# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1904_S43
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1904. 43

says that he has forgiveness of sins and that there is nothing condemnable in him, because he is in Christ JESUS. This can never happen where open Antichristianity is. There one is not in Christ JESUS. There the Church would be casting her pearls before swine. The Christian Church cannot grant sacramental fellowship to the representatives of the lodge system.

But here the often-made objection comes to us again: "I do not agree at all with what the lodge teaches. I believe in the LORD Christ, and that I am a poor sinner and have forgiveness of my sins through him alone. I also take no part in the meetings of the lodge and its other activities. I only pay my dues, so as to have a little support for myself and mine in case of need and death. That is all." — Now in theory it stands thus: everyone who is a member of an association takes part in everything that this association does, is jointly responsible for everything it undertakes, and joins in confessing everything it declares as its principles. So every member of a lodge is a representative of its moral method of education, a co-confessor of its rationalistic teachings. In theory! But may it not be that in practice it is so that someone has fallen into the lodge and yet personally remains a Christian, untouched in his inner man by the poison that is spat out in the lodge? We may certainly answer this question calmly with Yes, just as we would answer Yes if someone asked us whether we believed that there are truly believing Christians in the church of the Antichrist. Yes here and Yes there. But No here and No there, when it is a matter of admission to the Holy Supper. Let us hear the Scripture.

It says in 1 Cor. 11:26: "For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come." Going to the Lord's Supper is an act of confession. The communicant proclaims the death of Christ, praises Christ's suffering and dying as the sole source of all salvation and all blessedness; by his partaking of the Supper he confesses the true, pure doctrine of righteousness by grace, in opposition to all false doctrine. "Yes," says a lodge brother of the spirit we have just let speak, "my lodge brethren may all know that I go to the Holy Supper. By that I want to testify before them all that I do not acknowledge their teachings, that I confess Christ and his blood!" There may be a semblance of truth in this, that one makes a confession against the lodge when one goes to the Holy Supper. But it is only a very weak semblance, which vanishes at once when one looks at the matter in the right light. If one wants to confess the truth of the doctrine of the Gospel over against the lodge's teaching, one can do so only by condemning and damning its teaching and simply denying it any right to exist.