# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1916_S30
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

30 Proceedings of the twenty-sixth convention

Church, but all Protestant churches have a share in them to a greater or lesser degree. What is still found of God's Word in these churches, what they still have of the Gospel, that they owe to the Reformation of Luther. Even the Roman Church feels its blessings. And the full blessing was intended by God for them too, as for all men; for God wills that all men be helped and that all come to the knowledge of the truth, to the knowledge of the pure Gospel, which alone can save men. Through their own fault they have lost it. Through their own fault they either have not accepted at all essential parts of the divine Word, which God so brightly and clearly set again upon the lampstand through Luther, or have let it go again, because it cannot be reconciled with reason or is otherwise unpleasant to the flesh. It is likewise in the once so richly blessed Church of the Reformation in Germany. It too has through its fault lost the inheritance and has to a large extent fallen prey to unbelief. Just in our time the Gospel has been given up almost everywhere in outward Christendom. People still talk much about the Gospel, praise it too with many lofty words, but in many cases they no longer know what the Gospel is. People call it the Gospel that man lives by the "Golden Rule" and thereby earns forgiveness of sins, and thereby becomes happy on this earth and in the end also eternally saved. "The fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all men" — that is the Gospel of a very large part of so-called Christendom today. Of the Gospel that man is saved by grace alone, through the redemption accomplished by Christ, through faith in him, that man from his own powers can do nothing at all toward this work, be they natural powers or powers of grace offered him by God, that every man by nature lies in spiritual death and remains therein until God by his almighty power, through his life-giving Word, awakens him to life — of this people will hear nothing. It contradicts reason, morality, the moral personality and responsibility of man, above all natural pride, self-righteousness.

It is different — we may say it with heartfelt thanks to our faithful God — with us. We still have and enjoy in full measure the blessing, especially also the spiritual blessing of the Reformation. We still have the pure Gospel. God has given us his Gospel in its whole fullness in this land, which was then almost wholly unknown when Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg and thereby publicly opposed the dreadful indulgence trade of the Pope, when he, a weak, despised monk, like a David, confronted the Goliath at Worms and in trust in God, his heavenly Father, confessed the Gospel fearlessly before Emperor and Empire. God