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From The Deacons Bench-
The great preacher, writer, theologian and witness to the faith, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was executed on April 9, 1945, just days before the Nazi camp where he was held, Flossenbürg, was liberated. He was 39.
Here’s what happened:
On 4 April 1945, the diaries of AdmiralWilhelm Canaris,
head of the Abwehr, were discovered, and in a rage upon reading them,
Hitler ordered that the Abwehr conspirators [those who had plotted for
Hitler’s assassination] be destroyed. Bonhoeffer was led away just as he
concluded his final Sunday service and asked an English prisoner, Payne
Best, to remember him to Bishop George Bell of Chichester if he should
ever reach his home: “This is the end—for me the beginning of life.”
Bonhoeffer was condemned to death on 8 April 1945 by SS judge Otto
Thorbeck at a drumhead court-martial without witnesses, records of
proceedings or a defense in Flossenbürg concentration camp. He
was executed there by hanging at dawn on 9 April 1945, just two weeks
before soldiers from the United States 90th and 97th Infantry
Divisions liberated the camp, three weeks before the Soviet capture of Berlin and a month before the surrender of Nazi Germany.
More here-
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2019/04/never-forget-recalling-the-death-of-bonhoeffer/
From Sojourners-
Are we in a “Bonhoeffer moment” today?
It is common to wonder what we would have done if we lived in history’s most challenging times. Christians often find moral guidance in the laboratory of history—which is to say that we learn from historical figures and communities who came through periods of ethical challenge better than others. Christians who wish to discern faithfulness to Christ often look back to learn how others were able to determine faithful discipleship when their contemporaries could not.
With this in mind, Dietrich Bonhoeffer may help us out today.
Bonhoeffer was a German theologian and pastor who resisted his government when he recognized, very early and very clearly, the dangers of Hitler’s regime. His first warning about the dangers of a leader who makes an idol of himself came in a radio address delivered in February 1933, just two days after Hitler took office.More here-
https://sojo.net/magazine/february-2018/this-bonhoeffer-moment-American-Christians
From Christianity Today-
“Let’s say there is a ship on the high sea, having a fierce struggle with the waves. The storm wind is blowing harder by the minute. The boat is small, tossed about like a toy; the sky is dark; the sailors’ strength is failing. Then one of them is gripped by . . . whom? what? . . . he cannot tell himself. But someone is there in the boat who wasn’t there before. . . . Suddenly he can no longer see or hear anything, can no longer row, a wave overwhelms him, and in final desperation he shrieks: Stranger in this boat, who are you? And the other answers, I am Fear. . . . All hope is lost, Fear is in the boat.”
On January 15, 1933, in a Berlin church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer delivered this haunting allegory in a sermon entitled “Overcoming Fear.”
Germany was in the midst of fearful and turbulent times, indeed. The devastation of defeat from World War I, just 14 years earlier, was fresh on the people’s minds and hearts. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 compounded further pressures on the struggling German economy, driving the number of unemployed to more than six million. The new Weimar Republic lacked political stability and leadership, and fears of communism and extremism loomed large. As these dark waves battered them from all sides, many Germans—including German Christians—feared what the future would hold.
More here-
http://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2016/may-web-exclusives/dietrich-bonhoeffers-answer-to-political-turmoil-preach.html?share=+oeI4AVw2O7icbKtWGt6xmAIPhsK9hGk
From The Deacons Bench-
