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The Reichstag Fire

by Tim Nichols

On the day after Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany (January 31, 1933), Goebbels wrote in his diary:

In a conference with the Fuehrer we lay down the line for the fight against the Red terror. For the moment we shall abstain from direct countermeasures. The Bolshevik attempt at revolution must first burst into flame. At the proper moment we shall strike.

The Nazis were spoiling for a fight and in need of some excuse to attack an identifiable threat. They had already intimidated their opposition into virtual silence. Now they were in need of a belligerent "enemy" and such was hard to find. On February 24, Goering's police raided the abandoned Communist headquarters in Berlin. They gathered a few pamphlets that had been left behind and announced that they now had proof that the Communists were about to begin their revolution. An election was coming up (March 5) and something sensational was needed to stimulate public opinion. A promise was made to publish the "documents proving the Communist conspiracy", but the documents (if they existed at all) were never published. Then, on the evening of February 27, the Reichstag was set afire. As the venerated symbol of the homeland blazed, Hitler and his henchmen feigned great indignation. When Goering arrived at the scene he made a great public show. He shouted that "...this is a Communist crime against the new government!" He turned to the newly appointed Gestapo chief, Rudolf Diels, and screamed, "This is the beginning of the Communist revolution! We must not wait a minute. We will show no mercy. Every Communist official must be shot, where he is found. Every Communist deputy must this very night be strung up." The next day, in order to deal with the "emergency", Hitler goaded President Hindenburg into signing a decree taking away a number of personal freedoms, giving the government the right to take over federal states, and imposing the death sentence for a number of offenses, including, "serious disturbances of the peace."

And so, on the eve of the election, Hitler was able to gag his opposition and throw the populace into a frenzy of fear that would cause them to cast their votes in favor of the Nazis in order to preserve their country against the dreaded revolution. The rest of the history of intimidation and manipulation of Nazi Germany we will leave off for now.

Back to the Reichstag fire. Who actually set it? THE NAZIS THEMSELVES! At the Nuremberg trial, following the war, it was revealed by Hans Gisevius, an official in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior at the time of the fire, that "it was Goebbels who first thought of setting the Reichstag on fire." Rudolf Diels, the Gestapo chief at the time of the fire stated that "Goering knew exactly how the fire was to be started" and that Goering had ordered him "to prepare, prior to the fire, a list of people who were to be arrested immediately after it." Although there is some evidence that the Nazis had actually orchestrated the presence of a witless communist arsonist at the scene of the crime, it is clear that the actual fire was set by Nazi storm troopers (Shirer, William. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. NY: Simon and Schuster, 1960. pp. 188-196).

"Now," one might ask, "what in the world does this have to do with the church of our Lord?" Well, consider the following. For many years we have been at peace and united in the belief that we can be the church that Jesus established by giving careful heed to the truths revealed in the New Testament. We have held together by marching hand-in-hand under the banner of Jesus' authority. We have jointly bowed before Him, determined not to believe, teach, or practice anything beyond what He has authorized in His inspired word. We have mutually accepted our duty and joint desire to positively walk together in the light of His word. We have obeyed His commands to invite those yet in the world to leave their former religious opinions behind and to be added by God to His glorious church upon their obedience to His merciful plan of salvation (Acts 2:47). We have been united as we have come together on apostolic ground. Yes, there have been those who have gone out from among us (1 John 2:19), but they have been obvious because they have been the exception rather than the rule. They have not been representative of churches of Christ and their existence has done more to prove the rule than to argue in favor of the exceptions. In the past we have been able to present to the world a clearly united and definitive voice. The question, "What are those things that are most surely believed among churches of Christ?" would have been answered in the same way, with few exceptions, no matter where it was asked. When I was an "outsider" with no background in the Lord's body I observed this consistency coupled with a ready willingness of members of the church to present the Bible reasons for those things most surely believed among churches of Christ. I found the same consistency when I later read virtually every issue of the papers circulated among churches of Christ from the early 1800s to the, then, present. I found it when I read the published histories of the plea to restore New Testament Christianity. While I read a history that included departures from the norm, those departures were distinguishable from the norm. Those who have remained under the banner of Bible authority have remained united in their commitment to identifiable and concrete truths. With reference to these we continue to preach what our brethren have always taught. We may not come up to the same high standard of boldness as our preaching brethren in the past, but we continue to teach the same truths in this kinder, gentler age in which everyone seems to be standing in line waiting for their turn to be offended.

"I'm still waiting," one might say, "to hear what the Reichstag fire has to do with the church!" Yes. As we were saying, faithful preachers among us are still preaching what our brethren have preached for generations. This has not changed. It used to be that new converts to Christ would sit in the pew and hear clear Bible preaching interspersed with hearty "amens!" from their new found brethren. If these "amens" were not always overtly verbal, they were clearly discernible from the heads nodding agreement and approval and from the open Bibles with fingers tracing the very passages that taught what the preacher was preaching. If these babes in Christ wanted to protest the truth that had been taught, they found no allies among the solid Bible students who sat with them in the pew. They found, instead, loving brethren who cared enough about their eternal souls to help them to accept the truth with grace and humility. If these babes in Christ wanted to protest some false doctrine that had been taught, they would have found a room full of ready helpers in confronting the one who had taught what is not in the Bible.

Well, maybe I've idealized our brethren in the past to some degree, but at least this portrays what was once regarded as the way to conduct ourselves. It comes closer to what actually happened then than it does to what seems to happen most often today. The point, I think, is valid.

Something has drastically changed in some of our churches where simple Bible preaching is yet heard. The change seems to be in the disposition of many of those in the pew toward the preaching of truth. Where we once had hearty "amens," we seem to have quiet tolerance, at best, among many of our members who are willing to endure (though not stand behind) Bible preaching as long as no feelings are hurt. Others are less tolerant of what they ought to be upholding and they agressively seek out matters over which they can claim to be affronted. They seldom even try to deal with the question of what the Bible teaches on the subject. The offense is often simply that someone has preached a thing with which the hearer does not agree. It is a double offense if the preacher had some reason to actually know in advance that someone did not agree -- and then had the audacity to teach what our brethren have taught for centuries anyway! These unhappy folk then gather support from other members until they have set the local church "on fire" without ever addressing what the Bible actually teaches. They seek out the weakest members and convince them that they ought to be offended too! Rather than profiting and growing from the preaching of the truths that have been taught by our brethren for generations, weak members are encouraged to become enraged at the personal effrontery of having been preached to -- in spite of the fact that they had come to hear preaching. We regularly hear of preachers being fired for this great crime of preaching truth to one who was not willing to hear it.

Now we realize that men can speak truth in a rude manner. We are not talking about that. We also seldom hear of it and the accounts we do occasionally hear are normally the rather subjective judgments of the hearer who really does not like the content and uses the manner to condemn the sermon unfairly. If you doubt that this is a fair treatment of the current situation, try this. Go back and read the "Fifty Short Sermons" that Fred Dennis published in 1942. These are the same sermons that had been preached thousands of times by Bible preachers for generations. Imagine preaching these sermons, word for word, in the pulpit where you worship. They have converted and edified untold thousands of people when they were preached to receptive Bible students rather than to those who wanted their ears tickled. As you imagine preaching these sermons you are aware that someone in the pew is going to be "in the line of fire" every time. Now, if you want, imagine making your best effort to put the content of those sermons in your own words, using the most delicate approach possible without removing the truths involved. The same people are still "in the line of fire." You cannot change that. You must not change that. Those who attempt to remove from their preaching those truths that make some of the hearers "uncomfortable" (and a number of preaching brethren have told me that they are doing this very thing) are taking away from lost humanity the power of God unto salvation. They are blunting the Spirit's sword.

The self-proclaimed change agents deliberately and with forethought enter our churches with full knowledge of who we are and what we have long believed, taught, and practiced. They come with an agenda. For no Biblical reason at all they have determined that they must change the church of Christ into what it has not been in the past. Their leaders have issued public statements encouraging them to intentionally press their novelties upon the local churches until those churches are at the brink of destruction. They unashamedly desire to throw the churches off balance. To do so they are willing to "burn the Reichstag". They incite discord in the pew among our weakest members and then they point to the pulpit and shout, like Goering, "We must not wait a minute. This is an emergency! We can prove the evil intent of these preachers who are causing all this difficulty! They are uncaring, unloving, and set upon causing us harm." And while the fires burn that they themselves have set, they paint themselves into the picture as the saviors of the people. They never produce the promised documents. They get their victims to become their allies in a cause that is more wicked than that of the Nazis.

There will be a trial in the end. We must wait for it to get all the facts. Justice will be complete. Those who set the fires will be judged in a manner less agreeable than having a millstone hanged about the neck and being sunk in the depth of the sea (Matthew 18:6, 7).  

 Other Articles by Tim Nichols
Decisive Speech or Divisive Silence?
Eroding the Foundation -- Subjectivism
Change for Our children?