Reviving the Two Witnesses - The Two Witnesses Are Killed

 So severe  was the plague on Christendom that after the two witnesses had prophesied for 42 months in sackcloth, Christendom used her world 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 a spiritual sense called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord also impaled. And those of the peoples and tribe and tongues and nations  will look at their corpses for three and a half days, and they do not let corpses by laid in a tomb. And those dwelling on the earth rejoic 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 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 feeligns ran high, and in the spring of 1918, the religous enemies of the two witnesses took advantage of the situation.  They maneuvered the State's legal apparatus so that responsible ministers of the Bible Students were imprisioned 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 indignituy  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 Palestine climate, a corpse in the open streed 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 metioned above who were imprisoned   were even denied bail while their cases  were on appeal.  They were exposed publicly long enough to be a stench to the inhabitants of "the great city."  But what was this "great city"? 

John give us some clues.  He says that Jesus was impaled there.  So we immediately  think of Jerusalem. But he also says tha tthe great city was 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 systen 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 organiztion whose members had so m uch reason to rejoic when they silenced the disturbing preaching of the two witnesses.

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

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