Walter A. Maier
1893 - 1950

"What a glorious Lord of unlimited power He is for us in all our needs! Compared with a star of the first magnitude, you and I are truly less than one-millionth part of a grain of dust; yet how deeply the Lord loved us, insignificant specks in the universe that we are, when He gave His own Son for our redemption! Marvelous as these mightiest stars are, they do not mean as much to our Father as your soul. Jesus Himself declared, 'What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'"


Called "Jeremiah of the 20th Century," Dr. Walter A. Maier was the preachingest preacher in the world during the 1940s, operating through twelve hundred radio stations in a number of different languages. The air sizzled and crackled when the high-strung, athletic-formed and youth-vigored Maier let go his flaming message for exactly 19 minutes every Sunday to an estimated 20 million people over the Mutual Broadcasting System and independent stations around the world. He hurled invective without quarter at modern adulterers, cheats, crooks, hypocrites and worldlings. "You are all sinners, unforgiven and without hope in this world or the world to come if you haven't repented of your sins and taken Christ as your Saviour," Dr. Maier shouted into the microphone. A manuscript was before him, but often he forgot it as he hurled wide and far his thunderbolts of warning to a lost world. He often received 25,000 letters a week. It took 70 women to handle all the mail.

The Lutheran Hour was a work of faith. Dr. Maier got not one dime for all his broadcasting. It was a labor of love for lost souls.

His only income was a professor's salary (of O. T. Exegesis) supplied him by Concordia Theological Seminary, the Missouri Synod Lutheran school at St. Louis for the training of ministers.

Walter Maier was a shining example of the influence of a truly Christian home. He was born in 1893 in Boston to devout Christian parents, who prayed daily for and with their children.

He was the author of fifteen volumes of radio sermons. Perhaps his best-known book was the 598-page work on marriage and the Christian home, entitled For Better, Not for Worse, and it is reported that his commentary on the Prophet Nahum is the most comprehensive and authoritative ever prepared on this relatively little-known book of Scripture. Many of his sermons have appeared in THE SWORD OF THE LORD.