# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1859_S315
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Does the Iowa Synod Really Strive, etc. 315

...he takes it from. Scripture excepts no one from the uncertainty of the coming, but it does except believers from its terrible consequences. Cf. John 10:10: "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy." Theophylact, among others, interprets the passage in just this way, saying: "But ye are not children of darkness, that is, ye do not lead an unclean, dark life. But someone might say: What then — shall the day also seize unexpectedly those who are stained by no spot? It will indeed come upon them, but it will not bring its sorrow upon them."*) The opponents themselves, however, must already have had some doubt about the soundness of this interpretation, since they bring forward yet another proof, which is either quite superfluous or is only meant to take effect once their interpretation of 1 Thess. 5 — that believers know the time of the Lord — fails to hold up. For they say: "Even if the Christians of the last time knew, from the signs so clearly foretold in the book of prophecy, the nearness of Christ's coming, it is not thereby said that they now recognize the day or hour of Christ's coming. So for them too the word still stands, that Christ can come in an hour when they do not expect it." They thus do, after all, allow themselves to be reasoned with, and admit at least that the day and hour are uncertain; and if they will now look properly at Mark 13:33, "for ye know not when the time, καιρός, is," there is hope that they will yet take a further step.

But one thing more deserves mention here: pressed to the utmost, the opponents themselves admit that no one can know the time of the Antichrist before his end. Now is this not the old principle of the Lutheran church, that fulfillment is the only correct and certain interpretation of prophecy where the Holy Spirit has not himself given a clear and certain interpretation? Why then will these dear people hold to this principle only under compulsion and as an exception, and not carry it through consistently, casting all their "own interpretation" overboard? What good, after all, is the clamor about "greater development" if such an entire Synodical Report can bear comparison with the works of our fathers in no other respect than, perhaps, in type and printer's ink! —

On the third question — whether the Lord Jesus will destroy the Antichrist at his coming to the thousand-year kingdom — the said synod says: "When the time of the Antichrist is then fulfilled, Christ will put an end to him through the appearing of his visible coming. To this coming of Christ for the destruction of the Antichrist the thousand-year kingdom attaches itself." (Loc. cit., pp. 21-22.) And to escape the objection that, with their thousand-year kingdom, they are like the wicked servant who said, "My lord delayeth his coming," they say: "There-

*) "Vos autem non estis in tenebris, hoc est, non tenebrosam et impuram ducitis vitam. Dicet aliquis: Quid ergo? Num et hos, etsi nulla sint labe affecti, vel incertus invasurus est finis? Invadet quidem, sed nullo eos obducet moerore." ["But ye are not in darkness, that is, ye do not lead a dark and impure life. Someone will say: What then? Shall an uncertain end also fall upon these, even though they are stained by no blemish? It will indeed fall upon them, but it will cover them with no sorrow."]