Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #5 of Revelation, chapter 11, and we are going to read Revelation 11:3-6:

And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed. These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.

I will stop reading there.  Again, we have been discussing this for the last couple of studies.  The “two witnesses” are a figure that God is giving us.  They are not actually two people, but they are typified by Moses and Elijah, “the law and the prophets.”  The “two witnesses” prophesied for “a thousand two hundred and threescore days” or 1,260 days.  The Bible is prophecy.  The entire Bible is the prophecy of God and when anyone speaks forth the Word of God, we are prophesying.  That is why God, in the Book of Acts, quotes from Joel and says, “Thy sons and thy daughters shall prophesy.”  This does not mean that He is going to send prophets in the latter days; there are no prophets in the sense of Elijah or Ezekiel or Daniel, any longer.  God finished using prophets in an official role, once He completed the Bible, but His people are, spiritually, “prophets, priests and kings.”  We exercise our roles as prophets when we speak the prophecy of the Bible; the whole Bible is prophecy, so as we share information from the Bible, we are prophesying.  The “two witnesses” are a figure of the Bible itself: Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets. 

But we also have to recognize that the Bible does not prophesy of itself; that is, the Bible was in the churches, but it was the true believers within those congregations that would speak forth the Bible.  Likewise, when God ended the church age and began to send forth the Gospel of the Latter Rain, after the initial 2,300 evening mornings of the Great Tribulation, the Bible did not go forth of itself; God had devised a program of evangelization.  He had His people send it forth.  Back in September of 1994 when God first began to pour out the Latter Rain upon the people of the earth, there would have been certain ministries, not identified with the churches, which God used to accomplish that purpose. 

Then later on, He called His people out of the churches and congregations, once He opened up their understanding to the fact that the church age had ended and the Bible commanded them to “come out.”  They began to come out and more and more true believers began to identify with the witness of the “two witnesses” and their testimony outside of the churches.   And that is normally the case – God’s people strongly identify with the “two witnesses,” as the “two witnesses” identify with the Word of God, the Bible, and the “two witnesses” have the role of being messengers of the Word of God.  They were the ones that were ambassadors during the day of salvation.  They were the ones that were tasked with the responsibility of going into the world with the Gospel, so we find language that does identify the true believers with the “two witnesses” in Revelation 11.  For instance, it says in Revelation 11:3:

And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.

“Sackcloth” is a figure that God uses to express repentance.  When someone has become saved, God has granted that person repentance unto salvation.  He has given them the gift of a new heart that is “turned away” from sin and has repented from all the sins that had been gushing forth out of the desperately wicked heart of the sinner.  God changes the heart and gives the person repentance, a turning deep down from the heart of the individual that has become born again by the action of God.  Repentance unto salvation is a gift of God when He gives that new resurrected heart and that heart is in complete obedience to God and has repented.  That is what God is looking for. 

When the Bible speaks of repenting and believing, as it does in many different places, some people think, “Well, ok, I have to stop smoking, or I have to stop drinking, or I have to stop cursing and lying or whatever sin it is I am doing.”  Well, yes, but what if you did stop those outward actions, but there was no change within you?  Remember how the Bible talks of the sins that flow forth out of the heart of man.  So someone could put away an outward, observable sin like drinking alcohol, but the inward sin that is flowing from the heart is undisturbed.  It is still coming forth abundantly out of that desperately wicked heart, so there is no true repentance there.  The repentance must be “of the heart,” and that is why we prayed during the time God was still granting salvation, “Oh, God, grant me the gift of a repentant heart.  Turn me and I shall be turned.”  Then if God had given us that new heart, we would turn from outward, observable sins as well, but true repentance had already been performed by the action of God.

So it says that the “two witnesses” were clothed with sackcloth and this would be the outworking of the ministry of the “two witnesses” within the churches and congregations during the church age.  God utilized His people to speak forth His Word – to prophesy – and since they are His people, the figure is used that they were clothed in sackcloth and they prophesied for “a thousand two hundred and threescore days.”  We talked about this before, but, once again, it says in Revelation 12:6:

And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.

When we carefully go through the context of Revelation, chapter 12, which, Lord willing, we will get to soon, we will see that the woman is the body of believers, as Christ comes through Israel and is born (verse 5), and then the woman flees into the wilderness where God takes care of her for that 1,260 day period, which is identical to what Revelation 11:3 tells us about the period of prophesy of the “two witnesses.” 

If we look at “1,260” days, you can break that down to “three and one half years” of 30-day months.  And that is exactly how we should look at it because it is pointing to the last half of the “seventieth week” of Daniel, chapter 9.  In Daniel 9 God brought us to the “seventieth week,” and then the Lord Jesus Christ was ministering for three and one half years and that was “half” of the “seventieth week.”  Then the last “half” stretched over the entire church age, to the end of the church age (May 21, 1988) and then we reached the time of the end and when judgment began at the house of God.  At that point, the Scriptures were unsealed, according to Daniel 12: “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end.”  It was at the beginning of the Great Tribulation and judgment on the churches that God unsealed the Bible.

Let us move on to Revelation 11:4:

These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth.

In our last study, we also read in Zechariah some information that agrees with Revelation 11-4.  It says in Zechariah 4:2-3:

And said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have looked, and behold a candlestick all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and his seven lamps thereon, and seven pipes to the seven lamps, which are upon the top thereof: And two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof.

Let us skip down to Zechariah 4:11-14:

Then answered I, and said unto him, What are these two olive trees upon the right side of the candlestick and upon the left side thereof? And I answered again, and said unto him, What be these two olive branches which through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves? And he answered me and said, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my lord. Then said he, These are the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.

This language matches exactly with Revelation 11:4: “These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth.”  In Zechariah 4, we are reading of the “two olive trees” that are on the right and left sides of the candlestick.  Then God speaks of oil that is emptying out from two olive branches.  Again, the “two witnesses” are the Word of God and the true believers closely identify with the Word of God as we represent the kingdom of heaven.  So, here, God has in view the two olive trees that are closely related to and alongside the candlestick and they are closely involved in this process of the emptying of the golden oil.  Remember, in the Bible, oil can represent the Holy Spirit.  Actually, in Zechariah 4:14, where it says, “These are the two anointed ones,” the word “anointed” is translated as “oil” in Deuteronomy 28:51 and in 2 Kings 18:32, where it says “land of oil olive,” and that would relate to olive trees; the olive oil comes from the olive tree.  It is very difficult language to try to grab hold of, but the idea is that the true believers have the Holy Spirit flowing in them and, therefore, they are prophesying in accord with the “two witnesses,” Moses and Elijah, which represent the Bible, the Word of God.  The true believers are closely identified with the Word of God.

We are going to continue on in Revelation 11:5:

And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.

The “two witnesses” are the Bible, the Word of God, and God’s people carry forth that Word and “if any man will hurt” the true Gospel of the Bible and if any man shows himself in opposition to the kingdom of heaven, then God is saying: “And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies.”  Of course, there are a great many enemies of the true Gospel of the Bible.  The Bible is the truth declared by God and as His people share that truth within the churches and congregations (in this case), there is bound to be opposition to the truth.  There has never been a time in the history of the world, since the fall of man, when truth was spoken and someone did not oppose it.  That is the “nature” of man.  Mankind does not understand the truth of the Bible of himself and Satan is also ruling over them in the kingdom of darkness, since and he is the greatest of God’s enemies; he is contrary to truth and he is the “father of lies,” and he stirs up people to oppose true doctrine and faithful teachings.  He has been doing this from the very beginning, even before the fall into sin.  What was Satan doing when he presented himself to Eve as a serpent and he tried to get her to doubt by saying, “Hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”  He wanted Eve’s mind to go in a certain direction and to wonder and question and get to the point where she was willing to break the commandment of God. 

Satan has been working that way for thousands of years.  As the Bible has been declared, Satan has used his emissaries, unsaved individuals, to rise up in opposition to whatever the Bible says is true.  When the Bible says that men are to teach and not women, you better believe there will be some people that will insist, “Oh, this is not fair.  There should be equality between men and women just like there is in our society today.”  When the Bible says there is not to be divorce for any reason, they will say, “Oh, this is not fair; what about this case in which the husband has been unfaithful and has abused his wife?”  When the Bible says that marriage is only to take place between a man and a woman, they will say, “This is not fair; what about two individuals that are deeply in love, but they just happen to be of the same sex?”  We could just go on, and on, and on.  Is there any point that the Bible declares that men do not dispute or argue with God or think they know better than God?  They “know better” insofar as salvation: “Oh, we cannot leave salvation in God’s hand.  We cannot just wait on the Lord for Him to save His elect people.  This is not fair.  It is up to us and God has given us free will – we are not robots; we can exercise our own will.”  There is just no end to the opposition, no matter what the issue. 

Now we have come to the Day of Judgment and God has declared that His salvation program has come to an end.  He has completed that part of His program and He has shut the door to heaven.  Then people say, “Oh, this is not fair.  It is not fair to individuals born after that date of May 21, 2011.  It is not fair to this individual or that individual.  Besides, while there are still believers here on earth, there must be ongoing salvation.” 

It is just more of the same – people arguing against God and against what God has said in His Word.  This is the nature of mankind.  So, God, here, is establishing a principal: “If any man will hurt them” (the two witnesses) “fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies.”  Obviously, it is not to be taken literally.  First of all, these “two witnesses” are not two men.  They are not two people.  Also, fire does not literally proceed out of their mouth.  It is speaking of the Word of God.  It says in Isaiah 30:27-28:

Behold, the name of JEHOVAH cometh from far, burning with his anger, and the burden thereof is heavy: his lips are full of indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire: And his breath, as an overflowing stream, shall reach to the midst of the neck, to sift the nations with the sieve of vanity: and there shall be a bridle in the jaws of the people, causing them to err.

Then it says in Isaiah 30:30:

And JEHOVAH shall cause his glorious voice to be heard…

What is this glorious voice?  It is the Bible.

And JEHOVAH shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall shew the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and tempest, and hailstones.

You see, it is the Lord JEHOVAH, as it says in verse 27, whose “lips are full of indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire.”  It is the glorious voice of JEHOVAH that is like “the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and tempest, and hailstones.”  This is what the “two witnesses” are said to do: “Fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies.”  It is a reference to what the Bible can do, spiritually.  The Word of God condemns the enemies of the kingdom of heaven, the enemies of the Bible and God Himself, and it devours them in a spiritual fire.  God has done this upon those in the churches, for instance.  The judgment upon the churches and congregations was known from the understanding of the Bible and God has destroyed the “third part.”  He “killed” about two billion people within the churches and congregations of the world, through the truth of the Bible.  The Bible is able to kill, spiritually, those that have other religions; they will never have life, according to the Word of God.  It says in John 14:6:

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

This declaration of the Word of God “slays” the Muslims and it “slays” the Buddhists and any other religion or any other “way” to God that is other than Christ.  This is how “fire” proceeds out of the mouth of the “two witnesses.”  It comes forth from the Word of God and it is truth that condemns those that are in error. 

Even during the church age, there would have been churches that Revelation 2 identified as “synagogues of Satan.”  They had gone off course and they had gone “another way.”  They developed another gospel and we know there are many ways that churches do that; the “two witnesses” that prophesied during the church age would have had “fire” that came out of their mouths, spiritually speaking, to devour these enemies and “kill” them by the judgment that the Word of God pronounced against them.