# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1861_S92
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

92 Report on Preaching the Right Doctrine of Justification.

The one, namely, is the kingdom of grace in time, whose glory is
hidden until the last day, but whose form of the cross is and remains
manifest. The other is the kingdom of glory outside of and above all
time, which abides forever, and in which the kingdom of grace, on the
day of Christ's return to judgment, ceases and passes over. No less do
all the clear passages of Holy Scripture which establish the wholesome
doctrines testify that the last day is to be expected every day.
Accordingly, the heart of a sound Christian who truly lives in
justifying faith stands solely and only "in waiting for the blessed hope
and appearing of the glory of the great God and of our Savior Jesus
Christ." Until then, until this final appearing on the last day of this
world's course, his life is hidden with Christ in God. But when Christ,
who is his life, shall appear, then he too will appear with Him in glory.

Whoever, then, turns away from these sun-clear teaching passages of
Holy Scripture into the half-light of isolated prophetic passages and
rummages about in them, in order to find there, according to the lust of
his carnal spirit, a thousand-year kingdom of joy between the kingdom
of grace and the kingdom of glory, and thereafter to dangle such a
little invention before people unversed in Scripture even as its
doctrine — such a one is at the very least a frivolous fantasist and
enthusiast, without true fear of God and of His Word, and no sober,
simple, sensible evangelical Christian, that is, no Lutheran. And just as
it is certain that such a person, through these fanatical assertions of
his, decidedly damages and corrupts justifying faith in its nearest
blessed effects, as shown above, so it is equally certain that he himself,
for his own person, does not live and move in this faith — that is, does
not work and rest, eat and drink, wake and sleep, fight and suffer,
endure and hope, live and die, in it.

Such a person, if he wishes to become sober from this magical
chiliastic conjuring and delusion, in which the devil too disguises
himself as an angel of light, let him take the eye-salve of the Small
Lutheran Catechism and ponder diligently the explanation of the First
Petition, where, as is well known, to the question of how God's name is
hallowed, the answer runs thus: "When the Word of God is taught in
its truth and purity, and we, as the children of God, also lead holy lives
according to it, help us this to do, dear Father in heaven! But whoever
teaches and lives otherwise than God's Word teaches, profanes among
us the name of God; from that preserve us, heavenly Father!"

As it was said before the beginning of this work, so let it be said once
more here at its close, that it was intended only as an attempt to show
how the doctrine of justification is to be rightly preached. And in the
same way may the other part also be regarded, in which an attempt
was made to show how the doctrine of justification is indirectly
damaged and corrupted in the preaching of other doctrines that are
mostly most closely bound up with it.

W. Sihler.