# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1916_S42
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

42 Proceedings of the twenty-sixth convention

III.

If we are to win the victory with God's help in the struggle against the papacy at Rome, we must not only fight but fight rightly, and indeed above all use the right weapon against this enemy. This is God's Word, the Gospel of the free grace of God in Christ Jesus. Through it alone are consciences freed from the yoke and the tyranny of the Pope. This weapon we must not let be wrested from us. This weapon we must wield faithfully and diligently.

"And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully," so writes the apostle Paul at the close of his battle-filled life to his spiritual son Timothy (2 Tim. 2:5). It is not enough that one fights, even fights with earnestness and zeal, but one must also fight in the right way, in a way that is suited to the given struggle, if one is to be crowned, to win the victory. That holds for every struggle, it holds also for the struggle that we must wage according to God's will against the Pope at Rome. Many, many have already waged this struggle, have fought in it with all earnestness, have made it hard for themselves, have spared no toil and labor, no cost and exertion, and have nevertheless been defeated in this struggle, because they just did not fight rightly, because above all they did not have and use the right weapon against this enemy. We have already heard which is the right weapon, namely God's Word or, more exactly, the Gospel of Christ, our Savior. The apostle says in his prophecy about the man of sin and the son of perdition, the adversary, that the Lord will slay him with the spirit of his mouth (2 Thess. 2:8). We have to do here with an enemy whom not men but God alone, the Lord, the Almighty, can destroy, whom he will at last make an end of by the appearance of his coming. Human art, human wisdom, human might is quite in vain here. Behind this enemy stands the devil, who founded and set up the papacy as the strongest, firmest bulwark of his power, by which he seeks to hold men back from their only salvation and Savior and to destroy the Church of Christ. The apostle writes of this wicked one: "whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish" (2 Thess. 2:9, 10). The papacy is the mightiest organization which the devil has called into life, on which he has, so to speak, expended all his cunning and art in order to destroy Christ's kingdom. Also with respect to the papacy we have not to wrestle with flesh and blood, but with princes and powers, with the rulers of this