Reformation Lutheran Church, Bowie, Maryland (November, 1989)
RLC. The Church is no more. Reformation Lutheran Church existed from the fall of 1984 until the summer of 2003. The pastors at the time were Michael Bray and Michael Colvin. The Church came into existence from a schism in Grace Lutheran Church (ALC) in response to the general apostasy of the ALC which, soon after the local schism, formed an alliance with two other apostatizing Lutheran denominations (the AELC [which had recently split from the orthodox LCMS] and the LCA) to form the more patently apostate ELCA, the third largest denomination in the United States (behind the Southern Baptist Convention and the apostate United Methodist Church).
Below is a flier our young church circulated to thousands in Bowie, Maryland. It is a call to the reconstruction of society (starting with our town) on the basis of God’s law. It is a call to return to our historical roots. The flier calls the citizenry to begin reconstruction with something small. A declaration of Christ’s lordship over the city must at least take the form of an affirmation of the right to life of human beings. Accordingly, the city was urged to make itself an “Abortion Free Zone.”
Lest the modern reader, unaccustomed to the call for simple execution in concert with the deity’s demand for capital punishment, find himself “put off” by the exhortation to enforce capital punishment for capital crimes, let us suggest he direct his thoughts to some ameliorating considerations: 1) We moderns are faddish and fickle people, whose sense of justice accommodates itself, quite corruptly, to the ever-blowing Zeit Geist. 2) Biblical justice requires two witnesses for the conviction of a capital crime. The result is that convictions for capital offenses are rarely completed. A capital crime is one which must be flagrantly committed with such insolent high-handed Lawlessness that it begs for just punishment. Let us consider the example of the lawless juvenile, whose repeated offenses earn him a stoning. Our collective revulsion serves as a popular example of modernity’s abhorrence for the unmodern commands of Moses (Deut. 21:18-22). The hoodlum is to be taken by his parents indicted before the elders and then directed by them, upon examining the evidence, to stone him. All the men of the city were to participate in the execution.
Quite a feat. Imagine enlisting all the elders of your town to stone some regular incorrigible delinquent. What would the stoners think of the parents of the hoodlum?
Surely some astonished old Israelites back in the day would have smacked the parents in the chops and sent them home with a stern warning to whip their kid into shape and not to bother them again lest they get themselves a good public spanking!
In fact, there is no record of Israel ever carrying out the death sentence on any juvenile delinquent – in all the history of Israel – right up through the records of the Mishna and the Talmud.
The Law of Moses engendered a successful walk-softly-and-carry-a-big-stick effect which resulted in no juvenile delinquency problem among the Jews.
Read the 7-page flier here:
Jayne Bray letter to Wilmington News Journal Joseph Sobran’s Pensees of 1985
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