Saturday, September 13, 2003

Christ himself has described the way to heaven as a narrow path. Just so narrow is the path of pure doctrine. For the pure doctrine is nothing else than the doctrine regarding the way to heaven. It is easy to lose your way when it is narrow, rarely traveled, and leads through a dense forest. Without intending to do so and without being aware of it, you may make a wrong turn to the right or left. It is equally easy to lose the narrow way of the pure doctrine, which likewise is traveled by few people and leads through a dense forest of erronous teachings. You may land either in the bog of fanaticism or in the abyss of rationalism. This is no jest. False doctrine is a poisin to the soul. An entire banqueting party drinking from cups containg an admixture of arsenic can drink physical death from its cups. So an entire audience can invite spiritual and eternal death by listening to a sermon that contains an admixture of the poison of false doctrine. A person can be deprived of his soul's salvation by a single false comfort or a single false reproof administered to him. This is all the more easy because we are naturally more accessible to the shining and dazzling light of human reason than to the divine truth. For, "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them."--! Corinthians 2:14

From what has been said you can gather how foolish it is, yea, what an awful delusion has taken hold upon us so many men's minds who ridicule the pure doctrine and say to us, "Ah, do not cease clamoring, Pure Doctrine! Pure Doctrine!This can only land you in dead orthodoxism. Pay more attention to pure life, and you will raise a growth of genuine Christianity." That is exactly like saying to a farmer, " Do not worry forever about good seed; worry about good fruits." Is not a farmer properly concerned about good fruit when he is solicious about getting good seed? Just so a concern about pure doctrine is a proper concern about genuine Christianity and a sincere Christian life. False doctrine is noxious seed, sown by the enemy to produce progeny of wickedness.The pure doctrine is the wheat-seed; from it spring the children of the Kingdom, who even in present life belong in the kingdom of Jesus Christ and in the life to come belong to the Kingdom of Glory. May God even now implant in your hearts a great fear, yea, a real abhorrence of false doctrine! May He graciously give you a holy desire for the pure, saving truth, revealed by God himself!--The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel by C.F.W. Walther, pp. 20-21

The Holy Order of the Daystar and Jees, Us First would do well to ponder the words of our first synodical president.

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