# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1922_S8
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

8 Proceedings of the twenty-eighth convention

That means that we all confess the same divine truth as our faith, and that one does not speak one way and another another way, but that we all together "speak the same thing," 1 Cor. 1:10; John 8:31. It means further that we hold together and acknowledge one another as standing in the unity of faith, as Paul demands of Timothy: "Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner!" 2 Tim. 1:8. Thus the very existence of the Synodical Conference is an expression and a public confession of our fellowship in the truth of God against all error. We confess together and confess ourselves to one another, and together reject what does not agree with God's Word.

This fellowship of faith and confession given by God over the last fifty years has become a source of rich blessing to us. Holding together in the truth of God has strengthened us inwardly and outwardly and given us power. In spite of all opponents, and although we have often had to stand up for things that are not agreeable to the spirit of the age and to so-called "public opinion," our Synodical Conference has become a great genuinely Lutheran American church, indeed the most numerous general Lutheran church body of our country. And we have been permitted to establish and strengthen one another in God's Word, to lead one another to greater clarity in the knowledge of the divine truth, so that our faith became mightier and our standing in the truth all the more certain.

Against all the evil influences of our day, and the closer we come into contact with such influences in civil life, let us pray God all the more that he may preserve us further in this fellowship given by him, so that we all remain in his truth and hold high the banner of his Word. For therein lies for us all salvation and all spiritual prosperity. Through this God has given us our fellowship of faith, of doctrine and of confession. Through this he will make us perfect, strengthen, confirm and ground us.

2.

We thank God for this fellowship; for it is a fellowship in the Gospel of God.

The apostle writes to the Philippians: "I thank my God . . . for your fellowship in the gospel." If we read these words in the holy language in which Paul wrote, we find that in the terse manner of Greek he says to the Philippians: I thank God for your common labor and help in the spreading and furthering of the Gospel. The fellowship of the Philippians with their dear apostle Paul served the preaching of the Gospel; for that the apostle gave thanks.

For such a fellowship, as God has given us also in the Synodical Conference, is, no more than the faith of the individual, an idle, dead, unfruitful thing, but a fellowship "in the