# Der Lutheraner_Frankfurt am Main_Mai 1949_S51
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Number 5

May 1949

Page 51

From Church and World

The Falsified Augustana 1930

A Correction and a Statement of Fact

From Bavaria the editorial staff of our paper has been asked repeatedly to publish a correction concerning a remark in No. 2 of "Der Lutheraner" about the reading of articles of the Augsburg Confession at the jubilee celebration in Augsburg on June 25, 1930. We feel obliged to take a position on this in two respects: first — and this shall be done today — by addressing once more the event itself and its significance in the course of a development which consistently led to the Union of Eisenach in 1948, and second, by seeking to answer the question thereby raised, namely what right this development gives us for the gathering, now to be carried out also in Bavaria, of free-church Lutheran congregations.

Regarding the significance of that event, we have been written to at our request from a particular source, as follows:

"In Bavaria offense has been taken at the remark concerning the reading of articles of the Augsburg Confession with the omission of the condemnation formulas on the occasion of the four-hundredth anniversary celebration of the Augsburg Confession. We state here explicitly that it was the then supreme cleric of the Prussian Union, Vice-President of the Prussian Supreme Church Council, D. Burghart, who was guilty of this mutilation — amounting to a falsification — of the articles of the Augustana which he himself read aloud. This took place at the festal ceremony in the Barfüßerkirche in Augsburg on June 25, 1930, in the presence of the highest dignitaries, including those of the then Bavarian territorial church. Even though this was a celebration organized not by the Bavarian territorial church but by the then German Evangelical Church Federation, a celebration to which all manner of Protestant churches of Europe and America were invited, the Bavarian church government or one of its representatives ought tactfully to have rejected the mutilation of the Augustana and its transformation into a general Protestant confession. This did not happen — out of consideration, no doubt, for the Augsburg congregations — although the whole confessionally faithful Lutheranism of Germany was outraged at the incident. But if courage was truly lacking in Munich, then one ought at least to have spoken up at the German Kirchentag that immediately followed the Augustana celebration. For at this Kirchentag a "Declaration of the Kirchentag on the Church Question" was adopted — unanimously, amid cries of "bravo" — and without a single representative of the Bavarian church raising his voice, a declaration in which Burghart's concept of the church was generally endorsed. On the basis of the paper given by the Reformed presiding officer Wolff of Aachen on "The Right and Power of the German Reformation for Church Formation," a declaration on the question of the church, nearly two pages long, was adopted using Wolff's formulations, in which much was said of the German Evangelical churches which, by God's will, had emerged from the Reformation, but it was passed over entirely in silence that these churches hold different confessions. "The German Bible and catechism, the German hymn and hymnal, are the expression of a new church life," it says there. The Augustana, which had been jubilantly celebrated five days before, was forgotten. And as for the "German" catechism, everyone was free to think of the Lutheran one, or the Heidelberg one, or any other, as he pleased. At that time the venerable Wilhelm Zoellner, a champion of the dissolution of the Prussian Union, came to Berlin in utter despair and called his Lutheran friends together, reported on the celebrations in Augsburg and Nuremberg, and foretold the end that then began in 1933. For it was there in Augsburg that the concept of the church was coined which the Kirchentag in Nuremberg, amid cries of "bravo" even from the Bavarian representatives, adopted, which was then realized in the "German Evangelical Church" in Wittenberg under Ludwig Müller in 1933, even by the Lutheran territorial bishops, and was completed in the "Evangelical Church in Germany" in 1948. It is the concept of an evangelical church in which different confessions are united and in which the damnamus — with which false doctrine was condemned at the time of the Reformation — is practically abolished. "The Evangelical Church of Germany" — yes indeed, the EKiD was essentially finished already at that time. And the evangelical territorial churches had abandoned the highest office and the highest duty which the church of the Augsburg Confession has, namely to distinguish between pure and false doctrine, between church and heresy. No one will wish to claim that they have since regained this capacity. But that they nevertheless expect the free churches to renounce what is their task — namely, to watch over the purity of doctrine within their own sphere — is a fact which we take note of with deep sorrow. We, who bear the distress and loneliness of the free-church condition, as our fathers bore it, could imagine no finer day than that on which a real union of all who confess the Unaltered Augsburg Confession becomes possible. But that day could only come once the territorial churches, too, once again "judge doctrine" and are able to renounce those who dispute the truths of the Augustana. But as long as in the Lutheran territorial churches and in the so-called "United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany" — not to mention the EKiD at all — every false doctrine can be proclaimed without contradiction, we may not have church fellowship with them. This is forbidden to us by God's Word (Romans 16:17; Galatians 1:8; Ephesians 4:5; Titus 3:10; 1 John 4:1; 2 John 10)."

"Vain Hopes"

is the title under which the paper of our fellow believers in Australia, "The Australian Lutheran," in an issue that has reached us dated September 15, 1948, describes certain expectations attached to the great world church movements, especially also to the World Council meeting in Amsterdam. Its exhortations to sobriety are worth noting also for us. It writes:

"As vain hopes we must designate all those which are so assiduously spread by some, perhaps even by many, churchmen in connection with the World Council of Churches. A prominent preacher in Melbourne, for instance, recently put forward the hope that as a result of Amsterdam "the world church would suddenly step before an astonished world, in order to cleanse it of hatred, fear, bitterness, and passion." Two vain hopes are contained in this claim. The first is that a world church would yet come into being. The Word of God knows nothing of such a hope. On the contrary, it tells us that the church will remain divided until the end. Read 2 Thessalonians 3:2–12. There the Spirit of God speaks of the "man of sin," the "child of perdition," who will sit in the temple of God, that is, in the church, and whose evil work will continue until the Lord slays him with the spirit of his mouth and brings him to an end by the appearing of his coming, that is, by his glorious return on the Last Day. It is certainly not meant that all Christians will bow beneath the rule of the Antichrist. The other possibility would be that the man of sin and his deceitful work would cease — but that is precisely excluded by the clear statement of Scripture which we have cited. How, then, can there be a world church at all?

Even if it should be the intent of Amsterdam that a Protestant world church would come into being (how could this be a world church?), we must ask: What then would become of our Lord's solemn warnings against the many deceivers who arise in the last days, and who, if it were possible, would lead astray even the elect? His words state clearly enough that these enemies will arise within the church, and that they will not be permitted to deceive all believers. This, in turn, permits the conclusion that the church (in the sense of Christendom) will remain divided until the end of the world.

The other vain hope is that the world would yet be cleansed of hatred, fear, bitterness, and passion. To achieve this, one would first have to root out the sin of mankind. But that is a utopian dream. Our Savior tells his disciples that one of the signs of his return and of the approaching end of the world will be that "iniquity shall abound" and "the love of many shall wax cold." Matthew 24:12. Read also what the Spirit of God says of the last times, which he calls "perilous times" in 2 Timothy 3:1–5, not to mention other passages of Scripture at all. "Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom" — that is Christ's own description of the last days. We must therefore conclude: hatred, bitterness, and passion will not be removed from the earth.

Is it too much to say that these vain and therefore foolish hopes are themselves already a sign of the last times? Those who spread them contradict the word of truth and must be counted among those deceivers of whom our Lord speaks. When men can no longer endure sound doctrine, they procure for themselves "itching ears," which turn away from the truth and turn to fables. 2 Timothy 4:3–4. One of these fables is the vain hope connected with the World Council of Churches."

A False Christ

The newspapers of the West reported, in the period before Easter, on the appearance of a strange prophet in Sweden and elsewhere who, coming from America, caused a sensation through his appearance and his preaching. A host of journalists and cameramen and many people are said, for instance, to have gathered when Krishna Venta, as he calls himself, stepped off the airplane in Stockholm together with his wife, barefoot and clad in a long flowing garment of yellow silk, over which he wore a dark blue cloak. His appearance is described as tall and imposing in figure; he had uncut curly hair falling far down over his neck, and a flowing full beard. To reporters he declared: "My message is the most important there is: I wish to preach to all people the gospel of love, whereby I firmly reject the proclamation of any new religion. My teaching is the teaching of Christ; my many followers call me Messiah, and my works will one day show that I am the true Messiah." He evaded the question of his origin (he is said to have been born as Francis Pencoviz on March 20, 1901, in San Francisco) and declared: "I was never born into this world. It is true that there exists a man named Pencoviz, whom a father and mother brought into the world in 1901. But that is not me..." He stated that he had over 80,000 followers in Denver, U.S.A., and now wishes to reveal himself to the European world as well.

Inquiries made by a reporter of "Die Welt" with the criminal police in Stockholm, however, revealed a strikingly different picture. Their investigations in America have shown that the "Messiah" has already been convicted several times, for check fraud and even for burglary. For Christians, such police investigations are not needed. They know from Scripture that the appearance of false Christs is one of the signs of the approaching end of the world.

Christ himself said (Matthew 24:5): "For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many." And he warns: "Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not." Christ's return will not be the appearance of a wandering parlor preacher arriving by airplane, but "for as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." (v. 26–27)

Therefore, "take heed that no man deceive you" (v. 4)