# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1861_S229
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

What Is Reported of Us, True and False. 229

his more recent little books, for example "the Rose Months," show plainly enough that he
stands in open opposition to us; for this
little writing too makes it fairly clear to anyone who has eyes to see that his whole outlook is less and less
borne and permeated by the doctrine of justification, that the evangelical light is more and more
being extinguished in him, and that in its place an un-Lutheran contriving and work-mongering under the
appearance and pretense of the Lutheran character is taking possession of his heart. Finally,
it can hardly be hidden from him that, since he separated from us by his own doing,
no particular fortune and blessing rests any longer upon his work for
America; for who would maintain that his creature and
likeness, the chiliastic, unstable and shapeless Iowa Synod, with its Lutheran
demeanor without Lutheran substance, were a special blessing for
this land?

From the side of the Prussian Lutherans too our procedure
against chiliasm in doctrine and practice had no favorable reception and
assent to expect; for in the first place their "Kirchenblatt" has not shown the
proper confessional earnestness against chiliasm and has here and
there dealt rather too humanly with Löhe and his adherents. And in the second place
the synod assembled in the autumn actually made a kind of compromise with
chiliasm; for while on the one hand it confesses the 17th article of the
Augsburg Confession, it at the same time declares that it will not on that account
deny anyone's Lutheran orthodoxy or hold him under suspicion
for believing that he "must understand the 20th chapter of Revelation and other prophetic passages treating of the historical
course through the world in such a way that
he looks for their fulfillment still in the future."

But such a declaration would hardly have been issued if the synod had viewed
chiliasm from the truly Lutheran standpoint, namely from that of justifying
faith; then in holy hatred
against this harmful and pernicious fanaticism it would have raised a quite different, plain
and decided testimony against it; for Christians truly living in
justifying faith are already fellow citizens with the
saints and of God's household, and though hidden under the mask of the cross,
are yet inwardly priests and kings before God, who "with godly
being and holy walk wait and hasten unto the coming of the day of the
LORD," 2 Peter 3. They are already spiritually risen with Christ and
set in the heavenly places, and wait for no thousand-year kingdom,
but "for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of the great
God and of our Savior Jesus Christ" on the last day, Titus 2:13.
"Their conversation is already in heaven, from whence also they look for the Savior Jesus Christ, the LORD, who on the day of the general resurrection
will also transfigure their vile body, that it may be like unto His transfigured
body, according to the working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself,"
Philippians 3:21.

If this is so, then it is certain that such people are not in justifying