The passage: John is given a measuring reed and told to measure the temple, the altar, and the worshippers, but to leave out the outer court, which is given to the Gentiles who will trample the holy city for forty-two months. God will give power to two witnesses who will prophesy for 1,260 days, dressed in sackcloth; they are the two olive trees and two candlesticks that stand before God. Fire comes from their mouths to destroy anyone who tries to harm them, and they have power to stop rain, turn water to blood, and send plagues. When their testimony is finished, the beast from the bottomless pit will make war on them, defeat them, and kill them. Their bodies will lie in the street of the great city—called, in a spiritual sense, Sodom and Egypt, and the place where the Lord was crucified—and people of every nation will look at their unburied corpses for three and a half days and celebrate, exchanging gifts, because these two prophets had tormented them. After three and a half days God’s Spirit revives them; they stand up, terrifying those who see them, and are called up to heaven in a cloud while their enemies watch. An earthquake destroys a tenth of the city and kills seven thousand; the rest, terrified, give glory to God. The second woe is past; the third comes quickly. The seventh angel sounds, and voices in heaven declare that the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of God and His Christ, who will reign forever. The twenty-four elders worship, thanking God for taking His power and reigning; the nations were angry, God’s wrath has come, the time to judge the dead and reward His servants and destroy those who destroy the earth. The temple in heaven is opened, the ark is seen, and there are lightnings, voices, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail.
Today we begin what I will call the second part of the Apocalypse. I do not draw this line to fit some theory of my own. The seer is told that when the seventh angel sounds, the mystery of God will be finished, but that he must prophesy again before many peoples, tongues, nations, and kings.
I have taken it that the prophet is speaking of Jerusalem. Six trumpet blasts have announced that it is about to fall. It has not fallen yet. The vision before us mentions a period of 1,260 days, or forty-two months. We usually count about four years between the start of the Jewish rebellion, brought on by the oppression of Florus, and the end of the war under Titus. If I take this stretch of time, or part of it, as the meaning of the 1,260 days, I will at least stay closer to a strict reading than if I turned the days into years—and I will be less likely to be fooled by my own imagination than if I had to guess where those years begin and end in the history of Christendom. I need not describe how that short span was filled with horrors across the whole empire, and with special, indescribable horrors in Jerusalem. Since the disorder was everywhere, the wild fanatics in the holy city could easily convince themselves that the other city, the tyrant city Rome, would fall first. The Capitol was burned before the Temple was burned. The outrages of Vitellius might draw down God’s vengeance as much as those of John or Simon. And while the holy place still stood, there might always come some dramatic rescue to save it and destroy the besiegers, like the deliverance that came when Sennacherib besieged the city in Hezekiah’s time.
I. “And there was given me a reed, like unto a rod, and the angel stood, saying, Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court that is without the temple, leave out and measure it not, for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.”
The parallel here is plain and direct. The prophecy of Ezekiel dwells on the Temple more than any other prophecy does. Its defilement by the idolatry of its worshippers, its coming ruin by Babylon, and what its symbols meant to those living among the idolaters of Chaldea—all this surely filled his soul. Then comes the prospect of restoration. In his fortieth chapter we hear how he is carried in spirit to the land of Israel, where he sees a man with a line of flax and a measuring reed. With these the man measures every part of the city, and especially the various courts of the Temple. The prophet learns what that building is to be—one he cannot see with his eyes, but in which his countrymen will one day worship the God of their fathers.
The command to John to come and measure must at once have brought his predecessor’s vision to mind. Is he too a prophet of restoration? Is the Temple to be destroyed and rise again after seventy years? Is there to be a New Jerusalem in his day, as there was after the captivity?
The rest of the Apocalypse, I believe, answers these questions. This chapter introduces the period of 1,260 days. It explains what happens during them and what they mean. It treats them as a time of total darkness and desolation. But it shows that even in that darkest time the old witnesses of God were not extinguished; even then they were doing the work they had always done. The prophet will not clear away a false hope until he has offered something real in its place. Everything within city and Temple is doomed. No fire will come down from heaven to destroy the besiegers. The fall is delayed, but it is certain. Yet those are not wrong who say there is an immortality in the city, its altars, and its worshippers. That immortality will be revealed by the very destruction that is coming. One who once cleansed it of the traders defiling it said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again.” When those who heard Him saw Him rise from Joseph’s grave, they understood He had meant the temple of His body. That was one fulfillment; there could yet be another. The stone temple would not have one stone left on another, but the work for which it existed—the work it had already done for the world—could be accomplished. A better resurrection than the one that had comforted Ezekiel was approaching. What it was would be shown ever more clearly to John’s spirit. Meanwhile, he was not to measure the courts that Ezekiel had measured; he was to leave them out; the desecration they underwent in the 1,260 days was a sign that the better days, the more divine order, had no connection with them.
- “And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and three score days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies; and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed. These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite them with all plagues as often as they will.”
Those who try to work out what these two witnesses are from sources outside the text have a boundless field for their imagination. I will limit myself to the clues given by the passage itself and by the Old Testament passages it points us to.
The allusion here is to one of the prophets who saw the Temple rising out of its ruins and encouraged those who feared that their own weakness and their enemies’ opposition would never let it be finished. In his third chapter, Zechariah has a vision of Joshua, the high priest of that day, standing before the angel of the Lord, with Satan at his right hand to oppose him. “And the Lord said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan; even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem, rebuke thee. Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” At first Joshua is dressed in filthy clothes. These are taken away, and he is given the mitre and priestly robes—the full dignity of his office restored. Then in the fourth chapter we read that the angel woke Zechariah as a man is woken from sleep and asked what he saw; he answered that he saw a golden candlestick with a bowl on top, seven lamps and seven pipes to the lamps, and two olive trees beside it, one on each side of the bowl. He asked the angel what these were. The answer is not what we expect: “This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” The prophet is then told that the hands of Zerubbabel that laid the foundation of the house will also finish it. When he asks again about the olive trees, he is told, “These are the two anointed ones, that stand before the Lord of the whole earth.”
I believe that if we look closely at this passage, the very things that puzzle us in it—its apparent digressions and inconsistencies—will help us understand the witnesses in the Apocalypse. Joshua and Zerubbabel are clearly the priest and the ruler of the city rising from its ruins. Bound up with these men, who represent the great offices of the commonwealth, is a vision of the Temple itself—the Temple where Joshua will minister and which Zerubbabel will build. But the vision is not of the outward stone building; it is of two of its old symbols, the ones that best express its spiritual character and purpose. At its highest glory and its lowest depression, the Temple has always testified of an everlasting Law coming from the invisible God of righteousness, and of a uniting, living communion between Him and His creatures. The Word from His lips and the Spirit that goes out to give life to the creatures made in His image—these anointed ones who stand continually before the God of the earth—are presented to men in the ordinances of Law and Sacrifice, in the persons of the Judge and the Priest. They had lasted from the earliest times. When Elijah, in Ahab’s day, was allowed to bear witness against Baal worship by keeping the heavens from raining during the days of his prophecy; when, centuries before, Moses turned the waters of the Nile into blood so that Pharaoh might know the Lord of the earth to be the Deliverer of captives—they were acting as these witnesses. They were showing that divine power does not dwell with what looks powerful, but with what looks weak. As much as Zerubbabel, they were establishing the maxim, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit.” And so it was now. The witnesses in the midst of Jerusalem testified that a fire would come from the righteous God to sweep away the enemies of righteousness, whoever they were.
- “And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. 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.”
A time was to come, however, when these witnesses for the existence of law and of God’s care for men were to be silenced. I cannot say whether this refers to some particular event in the siege of Jerusalem that marked the extinction of the last shred of moral restraint and of belief in anything good. Probably it does. Probably the allusion would have made sense to some at that time who needed it. We do not need the specific fact, but the principle it stood for. What matters to us is to grasp that there was a critical moment in the history of that falling city—as there is in every falling city—when its crimes reached their peak and the restraints that had checked them stopped working. The one who kills the witnesses is described here as the beast that rises from the bottomless pit. More about him will be told later. Enough is said here to show that mere brute force, ungoverned lust and self-will, became triumphant over everything opposed to them. To all intents and purposes they were the lords of the Holy City. The Jewish historian would tell us as much. A seer was needed, not to record or repeat the announcement, but to tell us what it implies. The witnesses who perished in Jerusalem were witnesses of God’s government and of God’s mercy to the world. The killing of those witnesses could not affect Jerusalem alone; it must affect all mankind.
- “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. 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.”
In the first of these verses the place where the witnesses lived is identified as the place where our Lord was crucified. Jerusalem is named just as clearly by that description as by the other—that it is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt. What city, during its year of siege, better matched the idea of a Sodom, where all law and humanity were wiped out, or of an Egypt, where religion had become the great instrument of darkness and oppression, the denial of God, the spur to every crime? When the witnesses’ dead bodies are said to lie in the street of this city, I take it to mean that there was the most conspicuous example ever given of the decay and rotting of institutions that had been set up to spread life among the nations. When it says the peoples, tongues, and nations would not let them be buried, I take it to mean that the surrounding heathen preferred to have Jerusalem remain a sink of filth and iniquity—a spectacle of where its grand claim to a special worship had ended—rather than have it swept away at once. For a little while, not much longer than the time the Son of God Himself remained under the power of death and the grave, Jerusalem was to be—so men decreed, so God willed—a sign and witness of the evil possible on earth, which is only possible when it is the corruption of the highest good.
V. “And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice: and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt upon the earth.” A sense of release from the restraints of law, from belief in anything invisible, is vividly set out in these words. It has come to different nations at different times; and always, I believe, it has been the result of the moral collapse and degradation of some society that held high trusts and, through its own boasting, sank lower than those it claimed to warn and guide. That there should be this savage glee and mutual congratulation among idolaters who had been tormented by the witness the Jewish law and worship bore against their impurities—and that an actual loosening of all moral ties, greater than ever known before, should be tied to this feeling—we could guess even without evidence; but in fact we have it from the most trustworthy sources about the real shaking of Roman society in the period after Nero’s death.
- “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. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them. And the same hour there was a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.” Here is the key to the whole vision. Forms and institutions that were not only ancient and honored but could claim a divine origin and had been upheld by divine power, wither and perish. The world thinks they are gone forever. That is the very moment of their transfiguration and glorification. Then they are found to hold a life that depends on no accidents of time or place.
Everything above and below announces their presence and testifies to their authority. The fears that strike the consciences of those who most defied them are the signs of that presence and authority. The swift disappearance of some power that had claimed independence of them; the confessions, conscious and unconscious, of a God of heaven that follow a stretch of utter indifference and unbelief—these show that the witnesses have ascended. If they lose their local home and name, it is so that they may claim a universal rule.
The truth of these words has been shown at various times, so it is no wonder that one group after another has claimed them for itself. I believe we vindicate them for everyone by taking them as directly referring to the crisis I have described. History tells us that the Roman world, after being shaken from center to edge, was struck with a great fear; that when Vespasian took the throne it once again accepted a just and orderly government—or, as the prophet puts it, did homage to the God of heaven; that there was no such revival in the holy city, but only wilder fury and more utter brutality among those who claimed to honor the God of heaven there; and that the very restoration of order in Rome was therefore the signal for Jerusalem’s doom. This, I take it, is what the prophet means by “The second woe is past, and, behold, the third woe cometh quickly.” Rome’s great earthquake is over; the man who restores and delivers that city is the one destined to destroy this one. For now,
“The seventh angel soundeth.” That the fall of the Temple follows immediately upon the trumpet blast I gather not only from everything earlier in this chapter but from its last verse: “And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament; and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.” The temple in heaven is the backdrop to the picture of the great fire consuming the temple on earth. The ark and the covenant are seen to be there; the lightnings and thunderings that shatter the one reveal the other. And so it happens that what seemed the most terrible of all disasters is celebrated in these words: “And there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.” Since last Sunday I spoke of “the finishing of the mystery of God,” promised “in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound,” I need not dwell long on these words, because, wonderful as they are, they are the necessary sequel to that beginning. If the temple on Mount Moriah bore witness to a Lord God of Israel whom no man had seen or could see, and to an anointed king who would reign over David’s house and whose kingdom would have no end, then the fall of that temple either proved that testimony false or declared that the Lord God of Israel is the Lord God of all nations, that the Son of David is the King of men. In words, all Christians admit that the passing away of the Jewish state carried this proclamation with it. There are hymns taught to English children about God now calling the world His own and about heathens tasting His grace. But we have come to treat these as merely rhetorical phrases. We say that in a sense it is no doubt true that God reigns over the nations—meaning that in every practical and important sense it is not true. So when we hear of voices in heaven solemnly declaring that the kingdoms of this world are the kingdoms of God and His Christ, we naturally say they must refer to some quite different event from the fall of Jerusalem, to some time we have never reached. For we reasonably trust that in the language of heaven there are no rhetorical phrases—that its hymns celebrate real, not fictitious, blessings. It would indeed be daring profanity to confuse our idle talk about the world being God’s world with the ascription John speaks of in the sixteenth verse.
“And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God, saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power and hast reigned.” But would it be profanity to suppose that they understand the vital meaning of events that we have drained of meaning? Would it be profanity to admit that we have been utterly unthankful for what should have filled us with wonder and gratitude? Would it be profanity to ask whether the Apostles had any message to deliver to the world at all—whether we have any—if the message is not this: that the kingdoms of the world belong to God and His Christ, and not to the tyrants who have claimed them, nor to the devil or his angels?
In any case, I believe we shall find that this and no other is the teaching of the Apocalypse, pressing on us more and more in each vision that follows this one about the overthrow of the holy city and Temple. If the visions were all bright and joyful, we might have good reason to conclude they had nothing to do with the last eighteen hundred years of the world, or with our own day. But they are pictures of fierce conflict. The news that God has taken His great power and is reigning, which stirs such joy in heaven, finds little faith on earth. “The nations,” it says, “were angry.” They did not like being told of a righteous Judge. They were not eager to acknowledge One who cared for the poor and outcast, or who had taken their nature and died their death. God’s government and His Christ’s were far too unlike their own for them to want to live under it. But it adds, “Thy wrath is come.” Their wishes could not change the fact. They were angry because they felt there was a power over them with which they were out of harmony, and which would prevail against them. And this power, the prophet goes on, is felt among the dead as well as the living. Being the power of Him who was and is and is to come, the power of the Lamb who was slain and lives forever, it cannot be confined by mortal boundaries; it cannot be limited by the sleep that closes off our years.
X. “It was the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear thy name, both small and great.” I take the words as I find them; they may shatter some of our notions and theories; they may open up visions of judgment different from those we have inherited or made for ourselves. But if they are revelations of God, we must not shrink from them. We can be sure they will deepen and widen our faith, not shake it; that they will not lessen our awe, but make it more constant and more effective; that if they forbid any thoughts of God inconsistent with belief in His perfect love and full redemption, they will also not allow us to attribute to Him, or to keep in ourselves, the slightest tolerance for evil. The time has come that thou “shouldest destroy them that destroy the earth.” This was a cause of the elders’ rejoicing when the earthly temple fell and the heavenly temple was opened; and this must reconcile us to the fall of even what is dearest and most sacred to us—what has been dearest and most sacred in God’s eyes—if it stops being a witness for Him, if it hides the ark of His testament from men.