# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1899_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ninth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1899. 17

At this someone might perhaps say: Do you mean, then, that war and
enmity must and will always remain on this earth? Were the holy angels
mistaken, then, when they sang, "Peace on earth"? But did not the Lord
himself say in the plainest words, "Peace I give to you; my peace I
leave with you"? We answer: Indeed, so our Savior said. But why do
you leave out the words that follow: "Not as the world gives do I give
to you"? And have you not also read, "I have not come to bring peace
on earth, but a sword"? Can you really not see that the peace which
Jesus promises is something altogether different from outward, worldly
peace — namely, peace with God, spiritual peace, which the Lord himself
won and has granted only to his own, which the world therefore cannot
have, much less give? But how plain and how great this difference is!
For no one can have outward peace for himself alone, nor keep it any
longer than his neighbor wills. And how often and how plainly the Lord
foretells that the enmity against him, against his word, and against his
disciples will not only not lessen but will burn ever more fiercely, until
at last, at his return, he delivers his own forever from all distress and
brings them into everlasting peace! Blessed, then, blessed are those
who, amid all the world's strife and war, attain to the spiritual peace
which the Prince of Peace grants his own through his gospel. While
every other peace — even the peace people try to establish between
church bodies through shrewd political compromises — can turn to
bitter strife at any moment, the peace of God remains in the heart,
even when that heart is greatly troubled from without, so long as it
still clings in faith to its Savior. For just as in the ocean, even when
the waves rage wildly on its surface, everything far below remains calm
and still, so too in the heart that clings to the word of Jesus there is
always a hidden little place where, even under every trial, the peace of
God can remain and does remain. It is indeed the peace that passes all
understanding.

Yet this peace is not meant to remain hidden forever. One day it shall
break forth and shine out of every heart in which it has secretly dwelt.
It shall even, like the true heavenly sunlight, one day shine through and
illumine the whole earth. But — that will be the new earth, the earth on
which righteousness dwells and only children of peace walk. Until then,
however — let us not forget — war and strife and bloody garments will
remain on this old earth. And indeed war and strife between father and
son, mother