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Bruder Bußlinger

The Swiss born “Bruder Bußlinger” was a gospel preacher who toured Germany in the late 50ties. He chaired small prayer meetings. Followers who could not attend received typewritten copies (sometimes on tracing paper).

Bußlinger was no Wim Malgo and no Karl Fix. He does not come up with sweeping end of time visions. He also was no Velikovsky. His sermons aim however at an amalgamation of science with the Scriptures. Some statements are wrong. Sirius A is not a particularly distant star, it was actually one of the stars considered as suitable for the measuring of the parallax. It is only about 2 times as massive as the sun and not 144 (12x12) times as alleged. Bußlinger concedes that the earth is far too small a place to endure a shower of falling stars as predicted in Revelation (the fall of Lucifer's minions). Some passages can best be explained by the prevailing Cold War atmosphere. Russians using air flows to make their fighter planes invisible to radar [sermon #111]. Sputniks are condemned (equated with the Tower of Babel) [sermon #103]. They are seen as an encroachment of the spirit world, a spirit world over which God gave Adam no dominion. He is sometimes not far from Swedenborg who tried to incorporate celestial real estate (whose actual size, within the confines of the solar system, was known fairly well at the time) into theology. The verse of the 'many abodes in the house of the Lord' [sermon #111] is combined with the merit idea. Some planets are seen as halfway houses for children from broken homes (be they even hustlers). This spirit world cannot be probed by science (or by telescopes). It is however also said that scientists will not divulge all what is scried in Wilson cloud chambers.

God created Adam without stomach and intestines. Those fallible organs were only added after the Fall [sermon #113].

Some followers believed that Bußlinger had the gift of second sight. It was said that he could enter a room and challenge an invisible entity, I can sense thee, when the faithful respectfully fell silent. Bußlinger was probably a Pietist in the broadest sense.

[I dedicate this entry to the morgue (if there is one). The reference requirements cannot be met. My knowledge is based on a stack of Bußlinger’s sermons (in the #100-#238 range) and oral tradition. Bußlinger is not mentioned in Kurt Hutten’s “Seher, Grübler, Enthusiasten” which covers religious sects in post-war Germany exhaustively. The 'samizdat' sermons were mailed from Pfullingen but the municipal archive there holds no record.]