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

These verses are referring to the dead bodies of the “two witnesses,” typified by Moses and Elijah and it is a reference to the witness of the Word of God within the congregations.  There was a period of testimony which this passage calls “1,260 days,” but, in actuality, it pointed to the entire New Testament church age, a period of 1,955 years. 

Then at the conclusion of that time, it was God’s plan to visit the congregations and see if they were faithful to His Word.  He had granted them space to repent, we read in Revelation 2.  He came to see if they had repented and, of course, God quickly saw they had not and, immediately, He pronounced the judgment.  The judgment was that He would abandon the churches; the Holy Spirit came out of the midst; the Lord Jesus, who had been in the midst of the candlesticks, left the churches.  At the same time, God loosed Satan and he entered into the congregations as the man of sin.   This is the spiritual transaction which the Bible refers to as the “daily” being taken away and the abomination of desolation being set up and it happened, simultaneously, at the end of the church age.  Immediately, at that point, the “two witnesses” were killed.  Of course, the believers that closely identified with that witness of the Word would be closely identified with the dead bodies of the “two witnesses.” 

God uses the Greek word “ptoma,” and it is translated as the two English words “dead bodies” and it is found three times in Revelation 11, verses 8 and 9; once it is used in Matthew 24:28 in regard to where the carcases are, there the eagles will be gathered together; no doubt this also relates to the end of the church age and the judgment of God upon the congregations, as the eagles tie in with Babylon and its coming against Judah, an historical parable that painted a picture of what God would also do to the churches at the end of time.  The fifth place that “ptoma” was found was in Mark, chapter 6, in regard to the dead body (or corpse) of John the Baptist.  The significance of this is that John had been beheaded and the corpse the disciples took up and placed in a tomb had no head and the word God used to describe his corpse is “ptoma.”  This is helpful to us because the Lord Jesus is referred to as the “head” in a few verses.  We will just look at one verse in Ephesians 4:15:

But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head,even Christ:

Christ is the head of the body, we read elsewhere.  He is the head of the church and, of course, this refers to the eternal church, the body of believers, but Jesus also established the corporate body.  God set up the outward representation of His kingdom upon this earth.  While Christ was in the midst of the candlestick (in the midst of the congregations), it could rightly be said that Christ was the head of the church, but, at that point in time when Christ came out of the churches and the Holy Spirit departed, the “head” of the churches left, even though the Word of God remained – the Bible was not removed from the churches.  The “two witnesses,” representing the law and the prophets, were still there, but what good is the Bible without the power behind it and without Christ and the Spirit of God to open the “ears” that people might hear the Bible.  This is why it says, in Amos 8, which identifies with the judgment on the churches and the Great Tribulation, that there will be “a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.”  This means there would be no salvation because “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”  But if there is a famine of hearing the words of God and that famine is a result of the absence of God’s Holy Spirit, then there can be no salvation.  That was the judgment which came upon the churches and congregations of the world when God began judgment at the house of God. 

The end time was ushered in at the point when the churches came under the wrath of God and this is exactly what Revelation 11:8 describes: “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.”

Even though God is not coming right out and saying it, we know our Lord was crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem and that is the “great city” that is being referred to and the “two witnesses” are lying in the street of the “great city” and this points to the churches.  It has nothing to do with May 21, 2011.  The true believers, at that point, were outside the churches and congregations and if they, indeed, had been killed on May 21, then their bodies would not have been lying in the place “where our Lord was crucified.”  It is a reference to Jerusalem as a type and figure of the churches. 

What is the “street” pointing to, where it says, “And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city”?   The word “street” is fairly common in the Bible.  For instance, we read in Luke 13:25-26:

When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are: Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets.

This refers to the Lord Jesus Christ.  He is the teacher and He taught in Judah and He taught in Jerusalem and the Word of God taught in the churches of the world.  The link is with “teaching” God’s Word, the Bible, and the “street.”  This is what we can also see in Nehemiah 8, a chapter which leads into the Feast of Tabernacles, but it says in Nehemiah 8:1-3:

And all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the water gate; and they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which JEHOVAH had commanded to Israel. And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month. And he read therein before the street that was before the water gate from the morning until midday, before the men and the women, and those that could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law.

Here, in this historical setting, the people are gathered and I believe it is in Jerusalem and they gather unto Ezra the scribe who is reading from the Law of Moses, the Bible.  They are gathered in the “street” and, significantly, it is the street outside the water gate.  The Word of God and the Bible does identify with Gospel “water” and they were listening attentively as they stood in the “street.”  This is the picture God is giving us concerning the “street.”  The “street” is a pathway where the Gospel goes forth.  Is this not what streets do today?  Streets are in every city in the world and we still call them “streets.”  We can walk or drive down the street and to get from one place to another, you travel or journey through the streets.  When God sent forth the Gospel into all the world as His people obediently carried out the command as faithful messengers of the Word of God and they carried it through the “streets” of the cities of the world.  In the days leading up to May 21, 2011, the true believers went on tract trips; they flew to foreign lands and they walked through the streets of those cities and handed out tracts.  So we can see how the “streets” do identify with the distribution of the Word of God.  Christ taught in the streets.  Ezra read the Scriptures to the people in the streets.  We read in Proverbs 1:20-23:

Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.

The important thing we want to look at is that “Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets.” Also, in the Book of Proverbs, God personifies Himself as “wisdom” in Proverbs, chapter 8.  Wisdom is “Christ” and when she utters her voice in the streets, it emphasizes that Jesus teaches in the streets; the Word of God went forth into the highways and streets of this world.  It says in Proverbs 5:15-16:

Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well. Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.

Notice that the fountains are dispersed abroad and the rivers of waters, representing the Gospel message, are flowing forth in the streets.  It is the same thing as “wisdom” in the streets.  It is the same thing when Christ is in the streets.  They are all synonymous statements. 

It says in Isaiah 59:14:

And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey: and JEHOVAH saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment.

“Truth is fallen in the street,” and that would relate to the “two witnesses” that are lying dead in the great city Jerusalem, which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, the churches.  Keep in mind that it was in the churches and congregations that people would gather round each Sunday.  They would come to church in many nations of the world; there were many churches in many cities throughout the church age and people went to the churches in order to hear the Word of God.  It is as though this was the “street” or the “highway.”  It was the access to the kingdom of heaven and, at the end of the church age, “truth is fallen in the street.”  The dead bodies of the “two witnesses” are lying dead in the street.

Another way of saying this same thing is found in Lamentations 2:9-12:

Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from JEHOVAH. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground. Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city. They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosom.

These verses match the language of “Woe unto them that give suck in those days,” which is found in Matthew 24.  Notice that the sucklings are swooning in the streets of the city.  There is no more wisdom in the streets because Christ, who is wisdom, has left.  There are no more rivers of water flowing forth down the streets because Christ is the One who brings that Gospel water.  Without Him, there is a famine, a dearth and no rain and, therefore, there is no “water” for the people within the churches to drink. 

I think we get the picture pretty clearly.  When God says in Revelation 11:8, “And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city,” it is a terrible judgment that is come upon the churches at the time of the end.  Then it goes on to say in Revelation 11:8:

… which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.

Let us not pass quickly over the word “spiritually,” where it says, “which spiritually is called.”  This is very interesting wording, is it not?  And what is interesting is that it is God who is saying this.  You know, if you or I or any child of God were talking to people in the churches, like the elders, the pastors and deacons, and if we referred to a verse and we said “this spiritually is called,” the pastor would probably roll his eyes and the elders would shake their heads: “Oh, these poor ignorant people.  They have not gone to seminary.  They have not studied theology, as we have, and here they are digging into the Bible looking for spiritual meaning.  They do not understand that they are to look for the plain, literal meaning and look for no other meaning.”  That is what the pastors are taught in seminary: look for the moral teaching; look for the historical facts; look for the plain, literal meaning of the verses. 

That approach is quite opposed to God’s methodology and what He would have anyone to do that wants to come to truth in the Bible; God wants us to dig in and look for the spiritual meaning and, here, God is helping us in this verse.  This is actually a pretty complicated verse when you look at it.  On one hand, He refers to Jerusalem and He helps us by saying, “Where also our Lord was crucified.”  Anyone could go to the Gospel accounts and discover where Christ was crucified.  They would know it was in Jerusalem and, perhaps, they could discern the plain part of the statement, but they would fail to understand that there is nothing about Jerusalem in the Middle East that the Bible is concerned about when it comes to the time of the end, and Revelation 11 is dealing with the time of the end.  God is not concerned with the literal Jerusalem and whether the Muslims build their holy place or whether the Jews keep what they consider their holy place.  God is not concerned with Israel any more than any other nation.  God does not view them as a holy people at all. 

Again, a proper understanding of what God did at the cross when He rent the veil of the temple would greatly help any Bible student’s insight into the Scriptures in Matthew 24, when Jesus is answering the disciples’ question, “What shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of the world?”  Then it speaks of fleeing from Judea.  God does not care about anyone fleeing literal Judea at the end of time.  Judah is just like the Americas, or just like China or any other nation.  It is just a nation among the nations of the world.  The only significance is that the “fig tree is in leaf,” and it has no other significance.  But the “type and figure” of Judah and Jerusalem is where the significance lies: Judah signifies the churches; the holy place signifies the churches; Judah signifies the churches.  So God is giving the readers a helpful clue when He says, “which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt.”  Look for the spiritual meaning and dig into what you are reading and compare Scripture with Scripture to see what that spiritual meaning might be.

Then it goes on to say in Revelation 11:8:

… which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt…

God is using the figure of Jerusalem, which in turn represents the churches, and Jerusalem is spiritually called, first of all, “Sodom.”  Why is God calling them Sodom?  Let us go back to Isaiah, chapter 1.  As is fairly typical, God is very displeased with the nation of Israel, so God often brought enemies against them and then He brought the Assyrians against Israel in the north and the Babylonians against Judah in the south.  It says in Isaiah 1:9:

Except JEHOVAH of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah. Hear the word of JEHOVAH, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.

Sodom and Gomorrah were those wicked cities which the Bible records in the Book of Genesis.  They were so wicked that God used them as an example of the pouring out of His wrath and He destroyed those cities and Admah and Zeboim, four cites of the plain with fire and brimstone from heaven.  Here, God is addressing Israel of old, which points to the New Testament churches and God is saying they are just as wicked, but there was a remnant that was preventing them from being destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah; God had His people within the churches, the firstfruits, and He had to wait for all those elect people He intended to save over the centuries of the church age before He could destroy the churches by bringing judgment upon them.