The Apocalypse contains, according to
Selnecker, three important messages for him and his contemporaries. First, it
tells them not to despair at seeing the godlessness and evil of the people and
all the mighty rulers; second, it tells the to rejoice if they have an
opportunity to suffer and shed their blood for the truth; third (and most
important), it tells them that the Last Judgment is at hand. Among the sources
he used, he mentions an apparently unpublished commentary by Michael Stifel and
other contemporary works on the Apocalypse. However, he stresses, he only took
form them things that would make the text easier to understand for the common
man (“für den gemeinan Man”). (Daniel und Offenbarung, 1567, A3r)
The commentary is thus anything but
learned. Selnecker dispenses with most of the sophisticated exegetical
machinery, including the division into seen sections or visions. . . .
Selnecker makes it represent the Lutheranism of his own day, that is, just before
the Last Judgment, the date of which he never specifies, in contras to
Chytraeus.
Thus the woman of Apc 12 is the true
Chrisitan church of the last days. The twelve stars in her crown stand not only
for the apostles but for all the teachers who, influenced by the apostles,
honor the church in the last days. (Daniel und Offenbarung, 1567, [462])
The moon under the woman’s feet assumes a negative connotation. The moon, being
the light of the night, is to be opposed to the true light (the sun, or Christ)
and therefore represents philosophy, human reason, and false doctrine, which
the woman does not allow to seduce her. Seeing as Selnecker considers the
Apocalypse the book written expressly for his time, there is no question of the
woman being pregnant with all the truth faithful from all periods in history or
indeed with Christ. The male child denotes a powerful teacher of the latter-day
church, indeed, no less a person than Luther:
From the true Church of God should
come an excellent, highly spiritual teacher, such as Luther has been in our
time. He should send out thunder and lightning and speak like a brave hero. But
his beginnings should be difficult, as we saw. . . . (Daniel und Offenbarung,
1567 [463]) (Irena Backus, Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva,
Zurich, and Wittenberg [Oxford Studies in Historical Theology; Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000], 130-31)
