Reviving the Two Witnesses - The Two Witnesses Are Killed

The Two Witnesses Are Killed

So severe was this plague on Christendom that after the two witnesses had prophesied for 42 months in sackcloth, Christendom used her worldly influence to have them 'killed' John writes:  "And when they have finished their witnessing, the wild beast that ascends out of the abyss will make war with them and conquer them and kill them.  And their corpses will be on the broad way of the great city which is a spiritual sense called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was also impaled.  And those of the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations will look at their corpses for three and a half days, and they do not let their corpses  be laid in a tomb.  And those dwelling  on the earth  rejoice 0ver them and enjoy themselves, and they will send gifts to one another,  because these two prophets tormented those dwelling on the earth." -Revelation 11:7-10.

This is the first of 37 references to Revelation to a wild beast.  In due course we will examine this and other beasts in detail.  Suffice it to say for now that "the wild beast that ascends out of the abyss" is of Satan's  design, a living political system of things." -Compare Revelation  13:1; Daniel 7:2, 3, 17.

From 1914 to 1918 the nations were occupied with the firs world war.  Nationalistic feelings ran high, and in the spring of 1918, the religious enemies of the two witnesses took advantage of the situation.  They maneuvered the State's legal apparatus so that  responsible  ministers of the Watch  Tower Bible and Tract Society were imprisoned  on false charges of sedition.  Faithful coworkers were stunned.  Kingdom  activity almost ceased.  It was as though the preaching work were dead.  In Bible times it was a terrible indignity not to be interred in a memorial tomb.  (Psalm p79:1-3; 1 Kings 13:21, 22)  Therefore, great reproach would attach to leaving the two witnesses unburied.  In the hot Palestinian climate, a corpse in the open street would really start to smell after three and a half literal days.  (Compare John 11:39)  This detail in the prophecy thus indicates the shame that the two witnesses had to endure.  Those mentioned above who were imprisoned  were even denied bail while their cases  were on appeal.  They were exposed publicly long enough to become a stench to the inhabitants of  "the great city."  But what was this "great city?"

John gives us some clues. He says that Jesus was impaled there.  So we immediately think of Jerusalem.  But he also says that the great city is called Sodom and Egypt. Well, literal Jerusalem  was once called Sodom because of her unclean practices.  (Isaiah 1:8-10; compare Ezekiel 16:49, 53-58)  And Egypt, the fist world power, sometimes appears as a picture of this world system of things.  (Isaiah 19:1, 19; Joel 3:19) Hence, this great city pictures a  defiled "Jerusalem" that claims  to worship God but that has become unclean and sinful, like Sodom, and a part of this satanic world system of things, like Egypt.  It pictures Christendom, the modern equivalent of unfaithful Jerusalem, the organization whose members had so much  reason to rejoice when the silenced the disturbing preaching of the two witnesses. 

Next time: Reviving the Two Witnesses -Raised Again!

From the Book of Revelation