# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1860_S246
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

246 The So-Called Thousand-Year Kingdom.

they say the Empress Eugénie herself recently contrasted with Charlemagne, asking the present Napoleon whether he wished to follow the example of Charlemagne or of the first Napoleon. We come upon a time in which the spirit of apostasy passes through the nations, in which the dominion of the Christian principle is broken, in which a public opinion forms itself that is estranged from the church and its Lord, in which nobler stirrings of the popular spirit — such as, among us, "the glorious time of the Wars of Liberation" — soon die away again and are "like the morning cloud and like the dew that early passes away."

That, then, is the view opposed to the Chiliastic one. We now wish first to set forth the grounds that speak against Chiliasm, and then to examine the counter-arguments of the Chiliasts.

Let us look first at how the Apocalypse itself, according to its other statements, stands with regard to Chiliasm.

After the end of the thousand years there follows a new, massive uprising against the church, an ecumenical assault upon the camp of the saints and the beloved city. That fits very poorly with the Chiliastic view of the thousand years. It shows that even during that period a bitter root has remained, that Satan has still retained, even within them, a considerable scope for action — even though, because the nations watched and prayed, he could not succeed in organizing a formal assault, so that he had to content himself with carrying on his work more in the dark.

When, at the beginning of the description of the new Jerusalem, it says in chapter 21:1, "I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away," and when the Lord says in verse 5, "Behold, I make all things new," this points to the fact that even the thousand-year kingdom belongs to the old earth, that it is comprehended under Genesis 3, that the enmity continues in it between the serpent and the seed of the woman, that the word retains its force in it: "cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken. For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." There is only an old earth and a new earth, nothing in between. The old order of things continues until the "regeneration" announced by the Lord, and this takes place only on the Last Day.

Further, it is of decisive importance that it says, in the description of the new Jerusalem, in chapter 21:4: "And he shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away." Accordingly, throughout the whole time before the new Jerusalem, and thus also during the thousand years, there are tears and death, toil and crying, an abundance of suffering and sorrow, and whoever longs to be redeemed from this misery must not turn his eyes toward the thousand years