# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 04 24_S139
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

139

the congregation of Christ have been won, there is at the same time impressed upon her that stamp, so vehemently denied by the enemy down to this day, that she is nothing other than the restoration of the One, holy, apostolic Church. All heaven acknowledges her, cries on and on: Yes, that is she again, whom men on earth would never know! and thereby refutes the blasphemies which would dispute her the honor of being the true Bride of the Lamb.

V. 1. "And there appeared a great wonder," etc.: "The ark of his testament was seen in his temple" was praised in the last verse of the preceding chapter as the precious fruit of the victory which Christ had won through the testimony of the truth over the antichristian lie. That the Mediator of the new testament has become known again to the people in the pure preaching of the gracious Gospel had to be the first thing. The second must now not be lacking: that is the Bride of Christ, who rises as it were from the grave. That she still lives is the greatest wonder, at which the angels cannot gaze their fill. Therefore it says at the beginning of the 1st verse: "And there appeared a great wonder in heaven." What hitherto under the name of the Church had ruled on earth with great splendor had been of no account in heaven: for beneath it lay the true mother of the household of Christendom buried like a pearl in the rubbish. Now that the pearl is found again on earth, the world heeds it not; indeed the mighty multitude which still adheres to Antichrist is permitted to reject her, to revile her and to tread her under foot: therefore in this prophecy heaven opens over the little flock of the confessors of the pure Gospel, where that which is despised on earth is marveled at and praised as "a great wonder."

The Church, however, is described thus:

"a woman" (because she is betrothed to Christ, her Bridegroom) "clothed with the sun" (as one who in Baptism has put on Christ, the eternal, true light, who is her only righteousness), "and the moon under her feet" (that is, the perishable being of this world, to show that she, to be sure, as has plainly enough been made manifest in the vale of tears, is subject to the change of favor and disfavor, of protection and persecution, of dense pressure and great tribulation, yet passes through the same unharmed in her glory, just as a full stream remains the same, whether damp mists hover upon its waves or the sun is mirrored in them, whether the stroke of the oar and the call of the boatmen drown its murmur or only the little fishes in the depths accompany it on its winding ways, whether it flows through smiling fields or through a desolate wilderness to meet the sea), "and upon her head a crown of twelve stars" (this points to the doctrine of the apostles, in which holy Christendom steadfastly abides, and which no time can quench).

V. 2. "And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered." —

From this verse on follows the survey of the struggles and victories by which the Church has hitherto been preserved, as appears especially from the recurrence of the 1260 days (v. 6; cf. Ch. 11, 3). The prophecy has reached a height from which it grants us a look backward. But because the form of the Church, as long as this world stands, remains essentially the same under all the changes which she undergoes in her outward appearance in the course of the ages, the description which we here receive of the condition of the congregation of God points just as well to the travail in which Christ's Bride lay, in spite of her glory, also in the time of the Reformation. So the words above are again a comforting confirmation of the work of the Reformation. In the anguish which the flock of Christ on earth had also in Luther's time, the angels in heaven recognize only the same company of witnesses who in the apostolic age had borne the name of Christ amid the pains of death. Therefore the Holy Spirit now first recalls the struggles of the first centuries. How could they be better portrayed than is done in the words of this second verse? The congregation of God had not yet grown into the life of the nations. She strove that she might transplant her confession as a living fruit to a coming generation.

Yet like a woman in travail she seemed scarcely to carry her life away. Her "great pain" was, in the judgment of men, unto death. But in heaven they rejoiced in the midst of her pains: — "to the birth! to the birth!"

V. 3. "And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads."

It has always been customary in our Church to refer the "seven heads" to the seven hills of the city of Rome and to understand by the "ten horns" the ten great kingdoms which were subject to the Roman dominion. The "great red dragon" is the devil, who chose the largest and best seat for himself, and therefore set up his residence in Rome as soon as the glory of the world had flowed together there as into a sewer. — That we have here a picture of the Roman dominion is therefore beyond doubt. The question is only whether the vision is to be interpreted exclusively of the Roman papacy. The connection given above, according to which this whole chapter is to be regarded as a retrospect upon all the struggles of the Church from the time of the apostles, as well as the comparison of this passage with Ch. 13, 1., where the same vision recurs in somewhat altered form, deny it. The dragon is indeed the same who reigns in the papacy, has also his seat already at Rome and prepares the papacy there, but it is not yet his mask, although it differs from it only in name. The "seven heads and ten horns" are the Roman Empire, as the shadow of the papacy. The seven heads are also referred, perhaps, to the seven forms of government which existed one after another in Rome. More suitably one takes the number seven here again in its biblical meaning, as a picture of completion, first, so that it includes the sense that in the Roman Empire, as the last world-monarchy, earthly majesty and power had come to completion, that one might now wait for nothing more than the end; then also as a parody of the arrogated holiness, which brought the Roman Empire so far that it placed its emperors among the gods and had them worshiped. The ten horns are without doubt ten kingdoms which were subject to the Roman scepter (cf. Ch. 17, 12). Just so, however, the number has here also a deeper meaning. Now the number five is the picture of sensuality. Ten is twice five. The sense is therefore: everything that belongs to the realm of the senses, riches, human wisdom, art, etc., will be doubled in the Roman Empire precisely through the incorporation of so many kingdoms of the world, that is, rise to the highest. That too has happened: because, for example, Greece became Roman, there bloomed once more in Rome all that in the old nursery of human art and science was near to dying; the downfall of all other kingdoms round about preached the death of earthly power and pleasure, but while Rome went over the earth with the sickle to reap, it did not mirror itself in the ruin whose witness it was, but eagerly gathered from the withered stalks the ears, to let them flourish in its own field, what it had seen wither on foreign ground; and behold, the new luxuriant soil gave the stolen seed vigorous growth and the world a double bloom of its glory. The "seven crowns" "upon his heads" give to understand that here the Roman Empire is spoken of (cf. Ch. 13, 1.), which was itself a crowned earthly power, while the papacy borrowed its power from the old Roman Empire and founded it upon the pretended donation of Constantine.

V. 4. "And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born."

The "tail" of the dragon are the false teachers, who in the first centuries had the benefit of this, that the devil so often incited the Roman emperors against the Church and hindered them from defending themselves against their enemies; especially the Arians are meant, who brought it about that the orthodox Christians were violently persecuted in the Roman Empire. The "third part of the stars" are the teachers of the Church who fell away in the time of such trial because they were minded to earthly things ("did cast them to the earth"). While in this tribulation the Church still continued to strive that only her confession might not perish and her seed might remain, as has already been described in V. 2, the devil prepared a new danger, in order, when at last the Church on earth should come to her right, immediately to spoil the fruit of her struggle, namely to draw to himself the power of the Church herself