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| CFW and his brother kidnapped their niece and nephew from their father's parsonage. |
Walther founded the LCMS.
False. Loehe began the organization, inviting the Missouri group to join. Many of the best leaders were from Loehe, because they were not part of the Stephan cult. The Saxon group came over because of Stephan, not because of Walther.
Walther was an orthodox Lutheran.
False. Walther graduated from a rationalistic university and associated with two Pietistic circles. When the first leader moved away and died, the Walther group subordinated themselves to Martin Stephan as their cell group guru.
The Saxon group left for America to pursue religious freedom.
Ha! The rationalists were in charge of the state church, but Stephan's congregation had special permission to have cell group meetings. He was quite well known as a leader in various Christian efforts, hardly a martyr suffering in prison. Stephan took his group away when things got too hot for him - court trial and house arrest.
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| Rambach was a Halle University Pietist. |
The Saxon group preserved Lutheran orthodoxy by coming to America.
False. Stephan was a Pietist, educated at Halle University (in part). He taught the Easter absolution of the whole world to Walther, who enforced it in Missouri, parroted by his hand-picked successor F. Pieper. This Easter absolution nonsense is the heart of UOJ.
Walther and the clergy did not know of Stephan's adultery.
False. They definitely knew, as acknowledged in Zion on the Mississippi. Stephan was constantly with young women alone, chiefly Louise Guenther. Stephan left his wife in Dresden to fend for herself and took Louise to America. Stephan was already attracting negative attention in St. Louis, so they bought overpriced Mormon land in Perrysville.
Walther and friends found out about Stephan's adultery through private confession.
This fable was refuted in Zion on the Mississippi many decades ago. The author reported that the clergy either knew or chose not to see the obvious. The big scandal was not adultery, but Stephan spreading his syphilis into the colony.
No one understands Stephan's strange behavior in America.
False. LCMS leaders know that Stephan had syphilis in Europe, infecting his wife and children. He went to spas with his mistress to treat his rash. His night walks were also because of discomfort with syphilis symptoms, and he took young women along. The last stage of syphilis attacks the brain and causes strange behavior and delusions.
Walther did not sign the statement making Stephan their bishop for life.
He signed it.
Stephan was given three choices during the Walther mob scene - they piously claim at the Perrysville shrine to Walther.
False. Walther's mob robbed the bishop, threatened his life, and forced him at gunpoint across the river to Illinois. Instead of confronting the bishop with his sin, Walther secretly stole back the land given to Stephan. Instead of following Galatians 6:1 and Matthew 18, the carefully selected group violated the law and the Scriptures.
Stephan's adultery was the fault of Mrs. Stephan.
Walther himself shopped this slander against the long-suffering wife of the bishop. She fended for herself. She took care of her dying children the best she could. She did everything she could to stop his adultery, even tossing one young woman out her house when Stephan set up a room for her. Stephan called himself the ruler of the house and brought the girl back.
PS
Anyone not addicted to Holy Mother Synod worship can see that the Synodical Conference began as a private sex cult. Abuse of the pastoral office was practiced by Stephan, and his dictatorial powers were taken over by Walther. Anyone who was not LCMS was a damnable heretic, even though Walther never caught on to Lutheran doctrine.
The Darwin Schauer case in the LCMS shows that the Synod President is still a pope, as Walther was. Likewise, WELS and the Little Sect on the Prairie are more interested in PR results than telling the truth about their crimes (murder, adultery, child abuse).
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From someone:
Found a G.C. Knapp in working through Heick's "A History of Christian Thought." It
occurs in Book Four, The Disintegration of Confessional Theology; chapter seven,
German Rationalism; section head, The Theologians of Rationalism. The page
reference is 128.
"Frequently all the theologians of this period have been
thought of being as one stripe. This is not quite correct. Two main schools of
thought can be distinguished among them: the Supernaturalists and the
Rationalists proper. The former exerted a kind of restraining influence in the
earlier period of the Enlightenment; they marked the transition from Orthodoxy
and pietism to rationalism...Relying on Kant's axiom that pure reason cannot
establish religious truth, second group of Supernaturalists emphasized that
reason cannot deny the claims of Christianity. Among the proponents of this view
were F.V. Reinhard at Wittemberg and Dresden (d. 1812) and G.C. Knapp at Halle
(d. 1825). They labored to prove by rational means the possibility, necessity,
and reality of the content of supernatural revelation. Truth was to be proved by
Scripture. The idea was that Scripture, not reason, was to decide in matter of
religion; but reason establishes what the teaching of Scripture
is."
