Ministry: “Our Lord God fills His high office in an odd manner. He entrusts it to preachers, poor sinners, who tell and teach the message and yet live according to it only in weakness. Thus God’s power always goes forward amid extreme weakness.” [W-T 3, No. 3822]
Ministry: “No matter what gifts God gives to people, they rob Him of the honor… It is only in the area of the Word of God and religion that He wants to keep all the honor for Himself. Therefore He hangs the cross and ignominy, the world and the devil, about our necks, so that He may retain the honor and we may not become proud. Hence the man who wants to seek honor in theology and in the Word of God is just as sensible as he who would take a live coal out of a fiery stove. Let every theologian, nay, every Christian, conduct himself accordingly.” [W-T 1, No. 136]
Miracles: “God will perform no miracles so long as problems can be solved by means of other gifts He has bestowed on us.” [SL 10, 467]
Missions: “This
noble Word brings with it a great hunger and an insatiable thirst, so that we
could not be satisfied even though many thousands of people believe on it; but
we wish that no one should be without it.
This thirst ever strives for more and does not rest; it moves us to
speak, as David says: ‘I believed,
therefore have I spoken’ (Ps. 116:10).
And we hav e(says
Mohammedanism: “[Both
the Turk and the pope] agree in their opposition to Christ and in their desire
to have this doctrine [of justification by faith] abolished.” [SL 5, 153]
Psalm 2:9
Monasticism: “It is true, I was a pious monk, and so strictly did I observe the rules of my order that I may say: If ever a monk got to heaven through monasticism I, too, would have got there… If this life had lasted longer, I would have martyred myself to death with vigils, praying, reading, and other labor.” [SL 19, 1845]
Monasticism: “St.
Anthony wanted to know whose equal he would be in the kingdom of heaven. It was revealed to him that as yet he was not
the equal of a certain cobbler in
Money: “Nowadays
one sees a scrambling after riches from the lowliest station up to the highest,
even among those who wanted to be called Christians. It is a sin and shame to hear this. Nearly everybody falls into this shameful avarice. But such behavior may well be called a life
of swine. For the strongest hog at the
trough pushes the others away, as though it wanted to devour everything
alone. Just so things go on in the world
of today.” [SL 11, 1297f.] Luke 6:36-42
Moses: “Moses
is a very excellent preacher. But he
does not know how to comfort poor sinners; for in all his sermons you
hear: You must keep the Law or be
damned.” [SL 13a, 23] Matt. 11:2-10
Music: “Music
is a very fine art. The notes can make
the words come alive. It puts to flight
every spirit of sadness.” [SL 22, 1537,
No. 1] 1 Sam. 16:23
Nature, Human: “Both
the hardness and the shyness of the human heart cannot be expressed in
words. When there is no danger, the
human heart is so immeasurably hard and callous that it regards neither the
wrath of God nor His threatening… And
contrariwise, when it begins to be afraid, it becomes so dispirited that one
cannot restore it.” [SL 11, 774] John 20:19-31
New Testament: “John’s Gospel is the one, tender, true, chief Gospel, far, far to be preferred to the other three to be placed high above them.” [SL 14, 91]
Offense: “‘Not
many noble are called’ (1 Cor. 1:26). This is the question that offends all the
world to this day, learned and unlearned, saints and sinners… The people who
hold to this teaching are nothing but despised folk, worthless fellows, and
beggars. When do you see that great
lords, kings, princes, bishops consider it important?” [SL 8, 439f.]
John 14:22
Old Testament: “The Old Testament is the spring of the New, the New the light of the Old.” [W-T 5, NO. 5841]
Orthodoxy: “An orthodox person gives the glory to God and does not doubt that everything has been put down well and correctly in Scripture, even though he may not know how to prove everything.” [SL 11, 324]
Papacy: “What
is the whole papacy but a beautiful false front and a deceptively glittering
holiness under which the wretched devil lies in hiding? The devil always desires to imitate God in
this way. He cannot bear to observe God
speaking. If he cannot prevent it or
hinder God’s Word by force, he opposes it with a semblance of piety.” [SL 13b, 1632] Matt. 13:24-30
Papacy: “I
believe that our good God upheld many of our ancestors in the great darkness of
the papacy. For in this blindness and
darkness the custom nevertheless remained of holding a crucifix before the eyes
of the dying, and some laymen would say to him:
Look at Jesus, who died for you on the cross. Because of this exhortation many a dying
person turned to Christ again although he formerly had also relied on false
signs and had clung to idolatry.” [SL
13b, 2575] Matt. 24:15-28
Parents: “When father and mother can no longer exercise control, the hangman must take over and avenge. Governments are custodians of the Fourth Commandment as a cat is of mice.” [SL 22, 169, No. 63]
Peace: “How
many citizens or people do you suppose have ever once in their lifetime thought
that their protection and safety in the city are a gift of God?” [SL 5, 1306f.]
Psalm 147:3
Peace: “Therefore
he whom no one disturbs does not have peace; this is rather the peace of the
world. But he has peace whom everybody
and everything disturb and who yet endures all this quietly with joy. You say with
Persecution: “Whatever you must lose or lack for the sake of the Gospel is sacrificed and given directly to God Himself as if you were giving it to Him in heaven above, just as the three holy kings offered their gifts to Christ Himself personally in the manger.” [SL 10, 1949f.]
Persecution: “Therefore
for the sake of the faith and the Word of God, it is a very good, advantageous,
and wholesome thing to have enemies and persecutors. Incalculable consolation and benefits are
derived from them.” [SL 12, 305] Isaiah 60:1-6
Philosophers: “To
some people the statements [of philosophers of old] have seemed to pious that
they have almost made prophets of Socrates, Xenophon, and Plato. But because in these discussions philosophers
show that they do not know that God sent His Son Christ for the salvation of
sinners, these very beautiful discussions really show consummate ignorance of
god and are mere blasphemies.” [SL 1,
484f.] Genesis 6:5-6
Philosophy: “He who would philosophize in Aristotle without danger must of necessity first become a thorough fool in Christ.” [SL 18, 39]
Polemics: “We
accord our enemies all mercy and would not like to have a hair of one of them
hurt or one farthing taken from them…[It’s because we point out their error
that] they judge, condemn, and persecute us, and take honor, goods, life, and
limb from us, as if we were the worst rogues the world bears. We do not treat them in the same way, thank
God, but accord them all love and kindness and would like to help them if they
only want to be helped.” [SL 11,
129f.] Luke 6:36-42
Polemics: “When [my adversaries] are able to bring one saying of the fathers against me, they ring all their bells, beat all their drums, and shout aloud that they have won. They stop their ears, shut their eyes, and imagine that they have closed the and sealed all Scripture for me.” [SL 18, 1292]
Pope: “The Turk and the pope do not differ at all in the form of religion; they vary only in words and ceremonies. For the Turk observes his and Moses’ ceremonies; the pope, however, partly Christian ceremonies and partly such as were born of his own brain.” [SL 22, 845, No. 2]
Pope: “O
Christ, my Lord, look down, let the Day of Thy Judgment break and destroy the
devil’s nest at
Praise: “It is
impossible for a man not to become puffed up when his praise is sung. Paul, who had the Spirit of Christ, says (2
Cor. 12:7) that the ‘messenger of Satan’ was given him for the purpose of buffeting
him ‘lest [he] should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the
revelations.’ This is why Augustine
correctly says: When a servant of the
Word is praised, he is in danger; when a brother despises him and does not
praise him, the brother is in danger.”
[SL 9, 721] Gal. 5:25
Prayer: “But to pray, as the Second Commandment teaches, is to call on God in every need. This He requires of us. It is not a matter that is to be left to our choice; but we should and must pray if we want to be Christians…
Let this be the first and most necessary point to consider: All our prayers must be based and rest on obedience to God, irrespective of our person, whether we are sinners or saints, worthy or unworthy.” [SL 10, 102ff.]
Prayer: “Thus we must drive out the devil’s suggestion [of unworthiness] with God’s command [to pray]. Then he will stop; otherwise never.” [SL 10, 1340]