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The LTS is very privileged to host its second set of intensives for 2019. Drs. John Nordling (CTSFW, IN, USA) and Elliot Sithole (LCSA/SA Bible Society) are on campus for two weeks to teach courses on 1 Peter and Jeremia respectively. These exegetes supplement the LTS faculty and come with a great deal of experience and skills enabling them to teach these courses. We are very grateful to have them on campus and pray that the intensives provide a time of fruitful exchange and learning. The Lord’s blessings. Welcome!

A word of welcome is extended also to LCSA Bishop Modise Maragelo who visited the campus and students. Bishop Maragelo represents the LCSA, one of the member churches behind the LTS.

The distinguished guests are pictured here with Rev. Nkambule and Rector Winterle.

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The LTS community gathered on Friday, February 12 to mourn the death of fellow student Albert Payvah and to give thanks to the Holy Lord for His gift of redemption and salvation to Albert in Holy Baptism before calling him out of this life to the life eternal.

Albert was born on 16 January 1979 in Voinjama, Lofa County in Liberia, to parents Tarnuekollie and Kaibeh Payvah. Albert was baptized on the 22 November 1992 into the death and life of Christ Jesus his savior in Christ Memorial Evangelical Lutheran Church.

He was married to Anna, and they were blessed with two sons, Albert jr. and Dennis.

Albert came to South Africa and joined LTS in February 2016. His brother, Rev. Gemah Ballah, graduated from the LTS years before and is serving the Lutheran Church in Liberia in many ways today. He encouraged Albert to come to the LTS to study also for the Holy Ministry. Albert both as a man and as a theology student fought the good fight. As do we all, he too battled with sin in himself but rejoiced in Christ’s victory over sin, death, and the devil.

Albert suffered from several illnesses, among them diabetes and finally also hepatitis. Unfortunately, for various reasons it took a long while for the necessary diagnoses to be made, and so it took time for treatment to be administered. Towards the end of 2018, he fell more and more sick, such that his condition made it impossible for him to write the final examinations. He received care from deaconess students and the seminary community as his condition gradually worsened. Albert was admitted to hospital in very critical condition on Saturday 24 November. For some days, he was in the Intensive Care Unit.

Rector Winterle took members of the Liberian Embassy to visit Albert in hospital the following Monday. His condition improved gradually to the point that he was able to return home to the LTS and was cleared for travel to Monrovia, Liberia. Accompanied by fellow Liberian and deaconess student Ms. Patience Gbotoe, he flew home to Monrovia on 5 December, where he and Patience were received by Albert’s brother Pastor Gemah Ballah, who provided strong support to both of them.

Unfortunately, Albert’s condition worsened again, and he had to be admitted to hospital in Monrovia. He underwent treatment there, but to no avail. The Lord God called Albert Payvah out of this vale of tears on 21 December 2018. He was buried by his brother on 29^thDecember 2018.

The memorial service at the LTS was conducted by Rector Dr. C. Walter Winterle, assisted by Seminarian Gentil Magala. The Rector preached on Amos 5:4, which reads: “This is what the Lord says: Seek me and live.” The student choir sang, and Seminarian Michael Mutonga spoke on behalf of the students.

“If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.  For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” 1 Corinthians 15:19-22

Here follows the sermon by Rector Winterle.

Amos 5:4: “This is what the Lord says: Seek me and live.”

Dear Friends,

“Seek me and live”.

This echoes the gracious invitation of Jesus: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). And also, Jesus’ statement: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me… Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:6,19).

Albert listened to this gracious invitation of God: “Seek me and you will live.” He was not deaf to God’s words. He came to this Seminary from the distant Liberia to learn better the Word of God and to prepare himself to be a messenger of this Word. He was a good student and a good fellow, and he was nominated several times to the Prize Giving Award at the Graduation and end of the Academic Year Service last year. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be present to be honored due to his sickness.

Does this make Albert a better man than others? No. He was aware that he was a sinner and that he was not perfect. He struggled a lot with himself and his conscience his last days in this earth. I had the opportunity to offer him a short Confession and Absolution Service at the hospital in one of the visits I paid him. Did Albert trust in himself and in his own works to have an open heaven? No! His faith was in Jesus, and he was seeking the Lord and His mercy and grace. He was sure that only Jesus could take him to the Father. And this is our hope, te promise of God: “Seek me and live.”

When we closely look at this text of Prophet Amos, we will see that God is calling His people to repentance. As many today, people were not listening to God’s word, but were following their own thoughts and their own way. They were despising clean water that God was offering them to drink, and they preferred dirty water that was poisoning them. Therefore, God says more in this chapter to His people in the time of Prophet Amos and to us, His people of the 21^stCentury: “Seek the Lord and live… For I know how many are your offenses and how great are your sins. Seek good and not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you.” (Amos 5:6,12,14).

“The Lord be with you” is a common greeting during our Liturgy at the service. This means the name “Immanuel” = God with us. Since we are baptized, we are chosen by God and He is with us. He will never go away from us. Jesus promised: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

Unfortunately, many go astray, following their own way, leaving God, and suffering the consequences of their acts. But God calls them back and is waiting for everyone: “Seek the Lord and live.” He gives us our life time to listen to Him and to follow Him, to repent from our own wrong ways and to believe in the forgiveness He offers by faith in Jesus. How long will your life time be? The lifetime of Albert was shortened, unfortunately. We don’t know when our time comes, and we need to be prepared in faith, walking on the ways of the Lord.

Because I love you: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).This “gave” means Jesus’ death on the cross. But we know that Jesus’ life didn’t end up at the tomb on Good Friday evening. It crossed the tomb to show us a risen Christ on Easter Sunday! This suffering and victory of Jesus may be applied to our life: We are still crossing a difficult time in our life, full of temptations, anxieties and pain. But once this all will have an end. Albert is now celebrating Easter in heaven, eternal Easter with the resurrected Jesus and with all those who sought the Lord and followed Him through the tomb to the house of the Father, where there is life forever.

“Seek the Lord and live.” Amen.

Pastor Carlos Walter Winterle, Pretoria, 15 February 2019

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Representatives of the LTS Board of Members (Trustees), drawn from the Lutheran Church in Southern Africa (LCSA), the Mission of Lutheran Churches (MLC), and the Free Evangelical Lutheran Synod in South Africa (FELSISA), were present at the opening service to greet the students, staff, and faculty. The textbooks so graciously received from the LCMS were distributed during the classes that followed. And so it begins! May the Lord bless the teaching and learning at the LTS in 2019 in service to His kingdom and to the glory of His name.

Rector Winterle’s sermon:

Text: Jonah 1:1-17

1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: ² “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

³ But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.

⁴ Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. ⁵ All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.

But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep.⁶ The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.”

⁷ Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. ⁸ So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”

⁹ He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

¹⁰ This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the Lord, because he had already told them so.)

¹¹ The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”

¹² “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”

¹³ Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder than before. ¹⁴ Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.” ¹⁵ Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. ¹⁶ At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.

¹⁷ Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Dear Friends,

We are at the beginning of a new Academic Year at our Seminary. Is it just another beginning of another new year? What is your goal for this year? What are my goals for this year? And there is the big question: Why are we here?

I – God called Jonah

We are still in Epiphany Season. The reading from Jonah is the Old Testament reading from the past Sunday (One Year Series). Epiphany begins with the visit of the Wise Men from the East, foreigners, Gentiles, coming to worship the New Born King, and continues up to the Transfiguration of our Lord. Epiphany reveals Jesus as the Son of God, and the emphasis is always on mission: God sent His Son not only to the Jews, but also to the gentiles, to all peoples.

Jonah was one of the few prophets of the Old Testament who was sent to a foreign country to preach repentance: People should turn from their evil way and worship the true God. And Jonah was sent not to any city, but to the so-called “great city” (Genesis 10:11,12), Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. Nineveh was founded shortly after the flood and played an important role in ancient history.

As it had happened with Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:20-21), God was angry with the bad behavior of the people of Nineveh. But instead of destroying the city as He did with Sodom and Gomorrah, God decided to give a chance to it. He said to Jonah: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come before me.”

But Jonah, instead of obeying God, took the opposite direction from Nineveh. He tried to flee to Tarshish, probably a city in Spain. He ran away from the Lord.

Jonah didn’t know the African Proverb that says: “There is nowhere on earth where the wind does not blow” (ABC p. 1045). And he forgot Psalm 139: “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? … if I make my bed in the depths, you are there…if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”

We see God’s mercy to the Gentiles even in the midst of the storm, when the sailors were crying out each of them to his own god. Here Jonah had an opportunity to witness his faith to them: “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.” And they acknowledged the God of Jonah and believed in the Lord, even to the point that they prayed to the Lord before throwing Jonah into the sea. And after the calm came, they worshiped the Lord, offering a sacrifice and making vows to the Lord. How many of these Gentile sailors were saved by this testimony of Jonah? We don’t know… but God works in strange ways.

We know from the story that Jonah eventually went to Nineveh, preached there, the people repented, beginning with the king, and God had mercy on them and didn’t destroy the city.

II – God calls you

Mafa, Karabo, Younan, Desta… “go to the great city… and proclaim to it the message I give you” (Jonah 3:1). Will God call you to proclaim His Word where you are now? Will He send you out after graduation? The circumstances will not be favorable to your preaching. The world around us behaves like Nineveh, Sodom and Gomorrah. Some sins of Nineveh are mentioned, and it is nothing new under the sun: violence, evil ways, plotting evil against the Lord, cruelty, prostitution, witchcraft, commercial exploitation (Nahum 1:1; 2:12,13; 3:1,4, 16, 19).

We are facing some of these sins not only outside the walls of the Seminary, but even inside, as we had to deal with several problems last year. How will it be this year? God is still merciful and He sends His messengers to call for repentance.  The time of destruction has not yet come, and we pray it will never come. – Lord, have mercy…

What is our reaction to God’s call and to God’s message? Will we run away from our responsibilities? Will we listen to God’s call to repentance, confessing our faith in Jesus, changing our behavior, and trusting in God over all?

III – God wants to reach others through our ministry

God’s love has no limit. In His eternal plan, He had decided to offer salvation to all, not just to the Jews. He sent Jonah to Nineveh, a Gentile city, and they repented. He sent someone who called us from darkness to His light and who baptized us. He called us to this Seminary to learn His message and to prepare us to be able to share His Word with others. And Jesus was sent to all, without discrimination.

We have to learn from the Bible, we have to learn from the History, we have to learn from our experience. The Seminary provides sound teaching based on the Bible. But knowledge is not all. Behavior goes hand by hand with knowledge. We are silly if we don’t learn from our own experience or from other people’s experiences. And God’s grace in Christ is plentiful among us to forgive us and to lead us in a godly life.

Conclusion: Jonah learned the lesson. He prayed for forgiveness in the belly of the fish and confessed his faith: “Salvation comes from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9). After this he was ready to do God’s will.

Jesus confirmed the historicity of Jonah’s story when He compared the length of time between His burial and resurrection to the miracle of Jonah surviving after three days in the belly of the fish (Matthew 12:40).

Daily repentance and confessing of faith is the way God shows us to follow as Christians. By our behavior and by our words we are witnessing to each other, to our neighborhood and to the great city of Pretoria, about who our God is and how merciful He is in Jesus. And sometimes in the future He will send us somewhere to preach repentance and forgiveness through faith in Christ. Are you willing to go? Are you ready to go? This is the goal of this Seminary: To prepare you for going to the Gentiles to preach the message of God.

May God give us all in this new Academic Year faithfulness to follow His way, give love to deal with each other, and give strength to resist the temptations and turmoil of this life. Amen.

Rector Dr. Carlos Walter Winterle, LTS, Pretoria, 05 February 2019

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Every year in November, the FELSISA holds its annual church councillors’ retreat at FELS, a conference facility in the vicinity of Paulpietersburg in northern KwaZulu-Natal. This year, more than 80 church councillors and pastors from FELSISA congregations attended the retreat from November 2-3. The conference theme was “Theological and Pastoral Aspects of the Land and Property Law Debate in South Africa.” The land issue has recently come to prominence in South Africa as more and more politicians have begun to call for farms and land to be expropriated without compensation, following a protracted attempt to address major discrepancies in land ownership statistics in South Africa which fall along racial lines, with more than two thirds of the country’s arable land still being in the hands of white farmers almost 25 years after the end of apartheid. Naturally, the issue is an emotionally charged one and the prospect of expropriation without compensation evokes a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety over the country’s future, especially in terms of stability, safety, investment security, food production, and property rights.

Dr. Böhmer of the LTS was invited to address the church councillors on the land issue following a recent workshop held for FELSISA pastors in August of this year by Rev. Dr. John T. Pless of the LCMS, Rev. Michael Meyer of LCMS Disaster Relief, and Dr. Böhmer. The presentation was broken down into two segments, the first entitled “Theological Aspects of the Land and Property Law Debate in South Africa” and the second “Pastoral Aspects and Decisions.” Böhmer spoke on Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions to highlight the Lutheran position on property ownership (individual vs. communal). He went on to draw from Dr. Martin Luther’s “Admonition to Peace: A Reply to the Twelve Articles of the Peasants in Swabia” (1525) and his “Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed” (1523) to formulate seven theses towards a pastoral approach to the issue. A summary of the presentation has been accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of LOGIA (Eastertide, 2019).

During the conference, LTS Rector Dr. C. Walter Winterle was given the opportunity to express his thanks to FELSISA congregations and individual donors for their tremendous support shown to the LTS in 2018.

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The rector also called the children from the daycare forward to teach them about the significance and meaning behind the Luther Rose, which has come to serve as a symbol for Lutherans around the world.

Following the divine service, church history lecturer Rev. Dr. Karl Böhmer provided a festival address on the origins of the Reformation and on Lutheran identity today, highlighting the astonishing workload and prayer schedule of the Reformer Dr. Luther – astonishing because Luther so prominently accentuated the free gift of grace – and encouraging the students to pray as if all their work was of no avail, and to work as if all their prayers were of no avail, all the while receiving the Lord’s gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation where He gives them.

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The entryway to the LTS has long been in need of attention. After funds were raised to improve the main driveway and walkway leading into the seminary premises by two sister congregations, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church up the street and the Evangelical Lutheran Congregation in Arcadia (ELC), a work day was called at the LTS for Saturday, 21 October. A beautiful spring day dawned, with the promised rain holding off for long enough to allow a very productive work day. Seminary board members, staff, and students pitched in together with volunteers from both St. Paul’s and the ELC.

The work was kindly coordinated and supervised by building contractor Mr. Stephan Albers from St. Paul’s, who donated the use of his equipment as well as his own labour. In addition, several members of St. Paul’s donated the use of their equipment.

The project called for the remnants and foundations of the old dividing wall separating the chapel property from the rest of the LTS grounds, crumbling concrete, and rubble to be dug up and removed. Afterwards, the soil was leveled and sloped for water drainage. Finally, Mr. Albers’ company, Kliprich Construction, has now poured slabs of new concrete to create a new entryway. Once the cement has settled and hardened, and once expansion joints have been cut, the new entryway will be open for business! Thank you to ALL who participated and who made this day possible!

Following the work day, a braai was held with delicious meat to replenish the energy levels of the many tired workers. What a feast. Thank you to the kind donors of the meat!

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LTS staff and students are very grateful for these very generous donations and look forward to drawing from them and putting them to good use.

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During the brief Michaelmas recess, volunteers from the seminary community gathered for two work days. Two projects were on the agenda:

1. To organize the library books and archives held in the seminary’s “dark storage” (mainly books in Tswana and Zulu, as well as archival material from the LTS and the LCSA/LKM); and
2. collecting compost from the leaf pile and working it into the flower beds.

The students were ably assisted and led in their efforts by master gardener and groundsman Mr. Aaron Mthimunye and LTS Rector Dr. C. Walter Winterle. The projects were accomplished successfully – thank you to all who helped!

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