The world has seen lots of memorable duos over the years. People of a certain age grew up watching Ernie & Bert on Sesame Street. Younger audiences were delighted by the Toy Story movie series featuring Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear. The Lord of the Rings gave us Frodo Baggins and his loyal gardener Sam Gamgee. The Bible has its own famous pairs: Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit; David defeated Goliath with just a sling and five smooth stones.
We’ve recently been studying Revelation 11, perhaps the most challenging chapter in the entire Bible. This passage offers us the strange story of two witnesses who prophesy with power, are struck down and killed by a beast & then raised to new life. There’s been all kinds of wild speculation about these two witnesses. Who are they? To whom to they testify? When does this story take place?
Of this we can be sure: John the author of Revelation did not intend that the identity of these two witnesses remain a mystery. They’re crucial for understanding the contents of the scroll, which are in turn key for grasping the book of Revelation as a whole.
John describes them in this way: “I will give my two witnesses the task of prophesying, clothed in sackcloth, for those 1,260 days. These are the two olive trees, the two lampstands, which stand before the Lord of the earth.”
John is thoroughly consistent in his use of imagery. In the first chapter of Revelation, he described his magnificent vision of Jesus walking among seven golden lampstands. These lampstands were explicitly identified as the seven churches (v20). By reusing this image, John clearly indicates that the two witnesses are also a symbol for the church. The lampstand is an ideal way to represent God’s people who have been called to shine His light into a dark world.
But what’s the bit about “the two olive trees”? This is an allusion to the prophet Zechariah, who prophesied to the Jews who had returned from exile. Zechariah was given a vision of two olive trees which seem to represent Zerubbabel the governor and Joshua the high priest. These two leaders were given the task of rebuilding God’s temple and reinstituting proper worship.
The oil derived from the olive tree was used in the Old Testament to dedicate a person for service to God, either as a prophet, a priest or king. It was a symbol that God’s Spirit would rest upon them, giving them strength & wisdom. In the same way, John indicates that God’s Spirit will be with his people so that they can accomplish their assigned task.
Why are there two witnesses? In the last blog, we began to examine how the writers of the Bible often used numbers to convey meaning. In this passage, John uses the number two to signify trustworthy testimony. In the Old Testament, God’s law required that a person could only be convicted of a crime if there were two or more witnesses; the testimony of just one person was not enough to establish guilt (Deut. 19:15). John depicts two witnesses because that is the number required to provide valid testimony. We can therefore be assured that their testimony is reliable & true.
This might raise a question: if the number seven indicates completeness, do the two witnesses then represent only part of the church? The short answer is no. The witnesses still represent the whole church, but John chooses two because at this moment he wants to put special emphasis upon the church’s role of bearing faithful witness.
What is the message of the two witnesses? As we’ve noted, the law of Moses required two witnesses in order to convict someone of a crime. So here the church is given the task of bearing witness against the nations, who are guilty of sin and rebellion. John has already made it abundantly clear that the inhabitants of the earth have failed to worship the one true God and give him glory. They have instead worshiped idols and engaged in all manner of wickedness & immorality (Revelation 9:20-21).
John has already described God’s increasingly severe warning judgments against evil – the seven seal openings and the seven trumpets. The church’s role is to clarify that these are indeed warning judgments from the Creator. God’s people must alert humanity that if they persist in rebellion, they will certainly face God’s final judgment which will necessarily involve the total destruction of evil.
But the message of the two witnesses is by no means entirely negative. Notice that they’re wearing sackcloth – a sign of sorrow and repentance. The text never explicitly tells us what the witnesses say, but their garments indicate that they are calling the nations to repentance.
The Old Testament prophet Jonah had famously preached that in 40 days God would overthrow the city of Nineveh. But the people of Nineveh heeded God’s warnings. They proclaimed a fast and “all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.” When Jonah’s message reached the king of Nineveh, he issued a decree that “people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”
The prophetic ministry of the two witnesses ultimately stresses the goodness and mercy of God. He will certainly establish his eternal kingdom of righteousness, joy, abundance and life. But the coming of God’s kingdom will not simply involve the immediate annihilation of His enemies. Rather, God is patient and kind. He is graciously willing to forgive those who repent and turn away from iniquity.
The universal scope of the witness’s prophetic ministry comes into view later in the passage when their bodies are seen by “peoples, tribes, languages and nations” (v9). John uses the number four to represent the world, just as there are four cardinal directions on a compass. This fourfold phrase is repeated (with slight variations) seven times in the book of Revelation, thereby indicating that John is referring to all the people of the world. The point this: God earnestly desires to gather people from all nations into his kingdom.
When does the prophetic ministry of the two witnesses take place? Last week we addressed the meaning of Daniel’s cryptic phrase “a time, two times and half a time.” While 7 is the number of completeness, 3 1/2 (half of 7) signifies incompleteness or limitation. Daniel warned that the saints must endure persecution at the hands of the beast. But their time of tribulation will not last forever. Eventually, the beast will be condemned and sovereignty over the world will be transferred to the son of man.
In Revelation 11, this same time frame is presented in various forms: 42 months, 1,260 days or 3 1/2 days. But it always refers to the same reality: it’s the time of conflict between the saints and the beast. John prophesied that this great struggle would soon commence and would persist until the final coming of the Lord Jesus.
During this confrontation, God has given the church the indispensable role of bearing faithful witness. They must warn the nations of God’s impending judgment and call them to repentance and loyalty to the one true God. But this responsibility will not be easy. The beast will inflict upon them tremendous suffering and quite possibly martyrdom.
Unfortunately, many would-be interpreters of the book of Revelation have failed to recognize the nature & scope of the apocalyptic time period. They strictly relegate “the tribulation” to the future “end times.” This in turn causes them to misidentify the two witnesses. Such treatments badly miss the mark. We must always remember that any sound Biblical interpretation must have some relevance to its original audience.
In order to avoid these mistakes, we must keep firmly in mind the original context within which the book of Revelation was written. John’s letter was written to 1st century Christians living in the Roman province of Asia, warning them that the time of tribulation would soon begin. But this passage does not just apply to 1st century Christians, for the two witnesses represent all of God’s people from that day until the final moment when the Lord Jesus returns to cleanse the world of evil and reign over his eternal kingdom.
