# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1859_S240
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

...of Christendom, but have from the beginning been the horror of simple children of God and of faithful shepherds of Jesus. The difference is only that now, when everything contradicts the old, pure truth of God, they may swagger without anyone being able to stop their trade, and lift their heads a little more boldly. And yet the shaggy hair that still hung red-bristled down their necks in Luther's day has meanwhile turned silver-white. If that were not so, one would surely make short work of them: for however dangerous to the state they are at bottom, their knees now gradually knock together nonetheless; instead of coming to the rescue with the sword of prophecy as before, they now venture only, leaning on a staff that looks almost like the apostolic doctrine (but its bark has been peeled off, so it can no longer grow green — or is it perhaps not the very same defense of the Word, that a mind who enjoys the sap of the trees only so long as the axe has not stripped it of its bark should contradict an unfolding of its innermost, hidden glory upon this old earth that has drunk Christ's blood?) — to totter into the near thousand-year kingdom of their dreams. Their bristles, moreover, still will not be combed smooth today. What vermin might not swarm beneath them? Therefore, no mercy! Reverence for a gray head has no place here. Whoever has sinned himself gray will be spared as little as a child is innocent.

But my teeth will not do it. To use another image: we have come close to a whirlpool. There it is a matter of sailing carefully. God sets us such trials. Whoever is simple of heart and does not let the rule of faith out of sight comes safely through. — I press myself close to Luther. I know he was simple-hearted and understood the compass as well as the rudder. His teeth have cracked the nut. The sweet kernel that came out of it has proven it.

What, then, does Luther write about these thousand years? His words run thus: "The thousand years must begin when this book was made, for the Turk came only after a thousand years; meanwhile the Christians remained and ruled, no thanks to the devil. But now the Turk means to come to the Pope's aid and root out the Christians, because nothing else will help."

Let whoever wants to laugh, laugh. I remain, in all earnestness, with this interpretation of the thousand years. They begin with the redemption that Christ accomplished. There is no other point in time at which the devil's rule was perceptibly broken. The Word already resounds in Paradise and breaks the serpent's neck. No one who believes need fear the devil from Adam onward. But there is a difference between fulfillment and prophecy. As the Lord's coming in the flesh actually cast down the hellish kingdom — which, to be sure, had already long before had no power over believers — so it was specifically in the resurrection that Satan was bound. Consider the many castings-out of devils, the word of the Lord: "I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning," and that this happened throughout the whole apostolic age in the power of the name of Jesus — and then ask,