# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1859_S241
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Twentieth Chapter of the Revelation of St. John. 241

...whether any period, as long as the church stands, can still claim to be set beside the days of the apostles? If anything has been pointed out with the finger that the Lord stretches out in history, it is this word. Indeed, the beginning of the "thousand years" follows so naturally of itself that one can only wonder how clever people could have hit upon the idea of wanting to begin anywhere else than where the Lord visibly began. That once men start guessing, there is no end to the errors, one can well imagine. Hence the countless opinions about the thousand years.

But what, then, does "and bound him — a thousand years" mean? It does not mean: made a complete end of him; otherwise it would say: killed him. The devil remained still within his own domain; but within it he remained bound. (Note well that his dwelling has no stone walls, so there is no thinking here of the local boundaries of some district into which the enemy would have been banished — that surely needs no mention. Whoever grants this, however, must not then come to Luther with the objection that even within the visible church — one cannot claim this of the invisible church, that is, of the church in the proper sense of the word — the devil still had so much power throughout those thousand years.) He had, for example, the power to fall upon the sons of the high priest Sceva (Acts 19:16); but he was not permitted to touch a hair of the apostle Paul. Where had anyone before ever been able to offer him that? Now he found resistance, and effective resistance at that. Across the whole earth the Lord's servants went, and there was no place where Satan would not have had to yield before them, wherever there were people willing. The complaint, to be sure, did not therefore fall silent: "How often would I have gathered you together — but you would not!" Yet that was only a complaint about the resistance of the people who were invited, because they preferred the devil's rule to Christ's gentle yoke. And that is what matters here.

One might indeed object that this had also, at bottom, been the sole reason before why Satan kept his kingdom. For it is true that from Adam onward the truth was testified to all nations, and it was only their own resistance that was to blame if they did not, like that official at Damascus, also worship the God of Israel in the midst of the heathen. But in the first place, it has already been recalled that fulfillment is more than prophecy, just as it is one thing when the tree stands resplendent with fruit, and another when in winter the sap withdraws into the innermost core, although the tree remains the same tree. It is precisely the new form in which the kingdom of God appears in the world under the New Testament that decides the matter here. One need only think of such sayings as: "Go into all the world," etc. "God overlooked the times of ignorance, but now commands all men everywhere to repent." Do these not throw full light on our passage? And have these words remained mere words? Does not the whole earth bear witness to their power? Why else does one distinguish