# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 11 16_S42
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

the Christians in particular were persecuted most cruelly and bloodily by the still-heathen Roman emperors. But no torment or torture, however dreadful one might devise, was able to move the Christians to fall away from the pure Gospel. Many hundreds of thousands died the most agonizing martyrs' deaths in the first three centuries with joy and rejoicing. Yet what happened? In the fourth century after Christ's birth, at last a mighty Roman emperor too was converted to the Christian faith, whose empire embraced almost the whole world — namely the Emperor Constantine, surnamed the Great. From this time on, the bloody persecutions of the Christians by the heathen indeed ceased; the Christians gained freedom and peace. Whereas Christianity had formerly brought shame, it now brought honor, and whereas it had formerly been connected with the greatest danger to life and limb to be a bishop, the office of bishop now became an office of honor, standing, wealth, and worldly splendor. But the more the Christian Church now outwardly rose and gained in temporal goods, the more she declined inwardly, and lost her former zeal for purity of doctrine and holiness of life; ever more false teachers and false doctrines crept in, and an ever greater corruption of conduct gained the upper hand. There were indeed still, in the fourth and fifth centuries, men who zealously contended, with equal earnestness, for both pure doctrine and holy life, and who worked with blessing and power — an Athanasius, an Ambrose, an Augustine, and other church fathers; but once these witnesses of the Church had been taken by death, once such pillars no longer stood, the decay of the Church grew greater and greater from century to century.

The chief cause of this decay, however, was the following. The Roman bishop, because he resided in the capital of the world, had at first been voluntarily honored by all the other bishops as the most eminent among them in particular. But the later Roman bishops were not content with this voluntary honor which other, humbler bishops showed them. The higher their standing and influence, as the bishops of the imperial city, had risen, the greater grew also their pride and their presumption; and at last they came forward with the principle that they were, by God's Word, the unrestricted rulers and lords of the whole Christian Church, since they were the successors of Peter and the visible vicars or representatives of Christ on earth. And behold — through cunning and force, through bribery and threats, through rewards and punishments — they finally actually brought it about that the reigning bishop of Rome was recognized by the greater part of Christendom, and by its kings and bishops, as the visible vicar of Christ on earth, indeed as an earthly god, namely as the universal Pope. This was brought about in particular by a man named Hildebrand, who in the eleventh century ascended the Roman episcopal see as Gregory VII.

From this time on it grew ever darker and darker; it became midnight. Even the Bible itself was now forbidden to be read, so that the people might not notice the great deception. Thus it finally came to the point that almost nowhere was anything known of the true Gospel and of the right way to salvation, namely of the justifying faith in Christ. The few who still testified of it were persecuted as heretics in the midst of Christendom. Now almost nothing was taught any longer except the holiness of monastic life, the power of the sacrifice of the Mass for the living and the dead, the meritoriousness of pilgrimages to holy places, unconditional obedience to Pope, bishops, and priests, the invocation of Mary and other so-called saints and the veneration of their relics, abstinence from meat on the prescribed fast days, the observance of the church's commandments, the purchase of papal indulgences for money, and the like.

Millions sighed in this night of truly heathen ignorance for light, but in vain. All the efforts, even of many emperors and kings, to overthrow the antichristian papacy were in vain. — But at last God had mercy on the Christendom languishing under this dreadful spiritual tyranny, and let a time of gracious visitation dawn upon it once more, in which the Gospel again came to light in apostolic purity and fullness, and the Church, freed from her tyrants, shone forth anew as Christ's richly adorned bride. And this began, this very day, three hundred and thirty years ago, on October 31, 1517, when God awakened Dr. Martin Luther, preacher and professor at Wittenberg in Saxony, first to testify against the abominations of the papal indulgence — through whose service, at last, the whole hitherto hidden mystery of iniquity was uncovered, the Roman Pope revealed to all the world as the Antichrist, the pure Gospel and right worship given back to Christendom, and thus the Reformation of the Christian Church accomplished.

O blessed day, on which God began this great and glorious work! O blessed the Christians who live in such a time of the richest divine visitation of grace! O blessed we, who are members of the purified Church, and therefore have the Gospel pure, the holy sacraments unadulterated, and all the springs of saving knowledge, of comfort, and of freedom open to us! — What, then, shall we do today, on the anniversary of this great act of God? — Let us encourage one another in fellowship to recognize, with living faith, the blessings thereby received, and faithfully to preserve them — namely, to remain, without wavering, with our precious Evangelical Lutheran Church, even in this last, apostate age, until our death. Yes, an exhortation to this shall be the subject of my festival address in the present hour.

Text: Rev. 3:7–13.

The text just read, my beloved, is taken from the seven letters which Christ once sent through John to seven congregations in Asia Minor. It contains, namely, Christ's letter to the congregation at Philadelphia in Asia Minor. The chief content of the whole letter lies in the words: "Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown." What Christ here calls out to the Philadelphian church holds true for His Church in all places and at all times, including the Lutheran Church of our own day. Let me now, accordingly, answer the question:

Why should nothing move us to fall away from our Evangelical Lutheran Church?

I answer:

1. Because the Evangelical Lutheran Church is the true Church of Jesus Christ on earth, and

2. Because faithful perseverance in this Church brings unspeakable blessing, but falling away from it brings inescapable curse.

1.

At no time and in no land, my hearers, has open falling away from our Church been so common as in our time and in this our new fatherland. Thousands of Lutherans who emigrate here from our homeland either soon cast off all religion here and join the scoffers, or else all too soon let themselves be caught here in the snares of fanaticism and indifferentism, which are spread out everywhere over this glorious land of political and religious freedom. Thousands of inexperienced Lutherans, that is, are all too soon dazzled here by the fair Christian appearance of the sects, so that along with their fatherland they at once also change their religion, fall away from the faith of their pious forefathers, and faithlessly turn their backs on their mother church, which had spiritually borne them through baptism and to which they had sworn themselves with a solemn oath at their confirmation. What? Can that really be right? Will such Lutherans one day be able to answer for and justify before God this their inconstancy in the faith and this their apostasy from their sworn, ancestral religion and church? —

O truly not! — Were the Lutheran Church, to be sure, a false church, then indeed no oath sworn to her, however solemn, would be binding; then everyone would rather be bound, for the sake of his own salvation, to leave her. But in this you will surely all agree with me: if the Lutheran Church is the true Church of Jesus Christ on earth, then it must be a dreadful sin to fall away from her; as it says in that hymn:

He is godless and lost
who has sworn falsely before God!