# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1859_S314
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Does the Iowa Synod Really Strive, etc. 314

...already secretly at work at that time, ἐνεργεῖται. Now the effect is never present before the cause; therefore the apostle indicates to us that he is already there. And that is why verse 3 does not say that he is yet to be born, but that he is to be revealed. And John tells us, 1 John 4:3: "he is already now in the world." Now if he was already in the world in the apostles' time, and his duration is nevertheless supposed to be only three and a half of our years, then the Antichrist, together with the thousand-year kingdom, is long since past, and the Iowa Synod waits in vain for both.

It is almost superfluous to say even a word about the argument by which it is to be shown that the passage — the day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night — is not contradicted by the Antichrist's three and a half years, for it is nothing more than a petitio principii. First it must be proved that Christians really do know the day of the Lord fairly well from the signs, and only then can such an interpretation of 1 Thess. 5:1-4 be grounded on this certainty, namely that the Lord comes unexpectedly like a thief only for the godless. But against the first point Scripture itself rises up: Luke 21:35, "For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth"; Mark 13:33, "Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is" — so the second point falls as well. The opponents do object that he will not come to believers like a thief, and that they will therefore know when he comes; but they are mistaken about the punctum comparationis, which in verse 4 is different from that in verse 2. In verse 2 the apostle takes the comparison from the unexpected appearing of the thief, while in verse 4 he takes it from his intention

made known through signs and symbolic images. These symbolic images represent the various events and nations of the world. There is no important nation on the globe whose existence has materially influenced the fate of the world or the Christian religion that is not recorded on the sacred map. In the symbolic image of Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel saw the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Macedonian, and the Roman empires bloom and wither, and then he saw a fifth kingdom arise, as different from the others as the stone was from the image of the man. This kingdom was to arise at a time when the Roman empire would have broken up into ten small kingdoms, represented by the "toes." It was to arise outside these kingdoms and was to become a power to overcome them all. There are certain markers by which the time of its rise is fixed. One of these is the destruction of the Jewish temple and the cessation of the daily sacrifice. This, however, took place on the 189th day of the year 68 A.D.; from that time, says Daniel, seventy weeks shall pass, and then "a nation shall be born in one day." Seventy weeks, according to modern interpreters, equal 603 years and 214 days, or 1,290 symbolic days. From the destruction of the temple, on the day given above, the seventy weeks reach exactly to July 4, 1776. — Further: if we start from the morning of the said day on which the temple was burned, from three minutes past five o'clock, which is the exact time when the daily sacrifice ceased, then with the seventy weeks we arrive exactly at a quarter past three o'clock, on the afternoon of July 4, 1776. Precisely at that time, according to the best accounts, the Declaration of Independence was signed and published. Then was "a nation born in one day," a nation free of civil and ecclesiastical monarchy. (Anniversary address, deliv. by Rev. W. M. Leftwich in the Capitol of Missouri, Jefferson City: C. J. Corwin. 1859.)