# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 07 27_S190
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

190

water. So long, however, as we still lack the courage or the earnestness to do the Word of Christ ourselves and thus to experience His power directly in ourselves, so long the best counsel for the soul is to behold the power of the Word in other souls, that thus by degrees it may gain the earnestness and the courage to prove the healing power of the Word upon its own sickness. The sign of the heathen mission cannot indeed of itself, without more, work in thee the truly saving faith, but it can and shall invite thee, spur thee on, urge thee to take the last decisive step, namely, instead of the sign, to let the Word of the cross itself work directly upon thee. Then the Spirit Himself will testify that the Spirit is truth, and thou wilt be able to strike up: "I have now found the ground that holds my anchor evermore." And instead of missing or desiring other signs and wonders, or letting them be palmed off upon thee by the devil, God's old ape, thou wilt discover in thyself and round about thee daily more wonders and signs than thy poor heart can grasp and thy heavy tongue can worthily praise.

But the heathen mission bears witness not only to the Word which is carried among the heathen, that it is indeed a power of God to save all that believe, but secondly also to the bearer of this Word, namely to the people from which the mission proceeds. But quite another thing does the mission testify of the people that carries forth, than of the Word that is carried forth. God's Word and Son appear in the light and sign of the heathen mission in the splendor of transfiguration. But the missionary people has precisely in the mission which it conducts a warning sign that within its own territory the day of salvation is declining and evening is about to come, when, as is well known, from minute to minute the shadows grow longer and the light departs. In the illumination proceeding from the heathen mission Jesus appears to us like a hero of God, His head in sunbeams, His bearing foot, the missionary nations, in tempests, in the shadow of the breaking-in judgments of God. Well I know that the opinion, as though the awakening of a lively and blessed missionary activity were a favorable omen for the missionary nations, namely also for themselves the sign of the dawning of a new day, enjoys a fairly general approval. But before God's Word this opinion does not stand. Which, then, was the first missionary people? Evidently the Jews. As it is written: "Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined"—and again: "Salvation is of the Jews." And as it is written, so it has come to pass. Out of Zion went forth the beautiful splendor of God, but it went forth from Zion in a twofold sense, namely also in this sense, that Zion herself has lost it thereby. And the salvation came truly from the Jews, but in a twofold sense, namely also in this sense, that the Jews themselves lost it thereby. It is unmistakable that frequently in the Old Testament the promises already given there to the heathen are expressly at the same time also threats to the Jews. As it is written: "I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not; I said to a nation that was not called by my name, Behold me, behold me." And why so?—"I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts."—It is unmistakable that the word of John the Baptist: "God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham!"—is both, a promise to the heathen and a threat to the Jews. It is unmistakable that as often as the Lord Jesus Himself speaks of the calling of the heathen, He invariably connects with it the rejection of the Jews. He says: "Many shall come from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness." He says: "The kingdom of God shall be taken from you Jews and given to the heathen, who shall bring forth the fruits thereof." Still more clearly the Lord develops the law of the heathen mission in the parable of the great supper. According to this parable the invitation of the heathen proceeds expressly first from the wrath of God over the Jews originally invited. According to this law Paul and Barnabas in Antioch preach first to the Jews, and when the Jews thereupon blasphemed instead of believing, Paul and Barnabas said boldly and openly: "It was necessary that the Word of God should first have been spoken to you; but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles." From all these grounds and sayings St. Paul then also in the Epistle to the Romans concludes with surprising certainty that the riches of the Gentiles are the fall of Israel, that the blessed successes of the heathen mission are a token that with Israel's election and calling it is on the decline. I say with surprising certainty, for mere human wisdom would in this case have concluded otherwise. "Paul, thou art beside thyself," the wisdom of this world would have cried, "thou lookest and judgest too darkly and too heavily. Surely thou hast cause for a holy indignation over the old covenant people, but not cause for such hopelessness. Consider, Israel never had greater signs and times and men than these last thirty years. Nor are the successes hitherto at all so small that one might doubt the regeneration of the people as a whole. Think of the first three thousand on the day of Pentecost, think of the further five thousand, and how even many of the Pharisees and priests have become believers! Think of thyself! Was not the blindness and fury of thy people personally summed up in thee? And has it not also fallen from thine eyes like scales? Why then dost thou speak so definitely and confidently of a fall, of a long-enduring fall, when everything is still in the midst of fermentation, in the liveliest struggle of development, and entitled to the best hopes?"—Thus, about, would human wisdom have spoken and concluded. But Paul holds to the sign of the heathen mission given to him. He understands the sign-language of this work. He says: "The kingdom of God is given to the Gentiles."—"So it must be taken from the Jews," he concludes, "because Christ Himself has joined both together."

But as Paul, remarkably, does not regard the flourishing mission work of his time as a sign of the rising again of that people out of whose bosom the work went forth and by whose noblest sons it was planted, but as a sign of its fall, so we too might draw a false conclusion if we wished to infer from the mission work that has blossomed among us a new blossoming of the church in our fatherland.

It is not by chance that the new upswing of the mission enterprise dates precisely from 1795, thus comes from a time when Christianity in Europe resembled a decrepit old man, and shortly before in France Christianity, yea, with sufficient blasphemy the existence of the living God Himself, had been decreed away. This has happened that the word might again be fulfilled: "Seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles." It is not by chance that our Evangelical Lutheran Church precisely in the year 1836 roused herself to an independent heathen mission, at the very time when in a neighboring country they sought to destroy the independent existence of this Church by severe persecutions. It is not by chance that our age, in the main poor in faith, fleeing from the church, shy of Bible and cross, sold to the world and its lust, performs things which an earlier, spiritually richer age scarcely conceived, an age upon whose hymns and melodies, prayers, forms, symbols, catechisms and dogmatics we must live, as the Egyptians in the seven lean years lived and nourished themselves upon the seven fat ones. To say: Our fathers did not do their duty herein, is little, yea, as good as nothing said toward the explanation of this remarkable phenomenon. No! this phenomenon is explained essentially and sufficiently only by the law which Christ has once for all established, that the invitation to the great supper, according to God's predetermined counsel, passes to other guests only then when those formerly bidden do not come or no longer will come; that the vineyard is let out to other husbandmen only then when the original ones refuse the rent and cast the son and heir out of the vineyard. Therefore, as little as the appearing of the Son of God in the flesh, His mighty deeds, His powerful words, His resurrection, the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, and all the other great, great deeds of God in the apostolic age could prevent the fall of Israel which soon followed, just as little will the great deeds of God in our time, the life undeniably awakened at the most various points, be able to prevent that in place of the present bearers of Christianity, now grown hollow within, others shall be appointed. And that the Lord has such a thing in mind, that such a thing has been brought quite near to us, this the sign of the heathen mission is precisely to testify to us aloud. To be sure, it still remains possible that the danger for us of for-