Chapter Twenty-Five -Reviving the Two Witnesses

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 their 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 in the 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 over 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 in 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 first 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 Watchtower 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 79:1-3; 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 start  to smell after three and a half days. (Compare John 11:39)  This detail in the prophecy thus indicates the shame that those 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 such 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 first 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: Chapter Twenty-Five -Reviving the Two Witnesses -Raised Again!

From the book of Revelation