# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1860_S268
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

268 The So-called Thousand-Year Kingdom.

years lies. So, for example, in Matthew 10:15: "It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment than for that city," 11:22, 12:36, 1 Corinthians 1:8, 3:3, Philippians 1:6, 1 Thessalonians 5:2.

Just as there is only one parousia, one coming of the Lord, so too there is only one epiphany, one appearing of the same, and at this appearing occurs the general judgment, which according to the Apocalypse lies beyond the thousand years. The apostle says in 2 Timothy 4:1 that Christ will judge the living and the dead at his appearing. Over against the one epiphany in the past, 2 Timothy 1:10, stands also the one epiphany in the future found in 1 Timothy 6:14, 2 Timothy 4:8, Titus 2:13. In contradiction to this, Chiliasm teaches a twofold epiphany of the future.

There is, according to Romans 8:19, only one revelation of the sons of God. For it speaks here simply of the revelation. This revelation, which goes hand in hand with the revealing of Christ in glory, Colossians 3:4, and is conditioned by it, occurs in connection with the transfiguration of the earthly creature, the lifting of the curse which was spoken over the earth in Genesis 3, and thus falls beyond the thousand-year period, belonging to the era of the new heaven and the new earth. Until then the life of believers is hidden, Colossians 3:3, just as it has been during the eighteen centuries already elapsed since the first coming of Christ. The holy catholic church remains until then an object of faith, in contrast to the teaching of Chiliasm, which lets it step forth in full visibility and assumes a revelation of the sons of God upon the old earth.

In the overwhelming majority of the passages of the New Testament that speak of the kingdom of God, it stands in the comprehensive sense, so that the whole of the church is thereby designated, the church that was founded when the Word appeared in the flesh. Only comparatively seldom is the kingdom of God spoken of in the emphatic sense, so that thereby is designated that stage of development in which the appearing of the kingdom of God fully corresponds with its essence. So, for example, Luke 9:11, 21:31, 22:18. Professor Auberlen relates these passages to his thousand-year kingdom, and on this bases the claim: "Jesus was a Chiliast." *) But there is obviously only one kingdom of God in the emphatic sense, and that this cannot be the so-called thousand-year kingdom is shown by the Lord's own word in Matthew 19:28, according to which this kingdom first comes with the new birth, the renewal of the world, in the time to which Revelation 21:1 refers: "and I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away." Also the "new wine" that Jesus will drink with his disciples in his Father's kingdom, Matthew 25:34, stands in unmistakable connection with the new heaven and the new earth and with the "behold, I make all things new" of the Apocalypse. The old earth cannot bear new wine. If one wished to have Chri-

*) p. 373.