# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1859_S262
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

...persecuted [faithful servants of the Lord], because these sang, of Jesus, the song of St. John: "The Word became flesh." But it gets better yet. For it goes on to say:

"and who had not worshiped the beast, nor his image, and had not received his mark upon their forehead and upon their hand."

There we find ourselves once again in the very midst of the papacy, and can fetch the answer for ourselves out of chapters 13:15–17 and 14:9–11, etc., as to how far the boundaries of the thousand-year kingdom extend. This, too, serves only for its glorification. The gigantic exertions of the devil, and his thousandfold cunning to overthrow it, remain the whetstone of this diamond for as long as it still exists, even though it may at times be entirely covered over by them. Only when the struggle ceases, when there is no more contradiction and everything simply endures it, has the Antichrist truly established himself in the temple of God, and the bride of the Lamb lies with her adornment in the dust. Thus, then, the thousand-year kingdom continued to exist even under the papacy itself. But of those who are to be reckoned to it during that time, it does not say: I saw "the souls of the beheaded"; but simply: I saw all who did not worship, etc. For we know that the Pope burned with fire, and did not behead. The deeper reason, however, why nothing is said of the death penalty is probably this: that before the papacy ever attained such power as to be able to burn a Hus, the church had already held its ground in the struggle against it. All who have never, from the beginning, bowed their knees before this Baal are here reckoned equal to the martyrs.

"These lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."

This is to be understood thus: although all of these, in part, died early a violent death, and in part had anguish in the world and soon had to depart from it, they nevertheless had this great joy of victory: that the cause for which alone they lived — of whom indeed it is said that they loved not their lives even unto death — was, for a good while on earth, a leaven that leavened the whole lump, a grain of mustard seed from which grew a tree, under whose branches the birds of heaven sat. This follows clearly from the fact that it is added: — "with Christ." Had they remained alive that whole while, humanly speaking, this prophecy would not have been needed at all. But because they died bodily, it had to be said, so that the devil could not boast of it, that neither the cause which had been their life, nor their own persons, had suffered the least harm thereby. The saying: "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's," casts full light upon this passage.

Such a triumphal procession the Risen One held. It was still ever the same note that rang out from David's dust-covered harp on Easter morning. Nor did the strings ever cease to tremble. — For it was indeed by the power of the Lord's resurrection that all this came to pass, as the apostles so often testify. Who, then, would now wish to laugh at me for saying: with Christ's descent into hell begins the thousand-year kingdom? But I gladly let myself, with Luther, be—