# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1859_S243
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Twentieth Chapter of the Revelation of St. John. 243

...upward. And the Word alone accomplished that. O mighty key! What more do we need?

"and sealed it above him" — that goes on much as at the burial of Christ. And Christendom should take note of this. For he will come again once, and then put on just such suffering as an ornament of Christ (Antichrist).

Now let us look at the words. "Sealing" expresses an act that draws its force from an authority whose only coat of arms is the seal itself — as when, in the name of the government, pledged goods are made untouchable, or as Pilate secures Christ's grave. In and of itself it is a small sign; but it warns of someone who will avenge it, if it is not heeded. What, then, is it here? The word and the testimony, we have seen, are already represented under the key and the chain. Besides, Satan has now long since been bound and rendered harmless. What, then, is the seal on the gravestone meant to signify? Well, ask that. What was the mark with which God branded Cain? What is it that, to this very day, gives such a stamp in the eyes of the Jew, of the Christian, indeed of the world, that no one is tempted to adopt his way? One feels the force of such a seal and yet sees nothing. For it is not, in itself, some peculiar custom. What else might one not otherwise adopt? It is a secret ban that God gives force to in the hearts of men, without their being able to account for how they actually come to bow beneath it. What once enchanted the whole world has now become an abomination to the whole world. With that, everything has been said that can be said about the seal. Let us put it to the test. The Jewish temple-service, with its priesthood and its holy ordinances, so powerfully terrified even the disciples themselves right up to the resurrection that they timidly drew back when its custodians condemned Christ. But on Easter morning the guards themselves at once felt the force of the seal we are speaking of here, and the high priests respected it no less. Pentecost finds the apostles disenchanted, and from then on it is no longer possible for the satanic power of the Jewish priestly order — as one must regard it since the veil in the temple was torn — to armor over its impotence. Worldly power the Caiaphas-faction still has; but the seal it cannot remove. In the destruction of Jerusalem it becomes then fully manifest whose image and inscription it is. The heathen altars likewise, until the apostles went out into all the world, had flaunted their plunder of divine majesty in undisturbed peace. But when the word of the cross rang out, even the devoted advocate of the great goddess Diana had to fill the whole city of Ephesus with the complaint that the moon could not compete with the sun. That hearts, despite the ancient shrines and all the pomp of their festivals, suddenly grew cold again had its sole cause, once more, in the seal that God pressed upon the foreheads of the idols. The emperor Constantine was at last sensible enough to let himself be instructed. But he did not press the seal