Revelation 11:8-14

The Two Witnesses Ascend

A sermon by Pastor Joe Haynes

Preached on February 17, 2019 at Beacon Church

Last week I compared this prophecy to a courtroom drama, and we saw that right after the key witnesses gave enough evidence to convict the Antichrist of crimes against Jesus, that defendant jumped out of his seat and killed the witnesses. Let me set the stage again for what happens next. Jesus speaks in verses 1-3, and the rest of the verses describe a vision of prophecy that John sees.

The main characters are Two Witnesses, who (we know by comparing verse 4 to what the Lord Jesus said in 1:20) are symbols for a small number of faithful churches; the beast from the pit (v7), a.k.a., the Antichrist; and various observers mentioned in verse 9 and following.

The setting for this scene is a bit more complicated. It’s like a movie set, and the set looks like the city of Jerusalem and the Temple that used to be there. By the time John wrote Revelation, the Temple and the city were destroyed. But that’s the set. And the set is a symbol too: The whole city represents all who identify as Christians—in other words, the whole, universal Church as we see it. Cities have mixed populations. And so does this one. But on the inside of the city, inside the Temple is where there are true worshippers, while everyone outside the inner part of the Temple are not true worshippers—we could say “nominal Christians” or church-goers who don’t really love Jesus. John was told to measure the temple—to identify the true Church and separate it from nominal Christianity. And the drama unfolds as true Christian churches give testimony for Jesus and they are hated for it.

One more important detail is the time-frame. Verses 2 and 3 introduce a period of time that’s 3 ½ biblical years, but “days” in prophecy are always fulfilled as “years” in real life. So this 3 ½ years (or 1,260 days, according to the 360-day years in the Bible) is really 1,260 years in history. That’s how long these hated but faithful Christian churches carry on testifying for Jesus, teaching His Word, the Bible, and increasingly persecuted for their testimony: more than 1200 years.

As the leadership of the official Church got more violent in their opposition to the Witnesses’ testimony, by about the 11th century, many true Christians put two and two together and realized the Roman Catholic Popes are the Antichrist. The Popes declared that Christians who wouldn’t fall into line were heretics and deserved the death-penalty. Millions were killed, and right around the time when these Christians had offered enough biblical evidence to prove that the leader of the Roman Catholic Church was really the arch-enemy of Christ, he killed them once and for all. (Meaning he ordered them hunted down and arrested until it seemed like he had finally crushed the little rebellion, stamped-out everyone who opposed him.) In the symbol, the bodies of the Two Witnesses were dead. And this week, as we pick up the drama in verse 8, we see the audience goes wild and parties for three-and-a-half days (years) to celebrate because finally nobody is left to make them feel guilty. If historians of Christian history stopped writing their histories in the year 1514, this is how the story would end: with this shocking miscarriage of justice. The Defendant killed the key witnesses.

Just in case you’re not into books on Church history, let me give you a couple of facts that illustrate this tragic story: In 1302, Pope Boniface VIII decreed, “It is necessary for all human beings for their salvation to be subject to the bishop of Rome”, and in 1516, Leo X reaffirmed it at the Fifth Lateran Council.[i] Those true believers who refused to go along with that were condemned as heretics. On May 5, 1514, in the Ninth Session of that same Fifth Lateran Council, Leo X was informed that all of Europe was finally united under his supreme authority as the one and only head of the Church: no “opposers” were left. [ii]

You can imagine those believers who suffered for their convictions, out of love for Jesus and the truth of the Bible, crying out to God for help. Some probably wondered who would be left to praise God’s name if God let all the Christians perish. For some people, their faith is like putting God in a box: If I’m doing His will He has to save me! But if it’s true that the fallen leaves of Autumn enrich the soil of Spring, don’t you think it’s also worthwhile and good if God uses our testimony, even our suffering, to enrich a future generation of believers?

The Apostate Church Cheers the Deaths of the Witnesses

8 …And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified.  9 For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb,  10 and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth. (Rev. 11:8-10 ESV)

Verses 8-10 paint a grotesque picture of the Christian religion right after 1514. The “City” (i.e. ?), is no longer “the holy city” (v2) but “the great city” (v8). The character of the Church has changed (e.g. Rev 18:21, “Babylon the great city”). Next, in verse 8, the comparisons to Sodom and Egypt are lit. Grk., “spiritual” (“symbolic” in the ESV). In other words, it is the Holy Spirit who is giving spiritual insight into what the visible Catholic Church is really like: it’s shares the immorality that made Sodom infamous, with the pagan idol-worship of Egypt. So this City, the Church, is apostate and adulterous.

Verses 8-10 say the dead bodies of the witnesses are in the “large street” of the city (like a plaza) and nobody gives them the honour of a proper burial. In fact, the way people in the City react to the deaths of the witnesses, is with ugly jeering and self-congratulation. Now notice something in verse 9: who are those who look at the bodies in the streets?  Peoples and nations. Look at verse 2: they are the same people trampling and overrunning the whole Christian Church for 1,260 years. Not the worshippers inside the Temple: these represent all those who were faithful to the Popes but unfaithful to Jesus.

To explain how this was fulfilled, I need to tell you about two things:

1) Since these witnesses are faithful churches and not individual people, their corpses aren’t literal corpses. But the fulfillment of verse 9 is so accurate that even the imagery of the symbol corresponds to the real history it predicted. The refusal to allow people burial was how the Catholic Church punished so-called “heretics”. The same Lateran Council enforced earlier laws that made it illegal to grant a Christian burial to someone convicted of “heresy.” Even if that person had already been buried—they dug the body up, burned them, and scattered the ashes. They believed that without proper burial, the heretic was condemned to Hell.[iii] As John Gill writes,

...So the bodies of John Huss, and Jerome of Prague, were burnt, and their ashes cast into the Rhine; the body of Peter Ramus was cast about the streets, thrown into ponds and ditches, then dragged out, and beat with rods; and some have had their bones dug up again, after they had been buried many years, and then burnt, and their ashes scattered abroad, as Wickliff and Bucer here in England...[iv]

2) Verse 10 is also fulfilled in detail. In 1514, the Lateran Council declared all Christendom was united under the headship of Leo X. In 1517, Leo X ordered all Christendom to celebrate the Council’s victories: "...Our soul exults in the Lord. And we judge that thanks should be given to God for it; and that, among all the faithful in Christ, there should be those signs of joy which on similar occasions are want to be observed.”—Dr. Collins adds, “This was followed by a plenary Papal indulgence, the singing of the Te Deum, and lavish banqueting."[v]

If you can picture our courtroom drama illustration, it’s as if the audience saw the defendant kill the key witnesses, and then joined the real criminal in a party celebrating their deaths. It’s as if the Mob had taken over the whole city! Where is the Judge? See how verse 8 says this Church, the symbolic, corrupted city, is “where their Lord was crucified”? They treated Christ’s witnesses just like Christ’s own fellow Jews treated Him. Like Master, like servants. So where is Jesus in all this? Where is He when His people suffer for the sake of His testimony, for His Gospel? Who will defend them, avenge them, or even comfort them? Isn’t there any hope for those who suffer and even die for the truth, for what’s right?

Jesus Vindicates and Multiplies His Witnesses

“But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them,” (Rev. 11:11 ESV). The symbol shows the Two Witnesses being raised from the dead. But these were churches, not literal bodies, so what should resurrection look like? The old Family New Testament Notes say, "The Spirit of life from God entered into them; they were spiritually resuscitated. New and faithful servants of God were raised up, religion greatly revived, and the number of those who embraced it so multiplied, that the blood of the martyrs was seen to be the seed of the church."[vi] When did this happen? Don’t forget, verses 9 and 11 repeat the detail that these dead bodies lie there like that for “three-and-a-half days”. On the day-year principle, that’s 3.5 years right? 3.5 years after all Christendom was declared to be united under Pope Leo X, with no more opposing heretics to be found: that was May 5, 1517. Exactly 3.5 years later, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Church in Wittenberg—October 31, 1517. And in that protest, he didn’t mean to overthrow the Catholic Church, he meant to point out its errors according to the Bible. But when he did that, and then started preaching and writing books, he was teaching the Bible—like the faithful Christian churches had for centuries, up until 1514. And in a rush like the spread of a forest fire, Bible teaching and Gospel preaching took hold all over Europe.

Verse 11 said, in Greek, “a spirit of life from God entered them…”. And what we see in history can only be explained by giving all the credit to the Holy Spirit. All over Europe the Gospel took hold of people’s hearts and they people were born again; preachers preached the Bible openly again; and congregations listened heard and believed, including some princes and kings, who began protecting those who taught the Bible and protecting the churches in their kingdoms. In 1520 the Pope condemned Luther, but the local ruler, Frederick III, gave Luther his protection, and gave Luther time to translate the Bible into German—a crime under Catholic law. Others followed Luther’s example almost immediately around Germany, and by 1520 the wave of Reformation could not be stopped. In 1525, the Duke of Prussia formally broke away from the Catholic Church. Other cities and provinces followed Reformers like Huldrych Zwingli in Zurich, and John Calvin in Geneva. A spiritual, theological, and political earthquake was splitting Europe apart and large sections of the Catholic Church began to break off. You might remember from chapters 6 and 8, that the symbol of the skies or heavens represent the “sphere of political authority”.[vii] Well look at verse 12. “Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, ‘Come up here!’ And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them,” (Rev. 11:12 ESV). Bible-preaching Christianity, for a while, became ascendant—it went from being “Two Witnesses”—a remnant, outnumbered and persecuted—to having official status, and protection under secular law. In 1532, the German Emperor decreed "full toleration to Protestantism.”[viii] Protestant Christianity was elevated and churches thrived beyond the reach of the Popes in Rome. From that time forward, there have been a lot more than just Two Witnesses.

“Christendom” Is Fractured by an Earthquake

“And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven,” (Rev. 11:13 ESV). Again as we saw earlier in Revelation about the phrase, “a third of the earth,” this phrase is about a political region: it’s a reference to Daniel 7 and the ten kingdoms that rose up after the fall of the Roman Empire. One of those ten was Britain. And Britain was the first of the ten to declare independence from the Roman Popes. In 1534 Parliament declared King Henry VII head of the Church of England—“a tenth of the city fell”—one of the ten Roman kingdoms under the Catholic Church. What about the “seven thousand?” It’s also political. The Greek word is not an adjective numeral, but a plural noun: “seven thousands.”[ix] Like in the LXX, in Micah 5:2-- “Bethlehem Ephrathah… among the clans of Judah”: “thousands” in Greek could also mean “clans” or “tribal districts” in the Old Testament. Also, in the original, Rev 11:13 doesn’t say “people” were killed but “names of men” were killed. Putting that all together, it fits what happened in the Netherlands. By the 1540’s Calvin’s Bible teaching spread to the Netherlands, and fireworks ensued. As a result of the Reformation earthquake, in 1581 the very first Dutch nation-state was created when seven provinces rebelled against Catholic Rule and formed the Dutch Republic. Their coat of arms has a lion holding seven arrows. In “name,” seven Catholic provinces died, one Protestant nation was born.

When the sixth trumpet unleashed the Turkish invasion that overthrew Constantinople, in chapter 9, we read this:

20 The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk,  21 nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts. (Rev. 9:20-21 ESV)

But this time, seeing how God broke the stranglehold of the popes on Christianity, and brought a new religious freedom so that the Gospel was once again preached throughout Europe, many came to fear God and then to hope in the death of Christ to save them. They moved from the outer city to the inner Temple, to the altar, like in verse 1. Verse 13 says, “Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven,” (Rev. 11:13 ESV). God’s Word says, "On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness." (Deu 17:6 ESV) This prophecy seals the fate of those who tried to silence the Gospel for 1200 years. Many began to think all that was left was for the Judge Himself to show up and bring order to His Court. What happens next? The vindication of the Witnesses and the Protestant Reformation is not the end of the story; it’s only the beginning of the end, as, next week, Lord-willing, we will see in the next portion of John’s prophecy.