# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1857_S302
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

302   The Chiliasm of Certain Distinguished Church Fathers in the First Centuries.

rumor had spread these prophecies of theirs, it was believed that they had all already been fulfilled in ancient times, because the uninitiated did not know up to what goal they were proclaimed; whereas they certainly could neither have happened nor been fulfilled under the reign of a man. But when the religions of the godless have been destroyed and crime has been checked, the earth will be subject to God:

Even the sailor shall withdraw from the sea, the wooden vessel
Shall not trade in wares, for every land shall then bear all things;
The hoe shall not touch the ground, nor the pruning knife the vine;
The plowman shall then also loose the oxen from the yoke;
Golden-yellow the field shall gleam with swaying ears of grain;
And on the wildly growing thornbush the grape shall hang;
Stone-hard oaks too shall then sweat dewy honey;
No longer shall the wool learn to counterfeit so many colors,
But the ram himself in the meadows, with reddish purple
Or with saffron-yellow, shall change the color of his fleece,
And of itself mountain-red shall clothe the grazing lambs;
The goats themselves shall carry home their swollen udders,
And the cattle shall no longer fear the terrible lion.

This the poet uttered after the oracles of the Cumaean Sibyl. But the Erythraean says thus:

The wolves shall not then contend with the lambs on the mountains,
For together with the kid the lynxes shall consume their fodder,
Bears together with calves and with all the other beasts,
And at the manger the flesh-devouring lion shall eat chaff,
And with the children, far from their mother, the dragons shall sleep.

And in another place, concerning the abundance of things:

God shall then grant glorious joy to men as well.
For the earth and the trees and the countless beasts of the earth
Shall then bring men unadulterated fruit,
Wine and sweet honey and white milk and grain,
Which of all together is the best for mortal men.

And other things in the same manner:

Yet only the holy land of the righteous shall bear all this,
Streams of honey from stony rock and also from the springs,
And ambrosial milk shall flow for all the righteous.

Men, then, will lead the most peaceful life in all abundance, and will reign together with God in like manner, and the kings of the heathen will come from the ends of the earth with gifts, to worship and honor the great King, whose name will be glorious and revered among all the peoples that are under heaven and among all the kings that reign on earth."

Thus far Lactantius.

Of Nepos, who about 300 was a bishop in Egypt, Theodoret writes: "Nepos, the bishop of an Egyptian city, agreed indeed in all other things with the doctrines of the church, but erred in the divine promises,