Never Again
By Dr. Lawrence L. White
March/April 2001 Family Voice

A few years ago, an evangelical pastor came to address the student body of a Christian university on the East Coast. When he arrived, the president, an older gentleman who spoke with a German accent, greeted him. He asked to say a few words to the students before the service began.

“Today is an extremely important and painful day for me,” he said to the students. Silence fell over the room. Tears streamed down the old gentleman’s face.

“Today is November 9th, the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the ‘night of the broken glass.’ On this day in 1938, Nazi thugs moved through the cities of Germany, smashing the windows of Jewish homes and shops, burning the synagogues. Innocent men, women and children were beaten and killed simply because they were Jews.

“I was there as a young man,” he sobbed, “and I can still hear the shattering glass. Many of us were Christians then, and we did nothing. … That was the beginning of the Holocaust, because the Jew-haters knew then no one would stand in their way.”

The old man quoted the words now inscribed in the Auschwitz memorial in Poland, the place where so many died. “Never again!” he pleaded. “Christian young people, we must never let it happen again!”

• The innocents are slaughtered in a 28-year holocaust of abortion.
• Families and marriages are broken in the pursuit of immediate gratification.
• Militant homosexuals pursue approval, acceptance and preferential legal treatment.
• Our young people lose their way, and often their lives, to alcohol and drugs, and the bodies of murdered teenagers litter our schools.
• Our nation’s leaders wallow in decadence and deceit while the people look on in apathy.

For while the killing goes on, the Church and her pastors stand silent and afraid. Our America is fighting for her life against the principalities and powers of this dark age. To compare what is happening in America today to Nazi Germany is no exaggeration. Everything has been turned upside down and inside out. Right is wrong and wrong is right. Good is bad and bad is good.

We Christian pastors seem to have forgotten that God did not call us to be popular or successful. He called us to be faithful, to proclaim His Word, to call God’s people to war against the advancing hosts of evil.

Martin Luther once declared, “The preacher who does not rebuke the sins of the rulers through God’s word spoken publicly, boldly and honestly strengthens the sins of the tyrants, and … bears responsibility for them.”

Luther’s words ought to sear the conscience of every pastor in America today. We cannot blame the liberal media, corrupt politicians or apathetic public. This is our fault, for God placed us at this moment in our nation’s history to be the stinging salt and the shining light.

In 1940, a courageous young pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer denounced the church’s failure to speak out. He proclaimed, “The Church must confess that she has witnessed the lawless application of brutal force, the physical and spiritual suffering of countless innocent people, oppression, hatred and murder, and that she has not raised her voice on behalf of the victims and has not found ways to hasten to their aid. …

“By her silence, she has rendered herself guilty because of her unwillingness to suffer for what she knows to be right.”

The Church didn’t heed Bonhoeffer’s warning. Most of his colleagues dismissed him as a fanatic. In less than five years, he was dead, hung naked from a piano-wire noose in Flossenberg concentration camp. Germany lay in ruins, her great cities bombed out of existence.

The issue before us as Christians and as pastors is faithfulness to the Word of God. To speak to the great moral issues of our day is integral and essential. To fail to do so denies the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Pastor Martin Niemöller was yet another Christian hero who stood against the tide in Nazi Germany. Niemöller was a highly decorated U-boat commander from World War I. His suburban Berlin congregation was wealthy and influential. The Gestapo arrested him for faithfully preaching the Word of God, and he was charged with sedition. The judge couldn’t understand why a patriot like Martin Niemöller would criticize Hitler, the man German people hailed as their Fuhrer, an absolute leader who deserved unquestioned obedience. He promised Niemöller immediate release, if only he would agree to end his attacks.

Niemöller replied, “I cannot and I will not be silent, because God is my Fuhrer.”

Our allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ must take precedence over every other loyalty. If the Lord Jesus is truly our Lord, He cannot be safely compartmentalized, while we live like the heathen most of the time. If the Lord Jesus Christ is truly our Lord, He cannot be left outside the ballot box. We must serve Him in all we do.

But as we participate, we must be careful to maintain our theological and moral integrity. Christian pastors in this republic must be prophetic, not political. We must summon this nation and its leaders to repentance, for America needs a spiritual rebirth. Where God speaks on the fundamental issues of life, morality and family, God’s pastors must address the issues, on the basis of Scripture.

We can be certain: The Lord God Almighty hates the murder of innocent unborn children. Let there be no doubt: The Creator instituted holy marriage as the life-long union of a man and a woman. Any other combination perverts the divine intent. Politicians on either side of the aisle who seek only to preserve their own position and power will not welcome these prophetic witnesses.

“My brother!” he exclaimed. “What did you do? Why are you here?”

“My brother, given what’s happened in our country, why aren’t you here?” Neimöller asked.

Those days are coming soon to America. We have already seen attempts to muzzle Christian witness on radio and television, to label Christian objections to abortion and homosexuality as “hate speech.” It is only a short step from that to prohibiting it in the pulpits of every church. My brothers and sisters, given what is happening in our country, why aren’t you here?

Tragically, Christians in Germany realized their failure too late. One such man was a professor and diplomat, Albrecht Hausshoeffer, a quiet, gentle man who also wrote poetry. As he came to recognize the enormous evil of Nazism, he was drawn into the resistance and arrested in 1944.

In the final days of the war, as Russian tanks moved into Berlin and the dictator hid in his bunker, guards at the city prison received a list of those not allowed to survive. It included Albrecht Hausshoeffer. A group of prisoners were told they were about to be released. Guards led them into the nearby Tiergarten, the great park in the center of Berlin. When they were out of sight from anyone, the guards shot the prisoners in the back of the head.

When Albrecht’s brother heard rumors of what had happened, he hurried into the park to search for his brother’s body. When he found it, he also found a bloodstained paper clutched in his hand. Written on that paper was a poem titled “I Am Guilty.” Hausshoeffer had composed it just a few hours before his execution. The poem ended: “I knew the course of evil from its start./ My warning was not loud enough or clear enough./ Today as I die, I know what I am guilty of.”

We, too, have known the evil from its start in this great nation. We have grown accustomed to the killing and have gone on with our lives while 4,500 little ones have perished every day. The Supreme Court of our land sanctions the horror of partial-birth abortion. And yet, the churches and the pastors of America are silent. Where is the cry of outrage? We, too, have known the evil from its start.

The Christians of Germany realized only too late how much had been at stake. But it’s not too late for our America. The New Testament speaks of moments of divine destiny, when God confronts His people with a challenge and an opportunity. The Greek word is kairos. The Church in America has come to such a time. If we fail to meet this challenge, our nation will not survive.

“Everywhere, at all times of greatest trial, men have appeared, prophets and saints, who cherished their freedom, who preached the one God and who with His help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course. I ask you now, as a Christian, wrestling for the preservation of your greatest treasure: Why do you hesitate? … Are you hoping someone else will raise his arm in your defense?”

After only a few weeks, the Gestapo beheaded Scholl and his comrades. They died for their faith, but their words reverberate across the years to us in America, to a nation blessed more richly than any other in history. “Why do you hesitate? God has given you the strength!” Scholl wrote. “God has given you the will to fight! We must attack the evil now where it is strongest.”

This article is adapted from an address presented by Dr. Lawrence L. White at CWA’s 16th National Convention in September 2000. Dr. White serves as senior pastor of Our Savior Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) in Houston, Texas. As chairman of the Greater Houston Area Pastor’s Roundtable, Dr. White spurs on the pro-life movement in the American political process.

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