It is usual to say that time ends and eternity begins-a statement very vague and unmeaning, and involving much practical error. For the believer in Christ has already entered on eternity, and has begun to "look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen:; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal " (2 Cor. 4:1818While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)). The expression, " There should be time no longer," is found in Rev. 10, and the context fully explains that it has no such signification as that "time ends," but that it means no more time shall be allowed to elapse before the interference of God, and that God will no longer allow man to go on to the apparent frustrating of His purposes. " The angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by Him that liveth forever and ever, who created heaven and the things that therein are, and the earth and the things that therein are, and the sea and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer" (no longer any lapse of time); " but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished as He hath declared to His, servants the prophets." Now, if we have at all attentively considered how much of the prophetic testimony yet unfulfilled, we shall immediately see that many of the declared events require a course of time when once the action begins; and, more than this, that the prophetic testimonies have most expressly to do with things connected with time. The expression, therefore, clearly does not mean that time is no more, but that the strangeness of God's ways, the mystery, as it is here said, of letting man go on without God's interfering in judgment, is now finished; in other words, God's long suffering has reached its limit.
It would appear, from this expression, that the whole period (of which we are so boastful) of modern history is but as a blank before God; that His history of the earth, and the things in it, is already written in the Scriptures of truth; and whatever revolutions may take place, God's purpose of introducing earthly blessing is very definitely arranged, and all man's efforts will only tend to. illustrate the completeness of his failure.
The Lord will not retreat.,
Nor change His glorious plan,
Though all the devils meet
To aid rebellious man;
When once His word is passed
When He hath said "I will"
That thing shall come at last,
God keeps His promise still