# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1857_S332
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— Page 332 —

Pastor Schieferdecker: Luther says of Daniel that God could, in a
later time, still raise up a Noah who could interpret what is obscure
to Luther.

The passage is read out: "And in sum, I think that these 1335 days
will not be publicly understood by everyone until they are fulfilled
on the Last Day. Unless God should raise up a Noah who could reckon
these days and hit upon them exactly. As for myself, I am content
that the Last Day must be at the door; for the signs that Christ
proclaimed, and the apostles Peter and Paul, have now nearly all come
to pass, and the trees are budding and Scripture is blossoming and
blooming. Whether we can know the exact day matters little; let
another do better at it; it is certainly all near the end." (Ibid.,
p. 1489.)

What Luther means to say, then, is: if we have only a mediate
enlightenment from Scripture, we will not hit the mark; but should it
indeed become manifest beforehand, God would have to raise up a Noah.
But Noah was not a man mediately enlightened, but a prophet. It is
certain that the advance of the kingdom of God on earth unlocks much
for us that was formerly a mystery, and the more God reveals to us,
the clearer the prophecies become to us. But if we try to press into
the darkness of the future, we act against the explicit command of
the Lord and Savior. We must take great care not to consider ourselves
a Noah such as Luther speaks of.

That principle of prophetic interpretation was thus stripped of the
support it sought in Luther. The Synod firmly and decisively rejected
the accusation — made in writing by Pastor Gruber and also stated
explicitly by word of mouth by Pastor Schieferdecker — that the Synod
of the Western District had, through a traditional interpretation,
sought to bind consciences, and demanded that Pastors Gruber and
Schieferdecker either prove or retract this accusation. The members of
the Western District Synod demonstrated and proved, from the wording
of their own report, that on the one hand they had rejected only such
interpretations of Revelation 20 as ran contrary to the analogy of
faith, and on the other hand had so little intended, by their own
interpretation of Revelation 20, to bind consciences to a traditional
exegesis, that they had not even followed the customary interpretation
within the Lutheran Church, and had in any case presented their own
interpretation merely as an opinion.

Pastor Schieferdecker did try to support the accusation by pointing to
the words "we reject" and "we condemn" in the resolution of the
Western District Synod in question, words by which consciences would
indeed be negatively bound. But the point in dispute was soon put in
its proper light: namely, that through those words consciences are
bound to God's Word, as indeed they should be, and not to a
traditional interpretation, which is what was actually at issue. The
discussion on this point was concluded by the

unanimous resolution: The Synod indignantly rejects the accusation
that it sought to bind consciences through a traditional
interpretation.

Only Pastor Schieferdecker recorded his objection, with the
explanation that he feared his assent might give the impression that
he conceded the doctrines rejected in the Western District resolution
to be contrary to the analogy of faith.