# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1857_S340
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— Page 340 —

...and sung. Against all these clear passages, this universal belief,
this blessed hope and expectation of the whole holy Christendom on
earth, he sets his own interpretation of one obscure prophetic passage
from a prophetic book. Where the Lord says Yes, and all of Christendom
answers with one loud, universal Yes, there he says, on the basis of
this one obscure prophetic passage: No — an interim kingdom of a
thousand years must still come first; the Lord is not coming for a
long while yet. It was pointed out how all sober scriptural
interpretation had vanished from the chiliasts; it ought to be
obvious to anyone that the cited passages about Christ's return are
clear, while that one from Revelation is prophetically obscure — yet
to them all the other passages are obscure, and this one alone clear.

Pastor Schieferdecker maintained that his view of the thousand-year
kingdom did not abolish the doctrine of the Last Judgment, but rather
confirmed it. God, he said, had made the times of his administration
more precisely known in the prophetic writings, while laying the
foundation of the doctrine in the other writings. He was waiting for
the Last Day, but because he clearly saw that, according to the
Revelation of John, a period of a thousand years must still come
first, and because he could not tell from the context of prophecy and
history that it had already passed, he believed he did not sin in
saying: I am ready every day for my end, for the coming of Christ; yet
I cannot readily believe that the Last Day will come today or
tomorrow.

It was demonstrated to him that the passages about Christ's return do
not speak of some other manner of the Lord's coming, but only of his
return for judgment, and that he was therefore merely evading the
issue with such explanations. A longing for the Last Day and a
waiting for it according to the Lord's own word, they said, are
fundamentally different things from whatever kind of faith it is that
grounds itself on the connection between prophecy and history as
construed by human judgment; and an expectation of the Last Day such
as the Lord demands and the whole of Christendom holds stands flatly
in contradiction with the expectation of an intervening thousand-year
kingdom. He was then urged most earnestly, from various sides, to
submit himself to God's Word and not to set his own interpretation
above its clear statements, which would be an abominable sin. But in
vain. Although he admitted that he could not answer everything
satisfactorily, he still maintained that he could not abandon his
view — unless he were simply to say the thousand years do not exist
at all — just as he had already stated earlier that he could not let
go of his opinion unless he became convinced that Revelation 20 was
not Christ's own word.

Resolved: to put to Pastor Schieferdecker the plain, definite question
for a plain, definite answer: whether he confesses, with the whole of
Christendom, the belief that the Lord Jesus Christ could come at any
moment for the final judgment of the world?

Resolved, to give him until the next morning to answer it.

The Synod did not believe it could grant Pastor Schieferdecker's
request to be allowed to present to the Synod his own view, as he had
drawn it up in study and prayer. It knew the doctrine of the