Our third strength is the local community, the people with whom we actually have things in common and with whom we actually live. Regard for their lives, their property, and their welfare is our first political concern, long before other abstract "neighbors." How can we seek the good of our cities when "politics" has for so long meant what's covered on network news?

Our second strength is the household of God, especially local congregations. In it all the articles of our faith are learned and sung and confessed. How do we defend its teaching and its practice when so many even within its walls want to open the gates of the city of God to the enemies of God?

Our first and greatest strength is the setting for all human life from the beginning: the family. In it all the virtues of the First and Second Tables of the Law are discovered and practiced. How do we rebuild the walls of this fortress and preserve them once built when everything wants to tear them down?

Sooner or later, following Christ in this fallen world means encountering persecution for His name’s sake. “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16) Christianity is illegal in one out of four nations. Persecution is widespread even in nations where Christianity is technically permitted by law. Learn what the Christian underground is doing in several parts of the world—including the Christian underground that operates soberingly close to home, right here in the United States. Based on their experiences, evaluated by your knowledge of Scripture, what strategies will you have ready if persecution prevents your congregation from meeting publicly? How will you keep your children in the one true faith unto life everlasting despite the increasing hostilities in the surrounding culture? Indeed, what will God do through and among you for the blessing of many others?

In Revelation 13, we read of two beasts—a false state and a false church—together serving one false lord, Satan himself. It is the complete corruption and collusion of God’s establishment of two distinct kingdoms: lawful civil authority (Romans 13; AC XVI) and the holy Christian church (Matthew 16:19; AC VII). In the Magdeburg Confession of 1550, our Lutheran fathers applied Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdom to the Smalcaldic Wars, enumerated four levels of tyranny, and identified distinctive rights and responsibilities for magistrates, pastors, and laypersons in response to each level. In the Nazi era, Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Germany and Eivind Berggrav in Norway drew upon this Lutheran heritage to determine when and how to exercise political resistance against a totalitarian regime. Their lessons guide us still today.