# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1860_S274
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

274 The So-called Thousand-Year Kingdom.

By this, according to biblical usage, only the bodily resurrection can be understood. And since this has not yet occurred, the thousand years must still belong to the future.

The argument would be conclusive if the resurrection as such were spoken of here. That the resurrection meant is the bodily one is shown, for example, by Matthew 22:30: "In the resurrection they neither marry" etc. But here it is not simply the resurrection that is spoken of, but the first resurrection. By the addition "the first," the resurrection meant here is expressly distinguished from the bodily one. The first resurrection points to a second, and since this second one can only be the bodily resurrection, the first resurrection must designate something else.

It would be quite wrong, on hearing of resurrection, to think at once of the bodily one. According to biblical usage, any passage out of deep misery into salvation can be called a resurrection.*) Right in the first passage that mentions resurrection, Hosea 6:2, it denotes the passage into a happy state: "He will revive us — says the prophet to Israel — after two days; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live in his sight."**) Ezekiel, in chapter 37, beholds under the image of resurrection the restoration of Israel, which had fallen prey to death, that is, to deep misery. According to Luke 2:34 Simeon proclaims: "this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel," and it is plain that this resurrection only culminates in the bodily one, that it designates the whole of the salvation brought by Christ. In Romans 6:5 the new life of believers appears, from its very first beginning, as a reproduction of the resurrection of Christ, and thus likewise as a resurrection. So too in the words "if ye then be risen with Christ," Colossians 3:1; compare also Ephesians 5:14, Romans 8:11.

There is a threefold resurrection of believers. First, the spiritual one at the new birth, the resurrection from the death of sins. This cannot come into consideration here, since the passage speaks of the departed righteous. Then the resurrection of which Klopstock sings: "Rise again, yes, rise again thou shalt, my spirit (not dust?), after brief rest" — the passage of those who have fallen asleep in Christ into heavenly blessedness, which John has before his eyes in the Apocalypse when he says: blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth, and which he depicts in ch. 7:9–17 and 14:1–5 in such delightful colors that the Christian's heart laughs within his breast. Finally, the bodily resurrection. That only heavenly blessedness can be meant here is made clear, besides by the addition "the first," by the

*) From this ambiguity of the expression, the opinion of Hymenaeus and Philetus took its starting point, that the resurrection had already taken place, 2 Timothy 2:18.
**) That what is spoken of here is not a mere "rising" but a "resurrection" is shown by Simson in his commentary on this passage. This is supported by the comparison with Ezekiel's vision, the parallel with the "reviving," and the fact that "life" is named as the result of the raising up.