The Two Witnesses, Part 2

Revelation chapter eleven. We're just going to continue right on. We got through the first

three verses last week. Uh, kinda. And we're in this section that talks about the two witnesses.

And um, you've really, if you missed it, you're going to have to go back and check a lot of

stuff because we don't have time to catch everybody up on everything. But the short

summary is the two witnesses, they are coming and they are going to minister for 42 months,

which we said harkens back to the book of Daniel. And it really, it's symbolic for the entire

time period between Jesus' ascension and his return. And when we were talking about the two

witnesses, we were saying that there's a few different interpretations and something that

we need to reiterate this week that I said last week. You're free to hold to a different

interpretation than I hold to. That's fine because this is not a primary issue, right church?

When there's no reason to be up in arms and start throwing fists over eschatology, there's

plenty of other things to fight about. So, uh, the end times is not one of them. There are more

important issues. So you can hold to a different view. That's fine. Uh, as long as we agree on

Jesus, that's all that matters. But the most common view today, if you'll remember, we said,

the most common view today says that the two witnesses are going to come at some point in

the future and they refer to two literal people. Now, there were different suggestions. Some

people say Elijah and Moses. Some people say Elijah and Enoch. And if you'll remember, the view

that I put forward is to say that it's actually not referring to two individual people who are

going to come at some point in the future, but that the two witnesses refers to the church as a

whole and that it's referring to the ministry of the church during the time between Jesus'

ascension and his return. And the big question was, well, uh, why, why are they referred to as

two witnesses then? If this refers to the whole church, then why does it say two? And the reason

is because it's referring back to the Old Testament where the Old Testament said, in order for a

testimony to be believable and trustworthy, it had to be established by how many witnesses? Two.

And so this is just Revelation's way of saying the testimony of the church regarding Jesus and the

gospel is a reliable, trustworthy witness. It is a reliable testimony that should be believed.

That's, that's what the point is here. And we listed a bunch of other reasons for believing that it's,

it's not referring to two literal people. Another primary reason was that they're referred to as

the two lampstands. And we said all throughout Scripture, in every single place, the word lampstand

is used, and I looked at every single one that occurs in Scripture, it always refers to either a

literal lampstand or the church and nothing else. There's no in between. It never once refers to an

individual person or anything like that. It always refers to a literal lampstand or the church. And

even earlier in the book of Revelation in chapter one, Jesus said that the lampstands are the churches.

The churches are the lampstands. The lampstands are the churches. Since we're still in the same book

inspired by the same God, written with human hands by the same author, we should defer to that

interpretation that the lampstands refer to the church. And so there were like five other reasons,

but you'll have to go back and listen to that lesson on our website. So here's something I

want to do now, right? We're looking at the two witnesses and I've just put before you a view

that probably a lot of people haven't heard of before. And here's what I know happens, human

tendency, whenever we're confronted with a view that's different from our own or a view that

we're not familiar with, we have a tendency to be pretty skeptical, right? So I haven't heard it

that way before. That's not the way I've always been told. I've always believed something different.

And listen, again, that's fine. But what I want you to understand is that this is not a new

interpretation. And just because an interpretation is new to you, or no longer the common view,

does not mean that it's new to the church. In fact, this might surprise you. This view that the two

witnesses refers to the entirety of God's people who will be a witness for the Lord throughout the

entire church age, it was the very first view of the church. It was the very first understanding of

this passage from the church. And it was the majority of you for centuries and centuries

and centuries in the church. You have to remember Revelation was written in the 90s.

This is the 90s AD. That's when Revelation was written. I'm going to show you some examples

of early testimonies we have concerning the book of Revelation, specifically on this topic.

Arguably the most important one, Irenaeus. He was the Bishop of Leone, and he was ministering in

the 100s AD. So this is very, very early second century. And again, Revelation was written in

the 90s. In the 100s AD, Irenaeus, Bishop of Leone, he actually wrote concerning the two witnesses

in Revelation. He wrote about this in a book, a famous book, Great Read. It's called Against

Heresies. If you ever want to read it, it's free online, public domain. But he wrote, this was

just years, years after Revelation was written by John through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

And Irenaeus said this about the two witnesses. He said, the two witnesses are God's covenant people

encompassing both covenants and that their ministry is the church's witness until the time

of Christ's return. Isn't that interesting? This is the earliest extra biblical work about the

book of Revelation that we have. And this is the earliest person we have commenting on the book

of Revelation. And his view was not, it's referring to two literal people who were coming back.

This was a man who was living shortly after the Apostle John, who was friends with the Apostle

John's disciples. And he says it was referring to the church and their ministry. But not only that,

you can go into, again, early second century and beginning into the third century. But

second century, you have a man named Tertullian. And Tertullian had this majority view as well,

that the two witnesses were God's people who bear witness to Christ and the gospel until

the return of Christ. Now, this also continued into the third century with a man named Origin.

You might have heard of him before. Yeah, he was very famous. They said that he was the most brilliant

biblical scholar that the early church ever produced. And in the 200s AD, so this is early

third century, a little over 100 years after Revelation was written, Origin, like Irenaeus

and Tertullian, interpreted the two witnesses as the church. And he said that their prophesying

was the ongoing witness of the church that continues until Christ returned. You have the

same thing with Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage in 200 AD, except he added this little clarification,

this little unique contribution of his to stress the importance of the unity of believers

in fulfilling the witness that they're supposed to carry out on the behalf of Christ through this age.

Another church father in the third century, you can see up there, Victorinus of Patal. He was the

Bishop of Poetovia. Poetovia never even heard of that place, but that's where he was. And he was

the Bishop there. And he also held to this view with the added clarification that the death and

resurrection of the two witnesses, the church, represents the persecution and the eventual

vindication of God's faithful people. This clearly shows that this view was the majority view held

by the early church, at least through the first three centuries of the church. You get into the

fourth century of Ambrose of Milan, he also held to this view. And honestly, we could just keep going

on and on through Augustine and others and things like that. The point of this is that even though

this view might be unfamiliar to you, it is not unfamiliar to the church. And I think that's something

we have to keep in mind because we have this tendency in the church today to find a lot of

comfort in what we've always been told and the way that we've always been told it. And we hold

on to that. And then when you actually start looking back through church history and say, well,

how did the early church interpret this? How did the people who were closest in time to

Jesus and his apostles and even their disciples, how did they understand this passage? Because

Irenaeus, he was very close friends with Polycarp. Polycarp was a disciple of John. And he was

associated with John. Many people tried to actually include Polycarp's writing in the

Bibles, but the Bible, they said, this is not actually inspired. But they were the ones who

were learning from John, who wrote the book of Revelation under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

So they had a little more insight than we do today. We're very far removed. They were right there.

So all this is to say that the majority view today was not the majority view of the early church.

And with this view that you have two literal people who were coming back at some point in time,

it rose into popularity a little later. But something else we need to address with this,

if you're looking in Revelation chapter 11, and it's talking about the two witnesses, the common

Revelation 11 · chapter mention

view today, remember, it says that these is referring to two literal people who will come back at

some point in time. And they'll say, you know, Elijah and Moses or Elijah and Enoch, Elijah and Enoch

are usually the two biggest suggestions. And we run into an interesting problem.

You see, the reason that people suggest Elijah and Enoch, we said this last week, do you remember

the reason? Why do they say it has to be Elijah and Enoch? They never died. So you run into what I

called the 927 problem, all right, specifically Hebrews 927 is on. Could you put that on the screen?

Here's this very interesting problem. The Bible says in Hebrews 927, and just as it is appointed

for man to die once, and after that comes the judgment. So the people who hold to this view,

they say, well, it has to be Elijah and Enoch, because the Bible says man must die once Elijah

and Enoch did not die. Therefore, they have to return in order to fulfill what God is saying

they will do here and have, you know, the ability to die since the Lord took them before their

deaths. And at first glance, it seems like a serious problem to this other view, right?

Like, I mean, you look at this, the Bible says you got to die once they never died makes a lot of

sense. So they need to come back and die, right? Seems like a very serious problem at first, but

it's only a problem if you interpret Hebrews 927 very rigidly. And I think that we have good reason

not to interpret it rigidly. So interpret it truthfully, but not rigidly. And here's why I say

that because the verse clearly says there, it's been appointed for man to die once. Yes, we all

see it, we all agree. Here's the problem. Many people throughout history have died more than once.

Right? I mean, there are plenty of examples. For instance, the widow son in 1 Kings 17 died,

but then Elijah brought him back to life. Now the same thing applies for the widow son in 2 Kings

4, whom Elisha brought back to life. Jairus' daughter in Mark chapter 5, whom Jesus brought back to life.

Mark 5 · chapter mention

Widow's son in Luke 7, Jesus brought him back to life. Lazarus, you all remember Lazarus, Jesus

brought him back to life after he died. Dorcas died, and then Peter brought Dorcas back to life.

And then there's the funniest one, which is Uticus. Y'all remember Uticus? Don't tell me you forgot

about Uticus. He's the one who fell out of the window. Paul preached such a boring sermon, the guy

fell out of a window and died. How do y'all forget that? If someone died during one of my sermons,

I wouldn't forget. He fell out of a window and he died. And then Paul goes down, it's like I wasn't

done preaching. He brings it back to life. I mean, can you imagine you die out of falling out of

window? Paul says, you're not done listening. But all these people, here's the point. All of these

people, they died once, and then through the power of God working through some human, they were brought

back to life. But here's the thing, they eventually died again, right? So they didn't die just once.

It's been appointed for man to die once. If we're going to interpret that literally and rigidly,

it means man must only die once. However, if we're not so rigid with it, then you don't have to believe

that. The second reason I don't think that we should interpret it rigidly is because not everyone

is going to die, right? I mean, we got to be very careful with this. If we say that this is rigid

and literal and it must be the case, well, the problem is it's not going to be the case because

there are many, many people who will never die. For instance, if we are so fortunate, we might be

alive when Jesus returns. If Jesus returns before we die, will we ever die? No, we'll be escorted to

heaven. We'll go to the judgment throne of God and then we'll be with him forever and ever and ever,

and we will never be touched by death. So there are some people who will never die. So when you

look at this, this is why I always tell people, scripture interprets scripture. You read this and

you go, okay, it might be literal, it might be rigid, maybe only, everybody only dies once, but then

you look at the Bible and the whole testimony of scripture says, well, many people have died

more than once and many people will never die. That does not, I want you to understand something,

that does not take away from the truthfulness of what this verse says. Do y'all follow me on this?

This verse is true. It is just not rigid. This is not meant to be rigid. It's meant to be a general

principle. The Bible is saying here in Hebrews 9.27 that generally speaking, death comes for all.

For some, it comes multiple times. I mean, you've heard the stories even today of people dying and

then being brought back to life through our modern technologies. I mean, praise God for that. And you

know that when Jesus returns, the people who are alive will never die. This is saying generally speaking,

it has been appointed that death is mankind's end and after that comes the judgment of God. So in

other words, when you understand it like that and understand that it's a general thing, we don't need

to interpret this rigidly and because of that, it's not an actual problem for the view that the two

witnesses are the church, nor does this verse suggest that Enoch and Elijah have to come back

because they do not. If, yeah, if you, the only way you get there is if that's rigid, but since

that's rigid, not rigid, then Enoch and Elijah do not have to come back. Generally speaking, all

people will die and that will be their end. And so with that all said, trying to move past the two

witnesses and their identities, we can get into their ministry very quickly. I want you to look

at Revelation 11 verses four through six. This is going to describe the ministry of the two witnesses.

So the Bible says these are the two olive trees, meaning again, a reference back to Zechariah.

They're the ones anointed by God to carry out his ministry here. They're the two lampstands,

that's referring to the church and they stand before the Lord of the earth. And if anyone would

harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes. If anyone would harm them, this is

how he is doomed to be killed. They have the power to shut the sky that no rain may fall during the

days of their prophesying. And they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to

strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they desire. Now it's important to note

here that there's a lot of symbolic language being used and I want you to notice how it revolves

around our mouths and our speech. Did you notice this? Fire comes from the mouth and then the

witnesses use their mouths to prophesy and to call down certain judgments from God. And so what this

does is this actually representing the church preaching a message of judgment upon a people

who refused to repent of their sins and turn to Christ. In other words, we don't need to interpret

this literally as fire literally coming from their mouth. That's not what's being pictured here. You

could picture that and you know what? The Lord could make it happen, but I don't think it's necessary

here. This is not saying that fire is literally going to come from their mouth. It's a reference to

the judgment because fire is associated with God's judgment. And so it means that the message of

salvation in Christ, if rejected, becomes a message of judgment upon those who reject it and it

anticipates the final judgment. And here's the thing. Fire has already been used in the Bible in

this exact way. Alright, so the reference Jeremiah chapter 5 verse 14. This is what the Bible says.

Jeremiah 5:14

Jeremiah 5 14. I want you to notice the similarities here. Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of

hosts, because you have spoken this word, behold, I am making my words in your mouth a fire. And this

people would and the fire shall consume them. Was God saying that the words in Jeremiah's mouth

were literally going to become fire or that he was literally going to turn people to wood? And then

the words that Jeremiah spoke being fire would literally burn them up. No, it's a picture of

judgment. God was saying, I've given you a message to proclaim and they have refused to repent. They

have refused to turn from their evil sinful ways. They've refused to turn to me. And so now you're

going to preach a message of judgment and that judgment is going to be so severe and so fast

coming upon them that it will be like a fire consuming wood. Your words will burn them up like

a fire consumes wood. That's the idea here. That's what John is communicating to us in the book of

Revelation. He's saying the message of Christ is salvation to all who would repent and believe.

But notice it's also a message of judgment to those who reject the gospel and refuse to repent

and believe. I mean, the book of Revelation uses this imagery all the time, right? I mean, do you

remember what Jesus has coming out of his mouth? A sword. Are we supposed to believe that when

Jesus comes back, there will be a literal sword coming out of his mouth? No. The sword is a picture

of God's word, which we read about in Hebrews chapter four, where the Bible is likened to a

double-edged sword. It's saying that Jesus has this message of judgment for all those who have

refused to repent and believe in him. And so that's what they're saying here. It's not a

literal fire. It's referring to the effects of God's judgment upon those who refuse to believe.

And then notice it also describes some other things. He describes the two witnesses shutting up the

sky so that no rain falls and turning water to blood and calling down the plagues. And when he

does this, he's alluding to the judgment ministries of Elijah and Moses, like we talked about last

week. You remember Elijah had a ministry of judgment for three and a half years in which he

prayed that the Lord would shut up the sky and it would not rain. And that's exactly what happened.

God honored that prayer because he honors the prayer of a righteous person. The Bible tells us.

And then you remember that Moses had a ministry of judgment as well. Where was his ministry of

judgment? What was his? That's right. Yeah. When he was in Egypt and God sent him to be the one to

deliver the people of Egypt and Pharaoh would not let God's people go. And so God gave Moses the

ability to pronounce the plagues upon Egypt. And that's exactly what Moses did. It was a ministry

of judgment. He was saying God through Moses saying because you refuse to let God's people go,

here's what's going to happen to you. Here's the judgment of God upon you. Well, John, by the

inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is making that connection and saying that the ministry of judgment

is the ministry of the church now takes up. That our ministry as the people of God is like that of

Moses and Elijah. That God's judgment is coming. And we don't like that, do we? We want to be the

churches that go around saying, hey, God loves you and he does. And God just wants what's best for

you and he does. Turns out that's not what you want. We want to be happy, go lucky and have the

feelings and like, oh, yeah, everything's all nice and rainbows and sunshine all the time. But you

read the Bible and that's just not the case. That's not who God's called us to be. Yes, we tell people

God loves them. Yes, we tell them that there is salvation in Christ, but we're leaving out the

ramifications. And that's a detriment to the world and to the church. Do we understand that today?

I mean, this is why you hear some churches, they never mentioned sin in their church at all.

How do you repent if there's no mention of sin? There's no calling someone out and saying, this

is wrong. These things are wrong. These things are sinful. These things will send you to hell. Your

heart is corrupted. Your heart is wicked and dead in sin and you need a new one and you can't do

anything about that. You need the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. This is why you have no

churches today. Almost no church is preaching the complete message of the gospel. We want to

hang up ourselves on the good news, but here's the thing. Good news is only good if you understand

the bad news, right? That's right. Sinners in the hands of an angry God. People avoid that,

but it's one of the greatest sermons ever written where Jonathan Edwards literally described humanity

as God holding a spider's web and humanity was like a spider dangling above an open flame.

And at any point, God could just open his fingers and it is nothing but the pure mercy and grace

of God that keeps his fingers closed. He described it as people walking over rickety

wooden floorboards and underneath there's a fire raging and at any second those floorboards could

break or God could just pull the whole floor apart and Jonathan Edwards said it is nothing but the

mere mercy of God that keeps you out of hell any one second. And we don't think like that anymore,

do we? Sinners love their sin. They pursue their sin. They see nothing wrong with their sin. They

give themselves their sin and they think, I'm just going to go on living forever. And some people,

I've got this in a sermon coming up so I won't preach the whole thing, but let me get going.

Some people think, well, I'll just do it one day, you know? I'm just, I'm going to live how I want

now. I'm going to enjoy certain things. I'm going to live up my life and do all these things. And

then, but one day, one day I'll get my life together. I'll do the Christian thing then. I'll do Jesus

on my deathbed. And the thing is, you don't understand that at any moment you could die.

And when you die, that is it. It is nothing but the mere mercy of God that keeps sinners out of

hell for any one second. In order to appreciate the good news of Jesus Christ coming into this world

to save us from our sins, you have to understand the bad news. One of the biggest problems in the

church today is we are not telling people the bad news. We go around sugarcoating it for people

so they don't feel bad about themselves. Hey, you're not that bad. You can just clean a few things up.

You get right in here. When in reality, the Bible says no, actually, you are an enemy of God.

A son, a child of disobedience and darkness. You belong to the prince of the power of the air.

The Bible says you are dead in your sins. You are an enemy of God. You have no goodness in you at

all. You can produce no goodness in and of yourself. You are hopeless to save yourself. And because of

your sin, you deserve an eternity in hell and during the wrath of God forever because you

have sinned against the holiness of God. And since God is eternal, he is eternally holy. And to offend

the holiness of God warrants an eternity in hell. That is your situation. And there's not a thing you

can do about it. When you understand that, how good is it to hear, but Christ has already done it?

Isn't that so much sweeter and so much better? You tell people, hey, Jesus died for you. They say,

great, I've heard that before. You tell people where they actually stand before a holy God whose

mind cannot be changed and his will cannot be thwarted. And then you tell them, but Christ has

already done the work for you. That changes things. That's when you can really appreciate the good news.

What the Bible is calling us to do here as the two witnesses whose message, whose testimony

is trustworthy, unbelievable, and reliable, he is calling us to be bold witnesses for Christ.

Not to change the gospel, not to soften its offense, but to proclaim with boldness the entire

gospel message that if you will repent and believe and trust in Christ, you will certainly be saved

from your sins. You will never experience the wrath of God and you will be safe and secure in the

arms of Christ. And there's not a thing the enemy can do about that. But you also have to warn them

too, church. That's the part we don't do. That's the part we have to do. You have to warn them if

you refuse this message. If you reject this message, if you continue in your sin and your

disobedience and you push God out of your life and you never submit to him, there is wrath coming.

And God is storing up his wrath for the day of judgment. And on that day, no one can blame him

or say that he's unjust because we are supposed to warn them. This is what they deserve. It's what

we deserved. And Christ is your only refuge. That's what this is calling us to do, to be witnesses,

reliable, trustworthy witnesses for Christ. And make sure that people know the entire gospel

message, the bad news and the good news. That's all I have for you this week, Michael Stevenson.

How about hitting us with something?