In General Douglas MacArthur’s retirement speech before the West Point corps of cadets on May 12, 1962 he famously ended with these words: “Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps” (https://bit.ly/Macarthur-speech).[i] I think Luther’s last words could’ve been, but they weren’t, “The Word, the Word, the Word.” What here follows will be familiar to you if not downright repetitious to you if you were in my Bible class or Confirmation, but I write it down lest I forget.
The attack has always been on the Word, the written Word, because that is our access point to the Word made Flesh, our entrance into the In-breaded Word. The Romans soon realized that you couldn’t stamp out Christianity by killing Christians. This is the famous phrase attributed to Tertullian circa 200 A.D.: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” See my blog The Great Debate – Inherit the Wind, Posted on November 7, 2016 .
Seeing that killing Christians only made more, they went after that which made Christians: the Word. They destroyed the sacred manuscripts. Since there were so few, these were usually in the hands of the pastors. The Romans gave them the choice of giving them up or their life. The pastors who chose the former sometimes never recovered from this. They were worse than “the lapsed” because they gave up something far more important than an individual’s faith or confession. They gave up the Faith and the source of the confession.
Read the 1964 book God’s Smuggler, It tells the tale of Brother Andrew, as he was known, smuggling Bibles into countries where they were banned. The book tells incredible tales like him having a trunk full of Bibles and being stopped at the border. The guard demands he open the trunk for inspection. Andrew prays that his eyes would not see the Bibles in plain sight. They didn’t.
Confessional Lutherans are uncomfortable with stories like this as we are with Gideons and their Bible in every hotel room. Confessional Lutherans think it would be more helpful to pass out the Small Catechism. Maybe so. But next time you’re in a hotel room, and the lower priced the better. Examine that Bible, if there is one. It’s often marred – certain passages crossed out or torn out, but it does show signs of use. The Wyndham hotels, for the most part, have been taken over by Indians, Hindus. Some have the Bhagavata Gita and the Bible, some just the former. Marriotts have The Book of Mormon in them.
I tell you what impressed me as a kid in Lutheran school. After reading about Brother Andrew, we collected Bibles to send them to the Soviet Union. Later on we were shown pictures of what they did with them. They made them into cigarettes and toilet paper. I don’t think they would do that to the Book of Mormon or the Bhagavata Gita. And that says the truth about all three.
I’ve never been in favor of burning the Koran or any other religions holy book because they represent powerless idols. Charles V didn’t make war on the dead; I don’t make war on dead religions. The March 2025 Harper’s reports this: “Percentage increase in book sales in the United States over the past year: 1%. In Bible sales: 22%.”
Hmm. Maybe what Luther wrote is true. True, “The Word they shall let remain.” But perhaps false is the next part, “Nor any thanks have for it.”
[i] RE: MacArthur’s Faith or Lack therefore: This is from William Manchester’s 1978 biography American Ceasar. What do you think about such a faith as this? At 8 AM the family gathered for prayers, “the General’s substitute for formal church attendance.” They read the service from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and MacArthur read a short passage from the Bible (517). To me this is on par with Washington never taking Holy Communion. If you want more welcome to my Rabbit Hole keep reading. This is from Rom Chernow’s 2010 Washington: A Life, “A stalwart member of two congregations, Washington attended church throughout his life and devoted substantial time to church activities. His major rites of passage – baptism, marriage, burial – all took place within the fold of the church. What has mystified posterity and puzzled some of his contemporaries was that Washington’s church attendance was irregular [on page 132 Chernow reports his pastor at Pohick Church said “he ‘never knew so constant attendant at church as Washington.’” A bishop had said he saw nothing in Washington that would make him think he was a Christian cf. p. 130]; and he recited prayers standing instead of kneeling [in private he knelt, p.132 ]; that, unlike Martha, he never took communion; and he almost never referred to Jesus Christ, preferring such locutions as ‘Providence,’ ‘Destiny,’ the ‘Author of our Being,’ or simply ‘Heaven.’ Outwardly at least, his Christianity seemed rational, shorn of mysteries and miracles, and nowhere did he directly affirm the divinity of Jesus Christ. Chernow defends, “Some of Washington’s style probably reflected an Enlightenment discomfort with religious dogma, but it also reflected his low-key personal style” (131).
