# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 07 27_S191
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

191

passes by and it does not yet come to a collapse of the home church. For that is a wonderful God, who first lets Nineveh be preached to: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"—but afterward, when Nineveh repented, God repented of it and did it not. But surely it does nothing less than such a repentance of our people, somewhat similar to the repentance of the city of Nineveh, if God's Word and Sacrament are to remain pure and unadulterated to us and the collapse indicated to us by the rising bloom of the heathen mission is to be reversed. The less, however, our people in the main and on the whole give hope and prospect hitherto of such repentance, and so long as our nations in the main and on the whole thrust the bread of life from their table and trample it under foot, and cry ever and only of dullness and retrogression whenever God's Word demands room, seat and voice in our hearts and houses, in marriage and the training of children, in our customs, in our laws, the Word which has given birth to and borne all our true progress and bears it to this day: so much the less have we ground to despise the sign of the heathen mission and to say: It is peace, there is no danger. For both sayings must be fulfilled, the saying of Christ: "It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs," and the saying of the Canaanitish woman: "Yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table." Idle, unused, uneaten, God's Word simply cannot lie. If the surfeited former masters, who have come to lust after the fleshpots of Egypt, despise the plain bread of God and let it fall from their table, then the dogs come and eat. Therefore, whoever sees the mission ships push off from the home shores, let him rejoice in the Lord for the heathen's sake, but let him also be alarmed when he reads in spirit the inscription on the mission flag: "The kingdom of God shall be taken from you," when he reads the inscription: "Here sails the Word of God, which the European, the German, the Saxon Christians no longer want." And whoever can read and understand this inscription, and whose eyes overflow over it, let him hasten and save his soul, before the last mission ship weighs anchor and the last messengers shake the dust of the fatherland from their feet.

And who knows how near this time is, which we can stay by nothing but that for which we have the least inclination, namely by upright repentance! Who knows how near it is! For yet a third testimony the sign of the heathen mission is to bear to us, and yet another inscription is to be read on the mission flag, namely the end of the world. As the heathen mission gives testimony to the Word carried forth, and to the people that carries it forth, so also, thirdly, a sign and testimony to the world in general. To the Word it gives testimony of its divine power, to the missionary people of its fall, and to the world in general of its end. There is no need to set forth this third point at length. For Christ speaks plainly and clearly: "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come!" Yes indeed, then shall the end come. What would then remain on earth worth the speaking and the trouble of doing, when once the Gospel has been preached to every creature and out of all nations the eternal Church of God, the full number of God's elect children, has been gathered! All else that we otherwise love, cherish and pursue has its true, abiding worth after all only in this, that consciously or unconsciously, gladly or unwillingly it serves this last end, that God's house be filled. For this to come to pass the end of the world is waiting, and sooner it cannot come. But for anything else the end of the world waits not a minute, and the thoughts, plans, undertakings and inventions of men will all one day suddenly stand still and remain unfinished, yea, collapse like Babel's tower and everything that is built from below upward, when the last hammer-stroke has been struck on God's work and building; just as the walls of waves in the Red Sea stood only so long until the last hoof of Israel had passed through and reached the safe shore, but then fell together upon Pharaoh and all his pomp and all his plans. When the last elect soul shall have pressed through out of death into life, then heaven and earth also shall pass away and the door to God's kingdom will be shut. And there will be no more preaching and no more baptizing, but only on the one side of the known gulf the Te Deum of eternity will be struck up, and on the other, wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Therefore every mission station is a new tower on the battlements of Zion, and with every new tower a new bell sounds, and all the bells of all the mission towers ring solemnly and audibly through the old Christendom: "Midnight is the name of this hour!"—and again: "Her Friend cometh from heaven in glory, strong in grace, mighty in truth; her light waxeth bright, her star ariseth!" And that is the longing of all the pious from the beginning of the world. For as surely as we believe in one holy Christian Church, so surely, as long as human hearts beat, the sighing wherewith the Scripture closes has not ceased on earth! "Come, Lord Jesus!" To this longing and to this sighing the Lord answers by the sign of the mission. It is like a comet bearing the inscription: "Behold, I come quickly!"—and again: "It will not be long now, and we shall come home." And the greater the progress the mission makes, so much the more clearly there unfolds before the eyes of believers, in the midst of all misery and all anguish, the wonderful splendor of the great holy eve of the world, which goes before the Feast of the Lamb, and our mission festivals strike upon the ear sweetly like evening bells, that all who love Jesus' appearing may lift up their heads, for their redemption draweth nigh.

That is the sign-language of the heathen mission. Let no one despise or ignore it. And let us not overlook that in this sign-language and its right understanding the strongest incentive to missionary activity is also given us. If we labor together in this work, we help to set up a sign, a sign to the honor of the great God and Saviour, revealed in the flesh and crucified for us sinners—a sign which preaches to our home church the most speedy repentance, and a sign for whose completion the angels, as it were, are only waiting, in order to ring in the rest of the people of God. Therefore lift up the hands which hang down and the feeble knees, and make straight paths in this work with your feet, and let our watchword for the new mission year be the old thunder-word: "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently." Amen.

(Submitted.)

The Ship.

1.

Through the wild billows of the world
There sails the ship of the Church;
Borne onward by the breath of the Spirit,
Christ is within with His own:
They steer unswervingly the paths
Onward to blessed Paradise.
Their solace is the Lord's grace,
Their guiding star is His eternal Word.
But this enrages the old Dragon:
A roaring lion he goes about,
Fiercely he gapes his jaws wide,
And furiously stirs up the sea.
Soon it grows black with tempests,
The heaven has veiled its light,
The earth's foundations quake and tremble;
The lightnings flash, the storm-wind roars.
Like mountains the waves tower up,
The ship hangs heaven-high aloft:
The abyss threatens to dash it to pieces,
Now, it seems, it will not come forth again;
Since already the water-floods smite
With fury into the ship,
So that already the devils say in mockery:
Soon the Church will be no more.
The dear disciples see with terror
The certain destruction drawing nigh:
Then they hasten to wake the Lord,
And call upon Him with trembling:
"Help, Lord, O help, for we perish,
Save us, forsake us not!"
And the Almighty hears their pleading,
Rises full of grace and says:
"Be still, thou sea, and hold your peace, ye winds!"
And suddenly there is perfect calm:
The storm is still, the wind blows gently
The ship toward the blessed harbor.
The disciples give God the glory:
"Praise be to the Lord, whose strong hand
Overcame hell's fury, the rage of the seas
For the Church's salvation.
Lord, let us believe Thy words,
And stand fast upon this Rock:
So must the power of the gates of hell
Go to utter ruins upon us."

2.

So moves she on, the Lord's congregation;
So Christ, the strong Hero, protects her,
However fierce her foes,
Flesh, Satan, hell and the world.
Oft it seems she must succumb:
Already hell exults: "She is gone;"