# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1899_S31
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ninth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1899. 31

evil nature. Toward it they are lured from outside by the world in a
thousand ways, especially by the press, so powerful in our time,
which stands almost without exception in the service of a brazen and
shameless worldliness, and which, year in and year out, day after
day, carries on propaganda for the nature of the world even among
Christians. The situation is enough to make one despair, if one
looks at it with the natural eye. Perhaps more than one of us has, in
a moment of utter hopelessness, cried out: We must give up this
hopeless struggle; we simply cannot keep our congregations, and
especially our young people, from becoming worldly! But that is
wrongly spoken. Such talk does not become the church, to which God
has given nothing less than his word, the word of divine power. The
word given to the church is mightier than the world and all the
nature of the world. With this word we can resist the nature of the
world. The Lord Christ says in his high-priestly prayer to his
heavenly Father: "I have given them your word. ... I do not ask that
you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil
one. ... Sanctify them in your truth; your word is truth" (John
17:14-17). Let us simply not keep silent with the word entrusted to
us. Let us testify to this word unceasingly, publicly, and, as
occasion demands, particularly; let us expose to young and old the
nature of the world by God's word; let us proclaim, calmly and
clearly, God's judgment on the nature of the world. But above all:
let us not grow weary of holding up before Christians, insofar as
they are assailed by worldliness, their heavenly glory, through the
word of the gospel. When our heart grasps — and again and again
grasps anew — the heavenly inheritance that we have through Christ,
it lets go of the filth of this world quite of its own accord. Let us
not, then, lose heart. The church has no need to lay down its arms
before the world. St. John gives all Christians the testimony that
they have already overcome the world, when he writes, "Our faith is
the victory that has overcome the world" — and Christians overcome
the world anew every day, if only they keep reaching for the word
again and again in faith. Let us not fall into the error into which
it is easy to fall — merely lamenting the nature of the world,
instead of meeting and resisting it through the unceasing and patient
testimony of God's word.

Further: the Christian church has to bring it about, among its
members, that they place as much of their earthly goods in the
service of the church as the church needs for carrying out its
calling. How is the church to go about this? By what means can it
move its members to give for church purposes? Congregations and
denominations have in some cases resorted to the most desperate
means — means that have brought disgrace and shame upon the church
even in the eyes of the world. I hardly need [to list] these things