# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1859_S259
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Twentieth Chapter of the Revelation of St. John. 259

...thought that, in doing so, one had reached for a crown of honor? Indeed, whoever was consecrated a preacher was, so to speak, thereby set down into the mire. Where was a throne there? And who would even have wished to sit upon it himself? And yet, before God, all the labor, disgrace, and persecution taken on by him who was set as shepherd over the flock of Christ was reckoned equal to a royal throne. That is what this passage means to say, for the first period of the thousand years. But how did it turn out afterward? The emperors lent the thrones of the bishops their own splendor. They now also gained great influence over the filling of these seats. Our dear God did not look on this gladly, and many a holy eye among God's children was wounded by it. This appointment, in and of itself, was an offensive spectacle to the congregation of the Lord. "They were set upon them"; but who did the setting, and whom did they set there? Ah, God have mercy! It was only ever a matter of filling positions. The holy thrones — how they were profaned! When at last the thrones had been so nicely upholstered, the Antichrist, even before the thousand years had run out, found it far more profitable not to wait for some high authority to install him, but rather spread his coat-tails apart, showed holy Christendom and the high potentates his most holy backside, and, in his finest style, seated himself upon the comfortable chairs. Every Christian ought indeed to have been ashamed to do such a thing! And it is for this very reason that the Holy Spirit himself marvels at such an abomination, and Luther was in such close agreement with him on this that he set everything else aside and put down, as the sole sense of the words, this in his pen: "they" (the shameless servants of Belial) dared (that the thunder did not strike down upon it was only God's great patience) and "seated themselves upon them" — upon the thrones of the apostles, the humble servants of Jesus, of those to whom the Lord had said: "It shall not be so among you!" (Matthew 20:26.) Luther rightly translated it so; for the Bible was, after all, of no more use to those for whom the earlier sense of the passage had meaning, but was rather meant to be put into the hands of those down in the valley who needed even to catch the farthest ray of that light which here flashes through the thousand years — so that, despite the terrible roaring of the hellish majesty, they might, together with Luther, have a good conscience when they condemned the fact that the Pope had seated himself upon the thrones.

"And judgment was given to them" —: "to them," that is, to the thrones. This simply means as much as: the power which Christ, with the word "Go ye into all the world," etc., had made subject to himself over the whole earth, received, in a wondrous way, the handle into its own hands. It was a wonder. At first the apostles were punished, in Jerusalem and among the heathen, for preaching the gospel — so that they were judged the very moment they, as John 16:8 says, lent their mouths to the Holy Spirit and revealed God's wrath from heaven (cf. Romans 1:18) — and yet at last, by the power that dwelt in their message without any arm of flesh, their voice broke through, so that even the kings of the earth submitted to their judgment. But of this