# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1904_S41
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1904. 41

the nature of the lodge. If we disregard eternity altogether, we must say, and have said, that the lodge's teaching and Christ's teaching stand over against each other as sharply as two teachings can, so that the one turns directly against the other and leaves nothing of the other standing. Christ says: "Without me ye can do nothing," and the lodge wants to accomplish everything without the LORD Christ; it wants to create love, brotherhood, fidelity, truthfulness, joy, peace, happiness — everything without Christ.

It is a common remark of many lodge members that when they joined the lodge they neither renounced their faith nor lost it. They are, they say, just as good Christians as before, still have their old faith, which they already had as children, and no one can take it from them. So these people defend themselves. But the fact is that joining a lodge or any society involves assent to its principles. Every lodge brother, even if he says a hundred times that it is not so, is from the moment of his joining a co-confessor of the lodge's confession and a co-worker in the work of the lodges, which are not with Christ and for Christ, but against him.

When we think of the admission of Judas to the Holy Supper by the LORD Christ, it might find application in one case, which might perhaps occur some day, but will seldom occur. A member of a Lutheran congregation has applied to a lodge for admission and has already made the necessary down payment, but the initiation has not yet taken place. Nothing of this is yet known in the congregation, but the man concerned has told the pastor everything openly. Now the man wants to go to the Sacrament. The actual initiation, and with it public fellowship with an anti-Christian association, has not yet taken place. The will to be received is there, but this will can still, if God grants grace, be broken and hindered. In that case the pastor may, after earnest and urgent admonition, intercession and prayer, well admit the man concerned to the Sacrament if he asks for it. But if the man is already a full member of the lodge, even if within the congregation this is known to no one but the pastor and the man concerned, then the admission of Judas to the Sacrament cannot be applied, and an admission appealing to it is not justified. We are speaking here of such cases.

From Matt. 7:6 we have learned that we are not to give what is holy to the dogs nor cast our pearls before swine; that is, we are not to speak the comfort of the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins, to those, nor let them partake of it, who corrupt the precious teachings of the Gospel with doctrine and life. A teaching is corrupted by adding something or taking something away, distorting something or setting something against it. That the lodge corrupts the teaching of the Gospel needs