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REVELATION 11

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 15, 1901

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 78, No. 3.

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REVELATION 11

By Stephen N. Haskell

S. N. H.
THE first two verses of chapter 11 contain the message given by the people of God when they “prophesy again, before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.” Rev. 10:11. The reed is the ten commandments, God’s rule of character in the judgment. Eccl. 12:13, 14. These were seen after the temple of God was opened in heaven at the sounding of the seventh angel, in 1844 A. D. Rev. 11:15, 19. The altar is the golden altar before the throne in the heavenly sanctuary, upon which is offered the incense, the merits and righteousness of Christ, which is added to the prayers and confessions of God’s people. Rev. 8:3-5; 1 John 3:4, 5.
The measuring of the temple and its worshipers refers to the work of our great High Priest in the work of atonement as it is closing in the heavenly courts. This work pertains to every soul. “Satan is now using every device in this sealing time to keep the minds of God’s people from the present truth, and to cause them to waver. I saw a covering that God was drawing over His people to protect them in the time of trouble; and every soul that was decided on the truth, and was pure in heart, was to be covered with the covering of the Almighty. Satan knew this, and was at work in mighty power to keep the minds of as many as he possibly could wavering and unsettled on the truth.”—“Early Writings,” page 35.
This is a special message to prepare a people for Christ’s second coming, as much as Noah’s message was a special message to prepare the world for the flood. Those who can not discern the importance of a special returning to the Lord to be in a condition to be accepted of Him when He comes, will be as veritably lost as were the antediluvians or the Jewish people. Luke 21:20-24. The forty and two months, or twelve hundred and sixty years, of persecution is in the past. The law of God has been taken out of the hands of the power represented by the little horn of Dan. 7:25, and the “son of perdition” of 2 Thess. 2:3, 4; and now the Sabbath reform is to go to the world. Isa. 58:12, 13. This is one of the truths necessary to prepare a people for the coming of the Lord.
The two witnesses, the Old and New Testaments, were taken from the common people during the Dark Ages. The two olive trees are the anointed ones; the people of God become channels of light, into which the golden oil is communicated, through the golden pipes, to others.
It was the rejection of the light of the Reformation that led to the French Revolution before 1798 A. D. The time of persecution was shortened by the light of the Reformation and by the earth’s helping the woman. Matt. 24:22. France rejected this light of the Reformation; and in the French Revolution we have an object lesson of what the results of rejecting light and truth will ever be. “Fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies.” Men can not with impunity trample upon the word of God. The meaning of this fearful denunciation is set forth in the closing chapter of this book. Rev. 22:18, 19.
The great city in whose streets the witnesses were slain is spiritually Egypt. Of all nations represented in Bible history, Egypt most boldly denied the existence of the living God, and resisted His commands. No monarch ever ventured a more high-handed rebellion against the authority of heaven than did the king of Egypt. When the message was brought him by Moses in the name of the Lord, Pharaoh proudly answered, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.” This is atheism, and the nation represented by Egypt would give voice to a similar denial of the claims of the living God, and would manifest a like spirit of unbelief and defiance.
The “great city” is also compared “spiritually” to Sodom. The corruption of Sodom in breaking the law of God was especially manifested in licentiousness. This sin was also to be a prominent characteristic of the nation that should fulfill the specifications of this scripture. This prophecy has received a most exact and striking fulfillment in France. During the Revolution of A. D. 1793, “the world for the first time heard an assembly of men, born and educated in civilization, assuming the right to govern one of the finest European nations, uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn truth which man’s soul receives, and renounce unanimously the belief and worship of the Deity.” France is the only nation in the world concerning which the authentic record survives, that as a nation she lifted her hand in open rebellion against the Author of the universe. Plenty of blasphemers, plenty of infidels, there have been and continue to be, in England, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere; but France stands apart in the world’s history as the single State which, by the decree of her legislative assembly, pronounced that there was no God, and the entire population of the capital, women as well as men, danced and sang with joy in accepting the announcement.
“Where also our Lord was crucified.” This specification of the prophecy was also fulfilled by France. In no land had the spirit of enmity against Christ been more strikingly displayed. In no country had the truth encountered more bitter and cruel opposition. In the persecution France visited upon the confessors of the gospel, she crucified Christ in the person of His disciples. “The Beast that ascended out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.” The atheistical power that ruled in France during the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, waged such a war upon the Bible as the world had never witnessed. The word of God was prohibited by the national assembly. Bibles were collected and publicly burned with every possible manifestation of scorn. The law of God was trampled under foot. The institutions of the Bible were abolished. The weekly rest-day was set aside, and in its stead every tenth day was devoted to reveling and blasphemy. Baptism and the communion were prohibited. Announcements posted conspicuously over the burial places declared death to be an eternal sleep. See “Great Controversy,” chapter 15.
Previously to 1792 little attention was given to the work of foreign missions. In 1804 the British Bible Society was organized. In 1816 the American Bible Society was founded, and they have since printed more than two million copies of the Bible, and have translated the Bible into nearly three hundred languages. In this work the eleventh and twelfth verses have had remarkable fulfillment. The tenth part of the “great city” was one of the ten kings (France) that did this work. The sounding of the seventh angel began in 1844, and covers the entire period of the judgment and the establishment of the kingdom. Heaven beheld all this persecution, and rejoiced when deliverance came. The present condition of the world we see foreshadowed in the eighteenth verse.