2 The Two Witnesses and their Martyrdom, Ch. 11:3‐13
The two witnesses who prophesy, i. e. bear witness for God, and whom God ever preserves throughout all vicissitudes, and delivers even out of seeming destruction, are the churches of the Old and New Dispensations which have been divinely called to witness for the truth.(445) The two olive trees represent the Old and New Testament revelations which supply oil, the symbol of grace, to the two candlesticks, i. e. to the two churches,(446) the Jewish and Christian, that have been and are God’s special witnesses throughout the ages (cf. Zech. 4:2f.). The identity of the candlesticks and witnesses is shown both by the connection, and by the explicit statement of verse four: “These [two witnesses] are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks, standing before the Lord of the earth,” i. e. the witnesses are, in a sense, both the Old and New Testament revelations and the churches of the Old and New Dispensations, which alike witness for the truth of God, though the connection shows that the churches are specially intended.(447) Two is the number of confirmation in witness‐bearing (Jn. 8:17); hence the two witnesses may also be considered to symbolize the sufficiency of the testimony of the Old and New Testament churches, as also a sufficient number in the church in every age who witness for God and truth. These have power that is not of man but divinely given, as is indicated in symbolic language (v. 5‐6), yet when their testimony is finished, the Beast out of the abyss, the world‐power of chapter thirteen, introduced here by anticipation, accomplishes their apparent overthrow. Out of this deadly conflict with the world, and the apparent defeat and eventually the death of the witnesses, with the exposure of their dead bodies and contemptuous refusal of burial, a personal indignity and sign of hatred and contempt, the fitting type of the world’s treatment of the church in all ages and times, which in the vision occurs in Babylon, “the great city”, the type of the godless world,—out of all this seeming defeat comes ultimate victory. After three and a half days the breath of life from God enters into them, and they live again, and go up to heaven in a cloud. This points to the experience of grave peril by the church preceding her triumph, including temporary and seeming extinction at the hands of her enemies, and forming the occasion for an expression of their supreme contempt, an experience such as has occurred at different periods in her history, and which may, indeed, occur again in the future—the church persecuted, scattered, peeled, seemingly destroyed, but revived and restored by the power of God. Three and a half days of defeat,—a broken number, indicating a short but indefinite period in contrast with the three and a half years, or forty‐ two months, or a thousand two hundred and three score days, (v. 3), the length of the entire world‐conflict,—a time of rejoicing by them that dwell upon the earth, is followed, as in the case of our Lord, by resurrection, ascension, and triumph, a parallel that is apparently suggested by the similarity and was doubtless intended. This is true not only of individual saints who have borne witness and suffered death only to rise again in the witness of others and in their own personal resurrection, but is especially true of the church in a collective sense, both under the Old Testament and the New, which always rises triumphant after every great disaster in her history, and shall rise again in all her members at the resurrection of the last day after her witness is complete.(448) God avenges his own, as is indicated in the vision by the fall of the tenth part of the city, which is the share of the tithe under the Mosaic law, and by the death of seven thousand men, a great and complete number, seven multiplied by a thousand, who bear the punishment of their sin. As the result of the martyrdom and avengement the rest of men, give glory to God, a manifest attestation of the value of the church’s witness. The world’s persecution, though bitter and continued, fails to accomplish its end; the church of Christ survives, and rises again in power, and its witness becomes effective. Historical interpreters, however, generally regard the two witnesses as persons, futurists identifying them as Moses (or Enoch) and Elijah, whom they regard as yet to come, and preterists finding in them two leading characters during the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, a view that restricts the vision to very narrow limits. Others, catching the larger view, interpret as “The Christian church and the Christian state”, and still others as “The law and the prophets”, or “The prophets and the priesthood”,—i. e.