# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1860_S267
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The So-called Thousand-Year Kingdom. 267

"...ken." In open contradiction to this, Chiliasm teaches a twofold coming of the Lord: one for the establishment of the thousand-year kingdom, the other for the Last Judgment.

All the other books of the New Testament likewise, whose teaching concerning the last things has a wonderful unity, know of only one parousia, one coming of the Lord. Everywhere it speaks simply of the parousia of our Lord Jesus Christ. Chiliasm must acknowledge this, but it has now advanced to the bold claim that the expression parousia designates everywhere in the New Testament only his coming to establish the thousand-year kingdom.*) Why, then, only this coming and not also the coming to judgment and to the new birth should bear the name of parousia, no reason can be given. There are, however, decisive grounds for holding that the coming is rather everywhere the coming to the Last Judgment, beside which no other exists. To the question in 2 Peter 3:4, "where is the promise of his coming?" the answer is given in verse 10: "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up." According to 2 Thessalonians 2:1, our gathering together unto him is joined with the parousia of Christ; according to 1 Thessalonians 4:17, the rapture of the living from the earth, with which their transformation is immediately joined. If one lets oneself be driven by these passages so far as to place the transformation of the still-living believers and their rapture to Christ before the so-called thousand-year kingdom, one loses the living substance of the "camp of the saints" and of the "beloved city" which meet us in the Apocalypse beyond the thousand years. Further, according to 1 Thessalonians 3:13, our Lord Jesus appears at his coming "with all his saints," that is, his angels. This escort of angels is characteristic of the coming to the Last Judgment. In Matthew 25:31 the Son of Man comes in his glory, and his angels with him, and as a result of this appearing some go into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into everlasting life. According to ch. 13:41 the angels go out and gather out of Christ's kingdom all things that offend and those who do iniquity, and cast them into the furnace of fire. According to v. 39 the angels will go out at the end of the world and sever the wicked from among the just. There we clearly stand beyond the thousand years, at the point where the dead are judged according to their works, Revelation 20:12, and where all who are not found written in the book of life are cast into the lake of fire, v. 15.

Hand in hand with the passages that speak of the parousia go the references to the "day of the Lord," the "day of judgment." These too everywhere know only of one day. It cannot be the Chiliasts' day that is meant, because this day is assigned, among other things, the judgment of the departed ungodly, which according to the Apocalypse lies only beyond the thousand

*) Auberlen, p. 369.