The Two Witnesses of Revelation 11
Mark Odell, PhD
By the time we reach Revelation 11’s two witnesses (Rev. 11:3-14), we are neck deep in interpretation, and depending on which hermeneutic perspective is being used, so too is the effort to identify and understand who and/or what these witnesses were, are, or will be. It follows that interpreting the specifics of their purpose is a function of their identity. Moreover, the context within the book is critically important, as a kind of nesting series of loops reveals judgment against the enemies of God.
After the epistolary letters from Jesus to the 7 churches (Rev. 2 & 3), the focus of John’s vision moves to Heaven, specifically the throne room of God (ch. 4), where the Father gives the Son a book that has 7 seals (ch. 5). Next is the successive opening of the seals of the book, through the 6th seal (ch. 6), and with each seal, a cataclysmic episode is begun. It is worthwhile to note that the book is not yet opened, only that its seals are broken in order, revealing elements of the wrath of God playing out. Ch. 7 is an “interlude,” focusing on God’s people, his bond-servants, from Israel (which Israel?) and from the Great Tribulation. Chapter 8 is the opening of the 7th seal, which brings about 7 angels with 7 trumpets of judgment, the first 4 of which sound, and after the 4th, there is the announcement that the 3 final trumpets will sound and bring with them 3 “woes” to the Earth. The 5th and 6th trumpets sound in ch. 9, with the first woe accomplished with the 5th trumpet’s devastating torment against unbelievers only, and the 6th trumpet’s army of supernatural and deadly horsemen that kill a third of unbelieving humanity. Chapter 10 is another pause, as another angel with an open scroll/book announces that the final accomplishment of the mystery of God will delay no longer upon the 7th trumpet’s voice, and John is instructed to eat the book and that he will have to prophesy again.
This brings us to chapter 11. John does not immediately prophecy in a way we expect, but he actually does; he still speaks what God gives him and, as such, is instructed to measure the temple and those in it. Then we are introduced to “two witnesses” (Gk. martus, from which we get the word martyr) who will be given authority to prophesy and inflict the enemies of God with whatever plague they want, and who are invulnerable for a period of time. Then they will be killed by the beast from the abyss, and they will lie exposed in Jerusalem, while the world rejoices. Three and a half days later, God resurrects them and calls them to him in Heaven, and then a massive earthquake occurs, destroying a tenth of the city and killing 7,000 people (both significant symbolic numbers for completion or a “perfect” amount), and creating great fear in the rest, wrapping up the second woe. Then the 7th trumpet sounds (Rev. 11:15ff).
The witnesses prophesy in sackcloth, the clothing the ancients put on when mourning great loss. Prophets speak the mind of God, and in this context, sackcloth fits with the announcement of God’s terrible judgment against his enemies, human and spiritual. Their news is horrible to hear for an unbelieving world. Speaking unwelcome truth invites a hostile response, as Jesus received fatally from the Jewish leaders and their Roman collaborators, and as the early church received from persecuting Jews and then Gentiles. Now, with God’s wrath coming and being spoken of by these two witnesses, who are also called olive trees and lampstands that stand before God, the desire toharm them is inevitable. But they will be invulnerable for a time, 1260 days. The truth of their message, their testimony (v. 7), will not be silenced until God’s purpose for them is complete.
Futurist interpretations, whether Historical Premillennialist or Dispensational Premillennialist, and Historicist interpretations pertaining to the two witnesses have primarily taken the interpretive tack that what is being described is literal more than symbolic or allegorical (which is their default approach to the entirety of Revelation). As such, it is held by a majority that these are two individual people, although a minority view has them symbolizing non-individual entities or concepts.
Individuals suggested within Historical Premillennialism’s framework, which was largely imported from pre-Jesus Jewish eschatology and was first on the scene (aka Chiliasm), include:
• Moses and Elijah. They were present at the Transfiguration; curiously, John’s Gospel is the only one that omits that scene (it has been suggested that instead of including the transfiguration, Revelation is what Jesus gave him as a much fuller revelation of himself and his glory). Further, the miraculous powers they display parallel actual events in their own histories, with water turning to blood, other plagues, calling fire down from heaven, and stopping rain from falling.
• Elijah and Enoch. Both of these OT figures never died, but were taken directly up to God, and as John the Baptist was “Elijah” for Christ’s first advent, he and Enoch will herald his second.
• Elijah and Jeremiah. Like Elijah, Jeremiah’s death was never recorded, and he was appointed as a prophet to the nations, which he did not do in his first ministry.
• Elijah, Enoch and John the Baptist. As forerunners of Christ’s first and second coming, respectively, and the acceptance that John the Baptist was a recapitulation of Elijah, scriptural admonitions that the testimony of two or three witnesses is required to establish the truth of a matter [from Dt. 17:6 and 19:5, and reiterated in the NT], so that in this case two may not be literally two.
Dispensational Premillennialism agrees that Moses and Elijah or Elijah and Enoch are likely candidates. But this framework maintains also the possibility that these will be two as yet unnamed and unidentified people who will appear at that time. Both Futurist views acknowledge the connection with Zech. 4, where “two olive trees” work to accomplish God’s purpose in rebuilding the temple (a version of which John is measuring in Rev. 11), and those two individuals in history were the high priest Joshua and the Judean governor Zerubbabel, so whoever the two witnesses are, they will be empowered by the Spirit to do his will. They do not typically endorse the parallel of priest and king roles to be played out by the two witnesses. This still leaves their identity murky.
Historicism, which is the interpretive framework that moves forward with history, attempting to identify people, places, and events in current circumstances as being the fulfillment of prophecy made in the past, initially viewed any number of early church martyrs as being in this role. James and John (the Sons of Thunder from Mk. 3:17, who were told that they would drink from the same cup of suffering as Jesus [Mt. 20:23]), Peter and Paul (both martyred during the reign of Nero in the 60s AD), and other church martyrs were suggested. During the Reformation, figures such as Luther,Calvin, Zwingli, or Wesley, who were all anti-Papist (as the Pope was seen by many as the Antichrist), and were excommunicated from the Roman Catholic church, were thought of as possibly being the two witnesses.
In addition, the early church produced other ideas about who the two witnesses are, ideas which are still believed among many today. While Historical Premillennialism was widely believed and was the dominant position until the late 4th century, it was by no means the only view within the church. Origen’s Idealism in the early 3rd century (what today is called modified Idealism) also became influential, in which it was suggested that the two witnesses were the Law and the Prophets, symbolized by the plagues that occurred during the Exodus period with Moses as the leader who eventually received the Law and the shutting up of the rain under the prophet Elijah. These witnesses were recognizable to the ones being judged, and in particular if Revelation’s date of writing was in the 60s, prior to the destruction of the Temple and the diaspora of the Jews (and Christians), those recipients of God’s judgment were the Jews. They would be responsible for how they violated the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah), and how in doing so they desired to “harm” the witnesses but were unsuccessful until the beast (Rome) obliterated them, but their symbolic resurrection occurred through their fulfillment in the message and resurrection (literally) of Jesus.
This viewpoint is one consistent with both modified Idealism and partial Preterism, where much of Revelation’s prophecy is held to have been fulfilled in the 1st century and most of the imagery is symbolic rather than literal, with only Christ’s literal physical return, the final resurrection and final judgment yet to come. These interpretational systems also suggested later into the 4th century that the two witnesses were/are the two testaments that comprise the Scriptures. The Scriptures reveal God explicitly, including in the person of his Son Jesus, and the world is responsible for properly receiving them, but had/has largely rebelled, thereby desiring to the harm the witnesses (deny or suppress the truth of their testimony [see Rom. 1]) and eventually earning God’s righteous and terrible judgment. The Jews first received judgment in 70- 135 AD and then the nations/Rome/Babylon received both wrath and conquering by conversion to Christ. This interpretation gained considerable ground as both Idealism and Historical Premillennialism lost much of their influence to partial Preterist Amillennialism in the 5th century, in part because the canonization of the Bible was completed in 367 AD.
Another related view is that the witnesses are OT Israel and the NT Church, both of whom bore witness to and were in succession God’s special possession, both of whom spoke his mind to the world, and both of whom were/are/will be persecuted by an unbelieving and rebellious humanity. For some, their being called to Heaven after being resurrected is seen as the Rapture, but it also could be that the calling into Heaven is a symbolic statement of not being of the world, but living in accord with the believer’s heavenly calling and new life (resurrected [cf. Col. 3]) in Christ. Parenthetically, some Dispensational Premillennialists refer to this passage in support of the belief that the Rapture of the Church occurs in the middle of the literal 7 year Great Tribulation (thus a position called “mid-trib”).
In keeping with the established notion of the need for two witnesses to establish the truth of a matter, a partial Preterist view sees the two witnesses as possibly being theearly believers in Jerusalem who were spreading the Gospel, especially among the Jews. Their testimony of confrontation with the Jewish leaders about their killing the Messiah and their need for repentance (symbolically speaking with the fire of the Holy Spirit and afflicting their hearers with plagues of guilt) paralleled what the Jews had donerepeatedly with the Law and the Prophets. It resulted in their being martyred by Jews, both the apostate Judaizers and the Zealots, immediately before the temple’s destruction and the city’s sacking by Rome. John’s instruction about measuring the temple and those who worship in it in 11:1-2 is about Jewish Christians (OT Israel witnesses who became NT Church witnesses) in Jerusalem, while those in the outer court are those who will be trampled underfoot by the nations (unbelievers) while the two witnesses prophecy and afflict them before being killed by the beast (the sinful Jews, Gentiles, and world system that draws its power from the Devil). Their resurrection and calling into Heaven is their true state, and they join with those under or around the throne in Rev. 6, 7, and 14. This imagery closely parallels Dan. 8, where the final opposition to God and his people is the empire that supplanted Greece, which is Rome. Under the Roman Empire, both the temple, Jerusalem, the Jews, and the Church itself were persecuted and the former two destroyed, with the latter alone eventually triumphing. That occurred in 380 AD, when the Roman Empire became officially Christian (not that that was or is the end of the story).
Regardless of the particular hermeneutic perspective taken, it is clear that the two witnesses of Rev. 11 are to be an example for us. They make plain to us that those who do God’s will and speak his mind among a corrupt and perishing, rebellious humanity have his supernatural power and protection to be able to accomplish his purposes. We, like them, will be subject to persecution and even martyrdom as a result of our testimony, and we will be seen as the enemies of the Lord whose deaths will be greeted with celebration (e.g., as seen most recently with Charlie Kirk). But our resurrection and future eternity is assured, and God’s judgment will be perfect, so the admonition throughout the NT and even in Rev. 2 and 3 to stand firm, to hold on to our first love, to reject compromise or seek the world’s love, approval, and admiration, must guide us daily, until our assignments in this world to advance God’s kingdom are completed.
Sources
Davidson, I.J. (2004). The Birth of the Church: From Jesus to Constantine, AD 30-312. Baker
History of the Church, vol. 1. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker.
Davidson, I.J. (2005). A Public Faith: From Constantine to the Medieval World, AD 312-600.
Baker History of the Church, vol. 2. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker.
Weinrich, W.C. (Ed.) (2005). Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament
XII, Revelation. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.