# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1857_S385
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

[p. 385]

outward, worldly manner (not solely through the means of grace and the
impulse of the Holy Spirit). Thus: it is not the true kingdom of grace of
Christ on earth, to which He has directed and comforted His own. —
Furthermore, just as the kingdom of grace is not administered on earth in
an outward, worldly manner, so its fellow members are not promised in it
mere good days, rest, and peace from tyrants and heretics; on the contrary
they are told that they must enter the kingdom of God through much
tribulation, Acts 14:22 — that the kingdom of grace is a kingdom of the
cross, that is, such a kingdom that every Christian must daily take up his
cross and suffer persecution, Luke 9:23, 2 Tim. 3:12 — and indeed not
merely for a time, but always, until the end. For in Matt. 24:1-14, 29-51,
Luke 21:25-36, the Lord Christ teaches how things will go from the time He
spoke these words until His return to judgment: persecution will never be
lacking, the church will always be a militant one, the mixture of the good
and the wicked will endure, the weeds will even keep growing continually
"until the harvest" — that is, until the Last Day — Matt. 13:30, so that
when Christ comes, He will "scarcely find faith on the earth," Luke 18:8.
— Against this, the Chiliasts do object that what Christ says about the
"cross" refers only to the time preceding the thousand-year kingdom, and
holds good only up until the thousand-year kingdom. But oh, what a
wretched evasion! For by this the Chiliasts themselves admit that, by the
time their hoped-for kingdom is established, the Bible with its comfort
and its warnings will no longer apply. For Scripture is written only for
those who have anguish in the world but peace in Christ, and who will not
cease weeping until they reach that place. Rev. 21:4: "And God shall wipe
away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither
sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former
things are passed away."

§ 11. Just as little as with the kingdom of grace can a thousand-year
kingdom be reconciled with the kingdom of glory and triumph in heaven. For
those who fall asleep in blessedness arrive in the heavenly kingdom the
very instant of their departure. "Blessed are the dead which die in the
Lord... from henceforth," Rev. 14:13. "Today," Christ said to the
penitent, dying thief, "shalt thou be with me in Paradise," Luke 23:43.
And this heavenly kingdom is an imperishable, unchangeable, eternal
kingdom. Luke 1:33. Heb. 1:8. If the Lord were now to transfer the blessed
spirits back from the dwellings of heavenly joy and glory to our earth, to
the place of imperfection, their begun blessedness would thereby be
interrupted again, and so would not be eternal — quite apart from the fact
that, after the thousand-year kingdom, after a joy here below that is at
bottom only brief (because vain and perishable), the final terrors of Gog
and Magog would still have to be expected and endured. O vanity! —

§ 12. So then, the article of the kingdom of Christ is the first that is
overturned by that erroneous doctrine, foreign to Holy Scripture, of a
still-to-be-expected thousand-year kingdom. The second is now the article
of Christ's coming to judgment. For it has been revealed to us that
Christ will come again a second time, to judge the living and the dead.
"When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy...

[Sheet signature "25" at the foot of the page — not a folio.]