# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1863_S179
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Testimony against Chiliasm from the Norwegian Lutheran Church. 179

Article V, whereby one obtains such faith: "to obtain such faith, God instituted the preaching office, giving the Gospel and the sacrament." Through this preaching office, which the holy apostles administered then and the missionaries administer now, for example, congregations have arisen and do arise. This office exists before the congregations, because the Gospel and the sacrament exist beforehand and must exist beforehand. But once Christian congregations have arisen — friends out of enemies of Christ, members of the household out of strangers, brothers, joint heirs, all possessing equal rights and powers — then no one among them may exercise the preaching office publicly, that is, on behalf of the community, without a transfer of office, without a regular call; therefore the Church teaches (Article XIV): "No one should teach publicly in the Church without a regular call." That is to say: no one may administer the pastoral office without a call from the parish congregation. This pastoral office can only ever exist after the congregation has arisen, because a call and vocation cannot go forth unless those who call and commission already exist. The preaching office moves through the world in a twofold form, a missionary one and a pastoral one; where this distinction is recognized and held fast, all doubts and obscurities resolve themselves most easily and most satisfactorily. Thus Scripture and experience are not against, but for, the pure Lutheran doctrine of the office, because Scripture stands for the truth, and experience too, in the end, always gives the truth its due. —

Testimony against Chiliasm from the Norwegian
Lutheran Church.

Our dear brethren of the Norwegian Lutheran Synod of Wisconsin have been publicly attacked, in the journal "Kirktidende" published in Norway, on account of the faithfully Lutheran position which they hold. They have therefore published a thorough vindication of that position, from the pen of the Rev. Pastor Ottesen of Utica, Dane Co., Wis., in another widely-read journal in Norway, and have also communicated the same in their own organ here, the "Kirkelig Maanedstidende." From this we too now communicate the section which contains a testimony against Chiliasm, herewith, according to a translation prepared by a Norwegian student here:

Here the "K. T." (Kirktidende) accuses us of a one-sided interpretation of Art. 17, as also of Art. 14, that is equally one-sided. Indeed, we are so one-sided that when Art. 17 teaches that Christ will come visibly at the end of the world, to hold judgment and to raise up all the dead, etc., we are unable, on the other hand, to see how it could also be taught, "in good agreement with this," that Christ will return a thousand years before the Day of Judgment and raise up the believers and