# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1855_S85
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Specimen and Prospectus etc. 85

of judgment, when the hidden things of the heart shall be made manifest, Rom. 2:16, those tricksters will scarcely dare to say: "Lord, Lord, have we not in thy name," etc. For this reason the former sense seems better to fit the context. — It is also briefly worth noting what punishments Christ here threatens against the false prophets, when he says: "every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit," etc., and "then will I profess unto them," etc. This threat, namely, is held before the apostles:

1, that they, in the fear of God and with earnest calling upon God, might faithfully and honestly fulfill the duties of their office. For even of those who have prophesied in the name of Christ and done many mighty works, many will not stand, but will become false prophets, who will be hewn down and cast into the fire.

2, this threat is also held before the apostles for this reason, that they should not rely on those gifts which belong to the office and to the common edification of the church, become proud of them, and neglect faith and godliness. For many who can truly boast of those glorious gifts, 1 Corinthians 12:8, etc., because they neglect the true faith that is active through love, will at the day of judgment have to hear: "I never knew you, depart!" (But we shall return to this doctrine in the following number, when we treat of the dead faith of a merely outward confession.)

It is also a pleasant and useful observation how aptly Christ, in speaking of the false prophets, draws on the word "evildoers" from the ninth verse of the sixth Psalm; for there, in the original text, stands a word whose root means desire, and by which are denoted, among the prophets, all traditions of doctrine and of worship that are devised and set up without or against God's Word, out of one's own choosing or devotion. This word is now quite fittingly applied to the judgment concerning the false prophets, who against their own conscience, out of a desire to deceive, teach and defend what is false. For their judgment is the heavier. But those who have been zealous, though without understanding, to them Christ indeed grants that they are workers, that is, that with great zeal for their doctrine they do and suffer much. But because they are evil workers (evildoers), that is, because their doctrine and worship arose without and against God's Word out of little human notions or their own imagination: so Christ says to them: "I have never known you," etc. But should they say: are we not indeed workers? Well, yes, but evil workers (evildoers), whose judgment stands written in Psalm 6:9. Paul, too, seems to have wished to echo this word when he calls the false apostles "deceitful" in 2 Corinthians 11:13, and "evil workers" in Philippians 3:2. — There are, then, false prophets who are hidden so deeply, not merely from others but from themselves, beneath the sheep's clothing, that they themselves do not recognize that they teach what is false, so that on that day they may well be astonished that they are rejected: "Lord,