# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1862_S372
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

372 Church and Contemporary History.

The same reviewer reviews the work of Bauer, Inspector of the
Mission Institute at Neuendettelsau: The So-Called Chiliasm. Nördlingen,
1860, as follows: In this work defending chiliasm, the following seven
points are discussed briefly and to the point: 1) to set up, against the
reprehensible chiliasm rejected by our Church, a legitimate and scriptural
chiliasm; 2) to establish the facts hoped for by it; 3) to examine its
scriptural basis; 4) to set this doctrinal point alongside the Lutheran
teaching; 5) to demonstrate its practical significance; 6) whether this
doctrine belongs in the pulpit; 7) whether it could give cause for
schism. The most important point is naturally the third, the examination
of the Scripture passages; everything else will be understood of itself; but
it is precisely over this point that the lecturer passes remarkably quickly;
he does not even discuss — no, he merely touches — the passages 2
Thess. 2:3; Rom. 11; Matt. 23:38-39; Rev. 7 and 11, and, from the Old
Testament, Dan. 2 and 7, as well as Ezek. 37. The whole Judaizing
understanding of the Old Testament is presupposed, and this is combined
in an improper way with Rev. 20 — as has already been censured
elsewhere by the reviewer in this journal (1861, III, p. 412 ff.). The
greatest exegetical difficulty is said to lie in determining where to place
Christ's return, whether before or after the thousand-year kingdom. The
difficulty is resolved by "assuming" a double return, and to this
unscriptural makeshift we then owe the view that "Christ, from Zion, will
exercise over all kingdoms and peoples a rule as gracious as it is
powerful, corresponding to the peculiar conditions of that period. It is
the highest bloom and consummation, the kingdom-form of the Church
of Christ on earth." Despite the restrictions by which the author limits
this earthly hope, we must therefore say: it is untrue what Paul says: "If
in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most
miserable." No, no longer the most miserable, for we may hope for the
Millennium, and Shem-Hamphoras will give us a share in his Zion-
kingdom. Such a doctrine does not seem to us as innocent as it appears
to the author, and should it gain still more ground than hitherto in the
breadth of the congregations, we should not know why this fanaticism
should not work as divisively for the Church as many another. At present
much tolerance is being preached in Neuendettelsau, but whoever sows
the wind will reap the whirlwind.

Church and Contemporary History.

I. America.

The Church and the Military Power in Conflict. The following we
read in a New York political paper of October 25, in a correspondence
from New Orleans: "Last week Governor Shepley issued an order to the
rectors of the various Episcopal churches that henceforth divine service should be held