# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1896_S24
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

24 Proceedings of the sixteenth convention

be broken." What is commanded to us in Scripture is and remains commanded, and through this command everything that is contrary to this command is excluded. What is forbidden in Scripture is forbidden in such a way that everything that is contrary to this prohibition is excluded, or we would have no norm with which anything could be done.

Secondly, it is further said in the thesis and in the passage cited that thereby the uniformity of church practice as a divine demand is given not only for one time, not only for the apostolic age, but for the whole Church, including the Church of all times. What the apostles and what Christ, the Lord, Himself prescribed to His congregation, they prescribed not only to the Church of those days, the Church of the apostolic age, but to the Church of all times. This is especially clearly evident from some parts of church practice which are governed in God's Word.

Let us take first the practice of the Lord's Supper again. There it says: "This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me," and these words are spoken to the congregation which had heard the Savior's discourses on the last evening that He spent with it in His humiliation. But in the Savior's heart and thoughts in those hours were not only the holy apostles, not only the congregation of that time, whose Shepherd was now in this night to be smitten, not only the sheep of the flock which were now soon to be scattered, but in His thoughts were all who should believe on Him through their word. In His high-priestly prayer He included them, and again and again we notice how His glances direct themselves toward the end of time, indeed out into blessed eternity. And also in close connection with the institution of His Sacrament He speaks words that make this known, when He adds: "I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God." There He looks to the end of time, into eternity. What He has instituted here is now to hold for this whole time, so that in the same manner as on the night when the Lord was betrayed, the fruit of the vine would be drunk, until the time breaks in when one will drink it new in the heavenly Father's kingdom. In the practice of Baptism we have the same. He says: "Go into all the world . . . and teach them to observe . . . and lo, I am with you always, to the end of the world." There we have again this looking out, not only to the next days, but through all earthly days, to the end of days, and while this thought occupies Him, He institutes this order, this Sacrament, and commands His Church to the end of time to act as He has commanded it, to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and to teach to observe all that He has commanded. There comes no time and there is no place where this norm would not have to hold in Christendom. This