to continue the characteristic period of forty-two months; or to practise—to act—for that period.[1] When we come to the literal use of it, then it is earthly and literal. So, on the other hand, they that dwell in heaven, dwell in heaven. It is not merely their mystic character, otherwise it is obvious it is the 1260 years; and they that dwell in heaven are the heavenly-minded remnant. We have then the application of this character of the beast to its objects: “he blasphemed God:”—it was not here mere apostasy: that might be its actual course on earth, just denying the Father and the Son; but here it is his formal character under Satan’s power. He blasphemed the “name” of God, instead of in the place of power owning its, source—“and his tabernacle” i.e. the presence of God among the saints, as in the wilderness, their heavenly place, for so it was (the tabernacle was not the wilderness nor was it the temple, as in chap. xxi. 22: the Jewish body
- ↑ This must be taken for the last period of half the week, if taken in crisis and applied to the full manifestation of his character, which the verse seems to do. At the commencement of this period (then, as it seems to me, coming up out of the bottomless pit) he slays the witnesses: his plans and human self-will have, however, been very amply developed before, but with subtilty, and a testimony continuing: specially in the land for three years and a half. It is no part of this passage to say it is the last half week, but merely to attach to the beast the characteristic period of his continuance.
