To the Ends of the Earth

Revelation 11
Assurance for the Church

By Dr. Derek W. H. Thomas

Following John recommissioning in chapter 10, Revelation 11:1-13 contains the message John is now asked to deliver. It is a message of assurance to the church surrounded by her enemies. As she bears testimony to the gospel, and suffers the consequences of faithful testimony, God will protect her. The events described occur during the period of the first six trumpets. This will become especially clear as we identify the 1,260 days of 11:3 with that period that followed the first coming of Jesus Christ as described in 12:5-6 (c.f. 14:14-20).

The Protection of God's People (11:1-2)

The opening verses contain some difficult metaphors in which John is given a reed and commanded to measure the sanctuary of God and the altar and those worshiping in it. He is not to measure the outer court of the sanctuary because it was given to the Gentiles, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months (cf. three and one half years, time, times and half a time, twelve-hundred and sixty days, 11:3; 12:6, 14; 13:5). The number picks up on a number of Old Testament allusions, including:

i. the language of Daniel (a three and a half year [or twelve-hundred and sixty days] period of tribulation, Dan. 7:25; 9:27; 12:7, 11-12. Daniel's reference seems to be a microcosm of the final time, times and half a time (Dan. 12:7) and relates to the suffering under Antiochus Epiphanes. It also looks beyond to the final days, these three and a half years bringing to completion the seventy 'sevens' only sixty-nine and one half of which had been fulfilled in Daniel 9:24-27.)

ii. the Exodus. There were forty encampments (Numb. 33:5-49). It is also thought that the wilderness period was forty two years, since the judgment of forty years did not come until after they already spent two years there.

iii. Elijah's ministry of judgment in 1 Kings 17:1.

Some have seen this as alluding to a period of tribulation prior to Christ's return. Some (literalists) expect a restored temple rebuilt in Jerusalem during this period and those worshiping in it are ethnic Jews (the church having already been raptured). Unbelieving Gentiles are expected to persecute and overrun this Jewish remnant in a period lasting forty-two months. Others view what is described here to this period of history without insisting on the literal rebuilt temple. Hebrews 10:1-12 is clear that the sacrifice of Christ has utterly abolished the sacrificial system forever, making a literal rebuilt temple redundant and theologically objectionable.

Literalists of a different kind (preterists) see what is portrayed here as having historical fulfillment in the period leading up the destruction of the temple on 70 A.D.

If the picture, however, is of the present experience of the church, to what does the outer court of the Gentiles refer? Many commentators suggest that this is the professing, but apostate church which eventually joins forces with the unbelieving world in persecuting the true Israel of God, the church. We are not to think of the structure of the second, Herodian temple as we try to fathom what John is saying here. Following the death of Christ, in which the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile is broken down (Eph. 2:11-22), and the rending of the temple curtain has opened the way for all without distinction to come into the sanctuary of God's presence (Heb. 10:19-22), those who are outside are the "Gentiles," literally, "the nations." These are they who persecute the church of Christ for forty-two months. There is precedence for this temple metaphor in the closing chapters of Ezekiel which pictures the measuring of the city of Jerusalem, including the temple. It is this temple that John seems to have in mind rather than the second temple prior to 70 A.D.

The Witness of God's people (11:3-16)

Another metaphor of similar difficulty emerges. The whole point of ensuring the confidence presence with his people in the opening two verses is to prepare us for what he expects the church to engage in during the inert-adventual age: witness to a hostile world of his Word and his ways. They are prophets in the tradition of Moses and Elijah (though others have been suggested, including Enoch, Peter, Paul and the two Jewish high priests killed in A.D. 68). In the same way that John the Baptist came in the spirit of Elijah (Luke 1:17), the people of God are likewise to exude the same spirit. They are to function like "lampstands" (c.f. John 5:35). In 1:20 the lampstands alludes to the churches. Why two and not seven witnesses continuing the figure of chapter 1)? Perhaps because here the point is establish the legal basis on which this testimony proceedes (the law requiring two witnesses for validation, Numb 35:30; Deut. 17:6; 19:15; Matt. 18:16; 1 Tim. 5:19). Rejected as these witnesses will be by the world, their divine validity and authenticity remains in no doubt. The message of these witnesses is one of judgment, hence the sackcloth (11:3).

The lampstands are said to be in the presence of God (11:4) which is an allusion to the architecture of the tabernacle and the temple where the lampstands represented the presence of God, or the Spirit of God (Numb. 8:14; Exod. 25:30-31; Zech. 4:2-5). The church's testimony or witness is to be by the power of the Holy Spirit. The oil for the lampstands come from the two olive trees (11:4), an allusion to the prophecy of Zechariah 4 in which the prophet describes the assurance of the completion of the Second Temple "not my might nor by power but by my Spirit."

There is in this picture then, an allusion to that commission given to the church in Acts 1:8: "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

There is an invincibility about their witness (11:5). They cannot be ultimately harmed in any way. " The fragile vessels which make up God's church may be afflicted, perplexed, persecuted and struck down, but not crushed or in despair or forsaken or destroyed (2 Cor. 4:7-9). God told Jeremiah that the word in his mouth would be a fire that would consume the faithless (Jer. 5:11,14; c.f. 1:9,12,19). If the book of Revelation intends to encourage the people of God As they face persecution, it could hardly do so with greater force than to suggest that the power of the gospel which they witness to is like that of Elijah whenever he prevented the rain from falling (1 Kings 17:1), or Moses when he turned water into blood (Exod. 7:17-25). The church, as Jesus told Peter, has the power of the keys, a power that both liberates and condemns (Matt. 16:19; 18:18,19). The word which the church gives witness to is the Word of God. Its covenantal aspect ensures blessing to those who heed it and cursing to those who do not.

The Coming Persecution (11:7-10)

Verse 7 assumes that the witnessing work is done, the measuring (v.1) having concluded. It is along similar lines of thought to the words of Jesus in the Oliver Discourse that the gospel is first to be preached in the whole world before Jesus comes (Matt. 24:14). What follows a parallel that is found in Daniel 7:21, the prophecy of the final kingdom that will appear to persecute the people of God. It is the fourth beast of Daniel's vision, which has ten horns on its head and out of which emerges a little horn. Its ferociousness is depicted, and further allusions to this figure will emerge in Revelation 12, 13 and 17. Though this antichrist figure is to emerge at the end of the age, John has already informed us in his first epistle that this has been anticipated already in the Satanic eruptions that have occurred in the experience of the first century Christian church (1 John 2:18; 4:3). We are told it here this Beast is to be destroyed in the end of all things (19:19-21).

The end is characterized here as especially difficult for the people of God. They will be killed and their ability to witness ended. The picture given in verse 8 of the bodies of the witnesses lying in the streets of the great city for three and one half days is particularly gruesome. The great city is not to be identified with the "holy city" of verse 2, but with its more usual connotation, Babylon. Together with other Old Testament names for wickedness, the name of Babylon is joined with Sodom and Egypt. Jerusalem has become like Babylon, Sodom and Egypt. This trilogy of wick names is a way of depicting the world in its faithlessness. Note that the expression "spiritually" is inserted in verse 8 to safeguard any literal interpretation of the events of this chapter.

The picture now turns and is reminiscent of Ezekiel 37, the valley of the dry bones coming to life. Three and one half days pass by during which onlookers seem to stare with scorn at the corpses of those who have died in the streets, when suddenly these bodies come to life (11:11). The cause? "A breath of life from God entered them." This is the end and following a voice of command from heaven, the bodies rise into a cloud and disappear from the disbelieving gaze of their enemies. There is no secret rapture!