# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1858_S185
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Irvingism. 185

of the special gifts and of the offices which God has designated as the
chief organs of his activity, whereby it should be noted beforehand that
this concerns not the immediate working and blowing of the Spirit, but
the working of Christ in his offices and ordinances. (3, 42. 44.)
The restitution of the offices, and its fourfold form, can be grasped and
recognized by everyone, not only from the clear description in Holy
Scripture and from the conditions in the earliest apostolic Church, but
also from the fact that these correspond partly to the character of the
offices rooted in our Lord himself, and partly to the fundamental faculties
in man (understanding and conscience; heart and feeling; imagination;
will). (3, 125. 129.) On the other hand, this act of repentance and this
fundamental restitution are to be recognized as a preparation for the
second coming of Christ, and that the Lord has reserved such a thing for
his people in grace can be inferred from the preparatory activity of John
the Baptist, taken together with the prophetic passages concerning him
(Malachi 3:4; Isaiah 40). Both a theoretical illumination and a practical
setting-in-order are thereby given at the same time; the former will
extend first of all to those points of doctrine which are now pushed into
the foreground, the eschatological ones; the latter will above all embrace
the center-point of worship, namely the offering, the oblation of the body
and blood of Christ, in the Holy Supper; for from Hebrews 8:1-2 it
becomes clear that in the "true tabernacle," namely the body of Christ,
his holy Church, which is the theater of his acts, everything that now
happens in heaven through the high priest and king must appear in
figure and image. (3, 241—243.) But the ultimate practical points will
also not remain untouched; in particular the tithes will be recognized as
an originally apostolic institution, arising out of the understanding and
believing appropriation of the Melchizedekian priesthood of our Lord.
(3, 255—261. 2, 82.) — So this work of restitution and instauration is
in every respect characterized, by its very nature, as a work undertaken
by God, embracing the whole Church, as the true beginning of a genuine
reformation of the Church. (1, 28. 3, 278.) We are accordingly urged,
pressingly and imperiously, to a trusting-in-God examination of this
work, in the course of which all frivolity is to be shaken off, as well as
all fear of danger, where God himself is present with his revelation; for
on the one hand the possibility of a raising up of apostles and prophets
cannot be disputed, and precisely the fact that the apostles presuppose
the continuance of this and of all other ordinances leads us of necessity
to that conclusion. (3, 281 ff.) By no means, however, may this
examination call for signs and wonders; true sanctification is the one true
answer to the demand for wonders (3, Preface XIV.); the proof for these
new apostles and prophets lies not in their being sent, but in what they
do, or rather in what God does through