# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1857_S343
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— Page 343 —

...such a hope, one grounded not merely on conjectures and surmises
about present circumstances, but one that has its basis in Scripture.

To this it was replied: if a hope is called an uncertain one, and yet
it is claimed for it that it has its basis in Scripture, that is a
blasphemous statement. He is caught in a delusion. Just as with the
general conversion of the Jews, so here too, he thinks he is grounding
his hope on a prophetic passage, and yet, here as there, he remains in
doubt; that alone ought to make clear to him that the prophecy is
obscure before its fulfillment, and that therefore his hope cannot be
built — as articles of faith and hopes grounded on clear and plain
statements of Scripture are built — on a clearly recognized meaning
intended by the Holy Spirit, since that meaning is simply not yet
clear. He must recognize that his hope, built on his own
interpretation, can only be counted as a human opinion, conceit, and
delusion.

Pastor Schieferdecker declared that he must confess it was impossible
for him, today or at all in these days, to become convinced that what
he believes he finds in the prophecy of the Old and New Testaments is
an evidently false and mistaken hope; he truly finds grounds for it in
Scripture, and he cannot get past these grounds. He readily saw, to be
sure, that much could be said against it, especially when pressed to
say whether he believed that Jesus Christ could come at any moment for
the final judgment; that he did not dare deny, since it was attested
that the analogy of faith absolutely requires it. Although, on the
other hand, he also clearly saw that this expectation of the Last Day
has its own limit — as, for example, Paul says: there are still a
thousand years in between — and that too, after all, God had said. He
could give no satisfactory answer now. It would be against his
conscience if he were now to say that he firmly and confidently
believed, without any doubt, that nothing more was to be expected
before the Last Day.

He was answered that he was placing a burden on his conscience that
had nothing to do with it, and shifting away from his conscience the
very thing to which alone his conscience should be bound — namely,
God's clear Word. What was being demanded of him, moreover, was not
what he had just described. He was not asked to give up anything
contained in the prophecies themselves, but only his own
interpretation, which he set above clear articles of faith. We
neither wished nor were able to decide whether much still remained
that had been prophesied in Scripture but not yet fulfilled. What was
certain, however, was that the Lord could come at any moment for the
final judgment — Scripture says this plainly. He should, then, also
follow the guiding principle of scriptural interpretation and
subordinate the interpretation of obscure prophetic passages to
Scripture's own clear, authoritative statements. For Scripture says
that no prophecy comes from one's own interpretation; whoever has a
prophetic gift, it is to be like the faith. He does the opposite. He
still keeps placing his own interpretation above the plain sayings of
Scripture, even though he himself says it is not irrefutable, that his
hope could also prove false, and that he himself can therefore regard
it as nothing more than a delusion or human opinion. Such doubtful
matters have no place in the Church, and if a preacher occupies
himself with such things, he is nothing more than a preacher of his
own human opinion, not a proclaimer of the divine Word. That Word is
no reed, but firm and eternal.