Revelation 11 Commentary: The Two Witnesses

Today’s post is titled, Revelation 11 Commentary: The Two Witnesses. What are the two witnesses mentioned here?

Please click here for the previous study on Revelation 10 Commentary: Little Book.

Revelation 11:1-6: Then I was given a reed like a measuring rod. And the angel stood, saying, “Rise and measure the temple of God, the altar, and those who worship there. But leave out the court which is outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it has been given to the Gentiles. And they will tread the holy city under foot for forty-two months. And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy one thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.”

These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the God of the earth. And if anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds from their mouth and devours their enemies. And if anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in this manner. These have power to shut heaven, so that no rain falls in the days of their prophecy; and they have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to strike the earth with all plagues, as often as they desire.

In John’s original writing there was no chapter division between 10 and 11. Still in prophetic vision on behalf of the church, he is told to look carefully at the sanctuary of God in heaven, and to note the work of cleansing the sanctuary, which work prepares a people to meet God. Here was the secret that unlocked the mystery of their Great Disappointment.

He is not commanded to “measure” how long or how wide the temple is in meters or inches, nor to “measure” the people who worship therein as to their physical height, nor to weigh them physically on scales. He is to measure them as worshippers. An angel proclaims to all the world, “Fear God, and give glory to Him;. . . and worship Him” (Revelation 14:7).

To measure them as worshippers is therefore to measure their reverence for God and their faith in Him. To “fear God” does not mean to be afraid of Him as we would fear an enemy, but to appreciate His forgiveness of our sins: “There is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared” (Psalm 130:4). It follows that to “fear God” is to love Him.

Bad people become good not because of terror but because they appreciate what it cost the Lamb of God to forgive their badness. When a person knows he is a sinner, and when he knows his sins are forgiven by the blood of our High Priest who is in the heavenly sanctuary, then he cannot help loving God. A person with such a “faith which works through love” (Galatians 5:6) will “measure up” as a worshipper.

To love God is to keep His commandments, because “love is the fulfillment of the law” (see 1 John 5:3; Romans 13:10). In verse 19 of Revelation 11, John tells us that God’s people see in the heavenly sanctuary “the ark of His covenant.” The law of God, traced in stone by the finger of God, is placed inside that ark as witness that God’s law of love is the foundation of His government.

“The court which is outside” evidently refers to the vast host of those who do not worship the Lord, who are not to be judged at this time. Only God’s people are to be “measured” in this judgment. They are the key to the impasse in world history.

The two time periods mentioned here are obviously one and the same. Counting 30 days to a month, as Bible writers reckoned, the 42 months are the same as the 1260 days. This is the same period of time as the 1260 days of Revelation 12:6, the 42 months of 13:5, and the 3 1/2 years or “times” of Daniel 7:25, Daniel 12:7, and Revelation 12:14. Evidently God wants to be sure we understand this time period, or He would not repeat it so often! This is the time of persecution of the church between A.D. 538 and 1798.

During these “Dark Ages” the Bible was not wholly unknown to the people, but it was pretty well hidden and buried beneath a mass of superstition and tradition. The “two witnesses” are understood to be the Old and New Testaments, because the real purpose of Holy Scripture is to give witness to the mercy and truth of God. Our Lord commands us, “Search the scriptures. … So are they which testify [bear witness] of Me” (John 5:39).

The prophet Zechariah saw how the Bible gives the world its only true light. He saw a vision of two olive trees supplying oil through golden pipes to the golden lamps (see Zechariah 4:2-6, 11-14). It is the Bible, in the Old and New Testaments, which has supplied light to all the nations. “The entrance of Your words gives light.” “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:130, 105).

During all these past ages of persecution and oppression of the truth, God has not permitted enemies of the gospel completely to destroy His word. In the days of Elijah, the word of the Lord shut the heavens for three and a half years, that no rain should fell; the same word again opened the heavens that rain might come to restore the ruined land. That same word will bring the “seven last plagues” on the earth (see chapter 16), and will finally create a new heaven and a new earth (see chapter 21).

Revelation 11:7-10: Now when they finish their testimony, the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit will make war against them, overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. Then those from the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations will see their dead bodies three and a half days, and not allow their dead bodies to be put into graves. And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them, make merry, and send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth.

Who is the “beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit”? In Bible prophecy, a beast is a symbol of a kingdom or a nation. The “bottomless pit” is that place which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, “where also our Lord was crucified.” This is an evil power which does not acknowledge God.

The king of Egypt said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice? … I do not know the Lord” (Exodus 5:2). Here is what we call atheism, the idea that there is no God. As we view Europe at the close of the 1260 years of the Dark Ages, do we see an atheistic power arise suddenly? History says that France indeed made itself such a nation at that precise time. For the first time in history, a responsible government proclaimed itself atheistic. This was the root whence has come Communist atheism as we know it today. Stalin found his inspiration here.

A frightful revolution overturned the kingdom of France, and directed its bloody energies against what the people had come to suppose was Christianity. This misunderstanding was not really the people’s fault, because the popular church in France had misrepresented the religion of Jesus.

Losing all patience with the hypocrisy of those who professed to represent God, the revolutionary French government by an act of the legislature abolished the gospel and the Bible throughout France. They proclaimed that the nation acknowledged no God. Thus the “two witnesses,” the Old and New Testaments, were “slain” throughout France. In one city, the people tied a Bible to the tail of an ass and dragged it through the streets.

At the same time, the legislature formally established fornication by law. The French adopted as a motto, “crush the wretch,” meaning, Christ.

And surely Christ suffered in the person of His saints in France! In one night some years before the Revolution, 50,000 people who believed the Bible and trusted in Christ for eternal salvation were cruelly and treacherously murdered in the St. Bartholomew Massacre. Indeed, France was the place “where also our Lord was crucified.”

This was the spirit of the “bottomless pit.” In the Revolution, Bibles were gathered and burned; the seven-day week was abolished, and every tenth day designated as a day of profane rest. Death was said to be an eternal sleep. A prostitute was called the “goddess of reason,” and publicly worshipped.

Other Christian nations were horrified by what France was doing, and condemned these evil things. Christians of other nations were aroused to indignation and to prayer. But many worldly people and infidels rejoiced because of this terrible French Revolution. France had silenced the reproving voice of God’s two witnesses. The Word of truth lay dead in her streets, and those who hated the restrictions and the requirements of God’s law were jubilant. Crowds publicly defied the King of Heaven. There is a lesson here of interest to the world, including modern atheists.

Was France blessed because of its war on the Bible, and its hatred of Christ? Rome had succeeded in persuading the French rulers to persecute and banish the Christians who loved the Bible. An informed writer says: “Century after century, men of principle and integrity, men of intellectual acuteness and moral strength, who had the courage to avow their convictions, and the faith to suffer for the truth—for centuries these men toiled as slaves in the galleys [ships], perished at the stake, or rotted in dungeon cells. Thousands upon thousands found safety in flight; and this continued for two hundred and fifty years after the opening of the Reformation.

“Scarcely was there a generation of Frenchmen during that long period that did not witness the disciples of the gospel fleeing before the insane fury of the persecutor, and carrying with them the intelligence, the arts, the industry, the order, in which, as a rule, they pre-eminently excelled, to enrich the country in which they found an asylum. And in proportion as they replenished other countries with these good gifts, did they empty their own of them.

If all that was now driven away had been retained in France; if, during these three hundred years, the skill of the exiles had been cultivating her soil; if, during these three hundred years, . . . their creative genius and intellectual power had been enriching her literature and cultivating her science; if their wisdom had been guiding her councils, their bravery fighting her battles, their equity framing her laws, and the religion of the Bible strengthening the intellect and governing the conscience of her people, what a glory would at this day have encompassed France! What a great, prosperous, and happy country—a pattern to the nations—would she have been!

“‘But a blind and inexorable bigotry chased from her soil every teacher of virtue, every champion of order, every honest defender of the throne. … At last the ruin of the state was complete. …”

“The gospel would have brought to France the solution of these political and social problems that baffled the skill of her clergy, her king, and her legislators, and finally plunged the nation into anarchy and ruin. But under the domination of Rome, the people had lost the Saviour’s blessed lessons of self-sacrifice and unselfish love. They had been led away from the practice of self-denial for the good of others.

The rich had found no rebuke for their oppression of the poor, the poor no help for their servitude and degradation. The selfishness of the wealthy and powerful grew more and more apparent and oppressive. . . . The rich wronged the poor, and the poor hated the rich. Deprived of the Bible, and abandoned to the teachings of bigotry and selfishness, the people were shrouded in ignorance and superstition, and sunken in vice, so that they were wholly unfitted for self-government. . . .

“Unhappy France reaped in blood the harvest she had sown. On the very spot where the first martyrs to the Protestant faith were burned in the sixteenth century, the first victims were guillotined in the eighteenth. In repelling the gospel, which would have brought her healing, France had opened the door to infidelity and ruin.

When the restraints of God’s law were cast aside, it was found that the laws of man were inadequate to hold in check the powerful tides of human passion; and the nation swept on to revolt and anarchy. The war against the Bible inaugurated an era which stands in the world’s history as ‘The Reign of Terror.’ Peace and happiness were banished from the homes and hearts of men. No one was secure. He who triumphed today was suspected, condemned tomorrow. Violence and lust held undisputed sway.

“King, clergy, and nobles were compelled to submit to the atrocities of an excited and maddened people. Their thirst for vengeance was only stimulated by the execution of the king; and those who had decreed his death, soon followed him to the scaffold. A general slaughter of all suspected of hostility to the Revolution was determined. The prisons were crowded, at one time containing more than two hundred thousand captives. The cities of the kingdom were filled with scenes of horror. . . . And to add to the general misery, the nation became involved in a prolonged and devastating war with the great powers of Europe.

‘The country was nearly bankrupt, the armies were clamoring for arrears of pay, the Parisians were starving, the provinces were laid waste by brigands, and civilization was almost extinguished in anarchy and license.’ … A day of retribution, at last, had come. . . . ‘The gutters ran foaming with blood into the [River] Seine. . . . The daily wagonloads of victims were carried to their doom through the streets of Paris….. Great flocks of crows and kites feasted on naked corpses, twined together in hideous embraces. No mercy was shown to sex or age. The number of young lads and of girls of seventeen who were murdered by that execrable government is to be reckoned by hundreds.”

The “three days and a half’ as prophetic time are three and one half literal years. It is difficult to prove the precise dates during which the “reign of terror” against Bible truth continued, but some have thought it to be from November 1793 to June 1797. Then the government realized what a horrible mistake they had made and religion was again tolerated. Now the “two witnesses” are to be honored:

Revelation 11:11-14: Now after the three and a half days the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. And they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they ascended to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies saw them. In the same hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. In the earthquake seven thousand men were killed, and the rest were afraid and gave glory to the God of heaven. The second woe is past. Behold, the third woe is coming quickly.

Whereas Voltaire and other infidels had predicted that the Bible would soon be a forgotten book in all the world, we now see how the Scriptures “ascended to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies saw them.” The Scriptures have indeed been exalted since the French Revolution. In 1804 the British and Foreign Bible Society was organized for the translation and publication of the Scriptures in many languages; in 1816 the American Bible Society was organized for the same purpose; and by now the Bible has been translated into well over 1,000 languages and dialects and is published worldwide.

The “great earthquake,” in which “the tenth of the city fell,” is understood to refer to how the French Revolution cut France’s support of the papacy although France had been the original kingdom which established the political power of the papacy.

“When France publicly rejected God and set aside the Bible, wicked men and spirits of darkness exulted in their attainment of the object so long desired—a kingdom free from the restraints of the law of God. . . . But the transgression of a just and righteous law must inevitably result in misery and ruin. . . . Those who had chosen the service of rebellion were left to reap its fruits until the land was filled with crimes too horrible for pen to trace. From devastated provinces and ruined cities a terrible cry was heard, a cry of bitterest anguish. France was shaken as if by an earthquake.”

God help our governments in our modern world never to forget the lesson of France!

Chapters 10 and 11 have been an interlude describing events which took place between the sounding of the sixth trumpet and the sounding of the seventh. Now John returns us to the seven trumpets series:

Revelation 11:15-19: Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!” And the twenty-four elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying:

“We give You thanks, O Lord God Almighty,
The One who is and who was and who is to come,
Because You have taken Your great power and reigned.
The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come,
And the time of the dead, that they should be judged,
And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints,
And those who fear Your name, small and great,
And should destroy those who destroy the earth.”
Then the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple. And there were lightnings, noises, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail.
At last we come to the sounding of the seventh trumpet, during which the kingdoms of this earth are transferred to the rulership of the victorious Christ. All efforts of Satan and evil men to defeat Christ have failed.

No one doubts that today “the nations are angry.” Beginning in 1848, jealousy and hatred among the nations has been the rule rather than the exception. This is especially true in our century, when millions of human beings have been slaughtered in two frightful World Wars, and other equally bloody ones. And still the hatred between nations and races continues.

A final wrath is soon to be poured out in the “seven last plagues.” Thank God, those who fear His name, small and great, will receive their reward of mercy and salvation. Jesus says, “Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give every one according to his work” (Revelation 22:12).

John sees the crime of those “who destroy the earth.” How could he so accurately foretell the ecological crisis of our world today? Since the invention of nuclear bombs this possibility has become terrifying. The Geneva Conference for Disarmament reports that there are reserves of atomic weapons equal to 15 tons of dynamite for each person on earth.

The UN Environment Program insists that nuclear war would ruin the planet. Meanwhile, expenditure continues of a million dollars a minute for more weapons. Already man’s pollution of the atmosphere has produced acid rain, which is destroying vegetation, and has damaged the ozone layer creating the “greenhouse effect”.

Man has often been angry. But when God gets angry, watch out. When man ruins his beautiful planet created to be his home, God’s “wrath has come.” The world has never before witnessed it.

Once again, in this time of crisis John calls our attention to the sanctuary in heaven. In the typical Hebrew sanctuary, the ark of the testament was in the second apartment, called “the Most Holy.” Now we are directed to look into the Most Holy apartment of the heavenly antitypical sanctuary, where Christ is now ministering as High Priest in His closing work of atonement. Amid all the insecurity and anguish of this fear-ridden, terror-stricken world, look up into the sanctuary: there you will see your Saviour, the true Christ, ministering His blood on your behalf, to wash you and cleanse you from all sin, that you might be ready to enter into His kingdom.

There He is working to “finish” the “mystery of God,” to gather out of “every kindred, nation, tongue, and people,” a “remnant” of believers. He will “present every one perfect in Christ Jesus,” in whose mouth is “found no deceit, for they are without fault before the throne of God” (Colossians 1:28; Revelation 14:5). Not the “lightnings, voices, and thunderings” of earth should now engage our attention; let us rather fix our attention on Christ the Saviour and what He is now doing in His temple.

For a detailed, well researched and easy to read commentary on the book of Revelation I urge to buy a copy of Revelation of Jesus Christ: Commentary on the Book of Revelation This verse-by-verse commentary offers a text-focused and Christ-centered approach to the book of Revelation. Appropriate for personal study and as a college and seminary text, this volume provides both in-depth notes and lay-oriented exposition for use by scholars, students, pastors, and laypeople. An ever-increasing interest in the prophecies of the Apocalypse has resulted in deeper understandings which are introduced in this updated edition.

Ranko Stefanovic is professor of New Testament at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan. He holds a Ph.D. degree from Andrews University and is a well-loved teacher, popular speaker, and author of scholarly articles.

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Revelation 11 Commentary Video

Below is a video featuring a commentary on Revelation 11. It features Kenneth Cox.