# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 12 19_S65
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pass away now and nevermore."

Rev. John, ch. 14, v. 6. 7.

Published by the German Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 11.  St. Louis, Mo., December 19, 1854.  No. 9.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who pay in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 cents.

Only those letters which contain contributions for the paper are to be sent to the editor; all others, however, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, moneys, etc., are to be sent here under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(Submitted by Pastor Röbbelen.)

The Revelation of St. John *).

The First through the Fourth Chapter.

A time such as ours, which in the good sense as in the evil forms a high point in the history of the world and the Church, serves, as it teaches us to know God and His Word in general, quite especially also to make a book more understandable to us, whose mysterious contents otherwise admonish us rather to caution in reading it than to the reading itself. But in the same measure in which it becomes more accessible to us, the need also grows that drives us toward it. If the confessors of the LORD may enjoy the fruits of victory in good peace, which departed combatants have fought out for them also, then it may suffice to know in faith that they stand likewise under God's shelter and protection, as their fathers did of old. That a mirror-image of the stage on which they stand should be set in a frame and held before them with an inscription from God's right hand, so that they may not doubt that the LORD has appointed also their time in which to make His Word mighty unto salvation, is not so necessary for them. But when threatening forerunners of heavy judgments announce such storms that whoever has received even a grain of prophetic gift has an anxious foreboding of the speedy extinguishing of the light, which has been despised long enough, and it is a matter of awakening the company of those who, from the present evil world, even then still would keep themselves unspotted and be faithful unto death, so that, like the birds of passage that perceive beforehand the dying of the creature, it may betimes make for home, and in the winter of the world no longer cherish the presumptuous hope, as though Sodom would be converted and the withering of the fig tree that had borne no fruit would be stayed, but only, as at all times so now also, watch and pray, that it may escape all this that shall come to pass, and stand before the Son of man: then also the Word, the lamp of faith, is an unfailing oil, which for the sake of the believers, in the blackest night of dreadful tempests as well as in the brightest sunshine of the grace and truth of the saving Gospel of Christ the Son of God, with which the earth has been greeted, denies to the tyrannical sceptre of the devil and awards to Him who has said: "All things (therefore also all times and hours) are delivered unto me of my Father (Matth. 11, 26.)

This it is that St. John brings us, when in the "Revelation" he sets before our soul the ground-plan of the house of God, on which has been set down all that was to befall in the course of time, little by little, in and with the Church of Christ. Who therefore must not desire, in this day, to orient himself, as one says, that is, to find his bearings in this book? One likes, after all, to see on the map the place where one dwells or whither one travels; how much more must one care to find the movements of a fateful century marked with unfailing exactness according to the perspective (that is, distant view), which on Mount Zion in the first days of the New Testament by heavenly gift of vision was drawn for those who had eyes for it, not only what was near, such as an impending famine (Acts 11, 27. 28), but also the end of the world?

But it might come about otherwise, as has already been remarked above, that one would not merely find pleasure in strolling about in this book, but that acquaintance with it would become as needful to one as to Stephen the opened heaven and the wonderful sight of Jesus, whom he saw standing on the right hand of God (Acts 7, 55). For how soon might it come to pass that him who in faith

*) In the present number we make a beginning with the admission of glosses (explanatory remarks) on the text of the Revelation of St. John, which Pastor Röbbelen has sent in for the "Lutheraner." These glosses are indeed pearls enclosed in hard shells, hard to open perhaps for most readers, but they are pearls nevertheless, costly pearls, loosed from the crystalline rock of the divine Word. Let no reader therefore grudge the pains of pondering and reflection which it may perhaps cost him to open the hard but likewise valuable mother-of-pearl shell; his labor will be repaid. Our time seems, above all other times, to call for seeking the experience of those words which are found at the beginning of the Revelation of St. John: "Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand." (1, 3.) Many a pearl-fisher, to be sure, who let himself down into the ocean of the Revelation without the diving-bell of a simple child-like faith and without the rope of the pattern of sound doctrine, has found his death, but this shall nevertheless not mislead us as to the certainty of that promise: "Blessed is he that readeth, etc." Let therefore every reader first take in hand the text of the Revelation of St. John, read the chapters which are just being glossed first in their connection, and then stop a little at each verse and seek, with the help of the remarks made upon it, to grasp the mind of the Holy Spirit in the mysterious discourse of the holy seer John. Surely the preachers will gladly assist those who need guidance herein.  The Ed. of the Paper.