# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1860_S245
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The So-Called Thousand-Year Kingdom. 245

thousand years, which stands alongside the first, the binding of Satan. It is said that the perfected, faithful witnesses will reign with Christ during the thousand years. One might, accordingly, suppose that the thousand years are the time of the dominion of Christ and his glorified congregation. On closer examination, however, it turns out that this view is mistaken. The reigning of Christ and his believers during the thousand years is to be understood positively and not exclusively — not as though Christ and his believers had not reigned before and would not reign afterward — but rather the reign is ascribed to the thousand years only because reflection is directed precisely upon that period, because the question "what, then, shall become of us during the thousand years?" forms the starting point. Christ reigns without ceasing since his exaltation to the right hand of the Father; he rules even in the midst of his enemies, Psalm 110:2; he rules during the fierce onslaughts of the beast and in the time when Satan has again been let loose from his prison and has gathered Gog and Magog for battle against the beloved city, no less than during the thousand years. According to Revelation 1:5 he is the prince of the kings of the earth; according to chapter 17:14 he conquers the ten kings, because he is Lord of lords and King of kings; according to chapter 19:16, already as he goes forth to battle against the ten kings, he has a name written on his garment and on his thigh, thus: "King of kings and Lord of lords." That is the pledge of victory over the ten kings. According to 1 Corinthians 15:25, Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. That the reigning of believers with Christ is likewise wholly independent of time relations is shown by the remaining passages of the Apocalypse in which it is spoken of: 1:6, 9; 2:26–28; 5:10. Then the Pauline key-passage, 2 Timothy 2:12: "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him." In Romans 5:17 life and reigning appear as inseparably joined. In view of all this, one must give up the designation "thousand-year kingdom" as a misleading one. That, with regard to the thousand years, only a single mark is given is also clear from the fact that the onset of the new period is marked only by the cessation of this one mark. It says only: "when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison" — and of any cessation of the kingdom of Christ and of his perfected believers there is not a single word said.

This, then, is what the Apocalypse says of the millennium, during which Satan is bound so that he can no longer seduce the nations. There follows the new era, when Satan, having been loosed from his prison, again seduces the nations and gathers them for an assault against the beloved city, the church. The fulfillment lies before our eyes. If we reckon a thousand years from Boniface and Charlemagne, we come upon Voltaire, this Malefacius, whose watchword écrasez l'infâme means as much as: Satan, be loosed — upon the French Revolution, upon Napoleon, whom