# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1857_S381
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

[p. 381]

Appendix A.

A summary presentation of the grounds which press upon our conscience
to reject and condemn the doctrine of a still-to-be-expected thousand-year
glorious kingdom of Christ on earth.

(*Referat* [paper read to the convention] of Pastor Schaller.)

§ 1. A doctrine that is not only wholly foreign to Holy Scripture (an
*agraphon*, "unwritten thing"), but also contradicts it (an *antigraphon*,
"thing that contradicts what is written"), and in its consequences overturns
the chief doctrines of Christianity — such a doctrine we must reject and
condemn. That the doctrine of a still-to-be-expected thousand-year earthly
kingdom of Christ is just such a doctrine, we intend to show in what
follows.

§ 2. We shall not attempt here to demonstrate that the Chiliasts are not
even in agreement among themselves, but are divided into various classes
and almost countless gradations; we do not wish to name them individually.
However much they may differ among themselves, this much may be taken
as settled: all of them, or most of them, agree that before the end of the
world there is to be expected a twofold resurrection of the flesh, and an
earthly, glorious kingdom of Christ, and a dominion of believers over the
ungodly.

§ 3. But of such a doctrine — of a twofold visible second coming of
Christ, of a twofold resurrection of the flesh, and of a glorious
thousand-year kingdom of Christ on earth with an earthly dominion of
Christians over non-Christians — Holy Scripture knows nothing; this
doctrine is wholly foreign to it, it is an Agraphon, that is, a human dream
without Scripture. Or is it not? Then let someone point us to the passage
in Scripture where this doctrine is set out in explicit, clear, and plain
words. To establish such a doctrine it is not enough to cite passages from
Scripture that speak in general of a visible second coming of Christ, of a
bodily resurrection of the dead, or of a thousand years, and the like; for
that there are such passages, and more than one, what Christian would wish
or be able to deny? Rather, what is at issue is a twofold visible second
coming of Christ, a twofold bodily resurrection of the dead, a
thousand-year earthly kingdom of Christ! Let the sharpest eye be strained,
and let a few truly explicit, clear, unambiguous passages to that effect be
shown to us. Not a single one will be found.

§ 4. We are told to read Revelation 20. Very well — we have read it, and
we freely admit that we could not claim to interpret it authoritatively. We
do think it has already been fulfilled, yet we do not venture to declare
this an absolute certainty. But if it is not yet fulfilled, then it can be
authoritatively explained only by a prophet.*) We shall therefore wait
until God raises up such a prophet, who, before the complete fulfillment of
the Revelation of St. John, will expound and explain it to us in an
authoritative way. Yet even such an exposition and explanation would have
to agree with the rule we already hold in our hands, and which has been
given us for testing all doctrine — namely, the analogy of faith, according
to Romans 12:7. Before we [would accept] such a thing as giving full
certainty, on the basis of a direct illumin-

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*) "Prophecies, before their fulfillment, do not admit of a clear and certain
interpretation, unless the illumination of the Holy Spirit itself is added."
Johann Gerhard, *Loci Theologici*, Locus XXX, chap. VII, § 93.