nection with their place and promises, though unfulfilled: to this many of the Psalms refer; those in which God and not Lord is used as the term of relationship with the most High.
The saints may be united to this when removed hence and taken to Christ, but the great signal manifestation of the first statement of the chapter was, when Christ himself was taken out of the way; all, except that fact which characterizes all, is the statement of the principles and relative position of the parties; there may be, therefore, any lapse of time between the catching up of the man-child and the subsequent actings of the Lord; for there is no note of time connected with it: the facts are resumed, or, as to results, commenced by the war in heaven, This, is most signally fulfilled in its actual final accomplishment when Satan is cast out, The commencement, in their source,[1] of the very last
- ↑ Although I say their source, which is true as to the administration of events and the moral state of things, yet there is passed by here (as not the subject of the chapter, and what can be hardly called an event, as changing the whole order of administration and divine government itself),—the shaking of the heavens in order to the appearing of the sign and government of the Son of Man there: but this does not properly come in here; and therefore I have only thus noticed it. Its date in the course of events may be seen in Matt. xxiv. and Mark xiii.; but it forms no part of the course of mere human events, but is a change in the heavenly
