ceased to be in a suffering state.[1] Of the seventh seal nothing could be directly said—heaven could say nothing—man perhaps much; but his thoughts are not as God’s thoughts. The owning[2] of Christianity could not be condemned—the putting the Church into the world, its real effect, could not be celebrated. There was silence in heaven. But on this state of things, which heaven could not own at all, secret providence soon began to act. The angels began sounding. It was an action, then, ab extra in the providential state of things by angelic ministrations of providence, not in the known relationship of a suffering Church, and the world opposed, as it had crucified the Head. The growth of apostasy is traced, not in this second
- ↑ Or an expectant state as to themselves: looking at the close. They had no longer to say “How long?” though the judgment might not yet be actually come.
- ↑ So as regards the crisis, the heavens, as now filled by the saints, had no part in the Son of man’s judgment. Their armies which are in heaven will follow Him; but these were the preparatory judgments of God’s supreme providential power, in which the saints have no part at all; they could not open the bottomless pit to let the locusts out and Apollyon loose. They have the mind of Christ, and thus the character and ways of God in the Son of man, not his supreme government, though that ministers to them. It is entirely beyond them, and of that the trumpets are a part; the announcement of God’s sovereign dealings and government, not His ways and purposes with them,
