# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1859_S237
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Twentieth Chapter of the Revelation of St. John. 237

"and a great chain in his hand" —: a chain "that no one can break," with link joined to link in unmeasurable length.

The key is the word. The chain is the preachers of the word. They stand in Christ's hand and are bound to one another indissolubly. "Day unto day uttereth speech."

He has both; but who vouches for that? For that very reason it may well be written that One saw it.

It is remarkable that the papists drum into the people's heads that Luther is bound to a chain, so that whoever God opens the eyes of can see him in hell. Well, if the devil lies, he steals the truth. It would then only need to stand in another place, and everything would be right. Here too the whole error rests on this, that for "the key of the bottomless pit" one substitutes: bound in the abyss of hell, and out of the "great chain" in Christ's hand one makes a chain with which Luther was supposedly bound.

It seems to me again almost as though I heard Elijah mocking: "An angel from heaven" — look, you papists who limp around Baal's altar — He, He has the key which is, for you indeed, a true key of the abyss, a key of hell and of the devil; but take care, he turns it against you: then what you condemn to the abyss of hell becomes your own damnation. And in His hand — look here, do not turn away — hangs the whole great chain, which for you is truly a chain. But I will spare you: I do not write outright "in his hand," but rather in such a way that your ears, should you take it in at all, might make of it "against his hand." For it is directed against Him, as you yourselves say, and therefore you have made it recognizable enough, and have, ever since your worthy predecessors in the City of Seven Hills, loaded link after link of the great chain with chains. But you merely cast it against Him in vain: it falls back upon His hand — how else could it clank on and on so that your ears ring?

And in all seriousness, it is not without reason that epi (meaning: against, upon, at, rather than "in") stands here. At least for the links of the chain — especially those which, moreover, hang down quite far, all the way to just before the Last Day — it must be a comfort that the Holy Spirit too knows this and sets the words accordingly, so that they must let it be disputed whether Christ carries them, and how they themselves wrestle with prayer and supplication, despite the devil's lie and despite their own unbelieving flesh, to cling fast to the hand, and to cast themselves upon it, which according to their own feeling is turned against them. Indeed, Christ makes it forcibly hard for them, because He pushes them, chain and all, back under the wrist, and, whenever they try to draw near the fingers, flings them again, almost impatiently, back to the place He has assigned them — because He wishes to hold the key of knowledge in His own hand Himself. — One can only marvel that He has found links for the chain at all, and that one keeps on being welded to another even now. Well, that is precisely why He calls it "great" — the rusty chain which, since it runs downhill, can be put to no further use than to jam the wheels on God's chariot: —