# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1856_S157
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Miscellaneous Church News. 157

—fulfill is the actual purpose of Jesus Christ. He says that he came not to destroy the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them, and in Revelation it is assured with the oath of a mighty angel that in the days of the last trumpet the mystery of God, which he declared to his servants the prophets, shall be finished. This mystery consists in this: that the Temple is rebuilt, the testimony of Jesus and his will is exercised with the utmost emphasis, a people that has Jesus Christ as King is established, and finally, through the majestic revelation of this King, the hostile powers are destroyed and the kingdom of peace is established, of which all the prophets have spoken. From this we draw the certainty that at the place where the Temple is to stand, and from which the kingdom of peace is to go forth (Isa. 2), a beginning must be made toward the gathering and founding of the people of God, and we hold it necessary to prepare ourselves for this work, which of course can go forward and succeed only through the Lord himself, namely through the mighty working of his Spirit in us men. The content of your letter shows us that you share with us the same hope and the same will, and we believe your words that salvation comes from the Jews, but must be brought from the Christians to the Jews; we must understand this to mean that through the establishment of a congregation of Christians who, in the mind of Jesus, strive after the Kingdom, the Jews can be enlightened, so that they attach themselves to this work and thereby recognize Jesus as the Son of David and the Messiah, and so that the 11th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans may be fulfilled. Therefore we have not let ourselves be held back by the learned objection that the beginning must proceed from the Jews, but we intend, for our part, to do what we can, so that God's loving purpose toward Jews and Gentiles may be brought nearer to its fulfillment. The "when" of this is hereby already answered, so far as it concerns the labor toward the purpose of the gathering of the people of God; this must happen now, because the needs that must be met are present. On the zeal, on the power of the Spirit, with which this work is done, depends its progress, and thus also the "when" of the departure for the holy land. We can therefore give no determination yet as to the time of this departure, although our surmises run in this direction: that it can no longer be very far off, and that our work will have succeeded so far as to make the departure possible within some time. In our view, there should first go out the sending of a few men, as a commission, to ascertain precisely, on the spot, the local circumstances, and to take preparatory steps with the authorities. For you will see from the "Draft of the Constitution" that we as yet have no government concession for the settlement. Both for the sending of this commission and for obtaining the permission of the power that holds the land in possession — still more for the journey, for the acquisition of the needful property, and for the setting up of the settlement — we as yet lack the means to defray the costs and to make the matter appear to influential persons as a practicable one, worth the trouble of doing something for. We are thus for the present thrown back upon the work of testimony, namely upon laying the necessity of this way of rescue upon men's hearts so forcefully that they feel themselves compelled to support this work of the Lord with their money or with their power. The means of our testimony have thus far been, besides personal contacts, our appeal to the German Confederation, the publication of the draft constitution, and the articles in the South German Warte, which numbers about 1000 subscribers. We intend first to issue an appeal to Christians and Jews (!) for the support of the gathering of the people of God. So far we have found no fellow workers outside of Germany who might have directed the attention of their countries to this undertaking. We believe that the most important thing you could do at this moment for our common cause consists in this: that you make it known in America. If a German edition, or one translated into English, of our draft constitution seems suitable to you for this purpose, we authorize you to undertake such a translation there. The draft constitution contains all the notices needful for examining and setting forth the character of our work accordingly. — Would not similar