The threat of the community being overwhelmed by the non-Christian world does not mean that the faithful retreat. Instead, John depicts two “witnesses” prophesying during the period when the “temple” or community of faith is oppressed.

The character of their message is indicated by the sackcloth that they wear, which indicates that they are calling people to repentance. Wearing sackcloth was a sign of mourning and penitence, since those who understood themselves to be under judgment had reason to humble themselves before God (Job 42:6; Dan. 9:3; Jonah 3:6; Matt. 11:21). This form of witness suits a context in which the plagues that occurred under the first six trumpets failed to bring humankind to repentance (Rev. 9:20–21). These witnesses indicate that the opportunity for repentance is still available even as the community is besieged.

Revelation 11:3 And I will give unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. 4 These are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks, standing before the Lord of the earth. 5 And if any man desireth to hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth and devoureth their enemies; and if any man shall desire to hurt them, in this manner must he be killed. 6 These have the power to shut the heaven, that it rain not during the days of their prophecy: and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with every plague, as often as they shall desire. 7 And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that cometh up out of the abyss shall make war with them, and overcome them, and kill them. 8 And their dead bodies lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. 9 And from among the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations do men look upon their dead bodies three days and a half, and suffer not their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb. 10 And they that dwell on the earth rejoice over them, and make merry; and they shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwell on the earth. 11 And after the three days and a half the breath of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them that beheld them. 12 And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they went up into heaven in the cloud; and their enemies beheld them. 13 And in that hour there was a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell; and there were killed in the earthquake seven thousand persons: and the rest were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.

If you take that text seriously, literally there’s no way that took place in the first century or in any other century. There are no two witnesses and no city where you get people from every tongue and tribe and people and nation looking on these people, all coming by in a period of three and a half days.

If on the other hand you do see that these witnesses represent the witness martyr community (that part of the people of God who, in fact, die for their faith), then there is a sense in which when they die people from every tongue and tribe and nation gaze on them in scorn. It has happened again and again and again.

That only makes sense if the two witnesses are symbols for more than just two who happen to die in a particular city at a particular time.

When they come back to life again, they’re escorted to heaven. It does not make sense to say that this all happens in AD 70. It does not seem to make sense either simply to assign it to some unforeseen event in the future when a real Moses and a real Elijah come back.

Are these chaps going to come back, now not in a resurrection body but in an ordinary body, preach for a prescribed period of time, get bumped off again, and then come back to life?

Is the temple going to be rebuilt when the whole of New Testament theology argues that it points to Christ and the sacrifices of the temple are fulfilled in him?

Are you now going to rebuild the temple, if so, It misunderstands all of the book of Hebrews. It misunderstands the thrust of New Testament theology. Christ our Lamb has been sacrificed for us. He’s our Passover. I think that misunderstands the nature of apocalyptic and misunderstands the nature of New Testament theology and misunderstands John. It doesn’t handle the language properly.

if you fit it into a broader scheme in which in every tongue, tribe, and nation you get Christian witnesses who get killed and people gloat but then at the end they are brought back to life, who has the last say?

We can work through some of the symbols and see if this makes sense.

“They will prophesy for 1,260 days.” 42 months, three and a half years. If this is another way of referring to sustained tribulation that does take place between the first advent and the second advent,

It is not that these two individuals live for the whole period of church history. These two witnesses come and bear witness to the gospel, to the truth, to Jesus. Clearly, they are modeled in certain respects after Moses and Elijah. Shutting up the rain, for example, reminds you of Elijah.

Consuming enemies with fire (2 Kings 1). Like Moses they turn water into blood (Exodus 7). They smite the earth with plagues (Exodus 8).

That there are two witnesses in this view may stem from the well-known law in Deuteronomy 19, which requires a minimum of two witnesses for something to be true. They’re bearing witness to the truth. The period of their ministry, then, this 42 months, 1,260 days, and so on is exactly the same period as the trampling of the city.

While part of the city is being trampled, they continue to bear witness.

There is persecution, and the church witnesses. The whole church doesn’t die. Part of the city is trampled. Part of the temple place is trampled, and there is prophecy. As long as they are prophesying, as long as God gives them this, they prophesy, and they may actually call judgment down.

The most dramatic examples are given from the Old Testament, but you cannot read long in the history of Christian mission or the history of Christian preaching in times of revival not to know other times when terrible judgment has been called down

Certain cases of church discipline in 1 Corinthians, chapter 5, the church is told in the name of Jesus to cast certain people over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh?

One does not play around with God as if he’s a bit of magic you can turn on or turn off, but at the end of the day, we have such a domesticated, happy-yappy view of God in the West that we forget he is also a God of judgment, and sometimes he has given in response to his people calling down terrible judgments to stop this or that or the other.

During all that time, while the city is getting trampled, the preachers preach on. The prophets still declare the Word of God and sometimes bring down judgment.

If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. At the end of the day, what do we have other than the word of their testimony?. This is not the sword of the state or something like that. They finish their testimony. The time comes when they do, and the powers of hell attack them, and they’re killed. This is that part of the church that, in its faithful witness, is martyred.

I think the two witnesses represent the community of faithful Christians. The witnesses are depicted as lampstands, and in 1:20 the lampstands represented Christian congregations. Even though in this case the vision specifically refers to “two” witnesses, the implication is not that faithful Christians will be found in only two places.

Rather, the imagery fits the practice of providing two witnesses to sustain a truth claim in court (Deut. 19:15). The term “witness” suggests that the faithful are bound to speak the truth in disputed situations, like the witnesses that testify in a courtroom. John has already applied the title “witness” to the Christian named Antipas, who was slain for his faith (2:13; 17:6), and the two “witnesses” depicted in 11:3–13 extend the role of faithful witnessing more broadly.

As figures that stand for the faithful generally, the two witnesses encompass the traits of individuals from many periods in the history of God’s people. Calling them olive trees and lampstands recalls how Joshua the high priest and Zerubbabel the governor, who led Israel during the time of Persian domination, were depicted as olive trees whose oil supplied a golden lampstand (11:4; Zech. 3:1–4:14).

The faithful of John’s time embody these traits during a time of Roman domination, when they constitute a “kingdom” that recognizes the sovereignty of God, and serve as faithful can be compared to fire pouring from their mouths, which was a trait of the prophet Jeremiah, who bore witness during the time that the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem and its temple (Jer. 5:14; Rev. 11:5).

What does that mean? Well, there are several views.

One view says that this just has to be Jerusalem. Otherwise, what do you make of the last clause in verse 8, “Where also their Lord was crucified”? this city must be Jerusalem.

Sodom (proverbial for licentiousness) and Egypt (proverbial for its enslavement of the people of God), and it’s identified for us by this last clause, “Where also the Lord was crucified.”

Ezekiel 16:46–49 has places where Jerusalem is called Sodom Ezekiel 16, Jerusalem is being compared with her sisters, Samaria and Sodom. It’s not directly called Sodom.

Another view is, that although the immediate referent is Rome, Rome becomes a symbol for all of civilization against God.

In that framework, the inclusion of a reference to the crucifixion of Jesus is not given to establish a geographical identification, it seems to illustrate the response of the human heart, human civilization, first of all pagan Rome, but in principle “pagan” Jerusalem, to the Messiah when he came.

The deaths of these witnesses could be parabolic of the fate of the faithful in many times and places. Although John says that the witnesses are killed in “the great city” where Jesus was crucified (11:7–8), the passage does not have to be limited to one place on earth. The scene has a surreal quality in which places have more to do with characteristics of good and evil than with specific locations.

The adversary of the faithful is a beast that comes from the bottomless pit (11:7). The entry to the pit cannot be located on a map, but it refers to the origin of evil powers, as in 9:1–2. When John refers to the place where Jesus was crucified, he does not mention the name of Jerusalem. Instead, he identifies the place as Sodom and Egypt (11:8), evoking memories of the infamous sins of Sodom that warranted the destruction of the city by fire (Gen. 18:20; 19:24) and of Egypt’s oppression of the people of Israel (Exod. 1:8–14).

The city where the faithful are killed is called “the great city” (Rev. 11:8), which can refer to the whole realm in which oppression takes place.

In kaleidoscopic fashion, the title “great city” is here associated with Jerusalem, Sodom, and Egypt. Elsewhere it refers to Babylon (14:8; 16:19; 17:18; 18:10, 16, 18, 19, 21), which in turn is another name for Rome, the city built on seven hills (17:9), the city that is glutted with “the blood of the prophets and saints, and of all who have been slaughtered on the earth” (18:24). Those who gaze upon the bodies of the witnesses are not simply the residents of Jerusalem, but “members of the peoples and tribes and languages and nations” (11:9), and the deaths of the faithful are known and celebrated by “the inhabitants of the earth” (11:10).

The passage has to do with the witness of the faithful to the world and of their ultimate vindication through resurrection from the dead.

After their dead bodies have served as a spectacle to the world, the breath of life enters them, and they stand on their feet, like the dry bones that Ezekiel saw coming back to life (Rev. 11:11; Ezek. 37:5, 10). Like Christ, they are taken up to heaven (Rev. 11:12). The song of praise that resounds at the end of this chapter shows that the resurrection of these witnesses represents the resurrection of all the faithful. The vision shows readers what the heavenly chorus means when it declares that the time has come “for judging the dead” and “for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints and all who fear your name, both small and great” (11:18). In this passage we see an image of the suffering and vindication of the people of God.

More important is the fact that this expression “the great city” crops up again and again in the book of Revelation, and in the seven other occurrences. In every instance, it just has to be Rome. “The city on the seven hills,”

To anybody in the ancient world, what would that mean?

There are one or two references where that sort of language is used elsewhere, but in the Roman Empire, the city with seven hills, and with all the pagan connections clearly connected with this reference, the pagan connections bound up in the letters to the seven churches, and the pagan symbolism, the emperor worship that is bound up, it makes much more sense to take this as Rome.

On the one hand, the people who actually hung Jesus on the cross were a handful of people who manipulated a lot of others, a few Jewish leaders, Pontius Pilate, Herod by not taking responsibility, a few Sadducees, a corrupt court system. That’s it. On the other hand, from the perspective of New Testament theology, what put Jesus on the cross? Wasn’t it my sin? And your sin?

In that sense, as someone has well said, this city is every city and no city.

The symbolism is drawn from Rome, but it is the human city, what Augustine would call the city of man, against the city of God. It’s the great city over against the Holy City earlier in the chapter. The Holy City is being trampled on.

It is Egypt, which isn’t a city at all; it’s a country, but it’s used because it’s symbolic in the whole Jewish thought.

Just as the whole Jewish thought looks at the Maccabean Revolt in certain ways, all Jewish thought looks at Egypt in certain ways. What is Egypt? It’s all the power that enslaves them. “Where also our Lord was crucified.” That’s right. The Lord himself came to this city, and it slew him.

If this is the case, then, it is in line with the suggestion that the suffering that is going on is against all of God’s people and the two witnesses represent those elements of God’s people across the whole period of tribulation who witness faithfully even to the point of death. Wherever this happens, people look at them and gaze at them. From every people, tribe, language, and nation, they gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial, which in the ancient world was the worst form of opprobrium.

Isn’t that the way radicalized unbelievers view gospel preachers?

“You torment us.” John the Baptist comes along and says to Herod, “You can’t do that. That’s adultery. It’s sin, and you mustn’t do that.” What does Herod say? “Oh yes..

In other words, from their point of view, these are nitpicking busybodies, self-righteous clowns, who make life miserable for the rest of us, and if they’d just leave us in peace and everyone does his own thing, we’d all be happier, wouldn’t we? So when you get rid of them, you hold a party. It’s sort of like a pagan Christmas. You give gifts.

“But after the three and a half days ” apparently they’re dead for three and a half days. That’s all. So you have a party going on. Again, the three and a half days has to be symbolic in some sense. In some sense, the three and a half days are simply the response to the three and a half years. You get a similar sort of connection in some things in the life of Christ.

Remember how Jesus is brought out into the desert and fasts for 40 days and 40 nights (Matthew 4 and Luke 4)? Well, in the context of his temptations, after the 40 days and 40 nights, the Scripture texts he quotes all come from the wilderness experience of the Jews. The Devil comes to him, and Jesus says, “No, no, no. Have you not read, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’?”

That comes right out of Deuteronomy 8, where Moses says, “The Lord led you these 40 years in the wilderness in order that you might learn that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” All three of Jesus’ quotations from the Old Testament have something to do with the wilderness experience, and it becomes part of the Matthean theme in which Israel went through the period in the wilderness to be taught these lessons and failed.

It’s not going to be the whole three and a half years, because some die here, some die here, some die here, and some die here, but after the set period (they call it three and a half days, so it has echoes of the former, yet it’s a shorter period), they’re brought back to life. Now as far as I can see at this point, the bringing back to life does not suggest immortality but resurrection. They stood on their feet.

Nor are they brought back to life so they can have another go at them. These are resurrected preachers; they’re really going to put the fear of God in them. No, it doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say that these people are terrified because these people come back and preach to them and they see that they’re alive again. No, it doesn’t say that.

The final element of their witness is their faithfulness to the point of death, following the way of Jesus (Rev. 11:7–10).

Elijah was said to have been taken directly to heaven, so that he did not experience death (2 Kings 2:11), but the witnesses depicted here share in the fate of those prophets who were slain for speaking the word of God, and in the fate of Jesus, who was crucified (Matt. 23:30–31, 37; Acts 7:52). Their forceful prophesying in the face of opposition culminates, not in the annihilation of their opponents, but in their own martyrdom. Their faithfulness does not bring protection from death, for they are subjected to the dreaded fate of being denied burial (Rev. 11:9). Vindication comes only later, after death. In this they follow Jesus, who was crucified and later raised to heavenly glory.

They’re resurrected. A voice from heaven says, “Come up here.” They go to heaven.

Their enemies look on. At that very hour, there’s a severe earthquake. The whole system is crumbling. People die. Seven thousand people in the city are killed. (That would be about one-tenth of a good-sized ancient Near East city. Seventy thousand was a good-sized city in the ancient Near East.) Survivors were terrified, and they gave glory to the God of heaven.

In this framework, I don’t think gave glory to the God of heaven means, “Oh yes, now they were convinced and they all became Christians.” The point is exactly the same as you find at the end of Philippians, chapter 2.

Yes, Christ dies, but he rises from the dead and is vindicated. He’s seated at the right hand of the majesty on high, and one day, the texts say, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. That does not mean that everybody is going to become a Christian, but every knee shall bow.

Taken at the end of chapter 6, They cry for the rocks in the mountains. “Save us from the wrath of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb.” They pray, but their prayer is too late. Now that’s a very difficult passage. I acknowledge that. But I think it’s the way to read it that makes most sense of the theology of the rest of the book and fits in with primary gospel themes across the whole New Testament canon.

In the end, judgment does fall upon the nations, but its force is blunted.

John says that an earthquake occurred “and a tenth of the city fell; seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake” (11:13). The progression toward total judgment, which seemed unstoppable in the series of visions that were recounted in Revelation 8–9, is now reversed. Each of those visions spoke of disaster falling upon a third of the earth, culminating with the specter of death for a third of humanity (9:18). At the end of Revelation 11, destruction falls on only one-tenth of the city, which means that nine-tenths of the people are spared. To sense the magnitude of the change, consider how this reverses a broader biblical pattern. Isaiah warned that God’s judgment would fall so widely that only a tenth would survive it, and that even that tenth would be burned again (Isa. 6:13). Similarly, Amos warned that when God’s judgment came, nine-tenths would meet destruction (Amos 5:3). In Revelation, however, the opposite is true, for nine-tenths are saved and only one-tenth are destroyed.

After the earth experienced the horrors of the first six trumpets, people stubbornly persisted in idolatry and refused to repent (Rev. 9:20–21), but here nine-tenths of the people give glory to God, which is what the heavenly chorus did with their songs of praise (4:11; 5:13; 7:12).

The witness, death, and vindication of the community of faith accomplish what the prospect of judgment alone does not do.

It brings people of many tribes, languages, and nations to fear God and to give him glory. Note that in the days of Elijah—whose legacy is carried on by the two witnesses, as noted above—all but seven thousand people embraced false worship (1 Kings 19:18). In Revelation, however, the situation is reversed, for all but seven thousand now give glory to God (Rev. 11:13).

The conversion of the nations, rather than their destruction, is God’s will for the world (14:7). The glimpse of the fulfillment of God’s purposes that is given here is developed more fully in the final chapters of Revelation, where kings and nations again give glory to God and the Lamb in the greatest of all cities, the New Jerusalem (21:24–26).