# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S8
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

8 Proceedings of the eleventh convention

one another: Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, when he opened to us the Scripture?" Compare also Luke 24:44–45: "And he said unto them: These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you; for all things must be fulfilled which are written of me in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures." Indeed, that the unbelieving Jews did not believe the words of the Messiah, sent by God, Christ traces back to the ground that they would not believe the Scripture of the Old Testament, saying in John 5:46–47: "For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?"

The same practice that meets us in Christ the LORD we find also in the apostles. Of Paul it is said in Acts 17:2: "And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures." This he did, then, not to accommodate himself to the circumstances of the time, but it was his habit everywhere. The same we hear in Acts 28:23: "And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodging; to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses and out of the prophets, from morning till evening." And in chap. 26:22 the Apostle himself says: "Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come." But as he preaches orally out of the Scripture, so also in writing according to the Scripture, as he says, for example, in 1 Cor. 15:3: "For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." And this we find in all the letters of the apostles, that they show again and again how they ground what they set before us to believe and to teach also on the Scripture of the Old Testament. Hence the so frequently recurring citation of the words of the prophets. The holy Evangelists, too, were always careful to demonstrate from the Old Testament the divine plan in the holy history of the New Testament, in the great deeds of God, from the birth, suffering, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; as, to cite only one example, this meets us in an especially dense form in the Passion narrative according to John, chap. 19:24, 28, 36, 37, where it is always said: "That the Scripture might be fulfilled."

Indeed, this was precisely the purpose of the composition of the New Testament writings also: that Christians be strengthened and made certain in their faith in Christ. So St. Luke composed his Gospel, as he himself states in chap. 1:4: "That thou mightest know the certainty