# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1860_S270
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

270 The So-called Thousand-Year Kingdom.

hymns it says: "If it always went according to flesh and blood, in favor, health, and cheerful spirits, what would become of us?" Jung Stilling relates heart-piercing sufferings that befell him during a winter. But, he adds, how could it be otherwise? Without tribulation I would become a stagnant pool. The thousand years, thought of as a golden age, would thus, considered more deeply, be the absolute opposite of such a thing; it would be impossible for such a state of happiness to continue for a thousand years; before even one generation had passed, sins would so mightily proliferate that they would forcibly call down the judgments of God. One should also consider that God would not be merciful, gracious, patient, and of great goodness and faithfulness if he struck us harder than is absolutely necessary for our salvation. But to assume that is the consequence of Chiliasm. What God, according to it, will grant in the thousand years, he could already grant us now. Thereby the reason for our sufferings disappears, sufferings which often press upon us so heavily, and we are robbed of a fullness of comfort.

It is also a questionable side of Chiliasm that it lets Satan's activity cease entirely during the thousand years. Satan belongs, between Genesis 8 and the new earth, among the necessary furnishings of the best of worlds. Were this not so, that savage would be right in his question: why does God not simply strike him dead. He is the instrument of God by which hidden godlessness is drawn into the light and ripened for judgment, as can be seen in the example of Judas. He is the instrument of advancement for the elect. "Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been proved he shall receive the crown of life." But the instrument of this salutary temptation is "the tempter." That this one approached Christ is exemplary for the life of all believers. If Satan were brought to complete quiescence, they would be robbed of an essential means of progress. On this side too, the age that appears golden on the surface would, on deeper consideration, prove to be the opposite of such a thing. Schelling called Satan the solicitant principle in world history. Were we to think his activity away from the old earth, a sorrowful stagnation would set in.

Furthermore, for the whole duration of the present course of the world, the Holy Scripture has been given to the church. But this would lose most of its savor for the Chiliasts during the thousand years. The further one advances in the knowledge of Holy Scripture, the more one recognizes that it is a book of comfort, that J. Gerhard is right when he says: "one may well say that the whole of Holy Scripture is a continuous consolation, offered to the devout who sigh under the cross in this life." Should the cross cease, Holy Scripture would lose a great deal of its charm. What else drives one further into it than the cunning assaults of the devil, and the experiences in which it becomes plain that we do not wrestle with flesh and