Rick Strickert (Carlvehse)
Senior Member
Username: Carlvehse
Post Number: 6499
Registered: 10-2003 |
| Posted on Monday, July 04, 2016 - 3:05 pm: |    |
The LHM website contains several videos, including "WTC - History of LCMS." This video is a yet another sad example of the SPIN-DOCTORING, HISTORICAL-REVISIONIST (and DISHONEST) FAIRY TALE told about the Missouri Saxon immigration:
- The picture of the ship shown at the beginning of the video is not any of the five Stephanite-carrying ships, which were mostly barques (or barks), characterized by square-rigging on the foremast and mainmast and fore-and-aft rigging on the mizzenmast. The (ill-fated) Amalia was a smaller schooner. However, the Olbers, on its maiden voyage, was a ship with square rigging on all masts. Full-rigged ships (as the one shown in the video) had all square-rigged masts with a gaff sail on the mizzen mast.
- Also the Saxon ships were German and did not fly the American flag as shown in the painting.
- In fact, the ship shown in the video is the Oneco, an American ship built in 1839, with its maiden voyage on March 15, well after the Saxon had reached St. Louis. (The Oneco sank in 1855.)
- Martin Stephan was NOT a pastor when he sailed from Bremen with 700 Stephanites. Stephan had been suspended as pastor on November (Walter Forster, Zion on the Mississippi, p. 102). He took his mistress and one son along - but not his dying wife and children.
- Stephan had not made an enormous impact in Germany, but more in the Dresden area by sheepstealing, Already in 1831, Stephan and his disciples were becoming known as a sect (Zion, p. 75). In October, 1838, Stephan had been charged with improper conduct with a servant girl, and formal complaints by his congregation for immoral personal life, neglect of duties, and embezzlement (Zion, p. 183). Stephan favored young, single girls and had syphillis.
- The reason that the 700 Stephanites (100 of which were on the Amalia lost at sea) left Germany for America was not to seek religious freedom, but the basic reason was Stephan himself (Zion, p. 112).
- While persecution and arrests were carried out in Prussia (which resulted in a group led by Rev. Grabau immigrating to New York), few, if any, such persecution had occurred in Saxony. Later Walther admitted in a letter that there was no religious reason for the Saxons to have left Germany, except for the edict of Stephan. Walther sometimes told the truth.
- The only Stephanite arrested and put under house-arrest (Zion, p. 184) in Germany was Stephan. However warrants for the arrest of C.F.W. Walther and his brother, Otto Hermann, were issued in November, 1838, for the kidnapping of their niece and nephew just prior to leaving Bremen. Both men escaped on ships before they could be arrested. They let an innocent woman go to jail for their crime while the brothers Walther vamoosed.
- Several pastors in Germany became disciples of Stephan. However, before emigrating they had submitted their resignations or had abandoned their congregations. These Stephanites were not pastors when they left Germany. But CFW still called himself the pastor of his parish, even though he had resigned.
- While the Stephanites blindly followed Martin's orders, among the Saxon group were people wanting to leave the poverty of Germany, or for the opportunity to move to America (one of the Saxon physicians, Dr. Schnabel, and his family left the Saxon group when the Olbers arrived in New Orleans), and Stephan's women had been listed as "maids." (Zion, pp. 220, 355)
- The picture of debarking emigrants (@ 2m10s in the video) appear to be from the early 1900s not from the early or mid 1800s.
- The Saxon laymen did not make Stephan a bishop. It was a select group of his former-pastors and lay disciples aboard the Olberswho, at Stephan's request, declared him a bishop with broad powers (Zion, p. 215) on November 14, 1838, the day after entering the Gulf of Mexico. CFW Walther signed the document. Yes, he did. "A bishop and a pope disembarked from that ship." - WELS layman
- The question of whether the people went along willingly or otherwise with giving Stephan complete spiritual and temporal authority was NOT "probably a little bit of both." In fact, the people, who had given the bulk of their money to Stephan's control were told while traveling up the Mississippi River that they would be kicked out of the group if they did not sign the Pledge of Subjection to Stephan. Only Heinrich Ferdinand Fischer, one of the three who later published the Protestationschrift, refused to sign.
- Stephan was not "excommunicated" by the Missouri Saxon congregations, but rather he was deposed (excommunicated) and exiled by a Council of Stephan's former-pastors and lay disciples on May 30, 1839. No, he was threatened, robbed of everything, and kidnapped - forced to go to Illinois at gunpoint.
- The claim that deposing Stephan "caused a great crisis" about whether the Missouri Saxon immigrants were still a church is stretched. Such a claim was only valid for a few of the leaders, like Adolph Marbach, and some of the former-pastors.
- The "great crisis" was initially one recognized by those former-pastors, who realized they had no legitimate call and immediately ask for calls from the Saxon congregations. Another "great crisis" faced by the immigrants was the realization that the Gesellshaft was essentially broke, leaving them on their own to combat disease and obtain food and shelter. Stealing the bishop's gold, land, books, and personal belongings helped - a lot.
- The third "great crisis" (COMPLETELY IGNORED BY THE VIDEO) was when the pastors tried to continue their bishopric rule in the absence of Stephan. That resulted in the opposition of three people, Dr. Carl Eduard Vehse, Heinrich Ferdinand Fischer, and Gustav Jaeckel. Following an earlier draft, the three men issued a Protestationschrift, in November 1839, with some fifty theses objecting to practices of the pastors and pointing out the correct Lutheran doctrine (COMPLETELY IGNORED BY THE VIDEO).
- While recouperating in 1840, Walther read the Protestationschrift from Vehse, Fischer and Jaeckel, which led him to reexamined the Scriptures and Confessions. From these readings Walther came up with the propositions presented at the Altenburg Debate that were based on the theses in theProtestationschrift (Zion, pp. 520, 522) (COMPLETELY IGNORED BY THE VIDEO). As Forster noted, "Later writers with a less meticulous sense of fairness, however, have given Vehse [and the Protestationschrift] little credit." Those people include the video speakers: CTS President Rast, Dr. Schumacher, Rev. Mike Newman, Rev. Dr. (hon.) Gregory Seltz, and Rev. Rick Marrs.
- While the Altenburg Debate may be claimed as the "most important debate in American Lutheranism," COMPLETELY IGNORED BY THE VIDEO was the historical fact that, at the Altenburg Debate Walther himself acknowledged his debt to the Protestationschrift, which he referred to as "a precious gift of God." Later, Keyl and Burger also joined in this acknowledgment. Official LCMS history is a pack of lies. Walther and his bros followed an syphilitic sex monster, knowing all about his girlfriends. The outbreak caused by Stephan's STD was probably the excuse for the riot that ended his rule.
This historical revisionism has gone on for over a century now within the Missouri Synod (except with a few isolated exceptions). I regret to say that I regard the following people as being completely untrustworthy in communicating anything about the history of the Missouri Saxon immigrants (1838-1841):
CTS President Larry Rast,
Dr. William Schumacher,
Rev. Mike Neuman,
Rev. Dr. (hon.) Gregory Seltz, and
Rev. Rick Marrs.
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