Revelation 11

Revelation — Steve Gregg

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Revelation 11

RevelationSteve Gregg

In this piece, Steve Greg discusses Revelation 11, which he believes to be a remarkable and deliberate contrast to the rest of the Bible. While the things written in the book may seem to refer to specific situations, such as spiritual warfare, victory in Christ over Satan, and vindication in heaven, the early chapters and breaking of the seven seals bring forth the prophecies of Christ's return. The speaker emphasizes the importance of recognizing these events as true and how they relate to the book's themes of victory and vindication.

Transcript

We're going to be turning in this session to chapter 11 of the book of Revelation. One of the things in this chapter, there's three things in this chapter, and one of them, the part that's in the middle, is the well-known and much speculated upon prophecy of the two witnesses. Some commentators have said that this is the book of Revelation.

This is the most difficult passage in Revelation, judging from the many interpretations that have been given to it by different commentators. But before we get into the material, I need to remind you of what we were discussing just at the end of our last session. And that was a consideration of chapter 10.

Now, my view of Revelation is, in general, of course, somewhat a minority view. Although one that is increasing some credibility in evangelical circles. Certainly the past 30, 40 years, the view, the general view of the partial preterist has been recognized as having merit, especially as people are becoming more and more acquainted with what actually happened in AD 70.

It was my problem when I was younger teaching the book of Revelation. I assumed that nothing like this had ever happened before, so it must necessarily be future. And it was not my privilege, my teachers did not give me the privilege to know what had in fact happened.

And we do have record of it, authoritative record from an eyewitness named Josephus. And it's interesting how much he, though not a Christian himself and not aware of the book of Revelation himself, seemed to confirm so many things about it. Because John said to his original readers, who were of course living in the first century, that the things he was writing must shortly come to pass and that the time was near.

And we saw in chapter 22, verse 10, that he was told not to seal up the words of the book of this prophecy because the time is at hand. And that is significant when we come to chapter 10, because there's some other information given, which is sealed up. But the sealing up or not sealing up of a prophecy has to do with how soon the fulfillment is expected to be.

In Daniel chapter 12, when Daniel asked the angel, what shall the end of these things be? When he was asking about the prophecies of chapter 12, he was told, go your way Daniel, it is sealed up until the time of the end. And he later said, seal up the prophecy until the time of the end. He said, Daniel, you will grow old, you'll be buried in a ripe old age, and in the end of days you'll stand.

But for the time being, you're not going to understand this stuff. And so the sealing up of the book of Daniel was because it wasn't to be understood or read or applicable in the immediate future. It had a long-range fulfillment.

But in Revelation chapter 22, verse 10, by contrast, John said, don't seal this book because the time is at hand. So, I mean, the contrast is deliberate and remarkable. That whereas Daniel's prophecies would not soon be fulfilled after the time they were written, Revelation, John is told, is soon going to be fulfilled after the time of its writing.

Which would instruct us to look for something in the near future from John and his readers' point of view that might correspond to the things we read about. Now, of course, finding things that correspond requires that we recognize the degree to which the book of Revelation fits into a genre of literature called apocalyptic. Where there's a great amount of apocalyptic literature has been discovered now by scholars, which dates from the time prior to Revelation as much as three centuries before Revelation.

And that we see now that the Jews and the early Christians were very fond of this particular genre, this apocalyptic style literature where a message was given in symbolic visions. And with symbols of monsters and demons and angels and earthquakes and volcanoes and thunders and lightnings, all these things really representing somewhat more mundane matters. Wars, nations fighting against each other, the fall of empires, the fall of kingdoms and cities and so forth.

In apocalyptic literature described in seemingly cosmic proportions. And so we find in the book of Revelation the same usage. And when we look for any events that seem to be the fulfillment in the near future from the time of John and his readers, we do in fact find something.

And I've always thought it was interesting, I think providential, that we even have Josephus. Do you know how few books from 2,000 years ago have survived for scholars to read today? Josephus' work is as old as the New Testament in times it was written at the same time he was contemporary with the apostles. There are some books older that exist, but not very many comparatively.

And from the time of Josephus and the apostles, not very many books have survived. But perhaps in the providence of God, Josephus' works and his history of the Jewish war, which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem after a terrible, horrendous war and siege, that document has survived. And I suppose we should consider how at a loss we would be if it had not.

Because we would not know really anything about the fall of Jerusalem, which, according to Jesus, was the subject of much prophecy. Jesus said that the destruction of Jerusalem would occur to fulfill all that was written over in Luke 21-23. He said that.

So the fall of Jerusalem is apparently, according to Jesus, the subject of much prophecy in the Bible. Yet if we didn't have Josephus' work, we wouldn't even know what happened. We wouldn't even know the prophecies were fulfilled.

We don't have really any detailed information about it outside of that. We have some historians that mention that Jerusalem fell to the Romans, but not much more. And yet Josephus, an eyewitness of those events, wrote extensive details about it.

And it has really, in some ways, allowed us to recognize that the things that Revelation talks about, many of them, seem to have come true. Now, in that respect, I'm not very unique. There's many people who understand Revelation in a partial, preterist way and see the book as primarily about A.D. 70.

But those who do don't usually see these chapters we're coming to now the way I do. Because the way I'm looking at chapters 11, 12, and 13 is more the way that an entirely different approach to Revelation looks at them. The idealist view.

The idealist view looks at the whole book of Revelation a certain way. The preterist view looks at the whole book of Revelation a different way. I look at part of the book of Revelation in a preterist way and part of it in an idealist way.

What does the idealist say? The idealist says that the things in Revelation pertain to the whole age of the church. And they depict symbolically certain important trends, principles, realities that are universally and always true throughout the age of the church. Things like spiritual warfare, the victory of Christ over Satan, the vindication of martyrs in heaven.

And things that really don't apply to only one situation. They apply to the whole age of the church. These things are true.

And that they are depicted in symbolic ways. Well, the idealist thinks the whole book of Revelation should be understood that way. I tend to only take portions of it that way.

And I only do so, I don't do it by default. In other words, if I can't make sense of it a certain way, I just kind of fall back on some other way just because it's there. Actually, I don't do that.

I have thought through, and I may not have thought through correctly. It's not my intention to tell anyone that they have to agree with me. But I can't teach it some other way when I have come to see it a certain way.

So you will have to judge for yourself whether my reasons are adequate. In the unfolding of the early chapters up through chapter 9, we had the breaking of the seven seals and the sounding of the first six of the seven trumpets. The seventh trumpet has not yet been sounded until chapter 11, verse 15.

But at chapter 10, a pretty short chapter, I have seen a transition. John in chapter 10 saw an angel with one foot on the land and one foot on the sea, holding an open book in his hand. And when he spoke, seven thunders uttered their voices.

And when John intended to write down what the seven thunders said, he was told not to do it, but to seal it up. And then he was told that in the days of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God would be fulfilled, would be complete. And John was told to go and eat the little book, as Ezekiel similarly ate a scroll in Ezekiel chapter 3. And like Ezekiel, he found it to be sweet in his mouth, but bitter in his belly.

Obviously, an echo of Ezekiel chapter 3 here. But when he ate the scroll, he was then told in chapter 10, verse 11, you must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings. Now, here's my proposition.

This chapter 10 is announcing that there is now a second prophecy to be considered. You will prophesy again. You've already been prophesying all this time.

You're going to have another prophecy now. This one pertains to many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings. It seems to me that this is in contrast to the prophecy he's already been occupied with, which is not about many nations, peoples, tongues, and kings, but about one kingdom in particular, and Jerusalem.

I believe that most of the book is concerned with the fall of Jerusalem, but not all of it. Because here's this additional prophecy that is said specifically to have a broader scope encompassing basically the Gentile world, not just Jerusalem. Furthermore, that the angel has one foot on the land and one foot on the sea seems emblematic that his significance spans Israel and the nations.

The land as a typical image for Israel, the sea an established symbol for the nations or the Gentile world. The angel's standing on both. He's holding an open book.

Apparently this open book is the prophecy that John has to give because he eats that book and it becomes his message. The book is said to be a little one. It is emphatically a little one.

Several times it is referred to as the little book. Now there was another book earlier in chapter 5 with seven seals, but it was not said to be little or large. Its size was not a significant factor.

Nothing was said about its size. But this one is said to be little. It's a smaller prophecy.

It should occupy less space. Now, furthermore, when the angel holding that book began to speak, his voice was accompanied by or followed by seven thunders. We don't know and will not be able to find out what those seven thunders said because it was not recorded.

But what's more important is why it's not recorded. It is said that they were sealed up, which is, as I pointed out yesterday, a direct and deliberate contrast with the rest of the book of Revelation, which is not sealed. In chapter 22, the book of Revelation is said not to be sealed because it has a near fulfillment.

These seven thunders are told to be sealed. It doesn't say because they don't have a near fulfillment, but that is what the sealing or not sealing of a prophetic book seems to suggest. So that this smaller prophecy, this small book, it seems to be international in its concern and not so much immediate in its fulfillment.

It's the sealed up portion of the larger book. Now, having said that, I'm going to suggest that this little prophecy pertains to the period from AD 70, when Jerusalem was destroyed, to the actual end of the world. That is when Jesus returns in the future.

That period has been nearly 2,000 years now. How much longer it may be, we will not speculate, but it is a long time. And it is perhaps coextensive what we would be inclined to call the church age, the present age.

It is an age where God is reaching out to Gentiles, hence the prophecy has to do with many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings. It is not immediately fulfilled in John's time because it is stretched out over a very long time into the far distant future from John's point of view. So it is sealed.

But he is told in chapter 10, verse 7, but in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished. I suggested that the mystery of God here spoken of is the same mystery of God that Paul frequently speaks of, which is what? In Ephesians chapter 3, he said the mystery of God is that the Jews and the Gentiles would become one body in Christ. There is the church.

The church is the mystery of God. And by the time the seventh angel sounds, the mystery of God is completed. The church, I believe, at that point, has reached the culmination of its mission on earth.

That is what I am assuming. Now when we actually read about the sounding of the seventh trumpet, it does sound like the end of the world. In chapter 11, verse 15, 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 24 elders who sat before God on their thrones fell on their faces and worshipped 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. Now that may not be, some preterists believe it is not, but I believe it is the second coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the judgment and the rewarding of the saints, the time when the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, as Daniel predicted that the kingdom of God like a small stone would grow into a great mountain to fill the whole earth and would break in pieces all these kingdoms that opposed it and would then itself be the one universal kingdom worldwide.

That strikes me as the same thing this is saying when it says the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever. So, while I acknowledge there are other views on this, I believe chapter 11, verses 15 through 18, the seventh trumpet referred to the end of the present age when Jesus returns. And therefore, when the angel tells John in chapter 10, verse 7, before when the angel, the seventh angel is about to sound his trumpet, that means when Jesus is about to come back, then the mystery of God will be completed.

The church will be complete. So that is what I'm thinking about John, I mean about Revelation chapter 10. It is transitioning from the main body of prophecy that we've been looking at to a smaller book, a smaller prophecy, broader in range, more far out in its fulfillment than the main body, but nonetheless treated briefly in a small book.

I have suggested at the end of our last session that chapters 11, 12, and 13 are that little book. Now, I'll tell you why. Because, of course, they immediately follow the introduction that there's another little book and another prophecy, but more than that, they have something in common with each other.

All three of these chapters, and only these three chapters, discuss a period of time which is referred to by different designations that equal three and a half years. For example, in chapter 11, verse 2, it's called, at the end of that verse, 42 months. In the middle of verse 3, that period is called 1,260 days.

That's the same thing as 42 months. In chapter 12, verse 6, at the end of verse 6, it says 1,260 days, which again is the same thing as 42 months. And in chapter 12, verse 14, at almost the end of that verse, chapter 12, verse 14, it says a time and times and half a time.

If a time is a year, then two times added to a time would be three, and half a time would be three and a half years. That's how long 42 months is. That's how long 1,260 days is.

And in chapter 13, verse 5, at the end of that verse, it says 42 months. So five different times we have referenced to a period of time that is, although it's the same length of time, it's designated three different ways. Why? For stylistic reasons, maybe.

I don't know. But in any case, whichever designation is used, it totals three and a half years. Now, the way I was raised, I was taught that the tribulation period is seven years.

And although there's no place in the Bible that ever mentions such a seven-year period, I was taught that these five references to three and a half years, really some of them are the first half of the period and some of them are the second half of the period. And therefore, putting two different three and a halves end to end, you've got a seven-year period. But there's nothing in the material that makes it natural or necessary to see more than one period of three and a half years.

To my mind, in the absence of any hints that would point me otherwise, I would think that three and a half years is always the same three and a half years. And that the time period designated that way in Chapter 11 and 12 and 13 is the same period of time. And we never find that period of time after Chapter 13 or before Chapter 11.

It's only in those three chapters. And I, therefore, would like to float the theory by you that these three chapters are that little book that is introduced in Chapter 10. And that once we get through Chapter 13, we get back to the main body of the book, which is about the main subject matter again.

Now, I said that the little book, I believe, is related to the period from A.D. 70 to Christ's second coming, a period of something like 2,000 years so far. Where would I get that idea? Well, I get it from the very first reference to that period of time. Because it says in Chapter 11, and that's where we come to tonight, 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 underfoot for forty-two months.

Now, this is where I get the idea I have about this period of time. It says the Gentiles are going to trample Jerusalem underfoot for forty-two months. And this correlates with one other passage in the Bible that talks about the Gentiles trampling Jerusalem underfoot.

And that is in Luke Chapter 21, which I think gives us the cross-reference and the interpretation of the verses we're looking at. Jesus, in Luke 21, predicted that the destruction of the temple would come. That the temple would find total desolation, not one stone left standing on another.

He said that in Luke 21.6. As for these things which you see, the days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down. He's talking about the temple in the context. You can see that by reading the previous verse.

But then when he said that, in verse 7, they asked him, saying, Teacher, but when will these things be? That is, when will the temple be thrown down? When will the stones be thrown down? That's what he predicted. When will these things be? And what sign will there be when these things are about to take place? So these things are what Jesus predicted, the destruction of the temple. We know it happened in AD 70, but they were asking this question 40 years beforehand and didn't know when it would happen.

So they said two things. When will it be? What sign will there be that we know it's about to happen? In other words, will we have warning beforehand? Now, he answers them in what we call the Olivet Discourse. But when he comes to verse 21, or verse 20, Luke 21.20, he answers the question of what sign will there be that it's about to take place? Their second question.

In verse 20, he says, But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near. Then let those in Judea flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart, and let not those who are in the country enter her. For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written might be fulfilled.

But woe to those who are pregnant and those who are nursing babies in those days, for there will be great distress in this land and wrath upon this people. So he's talking about the great trouble that would come upon that land and that people, the Jews in Jerusalem, when the Roman armies would come and besiege the city. He told the Christians to flee from there, and we saw already that they did.

Historically, it's recorded that they fled before the Roman troops besieged the city. But then he says this in verse 24 as he continues to describe the carnage. He says in verse 24, And they will fall by the edge of the sword and be led away captive into all nations.

This, of course, did happen. Many of them were slaughtered and many were deported into the Diaspora, where they remain, most of them today still. And he says, And Jerusalem will be trampled by the Gentiles.

That starts to sound like something we're interested in here as we're trying to study the book of Revelation. We just read that it's given to the Gentiles and they will tread the holy city underfoot, Revelation 11.2 says, for 42 months. Jesus said, Jerusalem will be trampled by the Gentiles, obviously from this point where Jerusalem falls to the Romans, from that point until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

Now, the term the times of the Gentiles is not found anywhere else in Scripture, that expression. It's only used here. So, of course, there might be more than one way people would understand it.

And there are more than one way. But I think the way that most people would just assume intuitively, it means the times during which the temple is given over to the Gentiles or the time that the Gentiles prevail. Perhaps even the times during which God's outreach is going primarily to Gentiles.

Since the fall of Jerusalem, most outreach has been to Gentiles. And the times of the Gentiles, in my opinion, we are still in. God is still harvesting among the Gentiles, primarily.

And I believe He will do so until Jesus comes back. I believe the times of the Gentiles simply refer to the time from 70 AD until Jesus comes back, during which the focus of evangelism is no longer on Israel as it was in the early years of the Church and is now on the world at large. But if that's true, then Jesus has told us the period of time that the Gentiles trample on Jerusalem is from 70 AD until the end of the world, if the times of the Gentiles is being understood correctly here.

From 70 AD to the end of the world. In Revelation, that same period of time is called 42 months. And therefore, the three and a half years that we encounter in Revelation 11, 12, and 13, I think the code has been broken for us by Jesus' words.

Revelation is full of symbolic numbers, mostly seven. Three and a half is half of seven. It's as likely to be symbolic as is seven.

And many other numbers in the book of Revelation that don't seem to be so much intended to be statistical but symbolic. But if we are correct in this assumption, then what I'm saying is that when we encounter this 1260 days, this time, times, and half a time, this 42 months, this period of three and a half years, that length of time is symbolic. It's not the actual length of time.

It's not even an approximate length of time. It's merely a symbolic number that represents that period of time. That's my suggestion.

Now what we will find is that several things are happening during that time in these three chapters. First, the Gentiles are trampling the holy city underfoot for that period of time. Secondly, as we will see later in this chapter, the two witnesses are prophesying.

Of course, if this is the time from 70 A.D. until the end of the world, these two witnesses cannot be seen as two individuals but something else. But that's okay. It's not too difficult to justify it.

But the two witnesses, which I take to be the church, and I'll tell you why presently, prophesy for the same period of time that the city is being trampled. Then we read of the woman fleeing into the wilderness, which the Jewish church did in 80 A.D. and nurtured there for the same period of time. That is, the Jewish remnant is kept and preserved by God for the same period of time.

And then we have the beast in chapter 13, and his period of blasphemy is that same period of time. Now, of course, if I'm not mistaken about the identity of this period of time, if it is in fact the whole age of the church, so to speak, from 70 A.D. on, then the beast cannot be an individual, nor is there the slightest reason in Revelation to think he is, even if we made the three and a half years literal. There's not one thing in the book of Revelation that would encourage the view that the beast is an individual man.

He's got seven heads, ten horns, and all of those are kings. He's a system. He's not an individual man.

It's a political system. We'll talk about that later. We're not there yet.

But the point is, I believe the two witnesses are not individual men. I believe the beast is not an individual man. I don't believe the woman with the 12 stars on her head and clothed in the sun and standing in the moon, I don't think she's an individual woman either.

I believe we're seeing the apocalyptic imagery, typical of this kind of literature, representing principles or entities that are really not personal and depicting them symbolically as if they were persons. We've already encountered this earlier in the book of Revelation because we saw when the fourth horseman came out, the rider on the horse, who is obviously personified as a horse rider, is death. And running behind him is Hades.

Death and Hades aren't people either. They don't just last the lifetime of an individual. Death, Hades, these are principles personified.

So this is how Revelation does this. And so let's take a look here. What is chapter 11, verses 1 and 2 actually saying here? He was given a measuring rod and he was told to measure the temple.

The word temple there in the Greek, in verse 1, the word temple of God, the word temple is neos. In Greek, the word neos is the term specifically for the holy of holies, not the whole temple complex, but just the inner sanctum, the holy of holies. Now, later on in Revelation, the holy of holies seems to be identified with the New Jerusalem, which is itself identified with the church.

The New Jerusalem is dressed like a bride, adorned to see her husband. And when the angel says to John, come, I will show you the lamb's wife, we expect to see the church and we do, but what he sees is a city, the New Jerusalem, dressed like a bride. That's the lamb's wife.

A city? Once again, personification of something that isn't really an individual person. The bride is not an individual. The bride is the church.

Lots of individuals. By the way, the harlot isn't an individual either, in chapter 17. The individual characters in the book of Revelation represent larger entities, not individual persons in most cases.

And for that reason, I believe that the naos, the holy of holies as measured, is a representation of the true temple of God, the church. And what is it being measured for? Well, its dimensions are being procured so that it can be identified without question for what? So that it won't be given over to be trampled by the Gentiles for the next 42 months. In other words, the measured portion is being preserved This is symbolic here, of course.

He's measuring the holy of holies, which I believe represents the New Jerusalem. Remember when the New Jerusalem is described in chapter 21, it's a cube shape, like the holy of holies is. The holy of holies in the tabernacle is 15 feet by 15 feet by 15 feet cubed.

No windows. No lights. It's just lit by the glory of God.

The shekinah. The New Jerusalem. It's cube shaped too.

1500 miles by 1500 miles by 1500 miles. It's rather large. Holy of holies needs to be because the privileges of direct access to God in the holy of holies now accrue to millions of people who are the church.

And the city has no need of the sun or moon or stars because the glory of God is its light, just like the holy of holies. You see, the holy of holies is an emblem, I believe, of the New Jerusalem or vice versa. The New Jerusalem is an emblem of the holy of holies.

And both are ways of speaking of the true church, the true temple of God. The true habitation of God among men is the church, the body of Christ, the community of Christ on the earth. Made of living stones, Peter said.

Now, it is the church then that is being identified by this measurement. And what is left out? The external temple. And it is apparently the temple in Jerusalem because it is the holy city that's going to be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles for these 42 months.

The temple courts, the outer court, which coincidentally probably corresponds to the court of the Gentiles, is given over to the Gentiles, not so that they can worship God, but so that they can trample the temple underfoot. They can trample the holy city. This appears to be predicting the destruction of the temple and the subsequent trampling of Jerusalem by the Gentiles for the period of time.

But before the temple is given over, before Jerusalem is given over to the Gentiles, that true church is identified to be preserved. This is not any different than the identification of the 144,000 by the mark on their forehead before the judgment is poured out on Jerusalem. But this image of the preservation of the naos, of the holy of holies, introduces something new that we haven't seen, and that is the period of time.

The earlier prophecies have described the destruction of Jerusalem, but have left unanswered the question, what happens after that? And one who reads the description of the destruction of Jerusalem in the earlier visions would certainly say, that looks like the end of the world. Is it? No, it's not. There's a period of time after that too, before the end of the world.

We'll call it 42 months. Now, of course, if I'm suggesting that 42 months or three and a half years is a symbol for the church age, I ought to be able to present a compelling reason why that number, instead of some other, would have been selected to be a symbol of the whole age of the church. And, I can't.

I can't. I can think of reasons, but not compelling reasons. Some have compared it to the period of time that Nero persecuted the church, just like the beast is persecuting the church through this whole age.

Nero would be sort of a micro example of the beast. The beast extends through the whole church age, persecuting the church, but Nero was the current beast at the time, the current manifestation of this phenomenon, of the beast, the satanically inspired government that persecuted the church. And his persecution was three and a half years, and so that might make three and a half years to be a good symbolic number for the period of time.

But, another possibility is that since the two witnesses, who I'm going to identify with the church for reasons I'll give you when we get there in just a moment, they also prophesied for the same length of time. And what is the church but the body of Christ? It's the continuation of Christ's ministry. Christ's ministry was three and a half years.

If one wished to give a symbolic number for the ministry of the church, especially not having any idea how long it will actually be, and no one does know how long it will be, even now we don't know how much longer it may be, we can't give an approximation. We certainly can't give the exact period of time. So to pick a number that in some sense symbolizes it, to say, well, the church, that's the second part of Jesus, the second half of Jesus' ministry, the period of three and a half years was the literal length of time Jesus was in ministry.

Let's use that as a symbol for the church's ministry, which is also Jesus' ministry through his body after his ascension. That might be a reason for it, too. I honestly don't know.

I can't argue that it is for this cause or that cause that this number has been chosen. I can think of several possibilities, none of them compelling. What is compelling to me is that the 42 months is identified with the whole times of the Gentiles in the statement Jesus made.

And that seems to require that the period is symbolic for this age, and whatever reasons it may be chosen, I leave to your imagination or for God to show you, or for simply God to show you that the whole theory is wrong. But in any case, one of the things that is said to take place during this period is the giving over of Jerusalem to be trampled by the Gentiles. That's one thing that's going on for this period of time.

In other words, Jerusalem, which for so long, over a thousand years, was the headquarters of God's people and the headquarters of God's habitation on earth, it isn't anymore. It's been judged because of its rejection of Christ, sadly, and the headquarters are elsewhere. God dwells now in a temple not made with hands, a naos made of living stones, people.

And that has been identified before the judgment came and preserved. The rest is given over. Now, the next thing we learn is in verse 3 and following, I will give power to my two witnesses and they will prophesy 1,260 days.

So the same period of time that Jerusalem is being trodden underfoot, the two witnesses are functioning. They'll be clothed in sackcloth suggesting that repentance is some aspect of their message. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the God of the earth.

This imagery is borrowed from Zechariah 4, verse 2 and 3 and 11 and 14. There's a vision in that chapter where apparently Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest were represented by two olive trees. That is at least the general theory of commentators.

All that Zechariah is really told is that these two olive trees are the two sons of oil or most translations say anointed ones. The two anointed ones that stand before the God of the whole earth. Now, anointed ones, what does the word Christ mean? Christos means the anointed one.

But this is perhaps the body of Christ. The anointed one broken down into multiple persons. The body of Christ is made up of many members now.

But why the two witnesses? Why not just one? The church is one body, not two. Could it be referenced to the Jewish and the Gentile elements in the church? It might be. However, after the fall of Jerusalem, the Jewish church and Gentile church don't seem to have a distinct role.

They're merged. In the days of the apostles, before Jerusalem fell, the Jewish church had its own identity. It worshiped at the temple and so forth and it was under the 12 apostles that were there.

But Paul and his ministry took out to the Gentiles and they had a separate mission and different things going on in the Gentile church than the Jewish church. But after Jerusalem fell, that distinction was pretty much less so. And the church was mostly merged.

True, the Ebionites were an early kind of legalistic Judaizing branch of the church even after 70 AD, made up of some of the Christian Jews who had fled from Jerusalem. And they were separate from the Orthodox church. But for the most part, since Jerusalem fell, there's no distinction between Jew or Gentile.

In fact, there wasn't in God's sight even before Jerusalem fell. But since Jerusalem fell, there just isn't this separate center for the Jewish church to be identified with anymore. They're worldwide like the Gentile church is.

It's all one church. There's no distinction. So I don't think it means the Jewish and Gentile elements of the church.

But the reason for saying two witnesses instead of one is because of the Jewish conviction based on verses in Deuteronomy and quoted many times, actually three or four times or more in the New Testament, that says, in the mouth of two or more witnesses every word shall be established. Or as Jesus paraphrased it once in the Gospel of John, he said, the witness of two is true. Jesus said, it is said in your law, the witness of two is true.

He said, if I testify myself alone, my witness isn't true. But I have another that testifies of me. In other words, in the Jewish mind, a witness isn't necessarily credible.

Two witnesses are. Two witnesses are telling the truth. And therefore, to say that the church is a true and credible witness, it requires two.

And therefore, it's not even necessary to say why the number two would be an ideal number to describe the church, except that it couldn't be one. And these two, we're going to read a description of them, but one thing that's rather interesting, eventually in this vision, they get killed. And it says, we're going to look ahead just for the second, and then we'll go back.

In verse eight, it says, their dead bodies will lie in the street of that great city. Their dead bodies, actually in the Greek is their dead body. Their plural, dead body, singular.

The body of Christ is one. It's made of multiple individuals, but they are one body. And these two witnesses, I believe, are one body.

They are two witnesses because their witness is true. And the body of Christ is made up of more than one individual. But it is many members, but one body.

Now, verse five says, 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 the waters to turn them to blood and to strike the earth with all plagues as often as they desire.

Now, I haven't seen anyone walk around doing any of these things during the church age. Someone might say, well, this kind of doesn't make it look like it's the church at the present time. It looks like this must be someone in the future.

And so, that's how the futurist actually reasons. The reason that people are futurists is not because there's any good reason to accept that you can't take these things literally and make them apply to anything except the future. Because you can't find anything in the past where this literally happened.

People walk around calling fire out of heaven, turning water into blood. Unless, of course, we're talking about Moses and Elijah. Because two of the miracles recorded are those that Elijah does, and two are miracles Moses does, or did.

The ones that Elijah did were called fire out of heaven. Elijah did that once when the king sent 50 men to arrest him. Fire out of heaven came down and consumed the 50.

Another 50 came, same thing happened to them. Third 50 came, and the leader of the 50 begged Elijah to have mercy, and so he didn't call fire out of heaven on them. He went in and let them take him.

But he had the power to call fire down on his enemies and also to stop the heavens so it wouldn't rain for three and a half years. Another connection here to the three and a half years. Because Elijah stopped the rain and caused a drought for three and a half years, and then he prayed and it came back again, the rain.

So, two of the things Elijah did are attributed to these two witnesses. And then, turning water into blood and striking the earth with all plagues, that's what Moses did in Egypt. He turned water into blood, he struck Egypt with plagues.

So these guys, we have a sampling of their activities that are reminiscent of Moses and Elijah. Now those who are inclined to take this literally say, well, this must mean that Moses and Elijah are going to be coming back in the tribulation. After all, doesn't Malachi say, I'm going to send Elijah before your face? Isn't Malachi saying that Elijah is supposed to come again? And therefore, one of these witnesses must be Elijah and the other is probably Moses.

There's another theory too, that I was taught when I was a dispensationalist, and that is that certainly one of them is Elijah. The other one may not be Moses but might be Enoch. Why Enoch? Well, Elijah and Enoch have something in common.

In the Bible, they're the only two men of ancient times of whom it is suggested they did not die. They were taken into heaven without seeing death. Now, the way I was taught by my early teachers was, it says in Hebrews chapter 9 that it is appointed unto man once to die.

And those are two men in the Old Testament who never kept that appointment. They didn't die. It's appointed to men to die, and they didn't experience death, so they must come back and experience death.

And so the whole argument for Enoch being along with Elijah here is that these men have to meet their appointment with death. They're the only two who have not. However, there's a problem with that that anyone could discover just from thinking for a few minutes, clearly, and that is, Paul said, there's going to be a whole generation of Christians that don't die.

He said, we should not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. Paul said, the dead in Christ shall rise first, and we who are alive and remain should be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. There will be a whole living generation of Christians that will not die when Jesus comes back.

Will we all have to come back then and die too? Because we missed our appointment? Obviously, when Hebrews said it's appointed unto man once to die, it's not making an inflexible, absolute declaration. It's making an observation that, generally speaking, certainly people die, and they only die once, not twice. But there are exceptions of people who died twice.

We assume Jairus' daughter, the son of the widow of Nain, Lazarus, these were all people that died once and Jesus raised them. We don't have any record of it, but most people assume they finished living out a natural life and died again. That wouldn't be a problem in view of the statement in Hebrews, it's appointed unto man once to die.

The statement would mean, generally speaking, God has the power to make exceptions if he wants to, and certainly the generation that will be raptured at the coming of Christ is an exception. Those people who seem to have died more than once are an exception. Elijah and Enoch could both be exceptions too.

It's not necessary that God must make them come back and die. Now, I can see good grounds to see one of these as Elijah because of the connection both to the particular miracles recorded that resemble his and also those who believe that Malachi's prediction about Elijah coming has not yet been fulfilled. Jesus was not among them.

Jesus said, if you can receive it, John the Baptist is Elijah who was to come. And if Jesus says, if you can receive it, I'll say, I will. Lord, if you want me to, I'll receive it.

If you'll receive it, John is Elijah who is to come. Okay, I'll accept that. John was Elijah who was to come.

That means the fulfillment of the prediction. That's what who was to come means. The one that was predicted to come.

The one that Malachi talked about. John was him. Okay, so I'm not expecting Elijah back.

John was Elijah. Not literally, but he came in the spirit and power of Elijah according to the angel Gabriel who had preannounced his birth in the temple when he spoke to Zechariah, the father. And he said, your son will come in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the wicked to the wisdom of the just.

And the disobedient to the wisdom of the just. In any case, he's quoting Malachi 4, 5, and 6 and saying John the Baptist is that guy fulfilling that. So there's no reason to look for a future fulfillment of Elijah coming.

It's been done. Jesus is the authority on that for us. Nor Enoch.

There's nothing to identify this with Enoch unless we accept the reasoning that everyone has to die once. In which case, we're going to have to eliminate some of the things Paul said about our future. Some of us will not.

So, is it Elijah and Moses? They'd be good ones. If you're going to have two witnesses come in the end times, Moses and Elijah would be good ones, especially if they're in Jerusalem. It says their dead bodies lie in the streets of Jerusalem, the city Jesus was crucified in.

So if they're witnessing in Jerusalem, who could be a more effective witness to the Jews than Moses and Elijah, representing the law and the prophets? So if a person is a futurist, there seems to be little theories, a few theories that could be more commendable than to identify these two witnesses as Moses and Elijah coming back in the end times. And by the way, I mentioned this in our introduction. I've run into these two witnesses often over the past 40 years.

They show up once in a while. A couple of them picked me up hitchhiking once when I was a teenager. And they were the two witnesses.

They assured me. And not too long ago, just in the past few months, I got an e-mail from one of them. It was Elijah.

And he said, and he's in all sobriety, he said he's soon going to be getting in touch with, or Enoch's going to be getting in touch with him, and they'll be going to Jerusalem. So watch for that on Fox News. But there's a reason why this chapter has been said to be one of the most perplexing in the book of Revelation, because it's hard to identify these two if we're going to find two individuals as the two witnesses.

But, of course, a futurist view is not required. The Bible doesn't give us any command to take a futurist view of Revelation. In fact, it almost forbids it by the statement, these things must shortly come to pass, a statement made 2,000 years ago.

So if we don't take the futurist view and we don't take these as two actual people who are literally calling fire from heaven and turning water into blood, what's going on here? What seems to be said is that the supernatural power manifested through Moses and Elijah, representative, of course, of the law and the prophets, therefore the authority and the supernatural backup to that authority, which was seen in Moses and Elijah, is now attributed to these two. I take to be the church. Remember that the book of Mark closes in Mark 16, I think it's verse 20, it says, The apostles, whenever they were preaching the word, the Lord working with them, confirming the word with signs following.

Now they didn't call fire out of heaven or anything like that, but you can see that the signs and wonders that once credentialed Moses as a prophet of God and once credentialed Elijah in his day as a prophet of God, now that power, that miraculous confirmation of their message, was now belonging to the church. Now, many times when we read the Old Testament, we may not pay close enough attention to recognize this, we get the impression in the Old Testament there are a lot of miracles going on. There were in the time of Moses and in the time of Elijah.

Apart from that, not so much. We can think of many miracles in the Old Testament, but almost all of them are done by Moses or Elijah. When God established Israel during the Exodus and, of course, in the time of Joshua when they're taking the land, that was a cluster of miracles.

Plagues, miracles, supernatural provision, all kinds of things. Miracles through the man Moses. Why? Because God was credentialing him.

The people of Israel were skeptical. They needed to have abundant confirmation that God was speaking through Moses. After all, they were committing their whole lives, putting their necks on the line to follow him.

God confirmed the word of Moses with signs following. Likewise, Elijah. Almost all the other miracles in the Old Testament are Elijah's miracles.

Or Elisha's. Elijah and Elisha. And so, in a sense, the miraculous power of God confirming the words of his prophets is now resting upon the church.

We're not turning water into blood. We're not stopping the rain. It's not necessary to say these exact miracles are going on.

This is saying that the miraculous power such as Moses had, such as Elijah had, that is the power of the Holy Spirit bearing witness to the message through supernatural things, is now held by these people, not by Moses and Elijah literally anymore. By the way, those who do make it literally, Moses and Elijah cannot say that it's appointed unto man once to die and hold firmly to that because Moses did die. For him to come back would require an exception to that rule too.

In any case, I believe that this is the impressionistic symbolism that's saying that the power of God confirming the message is no longer with the Old Testament but with these New Testament witnesses. After all, remember, Moses and Elijah appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus. Peter was incredibly impressed.

He said, Lord, this is great. Why don't we build three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah? In other words, let's prolong this. Let's make a whole weekend of it.

Let's have a retreat and Moses and Elijah and you can take turns preaching and boy, will we be under the spout where the glory comes out. What happened was Peter didn't say the right thing. The Bible says Peter said that because he didn't know what to say.

That's what it says. It apparently suggests it wasn't a very smart thing to say. It certainly wasn't the right thing to say because what happened immediately was a cloud came down, covered them.

Moses and Elijah disappeared. Jesus alone was left and a voice from heaven said, this is my son, hear him. Peter and the others were Jewish.

They'd always been raised to hear Moses and Elijah. The law and the prophets, that was the authority for them. Not anymore.

This is my son, hear him now. Don't retain Moses and Elijah and Jesus as though they're equals. They're just here to pass the mantle on to him and then they're leaving.

Only Jesus is remaining. Therefore, the ministries of Moses and Elijah have been subsumed under the ministry of Christ and his body. It is the authority of Christ and his church that now have replaced Moses and Elijah and they nonetheless have the same kind of supernatural abilities that those men had.

That doesn't mean everyone in the church goes around doing miracles. I don't. I don't do miracles.

I'd like to, but I never have. Never have done miracles. Don't expect to, actually.

Maybe that's why I don't. I think people who do often expect to. People who don't expect to probably don't.

But the case is I don't consider that miracles are a ministry that I'm called to. I'd like it. It would be kind of fun.

But it's not saying that every Christian is going to be working miracles or that any Christian is going to do these specific miracles. The chosen examples are to connect them in principle to Moses and Elijah, the ones that God confirmed their message with signs following in the Old Testament. Now what was true of them is true of the church.

Now verse 7 says, Now when they finish their testimony, the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit will make war against them. Now what's interesting is the beast has not ascended yet. This shows that the book of Revelation isn't giving things in chronological order because the beast is actually introduced two chapters hence.

He's not described previous to this. He's not mentioned previous to this. He's spoken of as if we know who he is.

But it's actually in chapter 13 that the devil calls up the beast out of the sea, and he is then described and his career is explained. But here we're given sort of a foreglimpse of the beast before he's even been introduced. He's spoken of as if we know who he is, that beast that comes up out of the bottomless pit.

Now the bottomless pit, the abuso, is where demons are incarcerated. So this beast is, you know, demonized. Comes from the pit of the prison for the demons.

He comes out of there, and he makes war against them, and he's allowed to overcome them and kill them. And their dead body will lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. Now this is a reference to Jerusalem, though my impression is it's not just saying that the church will lie in the streets of Jerusalem.

It's rather that it looks to the world that the church is dead, and it's connected in their mind with having killed Jesus. It's placed in the vision in the same location where they killed Jesus. The death of the church is like another death of Jesus, but not exactly.

The witness, this is a symbolic vision. The church does not actually die. It appears to be dead.

I realize they're dead here, but the church doesn't really die. The church is never going to really die. But the time may come where it has been subdued, conquered, by the beast that comes out of the pit.

And it says, 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 in the 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. So the message was a torment to their consciences.

Now, after 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.

Now, the way I was taught this when I was a futurist was these two witnesses, maybe Moses and Elijah, maybe Elijah and Enoch, they're going to prophesy for three and a half years in Jerusalem. They're going to be killed by the beast, you know, the Antichrist when he comes up. And they are literally going to be dead in the streets of Jerusalem.

And no one's going to bury them. Everyone will get excited and send gifts to each other like they do at Christmas. And then, you know, the whole world is going to see them stand on their feet and rise into heaven.

Now, not only my pastor, but many authors I've read since then have made the point, this could never have happened before television. How so? Well, only now that we have satellite coverage of the whole world and we can watch events on the other side of the world in real time. Only because of the high technology we now have, could it be possible for the whole world to watch an event happen in the streets of Jerusalem and see these two witnesses stand up and go up? So, isn't that amazing? This is, you know, the book of Revelation anticipated television.

It's actually considered to be, you know, one of the things that, you know, is something that dispensationalists get enthusiastic about. Look at this, another confirmation of science from the Bible. Because it suggests that everyone in the world is going to watch them rise.

Now, let me ask about that a little bit. What are they trying to get us to picture? That these guys are dead. No one knows they're going to rise.

And yet, for three days, the television cameras are trained on their dead bodies. And at the moment they rise, it so happens everybody's at their television set watching this. This is now three and a half days of broadcasting.

And they're not watching, the cameras aren't saying, I know they're going to rise soon, so we're going to watch until they do. They don't expect them to rise, according to the story, and therefore they're just infatuated with this scene. We killed these guys, let's just train the cameras on them for a few months.

Oops, they rose from the dead on the 30 and a half day. Who could have figured that would happen? Now, see, if we're going to argue that every person in the world is literally going to see this, then not only is everyone who has a TV going to have to be watching, at that moment, that channel that shows it, but more than that, there's going to be a whole bunch of people, like in jungles and stuff, they're going to have to get TVs too, so they can see it, because they're on the planet too. And if they're going to see it, we've got to get TVs into every hut, every village.

Maybe get a big screen just so the whole village can watch and they don't have to have it in every grass hut. But you see, to suggest that this is talking about people watching television, seeing this literally happen, is missing the point, and it's not very realistic. What's being said here is, apparently, that after a lengthy period of time, a time equal to essentially the whole age of the church, 1260 days, during which time the church is invincible, during which time the church is bearing witness to the world, there's a little time, represented as three and a half days, during which they seem to be defeated, but they're not defeated.

They rise from the dead and they're caught up into heaven. I take that to be the rapture of the church. I take that to be the resurrection and rapture of the church.

But what it seems to be saying is that the church age in general will be a time where the church is unstoppable. But a little tiny bit of time at the end, the church seems to be defeated. Now, in Revelation 20, we have a similar scenario, using different numbers and different figures.

In Revelation 20, a thousand years, I believe, is given as a representation for the age of the church. But the devil is released at the end from the bottomless pit like the beast here rises from the bottomless pit. In Revelation 20, the beast comes out of the devil's pit after a thousand years for a little while, and then threatens the church, besieges the beloved city, but does not succeed because fire from heaven comes down, which I take to be the second coming of Christ, and vindicates the church.

The imagery is different, but the concept is the same. A long time of invincibility for the church, a short time at the end where the church seems to be vulnerable again and defeated by the enemy because of the intensity of the satanic influence in the world. But that short time is like, you know, if the whole church age was three and a half years, that short time is like three and a half days.

If the church age is a thousand years, that little time is just a little while. In other words, for the most part, through most of the age of the church, the church is bearing witness on the offensive, taking the gospel to all lands, driving back the powers of darkness, and so forth. But in the end, apparently for a brief period, something else may happen.

The church may be driven underground. The church may be on the defensive. A time of intense persecution, possibly global persecution.

It's interesting here because it says in verse 7, the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit will make war against them. If we're talking about two individuals, do you make a war against two people? No, you just go out and arrest them. You don't send the tanks and all that stuff to conquer two guys.

The two individuals are an army, and the beast has his army, and there's a spiritual warfare between the powers of darkness and the church, and it would appear that the church is defeated, or appears to be so, but not for very long. And the world finally thinks that they've gotten rid of this pesky conscience that's been bugging them so long, and they celebrate, but to their chagrin, Jesus comes back, raises up the church, raptures the church, and in verse 13, in the same hour, there was a great earthquake, which could be an emblem for the end of the world when Jesus comes back. It's the same hour.

Jesus talked about the final hour, and in that hour, Jesus said, all the dead shall hear his voice and come forth, in John 5, 28. So, there's this earthquake. The earthquake, 7,000 men were killed, a symbolic number.

It's a total number, a very large number, because it's 7,000, not just seven, but seven itself is a number of totality. So, apparently, the total number of those who are opposed to God, and the rest were afraid and gave glory to the God of heaven, so some get saved, apparently. Maybe people who had not previously heard the gospel, but were not ill-disposed toward God, maybe when Jesus comes back, maybe they turn.

We don't know. In any case, I believe that this is a summary of the age of the church. It's what I also see Revelation 20 as, only using different imagery.

And then, of course, we have what we already read, and that is the sounding of the seventh trumpet in verses 15 through 18, which I take to be the second coming of Christ, the kingdoms of this world who become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. Now, having come to that, you'd think we don't need any more on this subject of the three and a half years. We've been told two things about it.

One, Jerusalem is trampled underfoot for that period of time. Two, the church is witnessing for Christ during that time in the world. But, after closing down the section of the seven trumpets with the giving of the seventh trumpet, it's like that's the end of the segment.

It's like chapters 10 and 11 were mostly the interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpet, just as there was an interlude between the sixth and seventh seal. And now we've come to the end. So, let's get back to the next thing, whatever that may be, the next sevens.

But, instead of doing that, we have two more chapters about the three and a half year period. And I said last night to someone who's asked me about it, why is the seventh trumpet in the middle of this little book if this little book is one thing? I said, I don't know. I didn't write it.

They didn't consult me. But, it looks to me as if this would be the natural close of that little book except there's an appendix. Say, oh, by the way, there's more on this.

Now that we've actually brought this thing to a logical conclusion, there's some additional information about what's going on during this period of time. This woman flees in the wilderness. There's this war in heaven.

It's really cool. Satan's thrown out of heaven. There's this beast.

There are two beasts. And these have significance for the church. And therefore, before this period of time is left behind us and we move back to the main subject of the book of Revelation, this interval in the middle, this parenthesis, this little book, has a few more chapters at the end which serve sort of as an appendix, I believe.

And in verse 19, it says, 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. Now, the ark of the covenant, of course, is in the Holy of Holies.

And it's in the temple here in heaven. So, this would seem to suggest that the church at this point is raptured. And John sees that the temple which was preserved and measured at the beginning of chapter 11 is now in heaven.

It was not previously. And then there's these standard lightnings, noises, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail. We have this list of things that are... It begins in chapter, what, 5? And it talks about the lightnings and thunders and voices.

And then the next list is the lightning, thunders, voices, and an earthquake. And now it's lightning, voices, thunders, an earthquake, and great hail. And so, there's, as it were, a mounting dramatic element here.

These images of judgment are just getting more extreme, more severe as the book goes on. You see, you might think, well, then this is the end of the story if we've got... Jesus has come back. Isn't that the end? Well, it will be when it really happens, but it's not the end of the book.

Because in chapter 12, verse 1, we go back to the beginning and talk about the birth of Jesus and some of the things that happen after His ascension. Because in chapter 12 and verse 5, the child who is Jesus is caught up into God and to His throne. That's the ascension of Jesus.

But there's more. What happens after that? Well, the woman flees into the wilderness. The woman is the remnant of Israel, the church in Jerusalem.

They flee from the impending judgment, as Jesus had told them to, and they get into the wilderness. And God still preserves them there, even though He is destroying the city from which they fled. But we'll talk more about that next time.

We've run out of time for tonight. But we'll talk more about that next time.