# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1857_S334
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— Page 334 —

...set himself in the seat of the Lamb, wishing to loose the seals and
search out the future with certainty. Pastor Schieferdecker admitted
that the utmost modesty and caution are required in prophetic matters.
For that reason, though himself most firmly convinced, he held it to
be a sin to bind his faith on others' consciences. A forceful
objection followed: that if a Christian — let alone a theologian —
supposes he may not preach to others and lay upon their conscience
what he has recognized from God's Word, such a person burdens his own
conscience by putting a mere opinion in the place of faith. For what
cannot be preached to others is not faith but opinion, and such
things do not belong in the realm of doctrine. As proof that Pastor
Schieferdecker did not agree with the Synod, his participation and
co-authorship in the protest of the Altenburg and Frohna congregation
members against the Synod was pointed to.

The obstacle without whose removal agreement was impossible, it was
said, was the false principle for interpreting prophecies, in that
Pastor Schieferdecker held fast to believing he had found a certain
interpretation of the prophecy. If he nevertheless did not dare to
preach such an interpretation as God's Word — indeed, under some
circumstances held it sinful to do so — then this must serve as
evidence to him that his interpretation had not been sealed to him by
the Holy Spirit. He said, to be sure, that he believed he had, through
the Holy Spirit's illumination amid prayer and labor, arrived at a
certain understanding, that his conscience was captive to God's Word,
and that he was ready even to die for the truth of his interpretation.
But precisely in that he then did not consider himself bound to teach
this mystery of the Word as well, it became evident that his faith
was mistaken and that he lacked the necessary testimony of confession.
His conscience might well feel itself captive; but that he did not
consider himself obliged also to teach and confess it proved that the
conscience was in error. For a rightly grounded conscience has the
joyful readiness to teach and confess.

With that the Synod believed it had, for its part, done everything
possible to free Pastor Schieferdecker's conscience, and resolved to
continue the discussion of Pastor Gruber's letter.

Fifth and Sixth Sessions.

The reading of Pastor Gruber's letter was continued. In it Pastor
Gruber had accused the Synod of having come close to declaring the
Revelation of St. John — this precious gift of Christ, this
concluding book and crown of Holy Scripture — to be the work of an
accursed angel.

Pastor Schieferdecker remarked that the Synod had indeed given
occasion for this suspicion, in that it seemed to share the opinion of
Pastor Röbbelen, who, in "Der Lutheraner" — the Synod's own organ —
had set out his grounds against the canonicity of Revelation on the
occasion of an exposition of that book.

The Synod rejected this accusation by Pastor Gruber with indignation
as baseless and as a slander. It had, they said, never given occasion
for it; on the contrary, in the entire dispute over chiliasm not even
the slightest doubt about the canonicity of Revelation had been
raised — rather, the chiliasts had been challenged to prove their
chiliasm from Revelation itself. From Revelation