was an effort to alter the perfect order[1] of God's providence which always preserves His principles—they would perish by the sword.
What follows, seems analogous to the circumstances of Moses and Elias, and the energy of their ministry, not a question of their persons. Moses ministered when the people were under oppression, when the world prevailed and he had power to plague the earth to which Pharaoh belonged, and of which he was prince, and which he sought.
Elias shut up heaven on the apostate people, who ought to have been in connection and association with it, and the blessing was withheld from a land watered with the rain of heaven. Thus, it was power of calling in judgment suited to the respective position of the two; one, acting on the world out of which God’s people were called; the other, judging the people which had become the world, by arresting their enjoyment of blessings from heaven; both have their application to the state of things alluded to in this short but comprehensive prophecy.
At the close of the three years and a half, their sackcloth testimony ceased by their death, through
- ↑ It would be, in fact too, acting on the principles God was judging.
