# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 05 13_S147
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

147

of a certain heathen philosopher, Apollonius of Tyana, falsely pretends that he had done just as great, if not even greater, miracles than Christ, and that he also finally vanished and likewise swung himself up alive into heaven *). As little as those named, so little does the last among the heathen opponents of Christianity in its first age, Hierocles, venture to deny Christ's miracles, but he ascribes them only, in order to take from Christians the weapon lying in them, ridiculously to the aid of heathen gods **)! And if we now ask finally: How did those enemies behave, in whose interest it must above all have lain to charge the witnesses of Christ's resurrection with falsehood, the members of the High Council at Jerusalem, who had condemned Christ to death as a blasphemer and rebel? Why, when the apostles proclaimed Christ's return to life, did they not at once order a judicial investigation of the matter, convict the apostles of deceit, and nail them also to the cross? Behold the evil conscience of the wretched men: they only forbid the apostles henceforth to say anything to any man in this name, and dismiss them, and so against their will bear witness to the truth. — Finally, as already follows from what has been said, the holy apostles and evangelists were also in such a position that, even if they had not wished to tell the truth, they would yet have had to tell it. They did not first proclaim Christ's resurrection in foreign lands, where one could not refute them; they preached it publicly in Palestine, in the capital, there, where only a few days before the scene of what they related had been, and before the rulers of the country, whom they thereby declared to be the murderers of their own Messiah, orally and in writing, and appealed thereby to the testimony of many hundreds who had seen and heard the same.

*) If Philostratus thought it necessary, for the refutation of Christianity, to let his hero also ascend alive to heaven, this enemy has thereby, without wishing it, given mighty testimony that the resurrection and ascension can indeed not be disputed away.

**) This Hierocles writes among other things: "We hold that he who performs such deeds was no God, but a man who was beloved of the gods; these people (the Christians) proclaim him (JESUS) as a God, because he did some slight miracles". In another place the same writes: "They worship JESUS, because he made some blind to see, and did some other such miracles". — Julian the Apostate speaks similarly, who would gladly have denied Christ's miracles, if it had only been possible in his time. This bitterest enemy of Christ writes of Christ: "He did, during the whole time that he was upon earth, no remarkable deed, unless one would regard it as a great miracle that he healed lame and blind, and in the village of Bethsaida and Bethany freed some who were possessed by evil spirits".

But, my dear hearers, although accordingly Christ's resurrection, as a historical fact, has more human testimony in its favor than any event which is otherwise related to us in writings, yet there comes thereto still another, incomparably more important, a divine testimony. For where Christ, the Crucified and Risen One, is preached, there this preaching penetrates with divine power into the hearts of the hearers; even the determined enemy of Christ feels himself seized there by a wonderful power, which would constrain him to believe in it, and which he can resist only by force; and the hearers who do not wilfully resist receive at this preaching into their spirit the testimony of the Holy Ghost, which makes them so certain of Christ's death and resurrection that they could sooner let the heart be torn out of their body than their certainty of this fact out of their spirit. Hence millions, who yet have not seen the Risen One with their bodily eye, have joyfully shed their blood for this, that He is risen. Behold, that is an irrefutable testimony that Christ is no more dead, that He is risen, that He lives, that He is with His Word, that with His Word and His Sacraments He sends the Holy Ghost, that He Himself gathers, governs, extends, protects and preserves His Church. What would you say to him who, under a cloudless sky, would deny that the sun had risen? What would you say to him who would deny that there had been a man so bold as first to sail across the ocean, and who discovered America? Would you not say to the first: Fool, do you not see that it has become day? and you will deny that the sun has risen, because you do not see its disk? and to the other: Fool, do you not yourself dwell in this new part of the world? and you will deny that this western land was once discovered? So we can now say to all who deny Christ's resurrection: Thou fool, thou seest how Christ for eighteen hundred years has proved Himself living and mighty in millions of hearts, and how the rays of His sun of grace shine everywhere, and thou admirest the immeasurable cathedral of His Church, which He has built and through all the storms of time has almighty preserved: and canst thou doubt that He lives? doubt that this sun, though once set blood-red, has risen again? doubt that He lives who built the great temple of the Church named after Him and inhabited by whole nations, which stands before thee?

O, my brethren, behold, how confidently we can today confront those who are so unhappy as not to recognize the truth of the resurrection of their Savior, and so wanton as to deny it unexamined! How powerless appears all their striving against Christ and His truth! — like the powerless beating of the waves of the restless sea against a heaven-high rock of diamond. Let us therefore now strengthen our faith still further by considering what a firm and good ground we have in the resurrection of our Lord for a joyful confession of our faith.

Text:
the Gospel for Easter Day.

Setting aside the closer circumstances of the resurrection of the Lord, which are here related to us, let us today direct our eye upon this fact itself alone; the theme of our festival meditation shall namely be:

The resurrection of JESUS Christ, the Christians' good ground for a joyful confession of their faith;

and indeed

1. for the confession that JESUS is God's Son, and

2. for the confession that they are in grace with God.

1.

Christ Himself has said of Himself, my dear friends, that He is the Son of God, and indeed the only-begotten Son of God, and that He does not, like other men, come from the earth, but has come down from heaven. Christ has expressly said: "Before Abraham was, I am. I and my Father are one. He that seeth me seeth the Father. I am in the Father, and the Father in me. What things soever the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father." For this confession JESUS also died. For when the High Priest in the last hearing said to Him: "I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us: Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" JESUS answered then without qualification: "Thou sayest it. I am. Nevertheless I say also: Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven."

What Christ here has confessed of Himself, all His Christians also confess of Him *). The Christians confess, namely, that the JESUS who was born of Mary 1851 years ago at Bethlehem in the land of Judea, and 33 years afterward, as a malefactor, on Golgotha near

*) One reads now not seldom in the writings of the enemies of the Christian religion the assertion that originally Christ was held by Christians to be only a great prophet, and was first made God in the fourth century by the Council at Nicaea, and the doctrine of the Holy Trinity first established there. This is refuted not only by Holy Scripture and by the writings of the first Christian writers, but even by the testimony of heathens from the first century. Among others we still have a letter of Pliny the younger, which is addressed to the Emperor Trajan and in which it is said, for example, of the Christians whom Pliny had summoned before the court and questioned: "They confessed that this had been the sum of either their crime or their error, that they had been accustomed to assemble on a certain day before sunrise, and to sing hymns to Christ as their God." (Epp. X, 97.) Somewhat later the scoffer Lucian writes of the Christians: "They deny the Greek gods, but that crucified sophist of theirs they worship, and live according to his laws.