Reviving the Two Witnesses -Raised Again!

Raised Again!

The public press joined the clergy in vilifying  God's people, one paper saying: "The finis of The Finished Mystery has been given."  Nothing, though, could have been further from the truth! The two witnesses did not stay dead.  We read:  "And after the three and a half days spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet, and great fear fell upon those beholding them:  'Come on up here.'  And they went up into heaven in the cloud, and their enemies beheld them."  (Revelation 11:11, 12)   Thus, they had an experience similar to that of the dry bones in the valley that Ezekiel visited in vision.  Jehovah breathed upon those dry bones, and they came to life, providing a picture of the rebirth of the nation of Israel after 70 years of captivity in Babylon.  (Ezekiel 37:1-14)  These two prophecies, in Ezekiel and in Revelation had their striking modern-day fulfillment in 1919, when Jehovah restored his "deceased" witnesses to vibrant life.

What a shock for those persecutors!  The corpses of the two witnesses were suddenly alive and active again.  It was a bitter pill for those clergymen to swallow, the more so since Christian ministers whom they had schemed to put in prison were free again, later to be fully exonerated.  The shock must have been even greater when, in September  1919, the Bible-Students held a convention  in Cedar Point, Ohio, U.S.A.  Here the recently released president of the Watch Tower Society, J.F. Rutherford, stirred conventioneers with his talk  "Announcing  the Kingdom," based on Revelation  15:2 and Isaiah 52:7. Those of the John class began once again to "prophesy," or preach publicly.  They advanced from strength to strength, fearlessly exposing Christendom's hypocrisy. 

Christendom tried again and again to repeat her triumph of 1918.  She resorted to mob action, legal maneuvering, imprisonment, even executions-all to no avail!  After 1919 the spiritual domain of the two witnesses was out of her reach.  In that year Jehovah had said to them:  "Come on up here," and they had ascended to an elevated spiritual state where their enemies could see them but could not touch them.  John describes the shocking effect their restoration had on the great city:   "And in that hour a great earthquake occurred, and a tenth of the city fell; and seven thousand persons were killed by the earthquake, and the rest became frightened and gave glory to the God of heaven."  (*Revelation 11:13)  There were truly great convulsions in the realm of religion.  The ground seemed to move under the leaders of the established  churches as this body of revivified Christians got to work.   One tenth of their city, figuratively 7,000 persons were so profoundly affected that they are spoken of as being killed. 

The expression "a tenth of the city" reminds  us that Isaiah prophesied   regarding ancient Jerusalem that a tenth would survive the destruction of the city as a holy seed.  (Isaiah 6:13)  Similarly, number 7,000 reminds us that when Elijah felt that he alone remained faithful in Israel, Jehovah told him that there were, in fact, still 7,000 who had not bent down to Baal.  (1 Kings 19:14, 18)  In the first century, the apostle Paul said that these 7,000 pictured the remnant of the Jews who had responded to the good new about the Christ.  (Romans 11:1-5)  These scriptures help us to understand that the "seven thousand" and "the tenth of the city" in Revelation  11:13 are those who respond to the restored  two witnesses and abandon the sinful great city.  They die, as it were, to Christendom.  Their names are taken off her membership roles. They no longer exist as far as she is concerned. 

Next time: Reviving the Two Witnesses - Conclusion of Raised Again!

From the Book of Revelation