3 And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.”
4 These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. 5 And if anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes. If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to be killed. 6 They have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire. 7 And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit[a] will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, 8 and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically[b] 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. 11 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. 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. 13 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.
14 The second woe has passed; behold, the third woe is soon to come.
But now, at 7, the temper of the vision changes. Here is a plain prophecy of what we must expect to happen just before the end of the age, prior to the return of Christ. The Church shall finish its testimony, and when this time comes, the beast from the pit will have his hour of triumph. The anti-Christian world, urged on by hell, shall battle against the Church and shall destroy it. The teaching of the passage is quite unambiguous. The two witnesses, representing the true Church, are slain, and general rejoicing ensues (10). This is the climax of the age-long experience of tribulation, which at the end-time will be notably increased, by the appearance of the beast from the pit. Nor does this contradict the emphasis made in the past two readings that Christ shall establish His Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. For, in the first place, we must notice that it says this will happen 'when they shall have finished their testimony'. The Church is not cut off with its work unfinished, nor is the purpose of its witness unfulfilled. All that God intends through the Church will be accomplished. This does not detract from the terrible nature of these verses, but they need to be understood in their proper context. What they do mean is not that the gospel shall be destroyed - that were an impossibility - but that 'the Church as a mighty missionary organisation for the dissemination of the gospel and regular ministry of the Word shall be destroyed'. The public and official testimony of the Church will be silenced, its leaders liquidated, its organised witness broken and put out of existence. Certainly there will be individual believers left, although few (cf Luke 18:8) at our Lord's return. Now what we must realise is that this is not spoken of merely as a possibility for the future, but a prophecy. This day will come, according to the Scriptures. And of this, more in the next Note.