# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1859_S291
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Twentieth Chapter of the Revelation of St. John. 291

...in the stately temples of Christendom. Never has so bloodless a victory been won. — The "quarters" get their name in Greek from the bent knees, which indeed form an angle. That fits too. In the temples and in the kingdom in question, everything gleams with holiness; one bends the knee — upon the "earth," as a sign that one is minded of the earth and earthly. Satan has now attained what Christ refused him on the mountain (Matt. 4). Before him one bends the knee in the temples of the earth, to which the temple of Baal lent its shadow. What all this is aiming at has already been said in the introduction. The papacy obtained world dominion. Thus the highest bishop of Christendom went out in such a way that people might see him and he might himself feast his eyes on their admiration. Of what the Lord had said — that it "is within you" — he now transferred his residence into the outer world of the senses. It grew too hot for the lords within: they had to catch their breath a little and draw air in which they could breathe. Like fish suffocating under the ice, the pope and his clergy came out into the light — the light belonging to the world, which they were supposed to be the light of. But their lord and master, namely Lord Devil, had beforehand cut them a hole in the ice of unbelief and cold, by which their pretensions had until then been driven back by the remnants of Christian knowledge. So then came the beautiful spring. The sun shone. Mild breezes blew. And — the frogs outcroaked one another in the swamp.

"Gog and Magog."

Now one must first know what sort of lords these are. Luther has certainly already told us. But he must put up with our still throwing our filth at him, as at Ezekiel (chapters 38, 39), so that the rain does not soak through. Why should he not? Is he not used to having stones broken out of him?

For the "four quarters" lead me to the thought of taking the "roof" (for that, as we know, is what Gog means) in another sense than Luther does, when he finds in it an allusion to the dissolute life of the Turks. As the four corners of the temple, they are especially in need of being covered. Below, they would already be sufficient to hide the devil's uncleanness, in the mystical half-darkness of holy spaces, from the eyes of men, and to deceive the judgment of the crowd. But above they are still open. Heaven might take offense at what goes on there. And those who are still minded of heaven might get a hint from up there and raise an alarm. So: a roof, a roof! The pillar of cloud and fire sheltered Israel in the wilderness. Because he wants to be "like God," the Antichrist can make do with nothing less. So his own canopy-roof likewise appears in double form, as "Gog and Magog" — which at bottom is only a single name, just as that pillar was only a single pillar. Where, one wonders, does the ape of Christ even get what can lend his conjuring trick the magical shimmer of Israel? He surely could not have created it himself, for he cannot even make a single louse, not even