# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1860_S43
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Preface to Volume 1860. 43

false; for the orthodox Church has come to a settled conclusion not only concerning those articles that are set forth in her symbols, but implicitly concerning all that are contained in God's Word.

It is in vain, therefore, that the complaint is raised against us that, given the principles we hold fast regarding the requirements for church fellowship, a crumbling and dissolution of the Church must necessarily follow. By the same right our opponents might also accuse the Lord Himself of not having come to send peace, but the sword. The cause of the crumbling lies not in the correct principle, but in the sin of those who would rather see the bond that united them with the orthodox Church loosed than give up their pet opinions and, together with their Church, submit to the clear Word of God. They accuse the Church of harshness because she will not permit them to depart from God's Word, and they will not see that their own hard-heartedness, with which they cling to their delusion, is the sole cause of the crumbling and dissolution of the Church. Shall the truth yield to error, or shall not error rather yield to the truth?

It now remains for us to state our judgment on what Mr. Consistorial Councillor Ehlers has pronounced concerning the position of our Synod.

When he first expresses the wish that our Synod would clearly and definitely declare itself as to whether it denies church fellowship to all "avowed chiliasts," this wish has already been satisfied. For in the year 1857 our General Synod unanimously confirmed the following resolution, adopted a year earlier by the Western District Synod:

"We reject and condemn every kind of chiliasm according to which it is taught that, before the Last Day, a time is to be expected in which the devil will no longer have power and influence on earth, Christ will visibly come again, all nations will be christianized, and all the departed faithful, or a number of them, will rise bodily and will reign with Christ over all the heathen in a new manner not hitherto existing; we recognize that every interpretation of the following and similar passages of Scripture — Revelation 20, Psalm 67, Daniel 2 and 7, etc. — is, if it contains such a doctrine, false and a perversion of Scripture, since this doctrine is contrary to the analogy of faith, namely to the article concerning the nature of the kingdom of Christ in the world, concerning the general resurrection of the dead, concerning the Last Day, and concerning the return of Christ to judgment. — Although, however, the Synod declares every designated kind of chiliasm to be equally false and pernicious, it nevertheless holds that even a true Christian can fall into this error; it therefore holds it to be its duty toward those