# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1860_S271
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The So-called Thousand-Year Kingdom. 271

blood, but with the evil spirits under heaven? If Satan is put entirely into retirement, the Bible will soon gather dust.

It is also of significance that the undisturbed happiness which Chiliasm holds out in prospect, on the ground of Genesis 8 — which will continue until the new heaven and the new earth — cannot possibly flourish. From corrupted human nature, manifold strife and war must arise even during the thousand years. The inclemency of the weather, the disposition to sicknesses, the ground's tendency to bear thorns and thistles, the sweat of the brow, death — none of these can cease upon the old earth, which is in no respect fitted to be a place of happiness, but is rather, as "a vale of misery, full of trouble and affliction everywhere," a place in which man is prepared for his future destiny, in which he is not meant to be happy but to become blessed. To make the old earth into a place of undisturbed happiness is to seek grapes from thorns and figs from thistles.

These are the main grounds against Chiliasm. Let us now also consider the objections raised by its friends against the view that the thousand years of the Apocalypse belong to the past. "What the specific content of the millennium is supposed to be according to this interpretation" — it is remarked*) — "in truth reaches too far back into the preceding centuries, as far as Justinian, Theodosius, and Constantine, while conversely the unchristian, unbelieving character of the age reaches too far into the millennium itself." But as far as the latter point is concerned, hardly anyone will be able to deny that the work of Boniface and Charlemagne marks an epoch, and that from that time on the Christian state was secured among the Germanic peoples and attained a firm footing. As for the former point, the binding of Satan could not have been spoken of before the christianization of the peoples who brought about the downfall of the Roman Empire. The beast immediately found a new instrument in the peoples and kings of the great migrations. Only after this new instrument had been destroyed could the binding of Satan be thought of. It is also of significance that it was only among the Germanic peoples that the Christian state truly came to appear. In the old Roman state the pagan root always remained. One can see this quite clearly, for example, in the law of marriage. The idea of Christian marriage first came into its own among the Germanic states. Even under the Christian emperors of ancient Rome the license of divorces persisted, and the attempts to restrict it did not, in the main, achieve their goal. It was only as a result of the conversion of the peoples of the great migrations that pagan Rome truly became Christian. So long as Rome still maintained its dominion, its Christianity was very partial, and its conversion too, so far as it took place, was in many respects predominantly external. Even in the fifth century Rome was the center of heathendom.

*) Dr. Nitzsch, System, § 218.