# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 07 27_S188
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

188

unsearchable long-suffering and mercy, through the working of His Holy Spirit and Word, seems yet to receive grace unto repentance and conversion — this your former friend and leader will, even with this, to be sure, still very weak and meager knowledge of the absolute God of the Bible, appear against you at the day of judgment and condemn you.

For although he has not yet thoroughly recognized from God's Word the sin in Adam as the root of all corruption of the heart, of all darkening of the understanding and of all perversion of the will, and the grace in Christ as the fountain of all purification of the heart, of all enlightenment of the understanding and of all making good of the will, both in the large and whole in the history of the human race and in every single human soul, and up to now perhaps there is not yet in him the beginning of true repentance toward God and of true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ: yet two things are unanswerably clear from this his confession, first, that your supposedly newly discovered wisdom for happiness is nothing but folly unto eternal destruction, and that you also, without the mercy of the "absolute God of the Bible," are irretrievably lost.

So far, then, I have this time borne witness, from history as from the inmost of your own conscience, in summary, over and against you, concerning the divinity of the Holy Scriptures according to their origin, content and effect; and though you laugh and mock at it anew, as men who, blinded and led astray by the will-o'-the-wisp of Satan, hasten irresistibly to the infernal swamp: yet this testimony shall remain firm and certain truth as long as the Word of God abides, which shall judge you at the last day. —

A Remarkable Missions-Sermon.
Delivered by Superintendent Nagel of Triglaff near Greifenberg in Pomerania, at the anniversary festival of the Ev. Luth. Mission at Leipzig, on the 26th of August, 1851.

Come, Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy believers, and kindle in them the fire of Thy divine love. Thou who by the diversity of tongues hast gathered the nations of the whole world in unity of faith. Amen.

Matt. 16, 3. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; and can ye not discern the signs of the times?

Beloved in the Lord! Once the Pharisees and Sadducees came unto Jesus, tempting Him and desiring that He would show them a sign from heaven. But the Lord sighs deeply, rebukes them as a wicked and adulterous generation, and will give no sign. What shall we say to this? Shall then the Word of the Lord, shall the messengers of the Lord never and under no circumstances be accredited by accompanying signs? That cannot be the meaning of Jesus. Are not Moses and Aaron, Elijah and Elisha, Peter and Paul and other messengers of God, rather, accredited by signs and wonders, and the Lord Himself has not disdained to appeal to wonders for His mission, as He says: "The works that I do bear witness of me." — Or was this perhaps the wrong in these Pharisees, and the object of Jesus' sighing, that they demanded such signs? — Not that either, really. The Lord was not angry when Gideon asked: "Show me a sign." Rather He grants him the requested sign; yea, more than one. He is not angry when Hezekiah asks Isaiah: "What shall be the sign that the Lord will heal me?" — but He grants a sign for it. He is not angry when His own ask Him: "What shall be the sign of thy coming?" — but He names the signs. Yea, this also occurs, that the Lord directly commands to ask for signs. "Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God," He says to King Ahaz. He declares it and rebukes it as an insult to His majesty, when Ahaz does not ask the sign granted in advance. — How, then, is it to be understood, in view of these sayings, that the same Lord punishes the Pharisees who demand a sign of Him, and will give them no sign? These words show us this, that the Lord says beforehand: "When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; and can ye not discern the signs of the times?" — With these words the Lord does not so much charge it as sin against the Pharisees that they demand signs, but that they do not judge the signs of the time that are already at hand. "There are signs enough," He would say, "testimonies for the authority of my person and the truth of my doctrine. They are there, and not hidden. But now you act as if there were no signs, or as if those at hand were not sufficient. You desire more brilliant, more striking signs, and pretend that you would then believe, and yet have beforehand resolved that you will not believe. You hypocrites." — Thus the Lord reproves in these Pharisees, who demanded a sign, essentially the same thing that He had reproved in Ahaz, who would ask no sign, namely unbelief and hypocrisy.

This word of Jesus, however, which chastises the Pharisees and Sadducees, is profitable also to us for doctrine and for correction. For by it it is made sin to us also, if we are blind and cold, or at least indifferent and lukewarm toward the signs of our time, toward the signs through which the hidden God would become manifest to the present generation and newly legitimize His old Word. Especially is it made sin to us, if we, in order to excuse our unbelief, will not be content with the signs which the Lord has given to this time and this generation, and hypocritically desire others in their stead, which the Lord will not give. This hypocrisy will at the last day be forced to the confession: We have not believed because we could not believe, but because we would not believe!

On the ground, now, of our text, which makes it sin for us to despise the signs of the time that are at hand, and on the other hand makes it our duty to form a judgment upon them and thereby either to strengthen our faith or to break our unbelief, — on this ground and on the occasion of today's missions festival, let me, under the gracious assistance of God, set before you the Heathen Mission as such a sign of the times, by which faith shall be strengthened and unbelief broken. And indeed, first, in general, the nature of the missionary work as a sign shall be demonstrated, and thereafter, in particular, the language of signs of this work shall be interpreted.

1.

To the heathen mission of our days the nature and significance of a sign cannot be denied. For first it is evident that God's Word ascribes the nature of a sign to the heathen mission generally, to the conversion of the heathen to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That is to be a sign for the blessed Seed of Abraham, that all nations shall be blessed through Him. That is to be a sign for the Hero of the tribe of Judah, that the nations shall cleave unto Him. Among the signs of the time which Jesus names to the disciples of John, the last and evidently most important is this: to the poor the Gospel is preached. Among the signs which Jesus names to His disciples as forerunners of His coming, this also stands: This Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations. So also the other cannot be denied, that the heathen mission, precisely in the last 50 years, by God's grace has grown in such a manner and become manifest before the world, that we may with good conscience hold it up to everyone as a high-flying banner, as a sign. This work has not been brought about or promoted by cabinet orders, not by resolutions of chambers, not by opinions of estates. None of the current systems of philosophy has taken it under its wings or into its care. None of the fine arts has hitherto glorified it. Yea! it existed long in blessing before the regular church government here and there timidly acknowledged it. The purses of the rich have not preferably opened themselves to this work. It has not been carried on as a gainful commercial speculation. It has also not been degraded into a churchly traffic in indulgences, as if for the missionary contributions forgiveness of sins, life and salvation had been promised. The whole work rests, next to the grace of God, upon the free, good will of the people who live by faith: "Christ's blood and righteousness, that is my adorning and my glorious dress." And to this faith, which must let itself be called by the world a thing that makes men slothful to good works, the Lord has granted it to succeed, in fifty years, in a wretched time which, as hardly any time before, turns itself on principle away from eternity and its interests, to bring about a work for which in the Protestant church communions alone some six million thalers are contributed annually and ex-