# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 11 16_S45
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

...to prosper and to hinder the spread of the kingdom of God. They say: you brethren of all confessions and denominations, let us unite; let us join hands as brothers for the common struggle against the world and against the Antichrist; let us give up all strife over individual points of doctrine, and at last make peace! Then blessing will come upon the whole of Christendom, which has now for long enough, to its great ruin, been torn and split into parties.

But how bitterly such friends of a false union — one not founded upon unity in the truth — are nevertheless mistaken! It does indeed seem as though great blessing would result once rigid Lutheranism is finally carried to its grave. But consider: if in the end there were no longer any church that, with unwavering earnestness and unbending strictness, punishes every deviation from the Word; if there were no longer any church that clings with incorruptible faithfulness and unshakable constancy to every letter of Holy Scripture; if human love were to triumph over divine truth, and earthly peace over God's Word and honor — woe then to the world! Then the enemy would soon have succeeded in leading the whole of Christendom from one error to another, plunging it back into the old night of false belief, and finally wresting from it the whole of Christ and the whole truth. O what an inexpressible blessing, therefore, are those who remain steadfast with the orthodox church and its pure truth, confess it aloud until their death, and fight for it fearlessly! To them is given, as our text says, "an open door, and no one can shut it." However futile, indeed however ruinous their struggle in the very midst of the temple of the church may appear — they are victorious! Their adversaries must at last, as the Lord promises the Philadelphian Christians, "come and worship before their feet, and know that he has loved them." They are the light of the world, which everywhere powerfully drives back the encroaching darkness of the doctrines of men; they are the salt of the earth, which preserves the indifferent, lukewarm Christians from complete spiritual putrefaction; they are the walls that still stand before the breach; they are the pillars that bear up and support the vault of heaven of the holy church. Here, to be sure, the champions of the purity of doctrine are despised and hated as loveless quarrelers and disturbers of the peace; disgrace and persecution are the reward they reap here; but one day the crown of the victors will adorn the faithful warriors. Christ gives them, in our text, this great promise: "He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go out no more. And I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the new Jerusalem, the city of my God, which comes down out of heaven from my God, and my own new name." O blessed prospect. —

Yet, my hearers, I still carry one more arrow in my quiver against your heart. For if the blessing which faithful perseverance in the true church surely brings, both in time and in eternity, to us and to our fellow-redeemed, could not entice us, then at least the curse that certainly and inevitably follows apostasy from it ought finally to deter us.

We may indeed hope, when a person does not know the glory of our church, when perhaps it has even been impressed upon him from youth that it is a false church — we may indeed hope, if such a one in his ignorance turns his back on it and yet in simplicity holds fast to the Word of his God, that such a one will surely not be cast out before the face of God, but will find grace and hear a merciful judgment from his mouth. But what are those to expect who either have been instructed in the truth from their youth, or who have already often heard the truth, and who deny this truth once they have recognized it, and against better knowledge forsake their orthodox church, thereby willfully breaking the solemn oath they swore to it? What are they to expect when they now turn — whether for the sake of earthly advantage, or out of hatred and contempt for their fellow believers, or out of indifference to the truth, or out of spiritual pride and presumption — to some enthusiast sect, or one that mingles religions, or an openly unbelieving sect? What are such apostates and perjurers to expect? — God's Word tells us; it says: "But if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him." Terrible threat! What can be more terrifying than for God to have no more pleasure in a person? Of such a person it is said: "If God is against him, who can be for him?" He is a reprobate forever and ever. It is further said in Psalm 68: "God brings out the prisoners at the right time, and lets the apostates remain in drought." And finally Christ himself says: "But whoever is ashamed of me and of my words among this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." Ah, what an unblessed prospect for apostate souls! Here they must remain "in drought," that is, without true comfort; the grace they suppose themselves to have is self-deception; and one day, when they appear before Christ, the Lord will turn his gracious countenance away from them, just as they here turned away from his gracious Word, and there they will be excluded from the triumphant church, just as here they themselves excluded themselves from the church militant. — Or do we perhaps not wish to believe these threats of God in his Word? Has God not already often, through terrible judgments upon those who denied the Lutheran truth and church, set a fearful seal upon his threats?

At the time of the Reformation there once came to Bautzen in Saxon Upper Lusatia a Roman priest named Urban Nicolai, who came to a knowledge of the truth of the Lutheran doctrine and thereupon also publicly confessed it. Not long after, however, this same man, longing again for the fleshpots of Egypt, fell away once more, and from a confessor became a blasphemer. Once, on Trinity Sunday in the year 1537, he mounted the pulpit, blasphemed as usual, and finally uttered the presumptuous words: "If Luther's doctrine were right, may the thunder strike him dead!" What happens? That very evening a terrible thunderstorm arose; lightning after lightning crossed the sky, and the thunder rolled like a thousand voices of divine wrath. The wretched man, thinking of his challenge to divine justice, quickly had all the bells rung, hurried into the church, and threw himself trembling and shaking before the altar, and prayed. But behold! A bolt of lightning struck down upon him as he knelt and threw him stunned to the ground. The peasants of the village (he was now in the village of Kuhnewalde) ran up and carried him out for dead; but a second bolt of lightning struck down and killed him now on the spot, whereupon the bearers of his corpse fled away in the utmost consternation, but unharmed. In that region this dreadful judgment of God made so deep an impression that whole multitudes now turned to the Lutheran church, and many blasphemers fell silent.*) — Known also is the terrible example of an episcopal councillor at Halle, that Dr. Krause. When he had denied, out of fear of men, the Lutheran truth he had recognized, he fell into despair, heard Christ pronounce the sentence of damnation upon him already in this life, and at last, in his despair,

*) We have taken the above story from Gerber's book "on the unrecognized benefits of Upper and Lower Lusatia," who has borrowed it from the "Annals of the City of Bautzen."

"We do not wish," the blessed Gerber adds here, "to judge or condemn this Peter Urban on account of this sudden and dreadful death; for since his conscience was moved and had punished him, so that he too ran into the church and prayed with great anguish, we may hope that he repented of his blasphemy, which he had uttered against the doctrine of the Gospel, and begged pardon of God for it, and so we will hope that his soul was preserved, even though his body had to perish. It is nevertheless a dreadful example, which at that time also made a great impression on the minds of many papists themselves; so that they no longer opposed the Gospel so violently, but rather let it take a fairly free course, so that one city after another opened its gates to the Gospel and sought evangelical teachers, abolished the Mass, the processions, and other papist ceremonies, and renounced all obedience to the pope."

We find this story also briefly told in Luther's works. Luther adds: "So it goes. God does not let himself be trifled with in this matter; he will hold to his Word, or he will not be God. Such examples ought to be well noted and considered, for they are both terrible and comforting: terrible to the godless despisers of God's Word, but comforting to those who fear God and hold the doctrine of the Gospel dear and precious. But the world heeds nothing, neither God's wrath nor his mercy." (L. W. Halle. XXII. 1447.)