I need not here repeat what has already been said about "the heaven." It will be sufficient to refer the reader to vol. I, sec. iv. 2,3. To the saints this aerial expanse is closed. At present they do not shine there as the sun, moon, constellations, and stars of the firmament. The luminaries of the heaven are the dignities, or glories, incarnated in the officials who figure as the civil and spiritual rulers of "the earth and habitable." Although the saints are promised "power over the nations to rule them" (ii. 26,27), "the heaven," in which national government is located is shut and fast closed against them. Their principles incapacitate them for sharing power with the world-rulers in Church and State. A saint, who is one in deed as well as name, cannot condescend to subject himself to the conditions necessary to obtain the favor of the political mob, whether that mob be a mob of aristocrats, or a mob of what these call "the swinish multitude;" he cannot, I say, condescend, as a son of the Deity, a brother of Jesus Christ, and a king and priest elect for God, to seek the favor of "the dead in trespasses and sins," whose votes and patronage are indispensable to his exaltation to the heaven; in which he may figure by the eloquence of his speech, or the gaudy decorations of a court, as a star of the first or an inferior magnitude. No saint could by any other possibility than that based upon apostacy, consent to occupy the Papal Chair, or to fill an archiepiscopal, or other ecclesiastical or secular throne. The heaven, in which these seats of glory, honor, wealth, and power exist, is infected with such malarious and poisonous exhalations of sin’s flesh, that he could not breathe them, and live and move, and have continued healthful spiritual existence in the Deity. Fortunately for the saints this heaven is shut against them, and its door bolted, locked, and barred to keep out all who will not fall down and worship the Satan, who is prince of the Aerial, and bestows its glories upon whomsoever he approves.

But this heaven is not always to be shut up and barred against the saints -- against the Lord Jesus and his Brethren. The Satan that now fills it, and monopolizes its heavenly things, is to be hurled from it with a mighty overthrow. This Satan, which is Sin in official manifestation, holds the power and glory of the world’s dominions. They are delivered unto him, and to whomsoever he will, he gives them (Luke iv. 5,6). All the evil that afflicts humanity is "the power of the enemy," or the Satan, whether that evil be enthroned in the heaven, or be found in the poison of serpents and scorpions. But the Satan in the heavenlies is doomed; for Jesus in vision of the future, said: "I beheld the Satan as it were lightning fall out of the heaven." (Luke x. 18). He falls thence by virtue of a stronger than the Satan breaking into the heaven and casting him out. The Satan’s house or kingdom is strongly fortified against all burglars and besiegers, at present upon the earth. Under existing circumstances, there is no chance of the saints being able to make a breach, or to open a door in the heaven, to effect an entrance into it, and after the example of Cromwell and his Ironsides, to expel the Satan, and eject him with all his instruments of mischief and abomination. But though this present inability exists, the expulsion is to be accomplished. The oracle before us proclaims "a door opened in the heaven," which is equivalent to saying, that a power had been apocalypsed on earth, stronger than the Satan; that this power had made a breach in the enemy’s works; and that this breach had become practicable, so that the breaching power could march through it as through a door, and take possession of the heaven, or "kingdom under the whole heaven." (Dan. vii. 27).

The oracle does not say that doors were opened. Our attention is restricted to a door, that is, to one door. A door is that opening in a wall through which you pass into the area or room beyond. This is the scriptural use of the word. Understanding this, and that the apocalyptic heaven is that constitution of things expanded over all peoples, and nations, and languages, as the government by which they are regulated and controlled; the reader will perceive, that the coup-d’*tat by which the smiting power succeeds in placing itself in power and authority over any part of those nations or peoples, is a door of entrance to that new power into the heaven. That coup-d’*tat, which gave Louis Napoleon introduction into the heaven, and placed him there enthroned among "the Powers," was "a door opened in the heaven" for him to pass through. This is easily comprehended, and makes the oracle before us easy of comprehension, as we shall endeavor to show.

From the condensed view I have given of "the Mystery of the Deity as he hath revealed the glad tidings to his servants the prophets," under the caption of "the Apocalypse Rooted in the Prophets," (vol. I, chap. I, sec. i. 5) the reader will have learned that the Deity proposes to enact a great and mighty coup-d’*tat, or stroke of policy, upon the world’s government. He intends so to shape and overrule its ambitions and schemes, as to cause them to make the territory of His kingdom the seat of war between hostile confederacies, contending for dominion over the hundred and twenty seven provinces of Daniel’s lion, bear, and leopard. "I will gather," saith He, "all the nations against Jerusalem to war; and I will bring them down into the Valley of Jehoshaphat." "They shall pitch the tents of their entrenched camp between the seas to the mountain of the glory of holiness"; a region which in Apoc. xvi. 16, is indicated by the Hebrew word "Armageddon". This concentration of the hosts of the nations in the Holy Land, is its invasion by Gog, the Prince of Rosh, in hostility to the Merchant Power of Tarshish and its allies, then in possession of Jerusalem. But "this city shall be taken"; "and the land of Egypt shall not escape." Advanced to this sovereignty, the Gog-dominion stands forth as "the Dragon, the Old Serpent, surnamed the Diabolos and the Satan" Apoc. xx. 2; and as the Image of the kingdom of men in its latter day manifestation, as represented to Nebuchadnezzar in his dream. In the development of these events a crisis is formed, such as the world, for magnitude and importance, has never seen before. The Satan will then have attained to the loftiest pinnacle of the temple, with the presumption that universal sovereignty is within the grasp of his omnipotence. The heaven will be filled with his glory; and no son of sin’s flesh will find admission there, whose zeal runs not in the way of a ready and devout allegiance to the God-defying principles of "the spirit that works in the children of disobedience."

But things having arrived at this crisis, under the leadership of the Lawless One, the time will have also arrived for opening a door into Satan’s heaven, through which the saints may enter in. This will be done by a divine coup-d’*tat such as the Satan little expects. This political stroke consists in the power represented by a Stone falling upon the enemy, and crushing them with a terrible overthrow. This STONE-POWER is the power of the Eternal Spirit in Jesus and the saints; who with sword, pestilence, rain, hail, fire and brimstone, plead with the adversary, and destroy him from the Promised Land. In this way Yahweh makes Jerusalem "a cup of trembling, unto all the people round about when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem: also a burdensome stone for all people, all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it." Their multitudes and power will not appeal him. He will go forth and fight against them, and stand victorious upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east. In this way, He, who the prophet styles, Yahweh my ELOHIM comes in, "all the saints with him." In proof of all this, the reader is referred to Ezekiel, Daniel, Joel, and Zechariah.

Thus YAHWEH Elohim, the saints, "come in." By the crashing power of the Stone a door is opened, and they march in. Their Prince, who came as a thief, obtains possession of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and becomes a potentate among the thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers of the heaven, in which, until He breaks in upon them, "the Devil and his Angels" only can be found.