Sermon Tone Analysis

| *Two Witnesses*(Revelation 11:1–14) |

* *

*Then there was given me a measuring rod like a staff; and someone said, “****Get up and measure the temple of God and the altar, and those who worship in it.

Leave out the court which is outside the temple and do not measure it, for it has been given to the nations; and they will tread under foot the holy city for forty-two months.

And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for twelve hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.****”

These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.

And if anyone wants to harm them, fire flows out of their mouth and devours their enemies; so if anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in this way.

These have the power to shut up the sky, so that rain will not 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 plague, as often as they desire.

When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them and kill them.

And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which mystically is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.

Those from the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations will look at their dead bodies for three and a half days, and will not permit their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb.

And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and celebrate; and they will send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth.

But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God came into them, and they stood on their feet; and great fear fell upon those who were watching them.

And they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “****Come up here.****”

Then they went up into heaven in the cloud, and their enemies watched them.

And in 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.

The second woe is past; behold, the third woe is coming quickly.

(11:1–14)*

* *

*Intro*.

Throughout history God has faithfully sent His spokesmen to call sinners to repentance.

During the long, dark years of Israel’s rebellion, “the Lord warned Israel and Judah through all His prophets and every seer, saying, ‘Turn from your evil ways and keep My commandments, My statutes according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you through My servants the prophets’ ” (2 Kings 17:13).

Tragically,

however, they did not listen, but stiffened their neck like their fathers, who did not believe in the Lord their God.

They rejected His statutes and His covenant which He made with their fathers and His warnings with which He warned them.

And they followed vanity and became vain, and went after the nations which surrounded them, concerning which the Lord had commanded them not to do like them.

(vv.

14–15)

The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to them again and again by His messengers, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place; but they continually mocked the messengers of God, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, until there was no remedy.

(2 Chron.

36:15–16)

I sent you all My servants the prophets, again and again, saying, “Oh, do not do this abominable thing which I hate.”

But they did not listen or incline their ears to turn from their wickedness, so as not to burn sacrifices to other gods.

Therefore My wrath and My anger were poured out and burned in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, so they have become a ruin and a desolation as it is this day.

(Jer.

44:4–6)

Prophets such as Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jonah, and the others confronted both wayward Israel and sinful Gentile nations.

Jeremiah’s experience was typical of the reception that the prophets often received:

The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah (that was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon), which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of Judah and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, “From the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, even to this day, these twenty-three years the word of the Lord has come to me, and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened.

And the Lord has sent to you all His servants the prophets again and again, but you have not listened nor inclined your ear to hear, saying, ‘Turn now everyone from his evil way and from the evil of your deeds, and dwell on the land which the Lord has given to you and your forefathers forever and ever; and do not go after other gods to serve them and to worship them, and do not provoke Me to anger with the work of your hands, and I will do you no harm.’

” (Jer.

25:1–6)

Yet the picture has not been entirely bleak; God has always preserved a believing remnant.

To the Romans Paul wrote, “Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, ‘Though the number of the sons of Israel be like the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved’ ” (Rom.

9:27; cf.

Rom.

11:4–5; Isa.

10:20–22; 11:11).

God’s salvation has come to the remnant of faithful Israel, as well as believing Gentiles, through the faithful preaching of the gospel.

In Romans 10:13 Paul declares, “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Then the apostle asks rhetorically, “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed?

How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard?

And how will they hear without a preacher?”

(v.

14).

In the New Testament, as in the Old, faithful preachers called for repentance and faith, offering all sinners the hope of forgiveness in Christ.

Chief among those preachers was the Lord Jesus Christ Himself (Matt.

4:17; Mark 1:38).

The ranks of New Testament preachers also included John the Baptist (Matt.

3:1–2), the Twelve (Matt.

10:5–7; Mark 6:7–12), Peter (Acts 2:14ff.; 3:12ff.),

Stephen (Acts 7:1–56), Phillip (Acts 8:12, 35, 40), and the most prolific of them all, the apostle Paul (Acts 13:15ff.;

1 Tim.

2:7; 2 Tim.

1:11).

They in turn passed the truth of the gospel to a next generation of godly preachers, who passed it down to other preachers (cf.

2 Tim.

2:2), such as Timothy, Titus, and the prophets and apostles of the churches, as well as the early church elders and overseers.

Along with the many unknown preachers through the ages there have been notable proclaimers of the gospel, such as Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Chrysostom, Irenaeus, Wycliff, Huss, Tyndale, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Latimer, Knox, Bunyan, Wesley, Whitefield, Maclaren, Edwards, Spurgeon, and a host of others down to the present day.

In the future, during Earth’s darkest hour, God will raise up two exceptional and powerful preachers.

They will fearlessly proclaim the gospel during the last three and one-half years of the seven-year Tribulation, the period that Jesus called “the great tribulation” (Matt.

24:21; cf.

Rev.

7:14).

During that time of horrific divine judgments on the earth, of rampaging hordes of demons terrorizing and slaughtering millions of people, and wickedness rampaging unrestrained, their gospel preaching, along with that of the 144,000 Jewish evangelists (7:1–10), the “angel flying in midheaven” (14:6), and the testimonies of other believers alive during that time, will be a final expression of God’s grace offered to repentant and believing sinners.

In addition to preaching the gospel, these two preachers will proclaim God’s judgment on the wicked world.

Their ministry will likely stretch from the midpoint of the Tribulation until just before the sounding of the seventh trumpet.

That trumpet will herald the pouring out of the rapid-fire bowl judgments, the battle of Armageddon, and the return of Christ.

During that period, they will declare that the disasters befalling the world are the judgments of God.

They will participate in fulfilling the words of the Lord Jesus Christ that the “gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come” (Matt.

24:14).

They will also be used by God to bring salvation to Israel (cf. the discussion of v. 13 below).

#.

*The Two Messengers*

*And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for twelve hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.****”

These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.

And if anyone wants to harm them, fire flows out of their mouth and devours their enemies; so if anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in this way.

These have the power to shut up the sky, so that rain will not 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 plague, as often as they desire.

When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them and kill them.

And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which mystically is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.

Those from the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations will look at their dead bodies for three and a half days, and will not permit their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb.

And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and celebrate; and they will send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth.

But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God came into them, and they stood on their feet; and great fear fell upon those who were watching them.

And they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “****Come up here.****”

Then they went up into heaven in the cloud, and their enemies watched them.

And in 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.

The second woe is past; behold, the third woe is coming quickly.

(11:3–14)*

* The connection between this vision of the two preachers and the previous passage (vv.

1–2) should be clear.

* They are among God’s unique witnesses who will proclaim His message of judgment during the final stages of the Gentile trampling on Jerusalem—and will preach the gospel so that the Jewish remnant can believe and enjoy God’s protection.

* Seven features of the lives and ministry of these two remarkable and powerful preachers unfold in the text: their duty, attitude, identity, power, death, resurrection, and impact.

1.        their duty

*And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for twelve hundred and sixty days, (11:3/a/)*

a.        Once again, the speaker who *will grant authority to *the *two witnesses *is not identified, but it could be only God the Father, or the Lord Jesus Christ.

b.       *Witnesses* is the plural form of /martus,/ from which the English word /martyr /derives, since so many witnesses of Jesus Christ in the early church paid with their lives.

c.        Since it is always used in the New Testament to refer to persons, the two witnesses must be actual people, not movements, as some commentators have held.

d.

There are *two witnesses *because the Bible requires the testimony of two people to confirm a fact or verify truth (Deut.

17:6; 19:15; Matt.

18:16; John 8:17; 2 Cor.

13:1; 1 Tim.

5:19; Heb.

10:28).

e.