Witnessing - One Person at a Time

Newsletter article for February 1997

© 1997 by Rev. Paul A. Wolff

The new year is already one month old. I wonder how many resolutions have been kept. I don’t make New Year resolutions myself. It’s not that I’m perfect and don’t need some self improvement (far from it), but I recognize the futility of the exercise.

Nevertheless, I do have some goals for the year. It is my wish that this congregation would grow in their Christian faith through worship and Bible study. It is also my goal that the members of this congregation will also grow in their willingness and ability to witness their faith in Jesus Christ.

I learned a good lesson about witnessing during my time at Concordia Seminary. It is true that I took Evangelism and Missions classes, but the event which I am describing occurred after classes. I was the editor of the campus newspaper, and it was my job to report on what was happening on the campus. The Seminary campus can sometimes be a busy place, and October 10, 1993 was just such a night. There were baseball playoffs on TV, a piano recital in the auditorium, and a lecture on missions to Muslims in a conference room.

I wanted to get someone to report on the lecture because I thought it would be an interesting and useful topic for future pastors. However, everyone was busy that evening, and no one who I asked was willing to report on this lecture, but because the editor wanted the story, the task fell to him to do himself. I didn’t want to do it because I had already assigned myself two other articles for the following issue, and because I wanted to do other homework that evening.

There were only five people at the lecture. The lecturer was Dr. Luther Meinzen, a retired missionary to India. Also in attendance was Dr. Meinzen’s father (who at the time was 95 years old, and still had an iron grip when he shook my hand). Professor Harley Kopitske and his wife were also there, along with one seminary student (me).

Dr. Meinzen’s presentation wouldn’t have taken place if the student hadn’t been there. The Kopitske’s didn’t need to know about foreign missions because they spent many years as missionaries in New Guinea. Rev. Meinzen (the elder) didn’t need to hear the lecture because he began his mission work in 1920 in India and was a missionary there for 37 years (his son followed in his footsteps). But because one student showed up, Dr. Meinzen (the younger) was glad to spend an hour talking about missions to Muslims.

In witnessing to Muslims, it is important to emphasize the caring aspect of your Christian faith. Take the time to get to know the people you are dealing with so that you can be an effective witness. Muslim people are just as diverse as Christian people, so it pays to find out where they are coming from. It is somewhat ironic that those who are less indoctrinated in Islamic theology are usually the most rigid and uncompromising. Those who are more educated are often more open minded and willing to listen to what you have to say. It is also important for you to be willing to listen to what they have to say.

Dr. Meinzen suggested that argumentation is not the way to witness the Christian faith. You should show an openness to find out what they believe in. It is important to remember that in general, Muslims are very righteous people. Since there is no separation between Church and State in Islam, the Islamic rules of conduct are strictly enforced in many countries. Dr. Meinzen said, “People compare the best in Christianity with the worst in Islam, but that’s not the approach of Christ. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you’ is the law of love.” Christ didn’t stereotype people, or prejudge them, but he talked with all kinds of people, ate dinner at their houses, and took care of their needs through healings and the like.

“There’s a Tamil proverb,” says Dr. Meinzen: “You can’t dry the tears of your baby without getting your hands wet.” That is also how good witnessing works, where you get so close to a person that you get your own hands wet when the person is sorrowful. Isn’t that what Jesus did? He got so close to us that he became one of us when he was born of Mary in Bethlehem. Jesus ate with sinners, and tax collectors, and he died on a cross to take away our tears forever.

At the lecture, Dr. Meinzen gave an example of this hospitable kind of witnessing. A few years ago the campus pastor of Kent State University invited a Muslim doctor to speak to his Bible class about Islam. The pastor instructed the class to be polite and to listen to what he had to say, and not argue or put him down for his beliefs. A short time later the doctor invited the pastor to the Islamic Student association on campus to tell them about Christianity. This was an unexpected, but welcome opportunity to share the Gospel with Muslim people from several nations.

That is how missions work, and in some ways witnessing your faith is like Dr. Meinzen’s presentation, best when done on a one to one basis. You may be reluctant at first, but it can be very rewarding.

The Perfect Christmas

Newsletter article for December 1996

© 1996 by Rev. Paul A. Wolff

The closer we get to Christmas the more pressure we feel to make preparations for “the Perfect Christmas.” Christmas is a special event, and we want to do whatever we can to make everything just right. We want to give the perfect gift to our loved ones. We want to prepare the perfect Christmas dinner for our family. We want the perfect decorations that will set the perfect mood to express our love and joy in the Christmas season.

It is ironic that in the quest for perfection many people put themselves under enormous stress. As a result of this stress, our relationships with our loved ones is also stressed, sometimes to a breaking point. For many people, what ought to be a joyful time to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus, and to share the tokens of our love with one another, instead becomes a dreaded time of harsh words, unfair accusations, and a lack of love and forgiveness.

Popular psychologists use the term “dysfunctional” to describe when family relationships move beyond the breaking point. Some people think that a “functional” family is one that never argues, but that is not true. There will be arguments in every family. Sometimes the family that has the occasional argument (and can settle it without fights and hard feelings) is better off than the family who never has an argument, but is always looking to “get even.” The key to dealing with arguments and stress in a non-destructive way is forgiveness.

Christmas is a stressful time of the year. Either there are so many things going on that it can be hard to keep on top of things, or else we may feel isolated and alone, like the world is passing us by. Either way we can be distracted from the true joy of Christmas, which is that God loved us so much that He sent His only Son, Jesus, to be our savior.

If ever there was a perfect Christmas, then the first Christmas was NOT it. Mary and Joseph were forced to leave their home in Nazareth and travel at least 70 miles on foot to Bethlehem, even though Mary was nine months pregnant. When they got there the little town was so crowded that there was no place for them to stay, except a stable for animals. By nearly any measure, the circumstances of the birth of Jesus were not perfect. Yet, this is how God chose to bring our savior into the world. During His life on earth, Jesus did not enjoy the honor and glory befitting God, even though He is God. Instead, Jesus lived as one of us. Jesus went through the same types of troubles that we face in our lives, and at times He suffered worse indignities than many of us may ever face. Jesus did this because He loves us, and wants us to trust in Him for forgiveness and eternal salvation.

I am not writing this to make you feel guilty that on top of everything else you need to do more for Jesus. That’s not what Christmas is all about. We give gifts to one another because God gave us the gift of a Savior Jesus Christ. Jesus gave up his own life so that our sins could be forgiven and we could have eternal life. We forgive one another when they do us wrong because Jesus has forgiven a multitude of sins from each one of us.

This Christmas, whenever the stress and confusion start to wear you down, or when people get on your nerves, or even when things are going “perfectly,” remember that Jesus loves you, and He has forgiven you of all your sins. Jesus never promised that this life would be perfect, but He has promised that He will always love us, and will never abandon us. To Jesus Christ be all praise, honor, and glory, now and forever.

Selected to Escape Tribulation

Newsletter Article for November 1996

© 1996 by Rev. Paul A. Wolff

As we approach the end of the Church Year the themes of the Sunday Morning Bible readings begin to focus on the end times, death, judgment, and heaven. This reminds me of a piece of junk mail I received while I was on vicarage. Through a window in the front of the envelope, printed in red, were the words “Escape Tribulation,” and beneath that was printed on the envelope (also in red) “Notification of Selection.” Well, I’m not the sort of person who gets a kick out of tribulation, and I did feel a little honored to be selected to escape it, so I opened the letter.

You can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that the letter was only an offer to subscribe to a magazine. The enclosed letter described the content of the magazine. Apparently the magazine attempts to take Biblical prophesies and apply them directly to present history. This is like taking an oversized square peg and trying to force it through an undersized round hole—even if you get it through you lose something valuable in the process.

This publication seems to claim to be a Christian publication. And they claim that their conclusions are based solely on the Bible, but something doesn’t ring true. Their attempt to make Biblical prophesies correlate to our present history only takes away from the true object of the Biblical prophesies, which is Jesus Christ. Also from the tone of the letter it seems that the underlying message of this magazine is to encourage fear and anxiety over current events. They want us to believe that we are headed toward destruction or tribulation. This is also anti-Christian because it denies that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Rom. 8:28)

I don’t know what sort of a gospel they are preaching, but from their advertisement, it seems to be a “different gospel” than the one preached in the Bible. This “different gospel” is really no gospel at all (See Galatians 1:6-10). The Bible was written to show us that Jesus is our savior from sin, so that we know what God has done to save us. The Bible gives us hope and confidence in our salvation, it doesn’t lead us to fear and despair.

I have seen these sort of ideas before. I was working as a pizza delivery man back when the Persian Gulf War was going on. On the evening when the bombers began bombing Baghdad one of my co-workers got very excited, like this was the end of the world. He was particularly worried and remained glued to a radio, listening for news. He was pretty much useless for the job at hand, partly because he was enlisted in the reserves, and partly because he thought this was the end. I must admit that I benefited from this because I took nearly all the deliveries that night and made a ton of money. (I honestly tried to reassure my friend that this wasn’t the end of the world, but he didn’t want to listen to me.)

My friend had been told that because ancient Babylon is located in what is now Iraq that they would destroy Israel and the world would shortly come to an end. Of course, nothing like that happened. We defeated Iraq in such a lopsided victory, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Biblical times. To me the defeat of Iraq is closer to a metaphor for Christ’s victory over sin and evil, than any sign that evil is somehow going to be victorious.

The moral of this story is that there are still people who will pervert God’s word to try and make it say what they want it to say, and not what God intends. God doesn’t want us to be fearful about what the future holds, because the future is in His hands. If God wanted to make us fearful He would not have given us the Holy Scriptures, He would not have told us that He loves us, and He would not have sent Jesus to save us. It is the task of every Christian to keep the Second Commandment and uphold the truth of God’s word, and his name. The best way for us to do that is to study the Bible regularly so that we know what the truth is, and we won’t fall for lies.

No one knows when Jesus will return, and when it happens it will be “like the lightning which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other” (Luke 17:24), and it will happen “in the twinkling of an eye.” (1 Corinthians 15:52) Jesus made it a point not to tell us when, so that we will always be prepared. I don’t know what my friends were so worried about. When Jesus really returns we won’t mistake it for anything else, or he will wake us up with trumpets. In the meantime, there is work to be done. We should tell everyone about what Jesus has done for us so that when He returns His coming will be a joyful event for them, just as it is for us who believe, and not a fearful event.

Reformation Day 1996

Newsletter article for October 1996

© 1996 by Rev. Paul A. Wolff

At the end of this month we will celebrate a very special holiday. October 31 isn’t just Halloween (All Hallow’s Eve), it is also the 479th anniversary of the start of the Reformation. This is a great day in the history of the Christian Church, although it is understandable that it is not celebrated with such vigor in the Roman Catholic Church (to say the least). However, we celebrate Reformation Day because it is the day that Dr. Martin Luther brought the Gospel back to its rightful place in the Church.

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther, an Augustinian Monk and Bible Scholar, posted a sheet of paper on the door of the Church in Wittenberg, Germany. On the paper was printed 95 “Theses” about what Luther felt were unscriptural and anti-Christian practices in the Catholic Church. He wanted the local Church leaders and Biblical Scholars to study each thesis on the basis of Holy Scripture so that they could stop doing things which were spiritually harmful for the members of the Church, and they could have a better understanding what Scripture taught.

Luther’s 95 Theses were not received kindly by the leaders of the Catholic Church, even though the members of the Church were generally excited that someone in the Church was addressing the problems in the Church of that time. Even though printed Bibles were rare, the people knew enough about Christianity and about the Bible to know that some of the practices of the Church of that time were wrong. However, because of greed, and pride, and sin in general, the leaders of the Church were unwilling to admit any errors, and they tried to get Martin Luther to recant his position that the Church was in error. In a dramatic and famous scene from history, Luther stood in front of the emperor, who had put Luther on trial, and he told the emperor that unless it could be proven from Holy Scripture that he was wrong he could not recant what he had written because it was the truth of God’s word.

Martin Luther had come a long way in his life to get to this point. He was raised a good Catholic, and felt so strongly about the Church that he devoted his life to service in the Church by becoming a monk in the Augustinian order. However, as he tried to live out his faith, he grew increasingly unsure about the forgiveness of his sins, and even his own salvation. The problem was that the Church had a system of penance where a person would have to do a good work before receiving forgiveness from the priest (and presumably, God). Instead of reassuring Luther (and no doubt others, too) that his sins were forgiven, this only raised doubts in his mind whether he had done enough penance, or whether he was sorry enough for his sins. Luther even began to doubt whether God could forgive him at all for his sins.

The answer to this dilemma came when Luther was reading the Book of Romans where it says, “A man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.” And also in Ephesians where it says, “For it is by faith that you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” It was these passages, and others like them which reassured Luther of God’s love and forgiveness in Christ. This was such a relief to Luther’s conscience that he began to reread the Bible to learn if there were more passages like this. To his great surprise he found that there were passages like this throughout the whole Bible. In fact, he learned that the whole Bible was about what God has done to save us from our sins (the Gospel). The answer was always there, right under his nose, but he had overlooked it until this point. From then on he looked at everything the Church did in terms of the Gospel. This is what led him to post the 95 Theses.

This also explains why we hold Luther in such high regard in the Lutheran Church. Luther was not a perfect man. He did not do miracles (although several times God protected him in nearly miraculous ways). He did not even devise a clever system of theology like some later reformers. Martin Luther simply read God’s Word and discovered the Gospel of Salvation through faith in Jesus, and he tried to return the Gospel to its proper place in Worship, and in the Church. This is why we in the Lutheran Church place great importance on Holy Scripture and the Church’s doctrine. Since Scripture is God’s Word, it is the basis for all the teachings in our Church. God gave us His Word so that we can put our faith in Jesus to save us from our sins. Luther didn’t teach us anything new, but we thank God for sending Luther to remind us that Jesus is our only savior from sin, and that the only way we can be saved is through faith in Jesus Christ. We should keep this in mind this month during our times of Bible study. Whether you are at Church, or at home in your personal Bible study, remember that the Bible is about Jesus and what he has done to save you from your sins and give you eternal salvation.

May God bless your worship and Bible Study this month (and always),

Pastor Wolff

Introduction

Jeremiah was a prophet in ancient Israel. He preached to the southern kingdom of Judah until Jerusalem was conquered by the Babylonians around 586 B.C. It was a tough time to be a prophet of God. God’s people had long since turned away from the true God and had relied on idols instead. They didn’t want to hear God’s Word. Jeremiah told the people things that they didn’t want to hear, so he was very unpopular.

Nevertheless, Jeremiah was faithful to God and kept preaching God’s call for repentance despite false accusations, intimidation, threats, and other persecutions. Jeremiah is a great role model for faithful Christian preachers in a self satisfied world where the people don’t think that they need God, or who think that they have God under their thumb and can make Him do what they think is best for them.

I was an admirer of the prophet Jeremiah long before I received my call to be a minister of the Gospel of Christ. I had hoped that the message of salvation that I was preaching and teaching would have been received with greater acceptance than pre-captivity Judah. Though I was certainly not perfect, I was a faithful preacher of Christ and I did my best to get my congregation to accept the blessings of Christ, who is the savior of sinners. Unfortunately, they did not want a Christ who was the savior for sinners, because that meant that they would have had to acknowledge their sin. They wanted to be “uplifted” and admired, not humbled.

I remember one Sunday morning Bible class where I stated that my favorite Old Testament prophet was Jeremiah. One member of the congregation seemed a little upset by this comment and asked, “What do you mean by that?” I explained that I admired Jeremiah’s faithfulness in the face of opposition. I was certainly not accusing anyone in my Bible class of unfaithfulness like the Israelites in Jeremiah’s day. However, God’s Law has the effect of convicting sinners, and those who trusted in themselves were convicted of their unfaithfulness. Things did not go well for me after that, though I never suffered the intense persecutions that Jeremiah suffered.

My worst suffering was simply the sense of helplessness in seeing that the message of forgiveness and salvation that I worked so hard to bring to the people I loved was falling on deaf ears. It was like watching a train wreck and trying to warn the conductor to put on the brakes before he crashed, but he didn’t believe he was in any danger so he ignored the warnings and went along full speed into destruction. This certainly does not compare with all that Jeremiah went through, but it was enough.

In many ways it was made clear to me that things would go easier for me if only I would change the message that I was preaching. They wanted me to give a little more praise to their self-righteous acts. The way they put it was that they wanted to be uplifted. I lifted up Christ instead, but that wasn’t what they wanted. Instead of giving more praise to unrepentant sinners, I gradually became more direct in my calls to repentance, though I am ashamed to say that I don’t think I ever attained the directness that both John the Baptist and Jesus used in their dealings with the Pharisees of their day. The strong accusations of John and Jesus were needed in my congregation, but I tried to soften the hard hammer blow of God’s Law. Nevertheless, from the people’s reaction I believe they got the point, but unfortunately they were as stubborn as ancient Israel.

The articles which will be posted here are some of the monthly newsletter articles that I wrote during my tenure as the pastor of what was St. Timothy Lutheran Church in Detroit. These are not all of my articles because I have repented of some (mostly earlier essays) that I wrote that I suppose were just meant to please the people. You can see that with only one possible exception (near the end in 2005) I do not directly damn my readers as enemies of Christ, instead I am always concerned with turning the reader to Christ as the savior from sin. I do not put myself above anyone in the need for Christ’s saving forgiveness. In all of these articles I find that I am condemned first of my sins since I know my sins better than I know the sins of others, but I find that I am also first to receive forgiveness through faith in Christ. You, the reader, should also apply the Law to yourself where necessary and don’t shy away from it. I did not write these essays to condemn the readers, but to show people their salvation in Christ Jesus.

May Christ bless your meditations on these articles.