# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1860_S51
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Conversion of the Jews and the Thousand-Year Kingdom. 51

is. He maintains, however, that between the condition of the present-day Church and that of the congregation of the thousand-year kingdom there is no other difference than that the latter, which is supposed to be composed of an Israelite and a heathen-Christian church, stands in a heightened fellowship with the Lord, and by virtue of that fellowship exercises world rule. For the rest, sin and death are supposed still to be present in it, though only as determinations of nature. The members of the thousand-year kingdom also beget and rear children — the latter, however, only during the years of childhood; for since the Millennium must consist of nothing but saints, the millennial children are cast out into the rest of the world, to Gog and Magog, until they have proved themselves and attained maturity! — Concerning this account, especially the latter part, the said journal itself quite rightly says: "But let us set aside these follies offered up under the claim to the most authentic Lutheranism! What is at stake is something very serious, a fundamentally essential piece of the Christian hope" — but what, then, does the critic himself bring forth? — He maintains that, according to 1 Thessalonians 4:15–17, 1 Corinthians 15:51–53, 2 Corinthians 5:4, 2 Thessalonians 1:10ff., 1 John 3:2, and Philippians 3:20, such a thousand-year kingdom is to be expected, consisting entirely of people with glorified bodies, namely of those believers then partly risen from the dead and partly transformed while living, who are therefore then without sin and death. Then, upon the world that nevertheless remains unconverted, the word will only the more truly be verified: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." — It is, sadly, understandable, though certainly sad enough, that such stuff now finds its way even into the Erlangen journal (which at present is edited only by Dr. v. Hoffmann, Dr. H. Schmid, and Dr. A. v. Scheurl). —

In the October number of Reuter's Repertorium of last year there are reviews of two chiliastic writings — first, one by Th. Lessing ("The Hope of the Christian. Stuttgart, 1858"). In the review of this work it says: "It is unsuitable, indeed perverse and wrong, to turn at once with such matter (with chiliastic expositions) to lay Christians, unless one really intends to break with one's church. There lies in this, in any case, either an unfaithfulness or a hostility toward one's own church, which stands out the more strongly the more one conceals from lay Christians this contradiction with the church. The author does hint at it, to be sure, delicately, in the preface, by admitting that he may here and there have gone beyond the letter of the confessional writings, yet he means all the same that in doing so he has endeavored to search further according to the spirit and sense of the Reformation (!!), and he neglects — which we find decidedly reprehensible — to indicate, at the relevant points, his departure from church doctrine. For the author teaches the chiliasm definitely condemned in Article 17 of the Augustana, and indeed in very sensuously fanciful