knowing he has but a short time. Here the second paragraph of this chapter ends—the first at verse 8, where the parties are stated, as we have seen, in the original idea and purpose. Here the actings of heaven’s deliverance from his power, and the con- sequence of this to the Church, which properly sits in heavenly places; then, verse 18, what the devil did when cast down to earth, after he was cast out of heaven.
The dragon has now lost his place in heaven. He cannot rule the world, as thence, as the prince and god of it: but he comes as a woe and judgment from God, upon those whose end is to be destruction, and so has unlimited power over them; and he is in great wrath, because he has now but-a short time. His enmity against Him[1] who has thus sentenced him, is exercised against that which has any connection with Him in the now sphere of his malice. He can no longer accuse the brethren: he persecutes the woman; and, at this period upon earth, the woman is the Jewish Church—the woman that brought forth the man, for that was true of the Jewish economy as to Christ, looked at in his title of power upon earth,—“To us a Son is
- ↑ It is the angelic head of the Jewish people who was the power that overcame him above.
