“If Christ did not sit at the right hand of God, or daily pour out his Holy Spirit, the Christian faith would languish, for it is contrary to all human reasoning and opposed also by the devil. Therefore, if there were not this daily outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the devil would not allow a single person to cling in faith to Christ, proclaimed by the Pentecost message… But our dear God in heaven has erected an everlasting, divine bulwark to prevent this, namely, Jesus Christ, his Son, our exalted Lord at his right hand. By the Pentecost message he sustains and keeps us in the Christian faith, until such time as we become unthankful and God needs to punish us because of malice and unthankfulness, and inflicts a penalty by permitting the devil to tear away God’s Word, as happened in the case of the Anabaptists and the Sacramentarian enthusiasts.
However, the Pentecost message and the Christian faith must endure until the end of the world. If by our unthankfulness we lose it, others will receive it while the world lasts.”
Luther, Monday after Pentecost 1534
