On Sin

Sins Are Not Equal

If Equality is the chief God of the American religion, the American Interim exists to enforce submission to that god. 

The Augsburg Interim allowed Evangelical Lutherans to keep some of their distinctive practices, like American Indians are allowed to live on reservations, but it required them to adopt a variety of other Roman Catholic ceremonies and doctrines.  This had several positive effects from the perspective of the Holy Roman Emperor.  First, the Lutherans were forced to publicly acknowledge the supremacy of the Roman church.  Secondly, it maintained the fiction of religious unity in the Empire, and prepared the way for real unity by means of the eventual extirpation of the Lutheran Church.  Finally, it prevented the Lutherans from “blasphemy” against the Roman religion.  They would not be allowed to point out the anti-Christian nature of the Roman errors on the justification of sinners.

The American Interim functions in a similar way.  By demanding that Christian Churches acknowledge the false god Equality alongside the Holy Trinity, the American Interim seeks to prohibit or minimize “blasphemy” against its idol.  Likewise, it neuters the churches by compelling Christians to recognize the supremacy of the American religion.  Finally, like the Augsburg Interim, the American Interim works toward religious unity in the country by a gradual extirpation of Christianity.

That the American Interim has been successful is evident in the growth of what the demographers call “the nones”—those professing “no religion” instead of continuing to claim membership in the churches in which they were raised by their parents. Why is it that so many young Christians over the past sixty years have gone to college and ended up renouncing Christianity?  Because they had already been taught that Equality was their god and found, to their disillusionment, that there are inherent contradictions between Christianity and the worship of Equality, even in the syncretic version of Christianity found in every denomination. 

Just as the Augsburg and Leipzig Interims would have led to Lutherans gradually becoming acclimated again to Roman errors, thinking, “There isn’t that big a difference between us; if there were, why would our leaders have allowed us to adopt so many of their ceremonies again?”—so the American Interim softens Christians up and gradually accustoms them to replace the Holy Trinity with the idol Equality.

For further evidence of the success of the American Interim in this regard, consider the recent decision of the Lutheran Church of Australia to allow the ordination of women.  The Lutheran Church of Australia, sadly, is about fifty years late to this party.  One might wonder, “If you’ve held out this long, why change now?”  The answer is that even conservative protestant churches have accepted the terms of the American Interim, even in churches outside the United States.

It's useful here to think about the difference between the Leipzig and Augsburg Interims.  The Augsburg Interim was the settlement issued by the Holy Roman Emperor.  It was more “strict” in requiring subservience to the Roman church.  The Leipzig Interim was a compromise document, authored by Philipp Melanchthon, better known as the author of the Augsburg Confession.  (Lutheran readers should meditate on the fact that the author of the chief confession of our Church later became the author of a document handing the faith back over to the Emperor.  Sometimes our fellow confessors and erstwhile teachers become our betrayers.)

The Leipzig Interim intended to preserve Lutheran Orthodoxy without the unpleasantness of martyrdom.  The version of the American Interim embraced by conservative protestant churches, like the Leipzig Interim, bends the knee to the god Equality while trying to avoid the full consequences of doing so. 

Conservative Protestantism does not want to call Equality a god, but tries to baptize it by making it an attribute of God and a necessary quality of righteousness according to the Law of God.  Nevertheless, conservative Protestantism wants to maintain the authority of Scripture as God’s Word, so while upholding Equality as a divine attribute it is forced to explain why the actual text of Scripture rejects equality by denying women spiritual authority in the Church (not to mention temporal authority in the home and in the state).  Trying to serve two masters by adopting this compromise Interim leads conservative Protestants to always leave the door open for further concessions to the American religion, and it sows the seeds of continual agitation within the churches from those who are more committed to Equality than Holy Scripture and its God. 

That’s why we see conservative churches, decades after mainline ones have embraced women’s ordination, opening the discussion again and again and trying to find new, more “conservative” arguments by which they can arrive at the same conclusions the mainline churches already arrived at decades ago.  In time, the Lutheran Church in Australia will reach similar conclusions to the mainline ones about homosexuality, but by means of “conservative, Scriptural” arguments. 

Meanwhile, churches in the United States that are even more “conservative” than the Lutheran Church in Australia, such as the Missouri and Wisconsin synods, are in different stages of the same process.  But since they too have consented to the American Interim, they are only fooling themselves if they imagine that the same “softening up” isn’t in full swing in their pews, pulpits, and schools.

Concessions to Equality regarding the service of women in the Church, however, is the topic for next week’s post.  Today I want to consider how submission to the American Interim and its idol Equality have seeped into the teaching and belief of American Lutherans about sin.

Are All Sins Equal in God’s Sight?

The answer of Scripture and the Confessions of the Lutheran Church to this subheading’s question is a simple “no.”  Two brief prooftexts show this. 

First, our Lord says to Pontius Pilate, “He who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.” (John 19:11)  Second, in the Small Catechism’s “A Short Form of Confession,” Luther writes: “If, however, someone does not find himself burdened with these or greater sins, he should not trouble himself or search for or invent other sins, and thereby make confession a torture.”  Both Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions take for granted that some sins are greater than others, that sins are not equal.  Many citations could be provided, but this is sufficient for now.

Nevertheless, if one were to ask even a relatively well-instructed and knowledgeable Lutheran the question, there is at least a seventy-five percent chance that the Lutheran would answer, “Yes, all sins are the same before God.”  All sins are equal.

Part of the reason for this, I think, lies in the emphases of Lutheran doctrine.  Because, for us, the article of justification is the doctrine on which the Church stands or falls, we have diligently taught our people that concupiscence is sin before God, so that all our righteousness is as filthy rags (Is. 64:6) and that there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:22-23).  We also rightly see how the tax collector smote his breast and would not look up to heaven and went home justified, while the Pharisee who bragged about his righteousness went home unjustified.  And the Scripture is full of accounts of grave sinners being received graciously by our Lord while the self-righteous remain in their sins.  None of these points prove that all sins are equal and all sinners are equally bad.  What they show is that our Lord has freely taken on all the guilt and punishment of sin, and gives the forgiveness of sins freely to all who thirst.  But one can at least sort of understand how we might have come to believe that all sins are equal in God’s sight, since we emphasize that righteousness is a free gift, and no one is righteous, no, not one (Rom. 3:10).

But as I write this, I still wonder how we allowed it to happen.  I think, at one time, I probably believed this, or spoke this way.  I think part of it must be that some of us felt shame over the gravity of our own sins, and instead of taking refuge only in the wounds of Jesus by which He covers our shame, we instead told ourselves, “My sins are no worse than anyone else’s.”  And that is the reason this error must be driven out of the Lutheran Church; it is a trap of the devil that interferes with our taking refuge only in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins and the removal of our shame.

And Scripture speaks against this false comfort we have made for ourselves everywhere.  Consider the words of Paul in Romans chapter 5: ¹⁶ And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.  (15-16)  One sin brought condemnation to all men, but the free gift of God’s grace is greater than the result of the one sin because it brings justification after many sins.  The implication is that the guilt of humankind is much greater 4000 years after the fall of Adam.  One sin was sufficient for the condemnation of all Adam’s descendants, but now they have added many sins to Adam’s one.  And yet Christ’s one act of righteousness is greater than all of humanity’s increasing guilt.

Besides this relatively innocent misreading of Scripture, there is a more baleful reason Lutherans have come to believe that “all sins are equal.”  And this is not unique to Lutherans; I suspect you will find the same tendency or desire to “level out sins” in Evangelical and Reformed churches as well.  This is the desire to minimize the gravity of certain sins in service to the American idol Equality.  Since all men must be equal, because equality is a god or an attribute of God, Christians have taught themselves to say, “We are all sinners” in such a way that they minimize the guilt of unbelievers who are committing grave sins.  We do this to take away the offense of the cross.  To the Jews the cross was an offense because it shows that no one is righteous; to believers in the American religion the cross is an offense because it denies that everyone is righteous.  When the Church teaches, or acts as if all sins are equal, we imagine that we are sanding the rough edges off the Christian proclamation.  “Don’t worry,” the American church says, “it’s true that sodomy is a sin, but it’s a sin when I lust after a woman in my heart.  We are all sinners, and Jesus died for us all.”  As often happens, the unbelievers perceive that there is something untruthful in the way we are trying to sell the Gospel to them.  Their consciences convict them that sodomy and abortion and practicing witchcraft are grave sins, not peccadillos, and they hate Christians the more because we try to soften the blow. 

When this motivation is behind our desire to make all sins equal, we ourselves are actually committing a grave sin.  We are participating in the very sins we minimize.  We are doing what St. Paul describes in Romans 1: “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them (1:32).”  We become guilty of the thing he warns the Ephesians against doing: “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” (Eph. 5:11) Exposing the unfruitful works of darkness means calling them what they are, as the apostles repeatedly did in their preaching to the Jews in Acts.  Peter tells them: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” (Acts 2:36)  He doesn’t try to soften the blow by saying, “Pilate and the Romans also helped crucify Him; in fact, I also denied Him.  Don’t take it too hard; all our sins are equal.”  No, it was far worse that the Jews handed their Messiah over to lawless men to crucify Him than that the heathen Romans scourged and crucified Him at their behest, and it was far worse to crucify the One God had promised them for thousands of years than it was for Peter to deny Him, even though that was also a grave sin.  For Peter to have minimized it would have been for Him to aid and abet them in their sin, to give them comfort they had no right to; it would have been for him to participate in their sin. 

Approving of Sin by Pretending that All Sins are Equal

It needs to be said, clearly and unmistakably, that the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is doing exactly this by teaching or giving the impression that all sins are equal.  We are tacitly approving of the grave sins being celebrated by the American religion—in particular, sodomy.

This will be dismissed and scoffed at by many in the LCMS.  I had the same reaction when I first encountered the criticisms of Luther’s Large Catechism with Annotations and Contemporary Applications (from now on LCACA) when it was released.

But those with ears to hear should take to heart that when Lutheran believers and pastors claim, or give the impression, that all sins are equal in God’s sight in order to minimize the gravity of sodomy (or any other sin), those believers and pastors are participating in those sins.  Francis Pieper in his treatment on this topic quotes an old Latin apothegm that describes what it is to participate in the sins of others:

“The various ways in which one participates in the sins of others are set down in the old Latin verse:

Consulo, praecipio, consentio, provoco, laudo,

Non retego culpam, non punio, non reprehendo,

Non obsto, sed praecipio et defend aliena

(I counsel, teach, consent to, provoke, laud, do not reveal the guilt, do not punish, do not reprehend, do not resist, but teach and defend the sins of others.)” (Christian Dogmatics I:570)

Again, let me drive this point home: The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, by behaving as if all sins are equal, is participating in the sin of sodomy that our culture celebrates.  It is not exposing and reprehending sodomy as a sin that cries out to God for judgment, but instead quietly allowing its members to believe that all sins are equal, and therefore our culture’s celebration of sodomy is no worse than the sins of any other culture.

I want to look briefly at two examples of this failure to expose the works of darkness in published documents of our Synod.  The first is a well-known example from LCACA; the second, a less publicized, but more destructive example from the 2017 edition of Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanation.  Neither formally teach that all sins are equal, but both fail to properly reprehend, resist, and reveal the guilt of the grievous sins that our culture celebrate.  Both are examples of how the American Interim has pressed confessional Lutheran theology into its mold.

Two Examples

The following quote from LCACA has had a lot of digital ink spilled over it already; see especially this treatment by Old Lutheran Synod, which covers a lot of the same ground.  As I read it, I found a link to this article by Matthew Cochran, where I discovered that he was years ahead of me in identifying Equality as “America’s premier idol” and showing how the worship of Equality has seeped into our teaching about sin.

The quote, which has generated so much comment, is so scandalous that it has made the Missouri Synod a laughingstock on the internet, yet instead of examining our ways, much of the Synod has responded by defending the indefensible and taking punitive actions against those who were first to sound the alarm.

“However, though some of us are burdened with homosexual lust, pornographic addiction, transgenderism, pedophilia, and polyamory, more often they are the speck in our neighbor’s eye rather than the log in our own (cf. Matthew 7:3–5). For decades, if we didn’t wink at fornication we certainly turned our eyes from it, as long as the acts performed outside of marriage were heterosexual ones. We shudder in disgust when it suits us, forgetting that we, too, follow our hearts, that organ which produces every evil thought and sexual immorality (Mark 7:21–22). We are in love, so we live as though married; we are out of love, so we break our marriage oaths before death has ended them. …We may be tempted to see as sin only those most brazen acts of rebellion. But each of us must begin by removing the log from our own eye, for “if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness” (Matthew 6:23).”

The author of the essay seems to recognize that there is a distinction to be made between “those most brazen acts of rebellion” and less grave sins.  Yet what she appears to acknowledge at the end of the quote is drowned out by everything else in it.  First of all, pedophilia, homosexual lust, and so on are “burdens”, whereas heterosexual lust, fornication, and divorce are apparently just sins.  Secondly, pedophilia is described as a “speck in our neighbor’s eye”.  Even if the proper exegesis of Matthew 7 is that “all our neighbor’s sins are specks; our sin is always the log”—it is never proper to refer to sexual desire for children in any way that minimizes it, or appears to minimize it.  It hardly seems possible that anyone should have to point out that an essay that speaks this way about pedophilia has absolutely no place bound in a volume together with Luther’s Large Catechism, but apparently in the present day Missouri Synod not only one or two people need to point it out.  It needs to be yelled about for years by many people, because many of our ears have become dull and we have closed our hearts to the point where we can no longer hear and understand what even pagans know—that to sexually desire, much less abuse, children is among the most wicked and unspeakable of sins.

The essayist’s call for repentance for heterosexual fornication and divorce is welcome, and it is true that many nominal Missouri Synod Lutherans have behaved as if their pastors should wink at these sins. 

But it is pietistic to behave as though the only sins we need to preach against are the ones that “most of us are burdened with.”  Pastors should tell their parishioners plainly that unrepentant fornicators and those who divorce for unscriptural reasons without repentance are damned.  They should also rightly teach their congregations that God rained down fire from heaven on Sodom because sodomy offends Him even more than whoremongering and divorce.  We need to do this not only because we have an obligation not merely to repeatedly flagellate ourselves but to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins to the world, not behave obsequiously toward it in hopes that they will see how inoffensive we are.  We also need to teach our own people that homosexual lust and pornographic addiction are grave sins because it simply is not true that “not many of us are burdened with these things.”  Many of our members look at pornography, many of our members are tempted by lust for the same sex, and many who are not so tempted are tempted to agree with the world that it is not as bad as people once thought it was, or maybe even that it is not a sin at all.

Although this quote from LCACA does not formally say, “All sins are equal,” there is probably no better example of how the contemporary Missouri Synod acts as if they are.  We do this because we live under an Interim where it is necessary to behave as if all sins are equal if we want to be regarded as decent people. 

The second example comes from the 2017 edition of Luther’s Small Catechism.  Like many pastors, I paid little attention to the dramatic changes that were being made to the synodical explanation of the catechism and the questions and answers that were in the 1991 and 1943 additions.  By little attention, I mean “none whatsoever.”  I had no idea until actually a few weeks ago, because I had continued to use the 1991 edition.  But this year I had given away almost all my copies of that edition, and I bought some copies of the new edition for the Church and just a few weeks ago gave one to one of my new members, assuming it was more or less the same.  But preparing for a class where I was teaching the Close of the Commandments, I happened to pull out the new catechism and was shocked to find that the same tendency to speak as though all sins are equally grave is present in it.  This is probably more damaging than the essays in LCACA, since few people will read those.  But lots of children and new Lutherans will be exposed to the new edition of the Small Catechism.

The Close of the Commandments in Luther’s Small Catechism reads:

What does God say about all these commandments?  He says: “I, the Lord your God, am jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments.” [Ex. 20:5-6]

What does this mean?  God threatens to punish all who break these commandments.  Therefore we should fear His wrath and not do anything against them.  But He promises grace and every blessing to all who keep these commandments.  Therefore, we should also love and trust in Him and gladly do what He commands.

The first question asked by the 1991 edition of the catechism under the heading of the Close of the Commandments is:

69.  Why does God call Himself a jealous God?

A. He hates sin and insists on strict and perfect obedience;

B. He will not share with idols the love and honor we owe Him;

C.  He will punish those who hate Him.

By way of contrast, the new 2017 catechism asks:

93. Why does God describe Himself as a “jealous God”?

God refuses to share us with other gods.

In the same way that saying, “Homosexuality is a sin, but don’t worry, I’m just as bad a sinner as you,” is first of all probably false, and secondly, embarrassing and weak, saying more about the speaker’s desire for acceptance than the truth of God’s Word, so the new catechism’s revision of what it means that God is a jealous God.  God is not a jealous God because He can’t do without us.  He is a jealous God because He will not tolerate us worshipping idols, not even Equality, alongside Him, and because He will not tolerate any sin, but will instead punish it in His wrath.

The new catechism leaves this all out.  It also deletes the explanation of what it means that God punishes sinners for the sins of their fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Him.  Finally, in discussing how God carries out temporal punishments the new catechism says:

God punishes by

A.     Subjecting us to the difficulties of earthly life in a fallen world;

B.     Authorizing parents and other authorities to discipline us when we have done wrong;

C.    Handing us over to our self-destructive habits and their consequences.

The new catechism conveniently leaves out that sometimes God also directly punishes us for our sins.  He did that to Nadab and Abihu, Ananias and Sapphira, Herod in chapter 12 of Acts, who was immediately struck down by an angel when he was called a god and did not immediately give glory to the true God.  Why does the new catechism leave out the fact that God punishes children for the sins of their fathers if they walk in their father’s ways?  Why does it leave out how God frequently in Scripture strikes people and nations and cities in direct temporal punishment for their sins?  I don’t know for certain.  I do know it comports well with the belief of most Lutherans that “all sins are the same.” 

Old Missouri on the Distinctions between Sins

But we all know, in reality, that all sins are not the same.  We know this apart from the Law of God, from nature and reason.  We suffer because of the sins of our ancestors, whether we are Christians are not.  Edward Koehler’s annotated Small Catechism from 1946 explains very well why this is.  For Christians, the injuries inflicted by their parents’ sins are a cross that God uses for our sanctification.  For unbelievers who walk in the sins of their parents, God visits the iniquity of their fathers on them.  But regardless, when a person bears the scars of his father’s alcoholism or divorce or shameful life, he knows from experience that all sins are not the same. 

The Lutheran Church also at one time had not let the god Equality determine its teaching about sin.   The most famous work ever produced by a writer in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is probably Walther’s Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel.  In it he argues that a pastor is not dividing the Word of God rightly when he preaches in such a way as to imply that Christians are still under the spell of “ruling sins” and are sinning purposefully.  In that section of his famous book, which most LCMS pastors claim to have read, he distinguishes between mortal and venial sins, that is, sins which can co-exist with saving faith and those which cause a Christian to fall from faith and lose the Holy Spirit.  This seems like such an important point of doctrine that every pastor would diligently instruct his people about this distinction between sins, since it is so important to them to know which sins result in spiritual death.  And yet one would be hard-pressed to find a Lutheran layman who is familiar with the difference.

More recently, Francis Pieper’s Christian Dogmatics, volume I, has a chapter entitled “Classification of Actual Sins.”  Some of the subheadings of that chapter deal with “Voluntary and Involuntary Sins”, “Grievous and Less Grievous Sins,” “Mortal and Venial Sins”, “Dominant and Non-Dominant Sins”, “Partaking in Other Men’s Sins”, “Sins Crying to Heaven,” and “The Sin Against the Holy Ghost”. 

Though the will of man plays a part in every sin, in some cases the participation of the will is so pronounced that he actually plans the sin out before doing it.  Such sins are more grievous than sins that proceed from ignorance or fear.  Regarding grievous and less grievous sins, Pieper references John 19:11, cited above, and Luke 12:47-48, where the Lord teaches that the servant who knew the Master’s will and did not do it will be punished more severely in hell than the one who was ignorant of it.  Just as the good works of Christians will be rewarded in eternity, more grievous sinners will have more severe punishment in hell.

Furthermore, sins are not equal in their effect.  “Mortal sins are those which result in the death of the sinner.  This term takes in all the sins of the unbelievers. In the case of the believers those sins are called mortal which force the Holy Spirit to depart from one’s heart, which destroy faith.  Venial sins are sins which, though they in themselves merit eternal death, are daily forgiven to the believer.  They are also called sins of weakness.  They do not drive the Holy Spirit from the heart, do not extinguish faith.”  (Christian Dogmatics I: 568)

Sins are also not equal in that some sins have dominion over a sinner, while others do not.  “In unbelievers the sins are always dominant…All unbelievers are dead in sins, and Satan is the ruling power in them (Eph. 2:1-3; Col. 1:13; Acts 26:18).  The state of grace in which sin no longer rules is found only in the believers.  Rom. 6:14: ‘Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the Law, but under grace.’  When in the lives of erstwhile believers the struggle of the spirit against the flesh have ceased and the sins have again become dominant, then these believers have fallen from faith.  Hence the admonition: ‘Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body’ (Rom. 6:12).” (Christian Dogmatics I: 569).

One can also commit sin not by committing the act itself, but by participating in the sins of others.  By practicing church fellowship with those who depart from God’s Word, one becomes a partaker in their misuse of God’s name.  Taking pleasure in the sins of others is another way one becomes a partaker in the their sins; one does this by reading books that glorify immorality and by reading books that glorify false doctrines or false teachers.  One also becomes a partaker in the sins of others by consenting to or failing to reprove the sins he sees others committing.

Sins are not equal in that “certain sins cry out to God for public vengeance.”   These include murder (Gen. 4:10, where Abel’s blood cries out to God from the ground), the slaying of Christians (Rev. 6:10), withholding wages from hired laborers (James 4:10), and the oppression of the helpless, strangers, widows, the orphaned, poor, and enslaved, “who cannot help themselves and therefore cry to God that He would intervene (Ex. 22:21-24; Is. 3:14-15; Ex. 3:7-9; etc.)  Chemnitz (Loci, I, p. 258): ‘In the schools, they call them peccata clamantia because Scripture says that these sins, even though men remain silent, cry to God and call for His vengeance.’  Referring to Gen. 4:10; 18:20; Ex. 3:7; 22:23; James 5:4, he quotes the old memory verse:

                Clamitat ad coelem vox sanguinis et Sodomorum,

                Vox oppressorum mercesque retenta laborum

(To heaven cries the voice of the blood and of the Sodomites, the voice of the oppressed and withheld wage of the laborers.)”  The greatest and most grievous sin is the refusal to accept Jesus as the Savior of the world; when the Pharisees reproved Him for allowing the crowds to shout “Hosanna” to him, He rebuked their unbelief by saying, “If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out” (Luke 19:40; cp. Heb. 12:22-25).  Pieper remarks that when the old Lutheran dogmaticians speak of sins that do not cry out to heaven, they don’t mean to imply that they are guiltless, but only that God “in His patience and longsuffering is withholding His judgment of sin, giving room for repentance, or that according to His reckoning the measure of their sin is not yet full (Gen. 15:16: ‘The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full’).”  Christians harbor a multitude of sins which merit God’s wrath and eternal damnation, yet our sins do not cry to God for vengeance, because we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous (1 John 2:2).  (Christian Dogmatics I: 570-571)

This last section particularly deserves our attention.  Some sins cry to heaven for judgment; when we speak or act as if they are equal with the sins Christians commit in weakness, we are sinning against the people to whom we are mandated by the Lord to preach repentance.  We are also sinning against the Gospel, which tells us that no one can bring a charge against those whom God has justified (Rom. 8).  Even those sins which do not cry out to God for judgment God sees, and for those who are unrepentant the day is coming when the measure of sin will be full and He will judge, as He did the Amorites.  Speaking and behaving as if all sins are equal is unfaithfulness to God’s Word.  It denies His judgment and ultimately serves not God but the false American religion and its false god Equality.

Conclusion

I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord…He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty.  From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.

When Jesus Christ our Lord comes to judge the living and the dead, He will sentence most people who have lived on earth to an eternity of torment.  Some will face more grievous torment because Christ will judge that their sins are worse than others.  When, bending the knee to the American Interim, we give our neighbors the impression that all sins are equal, we are interposing ourselves between this Judge and His judgment.  May He have mercy on all who have done this or are presently doing this!

What He has called us to do instead is proclaim His Law in its full severity.  And to those who are cut to the heart by their grievous sins, He has called us to proclaim the only thing in heaven and earth that will remove our guilt and shame—His holy, precious blood, shed for sinners.  May He grant that we clearly bear witness to His judgment and to His blood which purifies us of all sin, and in so doing, that we cast out from our teaching on sin all offerings to the false god Equality.