John Kuhn Bleimaier
During the 1930s the nazi government in Germany attempted to establish a German national church which would collaborate with the nazi party and facilitate its objectives. Many German Christians objected to the concept of the church being coopted by the state and by an ideological movement. The Lutheran pastors who resisted the creation of a German national church took for themselves the name, “Confessing Church.” Many of the leaders of the Confessing Church are now recognized as heroes of the resistance to national socialist tyranny. The Confessing Church is most particularly remembered for its opposition to the mistreatment of Jews and other ethnic minorities. The Confessing Church vehemently objected to the notion that ethnic Jews who accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior were nonetheless precluded from membership in German Christian congregations. Most importantly, a bulwark of the Confessing Church was the belief that the Christian Church is the universal Bride of Christ. Christianity is not a tribal religion. It is the revealed Truth for all humankind. This is as true today as it was in the last century.
Today, in the 21st Century, we recollect the Confessing Church in Germany and its leaders as heroic opponents of the alternative belief system which had been articulated by Adolf Hitler. However, we seldom discuss one of the fundamental doctrines of the Confessing Church which was consistent with Holy Scripture. That fundamental doctrine of the Confessing Church remains at odds with the mass media driven pseudo-Christianity, which is propagated by some theologians today. Contemporary heresy would have us believe that Jesus’ Teaching is but one of many nice belief systems which facilitate life in society. Sadly, in our agnostic age an enormous number of people tacitly accept Voltaire’s cynicism to the effect that if God does not exist it is needful that we invent Him. That is, they see God as a legal fiction, useful for the promulgation of a minimal societal morality. As to the alleged equality of all religions, I vividly remember the late President Jimmy Carter’s spurious assertion back in 1979 that all religions are “good.” Hopefully President Carter learned the error of his supposition when dealing with the Iranian theocracy and its top cleric, the Ayatollah Khomeini.
The notion that all religions are equal and desirable as instruments of societal organization, is utterly false. Believing Christians know that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Light. John 14:6. He is our exclusive means of attaining salvation. Other belief systems are demonstrably on the wrong path. Islam teaches violence and subjugation. Hinduism preaches segregation and social inequality between caste groups. Buddhism countenances social indolence and passivity. All these non-Christian faiths view women as effectively subhuman. Historic pagan religions require human sacrifice and other abhorrent behavior. These are generalizations possessed of fundamental accuracy. Only Christianity teaches us the Beatitudes and to love our neighbor and even our enemy. Matthew 5:44. Jesus admonished us to be monogamous, in contrast to the near universal polygamy before the Common Era. Mark 10:6-9. Christianity articulates the New Covenant which sets aright the seemingly imprecatory passages of the Old Testament. Jesus took on human form precisely to correct the fallacies inherent in the beliefs of the Pharisees. The New Covenant supersedes the Old. Matthew 5:43-44; Hebrews 8:4-13.
This is precisely the essence of the teaching of the Confessing Church. These doctrinally straight Christians did not deceive us with platitudes that all religions are spiritual equals before God. On the contrary, the Confessing Church correctly instructed that we must treat nonbelievers with kindness precisely so that they will recognize the need to repent and accept Jesus as their Savior. This plainly places all people on the same spiritual footing. We all need Jesus to attain salvation. No other religion has the key. There is no alternative Savior.
In the contemporary environment, there has developed a heresy in the halls of some theological seminaries and among some televangelists to the effect that today’s Jews, who do not accept Jesus as their Savior, are nevertheless coequals with Christians before God. It has been postulated that the sovereign state of Israel is the heir apparent of Abraham on the basis of the Old Covenant. We need to be reminded that the New Testament teaching is to the contrary. John the Baptist said that God is able to raise up children of Abraham from the very stones along the Jordan river. Matthew 3:9. Saint Paul explains that wild branches have been grafted onto the chosen tree of life. Romans 11:17. It is rock solid Gospel that the universal believing church, the Bride of Christ, is the sole embodiment of God’s chosen people in the Common Era, Anni Domini, since the coming of Christ. This was precisely the lesson taught by the German Confessing Church of 1933 to 1945. There is but one universal Christian church, the bride of Christ, the exponent of the Gospel of love. All Christians, but only Christians, whether Jew or Gentile, bond or free, male or female, are one in Christ. It is critically important for 21st Century believers to understand this.
The Confessing Church responded to the nazi puppet congregation’s declaration of nazi church doctrine as follows: “It pleased God to make Israel the bearer and instrument of divine revelation. That is not revoked because the Jews themselves have become unfaithful to their divine designation. The church, as the true Israel, is the inheritor of the promise that was given to the people of Israel (Galatians 4:28-29). The Christian faith stands in unbridgeable religious opposition to (Pharisaic) Judaism.But this (Pharisaic) Judaism is alive not only in the Jewish religion itself, but also, and just as virulently, in all attempts to form a nationalist (nazi) church. It is nothing other than the natural human attempt to make his religious and moral self-justification invulnerable by confusing it with a nationalist sense of mission and in so doing to deny Jesus as the Christ of God.” Response by the Leaders of the Confessing Church to the Godesberg Declaration.
Between 1933 and 1945 the German Confessing Church made her courageous stand against the rising tide of virulent nazism in Germany. The Confessing Church effectively asserted that the true Bride of Christ is the only universal path to human salvation. All alternative faith systems are lost in the wilderness. Only those who accept Jesus’ message in the New Testament as the inerrant Word of God are on the way to eternal life. Ours is an exclusive brotherhood and sisterhood. However, it is also the most inclusive institution for humankind, as it is open to all. There is neither Greek nor Jew, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female for all are one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28. Christ provides the Way, the Truth and the Light for all humans. There is no alternative. We Christians are all in this together. However, in the world at large it is inevitably “them” versus “us.” The nonbelievers would gladly subvert the Bride of Christ and try to convince us that all religions and belief systems are equal. That is a satanic falsehood, whether articulated by nazis, 21st Century Pharisees, Buddhists, Marxists or liberals.
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