Revelation 11:3-12

This is a passage that has puzzled many. Two witnesses prophesy 1260 days, the same forty-two months or three and a half years. They have great power to stay the rain, and turn water to blood, and smite the earth with plagues. But when they finish their testimony the beast from the bottomless pit kills them, and their bodies lie on the street of that city where our Lord was crucified. There is no doubt therefore with what city we are dealing. People are glad they are dead and rid of their testimony; but after three and a half days they are resurrected and ascend up into heaven in a cloud. This is a highly figurative passage and while it means something, is to be taken symbolically rather than literally.

Who were these two witnesses? That is a question often asked and deeply pondered. Now we are obliged to John for dropping a hint that gives the clue. The meaning often lies on the surface while we read right over it and fail to notice it. The hint to which I refer is found in the fourth verse: "These are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth." But that is familiar language. Where did we hear that before? Go back to Ezekiel 4:1-14, and you have the reference. There Zechariah has a vision of two olive trees pouring oil into a lamp and he asks: "What are these two olive trees on the right and left of the candlestick?" And he is told: "These are the two annointed ones that stand before the Lord of the whole earth." Whatever slight differences there are in the two accounts they are evidently the same thing. John's vision reproduces Zechariah's, and whatever Zechariah meant, that evidently John means. Now as we study Zechariah we find that he means by these two figures the head of the state and the head of the church. Both of these had great power and authority over the hearts and minds and lives of men. Civil and religious authority go far to restrain the evil passions and deeds of men. And in the social and civil convulsions that destroyed Jerusalem when the Jewish state was crushed, when the temple was burned, and the leaders of state and church were slain, it would look as if the power of law and religion had perished; and the witnesses to social order' and moral restraint were slain. And there were men then, and there are some still, who are glad when all authority and restraint are dead, and anarchy and license revel rampant.

But things can't last that way. Men must revert at length to law and order and moral restraint. No society can endure without legal and moral safeguards. And so the witnesses are resurrected. Anarchy may last for a little while, and the wicked may rejoice; but government and religion can't stay dead. Their resurrection is certain, and that after a very short reign of terror. And that is what we think is meant by these two witnesses. They may be thought of as personifications, or as personal representatives of religion and government. But John says: "These are the two olive trees," and Zechariah supplies the explanation.