# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 06 12_S161
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pure shall to eternity endure."

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 5.  St. Louis, Mo., June 12, 1849.  No. 21.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears every two weeks, once, at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to pay the same in advance and to bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 cents.
Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be addressed to the Editor; all others, however, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, moneys, etc., are to be sent hither under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(Contributed by Dr. Sihler.)

Satan against Christ in Germany.

There is a great war upon earth, which also ceases not until the end of the days, so that not even a truce, much less a conclusion of peace, is ever brought about; it is, namely, the war between the old serpent and the blessed seed of the woman, between the liar and murderer from the beginning and Him who is called Faithful and True, between the prince of this world and Him whose kingdom is not of this world; in sum, between Satan and Christ.

To be sure, the serpent's head has already been bruised, and the prince of this world has been cast out, because the Prince of Life gave Himself unto death for the slaves of the devil, paid the ransom to God, the creditor, with His holy and precious blood, and thereby at the same time showed to the jailer, that is, the devil, the handwriting that was torn up; because He, as the Lord of glory, rose again, led forth the captives, and set free the children of death. Yet the old serpent still stirs its tail until the going down of the sun; yet Satan, now as a roaring lion, now as a glistering serpent, by God's permission, sets all his might and cunning to the task of fighting against Christ.

This, however, is not done directly, but in this way, that he incites the children of wickedness, his seed, against the children of the kingdom, against the little flock of believing Christians, the one holy Christian Church, and seeks utterly to destroy her. And God has therefore permitted these assaults, in order that the strength of Satan in the wise and mighty of this world might be put to shame by Christ, when He makes Himself weak in the foolish and lowly of this world, and perhaps also lets His own be slaughtered like sheep for the slaughter.

But Satan seeks in manifold ways to corrupt the Church and to destroy the saints of the Most High. At one time by open attacks and brute force, as for example in the bloody persecutions of the first three centuries by the Romans and of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the papists; then also by false teachers, who privily bring in damnable sects and deny the Lord that bought them; and as the devil shows himself there as a murderer and desires to kill the bodies of the believers, so he shows himself here as a liar and seeks by false doctrine to kill the souls.

Besides these two modes of attack, however, in which he takes the field directly against the Church with force or cunning, he also goes to work here and there in a disguised manner, yea, even assumes here and there the form of an angel of light, as though he had nothing in mind but to make men happy; and yet here also his courage and purpose are directed at nothing else than to hinder the preservation and increase of the Church and to overcome Christ in His members.

To these disguised attacks there belong, undeniably, also the rebellious movements which for more than a year have shaken a part of Europe and especially our old fatherland; for behind its dazzling signboard of "Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality" the devil had nothing in mind but, first, by violent means, through the armed masses of the people, to overthrow the authority of the princes as "by the grace of God," and to set up, by the grace of the people, a government under which in a short time all Christian discipline, morals, and order would have fallen to the ground and carnal liberty and equality would have come in, so that the excellent liberty-men would have held wives, goods, etc., in common, and out of Germany would have been made a great den of robbers, a pit of murderers, and a house of harlots.

But since our dear Lord God, by good fortune, still sits in the government, although the "red republicans" have long since dethroned Him in their hearts and heads, He has for this time said to the fine fellows: "Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us." For the Lord of hosts has blessed the arms of the princes and has forced the rebellious peoples under them.

Now when Satan saw that his stroke of violence had not succeeded, to set up his "red republic" by fire and sword as quickly as possible, and therein to make some of the noblest sons of liberty grand dignitaries of his infernal Majesty, he resorted again to cunning and straightway sent forth some of his most zealous apostles, to fill as many souls as possible with the poison of blasphemous unbelief and miserably to murder them.

One of these apostles of the devil, for example, Wilhelm Marr, according to German papers, is traveling through a part of northern Germany and has found great applause and following, especially in Hamburg and Lübeck, among the working classes, chiefly in the hostelries of the journeymen. In his book, "Das junge Deutschland," there occur, among others, the following passages:

"I maintain that the belief in a personal Deity is the chief ground and the engendering pestilence of our present worm-eaten social system, and that so long as men cling with but the smallest fiber to the thought of a heaven, there is no hope of true happiness on earth." "Christianity" — he says in another place — "and the existing order of things which is built upon it, are the essential cancerous ulcers of human society. Man through himself is the religion of the coming age. God has need of men, but man has no need of a God."

Should not every man who has even a trace left of the fear of God and respect for God's Word, yea, who has even a spark left of that natural light which, for example, the apostle Paul ascribes to the heathen — should not every such man turn away with abhorrence and horror from such senseless blasphemies, which this satanic blasphemer's mouth spews for-