# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_2016_S64
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

• It was true as the Nazis molded their German
Christian movement, and the children and grandchildren of Lutherans confessed fascism.
• It was true when activist courts began limiting the
freedoms of the First Amendment regarding the
“free exercise of religion” in this country.
• It is true as burgeoning African Lutheran churches
grow despite all the opposition that Islam and
animism can muster!
• It is true as a thousand former Muslims are now
catechized and confess Christ in our sister church
in Germany.
• It is true—the gates of hell shall not prevail—in the
face of a U.S. Supreme Court and other courts and
legislatures throughout the land detached from
eternal truth.
• It is true in the face of the most rapid moral, social,
and religious decline in the history of this nation.
• It is true in the face of Obergefell.
• It is true in the face of Orlando.
• It is true in the case of abortion law in Texas.
• It is true in the face of radical Islam.
• It is true in the face of California legislators who
would deny the constitutional rights of religious
universities and threaten one of our own crown
jewels, Concordia University Irvine.
• It is true in the face of a culture so screwed up that
innocent and courageous law officers are murdered
gratuitously.
• It is true in the face of the decline of Christianity in
the West.
• It is true in the face of the fact that in the past 10
years, the number of Christians has not increased in
a single county in the U.S.
• And it is even true in the face of the maddening fact
that the Missouri Synod has been declining numerically for over 40 years.

64

|

UPON THIS ROCK

We in the United States live in a period of history
akin to what Sasse described in Germany in 1936:
The lie is the death of man, his temporal and
his eternal death. The lie kills nations. The
most powerful nations of the world have been
laid waste because of their lies. History knows
of no more unsettling sight than the judgment
rendered upon the people of an advanced culture
who have rejected the truth and are swallowed
up in a sea of lies. Where this happens, as in the
case of declining pagan antiquity, religion and
law, poetry and philosophy, life in marriage
and family, in the state and society—in short,
one sphere of life after another falls sacrifice
to the power and curse of the lie. Where man
can no longer bear the truth, he cannot live
without the lie. Where man denies that he and
others are dying, the terrible dissolution [of his
culture] is held up as a glorious ascent, and
decline is viewed as an advance, the likes of
which has never been experienced. (Hermann
Sasse, Union and Confession)
Yet Jesus says, “On this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail.” “I believe; help
my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).
• Jesus says, “Behold, I am with you always, to the
end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). Do you believe it?
• Jesus says, “In the world you will have tribulation. But
take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
Do you believe it?
• Jesus says, “If you abide in my word, you are truly
my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the
truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32, emphasis
added). Do you believe it?
• Jesus prayed for His apostles, “I have given them
your word, and the world has hated them because
they are not of the world, just as I am not of the
world. I do not ask that you take them out of the
world, but that you keep them from the evil one.
They are not of the world, just as I am not of the
world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is
truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent
them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate
myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. I
do not ask for these only, but also for those who will
“President’s Report, Part 3”