In 2011, New York Times Best Selling author Eric Metaxas publishing BONHOEFFER: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, (Thomas Nelson, New York, 2011, 604 pp.) a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945). Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor who resisted the Nazi government, preached in support of Jews while all around him they were being removed from every walk of life. Bonhoeffer also launched illegal seminaries to train pastors, and was a pivotal figure in the events leading up to the Barmen Declaration and the launch of the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer was also had involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He was arrested in 1943 and remained imprisoned until he was executed by the German state just days before the surrender of Germany. Pastor Larry Kirkpatrick reacts to Metaxas' book and considers Bonhoeffer's insights in our situation of state incursions into the authorities of the church in the 2020s.
Notes 1. Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, (Thomas Nelson, 2011), 604 pp.
2. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1959), pp. 191-208.
3. Metaxas, p. 235.
4. Ibid., p. 160.
5. Ibid., pp. 153-154, italics original.
6. John Whitehead, “The Rise of Global Fascism and the End of the World as We Know It,” https://www.rutherford.org/publicatio..., op. cit. Bertram Gross, “Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America.”
7. Metaxas, p. 225.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 185.