# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1859_S292
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

...not even in Egypt, where he does after all occupy the temples and enjoys the king's protection besides. So he simply has to steal it. What God does in wrath over the sins of his people, he knows splendidly how to exploit for himself, and what God throws away, he picks up. Now God, to punish the ingratitude of his children, let the Turk arise, and cast Christendom away. That was, for the devil, a windfall meal. He took both and leaned them against one another: and so it became a roof. And — God? He had willed it so, just as he willed Pharaoh's hardening of heart. Indeed, God himself had made this roof: for had his wrath not had to raise up the Turk and cast Christendom down to earth, the devil would never have grown so bold. The roof was already finished by the time Satan was let loose. He is a fool for all his cunning. He felt flattered when he saw it, and supposed it was a canopy erected purely in his honor. His imprisonment was quickly forgotten. He took it only for a pastime, and looked at the whole matter the way one might if, a thousand years ago, the earth had not yet been thought a palace worthy of his infernal majesty, and he had therefore been asked to withdraw for a while into the basement until a better one stood ready. Now it stood there in all its splendor, and Lord Satan moved in amid rejoicing. — Now, to be sure, Gog and Magog are spoken of here as though they were persons; but they are indeed that too, even if we form such curious notions about it, as though the chimney were smoking for the very first time. The rod of God's discipline, which summoned the devil to the dance, was the Turk; Christendom, on the other hand, which God cast away, was the papacy. Under the most gracious protection and shelter of these two great powers the devil established his house. They served him as pillar of cloud and of fire. The Turk burned with an open flame, while the pope did not let the red glow show by day — he was the more bashful one, being, as it were, the soft inner lath-and-plaster wall of the roof, while the red tiles of devilish bloodlust, the gray slates of the last plagues (by which the trembling bones of men still fond of life, at the open grave, were dreadfully startled), and the black shingles, good for conflagration and hence a mirror of the near torment of hell, represented the barer wickedness of the former of the two patron powers, Satan's own.

Yet, with all this, the devil was still not entirely comfortable with the idea that, as "prince of this world," he should have to sit under the roof of other lords. So he did as good politicians do, and sought, through wars which he himself instigated, to fight his way into a free stronghold of his own. Hence it goes on to say:

"to gather them together to battle." — Strictly speaking he would also have to deceive them; but in that respect he had little left to do with them, although he did indeed make them worse and worse still. What else was left for him, then, but to set them against one another, if he wished to destroy them? For the devil can destroy only what he actually gets hold of, just as fire burns only what it touches, and the bear crushes to death only what it presses to its breast. — And he had, during his captivity, practiced chess so well (the pope, no doubt, must have paid him nightly visits now and then; for who else could have