# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1863_S182
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

182 Testimony against Chiliasm from the Norwegian Lutheran Church.

glorious Messianic kingdom on earth? Then again: to regard "chiliastic hopes" as innocent and "relatively justified" when one is not permitted to say that Scripture teaches anything clearly and definitely giving ground and right, indeed obligation, to such hopes — does that not amount to conceding that Christians may hope for something that is not clearly taught in the Word of God? But to hope for something of which I do not certainly know that God has clearly and definitely taught it is indeed a hope outside the Word, and surely a sin against the first commandment, "to trust God above all things"? For God is for us only in his Word, and if I hope for something outside the Word, then I do not trust God above all things. And what have I as a Christian to do with that of which I do not certainly know whether God has taught it or not? Will this not be a doubtful state without sure, firm faith, and therefore sin? (Rom. 14:23.) And if I believe certainly and firmly according to the Word of God that I can and should expect the Day of Judgment with the apostles at every moment, then I cannot possibly regard any "conception" which makes this faith uncertain or impossible as anything but false and erroneous. And K. T. errs greatly when she calls it a modest position of the theologians in Norway that they set up chiliasm as a problem and "do not venture" to reject it as erroneous (see K. T. 21, 61, col. 224), and that it is therefore immodest and arrogant of us when we venture to do so. On the contrary: it is immodest to reduce the definite doctrine of the Word of God to a merely uncertain human opinion that can suffer such a "problem" beside it as possible or relatively justified. A clear, definite doctrine of Scripture cannot tolerate an opposing conception beside it as a legitimate problem; only uncertain, human opinions about a matter can tolerate that. If, then, the theologians regard chiliasm as a legitimate problem, they must first reduce that clear scriptural doctrine — that all the dead shall be raised on the Last Day, and that we should always expect tribulation, always expect the Day of Judgment — to an uncertain "opinion"; but that is immodest folly and a mastering of the Word of God. And it is no immodest pride, but precisely modesty, to submit all favorite ideas or hopes and conceptions, one's own as well as others', to the Word, and to say: if it is clearly and definitely taught in the Word of God — and I believe it because it is so, that I should expect the Day of Judgment, etc. — then I cannot set up a conception which makes such faith impossible as a mere problem, but must call it a lie, from devils or from men, who wish to confuse and obscure a certain and clear matter of faith. And theologians who let themselves be thrown into alarm by such definiteness only thereby prove that they do not know the difference between a Christian, firm certainty of faith drawn from and according to the clear doctrine of the Word of God — for that doctrine always excludes and condemns all opposing "opinions" as fable and