# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S68
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

[p. 68]

—the political circumstances increasingly recommend it, especially now that in the West an independent Christian free state has arisen (whatever, according to the reports we have received, its present stance on religious principles may be)." (*Lutheraner* I, 12, 47–48.) Since people already at that time looked here with such great hopes, and God has now fulfilled them so abundantly, what duty must we have to preserve this inheritance for our descendants, so that we do not bring God's gracious counsel to shame? Christ himself says: "if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, as in Chorazin and Bethsaida, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes," and in the prophet Jeremiah it is said: "if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way" (Jeremiah 23:22). So human beings can indeed hinder the fulfillment of a gracious counsel of God. We now see the fulfillment of the hope of those men for this land only in its beginning; but God sees what can yet come of it, if we do not neglect it. He says to us now: will you help as my instruments, so that true Christianity and genuine Lutheranism, which lie in ruins in the old fatherland, may be rebuilt again in this land? But God's gracious counsel for this land will not come to fulfillment if we are lazy servants who bury the pound in a napkin. God's Word says: "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully" [negligently]. Let us therefore fear this dreadful curse and not become complacent; rather, as often as we think of it, let us consider how much God now demands of us, what a heavy and great accounting we must render to God on that great day. Let us therefore return home from these days with new courage for the work. With new earnestness and greater faithfulness let us go to the work, so that the light of the pure Gospel may be kindled in ever more places. — To the question whether it is indeed possible to hinder God's gracious counsel, it was answered: this is a very deep question, and it can only be answered here in general terms. One must distinguish between absolute decrees of God and those that are bound up with a certain condition. The latter can indeed be hindered by human unfaithfulness, but not the former. God wills that all be helped, but he does not will this absolutely, but rather under the condition that they believe in his Son. Therefore the godless can hinder this counsel. This is, to be sure, a terrible power that a human being can exercise in this way. So it can also happen with an entire people and an entire age. God would like his blessing to come to all, but people can prevent it, because he does not will it absolutely. When God wills something under a certain condition, and we do not fulfill the condition, then we cannot say on the Last Day: we could not help it, for we could not resist your will. No, he will say, I wanted to do it through you, but—