Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history.

Last time we were together we talked about the Barman Declaration and I mentioned the Bethel Confession,

and there's no time like the present to go back and talk about the Bethel confession.

We know the word Bethel, don't we?

It comes to us from scripture.

It's a biblical town.

It literally means House of God.

Well, there's a Bethel in Germany. It was set up as a place that was very much a center for those that were in need, physical need, mental needs, and there in Bethel was a hospital and it was also thought by the German Lutheran Church that if we have a hospital here and we have all these folks with needs that maybe this would be a good place to put a seminary so that young seminarians would be able to get experience

administering to those in society who were in significant need. So Bethel has hospitals and it also has a seminary.

And a young Dietrich Bonifer found himself there in Bethel

in the late spring in summer of 1933.

This is a time of intense strife in turmoil within the German

national church, the German Lutheran Church. The German Lutheran Church

had already endorsed the Nazi Party.

This was seen by a group within the Church as the selling of the soul of the Church.

And so they formed a splinter group within the larger Church and they called themselves the confessing church.

And though Bonifir was young, he was a very accomplished theologian even by this age and

he found himself playing a significant role in this new church, the confessing church.

And while he was there at Bethel, he decided that this church needed a statement, a doctrinal

statement.

And with the help of a friend, he began to write the Bethel Confession.

He wrote the first draft in the summer. He would write another draft a couple months later,

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