Strangers to Sisters - Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary Library: Essays

we do? Why stand aloof against a current and rush for that
great union which all the world is praising? These and
similar questions we must earnestly consider, until we, by
the power and light of God’s Word, arrive at such a firm
conviction, that we can, from the Scriptures, answer them
properly every time the old Adam puts them in our mind. 64
The faith which the founders of our old organization these
many years fearlessly professed, in speech and writing, and
manifested in their church order, is given us by God. It was
all prepared according to the Apostolic teaching of the
Guide, the Holy Ghost, and all through bears the stamp of
evangelical liberty, the truth and grace of God. We have a
Christian right to retain it and cannot yield to false
brethren, in order that the Gospel may continue with us.
(Galatians 2:5) Most of the sages, by whose hand God gave
it to us, have finished their course with honor, leaving their
shields untarnished, We may be proud of them. 65
Let us abide strictly in the Word until our dying day. 66
Similarly, President George Gullixson, in a 1923 address to the ELS concurs that
the attention to Scripture and what it says is the sole authority,
In this holding fast to the biblical truth lies our hope of
success in our work as congregations and as a church body.
Let us remember that just this position, on God's Word
alone, gave Luther success as the one great reformer of the
church. The 'little speck' he stood on was the Word of God.
For that reason he was also unassailable, invincible from all
the powers which sought to overthrow him. May God give
us wisdom and courage not to let ourselves be tempted by
the many accusations of “Pharisaism” and “selfimportance”
which are rampant. People are asking how
these few people can be right and the vast majority
wrong. 67
64 Bjug Harstad, “Opening Sermon on Genesis 12:1-4” Lutheran Synod Quarterly 42, nos. 2 & 3
(June/September 2002), 191.
65 Bjug Harstad, Opening Sermon, 192.
66 Bjug Harstad, Opening Sermon, 199.
67 George Gullixson, Presidential address given to the 5 th regular convention of the Norwegian Synod of the
American Evangelical Lutheran Church, June 15-21, Princeton, MN.
http://www.evangelicallutheransynod.org/publications/essays/presaddresses/1923. (Accessed July 19,
2008).
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