_Another angel_ now appears, the first of the second series of three, and styled "another," not by comparison with Him who sat on the white cloud, and who is exalted far above all angels, but by comparison with the angels previously spoken of at the sixth, eighth, and ninth verses of the chapter. This angel is said to come _out from the temple_--that is, out of the _naos_, out of the innermost shrine of the temple--and the notice is important, for it shows that he comes from the immediate presence of God, and is a messenger from Him. Therefore it is that he can say to the Son, _Send forth Thy sickle, and reap_. "The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing."[406] Until the Father gives the sign His "hour is not yet come;" and more especially of the hour now arrived Jesus had Himself said, "But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father."[407] The day, the hour, the moment, has now arrived; and, as usual in this book, the message of the Father is communicated by an angel. The intimation that the hour is come is grounded upon the fact that the harvest about to be gathered in is _fully ripe_. The Revised Version translates "overripe;" but the translation, though literal, is unhappy, and so far false as it unquestionably suggests a false idea. God's time for working is always right, not wrong; and it is perfectly legitimate to understand the word of the original as meaning simply dry, hard, the soft juices of its ripening state absorbed, and the time of its firmness come.[408] Thus summoned by the message of the Father to the work, the Son enters upon it without delay. "As He hears, He judges."[409] _He that sat on the cloud cast His sickle upon the earth; and the earth was reaped._ The second angel of the second group of three next appears, having, like Him that sat upon the cloud, "a sharp sickle;" and he too waits for the summons to use it.