# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1860_S244
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

244 The So-Called Thousand-Year Kingdom.

overthrow of the old Roman Empire proceeded. For what is stated further in chapter 20:4–6 with reference to the thousand years does not belong to the historical domain, but to existence in the world beyond, and is only a particular application of the Christian article of faith concerning eternal life. The Apocalypse is not a book of soothsaying; it is a book of comfort. It is meant, in the first place, to comfort those who at the time of its composition were groaning under the Roman persecution, and to equip them with invincible strength. We must never forget that it was written by one who was on the island of Patmos for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, and who dedicated his book, in the first instance, to his "companions in the tribulation and in the patience of Jesus Christ." From the circle of these there came to him, as he proclaimed the binding of Satan at the beginning of the thousand years — to him who at present had great wrath and persecuted the woman who had borne the man-child, and cast out of his mouth water like a flood after her, to sweep her away — the question in return: but what is that for us, who fall under the strokes of Satan before the dawning of the thousand years? "What shall we have," Matthew 19:27. The prosaic answer to this question is this: what the earth denies you, you will find in heaven. But in that form the answer could not be given in the Apocalypse. It is wrong when some read it as though they had before them a compendium of dogmatics. It belongs to the highest flight of sacred poetry; it is a book of the visions of God. Vision loves to clothe everything with flesh and blood and to present it in vivid, pictorial form. So it happens here as well. A court of judgment is held, and in it appear all the martyrs and faithful confessors, all who in the persecutions by the beast, the heathen world-power, did not deny the faith, and who, after the trial of their works, are appointed unto life. Even if they do not live to see, on earth, the dawning of the thousand years, they nevertheless find themselves, during that time, in heavenly blessedness, while their persecutors and oppressors are deprived of it, and are at last cast down into the dreadful lake of fire, becoming a prey of the second death, which has no power over the blessed. Who, in view of this, would not willingly and joyfully endure the sufferings of this present time; who would begrudge the enemies of the church their fortune and their successes, which lead to such an end?

Just as the seer here ascends from earth to heaven, so also in chapter 7 it is first depicted how, in the tribulations that are to come, God holds his protecting hand over his believers on earth, and then, in verses 9–17, attention is directed to the heavenly glory that, after the brief tribulation of this time, awaits the elect.

At first glance, then, the description of the heavenly blessedness which the elect enjoy during the thousand years, although it removes itself, on the whole, from the domain of historical development, nevertheless contains a second characteristic mark of the