# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1859_S290
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

Just as unexpectedly as the Lord will one day come again, the devil, after a thousand years of concealment, once more broke loose to hold his judgment.

"To deceive the nations in the four quarters of the earth." — Because he is permitted to go out, he also soon finds followers again. There one sees how matters have stood until now. God alone gave truth its standing. The majority of those who celebrated their victory were so minded that they would far rather have sung a Te Deum to the prince of this world. It happened just as when a conqueror compels peoples whom he has previously subjugated to fight for him, and to accompany him, for that service, on his triumphal processions. — Now the tables turn. Satan plants his banner. He who already had a great people secretly serving him now rules freely and openly. His influence no longer extends merely to individuals: he is now permitted to "deceive the nations."

The waves lap, so long as the dam holds, only at the outermost edges of the land; but when the dam breaks, they afterward flood the whole land, and there is no holding them back any longer. So too the devil — who in any case gladly takes the whole head of hair once he has caught hold of a single strand — soon brings everything under himself. He has kept a long fast; now he is hungry. Since he cannot be converted, he has, in the course of the thousand years, become worse beyond measure than he was before. This now comes out all the more clearly into the light, since one has seen him for so long a time only in chains.

"In the four quarters of the earth" — he can soon come into "all the world." That is a mission that leaves its stain, and a catholicity one can grasp with one's hands.

Note. The "four quarters of the earth" properly means four corners, four angles. One does not quite know what this expression is meant to convey. But it leads to the thought that, wherever Satan comes with his new dominion, a corner must be made where he can heap up his filth and commit his secret shame. — Otherwise the four corners also call to mind a house. The sense would then be: the devil brings the nations under himself — by what means? one asks — surely only by burning down all the churches, and so forth. Answer: Oh no, he does it in the four corners, in the handsomely square, well-proportioned stone houses and splendid temples. He leaves everything as it was. Since he meets with no contradiction and no resistance, he need not remove anything either. He is already sitting wherever he wishes. The betrothal, which has already lasted for years, is merely being proclaimed. For they have indeed become "corners of the earth" which were meant to be the holy halls of the Lord. Because it happened long ago, and because of this victory the saying holds true which the forefather of the Antichrist once boasted: I came, I saw, I conquered — so the Greek language seems, as it were, made for proclaiming such a new wonder-work, since by its own idiom it pushes the "deceiving" into the past tense, even though it still lies in the future. Ah yes, the nations have already for a good while been sitting "in the four quarters of the earth,"