# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1859_S258
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

...taken, the rule of the church was, it is nevertheless an undeniable fact that episcopal power — at least in name — and the congregation itself attained, at that time, a standing that outshone the thrones and dominions of the earth. And the abuse of spiritual power, which is here shown behind the curtain, is surely also meant to be rebuked, when it takes on a name otherwise belonging to the royal seats of the princes of this world. Indeed, it lies very close at hand to connect the immediately preceding "must — be done away with" with our passage, and to pluck the bitter almond from this bush: because the spiritual eye, in these thousand years, was offended too greatly by the "thrones" with which the new lords mocked the warning of the old Master (cf. Luke 22:25–26), it could no longer endure; God had to withdraw his hand from a kingdom that had exchanged the keel of the ark for the stakes which human hands had rammed into the sandbank.

Let it be noted here in advance that a holy mockery is mixed into the depiction of the thousand-year kingdom generally. God held the devil fast and protected the confessors of the Lord. But what came of it? Despite all the peace that was even enjoyed in the world through Christ, it came about that, to say it plainly, men themselves begged the devil loose again and hauled the dear old lord back up out of the abyss by force. The thousand-year kingdom therefore has no other meaning in the history of the Kingdom of God than to rescue, by a conspicuous sign, the honor of him whose deity Jew and heathen alike disputed. In short: this vision, too, has too large a perspective for us to measure it by any single interpretation of the words before us. When the eye sweeps out over a thousand years, it simply cannot find its resting point where it first falls. These thousand years, moreover, run downhill besides. It is a single line that the eye traces through; but at the bottom everything is low, whereas at the top everything was high. This we can see clearly at this very point. The thrones stood, at first, very high. A city set on a hill was the persecuted apostolic congregation. And behold, it was reason itself that set it down low in the valley. They rose up high before the world, and now the eye of God saw them sinking down.

"And they sat upon them" —: This translation had, in Luther's day, and still has today, its full right: it is the finger of the Holy Spirit, showing us the way. Properly speaking, however, the words run in a way that we cannot possibly render faithfully in the German tongue, namely: "and they set upon the same." Anyone can see what a difference that makes. If one keeps to the text, the eye falls upon others than those who occupy the thrones; our translation, by contrast, lets the eye rest solely on the latter. Now these words, like the ones before them, have — through the fault of the apostates — acquired a double sense, a good one and an evil one. In the first sense they mean as much as: the holy preaching office was set up, that is, Christianity was received. Who would have