# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1855_S94
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

94

(From Past. Grabau's "Informatorium".)
Let Everyone Take Note! *)

We have refuted the erroneous Missourian doctrine, found in the "Lutheraner" and in the "Voice of the Synod of Missouri" etc., concerning Church and Ministry, that the Roman papal sect is a part of the universal Christian Church, because the Antichrist sits in the temple of God, in the Christian Church, according to 2 Thessalonians 2:4; — refuted in the Kirchliches Informatorium, Vol. 2, pp. 57, 65, 74, 84, and we have demonstrated Luther's correct opinion, that a part of the holy universal Church of God exists within the papist sect under the Antichrist, under his power, force, and oppression, as a man is under a bear. Furthermore we have shown that Luther denies to the papal Church that it is a part of the Church. It — the papal Church — lies only upon a part of the true Church, like a nightmare. Therefore it is said to be a Missourian (Waltherian) innovation and falsification of our symbols, in that in place of the universal Church of Jesus taught therein, two churches are set up:

a new, invisible true Church, and
an improper, general Christian Church, namely
the totality of all Christian sects.

The latter we have rightly called a substitution made by Pr. Walther, which is put in place of the true universal Church of Jesus and foisted upon our symbols.

To this, no refutation and no retraction of the false, unsymbolical doctrine has followed thus far, but only a disparaging mention in the "Lutheraner." If, accordingly, the old teachers say with Luther that the true Church has also been preserved under the papacy, and still lies hidden beneath it, because St. Paul says the Antichrist will set himself in the temple of God, then the meaning is: the Pope has set himself up as the Antichrist first within the holy Christian Church of God, then set himself up as lord and made it into a temple of Baal with a Christian appearance. Although he has brought things so far that everything must lie at his feet, there have nevertheless always been baptized children and witnesses of the truth there, as part of the one Church of Jesus, and will continue to be, so long as the Antichrist must still let God's baptism stand, and children of God and members of his Church continue to be reborn there — who, however, lie under the Antichrist and his power until, through confession, they depart from him, or—

*) Two reasons move us to communicate this article from the pen of Herr P. Grabau. First, so that it may be seen in what sense he made the peace proposal to our synod mentioned in the January issue (evidently, that is, only to mock us), for the above appeared in the very next number; and second, so that it may be seen how the "Inform." renders our doctrine — that is, Luther's doctrine — to its readers. L. u. W.