# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1859_S296
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

could not help feeling the impression, of which it was still said at Luther's grave: "I have already seen him at Worms," and thought, no doubt: I have no desire to see the dead lion once more; there might be stinging bees in the carcass.

The tenth verse has already been touched on darkly at the close of the previous chapter. There is nothing more to say about it here except that now the devil too comes into the pit. But that means only this much: one could now recognize as the devil him whom one had until now taken for the dear God. There is nothing else to be sought in this passage. It was only an eclipse of the moon, if one had done so until now. As the Reformation receives its light in this chapter from the resurrection of the LORD, so now the papacy too is clothed in the evening red that befits it. Yet it is still the same sun that once refreshed the world at midday! Even though, after it has set, its light has not yet wholly gone out, still no new sunset is to be expected.

One might object, however: does it not stand here that the beast and the false prophet were already in the pit, and that the devil was merely thrown in after them; how then can you say that this verse coincides with verse 20 of the previous chapter? Answer: at one time the pope was visible and the devil invisible. Just as one can have seen a man for some time before perceiving from his speech what he had had in mind from the beginning, so the soul of the papacy — that is, the devil — came to be recognized somewhat later for what it was, as compared with the bodily papacy that falls under the senses. How long did not even Luther himself still hold the papacy to be innocent, when already the lightning had long since struck down upon it before his very eyes! He thought at first that it had only struck the chimney; for after all Tetzel's indulgence-trade was really nothing more than that. Just so, the soul of the papacy went on living, in the eyes of those who had been witnesses of the judgment that had been proceeding against it since October 31, 1517, for some time yet, even though the body had already received its death-blow — as indeed commonly happens with mortal wounds, that the soul departs only after the body has already been wounded a while before, without the dying man needing to receive a new wound at the very moment of death for that reason. But then it is only our German language that is to blame for the word "was" having crept in (namely in the words, "when the beast and the false prophet was"). It simply could not be rendered otherwise. In the Greek it is not there, and what precedes coincides in time with the beginning of this verse also ("And the devil — was cast"). The latter, however, is told only in summary fashion, because it had already been described at length in chapter 19:20 — one more proof that, so far as the course of the history is concerned, the thread is here taken up again which we had lost there. The very form of the speech, too, is meant to let us notice that what had been torn off is now being spun on again.

"shall be tormented day and night"—: that refers to the vexation