# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1859_S147
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the History of American Chiliasm. 147

and instructed better, the lengthy report says nothing of this; it seems Pastor Grabau received this disclosure in silence, so as not to loosen at once the tender bond just then tied between Buffalo and Neuendettelsau. For the report says: "This, however, appeared only as a private opinion; for he did not say that he intended to preach it, and in the session of the K. Ministerium he remained silent when it was declared there that such opinions might not be preached. We had always distinguished such private opinions from public preaching and confessing." Just as Grabau had kept silent about Dörfler's disclosure that he believed in a thousand-year kingdom, so now Dörfler in turn kept silent about the K. Ministerium's declaration that chiliasm might not be preached. Dörfler probably held the latter to be an inconsistency, since one who believes in crude chiliasm naturally cannot preach in a Lutheran manner, even if he wished positively to keep silent about his chiliasm. For the crude chiliast does not, after all, believe the doctrines of Christ's kingdom, of the general resurrection of the dead on the Last Day, of Christ's coming, of the Antichrist, etc. Later the Buffalo people themselves seem to have recognized their inconsistency, for they cite, for example, the following passage from Baumgarten's Commentary on the Christian Book of Concord, p. 103: "The defenders of such (chiliastic) opinions cannot be genuine confessors of Article 17 of the Augsburg Confession. In this they can defend themselves neither with the evasion of a distinction between their chiliasm and the dreams of the Jews and a resurrection of all the saints preceding the expected kingdom of Christ, or an earthly kingdom which they do not maintain, with a complete cessation of all the godless; nor yet with the pretense of not propagating such opinions."

The report goes on to say: "From the month of August until December 1858 we heard nothing from Dörfler that he was spreading the chiliastic doctrine; but in December of that same year the rumor of it came, by way of the parish vicar at Detroit, to the Senior of the Ministerium at Buffalo, with the request that the schoolteacher Runkel in Toledo, who was troubled in conscience over Dörfler's chiliastic activity, be counseled, or that other suitable steps be taken in the matter." So Dörfler was accordingly asked how matters stood with the rumor that he was spreading chiliasm. "Thereupon Dörfler gave," as the report states, "on Dec. 8, '58, the following haughty and improper answer." Namely, first, that he had never publicly preached the doctrine of a thousand-year kingdom, only occasionally, on a Wednesday evening of the past winter in the school, when he had been going through the Augsburg Confession with some members, he had at the close of Article 17 made a few remarks about it; second, that he had by chance spoken privately with individual members of the congregation about it, but had never had the intention of pressing his opinion regarding this doctrine in an underhand, back-room manner — for what else did he have his pulpit for? Third, that he acknowledged Apoc. 20 as God's Word, and in view of this