Lesson 23 - Revelation 11 Cont.

[Music] [Music] last week we got well into Revelation chapter 11 and we discussed several important elements of that chapter including the use of several numbers and I was told afterwards Wow I have no idea what you said so I'm not gonna do it to you again alright but these numbers that we dealt with are important numbers are important particularly in the book of Revelation and the numbers that we dealt with were 42 three and a half and 1260 and briefly what we found was that 42 months three and 1/2 years 1260 days need to be viewed as essentially the same amount of time now you might say well gosh that's a no-brainer right but what we discussed was that there's a complexity of the Hebrew calendar and we should not expect the precision in their ancient calendar to the extent that our modern calendars give us today therefore despite some scientific realities about actual minor technical differences between 42 months three and a half years 1260 days it's just too insignificant to matter in the prophetic sphere and further that we ought to not seek to focus on any minor differences minor differences in time measurement concerning prophetic issues because such exactness was never the point it was never the concern of that ancient writer that is the precise time was not as important as the event to which the appointed time pointed towards it's the event that mattered or as we like to say in our day the main thing is the main thing the main thing is what we need to keep our eye on not get distracted it's doubly so concerning the Bible and the God principles that we learn from it that said we need to note that there is a symbolic difference in the number 3 and 1/2 because it because 3 and 1/2 is half of the number 7 7 is the ideal number it indicates divine Direction wholeness perfection completeness prophetically it can indicate finality so 3 and 1/2 indicates something in which the journey towards wholeness has been arrested 3 and 1/2 indicates something that has not achieved wholeness it's neither complete nor perfect this understanding about the significance of numbers then leads us to consider the duration of time that was presented to us in the next chapter of Revelation and in Daniel and it's that famous phrase time times and half a time I am convinced that this phrase is to be seen as numerically equivalent to 3 and 1/2 in its duration and that duration could be expressed in hours days months years whatever however it's fair to ask why the Bible would even use such a puzzling and ambiguous phrase as a time times and half a time instead of just saying three and a half and in our previous lesson I offered the possibility that it was because of biblical numerology what I mean by that is that since numbers have a symbolic meaning in the Bible then when God wants to express an amount or a quantity or a duration of something in terms that do not have that same symbolic meaning then it can't be expressed using using actual numbers it can't use numerical digits it has to be expressed with a word description so while the number three and a half has the symbolic meaning of imperfection or the lack of wholeness the word description a time times and half a time doesn't have that same symbolism it's three and a half even though we find in Daniel and in Revelation that it means the same duration of time as three and a half so as applied to Revelation chapter 12 which we'll get into next week when Israel goes into the desert to escape the Beast and is supernaturally protected by God for three and one-half years also expressed as 1260 days same amount of time we're not to take that time period as meaning something that is symbolically incomplete symbolically imperfect therefore the number three and a half is avoided and instead instead is substituted with the word description a time times and half a time even so I want to make it clear that this is my personal assertion I cannot say with absolute certainty that this is why the number three and a half at times is expressed in words as a time times and half a time I'm gonna have to let you be the judge about that so chapter 11 opened with John being handed a measuring rod an ancient measuring tape and it was in order to measure a new temple now I pointed out that this temple was not the so-called Millennial temple that will be built after the war of Armageddon the temple that Christ will occupy for a thousand years it's not that temple that he's measuring rather the temple being measured is what I label the Third Temple it's the one that will be built possibly in our time to replace Herod's temple which was the second temple that one that the Romans destroyed and to this day has not yet been rebuilt it is the temple that the Antichrist will encourage to be built but later he will enter it defile it and declare that it is a temple meant to glorify himself and we're also meant to notice that there will be an enormous outer court called the court of the Gentiles because just as it was with Herod's temple Gentiles will be encouraged to come and gaze and awe at this amazing structure even though they're not allowed to near to the holy sanctuary and while on the surface such a thing as a court of the Gentiles seems like a fair reasonable practical thing to include in this new temple complex this is not adhering to the biblical pattern Gentiles which in the Bible by definition means non worshippers of the God of Israel are not supposed to be allowed into the temple complex it's only for Israelites so right off the bat we see that even the architectural design of this next temple the temple that's coming folks we may see this built with our own eyes the architectural design of the next temple is going to go against God and the pattern he laid down now we end in our last lesson with the introduction of these two mysterious witnesses who are sent by God to prophesy and we learned that they will be supernaturally protected for 1260 days three and a half years before they're finally killed so that's where we're gonna begin this week so turn your Bibles to Revelation chapter 11 Revelation chapter 11 we are going to begin at verse 3 if you have a complete Jewish Bible the page is 1542 one five four two we're gonna start at verse three of Revelation chapter 11 we'll read now we'll read it all the way to the end also I gave power to my two witnesses and they will prophesy for 1,260 days dressed in sackcloth now these are the two olive trees and the two menorahs standing before the Lord of the earth and if anyone tries to do them harm fire comes out of their mouth and consumes their enemies yes if anyone tries to harm them that's how he must die they have the authority to shut up the sky so that no rain falls during the period of the prophesy also they have the authority to turn the waters into blood to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they want and when they finish their witnessing the Beast will come up out of the abyss will fight against them overcome them and kill them and their dead bodies will lie in the main street of the great city whose name to reflect its spiritual condition is Sodom in Egypt it's the city where their Lord was executed on a stake some from the nations tribes languages and people see their bodies for three and a half days and do not permit the corpses to be placed in tomb the people living in the land rejoice over them they celebrate they send each other gifts because these two prophets tormented them so but after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them they stood upon their feet and great fear fell on those who saw them then the two heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them come up here and they went up into heaven and a cloud while their enemies watched them in that hour there was a great earthquake a tenth of the city collapsed seven thousand people will care were killed in the earthquake the rest were awestruck and they gave glory to the God of heaven the second woe was passed see the third woe was coming quickly and the seventh angel sounded his shofar or his trumpet and there were loud voices in heaven saying the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord in his Messiah and he will rule for ever and ever and the twenty-four elders sitting on their Thrones and God's presence fell on their faces and worshipped God saying oh we thank you out and I God of heavens armies the one who is and was that you have taken your power and have begun to rule the or the nation's raged but now your rage has come the time for the dead to be judged the time for rewarding your servants the prophets and your holy people those who stand in awe of your name both small and great it's also time for destroying those who destroy the earth then the temple of God in heaven was opened and the Ark of the Covenant was seen in his temple and there were flashes of lightning and voices and peals of thunder and earthquake and violent hail that's quite a scene admit so the Lord is going to send two witnesses to prophesy for 1260 days now they're going to be dressed in sack cloth and they're to be identified as the two olive trees and the two menorahs lamp stands that stand before the Lord of the earth they have been given the ability to essentially protect themselves much like mythical dragons do they breathe fire and they kill those who threaten them they have the ability to stop the rain from falling to turn water into blood and to strike the earth with plagues and we're gonna spend some time with this and add to what we discussed about them in our previous lesson now to understand the substance of these two prophets and even to get a handle on who or what they are we must refer to the Tanakh the Old Testament therefore last week we looked at passages from Deuteronomy Zechariah and 1st and 2nd Kings we found that numerical the numerical symbolism of their being two witnesses has to do with the law about bringing someone to trial for a capital offense it is that either two or three witnesses are required to give testimony against the accused in this case we actually have three witnesses God plus the two witnesses who are the accused humanity all of it all of us we find in those Old Testament Scriptures that Elijah brought down fire upon those who would harm him in and he stopped the rain it is important that we remember that the rain was stopped for how long by Elijah three and a half years as the amount of time and what it symbolizes is central to end times activities in Revelation and it was Moses of course who struck the land of Egypt with plagues and he turned the water to blood so there's a lot of similarity between these two witnesses and Elijah and Moses and in the case of both men the purpose for their destructive activities was so that people would turn from their sin which at that time was mainly idolatry and instead they would seek God so the mention of these two witnesses who are prophets wearing sackcloth is to connect them with the Old Testament prophets who wore sack cloth as a sign of mourning over the Israelites whom they were prophesying against their prophecy as with most prophets was condemning Israel for their rebellion and their sin the hope was for repentance and the mourning garments the prophets wore and that the two witnesses will wear will wear are therefore related to repentance mourning and repentance are related so who are these two witnesses that place a critical role in the end times events and exactly when do they appear now these two questions are enormous in their impact on in times doctrines and on the in times timeline of events so as you might imagine the answers to these two critical questions vary all over the map mostly according to which denomination one belongs to the answers to these questions are so meaningful that we're going to spend quite a bit of time with them so here we go I believe the best place to start is to go back in time to the earliest of the church fathers those church fathers who commented on the question of the identity of these two witnesses and what they might symbolize so I'm just gonna summarize for you the positions of various of the early church fathers drawing heavily from the ancient Christian commentary on scripture to do so not times I'll quote at other times I'll paraphrase paraphrase rather just for the sake of expediency alright occu mineus who lived in the 900s ad himself drew heavily on the recorded thoughts of the earliest church fathers from the 2nd and 3rd centuries and he had this to say about the identity of the two witnesses just as the coming of Christ in humiliation was announced by John the Baptist so his coming in the glory of the father will be announced by Elijah and Enoch so the assertion is that these two witnesses of Revelation are Elijah and Enoch and their primary purpose why are they here is to announce the second coming of Messiah his return however Hippolyta's writing around 200 ad in other words not much more than a hundred years after John wrote down his visions in a revelation adds this it may be however that John also will return at the end along with Elijah and Nina he's referring to John the Baptist not John the Apostle he was right in the book but he acknowledges that he thinks these two witnesses are Elijah and Enoch victorious and the mid 200s ad wrote in his commentary on Revelation or instead of John it will be the Prophet Jeremiah who along with Elijah returns to announce the Lord's coming Victor anise then things the two witnesses two witnesses will be Elijah and Jeremiah so we see that when these early church fathers attempted to identify the two witnesses it was a foregone conclusion that Elijah was going to be one of them although the other one was not agreed upon unanimously and yet others of the Church Fathers saw things quite differently Tyko Gnaeus writing in the late 300s ad says the two witnesses symbolize as well the two Testaments by which God governs in rules his church so to Tycho Gnaeus the two witnesses are just figurative of the old and new testaments and by the way the new testament that he's referring to the other testament had only been in existence about a hundred and fifty years or so by his day it was new also notice how Tycho Gnaeus equally honored the old and new testaments and unlike the modern church he saw the Old Testament as fully in in the end times fully now Treme seus who lived in the mid 500s ad said this the two witnesses are said to be two olive trees and two lampstands because they represent the one church which is formed from the two peoples of the Jews and the Gentiles and is illuminated by the two Testaments which pour the oil of knowledge into the church so prime a seus like Tycho Gnaeus view the two witnesses as symbolic and figurative but we also have in prometheus and very early church father who acknowledges that the Jews are every bit as much a part of the church as our Gentiles and who agrees with Tycho Gnaeus that both the old and the New Testaments remain as divine illumination for the church what an amazingly different attitude some of these early church fathers had about the inclusion of Jews and the continuing relevance of the Old Testament than what we hear from the pulpits today and how far away modern Christian thoughts can be from those of the earliest church leaders who were closest in history to the time of the Jewish Christ and the Jewish apostles essentially sad to say the modern church is attempting to rewrite Bible history to its liking mostly to frankly to appease who the world to appease the world and yet even in the time of the earliest church fathers we see them separating the institution of the Church from its Hebrew heritage because Tycho Gnaeus also says this all that God had done for the church he has given to the church therefore the church has the power of binding and loosing so that she can cause the rain of blessing to cease to fall upon the earth so while this is not quite replacement theology it smacks of an attitude that these two witnesses are all about the Gentile church a church that operates on the assumption that even though Jews are part of it their conversion to Christianity means they are less Jewish and more Gentile like than their non believing Jewish brothers now occu mineus commenting on the supernatural power that was given to these two witnesses says that similarly at the end of times God will give great power to his two prophets for they will promote truth and light by signs and wonders even as the Antichrist by false signs advances the cause of deceit and darkness so now we're starting to deal with the win of the two witnesses and occu mineus says that the two witnesses will operate as prophets of truth and light during the same time period that the Antichrist will be operating as a false prophet of Lies and darkness that is the two witnesses and the Antichrist he says will appear simultaneously Hippolyta's writes the preaching of the two witnesses will be met with great resistance by the Antichrist who will exalt himself and glorify himself as God so Hippolyta's anak you mineus agree that the two witnesses and the Antichrist are contemporaries they'll be there at the same time but Hippolyta's also thinks this yet tradition says that the Antichrist will arise by God's allowance from the tribe of Dan and hence from the iniquitous hearts of the Jews so here we have firm evidence that early on some segments of the Gentile Church formed a doctrine that the Antichrist would be a Jew specifically from the tribe of Dan and this because in their view Jews hearts were incorrigibly simple and on yet another aspect of this section in rebel of Revelation chapter 11 occu menea seconds that the Jerusalem of the Antichrist will be seen as Sodom and Egypt because it will enslave and abuse the servants of Christ and will be noted for its licentiousness the term servants of Christ are referring to believers in general who apparently are still on earth so there we have a pretty good all-around picture of what early Gentile church fathers thought about these two witnesses but now let's go back and examine the Scriptures ourselves and see what conclusions we can draw and Malachi 3:23 in the complete Jewish Bible or four or five and other English translations we read this look I will send to you LEL Elijah the Prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day about an I let me repeat that Malachi the prophet says I will send to you Elijah the Prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord it is because of this prophetic passage that Jews look for Elijah to appear in the future whereupon he will announce the arrival of a messiah much of Judaism believes Elijah will come on Passover so that is why is traditional to set an extra place setting at the Passover table just in case Elijah shows up nonetheless it is beyond doubt that this passage and Malachi plainly says that prior to the great and terrible day of the Lord Judgment Day Elijah the Prophet will come to herald it and in light of that it is no wonder that the early church fathers more or less agreed with the Jews and said that one of these two witnesses has to be Elijah now when you add in the reference to fire to stopping of rain for three and a half years he is prophesying it's hard to argue against such a conclusion now another reason that many say one of the witnesses must be Elijah is because he didn't die rather he was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind they see this as important because in the book of Hebrews we read this in Hebrews 9:27 just as human beings have to die one but after this comes judgment that's the statement Warren is more familiar form that we find in the in the King James Version as that is appointed unto men once to die but after this the judgment however it is my opinion that this statement about all humans dying once is all about professing what comes immediately following that I just read to you from Hebrews 9:27 here's 928 so also the Messiah having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time not to deal with sin but to deliver those who are eerily awaiting him so the idea is this just as humans have to die once so also the Messiah dies once but he dies once to bear the sins for everyone he doesn't have to die an individual death for each person who trusts him his one-time death for all on the cross is sufficient however for humans after we die a day of judgment will come but Messiah will not have a day of judgment after he dies he will come again fully alive in order to deliver those humans who wait for him to come the point being that the author of Hebrews a speaking of the obvious fact the humans have to die once there's no escape from it the idea is not to make death a hard-and-fast spiritual principle rather it is a self-evident general rule of all flesh human or animal that death comes to all creatures period end and yet there are notable exceptions and Elijah was one of them but even so this statement in Hebrews does not imply that if a human like Elijah is translated into heaven to avoid his physical death that at some point God must return that human to earth so that person can die since all humans are appointed ones to die that's not what is trying to say ok let me give you another obvious example that death will not be required of all humans it's not a spiritual principle the rapture how about that the standard Christian belief about the rapture is not that there will be a sudden mass worldwide death and then all at once believer souls will kind of crowd their way into heaven rather it is that in some instantaneous painless non traumatic way will shed these fragile bodies on earth and just appear in heaven don't ask me how that is raptured believers will avoid physical death that's the point in fact the avoidance of death and pain and anguish is supposed to be the whole point of the rapture so assuming that's the case then there will be countless millions that because of rapture will not die once as appointed as disappointed All Humans and there is nothing said in the scriptures that those believers who are raptured away and escaped death have to be sent back in a while so that they can die once that's the point of that little cartoon that you see there the issue of the Hebrews the book of Hebrews statement of humans having to die once plays a role for some people in trying to identify the two witnesses because they insist we have to find some Old Testament characters who didn't die why because the two witnesses of Revelation do die after three and a half years of prophesying and thus if they died before then they're disqualified because we find them dying again see the point see I think this entire notion is a red herring and it throws us completely off track so indeed one of the two witnesses could be Elijah because we have scripture says saying that he will appear before Judgment Day and because the description of what the witness can supernaturally do are exactly what Elijah did when he was alive and of course while turning water to blood and striking the ground with plagues exactly fits Moses some say well it can't be Moses why he died he died once however I think there's another clue about the identity of these two witnesses that we shouldn't overlook Matthew 17 Matthew 17 verses 1 through 13 I'll read it to you 6 days later Yeshua took caifa Peter Yakko that's Jane and his brother John and led them up to a high mountain privately and as they watched he began to change form his face shone like the Sun his clothing became as white as lightened then they looked and they saw Moses and Elijah speaking with him and Peter said to you oh oh it's good that we're here Lord I'll put up three shelters if you want one for you one for Moses and one for Elijah and while he was still speaking a bright cloud enveloped them and a voice from the cloud said this is my son whom I love with whom I'm well pleased listen to him and when the disciples heard this they were so frightened they fell facedown on the ground but Yeshua came and touched them he said get up don't be afraid so they opened their eyes looked up and saw only Yeshua by himself and as they came down the mountain Yeshua ordered them don't tell anyone which you had seen until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead and the disciples asked him well then why do the Torah teachers say that Elijah must come first and he answered on the one hand and follow me now on the one hand Elijah is coming and he will restore all things but on the other hand I tell you that our Elijah has already come and people did not recognize him but did whatever they pleased to him in the same way the Son of Man 2 is about to suffer at their hands then the disciples understood he was talking to them about John the Baptist first what's the significance of Elijah Moses and Yeshua while appearing together it is to show the unity of God's Word Elijah is the chief of all prophets Moses is the chief of the Torah and the law and Yeshua is the Messiah that the prophets and the Torah together point to in Christian terms we have the chief representatives of the Old Testament together with the chief representative of the New Testament if the law and the prophets were dead and gone and no longer relevant but only the New Testament had relevance then it makes no sense to have the three chief representatives dialoguing together in front of the disciples for a show of unity second now when Yeshua swears to secrecy his disciples who witnessed is amazing sane they were confused so they asked why then why does the Torah do the Torah teachers say that Elijah must come first and Yahshua replies with a statement that initially baffles the disciples but then they get it it is that Elijah is coming in two different sentences the first sense is that he's coming in the future the second sense is he's already come but people hadn't recognized the disciples then understood the past tense sense of his coming as a symbolically meaning John the Baptist bottom line Alijah indeed is going to come in the future right from the mouth of Christ and according to the Prophet Malachi and it will be to announce the judgement of humankind on the day of the Lord so I agree with several of the early church fathers that one of those two witnesses must be Elijah must be and with less evidence I also think the other witness will be Moses because the descriptions are just so strikingly familiar and similar and because they both appeared with Christ at the Transfiguration that said some believe it could be two men are very similar in kind to Elijah and Moses these men will be otherwise regular normal human beings living during the time of the end but they will be empowered by God to do very similar things as Elijah and Moses did yet to that possibility I think some words in a revelation 11 for make it highly unlikely let revelation 11 for these are the two olive trees and two menorahs standing before the Lord of the earth the key word is standing the two witnesses are here described figuratively as being the two olive trees and two menorahs and they are said to be standing before the Lord in other words the two witnesses are already in heaven with the Lord standing before him right then it would make very little sense if these two witnesses were just humans that were alive and already living on earth there the time of the Antichrist because they could not possibly have also been standing before the Lord in heaven as the two olive trees and two menorahs I add the caveat that since this is unfulfilled prophecy I can't be a hundred percent sure of my interpretations or identification so I'm not at all dogmatic about it and my advice is for you to not be dogmatic about it either now I want to point on a couple of facts before we move along it would be accurate I think to say that the last prophet in the Bible is the Apostle John who wrote down his divine visions into the work we call the book of Revelation and I state pretty confidently there have been no divinely ordained prophets appearing to God's people since John even though thousands literally thousands maybe millions of Christians have anointed themselves as prophets therefore the next divinely ordained prophet to appear in history are going to be these two witnesses appearing together and who better than the chief of prophets Elijah and Moses who was also a prophet the once famously said in Deuteronomy add this to the mix to Deuteronomy 18 for these nations which you are about to dis possess listen to soothsayers and diviners but you Adonai your God does not allow you to do this I don't I will raise up for you a prophet like me from among yourselves from your own kinsmen you're to pay attention to him just as when you were assembled at rev that was Moses speaking so now let's move on to revelation 11 verse 7 there we read that when the two witnesses have finished their witnessing the beast comes up from the abyss who will fight against them and he will kill them now we learned back in chapter 9 that this abyss is not the grave but rather it is the realm of unclean rebellious demons so the Beast very special demon is probably Satan himself or perhaps the spirit of Satan I offer that alternative only because when speaking of God we can also speak of the Spirit of God the Ruach and not necessarily mean God the Father even though they are have had their one their fully unified another possibility is that this is speaking of the Antichrist who kills the two witnesses because the spirit of Satan the beast inhabits the Antichrist somewhere within that sphere of thought that the Beast is satanic and probably the chief demon Satan it becomes personified in the Antichrist is where the reality of all this lies but why are the two witnesses killed think about this why are they killed who wants them dead the answer lies in what happened to the prophets of old it was their job to take a message of warning and or of reproval or even condemnation from God to certain groups of rebellious Israelites and the unusual reaction was for these rebellious Israelites to try to kill the Prophet why because people don't want to hear that they're doing wrong people want their sin affirmed is good people don't want to hear the truth if it rebukes their lifestyle if it deprives them of something they want people get angry when they're told they're behaving wickedly coupled with the fact that these witnesses are empowered to shut off the rain to turn water to blood to bring on unnamed plagues no doubt they're gonna do these things why else would they be given the power so people are gonna hate them desperately want to see them dead but notice that even though even through all this hatred against them they survive because their God appointed period of prophesying was not yet up their mission and therefore their lifespans could not be interrupted could not be arrested until their purpose and life was completed no doubt many will attempt to stop their teaching their prophesying their destructive actions by killing them but they're gonna fail and in most cases they will be killed by the fire that these two witnesses bellow from their mouths what were they prophesying about no doubt about the sins of mankind and the end there was just days or weeks away and also of the good news of salvation in Yeshua where were they prophesying verse eight says they were prophesying in the city where their Lord was executed on a stake it can be no other than Jerusalem no doubt the people that were being spoken to were primarily the Jewish people and since the bulk of Jews have resisted to this day of accepting their Messiah it should be no surprise that when the two witnesses show up the bent against accepting issue of Nazareth as Messiah is violence especially in view of all these catastrophic events of the seal interpret judgments that have been occurring so here we have a couple of Jews witnessing to hundreds of thousands of Jews in Jerusalem and the Jerusalemites are not happy about it certainly their prophetic oracle these two witnesses prophetic oracle was known far and wide and so many times more gentiles heard it than Jews but God chose Jerusalem in Israel to send his prophets to witness because their main concern his main concern at this time was to save as many of his chosen people as possible it pains me to no end that the holy city I have visited so many times will have by then become so spiritually degraded that to God Jerusalem Jerusalem will seem no different in its level of wickedness than Egypt and Sodom will continue in our study of revelation 11 next week [Music] you you

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Keywords: New Jerusalem, Son, Holy Spirit, Father, New Testament, John, Armageddon, Coming quickly, Millennium Reign, Seven Churches, Second Death, Tom Bradford, Jerusalem, Bible Study, Streets of Gold, Torah Class, Revelation

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Length: 54min 47sec (3287 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 20 2018