# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S70
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

70 Proceedings of the eleventh convention

judgment is pronounced upon those who are not obedient to the Gospel
of Christ, 2 Thess. 1:8: "In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that
know not God, and that obey not the Gospel
of our LORD Jesus Christ." When the Son of Man comes to the last
judgment, he will not judge according to a human
book, but according to a divine standard. And that is the Gospel
which he spoke and recorded in Scripture. Therefore it is said
outright in Acts 13:41, 46 that whoever despises the Word of God thereby
judges himself unworthy of eternal life. "Behold, ye despisers,
and wonder, and perish; for I work a work in
your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you."
"It was necessary that the Word of God should first have been spoken to you; but seeing ye
put it from you and judge yourselves unworthy
of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles." Only
a divine Scripture can demand that no one should ever depart from it,
and that under threat of the divine wrath and curse. And
such a curse is to strike not only those who oppose Scripture, but
also those who merely teach differently from it. Gal. 1:8: "But though
we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you
than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." Among the
Galatians there were people who claimed that they led the right doctrine
and were the right successors of the apostles; Paul, however, was no
right apostle at all. But Scripture cursed them as false apostles, because they
taught otherwise than the Gospel preached by Paul.

Deut. 12:32 Moses commands: "What thing soever I command you, observe to do
it. Thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it."
Only he can speak so who speaks God's Word in the sense in which
Moses spoke, driven by the Holy Spirit to speak. Of our own sermons
we cannot say so. In the writings of our highly enlightened
fathers there may here and there be a view of which we must say:
here we do not go along. But where it is said: Let no one
take anything from it or add to it, there he must have spoken in whom every word
is divine truth. Therefore also Christ commanded his apostles
that they should teach men to observe all that he had commanded them.
If, on the other hand, we urge Christians to do this and to reject
that, they may rightly say: Where is it written? With
the apostles it is different; they could say: You must hold to it,
because we have written it from the Holy Spirit. So
Paul raises his letters to a use in the church such as only God's
Word had, when he gives his writings to the congregations to be read publicly,
and adjures them, that is, in God's name charges them, not to leave them
unread. For in the congregation God's Word was read. How
greatly these congregations would have wondered if Paul