# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1857_S88
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

88 A Testimony of Dr. Hengstenberg against Chiliasm.

...in tense expectation of the things that were to come. "The churches and monasteries were left to fall into ruin; many princes and lords journeyed to Rome, built hospitals for the poor and for pilgrims, as well as abbeys, to which some of them betook themselves to await that day."

Truly strange is the prejudice against the view here set forth concerning the thousand-year kingdom, as though it took something from our comfort, as though it were fit to dampen our hope — a prejudice for which Bengel, all too taken with his own view, provided manifold nourishment. Quite the contrary: it is very comforting for us to know that we already have the thousand years behind us, and that before us, therefore, lies not twilight but the bright day — not the provisional victory that is then followed again by heavy defeat, but the final victory. If the old earth becomes ever more corrupt and full of wickedness, it is a great comfort that we are journeying by a straight road toward the new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

Characteristic is Bengel's remark on p. 581: "Those do far too little justice to the matter who make of the thousand years something past, and consequently something so insignificant." Whoever regards the past of the Christian Church in this way thereby cuts off, without noticing it, the root of a living and reasonable hope for the future. If the word "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world" has proven itself so poorly in the past, it is foolish to hope that in the future it should suddenly begin to be gloriously fulfilled. For indeed it is the same with the individual: his hope for the future is alive precisely to the degree that he is able to recognize the blessing of God that lies hidden beneath the cross, the grace that lies hidden behind sin — which only he can do who is able to say from the heart: "What I do not perceive, teach thou me."

Another chief argument against our view of the thousand-year kingdom is drawn from vv. 4–6. According to this, the resurrection of the righteous is to take place at the beginning of the thousand years, and they are to dwell upon the earth for the whole of the thousand years. Since nothing of this is to be observed in the past, it is, so it is thought, self-evident that the thousand years must belong to the future.

Yet against such a conception this alone should suffice to raise doubt: that it leads to a wholly monstrous mingling of the irreconcilable — the Church consisting of a mixture of members, some of whom are still in the

...development of theology, its untenability came ever more to light. It was also pushed back by the fact that it became increasingly evident how the Church, under ordinary human conditions, would attain to the ruling power. Lactantius is the last notable representative of chiliasm. The instinct that reacted against it in the ancient Church was a healthy one, even though, for want of exegetical capacity, it often erred considerably in its choice of weapons.