General Council

“The attentive reader… will see that the matters here treated are not antiquated or obsolescent, but enter most deeply into the issues of the hour.” — Henry Eyster Jacobs Clear print, large format quality paperback available on Amazon by the Lutheran Librarian

“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.

“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.

“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.

“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.

“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.

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.

“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.

“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.

Towards the end of his life, C. F. W. Walther brought forth a teaching of election which many Missouri and other American Lutherans could not reconcile with the Scriptures or the Lutheran Confessions.

Rev. George Henry Gerberding. The subject of this sketch was born in Pittsburg, Pa., Aug. 21, 1847. His father, J. G. H. Gerberding, was born in Germany, but came to this country in his sixteenth year.

Rev. Prof. A. Spaeth, D.D. The land of Brentz and Jacob Andreae has been represented in our seminary from its very inception in the person of the eminent professor of Hebrew.

Solomon Erb Ochsenford, son of Jesse and Mary Ochsenford, was born in Douglass Township, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, on November 8, 1855. His earlier educational advantages were limited, owing to the straitened circumstances of his parents; hence the years of childhood and youth were spent in the country, near Falkner Swamp, one of the earliest German settlements in the state of Pennsylvania.

Rev. Samuel Laird, D.D. The Rev. Samuel Laird, D. D., was born on the 7th of February, 1835, in New Castle Co., Del. When about six years of age his parents removed to Philadelphia, where he continued to live until after entering the ministry.

Rev. Charles William Schaeffer, D.D., LL.D., the son of the Rev. Solomon Frederick Schaeffer, was born in Hagerstown, Md., May 5, 1813. His father was at the time the pastor of St.

About Rev. Beale M. Schmucker, D.D. Rev. Dr. Schmucker came of a ministerial family. Both his father and grandfather were clergymen, and the connections of the family with the Schaeffers, the Sprechers, the Geissenhainers and Sadtlers represented some of the best known ministerial names of our church in this country.

Rev. Charles Porterfield Krauth, Jr., D.D., LL.D. The ancestors of Dr. Charles Porterfield Krauth, on his father’s side, were of German descent. His grandfather, Charles J. Krauth, came to this country as a young man before the close of the last century, and became teacher and organist in the service of the German Reformed church.

Rev. William A. Passavant, Sr., D.D. Rev. William Alfred Passavant, D. D., was born at Zelienople, Butler Co., Pa., Oct. 9, 1821. He was graduated at Jefferson College, Pa., in 1840, and at the Lutheran Theological Seminary, Pittsburg, Pa.