Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #7 of Revelation, chapter 11, and we are going to read Revelation 11:7-8:

And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.

These verses are very important to help us to understand what took place at the beginning of the Great Tribulation Period.  It was at the beginning of the Great Tribulation, which was also the beginning of the judgment on the churches, that God gave the victory to Satan.  This was the time Satan was loosed and came against the camp of the saints.  This is the time that Revelation 13 pictures, as the beast came up out of the sea.  Notice it says in Revelation 13:3-5:

And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.

Satan’s “deadly wound was healed.”  God struck Satan a death blow when the Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross and Satan was bound in the bottomless pit for “a thousand years,” which is a figure to represent the duration of the church age, which was an actual 1,955 years.  But upon the loosing of Satan, it was as if that deadly wound was healed and notice the reaction of the world: “They worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast?” It was a time when Satan is victorious.  He had wanted to be like God.  It was his desperate desire from the very beginning in the Garden of Eden when he deceived Eve into believing a lie over the truth of God, causing mankind to become a servant to Satan and sin.  All though history, Satan was attempting to show he was God over man; he was like God.  Finally, at the time of the end, God loosed Satan and allowed him to take his seat in the churches as the man of sin and he could show himself that he was God.  It was “given unto him.”  God permitted and allowed all of this to happen: “And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.”  The forty two months is another figure to represent the duration of the Great Tribulation period.  Satan was winning and he was overcoming.  He was the victorious one and the kingdom of darkness was winning. 

Just look at the condition of the churches over the course of that twenty three-year period from 1988 to 2011.  It is very obvious that “darkness” was winning in church after church; lies and deceits were victorious over truth within the congregations.  And look at the world during the same period of time.  Wickedness multiplied like never before in the history of the world; Satan was being worshipped by the unsaved inhabitants of the earth; the beast’s “deadly wound was healed.” 

The Bible teaches in many places that the end of the church age and the beginning of judgment on the churches (which was the beginning of the Great Tribulation) was when the “two witnesses” were killed.  This was when Satan, the beast, ascended out of the pit and overcame and killed the “two witnesses.”  For instance, it says in Joel 1:6-7:

For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion. He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.

Then it says in Joel 1:10-12:

The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth. Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished. The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men.

It is describing Satan’s assault upon the churches and congregations.  We could go to numerous verses that would support this same thing.  Satan and his forces come against the churches and because God is the one who is using Satan as an instrument of judgment, Satan wins and the corporate church (the outward representation of the kingdom of God on this earth) loses.  This language is found in Habakkuk 1: 6-10:

For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwellingplaces that are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of themselves. Their horses also are swifter than the leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves: and their horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far; they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat. They shall come all for violence: their faces shall sup up as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand. And they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them: they shall deride every strong hold; for they shall heap dust, and take it.

Here, God says that He raised up the Chaldeans; notice that they are a mighty army that marched triumphantly over the people of God across their land and possessed their dwellingplaces, all the churches and congregations in all the world.  What God did at the beginning of the Great Tribulation is probably best summarized in Jeremiah 25:9-11:

Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith JEHOVAH, and Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and an hissing, and perpetual desolations. Moreover I will take from them the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the candle. And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.

God called Nebuchadnezzar His servant and He is bringing him against His land, Judah, and they destroy it and make it a desolate land.  That is exactly what they did and “all these nations round about” will serve the king of Babylon, and the king of Babylon is a type and figure of Satan and the Babylonian are the kingdom of darkness.  It is picturing what God did at the end of the church age when judgment began at the house of God, at the point of Satan’s loosing and his ascension out of the bottomless pit.  This is the point that is referred to in Revelation 11:7:

And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.

It happens at the beginning of the judgment on the churches, the beginning of the Great Tribulation, and Satan is victorious for the entire period of the Great Tribulation.  Victory was given to the king of Babylon for seventy years and victory was given to the beast to “continue for forty and two months,” and both of those time periods represent the actual time of the Great Tribulation, which turned out to be an exact 23 years, from May 21, 1988 until May 21, 2011, which was the end of the Great Tribulation and the end of Satan’s rule, the official rule that was granted to him by God.  God says in Jeremiah 25:11: “These nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years,” and this was an historical time period to represent the complete duration of the Great Tribulation.  Then it says in Jeremiah 25:12-13:

And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith JEHOVAH, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations. And I will bring upon that land all my words which I have pronounced against it, even all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah hath prophesied against all the nations.

Clearly, during the seventy years, the king of Babylon was God’s servant and an instrument of His wrath, accomplishing His purpose.  This is how God viewed the loosing of Satan and his coming against the church.  But after the seventy years, it is as if the Great Tribulation has ended and now God turns around and addresses Satan and his emissaries and He says: “You are guilty.  You are the one I am going to punish now – you and all the unsaved people of the earth.” 

May 21, 2011 is that day of transition and it is that day that was the end of the victorious period of Satan’s reign.  It is the time that Satan’s great conquest over the outward representation of the kingdom of God, the churches, had come to its conclusion and now God turned his attention to Satan and all of the unsaved and He says, “You are the ones to be punished now.” 

So, anyone who is thinking that Revelation 11:7, where it says the beast ascends out the bottomless pit and makes war against them and kills them on May 21, 2011 is going contrary to dozens and dozens of verses in the Bible.  If you go contrary to one verse in the Bible, you are going the wrong way, but when a teaching is as overwhelming as this teaching is, we would have to say that someone that cannot see this is “blind.”  The Bible clearly teaches that the time that Satan overcame the saints was the duration of the judgment on the churches.   And that was it.  He was allowed to continue to that point, but he could go no further.  Following that, it is not Satan judging anyone; it is not Satan overcoming anyone; it is not the kingdom of darkness that is winning any longer. 

It is the Lord Jesus Christ coming triumphantly in judgment on Satan.  God has won the battle and He has won the war.  All of His elect have been found and safely brought into the kingdom of heaven.  All that were in Satan’s dungeon of darkness, sin and despair have been delivered that were predestinated to be delivered and now Satan and his forces are the objects of His wrath.  This is what Jeremiah chapters 50 and 51 go into extensive detail about – it is the fall of Babylon and the end of the seventy years, the period of Judgment Day for the devil and every unsaved individual.

Let us move on to Revelation 11:8:

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

We are going to take a little time to understand the Greek word “ptoma.”  This is the Greek word that is translated as “dead bodies.”  These two English words are a translation of that one Greek word and they are found three times in Revelation 11.  Once, here in verse 8, then twice in Revelation11:9:

And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves.

This Greek word “ptoma” is found three times in these two verses, but it is only found five times in the entire New Testament, and three out of five times they are here in Revelation 11.  In Matthew 24, a chapter that is dealing with the Great Tribulation and the end of the world, it says in Matthew 24:28:

For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.

By the way, “ptoma” is Strong’s #4430.  So we could read this: “For where the dead body is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”  Remember, we read in Habakkuk 1:8, God related eagles to the Chaldeans that were coming against His people.  This is significant because in Deuteronomy, chapter 28, a chapter in which God spells out the curses of disobedience, He says in Deuteronomy 28:49-50:

JEHOVAH shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; A nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor shew favour to the young:

This nation is the nation of the unsaved and it really is a figure of Satan and his armies coming against the believers in the time of the judgment on the churches at the end of the church age.  Of course, one of the main tactics used by Satan in his assault against the congregations was the phenomenon of speaking in tongues.  So God points out that He will “bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand.”  For some time speaking in tongues spread quickly throughout the churches, as so many churches accepted it as a legitimate gift of God, as if God were still bringing additional divine revelation.  This destroyed those congregations and they became “another gospel” immediately.  The important thing, here in these verses, is that God typifies that assault against the churches as the “flying of an eagle.”  God does the same thing in Lamentations, chapter 4.  Lamentations is a “lament” that God has judged His people through the Babylonians and we read in Lamentations 4:19:

Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of the heaven: they pursued us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us in the wilderness.

Then it continues to describe the destruction of the churches by Satan, as he comes against them, according to the will of God.  That is what Matthew 24:28 refers to when it says, “For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”  This fits right in line: the beast ascends out of the bottomless pit, makes war against the “two witnesses” and overcomes them and then their “dead bodies” lie in the street of the great city that is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt.  There will be the gathering of Satan and all the false prophets and all the dark forces of Gog and Magog that have been gathered together to come against the camp of the saints at the time when judgment commenced at the house of God. 

Let us look at the fifth and last place we find the Greek word “ptoma.”  The fifth place is in Mark 6 and the context is an historical account of John the Baptist, by Herod’s decree, and it says in Mark 6:27-29:

And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her mother. And when his disciples heard of it, they came and took up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb.

The word “corpse” is a translation of “ptoma.”  It is the same word found three times in Revelation 11 and it is the same word translated as “carcass” in Matthew 24:28.  Here, it is describing John the Baptist’s dead body and we wonder why God uses this word here, when in all the other places it is set in the context of the Great Tribulation, the point when the witness of the Gospel is lost at the beginning of the Great Tribulation.  Why would God take this word which He has carefully used in very special places that relate to the Great Tribulation and then use it to describe John the Baptist’s corpse?  There is another word God could have used and in one of the other Gospel accounts He does use another word, but, here, He does.   What can we learn from this?  I do not know all the spiritual application that may be here, as far as who Herod represents.  We can see that he could be a type of Satan.  It is Satan, the beast, that overcame and killed the “two witnesses” in Revelation 11 and it is Satan who came as an eagle upon the carcass, so perhaps that could be in view.  And, perhaps, John is a picture of the church, but that is not the main thing we can learn from this. 

The main thing we can learn from this is that this perfectly describes the nature of the dead body; that is, we know that John the Baptist’s corpse which his disciples came and retrieved and laid in a tomb was a “headless corpse.”  They did not obtain the head because the head was placed on a charger and given to the damsel and the damsel gave it to her mother.  The disciples of John had the rest of the body – without the head – and that is the important teaching that we can take away from God’s use of this word “ptoma.”  This is the teaching He wants us to understand: when the “two witnesses” are killed by Satan and their dead bodies (their “ptoma”) are lying dead in the streets for three and one half days, we can understand that this is because the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus Christ, has come out of the churches at that point and He has abandoned the congregations and He has left behind His Word; Moses and Elijah, “the law and the prophets” are still there; the Bibles are still within the congregations, and the true believers that identify closed with the “two witnesses” and are messengers of Moses and Elijah also remained in the congregations at that time.  But the Holy Spirit left and Jesus came out of the midst where He had been since the beginning of the church age and darkness overtook the churches during the remaining time that the churches would exist.  It left the churches without a “head.”  The Lord Jesus Christ, the head of the church, had departed.