Revelation 11:8

And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. DEAD BODIES. So 'Aleph ('), Vulgate, Syriac, Andreas; but A B C, Coptic, read singular, 'dead body.' The two fallen in one cause are considered one. THE GREAT CITY - eight times elsewhere used of BABYLON (; ; ; ; ; Revelation 18:18;...

3-13 In the time of treading down, God kept his faithful witnesses to attest the truth of his word and worship, and the excellence of his ways, The number of these witnesses is small, yet enough. They prophesy in sackcloth. It shows their afflicted, persecuted state, and deep sorrow for the abominations against which they protested. They are supported during their great and hard work, till it is done. When they had prophesied in sackcloth the greatest part of 1260 years, antichrist, the great instrument of the devil, would war against them, with force and violence for a time. Determined rebels against the light rejoice, as on some happy event, when they can silence, drive to a distance, or destroy the faithful servants of Christ, whose doctrine and conduct torment them. It does not appear that the term is yet expired, and the witnesses are not a present exposed to endure such terrible o...

Verse Revelation 11:8. _THE GREAT CITY_] Some say _Rome_, which may be spiritually called _Sodom_ for its _abominations, Egypt_ for its _tyrannous_ _cruelty_, and the _place where our Lord was crucified_, because of its persecution of the members of Christ; but _Jerusalem_ itself may be intended. All these things I must leave to others....

AND THEIR DEAD BODIES SHALL LIE IN THE STREET - Prof. Stuart, “Shall be in the street.” The words “shall lie” are supplied by the translators, but not improperly. The literal rendering would be, “and their corpses upon the street of the great city”; and the meaning is, that there would be a state of things in regard to them which would be well represented by supposing them to lie unburied. To leave a body unburied is to treat it with contempt, and among the ancients nothing was regarded as more dishonorable than such treatment. See the Ajax of Sophocles. Among the Jews also it was regarded as a special indignity to leave the dead unburied, and hence they are always represented as deeply solicitous to secure the interment of their dead. See Genesis 23:4. Compare 2 Samuel 21:9;

EXPOSITION REVELATION 11:1 AND THERE WAS GIVEN ME A REED LIKE UNTO A ROD. We are not told by whom the _reed _is given, but in Revelation 21:1. the angel has the reed, and so also in Ezekiel 40:1., upon which the incident seems founded (see Ezekiel 40:1.; and cf. the reference to the outer court in Ezekiel 40:17). The reed is "like a rod;" that is, like to a _staff. _It is for a measuring line, as in...

AND THEIR DEAD BODIES [SHALL LIE] IN THE STREET OF THE GREAT CITY,.... Not Jerusalem, which was destroyed when John had this vision, and which will; not be rebuilt at the time it refers to; nor is it ever called the great city, though the city of the great King; however, not in this book, though the new Jerusalem is so called, Revelation 21:10; but that can never be designed here; but the city of Rome, or the Roman jurisdiction, the whole empire of the Romish antichrist, which is often called the great city in this book; see Revelation 16:19. The city of Rome itself was very large, and the Roman empire still larger, so as to be called the whole world and the antichristian see of Rome has been of great extent. Now as the street of a city denotes a public open place i

GREAT CITY That is, Jerusalem....

CHAPTER 11:1-18 Revelation 11:1 . We see at once how Jewish things come now into view. To apply these verses to the Church and make the temple the Church is absolutely wrong. The temple and the altar are Jewish; the holy city is Jerusalem. After the Church has left the earth the Jewish people will be fully restored to their own land, and their land restored to them. They will possess Jerusalem once more. When the Jews are once more masters in their own promised land they will erect another temple and then restore the Levitical worship as far as it is possible. Such a temple must be in Jerusalem. (See Isaiah 66:1 .) In that temple the personal Antichrist, the beast out of the land of whom we shall read in chapter 13, will appear and claim divine worship. (See...

THE INTERLUDE CONTINUED. THE SECOND EPISODE. The first two verses are introductory, and represent the survey or measuring of the holy city by the seer. Then comes the prophecy concerning the two witnesses, followed by the first appearance in the book of the beast or Antichrist (Revelation 11:7). REVELATION 11:1. A REED: a measuring rod (Ezekiel 40 ff., Zechariah 2:1), Ezekiel's reed (Ezekiel 40:5) was nine feet long. MEASURE THE TEMPLE: the allusion is not to the heavenly sanctuary but to the Temple at Jerusalem. The object of the measuring was to provide for its preservation in the day of crisis. The referen

I will. exposed in the broad street of the false Church, or somewhere in the dominions or presence of Rome. During the long period extending from A. D. 533 to 1792,. prophetic period of 1260 years, the two witnesses, the Old and New Testaments, remained in sackcloth. Even where the light had begun to spring up and the Protestant Reformation had taken the place of the Romish faith, there was still intoleration. Puritans were persecuted in England, Baptists in Lutheran Germany, Calvin burnt Servetus in Geneva, Quakers and Baptists were punished for their religion in the American colonies. Still, although the Bible had been translated into various tongues, the witnesses, until nearly the close of the eighteenth century, everywhere testified in sackcloth, for the reason that the world had not yet learned the principles of free religious toleration. Men were not allowed to read and understand...