# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1859_S263
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Twentieth Chapter of the Revelation of St. John. 263

...be mocked: for here is God's word: "with Christ!" If, as this verse testifies, the thousand-year kingdom is to stand in victorious struggle against the devil with Christ, then Christ himself must lead the round-dance, and something that he has done must bear this whole kingdom. But that, when it comes to the struggle against the gates of hell — and let it be pointed out once more that, according to the prophecy, this kingdom stands precisely in that struggle — can only be Christ's descent into hell.

To rightly understand the word "lived," and not to refer it, with the Chiliasts, to a bodily resurrection before the Last Day, compare what has already been said about it at chapter 11:11.

V. 5. "But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection."

Literally: "The remainder of the dead — that is, those who were left behind by the dead (on earth), their survivors — lived not." The sense is: once this line of witnesses had fallen asleep, it was over with faithfulness to the confession; only after the thousand years were completed were the old witnesses to receive, after a brief period of distress, new successors, who would stand forth as a wonder — proof that the "seed" of God's servants thrives before God despite the floodwaters of time (Ps. 102:29.). The emphasis, then, lies on the words: until — were completed.

This verse thus points to a particular feature of the thousand-year kingdom. It is the more immediate relation in which its witnesses stood to the deeds of God that had lifted the old world off its hinges. Men did not think, as much as now, about studying a formula of confession. From mouth to mouth, ever since Pentecost, the new message traveled. Like the waves of the sea, the knowledge of the Lord covered the earth — which did not exclude hypocrisy and a thousandfold misery, but gave every child of God a living point of reference. The instruments that the Lord used to build his kingdom receded, in this, into the background, however much they gradually pushed themselves forward by force. That they had to do so by force proved precisely how much they were working against the spirit that reigned in the church. In this direction of the age lay the points of connection for tradition. In the days of the Reformation, by contrast, one had first, as it were, to awaken again the long-since-fallen-asleep witnesses of the truth. By their word, faith is kindled anew. Those who now come into fellowship with them are, quite properly, their children. Thus is fulfilled what this verse has prophesied: "the rest of the dead (in the sense just explained) live, after the thousand years are completed."

This understanding of our passage is fully justified by the original text. "The rest of the dead," in genuine Greek usage, are those who are left behind as survivors of those who have died. These lived not, and did not become alive again ("again" is missing in the original text, although it corresponds very well to the sense, if one thinks in this connection of the dead who indeed