THE TWO WITNESSES

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 22, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 16.

THE TWO WITNESSES.

(Concluded.)

Chapter 11: 4–13.

Recall again the law of witness of the Word: there must be, to establish a thing, at least two agreeing witnesses. That was the law as regards the trial of any man for any crime. No charge should be brought against a church elder except at the mouth of two or three witnesses. The divine mission of Jesus Christ was established by the testimony of two non-collusive but perfectly agreeing witnesses. The Father witnessed to the Son in His Word (John 5: 39); and the Son witnessed to that Word in His life, work, and teaching (Verse 36). And God grants to every believer the same blessed assurance of the twofold witness that he is a son of God. Rom. 8: 16.

Recall again that this twofold witness to Jesus Christ and His divine mission, the testimony of which affects every soul on earth, was God’s Word,—God’s Word in type, in precept, in portrayal, in prediction, and God’s Word in antitype, in character, in life-work, in fulfilment, in Jesus Christ. Men could not logically or justly gainsay that twofold witness, then. Jesus truly said to those who would not accept this witness: “Think not that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, on whom ye have set your hope. For if ye believed Moses, ye would believe Me: for he wrote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?” John 5: 45–47. But Christ’s works, life, character, teaching, are written in the New Testament. The Old and the New Testaments, therefore, are two witnesses to us even as to them of the divine mission of Jesus.

“These are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks, standing before the Lord of the earth.” Rev. 11: 4. This is worthy of more than a superficial view. These figures include more than mere words. Inseparably connected with these witnessing words are the ones through whom the word is given. These are Christ Jesus, His angel, and through His prophet, apostle, preacher, to the people. Rev. 1: 1. God gives it to Christ, the “Faithful and True Witness”; Christ commits it to His angel, Gabriel; His angel brings it to God’s servant; and that servant reveals it to the people of God. Angels and men are connected inseparably with its giving. With the part which the angels have to act we need not concern ourselves here. They will ever do faithful work for the Master, and we can praise God that He, in His goodness, has given us such mighty, faithful colaborers.

“Ye Are My Witnesses.”

To His people God has given, as the twofold witness to His own blessed Gospel, His Word of truth in both Old and New Testaments, showing His own divine working in ages past, but that Word fulfilling in the world to-day, and especially in their own life and character. The great evidence to the individual soul is thus stated by Christ: “If any man willeth to do His [God’s] will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from Myself.” John 7: 17. God’s will is expressed in His holy law (Ps. 40: 8); and that law has been drawn out in His Word into “ten thousand precepts” (Hos. 8: 12, R.V.). God’s witness in His own heart and life witnesses with God’s witness in His Word, and the soul is established in faith.

To such souls—souls in whom He has written His Word—the great God has committed the blessed and important privilege and responsibility of witnessing for Him. He has given His Word, and in His people in each generation, He has reposed the solemn trust of witnessing to that Word, of demonstrating its truth, its power, its life, in their lives. God’s true church is God’s living witness in each generation to the truth and power of a living Word. That church is a demonstration to the world that the written Word of God is not a form of words, no cold and lifeless system, but a living power to the heart opened by faith. God has put His case, so to speak, in the hearts and hands and the lives of His people, and trusts them, as no collusive witness, to demonstrate Him to the world as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

“Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah; Even my servant whom I have chosen: That ye may know and believe Me; And understand that I am He.”

“I, even I, am Jehovah; And beside Me there is no Saviour. I declared My purpose, and I have saved; I made it known; nor was it any strange god among you [that made it known]; And ye are My witnesses, saith Jehovah, that I am God.”

“Fear ye not, neither be ye afraid: Have I not declared it unto you from the first? Yea, I have foreshown it; and ye are My witnesses.” Isa. 43: 10–12; 44: 8 (Lowth).

And even in her errors, her wanderings, her backslidings, her persecutions, God’s church has witnessed to the truth of His Word in life and experience. Jehovah has foreshown it; His people bear witness to His Word.

With these preliminary thoughts, let us continue our study of Revelation 11 by

Questioning the Text.

What are God’s witnesses enabled to do?

“And if any man desireth to hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth and devoureth their enemies, and if any man shall desire to hurt them, in this manner must he be killed. These have the power to shut the heaven, that it rain not during the days of their prophecy; and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with every plague, as often as they shall desire.”¹ Rev. 11: 5, 6.

What will occur when the days of their testimony in sackcloth is finished?

“And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that cometh up out of the abyss shall make war with them, and overcome them, and kill them.”² Verse 7.

Where will this take place?

“And their dead bodies lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.”³ Verse 8.

How long do these witnesses remain dead? How do the unbelieving regard it?

“And from among the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations do men look upon their dead bodies three days and a half, and suffer not their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb. And they that dwell on the earth rejoice over them, and make merry; and they shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwell on the earth.”⁴ Verses 9, 10.

What then occurred? What voice was heard? What was the response?

“And after the three days and a half the breath of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them that beheld them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they went up into heaven in the cloud; and their enemies beheld them.”⁵ Verses 11, 12.

What befell the great city?

“And in that hour there was a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell; and there were killed in the earthquake seven thousand persons: and the rest were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.”⁶ Verse 13.

Note and Fulfilment.

1. Power of His Word.—A few references are made to the power of God’s Word. For instance, in Leviticus 10 we have two men desiring to make of none effect God’s word respecting the use of common fire in the sanctuary. The result was that fire came forth from God and devoured the men. Uzzah and others desired to make of none effect God’s instructions concerning the carrying of the ark of God. By that same word he was slain. 2 Sam. 6: 1–7. (See Rev. 22: 18, 19.) When men are at last condemned, it will be the Word of truth that will accomplish the condemnation. John 12: 48. It was in the days of Ahab that God’s word shut heaven for three and one-half years. It was God’s word that turned water to blood in Egypt, and brought upon that proud nation by the ten plagues the utter abasement of her idolatry. But the word in the first instance was through God’s servant Elijah, and in the second by “Moses the man of God,” God’s living, human witnesses testifying with His word.

2. Witnesses Slain.—The “testimony” is that of the church during the 1,260 years of papal persecution, noted in our last week’s study, and to be noted more fully in our study of chapters 12 and 13. God had His true church during this time, but she was not riding in triumph, supported by the civil power, treading under foot the church of God (chapter 17: 3–7; 11: 2); she was driven into mourning and sackcloth, persecuted, and at times corrupted, driven into mountain fastnesses, slain by the sword, destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy, yet witnessing to the world of the power of God to sustain (chapter 12: 6, 13–16; Heb. 11: 37, 38; Dan. 11: 35). The two witnesses are slain by a new power which arises out of the corruptions of apostasy within these 1,260 years of trouble, which began in A.D. 538 and ended in A.D. 1798. Their testimony is finished, and the

witnesses are slain in educated and priest-ridden France, not directly by the papal power, but by what grew out of the corruptions of the Papacy, the recoil from dead forms and wearisome burdens, and the rejection of the Gospel. This manifestation of the beast-power was infidelity, especially manifest in France, where it was thought the Bible, God’s Word, was given its death blow.

3. Where?—In the street of the great city, spiritually called Sodom (noted for its lawlessness and licentiousness), and Egypt (for its infidelity and darkness, “I know not Jehovah,” Ex. 5: 2). See “The Bible and the French Revolution,” Chapter XV. of “Great Controversy.” For centuries, where Rome had power, relentless war had been waged against God’s Word. God sought to save men by a revival of witnessing power in the Reformation. It swept through England and Germany, and regenerated them. It seemed at times as tho it would sweep from France her refuge of lies. Burdened with the papal hierarchy, she was ready to reject the Papacy; but, loving sin, she was not ready to accept of Christianity. She therefore plunged into the darkness of infidelity, and sought to destroy all revealed religion, and set up the religion of desire and reason,—of lust and imagination. To do this the Bible must be destroyed; the French Revolution was the culmination of the teaching which rejected the Word of God. Men sought to destroy God’s Word, because they did not know it; and for this ignorance the Papacy, entrenched in Church and State and school, was responsible. That awful darkness in France was the most striking movement of that character the world has ever seen. It took both Sodom and Egypt to properly typify it. The Bible was prohibited by the national assembly; Jesus was declared an impostor: “Heaven-daring blasphemy and abominable wickedness went hand in hand, and the basest of men, the most abandoned monsters of cruelty and vice, were most highly exalted.” Satan seemed to reign supreme; Christ was in His Word crucified anew. Death was declared to be an “eternal sleep.” The week of divine origin was set aside, and a ten-day period ordained, the closing day of which was devoted to excessive reveling. To crown it all the constitutional bishop of Paris was brought forward in full procession to declare that the religion he had taught was a piece of priestcraft, having no basis in sacred truth or history (a large quantity of truth), that Deity did not exist, and then stripped himself of his Episcopal robes. A lewd female was worshiped as the goddess of reason.

4. The Rejoicing.—Three days and a half represent so many years, the time of the unholy war waged by France against God’s truth, when it seemed to all outward appearance that it had perished. The witnesses in God’s Word are spoken of as persons, because the figure better sets forth the form of witnesses generally. There is no doubt, also, that many of God’s faithful children went down in the awful “Reign of Terror” which spared neither age nor sex, in which every crime was punishable with death. The rejoicing was on the part of infidelity in all countries. It was seriously thought that the wave of infidelity would engulf England and America, and, in fact, the Christian world; they were affected, but despite the seeming triumph, God’s Word of twofold witness survived.

5. Life, Resurrection, Power.—For the great world’s sake God could not let truth be crushed; and to that very people who had declared death to be an eternal sleep, God demonstrated that they could not take the life of His seemingly, to human reason, cold, inanimate Word. Right in the beginning of the awful wickedness the French Bible Society, tho very small, was formed. In 1803 began the British Bible Society, followed a few years later by the American. Nothing could more fittingly represent the reviving of God’s Word and interest therein than resurrection and ascension. Like its Lord, it had been crucified and slain. Over it death, demons, and wicked men rejoiced, even as over Christ’s death. But as God called His Son to life, so He did His Word. As Christ ascended up on high to give new life to His church, so that Word in its entirety was exalted as never before. It is now translated into nearly all the dialects and tongues of earth, so that men can read and receive in their own lives the witness of God. And this is the lesson to God’s children. As general regard for the written Word is manifest in giving it to all the world, obscured tho it may be, as indicated by the cloud, even in greater degree it ought to be cherished and nourished and received and held forth by the children of God. To the great world that Word is given as God’s great primary witness of the ages. Every soul who accepts it as such demonstrates in himself its truth. But now God asks and entreats His church to “arise and shine,” that the world may see and know, contrary to the claims of all false science, that the Bible is the Book of God, potent with the life of its Author, able to save men from sin, and to develop a church without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing. This is the witness this prophecy demands, anointed witnesses of God, Spirit-anointed, Spirit-filled witnesses, demonstrating that Jehovah is God, mighty to save.

6. The Result.—The great shaking came to France as the result of her infidelity. Had the Reign of Terror continued, France would have been depopulated. As it was, she was greatly shaken. “The great city” is the antitypical Babylon, Rome, embracing the ten kingdoms, of which France, spiritually Sodom and Egypt, in this great Babylon, is a tenth part. The seven thousand names or titles of men (margin) may refer to the titles and orders of nobility which were abolished at the time. And out of all these sad calamities the world then learned a lesson which she is now forgetting. Infidelity does not vaunt itself so boldly and generally as in France in 1793, but it is creeping in more subtly and dangerously in the very terms of truth. God wants faithful witnesses to truth. Are you one?