It's been my habit over the years to bring to you a biography summary regarding a summer read that I was able to enjoy. And I was able to read Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas. It's a big read and therefore I'm not going to be able to do it in one session, probably at least two. My hope is it'll be beneficial and it'll be useful. On the back cover, it reads, who better to face the greatest evil of the 20th century, referring to Hitler, the Nazis, and the Third Reich in Germany? Who better than a humble man of faith? As Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seduced a nation, bullied a continent, and attempted to exterminate the Jews of Europe, A small number of dissidents and saboteurs worked to dismantle the Third Reich from within, even to the point of Bonhoeffer's joining in heavily with a assassination. In fact, more than one assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. Let's just condition our thoughts by engaging in a Scriptural reading. Romans 13, please turn there with me. Romans 13. I think we seem to have lost our video here. Blake, any way we can retrieve that? That would be great. Romans 13 beginning at verse 1, I just ponder the implications of an evil government like the Third Reich and the kinds of abuse that was taking place and how this passage would apply. Therefore, he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword for nothing. For it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil. Therefore, it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience sake. So, we consider Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was born in 1906, and he was martyred at the age of 39 in 1945, just a couple of weeks before Germany surrendered and Hitler himself committed suicide. He was born February 4 of 1906. Dietrich and his twin sister Sabine were born in Breslau, Germany. He, Dietrich, was the sixth child of Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer. His father was a prominent professor of psychiatry and neurology. His mother was one of the few women of that generation who had obtained a university degree. Just to get a little glimpse of family life there among the Bonhoeffers, Carl, the father, a very sophisticated scholar of a man, wrote, we poured water on an old tennis court with an asphalt surface so that the children could try skating. The six-year-old Dietrich said to his sister Sabine, as we get a little picture of what was going on there in the life of the Bonhoeffers amid the family, apparently there was a spirit of heroism that was early on demonstrated in the personality of Dietrich. It says that they were on a lake and Dietrich says to his little sister when he was only age six, There's a creature over the water. Don't be afraid. I'll protect you." So we see this sense of heroism coming out in him. Carl, who was the father, he was not a man of faith. He was not a Christian man. In fact, he was a man who was an agnostic. His mother, though, Paula Pornhofer, was a very reverent woman. She had a very high view of scriptures. And Carl, with his agnosticism, never undercut the ministry that Paula had among the children. To the contrary, he quietly supported it and permitted her to continuously teach the children the scriptures. and also to teach them hymns. They did not, however, go to church, as even Paula herself believed that the church was not faithful to the scriptures. She herself had a bit of a Moravian-type background. And her piety was very evident as she led the children and raised them in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Of course, we're dealing with now as we move up into the 1911, 12, 13, 14, 15 toward World War I. And at one point, one of the girls ran home to the Bonhoeffer home and said, hurrah, hurrah, there's a war. as a war can sound very exciting. However, as the war began and bullets began to fly and explosions took place, the older brother, Walter, was injured by an exploding shell and eventually he died of serious complications. In fact, it was written by one of the sisters, my mother was deathly pale and shrouded by a great black mourning veil. And so we see that after the 17-year-old Klaus died, we see that Paula collapsed. as for many weeks she was able to get out of bed. You mothers, you think of the loss of a grown son. In fact, we've had that experience in our own church and the kind of devastation that takes place when a boy who's been built like a ship and he's headed out to the harbor to be a man, to have a voyage on the ocean of life, and there he is, sunk, basically just outside the channel. And so we see the statement is it was several years before Mother Paula seemed to be herself again. There are the children. There is Dietrich actually right there. See his helmet type hairdo there. There is the governess and the other child, I believe that's the twin sister Sabine there. We see a little portrait of Dietrich there, and there as he grew up to be a little bit older. So Germany loses the war and in 1919 the Treaty of Versailles is signed and it was felt that Germany received a disproportionately crushing blow in the conclusions and in the details of the Treaty of Versailles. One of the details was that they had to give up most of Poland, which had been theirs geographically. Secondly, they had to accept sole responsibility for the war in its entirety. And thirdly, they were forced to suffocate and exterminate their own military, to be totally defenseless. These harsh conditions created patriotic resentment among the people of Germany. And of course, that made the nation Germany very ripe as Hitler preyed upon this resentment as he and his Nazi radicals stirred up the Third Reich. Well, in 1923, Bonhoeffer began to study theology at Tübingen University. In fact, during this time, it was not very common for a promising young scholar of a man, highly gifted, to choose the ministry, to choose a law, to choose business. That was much more common. In fact, Karl was quite disappointed that his son Dietrich had chosen to be a student in theology. This is the same year, by the way, 1923, when Hitler was jailed for treason. Hitler began to try to stir things up for the cause of his great vision that he had. He was thrown into jail and he wrote what many view as the crackpot manifesto called Mein Kampf. which became his philosophy that was embodied in the Third Reich eventually. And so we see that Dietrich himself at this time actually did become a soldier as the military was not totally exterminated. He did get drafted in and he was involved in marching and in shooting. And it indicates that due to his bad eyes, he would have to wear glasses. In fact, so you would see in many other pictures that we might have that he will be wearing glasses as he had an issue with his sight. In 1924, as Dietrich grew older, he visited Rome at the age of 18 with his brother, Klaus. And there he began to formulate ideas about church and community. Up to this point, he was a part of the Lutheran German Church, which was basically a state church. We know the Church of England. is part of the state, and so too it was for the Lutheran German Church. And when he went to Rome, he was impressed with the more universal nature of the Roman Catholic Church, that it was really worldwide in his expanse. And so, going to the church and seeing the Mass and the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Square, it broadened out his idea that church existed beyond German Lutheranism. See, Lutheranism has had championed the Reformation and they broke away from the Roman Catholic Church and during his youth at this time Bonhoeffer questioned whether it was really wise for the Lutheran Church to have broken away from the Roman Catholic Church. Maybe they should have tried to work from within. He would find eventually himself regarding being part of the German State Church that he would actually separate from the German State Church itself with a reformation of sorts. So there he studied then eventually at Berlin University. And as he studied, he disagreed with many of his liberal professors. Schliermach was one professor and Van Harnack, He gravitated toward another scholar at this time, whose name is Carl Barth. We do have him here. We actually do have a picture of Carl Barth, who was a neo-Orthodox theologian who had a much higher view of the scriptures than did Schliermacher and then Harnack. These other liberal theologians at University of Berlin basically saw the scriptures as merely mythological. On the other hand, our friend Karl Barth was one who took a much more serious view of the scriptures and we find that Dietrich was drawn toward him. Then he began to think of himself as he studied the scriptures more and more as more of an individual who should not really be a theoretical theologian but instead he should be a pastor. He considered that profound theological truths needed to be made clear enough so that even children could understand them. And we will see how Bonhoeffer himself will have an impact on young people. He says, if you can't give the Word of God in such a way to young people that they understand, it's useless to even know them in the first place. He during this time had a first love relationship with a distant cousin named Elizabeth Zinn. Elizabeth was one year younger than Dietrich. She herself studied theology at the University of Berlin. He had a multiple year relationship with her that ended in a parting of the ways. Eventually, the next time we come together, we will see that when he's in his late 30s, he will strike up a relationship with a woman named Maria von Wedemeyer, 19 years his younger, and he will actually be engaged to her. And when he is martyred, he will do so a man who was betrothed to marriage. In 1927, Dietrich traveled to Barcelona, Spain, and there he pastored a church in Spain of German expatriates, people who had traveled to Spain, still were German speaking, still a part of the German Lutheran Church. There he was an assistant pastor. and he engaged in substitution preaching for the senior pastor in his absence, and he also engaged in a children's ministry. When he came to the children's ministry for the first time on a Sunday morning, there was one student who was present, a young girl. He thought traveling all the way to Spain for such a thing didn't seem appropriate. He went around, Pastor Sitzma, Craig Seitzma. What a blessing to be able to see you. Studying Bonhoeffer here. So there he was in Spain, in Barcelona, and one student in his Sunday school class, he went off among the parish, among the families, and tried to stir up interest. And the next Sunday morning, there were 30 students who were present at his Sunday school class with the youth. And there his ministry began. He preached as an intellectual and much of his rhetoric soared way above the heads of his non-intellectual listeners, but he gradually learned to get on their wavelength. He became more practical. He became more understandable. And when he preached, the statistics show, though there was not enormous growth, there was a real bump in the attendance when he preached over the senior pastors preaching. In 1929, Bonhoeffer returned back to Germany where he became a lecturer at Berlin University. He needed to await his ordination at the age of 23, that would be the minimum age. And during this time, Nazi radicals began to stir up long suppressed writings of Martin Luther regarding anti-Semitism. Let me just read an interesting little portion here from the biography itself. As Hitler began to stir, Nazis began to create propaganda And you realize that there was great angst against the Jews, as in many ways they were blamed for the difficulties of World War I and the hardship that had come upon the German people. Hitler and his friends used Martin Luther as their champion for the bringing about of anti-Semitism. In the beginning of his career, Luther's attitude toward the Jews was exemplary, especially for his day. Luther was sickened at how Christians had treated Jews in 1519. Luther asked why Jews would ever want to become converted to Christianity, given the cruelty and enmity we wreak on them, that in our behavior towards them we less resemble Christians than beasts. For years, later in an essay, an essay which entitled that Jesus Christ was born a Jew, Luther wrote, if I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian. So early on, he was very sympathetic toward Jewish people. His initial cheeriness and optimism would not last long. For much of Luther's adult life, he suffered from constipation, hemorrhoids, a cataract in one eye, and a condition of the inner ear called Meniere's disease. which results in dizziness, fainting spells, and tinnitus. Luther also suffered mood swings and depressions. As his health declined, everything else seemed to set him off. And so he began to display a crankiness and an orneriness later on in life. And it affected his attitude toward the Jews as his health unraveled. Trouble started in 1528 when after a large meal of kosher food, Luther suffered a shattering attack of diarrhea. And he concluded that the Jews had tried to poison him. Now, many of us know that it's possible for an older man to lose his sharpness. And there may be certain things that an older man does later on in life that he really wouldn't want to be as the clarion call of his life, and so it was with Luther. Regarding this tragedy, listen now, Metaxas writes this, three years before his death, Luther advocated actions against the Jews that included, among other things, setting fire to their synagogues and schools, destroying their houses, confiscating their prayer books, taking their money, putting them into forced labor. One may imagine that Luther's younger self would have thought of such statements, but Goebbels and the other Nazis rejoiced that Luther's ugliest ravings existed in writing, and they published them and used them with great glee. didn't realize this, that Luther himself had written in anti-Semitic ways. In 1930 and 1931, then, Bonhoeffer went off to America, realizing there were storm clouds brewing in Germany. Remember America in 1929, the stock market crash, when he saw the Statue of Liberty in the skyline of New York, he sensed that there had been some erosion of economic strength. He was awarded the Sloan Fellowship, which allowed him to attend Union Theological Seminary there in New York. One of his friends was a young African-American theology student from Alabama. His name was Frank Fisher. Fisher invited Bonhoeffer to visit church services in Harlem where there was a Dr. Adam Clayton Powell. Now Bonhoeffer had been to other churches there in New York City. He had especially been at the church of the liberal intellectual Henry Emerson Fosdick. He had a palatial church built by the Rockefellers, but when he had gone to hear Fosdick, the great intellectual, preach, he says it was barren, sawdust, the Word of God wasn't there. He goes off to this church in Harlem with this little backwoods preacher, and he finds that the Word of God is there. He said he experienced a veritable spiritual feast. And Bonhoeffer spent much of his time in New York at Harlem, and there he interacted with that congregation. He loved their singing, the robust spirituality of it. And when he returned back to Germany, he brought back phonographic records of the spiritual songs he heard in Harlem. He also saw in the U.S. hurtful racism. and he made parallels with the discrimination that was taking place in Germany with the Jews. Bonhoeffer writes, I found that the cars of the Negroes generally looked cleaner than the others. It also pleased me when the whites had to crowd into their railway cars while often only a single person was sitting in the entire railway car for Negroes. This was a separation between the two. In 1931, Bonhoeffer went back to Berlin and there he returned as a lecturer at Berlin University. This time he also visited Switzerland to actually meet personally Karl Barth and a friendship was struck up between the two. In 1932, Reformation Sunday, there Bonhoeffer preached at a showcase Lutheran Church and Reformation Sunday was usually a time for a great patriotic sermon to speak about the glories of Germany. But instead, Bonhoeffer spoke about the German church being like Ephesus, a church that had lost its first love. He accused the church with a prophetic voice that it was no longer the church of Martin Luther, who said, here I stand on the scriptures. I can do no other. He called upon his fellow congregants to stop playing church. He said, we're sleepwalking toward a precipice. As you saw again, the Third Reich swamp ahead. Something interesting happened at this time upon his returning back from the U.S., and some say it was actually a conversion that took place. He actually wrote a letter to Elizabeth Zinn during this time. He says this. as he reflected back on his own ministry up to this point. He said, I had plunged into the work in a very unchristian way. I had an ambition that was unnoticed in myself. Then it happened. Something that has changed and transformed my life to the present day. For the first time, I discovered the Bible. It's believed, again, under the ministry of the church there in Harlem. I had often preached. I had seen a great deal of the church and talked and preached about it, but I had yet never become a Christian. I know at that time I turned the doctrine of Jesus Christ into something of personal advantage for myself. Also, I had never prayed or prayed only very little. I was quite pleased with myself, but then the Bible, and in particular the Sermon on the Mount, freed me from that. Since then, everything was changed." Metaxas writes, somehow Bonhoeffer's time in New York, especially his worship at the Negro churches, played their part in all of this. He had heard the gospel preached there and had seen real piety among a suffering people. The fiery sermons and the joyous worship and singing had all opened his eyes to something that had changed him." And Metaxas asks, had he been born again? So it seems that was the case. So in January of 1933, Hitler was elected as Chancellor of Germany, and he later took control as dictator, the Führer. Now it's interesting, two days after Hitler was made the Führer, Bonhoeffer himself gave a radio speech that was entitled, The Younger Generation's Altered Concept of Leadership. And in this radio broadcast, he spoke of the problems with the concept of a Führer, a dictator. And he explained that such an individual for a nation will eventually become an idol. He was halfway through his radio speech when it was cut off. The question is, was it Nazi censorship or was it simply a miscommunication with the station manager? We don't know for sure. Bonhoeffer was upset, though, and he made sure that his full message was copied over and sent out among his intellectual friends. The question could be asked, why did Germany vote in Hitler? Well, a quick answer would be they had the old leader who was the Kaiser, who was a form of dictatorship, and then after the war, the Treaty of Versailles, they got a democracy handed to them. They had no idea how democracy worked, and so things in Germany began to fall apart. They then remembered back the old order of things, the structure of the Kaiser, and so people clamored for a new strongman leader. And with Hitler, they voted to destroy the democratic government that they hated. And then Hitler, arising as the new strong man, began to chisel away at the German democratic constitution. One thing that was added to the policies of Hitler was called the Aryan paragraph, referring to the Aryan race. It was established in Third Reich law that government employees must be of Aryan stock, Germanic stock. There are certain key characteristics. Maybe it would be shown by blue eyes, blonde hair, detached earlobes. My wife is an Aryan. She describes to me what an Aryan is. An Aryan I am not. So with the German church being a church state, then all the pastors of the German church needed to be Aryan. And any with German blood, that would be including Dietrich's friend Franz Hildebrand, would have to be excluded from the ministry. And by the way, many Jews had become Christians and were a part of the German church. Bonhoeffer responded with an essay entitled, The Church and the Jewish Question. Bonhoeffer said it's the duty of the church to stand up for the Jews. And he had three conclusions. First, the church must question the state, not merely give quiet obeisance. Secondly, the church must help the state's victims. And thirdly, the church must work against the state. begin to consider the implications of this. He was seen as very unsubmissive and very unpatriotic at this time. April 1 of this year brought a boycott of Jewish stores across the country. S.S. and S.A. men would intimidate shoppers from entering Jewish owned stores. Stores would have a designation of a Star of David that were written upon the front of their glass windows. Don't buy from the Jews. Interesting story told of Bonhoeffer's grandmother as she came to shop at a store on boycott day. There was a line of SA men standing opposing her passing. And the young woman just, not so young woman, passed through when she was attempted to be restrained from entering and she informed the SA men that she would shop where she liked. And she did so. It's interesting, this is an old woman who in theory had very little to lose. Karl Bonhoeffer told of how when he was at the University of Berlin, again, Karl is a upstanding psychiatrist and a very wealthy man of great influence. When a fellow from the Nazi Third Reich would come in a lecture hall and give a statement to all of the faculty, propagandist ravings, he says, The man should have had someone stand up and shout him down, or people should have stood up and walked out, but no one did. Everybody sat quietly. Why? Because they feared that their names would be taken down on a list and be sent off to a concentration camp. I even asked my father-in-law, Arnold Becker, who was a part of this. He actually fought in Hitler's army. When he was 16, he was put in Hitler's army. And I asked him, how could it be, Arnold, that these kinds of things would take place among your people, that people would be quiet when such terrible things were going on? He said, what's the difference now, Mark, regarding abortion and what's taking place? People just quietly let things go on. That gives us very probing questions, which realize the kind of pressure when you think of you're a man like Karl Bonhoeffer and you have children and a wife and grandchildren. What does this mean for you? And what does this mean for them? Not only putting your name on a list, letting your wife or your daughter or your grandchildren sent off to concentration camp. there started up what's called a German Students Association. There would be certain young brave Nazi men and women who were supporting patriotically the new Germany that Hitler was stirring up. You could see economic muscles begin to flex and even military beginning to arise phoenix-like from the ashes. Huge bonfires were lit, hurling thousands of books that would speak about the unitedness of all men instead of the superiority of the German race. A poet named Heinrich Hein said, where books are burned, they will in the end burn people too. This was Germany's version of the French Revolution. Some say that Hitler was a Christian. Ever heard that? Hitler claimed some form of Christianity, but in reality, Hitler wrote, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese who regard sacrifice for a friend as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did we have to have Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness You see, the view of Hitler in the Third Reich and Nazism was the survival of the fittest. Nietzsche, that nihilist philosopher, had the idea of the superman, the cruel brute, the great leader. And that was Hitler's idea. People with epilepsy and other disabled folks were viewed as useless eaters. They're having lives unworthy, lives that should be exterminated. In fact, Nazis would go to hospitals to grab sick people to take them off to concentration camps to end their lives because they were not useful to the Third Reich. Many refused to hand such people over at this time. at this time would print opposing pamphlets. He'd even use his father's Mercedes to distribute them. He also recommended that church ministers would cease performing funerals. He said, how can we as the church protest against the state? Stop performing funerals. That would be something unacceptable by the society. We would get attention. But many refused to take such a stand, saying that Dietrich was a bit over the top. Bonhoeffer was even threatened by the Gestapo at this time. If you don't quiet down, we'll send you to a concentration camp. The German church had refused to oppose the Aryan paragraph and Bonhoeffer said that a church unwilling to stand up for the Jews was not the real church. Bonhoeffer had written this, if you board the wrong train, it's no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction. Bonhoeffer recommended that people leave the church. Karl Barth said, no, it's not yet time to leave. In October of 1933, pastors across Germany began signing a statement pledging support for the persecuted, and they opposed the Aryan paragraph. The signers of this began to be a part of what was called the Pastors Emergency League. And by the end of the year, 1933, 6,000 pastors had signed the statement. And now coming out of the state German church was this confessing church. And the confessing church really became the faithful church. Martin Niemöller was a theologian at this time. And Niemöller again said, no, we must stick with the German church and not go out to be a part of the confessing church. Listen to what Niemöller eventually wrote. He had resolved to stay loyal to Hitler and his governmental leadership. But eventually, Niemöller himself was imprisoned for eight years in a concentration camp. And he penned these famous words, Niemöller did, first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. And then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me." So we'll stop there, and we see how Issues right now became very ripe for the need to seek to overthrow the Third Reich. Tales will be told about the certain night was called the Night of the Long Knives when Hitler snuffed out some kind of a mutiny among his leaders and he went out and butchered hundreds of people. Germans and cabinet members who opposed him. One man wrote after this, this had a chilling effect on most Germans. A crippling fear rose up like a bad odor within you. So we see that Bonhoeffer was a man for his time, someone the Lord appointed for a time such as this. And we could even discuss, our time is gone, but discuss among ourselves, what does one do? And is the idea of becoming part of an assassination plot against a man who would exterminate millions like Hitler, is that something that a man of God would or should do? Let's close with a word of prayer. Joe, could you close us?