But all dead ones in the grave shall not sleep the sleep of death perpetually. “The wicked shall be turned unto sheol, all the nations that forget God; but the needy shall not always be forgotten; the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever” (Psalm 9:17-18).
These poor and needy are those dead ones, who, while living, “obtained a good report through that faith, which is the full assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11: 1, 39, 40). These are they styled by David in the Psalms the righteous, who shall flourish as the palm tree; the upright in their hearts; the seed to be accounted to Yahweh for a generation; the excellent in the earth, in whom is all His delight; those who regard His works and the operation of His hands; His people; His inheritance; them that reverence Him; the blessed, whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, to whom Yahweh imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile; the broken of heart and the contrite of spirit; they who shall inherit the earth and dwell therein for ever; the meek, who shall delight themselves with abundance of peace; the saints, who are preserved for the Olahm, and shall shout aloud for joy, when they execute the judgments written; the perfect, whose end is peace; His lovers and His friends; the fellows of the King, and princes in all the earth; those under whose feet the peoples and nations are to be subdued; the Man styled by Paul “the One Body”; the prisoners of Yahweh; His servants, who take pleasure in the stones of Zion; the heavens who declare His righteousness; those who keep His covenant, and remember His commandments to do them; the seed of Abraham His servant, the children of Jacob His chosen; the priests of Zion clothed with salvation; the kings of the earth, who shall sing in the ways of Yahweh. These have been sleeping the sleep of death for ages; but, inasmuch as that many of the things affirmed of them by the Eternal Spirit, are no part of the estate of the poor and needy during their sojourn among the living, it follows that, as not one jot or tittle of the divine word shall fail, by implication David inculcates their resurrection to execute the judgments written against the kings and nobles of the nations; to take possession of the earth, and to dwell therein for ever.
In the system of nature whence the symbol before us is taken, clouds are opaque congeries of aqueous particles, exhaled from the waters of the earth into the air by the electricity of the expanse. This being their nature and origin, they furnish a beautiful and expressive symbol representative of those who are present with the Lord in his apocalypse. In the revelation given to John, the inhabitants of the earth, in their various subdivisions, are styled “many waters;” as, “the waters which thou sawest, upon which the Harlot sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and languages” (ch. 17:1, 15). From these waters have been exhaled by “the Spirit, which is the truth,” from the generations of the past, particles which, when viewed in mass, constitute, as Paul terms them, “a great cloud of witnesses.” But this cloud is only seen as a matter of testimony. The subjects of it are in the earth; and perceived only as particles to be exhaled, or drawn out, by the power of those beams, soon to irradiate from the Sun of Righteousness. When He shall “arise with healing in his rays,” they will come forth from the womb of the dawn as dew. Every resurrected saint will be a dewdrop, sparkling in the star-like glory of a divine refraction. The appearance of dew from the womb of dawn, as representative of the resurrection of the saints, is the most beautiful of scripture similitudes. Before the sun rises, all nature is concealed in the womb of night; and although the herbage is wet with dew, yet is it invisible by reason of the darkness. The dew is, as it were, in Hades, waiting for the birth to be given it by the rising of the sun. As soon as the eastern portals of the sky begin to open to the light, which is the life of dew, its drops begin to sparkle with the prismatic glory of its refraction. The apocalypse, or appearing of the dew, is its birth from the womb of dawn; and, however clear the air may be at its birth, oftentimes the heat of the sun’s rays exhales it from the herbage, and it becomes invisible until it reappears at the atmospheric dew point in the form of clouds. If the reader understand this he will be enabled to discern the relations of the saints to Jesus, as the Dew and Clouds of the Millennial Dawn to the Sun of the New Heavens, prepared “as a Bridegroom emerging from his canopy, and rejoicing as a Conqueror for the running of a course” (Psalm 19: 5).