Sermon Central
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Death
Contributed by Revd. Martin Dale on Oct 24, 2025 (message contributor)
Paul writing from a prison cell and probably knowing that he would soon die
by the sword writes to the Philippians,
“I give thanks to my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor imprisoned in 1943 for his political and Christian opposition to the Nazi regime, was executed two years later.
On the day that the sentence was carried out he conducted a service for the other prisoners.
One of those prisoners, an English officer who survived, wrote these words:
”Bonhoeffer always seemed to me to spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the least incident, and profound gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive... He was one of the very few persons I have ever met for whom God was real and always near...
On Sunday, April 8, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer conducted a little service of worship and spoke to us in a way that went to the heart of all of us.
He found just the right words to express the spirit of our imprisonment, and the thoughts and resolutions it had brought us.
He had hardly ended his last prayer when the door opened and two civilians
entered.
They said, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us."
That had only one meaning for all prisoners--the gallows. We said good-bye to him.
He took me aside: "This is the end; but for me it is the beginning of life."
The next day he was hanged in Flossenburg.”
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