effectively

-with our children and with our adults, we must have a Bible which

we can trust and which is in the language of our people.
What shall we do? The answer is simple. We can ask God,