Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1950, Page 6

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6 Proceedings of the Forty-First Convention,

Presidential Address
By the Rev. S. C. YLVISAKER, Pu. D.

Since President Schlueter has been incapacitated by seriou:
illness, the three Vice-Presidents of the Synodical Conference hav:
agreed to assume the responsibilities connected with this conven-
tion. With the co-operation of the delegates it will, we hope, be
Possible for us to avoid confusion; and we pray the Lord of the
Church that He will remember us in our need, bless our endeavors
and unite our hearts and minds and hands about His holy cause
and His blessed Word for the effectual working out of the holy task
which has been entrusted to our Synodical Conference. By agree-
ment of the Vice-Presidents it was left to me to write and deliver
the so-called presidential address.

For a summary of the work of the Conference during the past
biennium we shall have to refer you to the reports of the various
committees and their memorials as published in the Book of Me-
morials for this convention. We ask you to study these reports and
make yourselves quite familiar with their contents, for in the end
they represent the concern of us all, both as individual Christians
and as representatives of each of our synods. There will be prob-
lems for this convention to solve, needs to fill, work to be done,
plans to discuss, that may affect our mission through long years to
come. In all of this let faith, love, gratitude and Christian courage
prevail to the glory of our dear Savior Christ.

In the Book of Genesis, chapter 22, verse 1, we read: “God
did tempt Abraham.” We are reminded of the weary walk of
Abraham and that “son of the promise” in whom Abraham took
such delight, and we consider with distress the thoughts and
wonderings with which Abraham must have been overwhelmed as
he walked. Why does God do this? Has He perchance found so
much sin in me, in us, that He now is about to remove the very
son who, according to the promise, has been born to my old age
in whom all the world should be blessed? Does it not seem as if
the whole future of the Church is bound up in this boy, and is it
not rather a time when God should begin to make great the name
of Isaac that all might know that God has established salvation
among His people?. But instead God would remove this son by
a cruel knife— what then of the promise of God? And so God
tested and tried the faith of Abraham — but for good.

Our Synodical Conference has been singularly blessed. The
promises of God have been many, and they have been sure. Now
it would seem as if God would lead us to Moriah to test and try
the faith of His children as of old.

And with a certain feeling, at least, of uneasiness our gaze turns
to the brotherhood, to the conditions, confessionally and spiritually,
that exist among us, as we ask ourselves as in the sight of God:
Is this what God has built, what He has willed, what He has
planted? Is ours the doctrine God has taught? Ours the unity His
Spirit has willed? Do-we look to man-made aims or does the glory
and pleasure of God alone guide our every way? As Abraham had