I was given a reed like a measuring rod and was told, “Go and measure the temple of God and the altar, with its worshipers. But exclude the outer court; do not measure it, because it has been given to the Gentiles. They will trample on the holy city for 42 months. And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” They are “the two olive trees” and the two lampstands, and “they stand before the Lord of the earth.” If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die. They have power to shut up the heavens so that it will not rain during the time they are prophesying; and they have power to turn the waters into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they want.
Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them and overpower and kill them. Their bodies will lie in the public square of the great city—which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where also their Lord was crucified. For three and a half days some from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.
But after the three and a half days the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies looked on.
At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.
The second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon.
The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said:
“The kingdom of the world has become
the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah,
and he will reign for ever and ever.”
And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying:
“We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
the One who is and who was,
because you have taken your great power
and have begun to reign.
The nations were angry,
and your wrath has come.
The time has come for judging the dead,
and for rewarding your servants the prophets
and your people who revere your name,
both great and small—
and for destroying those who destroy the earth.”
Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a severe hailstorm. (Revelation 11)
The Temple
As we have seen many times in our study of Revelation, this is a book filled with symbols. That is especially true of Revelation 11. If we take this chapter at its most literal level, we will be mystified without relief.
For example, what is the Temple that John talks about at the beginning of this chapter? It can’t be the Temple in Jerusalem because that Temple was destroyed in AD 70, some 20 years or more before John wrote this book. So, what does John mean when he talks about the Temple?
This is a point where we must do something that is really always good to do when studying the Bible. We must compare Scripture with Scripture. So, first we must ask, “Does the Bible talk about measuring the Temple anywhere else?”
The answer is that it does, in the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel sees a vision of the Temple being measured during an earlier time when God’s people were in Exile and the Temple had been destroyed. In that place the vision of the Temple being measured is prophetic of the fact that the Temple was to be rebuilt.
Is that what Revelation is talking about too? To answer that question correctly I think we need to examine how the word “temple” is used in the rest of the New Testament.
The word “temple” is used some 120 times in the New Testament. Most of the time, in the Gospels and Acts the word refers to the physical Temple in Jerusalem. But then in John 2:18-22 we read this exchange…
The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
I think it is significant that this exchange happens in the Gospel of John, because Revelation is written by John or some member of his community. So, Jesus speaks of his body as the Temple. By forgiving people of their sins, Jesus was assuming the place of the Temple, making it redundant. Since Jesus came and became the sacrificial lamb for us, there is no more need for the Temple in Jerusalem. The whole of the New Testament and the book of Hebrews, in particular, is at pains to make this point.
Then, in Acts 17:24, Paul says, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.” It is striking that Paul said this while standing right near one of the greatest temples of the ancient world, the Parthenon.
This begs the question, “If God doesn’t live in temples built by human hands, then where does he live?”
In a way, Paul answers this question when he says in 1 Corinthians 3:16, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”
In 1 Corinthians 6:19, Paul gets even more specific… “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?”
So, according to Paul, we, God’s people, are God’s temple, and even more specifically, our bodies, are temples of the Holy Spirit.
Then, in Ephesians 2:19-22, Paul elaborates on this teaching more fully…
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
Thus, in Ephesians, according to Paul, we, God’s people, the Church, the Body of Christ, are now God’s temple. So, for these reasons, when we come to the beginning of Revelation 11, I think it best to interpret the Temple as a symbol of the Church.
But here is an interesting point. John is told not to measure the outer court, the court of the Gentiles in the Temple, because it will be trampled on by the Gentiles for 42 months. What is that about?
The key to answering this question is in the phrase “42 months”. Where else do we read of 42 months in the Bible? Well, 42 months is also 1,260 days, or 3 ½ years which is half of 7 years. You may remember that in addition to Ezekiel, the author of Revelation has his mind filled with the book of Daniel. In Daniel 9:27 we read, “He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on a wing of the Temple, he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.”
This is a reference to what Antiochus Epiphanes did when he conquered Jerusalem; he set up an altar to the pagan god Zeus Olympius in the Temple in 168 BC. Jesus predicted the same thing would happen again (Matthew 24:15; Luke 21:20). He predicted that Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed and that there would be another abomination that causes desolation that would be set up in the Temple. This happened when the Roman General Titus, later to become Emperor, conquered Jerusalem, sacrificed a pig on the altar in the Temple and then destroyed the Temple itself in AD 70. Titus’ Arch in Rome commemorates this event and there is nothing left of the Temple in Jerusalem except for the Western Wall where the Jewish people pray to this day.
So, is John predicting a future trampling of Jerusalem by the Gentiles for a literal 3 ½ years? I do not think so because Jesus said in Luke 21:24, “Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” Jesus saw that time as beginning with the destruction of Jerusalem which he predicted, and which took place in AD 70. But no literal sequence of events as indicated in Revelation 11 began on that date. I agree with Michael Wilcock when he writes,
To say ‘The times of the nations are forty-two months’ will lead us into great and unnecessary difficulties. To say, on the other hand, ‘“Forty-two months” means the times of the nations’, puts quite a different complexion on the matter. The figure becomes a symbol like the red cross or the swastika, a shorthand way of indicating the period during which the ‘nations’, the unbelievers, seem to dominate the world, but the ‘people’, God’s people, maintain their witness in it.
The Two Witnesses
This leads us to the Two Witnesses. Who are they or what do they represent?
In order to answer the first question, we might also ask a second: “Why are there two witnesses?”
Two witnesses were essential to establish any truth according to Jewish legal custom. Jesus also sent out his disciples two by two.
The two witnesses prophesy during the “times of the Gentiles” which have lasted from the first century until now. These two witnesses are like olive trees and like lampstands. We have already seen that in Revelation the lampstands are a symbol of the Church. So, in effect, these two witnesses are symbolic of the Church as a whole and the testimony of the Church to the Lord Jesus Christ over the past 2000 years.
But the two witnesses are also like olive trees. Another favorite book of Scripture for John is the book of Zechariah. In that Old Testament book two olive trees are symbolic of Joshua, the priest, and Zerubbabel, from the line of David.
1 Peter 2:9 says of us, the Church, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” We are kings and priests called to declare God’s praises.
In another way, these two witnesses are like Moses and Elijah. Moses turned water to blood and called down plagues upon Egypt, because Pharaoh would not let God’s people go. Elijah called down fire from heaven. But before that he prayed (1 Kings 17 ff) and it did not rain for how many years? James 5:17 and Luke 4:25 tell us that it did not rain for 3 ½ years. So, the two witnesses in Revelation 11 are like Moses and Elijah, representative of the law and the prophets. And what do the law and the prophets do? They testify to Jesus. They point us to Jesus as our Savior. And that is what the two witnesses in Revelation 11 do. That is what the Church is called to do. That is what you and I are called to do—point people to Jesus.
The Beast from the Abyss
Now, when we do that, when we try to point the world to Jesus as Savior and Lord, we better expect opposition. To proclaim Jesus as the only way to the Father is to go against the grain of this world, it means swimming upstream.
And this is what we see happening to the two witnesses in Revelation 11. A beast comes up from the Abyss and attacks them. We are going to see more about this beast later in Revelation, so I won’t say anything more about it now. But the beast attacks the witnesses and kills them. Their bodies lie in the street of the great city where also their Lord was crucified. They are refused burial, one of the greatest indignities in ancient times. The unbelievers celebrate when these two witnesses are killed. But God raises them up after 3 ½ days, almost the same as the number of days that Jesus was in the tomb. And then they ascend to heaven just like Jesus, followed by an earthquake, just like the earthquake that attended Jesus’ resurrection in Matthew’s Gospel.
What does this tell us? I believe it tells us that if we point others to Jesus as Savior and Lord then we better expect opposition. We also better expect to be identified with Jesus in his death, his resurrection, and his ascension. They all go together. To follow Jesus is not to escape persecution, but rather to be saved through it. Yes, the Church will experience suffering. But at the same time, we can count on the Lord to raise us up through the breath of his Spirit. We can count on the Lord to lead us in triumph over the beast, because that is what the ascension is symbolic of, it is symbolic of breaking through the power of the prince of the air. (Ephesians 2:2)
The Seventh Trumpet
Now, if resurrection is happening, if the Church is being resurrected, then what might we expect to go along with this? We can expect the Second Coming of Christ.
And that is exactly what we do see with the blowing of the seventh trumpet. “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.”
Can’t you just hear the Hallelujah Chorus whenever we read or say those words?
Now, when the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, what else is that but another way of talking about the Second Coming of Christ, when heaven and earth shall be joined, and Jesus will establish his eternal kingdom?
The twenty-four elders on their thrones before God confirm this as they fall on their faces and worship, for they say, “The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great and for destroying those who destroy the earth.”
What is this but the end of history as we know it, and the final judgment? Scripture calls it “the day of the Lord”, a day that will see the return of Christ, the resurrection of God’s people, the final judgment, and the establishment of Jesus’ eternal kingdom. What a day that will be!
“But,” you say, “This is only Revelation 11, we are only halfway through the book, why is John talking about the end of the story here?”
You can be forgiven for asking that question. Remember what I said earlier in our study of Revelation. This book is like a spiral staircase. It revisits the same themes over and over again, round and round. But each time we go round a spiral, we rise higher and see the same themes from a new vantage point. As G. B. Caird has suggested, John “has set down his visions with the skill of a consummate literary artist, composing symphonic variations” on his themes. So yes, John is telling us the end of the story here. But it is only the end of Scene 3. We are going to ascend through five more spirals before the book is over.
So, what have we learned today Church? We have learned three things…
(1) We have learned that the Temple in Revelation 11 represents the Church. That is who we are. We are a Temple for the Holy Spirit. If you want to be a Temple for the Holy Spirit all you have to do is invite him to live inside of you. Jesus says the Father will give the Holy Spirit to whoever asks for him.
(2) The two witnesses also represent the Church. They tell us what we are supposed to do. We are supposed to be witnesses for Jesus, pointing people to him as Lord and Savior. But remember this too, the Bible never uses the word “witness” as a verb. It is always a noun. A witness is who you are if the Holy Spirit is living in you. You can’t get away from being a witness for Christ if he is living in you by his Spirit. “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.”
(3) And finally, we have learned, once again, that Jesus is going to win in the end. That is the reminder of the seventh trumpet.
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