Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #10 of Revelation, chapter 11, and we are going to read Revelation 11:9-11:
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. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth. And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.
We are moving on in our study of the Book of Revelation and we are now in Revelation, chapter 11, which also has much to say about our present day, the time of the Great Tribulation and the end of the Great Tribulation.
Earlier, in verses 7 and 8, the “two witnesses” finish their testimony and Satan, the beast, overcomes and kills them. He is victorious over them, as God gives him the victory. Their “dead bodies” (from the Greek word “ptoma”) pointed to a corpse or carcass without a head, due to the fact that Christ had departed from the churches, leaving behind His Word, but without His Spirit, and now the churches are like a corpse. He even left behind His people for a time that remained in the churches at the beginning of the judgment on the churches and the beginning of the Great Tribulation. They were not aware that the church age had ended earlier and so they also identified with Moses and Elijah, “the law and the prophets,” that remained in a dead church. The moment Jesus left the churches the churches died and they have remained dead. All churches in the world are dead, spiritually. They have no life. It does not matter how many members they have or how big the church building is or what their mission projects are or how many people respond to an altar call. None of that is evidence of life – life comes through the Word of God, by the Spirit of God, as God opens the ears of the deaf and He gives them a new heart and a new spirit. That cannot happen because the Holy Spirit has departed and, therefore, despite the preaching and despite the teaching of the elders, it lacks the most important thing and that is the power of God. So no one has been saved in the churches since God left the churches and the “two witnesses” were killed.
Now we are going to read Revelation 11:9:
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.
God is saying that the “two witnesses” are dead and there are people who will see this and God uses four nouns to describe these people: “The people and kindreds and tongues and nations” are the four groups and this is basically describing the same thing – the people of the world. The death of the “two witnesses” will impact the people of the world in a significant and personal way for this “three days and an half” period that the “two witnesses” are lying dead in the streets.
Let us look at these groups of “peoples and kindreds and tongues and nations.” Let us turn to Revelation 7:9:
After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;
A little further on a question is asked about this great multitude and it says in Revelation 7:13-14:
And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
This pinpoints this group, the great multitude that is in view, that is said to come from “all nations, and kindreds and peoples, and tongues,” the group mentioned in Revelation 7:9. We know this for certain: the great multitude which God saved of the “nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues” was all saved outside of the churches. They were not saved in the churches during the Great Tribulation; that is impossible. God, after a very grievous first part of the Great Tribulation, began in September 1994 to send forth the Latter Rain outside of the churches. Through this sending forth of His Word outside of the congregations of the world, God saved a great multitude of people all over the earth and that is expressed by these four groups of “nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues.” They are the great multitude. Millions of people were saved by God during the last (about) seventeen years of the Great Tribulation from September 1994 through May 21, 2011.
This helps us to know that when God says, in Revelation 11:9: “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.” It refers to people outside of the churches that will see the “dead bodies” of the church itself – they will see the spiritual corpse of the Word of God within the churches and the ineffective witness of the true believers within the congregations – and they will see that the churches are “lifeless.” It does not have God’s Spirit; it does not have Christ dwelling within it any longer.
So the number “four” that is in view with the “nations, kindreds, tongues and people” teaches us that this is a universal phenomenon and not a localized situation when Satan is allowed to overcome the “two witnesses.” It has happened all over the earth; it is worldwide; every corporate church is affected and they are dead. No churches are exempt. No churches have gotten away from this final judgment of God, the judgment that began at the house of God. It is not just “apostate churches,” but it is the Reformed churches, independent churches, house churches and every kind of church. God’s Spirit has left every church and that is why, later on, when God revealed through the Scriptures that He had ended the church age, He commanded His people to “depart out of the midst” of the congregations and “flee to the mountains.” The mountains represent the Word of God, the Bible, and the Bible is a representation of God Himself. We are to flee to God and no longer have any dealings or association with any corporate church anywhere in the world. This was for people’s own good; they would find no blessing there and, in fact, the churches are under the curse of God and you could not have received the Latter Rain during the time when God was pouring it out and you could not have become saved if you had stayed in a church. It was a very serious thing when God commanded to “depart out of the midst.”
Let us think about something. Here, God says, ““And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half,” and the “three and one half days” is a picture to typify the first part of the Great Tribulation period; it does not represent the entire period, so the four groups that see the “dead bodies” and what has happened to the churches are the peoples of the world during the first part of the Great Tribulation period – the first 2,300 evening mornings, as we have learned from the Biblical calendar of history. This is telling us something about the first part of the Great Tribulation and not the entire period. But is that what is really in view? Would God break up the Great Tribulation like this? Would He spend special time to emphasize what happens during the first part, rather than the whole? The answer is, “Yes.” God has actually revealed in other places in the Bible that His plan for the Great Tribulation is a two-part process. For instance, we looked at this when we were studying Revelation 8:1:
And when he had opened the seventh seal…
Remember, there was that Book, the Bible, and it had seven seals. When you take off the first seal, it is still sealed. And if you take off seal numbers 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, it is still sealed. But once you remove all seven seals, then it is an open Book and that happened at the beginning of the Great Tribulation period. This began the time of the end, as Daniel was told: “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end.” When judgment began at the house of God, this began the end of the world and the final judgment process, which it appears that it was God’s plan to judge mankind – both the churches and then the world – for 10,000 days. So once the seven seals came off at the beginning of the Great Tribulation, God opened up the Scriptures and this Great Tribulation period is referred to by God as being “one hour” in length, in Revelation 17 and Revelation 18. The Great Tribulation is typified as “one full hour.”
Revelation 8:1 says, “And when he had opened the seventh seal,” and this would lock in the time as May 21, 1988, the beginning of the end and the beginning of the Great Tribulation, when the Bible was then an open Book. Then it goes on to say in Revelation 8:1:
And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
That “silence in heaven” points to (virtually) no salvation, due to the Greek word that God uses for “silence.” It does allow for the slightest bit of noise and, therefore, we say that virtually no one was saved – not because there is any evidence anyone was saved, but due to the allowance of this language. There is a good possibility no one at all was saved, but virtually no one was saved. We know absolutely that no one was saved within the churches, but outside of the churches there may have been a handful of people, if anyone at all during this period in which the Bible says was “about the space of half an hour.”
The final “hour” of Great Tribulation represents the entire 23-year period, which is the full hour and the first part of that period upon the opening of the Bible there were 2,300 evening mornings (six years and about four months), so it is not exactly “half” of the 23 years, but it is a portion represented by half an hour in which virtually no one was being saved; an this was where the impact upon the people of the world comes in because God was utilizing the “two witnesses” within the churches and congregations for almost two millennium or 1,955 years. That is how there was blessing and that is how salvation came as God was saving in the churches and He could have saved outside the churches through the hearing of His Word, too, if He chose to do so, but He was primarily saving through the churches.
Then that period ended and there was no more Spirit of God working within His people within the congregations; even the missions were affected and it was not just the churches back home. If that church sent missionaries abroad to India or Africa or China, that mission field was also affected so that no one was being saved there either. So the first part of the Great Tribulation (that first six years and about four months from May 21, 1988 through September 7, 1994) was a long period of time for the world when the “two witnesses” had been killed and God had not yet lifted up any other program of evangelization. He had not yet lifted up any other “witness of the Word” to go forth into the world outside of the churches. It was not yet time for the pouring out of the “Latter Rain” and the “second Jubilee.” It is amazing that 2,300 days after the end of the church age when we came to September 7, 1994, it was the first day of the Hebrew seventh month in a Jubilee Year. The year 1994 was a Jubilee Year and it was even the 40th Jubilee period since 7 B.C. and it was exactly 2,000 years from 7 B.C. In 1994, on the first day of the seventh month, a special trumpet sounded to signal the Jubilee and then God began at that point to rain the Gospel upon “the nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues,” to save the great multitude and also to set the captives free, which is the significance of a Jubilee. This is the “second Jubilee” period, a short little season at the end of the Great Tribulation.
But there was that first part of the Great Tribulation in which everything just appeared to be going terribly wrong and Satan appeared to be victorious. Look at Revelation 13:1-3:
And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed…
Satan received a death blow at the cross in 33 A.D. when he was sent into the bottomless pit – that spiritual binding that was upon him and continued for the duration of the church age. But upon his loosing, he ascends out of the bottomless pit and he kills the “two witnesses” and now it is as if “his deadly wound is healed.” Is the work of Christ on the cross of no effect upon Satan any longer? It would be easy to think that. Look at the language of the world following this: “and all the world wondered after the beast.” You know, the world has “eyes.” They can see what is happening in the world. They can see what is happening in the churches. They know that the church was where the Bible was and it was, therefore, the “holy place.” They realized that the churches should be representatives of God and they had a certain respect for ministers of the Gospel throughout the period of the church age. They had a certain respect for the child of God that lived according to the Word of God. If they were drinking alcohol and a pastor came by, they would hide the beer or alcohol or they would watch their language. But now the world also recognizes somehow that there has been a change; something has happened; that church no longer demands their respect. They actually disdain the churches and mock and ridicule the churches. They say, “Look at what the churches are doing,” when they hear about priests or pastors and sexual abuse of children and they see that ministers are involved in sexual affairs and all kinds of things are happening that never happened before – churches are ordaining homosexuals and female pastors. These are things we may not think the world can discern or understand, but they “saw” it and it was God’s will that they see these things. They recognize that the churches are not like the churches of old and there is something wrong with these churches.
On the other hand, look at Satan and look at the power of the beast. Look at the promiscuity and crime and murder and how greatly sin is multiplying. Look at the news reports on television and sin is just everywhere. It certainly appears as if Satan has won, as sin and evil and wickedness are victorious and it says in Revelation 13:4:
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?
Implied in this statement is that we had thought Christ was the one that was able to make war with him and overcome him and, yet, now it does not appear that way, as they see churches overcome by lies and falsehoods and deceit. It appears that Satan, the beast, is actually the winner. Then it says in Revelation 13:5-7:
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. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
And, here are mentioned three of the four groups we saw in Revelation 11 and this is to indicate that this is God’s purpose. He is the one that is ultimately behind the loosing of Satan. Satan could do nothing; Christ had the key to the bottomless pit and Christ opened the pit. Christ is the one that brought Satan upon the churches and the world at this latter stage.
Then it goes on to say in Revelation 13:8:
And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
We can see this is a worldwide phenomenon. This is not isolated. It is not just here or there, but it is everywhere and that is what the Bible says and that is our own personal experience. We can refer to our personal experience as long as it is in agreement with the Bible. We look at the churches and we see the devastation and the spiritual destruction. We look at the world and we cannot believe that anyone alive a few decades ago would have to admit that there is something terrible and awful and almost unbelievable that has happened to all the world – the world has gone “mad” with sin and it has been given over to all sorts of wickedness. How can these things be and how can it be so common? It can only be that the Bible is true. God knows the end from the beginning and He details, in Romans, chapter 1, what we can read in our newspapers in this day. He describes in perfect detail the sins of men that have taken place at the time of the end, in the Great Tribulation and now in this period of Judgment Day itself.