# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1888_S21
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1888. 21

But God wills that all Christians be one in faith, and indeed so one that they agree in all articles of Christian doctrine, as Thesis I says. It is wholly incomprehensible how people who profess to believe Holy Scripture can speak of different, equally entitled tendencies in the church. Of the equal entitlement of different tendencies there could be talk only if God permitted us men to depart from his Word; if he either dispensed the preachers from preaching his whole Word pure and unadulterated, or at least released the hearers from believing everything that is preached to them from God's Word. But neither the one nor the other is the case. Rather every preacher is to preach only God's Word, without any admixture of human thoughts. Jer. 23:28: "The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord." 1 Pet. 4:11 says of what is to resound in the church of God: "If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God." Every preacher is to proclaim not merely parts but the whole Word of God, as Paul says of himself, Acts 20:27: "I have kept back nothing, but have declared unto you the whole counsel of God." The preacher is to add nothing to the Word that God has given us and take nothing from it, Deut. 12:32; Rev. 22:18–19. Matt. 5:19 says in earnest warning: "Whosoever shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven." And as for the hearers, they are commanded to accept the whole preached or read Word of God. Christ speaks reproachfully to the disciples at Emmaus, Luke 24:25: "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken." If preachers take it upon themselves to depart from the Word of God, the hearers are to turn away from them. Rom. 16:17: "Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them." It is, we repeat, truly incomprehensible how such people, who profess to believe Holy Scripture, can still speak of different, equally entitled tendencies in the church. Only one tendency is entitled according to Scripture, namely the one that accepts God's whole Word without adding to it or taking from it. As certainly as God wills in his church only one doctrine, the one revealed by him, so certainly he wills only this one "tendency" in the church. That there are other "denominations" does not come from God's unfathomable wisdom, but from sin, from the folly of men, from the unbelief that will not accept God's Word. That there are Reformed and papists is not willed by God, not wrought by God, but only permitted by God, like any other sin.