Samuel Ridout

In the history of Saul, therefore, we may say we have the history of human government and kingly authority under its most favorable aspects, so far as man is concerned. The end, we have seen, is self-destruction. The whole course of prophetic history as outlined in the book of Daniel, confirms all this, while the New Testament reiterates the same solemn lesson. God must "overturn, overturn, overturn," all power "until He come whose right it is." We find therefore in the setting aside of Saul, typically the setting aside of mere human government. Christ is the only One upon whose shoulders the government can be placed and rest securely. He whose name is "Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God," is also the "Father of Eternity" and will finally, in His own blessed person, merge the millennial kingdom of the Son of Man, where evil is kept in restraint, into that eternal state where government ceases to have the character of restraint and passes into the wider, deeper, fuller and therefore the eternal fact that God is "all in all."