Page:Darby - Notes on the Book of Revelations, 1839.djvu/182

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

us. And now in the manifested failure of the Church on earth, unfolded in the first chapters, though the bridegroom might tarry the Church, knowing his mind, had but one cry, “Come quickly!” In this position, therefore, the Church is practically set.

From the time the prophecy took its course, all was remediless. When it took it absolutely and definitely in the crisis, it became absolutely and definitely so as to individuals, as regarded the dispensation of judgment—“the door was shut.” The Lord declares He has sent His angel to testify these things in the Churches. Here we are brought back to what went before the prophetic sayings; the Churches being thus made cognizant of the prophetic sayings. The Lord presents himself to them, as the root indeed, but as the offspring of David, ready to inherit His throne: and the bright and blessed witness of millennial day; and in one sense, eternal day to the Church. This was the next thought to the Church on this failure. Accordingly, knowing it, the Church is only lifted up into better hopes, and the Spirit,[1] which, as Com-

  1. The Spirit saying it shewed that it was not merely a holy though untaught desire, but the mind of the Spirit itself, in and to the Church, who what he hears, speaks. It was the Divine