“I want you to understand that I have never preached opinions from this pulpit; it is not a question of opinion; I have absolutely no right to stand here and give you my opinion, for it is not worth any more than yours; we do not come to church to get opinions; I claim that I can back up every sermon I have preached, with the Word of God, and it is not my opinion nor yours, it is the eternal Word of God, and you will find it so on the Judgment day.
"A decade has fully passed since the outbreak of the eventful controversy which has divided the Lutherans of North America into two camps. Dr. Walther showed already in the years of 1864—70, a leaning to the Calvinistic doctrines… The controversy itself broke out first in the year 1872, when Lehre und Wehre, the organ of the Missourians, (p. 205) directed a sharp attack upon Philippi of Rostock, accusing him of Synergism on account of his treatment of the doctrine of conversion in his Dogmatics.
“One of the areas in which the Reformer has been repeatedly misrepresented has to do with the relationship of the Church with the Jewish people, frequent attempts being made to link him with modern anti-Semitism. Such attempts call for clarification by the Church of the Reformer’s actual position.
“[Luther] reflects his true heart attitude toward the Jews with this prayer: ‘O God, heavenly Father, turn and let thy wrath over them be brought to an end, for the sake of thy dear Son.
“The body without the spirit is dead, but it retains for a while the form; and while the form is there, hope may sometimes lie cherished that life will yet revisit it; but when even the form is gone, and the body fallen to ashes, unless God shall speak, hope is extinct forever.
“It is a sad thing to see the form robbed of the power; but there is one stage of misery below this.
“The life of so distinguished a servant of God as Melanchthon deserves to be better known to the general reader than it actually is. In the great Reformation of the sixteenth century, his work stands second to that of Luther alone. Yet his life is comparatively unknown to many intelligent Christians.
“In the preparation of this book, the author has made use of a number of biographies of Melanchthon by German authors…His aim has been to prepare a brief but sufficiently comprehensive life of Melanchthon, in such a form as would interest the people… That these pages may, in some measure at least, accomplish their purpose, and make the Christian reader more familiar with the work and merit of the man of God whom they endeavor to portray, is the sincere wish of the author.
“There are points in the Church’s history, years, months, days, in which all the evil that has ever assailed the Church, seems brought to a focus, and to overcome it, the Holy Ghost, who never deserts his charge, concentrates against it not only the sum of all the experience of the Church of the past, but also the endowments of new, fuller, richer unfoldings of the sense and power of God’s Word.
“Dr. Krauth was beyond all question the most learned and distinguished among all Lutheran theologians that use the English Language, and the great scholars of our church in other parts of the world have long ago ranked him among the chief scholars of the great church of theologians.” – Dr. G. F. Krotel
“He understood the faith, and he gave his best energies to its exposition, inculcation and defense against all assailants.
Justified and saved by grace alone, for Christ’s sake, through faith — that is the kernel of the whole Gospel. This is the fundamental article of the Christian faith and upholds the entire system of Christian doctrine as well as the church itself.
“Any doctrine that cannot be “rhymed” with the doctrine of justification, bears on its face the brand of apostasy from the one revealed truth and stands disclosed as a false interpretation of Scripture.
“On November 16, 1881, 12 pastors and teachers, 4 representatives of congregations, and 9 guests met at Blue Island, Illinois to discuss the new doctrine of predestination the Missouri Synod had begun to teach at that time. Besides this a number of letters from pastors and laymen were sent in, heartily favoring the purpose of the meeting. Most of these represented congregations (which) had left Missouri as a result of the issue.
“This article [justification by faith] is, as it were, the fortress and chief bulwark of the whole Christian doctrine and religion. If this article remains inviolate, the perversions of the other articles will cease of themselves.” – Chemnitz
Calvinism’s “doctrines of grace” make unconditional election the first cause of a person’s salvation. In contrast, the Book of Concord places “justification by faith” at the center of orthodox Christianity.
Towards the end of his life, C.