# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1860_S5
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Preface to the 1860 Volume.    5

...kingdom of Christ, which is supposed to take place before His return to judgment) — so long as the opponents of this opinion are unable to give a satisfactory interpretation, especially of the passage of Scripture on which the Chiliasts chiefly base their opinion, they must allow the Chiliasts to interpret that passage differently than they do. To be sure, some opponents of Chiliasm, who likewise bring their interpretation to market, will express themselves thus: "Yes, but with our interpretations we do not offend against other passages of Holy Scripture; therefore we do not forbid the Chiliasts to attempt the interpretation, but we forbid them only this: to interpret it in such a way that it contradicts other passages of Holy Scripture." Yes indeed, for my own part I likewise cannot reconcile what Christ says of His coming to judgment, and what the apostles say of it, with an interpretation of Revelation 20 according to which Christ is to appear visibly before His final coming, etc., and that is precisely the reason why I leave the passage entirely aside; but in any case, such interpretations stand in contradiction only with such scriptural passages as themselves treat of future things, and of which we must confess that we, too, do not fully understand them. — But there is one point I wish to emphasize particularly here. In the above-mentioned verdict of the Missouri Synod it is said that Pastor Schieferdecker flatly denies an article of faith, namely that "of the general resurrection of the dead on the Last Day." But it is, after all, undisputed that neither Enoch and Elijah, who have not died, nor yet the deceased saints who came out of their graves after Christ's resurrection, will rise again on the Last Day. Suppose, then, that it pleased God to let still more of the dead rise before the Last Day — would that abolish the truth that Christ on the Last Day will make all who are in their graves come forth from their graves? Now whoever confesses this — how does he offend against the article of the general resurrection of the dead on the Last Day? .. And where, indeed, is the article of a general resurrection of the dead on the Last Day (meaning, that is, of all men who have ever lived and died) to be found in our ecclesiastical confession? In the text of the second article of the Creed it says only that JEsus will come to judge the living and the dead, and in the Explanation Luther says of Christ: "who will raise up me and all the dead"; but what does this mean, more than: me and all who will then be dead? And beyond this, nothing further stands in Article 17 of the Augsburg Confession either .. If Chiliasts offend against a real — not a merely supposed — article of faith, and will not be taught and will not let go of their error, then church fellowship with them is to be dissolved. Furthermore: if they make their opinion into an article of faith, whose acceptance they demand of everyone as necessary to salvation,*) and if they thereby fall into (what then

*) As is well known, this is done almost only by the Antichrist at Rome, and by wild, half-deranged fanatics wholly blinded by the devil; otherwise it belongs, rather, precisely to a mark