# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 01 21_S84
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

84

and he as a pilgrim passes through this world, as through a strange land, yet his Christian calling demands precisely that he be not indifferent to what goes on around him in the world, but with open eyes for the great events of his time go his way to the heavenly home. The Holy Scripture, as it has preserved for the Christian the whole past of the world with its course of development from the first day of its origin, has also opened to the Christian the whole future of the world, with the course of its doings to the last day of its existence. The Christian therefore has the sacred duty to observe attentively the state of things in this world and to compare it with the picture of the future which is already held before his eyes in the mirror of the divine Word; in a word, it behooves him to seek out the "signs of the of the times" and to judge them wisely according to God's Word.

Has there ever been a time which is rich in remarkable occurrences, by which even the dullest Christian eye can see that one lives in a time according to God's Word, this is the present one; and rich indeed in such occurrences as cry aloud to Christians, as with a voice of thunder, in their hearts: "The Lord is at hand!" For centuries the believers have been filled with ever more lively hope that the great and glorious day of the Lord is at the door; for centuries the longing of Christians, that the Lord would soon make an end, complete and eternal, of the ever more and more terribly increasing corruption and misery in the world, has, as never before, become ever more burning; for centuries the cry of all the children of God: "Yea, come, Lord Jesus!" has become ever more fervent and loud and mighty. Who among our readers should not have heard from this or that aged pious member of his family words like these: "If we do not live to see it, yet ye, our children, our grandchildren, will live to see that the last decisive, dreadful struggle of the kingdom of hell and the world against Christ and his own breaks out?"

Indeed it has still not yet come to pass, what our pious fathers already expected as nearest at hand; men still eat, drink, buy, sell, plant and build, so that it looks no otherwise than as if the world were only now beginning to live in earnest and to take its ease on earth. Indeed the scoffer therefore laughs at the Christian, who still hopes and waits for the speedy coming of the day of the general and perfect redemption, as at a fool; yea, even not a few among the Christians, since the bridegroom tarried, have become drowsy, have given room in their hearts to the thought: "Our Lord will not come for a long time yet," and have not provided themselves with a sufficient store of oil, in order, when the cry should soon be: "Behold, the bridegroom cometh," to go forth with adorned lamps to meet him. But how? do not such belong to the foolish virgins? Is it not horrible blindness to think of the Lord, for this reason, as being farther off with his promised return to judgment upon his enemies and to eternal glorious redemption of his own, because he has so long already been expected in vain by his own? Must he not be so much the nearer, the longer the time of waiting for him has already passed? And if all the believers already stretched out their arms to him with trembling joy when they saw the signs of their time, what shall we now do, when to these signs in our days ever more and ever plainer and clearer ones are added? One of the most important signs of the very last time is, according to Scripture, complete apostasy in the midst of Christendom, godless scoffing and denial of God, overthrow of all divine ordinances in the world and the rending of all sacred bonds. Let the dear reader compare only the following passages: 2 Pet. 3, 3—15. 1 Tim. 4, 1. 2 Tim. 3, 1—4. Jude 17—21. etc. But since perhaps many of our readers in their seclusion do not suspect how horribly these prophecies of the Holy Scripture are now being fulfilled, let us be permitted to communicate, in this and in the next number, some things from a correspondence which appears in the political paper "Der Zuschauer am Potomak," already announced and recommended through the "Lutheraner," published in Washington, District of Columbia, and edited by Mr. F. Schmidt. There it says, namely, among other things as follows:

"You will permit me, Mr. Editor, to communicate through the "Zuschauer" to my German fellow citizens what the views of these red Republicans really are, and then let them themselves decide whether the papers which represent the same are organs of the Germans in America.

At Geneva a manifesto of the German Democrats has appeared, in which it says: "The June battle is the birthday of the red, our Republic. The February struggle has world-historical significance only for this reason, that it made the June revolution possible . . . From now on it is a question of a war of annihilation of one's own or of the opposite party; only after the complete undermining and shattering of all present social conditions can we realize the principles of our party . . . Religion, which must be driven out of education, shall vanish from the mind of man . . . The Revolution annihilates religion altogether, in that it makes the hope of heaven superfluous through the freedom and welfare of all on earth. We therefore take notice of the religious struggles and endeavors, the formation of free congregations and the like, only insofar as by religious freedom is understood freedom from all religion. We do not want freedom of faith, but the necessity of unbelief. In this as in every other respect we seek to break completely with the whole past. We do not want to graft a new shoot on the rotten stock; we want in no respect reform, but everywhere revolution."

Heinzen, at present editor of a German newspaper in New York, is said to have written the above manifesto. He urges blood, a sea of blood, calls humanity a madness, and sees in "fulminating silver" one of the most powerful means for the welfare of mankind. Heinzen proposes to blow up whole cities with 100,000 people into the air by underground chambers of fulminating silver, and besides to put "a million barbarians" under the earth.

Neff says in his "Contributions to Peasant Politics:" "One must slay the dogs, pursue the enemies of noble humanity, by rising taxes on incomes and inheritances, up to 50 in the 100, cut down the larger fortunes, under a terrible oath mould bullets, and make for themselves little registers of those who must die for the prosperity of the social republic; burn the princely-flattering, doglike-humble prayer-books, and adopt the religion of bravery and of pride in freedom. The ancients sacrificed men to their idol-god, we must sacrifice men to the god of freedom. Only when the blood of a thousand human sacrifices has ascended to heaven will freedom and love return again upon earth."

The bookseller Hof, of Mannheim, cried at the funeral celebration of Blum in Zurich in 1849: "The great guiding thought of the Baden revolution has been: There is no God! God lies in man, to create a paradise on earth. Dortu, Heilig, Trützschler died with the conviction: We go into nothingness, but we have fought for freedom.— Blood! Vengeance! a greater stream of blood must flow from the heart of reaction than the stream of the Rhine."

Let it not be believed, however, that these are merely the views of individual men, and that the people in Germany reject them with abhorrence and disgust. Germany, the fatherland of the Reformation, has long since been estranged from the Christian faith in its higher ranks, and in the most recent time it appears more and more that the consequences of rationalism lead to downright gross atheism and now ferment in the mass of the people. How deep the religious decay is may be shown by a scene taken from life in a German hostel in Geneva: "It is Saturday before Easter. The night is spent in riotous revelry; it cannot be told even before men. In the morning, as they say, hostel divine service is held; a journeyman is made a preacher, the others gather as penitents, boastingly confess their dissolute life, and give their confession-penny. Brandy is bought with it. As now the celebration of the Holy Supper in the house of God, with the consecration of the sacrament by the simple, great words of institution of the Redeemer