"Where books are burned, they will, in the end, burn people, too."

Another lesson from the biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Bonhoeffer: pastor, martyr, prophet, spy"

This one is the translation from the German poet Heinrich Heine, who also happened to be Jewish.  He wrote those chilling words in 1821 and his books were consigned to the flames on May 10th 1933 as the Nazis unleashed a midnight pagan ritual during which Goebbels ranted "You are doing the right thing at this midnight hour- to consign to the flames the unclean spirit of the past."  And so, Germany was "purged" of its non-Aryan thoughts...This section of the book deals with the step by step destruction of civil society in Germany once Hitler and his party took power, as they used democracy to destroy democracy, and used the law to debase the law.  Sadly, there were many in Germany who went along willingly; some because of their own anti-Semitism, others out of pressure and fear, still others who thought that the Nazi nightmare couldn't last.  Men like Bonhoeffer tried to stem the flood, to organize a resistence before it was too late; to no avail.  When the foundations are being destroyed it is not enough for one man to act, nor even a few.  If they must stand alone, then act they must, but if God's Church is to survive the evil that men would inflict upon it, it must stand together to defend the Gospel.  Let Germany be a lesson to us all, the Church was not united in its defense of the Gospel message, it was divided by factions that sought their own agendas at the expense of the Cross of Jesus Christ; let that never be said of us.  We preach the Gospel, here we stand, we can stand nowhere else.