# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1859_S266
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

"that hath part in the first resurrection" — he who thereby joins the ranks of those who have Christ for their forerunner. It would be a great thing if only the news of the one resurrection of Christ were to sound forth. But now it is preached in such a way that everyone who receives the preaching obtains, through his faith, a share in it. Then an ever-growing choir of blessed souls jubilantly cries: The One is the First! The "first" promises a second — yours and mine. — Now the mystery has been made manifest. All the world wished to become blessed through its own life, and one generation rattled out to the next, in death: we have not become so; our hope was a lie. All the world was to become holy through its own works, and one hypocrite confessed in confidence to another that his holiness was fraud, that beneath the mask of virtue his heart was a cesspool of vice. What men had so long sought in vain, with so much toil, was now offered, free of charge, through the "first resurrection." Blessed and holy was everyone who received the testimony of Christ's resurrection.

And yet it was, at the same time, necessary to proclaim the "first" as the promise of a second. For — a fresh proof that no visible kingdom of peace is to be sought in these thousand years — whoever became a partaker of it (the very expression "hath part in," etc., already points to Christ's resurrection) had, according to the word of the Lord, "in the world ye shall have tribulation," so much to suffer that he would scarcely have recognized this blessedness at all, had its goal not been set further off, and had this "first" not been presented as a mere passage into a resurrection still to come.

"On such the second death hath no power." — Up to the first death, one would rather do without the hope that is given us in Christ, because it brings too much temptation and trial with it. If, therefore, despite the "blessed and holy is," etc., which we have just heard, courage should still remain faint, then the soul is now, in holy terror, given a fresh incentive. For those who, for the sake of the life to come, do not wish to be "of all men most miserable," are reminded in these words that "the second death" still awaits — that is, as v. 14 explains, the eternal damnation in the hellish pit — for those who set no store by such blessedness.

"but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years." — Here is added the comfort that a Christian already has in this present life. Not only may he hope for another, more perfect resurrection than the one to which he is already awakened here in faith, when he lays hold of Christ's resurrection, and need not be terrified before damnation; but even in this body of death, his suffering bears rich fruit: for "they shall be priests of God and of Christ" — they must indeed offer themselves up, but they offer themselves to God, and indeed not to a God who sat enthroned outside the world and looked upon the anguish of the children of men without mercy, but to one who became flesh in Christ, has suffered, and lets the power of his suffering and dying come to the benefit of all who suffer