When we consider the great battle that lies just ahead, it would be well for us to remember that it is the last in a war between Satan and the Word. In Revelation 19:15 Christ is represented as having a sword coming out of His mouth. Is it a real sword? No. It is the word of God. The only humans who take the word of God seriously, who allow their lives to be shaped by Scripture, stand up against the overwhelming tide of evil and destruction coming against them. They alone have learned to live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Here are the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11, but besides being called the Two Witnesses, these individuals have several different names in the book of Revelation: the 144,000; the remnant; the “brothers and sisters soon to be killed.” There is a good possibility that most of the angels in Revelation represent this same group. These are the same people presented under various names.
I have had called to my attention that I do not refer to the Two Witnesses as “the Old and New Testament” in my Revelation materials, as Ellen White calls them in Great Controversy (p. 267). This was a terrible breach of Biblical interpretation; this individual could not support my presentation of Revelation because of it. Do I believe they are the Old and New Testament? Yes, I certainly do.
But if we stop there we will never understand what Revelation 11 is telling us. If we never see them as God’s people of the last days, we can never understand what this chapter is saying. They have ingested the word into their own life and character, much as a tree pulling up nutrition from the ground by osmosis. In the typical interpretation the people of the French Revolution discarded the Bible, showing their antipathy by burning it. The Scriptures suffered in the typical fulfillment of Revelation 11, but is that what we can expect in the antitypical fulfillment?
Just for a moment consider the Old and New Testaments as literally standing before us. One breathes fire. The other shuts heaven that it rain not in the days of his ministry. The pages within the covers are killed. Can you see the Old and New Testaments running for their lives, enduring contradiction of sinners against themselves, their little stick legs making tracks down the road?
No, because by a process that only the Holy Spirit fully understands, the word has transformed itself into sanctified and holy people. They are now like Jesus. For every temptation or test, they know what the word says, and they stay by the word. The Two Witnesses are people who have been so profoundly changed by the word of God they know how to resist this great tide of evil coming against them in the last days. These are like the household of Issachar in the days of David the king: “Men who had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do” (1 Chron. 12:32, Amplified). Inanimate pages imprinted with words cannot do this. This calls for transformed humans–the Two Witnesses of Revelation.
The Bloggery
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