# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1858_S329
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Against Chiliasm. 329

sm,” which has already been given in extract in the “Lutheraner,” the
chiliastic sermon of the Rev. Pastor Löhe printed in the “Zeichen der Zeit”
[Signs of the Times] is refuted. This little tract, too, deserves to be
communicated to our American brethren in an extract, which we give in what
follows.

I must find it questionable that the author puts forward, for what he
presents afterward, a “light” (p. 4) newly dawned upon him during his
illness. One should not trust oneself so quickly, especially not in
illness, and certainly not when it comes to going against the doctrine
of the church, as it does here so forcefully. The sermon, to be sure,
does not say this, nor does it come to grips with the church's doctrine
in the least; it merely asserts — and casts upon the church's doctrine
the appearance as though it were simply unwilling to be properly
subject to Scripture. — I must regret the manner in which Paul's words
in the text are turned into their exact opposite.

Let us now go through the sermon for our purpose, namely briefly setting
forth the chiliasm contained in it. The first part treats the question
of which resurrection of the dead St. Paul speaks of in the text, and
the second describes the approach to it. In the third, corresponding
practical applications follow.

I. The first part proceeds at once, setting the text aside, from the
Revelation of John (20:5), in order to bring light from there into the
epistle to the Philippians, and to show that Paul (v. 11), by the
resurrection of the dead, does not mean what we confess in the third
article, but something else, of which our church has hitherto known
nothing. A false way of interpreting: for one ought not to explain the
Gospel by prophecy, but rather prophecy by the Gospel. As the sermon
proceeds here, so all enthusiasts otherwise proceed, and in this way one
easily makes a caricature of Christianity. In now wishing to interpret
Rev. 20:5, Löhe holds that the first resurrection mentioned there
requires a second, which is also mentioned at the close of the chapter
of Revelation. Oh yes, certainly! Only the question is how the two
resurrections are to be understood; and when he now portrays as not
properly believing those who, together with our church, understand by
the first resurrection the renewal and conversion of men, he thereby
levels this same reproach at the Apostle Paul, who in Romans 6 says of
us that through baptism we have died and been buried with Christ and
now, through his resurrection, are already in newness of life — and how
often the same apostle otherwise speaks of the new man on the basis of
the old man given over to death. There our person has indeed risen as a
new one, Col. 2:13, Eph. 2:5f. Likewise the aged Simeon speaks of the
fall and rising again of many in Israel, without thereby designating
the bodily transfiguration. Indeed Christ himself calls faith an already
having passed through from death to life (John 5:24), and in another
place he says (John 6:40): whoever sees the Son and believes in him has
eternal life (which is indeed the second, heavenly life), and I will
raise him up on the last day. There Christ teaches, in the strict sense,
one bodily resurrection, but grasped spiritually, together with