Collection › LCMS Convention Proceedings (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1941 · 38th Convention, Fort Wayne › Page 433
LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1941, Page 433

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

Two Radio Addresses: 433

i ces of Canada, and from Central and South America. This
‘by the way, is a fortress of confessional Lutheranism, where
St. Paul’s, the mother church of all Lutheran churches in
ayne, was organized in a meeting held in the County Court
From these humble beginnings the Missouri Synod has
tiplied in numbers and influence, until today they’re one of
tanking denominations of America.
is morning I walked into the flag-bedecked Convention
Where I saw the President of the Synod,.Dr. J. W. Behnken,
nelding the gavel of his high office. Dr. Behnken, a 57-year-old
six-footer, who came out of the pastorate in Houston six
_ago to head the Missouri Synod, has just been reelected
dent for another three years.
In his opening address to the Convention, President J. W.
ehnken observed that for the second time within the short
pace of twenty-five years the Missouri Synod is meeting at a
‘eriod when practically the whole world is in the throes of a
tructive war. Dr.Behnken rebuked those who keep asking
yhy.a merciful God permits ruthless wars of cruelty and of human
uffering. The speaker saw in the world crisis the awful work
f’ men’s hands, of national sins, of vice, immorality, murder,
obbery, greed, and graft. “A world as wicked as Sodom and
Gomorrah, as guilty as Nineveh,” said Dr. Behnken, “deserving
thing at God’s hands but His righteous wrath and punishment,
rants to accuse God of unfairness.” “Rather than blaming God,”
the speaker said, “men and nations should repent of their sins in
“sackcloth and ashes.” That’s what the Missouri Synod thinks
about this war business and the starvation and misery and empty
chairs and the wanton destruction of life and of property and the
blasting of men’s hopes and dreams for a better world. The fault
isn’t with God. The fault is with men who oppose the righteous-
ness of God with their own petty schemes and their pride of
opinion and their power politics. That’s sound religion, and we’re
glad the Missouri Synod is placing the responsibility for the
crime of war precisely where that responsibility belongs — not
with God but with men who hold the truths of God in contempt
and who substitute for the love and reconciliation of God the fury
and madness of mortals.

All through this Convention these Lutherans have manifested
an awareness of the catastrophic events of a world in conflict.
But they’re not afraid, not the least bit afraid. To them the world
is still God’s world, and they’re resolved, come what may, to
render unto Caesar the things that are Ceasar’s and unto God the
things that are God’s.. In a world of deceit and of cruelty, of
fabrication and of human error, the Missouri Synod is resolved
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