# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1860_S275
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The So-called Thousand-Year Kingdom. 275

is all the more decisive because the whole teaching of Scripture knows only a simultaneous resurrection of the righteous and the wicked, so that the subjects of the first resurrection must also be those of the second — for the following reasons as well:

John sees the souls. From this it is clear that only blessedness can be in view here, not the resurrection of the flesh. For otherwise it would rather be the bodies or corpses that were meant.

It says: "they lived," "but the rest of the dead lived not." Here, then, only life is being granted. Since no further specification is given, this can denote only blessedness in general. It would have been impossible to use the mere phrase "they lived" of those who already enjoyed blessedness, into which, according to the teaching of Revelation, believers enter immediately upon their departure from this life. The essence of heavenly blessedness is designated in Revelation 7:17 by the words: "he shall lead them unto living fountains of waters."

In the passages ch. 7:9–17 and 14:1–5, in which those who died in Christ are set before us in heavenly blessedness, all the marks are present that confront us here: being blessed and holy, being priests of God and of Christ, reigning with him, being withdrawn from the power of the second death.

Even a resolute defender of Chiliasm*) feels compelled to remark: "It is harder to explain why this first resurrection should be an object of such beatitudes and such joy for the departed saints, seeing that they already stand before the Lord as blessed ones." And indeed, the saying "blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection" presupposes that before the first resurrection they were not blessed and not holy or glorious. Since, then, according to the Apocalypse, the blessedness and glory of believers begins immediately upon their departure from this life, the first resurrection can only be heavenly blessedness.**)

"The first resurrection" lies far removed from the end. Between it and the Last Judgment lie the thousand years and the times of Gog and Magog. This excludes the bodily resurrection. The bodily resurrection of all believers is, according to the many repeated sayings of Christ which John in particular is fond of relating, to take place on the "last day," the day after which no other follows, John 6:39–40 (Every one who seeth the Son and believeth on him hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day), 54, etc. The last day cannot be an entire period, at any rate not one that as yet reaches no conclusion. Within the last day it is impossible

*) Flörke, p. 131.
**) Already Burnet, De statu mortuorum et resurgentium, Cologne on the Spree, 1733, p. 257, says: Putas sat scio Beatos fuisse martyres in altera vita, ante suum huc reditum et descensum, quodnam vero aut quam ob rem cepit eos suae beatitudinis fastidium. [I suppose I know well enough that the martyrs were blessed in that other life, before their return and descent hither — but what, or for what reason, seized them with weariness of their own blessedness?]