The Two Witnesses of Revelation 11

Primer on the Two Witnesses

“And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore 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 the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.” (Revelation 11:3-6)

In Revelation 11 there is a prophecy of two special witnesses of the Lord assigned a 1,260 day mission in "the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified" (Revelation 11:8).

Most prophecy experts today subscribe to the futurist model of interpreting prophecy, and accordingly take a very literal sense from that passage, expecting two literal prophets to operate for a literal 1,260 days (three and half literal years) in Jerusalem, performing miracles and commanding fiery deaths for those who oppose them, until the Antichrist comes along and kills them.

Amidst this interpretation is the common notion that these could be Enoch and Elijah, or even John the Baptist and Moses, or perhaps some other historical duo of prophets brought back again to witness in the end times.

But the Reformational historicist model eschews the superficiality of the Jesuit-concocted futurist eschatology and instead digs deeper to correctly understand the symbolism detailed in the passage.

And so, speaking from a historicist interpretive perspective, the first thing we notice aside from their title (“witnesses”) and their duality, is the duration of their commission.

That is, they are to perform a special witnessing for Christ for 1,260 prophetic days, equating to a literal 1,260 year period,¹ which is exactly the same timespan as the 42 months described in the previous verses in Revelation 11 as applying to the duration of western Europeans being dominated by apostate Christianity.

The key difference here is that the Two Witnesses’ era of action is denominated in “days” whereas the Gentiles’ era is denominated in “months” (just as the reign of the Beast from the Sea is in Revelation 13:5); as John Gill points out, the reference to months is to emphasise the darkness of the overlordship of the ungodly during those 1,260 years in contrast to the brightness of the nature and light-shedding mission of the Two Witnesses.

Note also that their mission is within the context of the era of apostate "Christians" aka "Gentiles" in the West (Revelation 11:2) and hence it is fully simultaneous with the 1,260 year era in which the outer court of Revelation 11:2 (apparent or nominal, but in actuality, apostate Christianity) is assigned to said "Gentiles", which is one and the same as the reign of the Beast from the Sea (mentioned above).

Moreover, the Two Witnesses' sphere of operation must be the same as that of the very thing they witness against, meaning, their mission is within nominal Christendom, specifically the western European realm, from the point at which the head of the western fork of the Antichurch reached apotheosis as both ecclesiastical and temporal ruler and thereby began to not just claim prerogatives that belong to Christ alone, but started to exercise them.

This happened when the Papacy became a direct temporal ruler over the three kingdoms plucked up by the roots before it as foretold in Daniel 7:8's prophecy of the "little horn" having three kingdoms delivered into its hand, under the terms of the Donation of Pepin which, though made in 756, only came to fruition in the year 765.

That development marked the opening of the Thyatira church era and the commencement of the Two Witnesses' public mission of protesting against the errors of Rome, as well as against error and iniquity in general.

Furthermore, their mission’s context is the rule of the Gentiles (Revelation 11:2) over the outer court of the "holy city" (not Jerusalem as the daft futurists say, but supposed "Christendom"), and therefore it consists of openly reproving the doctrinal errors of the apostates and publicly opposing the ensuing political claims and degrees of tyranny those rulers advance; claims such as the Papacy’s insistence on being Christ’s sole representative on earth and in being co-Mediator with Christ and appropriating for itself Christ’s temporal Kingship rights.

Plainly, then, the Two Witnesses hieroglyph symbolises the error-reproving aspect of the Lord’s people’s service in a very public, open sense and does not refer to anything as theologically offbeat as resurrected Bible prophets on a final mission.

Meanwhile, Gill, rightly points out that the 1,260 year duration of the Two Witnesses' mission is the same timespan as that assigned to the Woman (the true body of believers) in the wilderness (i.e. the spiritual wilderness) in Revelation 12:6 in the aftermath of the western Roman empire's collapse, but I argue that her arrival in the spiritual wilderness began with the Lateran Council of 769 (in which the biblical teaching of iconoclasm was castigated as "heretical"), four years after 765's fruition of the Donation of Pepin opened the Thyatria church era and the Two Witnesses' mission.

The Duality of Their Witness, Their Garb and Their Title

“...in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established” (2 Corinthians 13:1)

The duality of the witnesses references the veracity of their assertions and advocacy for Christ’s claim as exclusive Mediator between God and man, as well as His claim of Kingship rights over the nations.

In other words, their duality symbolises their compliance with God’s mandate on formally testifying to and asserting facts amidst the affairs of humanity and as such, is God’s seal of approval upon them and their mission.²

They are further said to be “clothed in sackcloth”, an obvious allusion to the garb of prophets of old such as John the Baptist, highlighting a prophetic parallelism here between John preparing the way in the literal wilderness for Christ’s literal first advent and these two symbolic witnesses preparing the way in the metaphorical wilderness for Christ’s metaphorical next advent that shall consist of His spiritual reign (the true Philadelphian church era), i.e., the Kingdom of Daniel 2:44, 7:18,22, etc., (and note, of course, that the coming Kingdom era is in turn is preparatory to Christ’s literal Second Advent).

Sackcloth might also evoke their repulsiveness to the "Gentiles", but chiefly I believe it is to underline the point that theirs is a Divinely approved mission, with the formal credibility of the duality of their number and biblical synonymity with the form of their symbolic apparel, so that whichever way we consider their mission, we cannot escape that “they shall prophesy...” (as Revelation 11:3 puts it), that is to say, they articulate and convey God’s disapproval of the spiritual condition of the apostates and nominals as well as His disapproval of almost the entirety of the aspects of rulership those ungodly people would exercise over the western nations throughout the 1,260 year period from 765 until the effective assassination of the Two Witnesses through wicked laws that came into maturity in the year 2025 in Europe and through ever-increasing on-platform censorship that gets around First Amendment rights in the US.

A final point worth considering here is the term witness itself, since it might equally be rendered “public protestor”.

Its etymology is inextricably linked to the very name the Reformers and, retrospectively, the pre-Reformation believers are described as: Protestants.

“Protestant originates from the Latin word protestari, meaning ‘declare publicly, testify, protest,’ which combines pro meaning ‘forth, before,’ and testari meaning ‘testify’."³

And that’s exactly what the Two Witnesses do: they publicly expose and formally protest (i.e. witness against) the doctrinal errors and ensuing dicta and Christ-denying of the apostate and nominal Christian party that has dominated the West for centuries.

The English Puritan theologian (and pastor to Oliver Cromwell), Thomas Goodwin, frames it thus:

“All the quarrels between the Popish party...and the witnesses, are reducible to these two heads: (1) True purity of worship; and (2) true holiness, and peculiar election of worshippers [i.e. Pelagian-Arminianism versus Calvinism]” (Thomas Goodwin in An Exposition of the Revelation (on Rev 11)).

However, it should be obvious by now that their voice had increasingly become a whisper even before the present decade's raft of legislation and police harassment to silence any public witness against sin and error, especially as the present Sardian church era nears its end. But before we examine why that is the case, we must consider additional particulars concerning the Two Witnesses.

Two Olive Trees

“These are the two olive trees...” (Revelation 11:4)

The Two Olive Trees symbolism appeared before Revelation 11 in Bible prophecy:

“And two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof.” (Zechariah 4:3)

And:

“Then answered I, and said unto him, What are these two olive trees upon the right side of the candlestick and upon the left side thereof? And I answered again, and said unto him, What be these two olive branches which through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves? [i.e. two olive branches from the olive trees which, by means of the two golden pipes, supply golden oil to the candlestick] And he answered me and said, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my lord. Then said he, These [i.e. the olive trees] are the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth”. (Zechariah 4:11-14)

I believe that the true sense of that depiction has the two olive trees representing the ministries of God’s witnessing servants, i.e., ministers of the Gospel of Grace, that supply the golden oil of sound doctrine⁴ through the instrumentalities of preaching and written exposition (the two golden pipes) to illuminate the broader body of the Lord’s people, represented by the central candlestick in that chapter of Zechariah.

The fact that there are two Olive Trees again attests to the God-mandated mission to witness, and parallels with the fact that Jesus sent out the disciples in pairs to do His service; in symbolic prophecy, therefore, the number two is, if you will, “the number of witnessing for God”.

In Zechariah 4, the emphasis of the symbolism is on the pastoral role that the Lord’s Two Witnesses have in nourishing His children, and aligns with Jesus telling the Apostle Peter, “Feed my sheep” ~ John 21:17.

However, in Revelation 11, the emphasis is contextually expanded to more than feeding the Lord’s sheep, as it were, but to protesting and repudiating the deeds, whether ecclesiastical or temporal, of the apostates and nominal members of so-called Christendom who, collectively, are described hieroglyphically in Revelation 11:2 as the "Gentiles".

Two Candlesticks

“...and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth” (Revelation 11:4)

“...the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth” (Zechariah 4:14)

To recap, the Two Olive Tree metaphor designs the Lord’s few faithful pastors, or more specifically their ministries, but we note in Revelation 11:4 that the Two Witnesses symbol also encompass the Two Candlesticks metaphor, and hence not only is the commission of the Lord’s faithful pastors more emphatically expansive in Revelation 11, it is also a mission that is assigned to all of the Lord’s faithful children, who are called upon to own Christ before sinners, to endure and disseminate sound doctrine, and to testify against sin.

This is deducible because the candlestick symbol in Zechariah represents the wider body of the true, transcendent Church of the Lord, which conveys light to the world through the testimony of the upright lives and longsuffering, selfless, merciful hearts of its members, as well as through their words, in public and in private, in loving advocacy of Christ and against the sins of His enemies, ecclesiastic and temporal.

This is because the candlestick feeds from the golden oil of sound doctrinal instruction and brings forth spiritual light to the world, and so the testimony of the broader body of true believers is intended by the candlestick metaphor.

Besides, lest there be any lingering doubt as to the symbol intended by the Two Candlesticks, Jesus Himself stated explicitly, in reference to an earlier candlestick hieroglyph in Revelation as follows:

“...the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches” (Revelation 1:20)

In sum, then, the Two Witnesses symbol in Revelation 11 is an umbrella term for all that comprises the Lord’s faithful public witness for Christ and His cause, and against His enemies and their cause, within the western world.

It encompasses faithful pastors and ministering laymen principally, but also includes every true believer who has the health and liberty to communicate in defence of the Lord’s cause.

That is not to say that the Lord has had no public witness beyond the West, but rather that the focus of Revelation 11 is on His public witness exclusively within the western European lands and colonial offshoots, a point that becomes much, much clearer as we probe deeper into Revelation 11.

Fire From Their Mouths Slays Their Enemies

“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.” (Revelation 11:5)

In the course of their mission, the Two Witnesses were to inevitably make enemies who would despise their testimony.

That is, those ungodly persons, or more specifically, their false ministries (to maintain consistency with the symbolism of the Two Witnesses themselves being ministries rather than individual Christians) targeted by the reproof of the faithful preaching of the Lord’s Word during the 1,260 year period in which the West would be dominated by apostates and nominal Christians would come to hate and seek to destroy that preaching or hinder or marginalise the faithful ministries, by whatever means.

The means of hurting the Lord’s public witness we can observe from history to range from murderous assault on the faithful servants of Christ, which began when the unbelieving Jews opposed and sought harm upon the Apostles, then later the kind of attacks exemplified by the Inquisition acting on behalf of the false ministries of the Romanist priesthood, and latterly the more effective means of subversion from within the church in the form of dissemination of false doctrines, especially Arminianism, again from counterfeit ministries, progressively drawing many professors of Christ away from the doctrines of sovereign grace.⁵

But neither murderous assault nor infiltration per se is strictly what is intended by the symbolism here; rather, the hurt God’s enemies would do refers to counter arguments framed as “refutations” to the points raised by the Lord’s public witness in the West during the 1,260 year period in which the apostates and nominal Christians would be the dominant societal party.

For instance, we say that faithful Christians should be our rulers, because “when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice” (Proverbs 29:2), but the abstentionist angels of light among the apostates say, “Christians should confine themselves to religious matters and not become entangled in politics”.

Again, we say that homosexuality is a vile affection (Romans 1:26), but they invoke the meek-looking teachings of Situation Ethics to say that “love is love, we should not judge, etc.”

That trick is not such an easy sell as the abstentionist line, but it has still managed to draw countless multitudes off-course.

There are many other examples one could cite, such as the form of worship (lapsed from the Regulative Principle into the anything-goes Normative Principle), the sacraments, church government, church discipline, the means of evangelising,⁶ gender roles, etc., in fact, pretty much every aspect of church life, domestic life and societal life. Essentially, nothing is out of bounds for Satanic contention; through the agency of the children of disobedience in whom he works, every aspect of life – sacred or profane – is fair game for Satanic accusation against the Lord’s created order and the regulative ordinances and moral declarations of His Word as expounded by His public witness.

But then we notice this elsewhere in Revelation:

“And they overcame him [the accuser, i.e. Satan] by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony...” (Revelation 12:11)⁷

Since technically, testimony and witness possess the same meaning in Revelation, the devouring fire that proceeds from the Two Witnesses’ mouths is the same thing that is referenced in Revelation 12:11 as the word of their testimony that overcomes Satan’s assaults against the Lord’s children.

And so that devouring, fiery word is not to be restricted to the proclamation of their profession of faith, but in the context of Revelation 11 the meaning is it demolishes and refutes every argument the apostates bring against it, devastating their arraignments in the sight of God, His holy angels, Satan himself, his demonic minions, the honest among men and, eventually in time, and in eternity, in the sight of the deluded accusers also, some of whom themselves may in time turn to Christ, just as Paul the Apostle, a persecutor and false accuser of the Lord’s cause, repented (by God’s effectual calling and irresistible grace) and became the greatest of all the Lord’s servants in his era.

Hence the doctrinally sound assertions made by the Lord’s public witness for Christ and His Kingship rights, and against ungodliness in all its forms, will sooner or later be demonstrably vindicated and as such, shall fierily consume and kill the false ministries and other Satanic, accusative devices arrayed against the Lord’s few faithful ministries and missions.

Therefore, the symbolism refers not to the literal death by fire of those who attack the Lord’s public witness, but primarily to the utter defeat of the arguments and other devices employed by that witness’ enemies, since our protest against them consists of refuting their errors on the immovable basis of the Highest Authority: the Word of God itself.

To me that further implies that now, more than ever, the Lord’s children should double down on witnessing against the sins of these perilous times and for the exclusive redemptive qualities and kingship rights of Christ to rule over the nations, knowing that this is our primary spiritual mission and that it is at the heart of the Apocalyptic events outlined in Revelation 11.

I would, however, caution against over extracting meaning from the “fire from their mouths” theme, which I think Thomas Goodwin did in focussing on the eternal consequences for those who attack the Lord’s ministries, given that simply dying in sin without ever attacking the Lord’s public witness likewise brings eternal fire:

“For as when this fell out [the fiery destruction of Nadab and Abihu for offering strange incense], Moses had then brought the people out of Egypt, and had long before begun to set up the tabernacle and other ordinances of worship; so when falls out the rebellion of these men here [in Revelation 11:5] devoured with fire? It is after the church has come out of that spiritual Egypt where these former plagues were executed, and after that public worship is erected and set up according to God’s appointment in many things; that is, after the first great reformation made by Luther, etc... [Here Goodwin makes the scope of the fire from the Witnesses too narrow, i.e., applicable to the Reformation aftermath only] Observe the quarrel of both those companies then, a nd of these now. The first quarrel then was about introducing human inventions in God’s worship, which himself commanded not [which is a valid point]. The second was, not only a renewing and continuing that quarrel, but further, to take away all distinction of persons in worshipping [the sin of those who followed Korah, who withstood Moses; that too is a valid point, but Goodwin definitely over expanded and overcomplicated the meaning of the Scripture in much of his exposition]. Now, what has been the quarrel [in Goodwin’s day] but about human inventions? Which are as that strange fire then which God commanded not, which yet are introduced and continued in worship... [here Goodwin justly refers to music in church services and other Romish innovations alien to the pre-Reformation believers and Reformers, and proceeds to condemn the Korah-esque admission of all mankind into an interest in Christ’s Atonement, in Romish defiance of the Reformed and pre-Reformed Christian doctrine of election]” (Thomas Goodwin in An Exposition of the Revelation (on Revelation 11)).

Power to Prevent Rain

“These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy...” (Revelation 11:6)

Heaven is one of those special terms in Revelation that possesses context-derived meaning and in this instance, that meaning appears at first glance to be simply the sky, from whence rain falls.

Likewise the word rain itself requires scrutiny, as we are not discussing literal language in this passage, but Apocalyptic symbolism, and so we perceive that the heaven-and-rain construct contains a metaphor for something other than literal rain falling from the literal sky.

And we further note that the mission of the Lord’s public witness is called a prophecy, not that witnessing against the errors and claims of the apostates and nominal Christians and others who magnify themselves against Christ’s roles as exclusive Mediator between God and man and His role as King of kings with the right to temporal supremacy over the governments of this earth can literally be described as prophecy in the sense of fresh, direct revelation of future events, but rather in allusion to their opening (as enabled to do so by the Lord at the appointed times) of established biblical prophecies pertaining to the false claims of the Antichristian party and the public refutation the Two Witnesses administer against the ungodly who dominate the West.

And this “prophecy” of theirs they exercise on the basis of their possession and understanding of the true doctrinal content of the Word of God as a whole, prophetic or otherwise, given that:

“The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him [i.e. lovingly respect Him]” (Psalm 25:141)

In briefer terms, therefore, prophecy in Revelation 11:6 does not refer simply to preaching the Gospel of Grace because “the days of their prophecy” is tied to their being “clothed in sackcloth” which in turn is tied to their mission to witness against the error of those apostates and nominals who call themselves Christian, but who are not.

Rather, the term prophecy in Revelation 11:6 denotes the entirety of the admonitions and exposés of the Lord’s faithful public ministries that they deploy to refute the doctrinal stances of the apostate and superficial Christian party chiefly, during the 1,260 year era of their mission.

We can note from this that the word prophecy itself, when used in Apocalyptic scripture, possesses nuance that would be missed were we to carelessly view the term in a hyper literal sense.

With the contextual meaning of prophecy hereby established, we now return to investigate the rain metaphor to ascertain its meaning in this passage and thankfully, as John Gill points out in his commentary on this verse, there is scriptural precedent:

“My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass” (Deuteronomy 32:22)

So the Lord’s Word itself explains the symbolism: rain is a prophetic hieroglyph for sound doctrine that equips the recipient of it unto every good work.

And we have further precedent of the symbolism:

“...I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it" (Isaiah 5:6) [i.e. upon the Lord’s vineyard, itself a metaphor for the Jewish nation in Isaiah 5:7]⁸

Gill additionally comments that the Targum, which is the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, renders Isaiah 5:6 thus: “...and I will command the prophets, that they do not prophesy upon them prophecy”, the inference being that the clouds and heaven are metaphors for the Lord’s prophets of old.

However, because we are assessing Revelation 11 here and the mission of the Lord’s public witness, the clouds and heaven symbols refer to that aspect of the Lord’s public witness that bears and sheds the spiritual rain of teaching and instruction in sound doctrine throughout the 1,260 year period.

Therefore, in the context of Revelation 11:6, the Lord’s public witness throughout the 1,260 year period in which the apostates and nominals would dominate the western European nations (and their colonial offshoots), would not promulgate the doctrines that come from sound understanding and exposition of God’s Word in every locale universally or at the same time but would rather abstain from doing so in regions very hostile to their preaching, that is, in regions where the Antichurch of Rome would hold sway.

Note that I say abstain, for it is seen that the Lord’s public witness appears to exercise discretion in withholding its “doctrinal rain”, presumably because power to do so is ascribed to these faithful ministries in this verse 6 (“These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy...”)

And this we experientially observe when the Lord’s faithful servants will neither have fellowship with, nor spiritually nourish, the apostates, but will rather come out from their midst and fellowship exclusively among themselves and to principally evangelise among and teach those who are not doctrinally opposed to them, notwithstanding the fact that the Lord’s faithful servants will publicly protest against the errors of those who are doctrinally opposed to them.

And history has demonstrated that point: faithful ministers, such as Franciscus Gomarus and Augustus Toplady, have always refused to fellowship with Catholics and others in doctrinal error (notably the counterfeit Protestants that are Arminians), but have openly opposed and refuted their errors, whether through public oratory or through published works.

But some might object here by claiming we seem to have stumbled upon a quandary by alleging that, on the one hand, we are to openly refute error, yet on the other we are to withhold the refreshing rain of sound doctrine from those who are in error.

So how do we reconcile those two requirements?

The answer lies in the details of the differences between those requirements.

Consider Christ’s explicit command to His disciples:

“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” (Matthew 7:6)

Gill’s reads this as the Lord’s servants being commanded to desist from issuing reproofs to the most impudent and aggressive among the ungodly, as this excerpt from his commentary shows:

“Here the phrase is used in a metaphorical sense; and is generally understood of not delivering or communicating the holy word of God, and the truths of the Gospel, comparable to pearls, or the ordinances of it, to persons notoriously vile and sinful: to men, who being violent and furious persecutors, and impudent blasphemers, are compared to "dogs"; or to such, who are scandalously vile, impure in their lives and conversations, and are therefore compared to swine...

But since the subject Christ is upon is reproof, it seems rather to be the design of these expressions, that men should be cautious, and prudent, in rebuking and admonishing such persons for their sins, in whom there is no appearance or hope of success; yea, where there is danger of sustaining loss;

lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you:

that is, despise the admonitions and reproofs given, and hurt the persons who give them, either by words or deeds” (John Gill on Matthew 7:6)

Gill goes on to reference Proverbs 9 on this, which says:

“He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame: and he that rebuketh a wicked man getteth himself a blot. Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee: rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee.” ~ Proverbs 9:7-8.

With that in mind, I submit there is a dichotomy between proffering public protest against error (which is the defining mission of the Lord’s public witness in the context of Revelation 11’s 1,260 year era) and the more expansive supply of the nourishing rain of sweet, sound doctrine to those who are receptive to it.

Actually, I would go further and say that Christ’s command quoted above highlights the difference between rebuking error in abstract terms and rebuking a demonstrably hostile and unreceptive individual sinner (or cluster of such) for his (or their) sins; the former falls under the mandate imposed on the Lord’s public witness, but the latter we are debarred from attempting and is much the same as the command to treat professing Christians who refuse private, personal, one-to-one rebuke or conciliatory steps as unbelievers.⁹

And this can be seen in action when Paul told the unbelieving Jews in Corinth that he was done trying to reason with them:

"And when they opposed themselves, and blasphemed, he shook his raiment, and said unto them, Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean; from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles." (Acts 18:6)

Again, note what Paul did at Ephesus when he saw he was making no headway with the unbelieving Jews:

"But when divers were hardened, and believed not, but spake evil of that way [of Christianity] before the multitude, he departed from them..." (Acts 19:9)

Paul did not persist with scorners and haters, as some insist we should do today; rather, he took his leave of them and moved on, and this ought to stand as a lesson to those who foolishly try to continue preaching to the aggressive Islamists at Speakers' Corner in London.

In sum, then, the Lord’s public witness was commissioned to openly refute the errors, both in terms of soteriological doctrine and in terms of temporal claims, throughout the 1,260 year period established in Revelation 11 and concurrently, to desist from sharing the bountiful treasures of spiritual nutrition buried in the Word of God, which those doctrinally opposed to the Gospel of Grace and of an incorrigible, implacable, unteachable spirit cannot receive.

So, we are to publicly stand against the errors of apostate Christianity in all its forms (and for that matter, error of other sorts), invoking arguments from the Word of God in doing so.

But at the same time, we are not to supply individuals stubbornly adhering to such errors with any further doctrinal instruction from the Word of God, as there would be no point given their hardness of heart and besides, as Proverb 9:7-8 confirms, it would elicit needless additional hostility towards the Lord’s cause.

Power to Over Waters to Turn Them to Blood

“...and have power over waters to turn them to blood...” (Revelation 11:6)

Waters, as an Apocalyptic symbol, typically refers to doctrinal matters, although some interpreters erroneously take the symbol to simply refer to the ungodly masses; a compromise position would be that it refers to the masses as affected by doctrinal matters, but in either case, it has fundamental reference to doctrinal matters.

But how could it be possible for the Lord’s public ministries to exercise power in any sense that would transform said waters into any kind or semblance of blood?

The answer is that this power is conjoined to the power of withholding the rain of rich spiritual insights referenced at the start of Revelation 11:6 and thereby we see an indirect power in the hands of the Lord’s faithful public ministries to bring God-sanctioned distress and bloodshed upon the ungodly, and so we may accordingly also model the third one of the Seven Last Plagues, in which the rivers and fountains of waters are to be turned to blood (Revelation 16:4), in the same fashion, but without making Goodwin’s mistake of tying that third plague to this aspect of the pre-slain ministries of the Two Witnesses, not least because the Seven Last Plagues come after the Two Witnesses are killed.

But how can we sure of that chronology?

Because when the apostates and nominal Christians have not, through their evil doctrines and unreceptive, unapproachable, unteachable bearing, accepted the Gospel of Grace and the nutritional doctrinal manna that comes with it, and have not heeded the Lord's public witness directed against their errors, and therefore have not repented, that they then have been left to the hardness of their hearts which in the ungodly sooner or later tends towards anger, murder, covetousness, robbery and destruction on a personal level and war and plunder on a macroscopic, national level.

In other words, throughout the 1,260 year era of the mission of the Lord’s public witness since 765, every single war and plague in the West¹⁰ has ensued as a spiritual consequence of the western nations’ antipathy to the rebukes of the Lord’s faithful ministries and hence we observe, “There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” (Isaiah 57:21), and this is the meaning of the Second Woe unleashed by the Sixth Trumpet in Revelation 9 and 10, i.e., that every great war, invasion, plague and sorrow brought upon European civilisation has come, one way or another, as a failure to heed the preaching of the Lord’s faithful few ministries, instead persisting in adhering to the Antichurch’s creed (and latterly, atheism), thereby filling those false doctrinal waters with blood.

In sum, then, when the Lord’s faithful public witness is not heeded, the outcome is that He sends war and bloodshed, degradation of quality of life and, finally, eternal “bloodshed”, that is, eternal death, in the Lake of Fire hereafter.

Power to Smite the Earth with Plagues

“...and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.” (Revelation 11:6)

These plagues are the antithesis of the blessings that come from the blessed rain of sound doctrine received heartily, and consist, in keeping with the symbolism, of all other temporal judgments that have fallen upon ungodly humanity since the Thyatirean era started in 765 and continued throughout the present Sardian era that began with the Reformation in 1517

And so these plagues appear to be a synoptic summary of all of the preceding explicitly named judgments expanded upon above.

Meanwhile, the earth that is smitten by these plagues is, once more, European civilisation, specifically that which is nowadays known as the West.

This is not to say that the barbarian sea that is the East has been absolved from Divine judgments, but rather that the focus of Revelation is on the realm of the church transcendent since Apostolic times, and that realm has been almost universally just the West.

"As often as they will", Gill interprets thus:

"...alluding to the plagues of Egypt, one of the names of Rome, or the Roman jurisdiction, in Revelation 11:8, and which is meant by the earth here [Gill here takes "the earth" to refer to those who espouse the religion of the Antichurch of Rome, but I take it to more expansively apply to the West as a whole, as an ungodly abstraction, including all votaries of the Antichurch plus apostate "Protestants" and atheists]; and referring to the rest of the seven vials poured out by these witnesses, signified by seven angels; and their having power so to do as often as they will, is to be understood of these plagues being inflicted on the inhabitants of the earth, or followers of antichrist, in answer to their prophecies and prayers, which are made according to the will of God, and so always have their effect, being such." (John Gill on Revelation 11:6)

That is, the "as often as they will" statement seems to refer to a "passive curse" placed by the Lord's faithful public ministries upon the ungodly for rejecting exhortations and reproofs, just as Paul told the Christ-hating Jews of Corinth, "Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean" (Acts 18:6).

"Killed" by the Beast From the Bottomless Pit

“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.” (Revelation 11:7)

Alexander Hislop relates in The Red Republic that the killing of the Two Witnesses was popularly, but not universally, regarded among Protestants (myself included until I studied the subject in detail) as an event that occurred just prior to the Reformation, when the Lateran Council of 1512-1517 (under the pontificates of Pope Julius II and Pope Leo X) decreed against the Waldensians and celebrated their apparent victory in suppression opposition to Roman Catholic supremacy with a declaration thus:

"Jam nemo rectumat, nuttus obsistit”, the sense supposedly being “Resistance to our rule and religion is at an end, opposers exist no more." (Hislop in The Red Republic quoting E.B. Elliott¹¹, in turn quoting the victory declaration of the Third Lateran Council.

However, Hislop points out that the refusal of the Waldensians to attend the Council to give an account of themselves (and inevitably be put to death) was in no sense a “slaying” of the Lord’s public witness, which continued within nominal Christendom at that time:

“...in 1513, Cardinal Thomas of Strigonium¹² was despatched by the Pope into Bohemia, for the express purpose of rooting out, if possible, heresy from that country. When he was despatched, it was well known at Rome, that there Were in Bohemia... Hussites,¹³ the purest body of Christ's witnesses, in a position of avowed opposition to the Papal church. In the same year, the Pope's bull was issued, giving them the choice either of pleading at Rome, or making their peace before the cardinal, in their own country. That bull testified to the existence of "manifold heresy," ( “multiplex haeresis”) in Bohemia. Now, what success attended the legate's mission? Did he succeed in extinguishing the Hussites, in putting down the "multiplex haeresis" of the Bohemians? If he did, of course there were two ways only by which that could be accomplished: The one was by force, the other by conciliation. Did the sword, then, or the stake, purge Bohemia of the taint of heresy? There is not the slightest evidence of anything of the kind.” (The Red Republic, Chapter 4)

Some, such as Thomas Goodwin, supposed that the Papacy’s efforts at silencing the Lord’s public witness just before the Reformation constituted a foreshadowing of the still-future slaying, but were of themselves not the event described in Revelation 11:7; this is obviously my view also, and I add that the killing of them has begun, being timed for the middle of the present decade.

But the most telling proof that the Papal attempts at silencing the Lord's public witness against sin and error are not what is intended by the killing of the Two Witnesses is the fact that it is the "beast from the bottomless pit", i.e., the third and final phase of Daniel 7's fourth beast system, that is the killing agency, it being one and the same as the Scarlet Coloured Beast from the Bottomless Pit of Revelation 17, i.e., the godless ruling elites of the West in an atheistic, hyper socialist, globalist, post-nation-statist form, which is how they are today, making this killing a present-day event.

And this killing is not simply an instantaneous hit directed against the Two Witnesses.

No.

It is the outcome of a "war against them" that "shall overcome them", meaning it is a process started shortly in advance of the year 2025 (1,260 "days" (i.e. years) after 765), a process designed to wear them down and defeat them in the sphere in which they operate (i.e. in public in the West), which bespeaks a western world campaign of public disavowal of the Lord's witness against error by attacking the content of that witness.

Going by the reliable German Bible (1912 Luthertext):

“Und wenn sie ihr Zeugnis geendet haben, so wird das Tier, das aus dem Abgrund aufsteigt, mit ihnen einen Streit halten¹⁴ und wird sie überwinden und wird sie töten” (Offenbarung 11:7)

i.e.,

“And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will hold a quarrel with them and will overcome them and will kill them” (Revelation 11:7)

The faithful German rendering of the Greek original, while missing the gradual, procedural aspect of the killing of the Two Witnesses, suggests an extra nuance in the war being waged against them by the scarlet beast system, i.e., it picks a fight with them, specifically with a view to killing (silencing) them.

And this is being done by exalting Sodom, Islam, feminism and all the other "sacred cows" of the beast system, i.e., by making an idol out of these things and giving them a voice so that they demand "worship" (compliance) upon pain of "death" (cancellation, ostracisation, etc.), in sum, the beast system exerts pressure on society to mark itself as supportive of these things - see my commentary on the Image of the Beast.

With that process well established, the beast system's second step is to legislate for those things, crafting "hate speech" laws that make it an offence to speak against them and deploying the police to enforce those laws or granting the police extensive leeway to abuse less directly related laws to harass and silence any public witness against the abominations of the Image of the Beast.

Hereby the Lord's public witness in the West has been strangulated into silence (and in America similar is happening through online platforms enforcing their own rigid rules that bypass the First Amendment, while in the public space, out on the streets, US police have begun to little-by-little "suggest" to street preachers opposing LGBT, etc., to perhaps desist).

This killing process is also exactly what Thomas Goodwin predicted it would be back in the 1600s, i.e., the abuse of civic laws to silence the voice of the faithful few ministries publicly speaking out against sin and error.

And it is specifically the ten horns, that is, all of the western governments (though more than the symbolic "ten" in number), acting in unison, that will make war with the Lamb at this time.

“These shall make war with the Lamb” (Revelation 17:14)

Of course, it has always been the case that the western governments have been, in some sense, at war with the Lamb.

For example, which of our WW1 and WW2 leaders would have supported Christ's Kingship?

How do you suppose, say, that great conservative icon, Winston Churchill, would have reacted to the proposal that the Lord’s people be in power and rule over the nation?

Or even the “godly” Queen Victoria (who had a well known extramarital affair)?

Or Elizabeth 1 (who hated the Puritans)?

Or King James 1, who sponsored the KJV translation (but who had an abnormal keeness for young men)?

Or any of the Founding Fathers of the US (several of whom, including George Washington, were Freemasons)?

The fact that none of them acknowledged Christ's Kingship rights or attempted to establish the Kingdom tells it all.

However, in the past, secular governance's dislike of Christ was pretty much on a passive, indirect basis, through governmental systems and ideologies during the Beast from the Sea era that failed to acknowledge Christ’s Kingship rights and have been generally either “passively aggressive” towards the gospel of grace and the Word of God or at best, feigned regard for those things with shows of lip service and invocations of Divine blessings on coronations, constitutions and so on, as shown by the late wicked Queen's scurrying to Rome dressed in black out of deference to the man of sin (in breach of her oath).

But now that the Lord's public witness has effectively been extinguished, there is no apathy and no tolerance; this time, the western governments who front for the ruling globalist oligarchy, are proactively - but sneakily - engaging the Lamb in warfare because that is what the scarlet ideology has always done.

So how would the western governments wage war on the Lamb?

By coming after His people, of course.

Remember, in this world the Lord’s people are His servants, His de facto agents, His children.

And so any good or evil done to them is done as it were to Him.

Hence He would say to the pre-conversion Paul who had made persecuting Christians his mission:

“Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 9:4)

Likewise, on Judgment Day He will say this to those apostates who mistreated His servants:

“Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.” (Matthew 25:45)

Therefore, when the modern western nations’ governments, those ten horns of Revelation 17:14, wage war against the Lamb, it is in the form of attacking the Lord’s children.

With all of the foregoing established, we may now consider the timing in more detail.

The "Finishing" of Their Testimony

“And when they shall have finished their testimony...” (Revelation 11:7)

Goodwin and other writers, all of whom were well versed in New Testament Greek, observed that the clause “when they shall have finished their testimony” can equally, or should more properly, be rendered thus:

“when they were about to finish their testimony”

If that be the case, it suggests that the attack on the Lord’s public witness against sin and error was projected, in this prophecy, to commence just before the 1,260 year period expires, that is, in the last few years immediately leading up to 2025.¹⁵

And of course there is abundant evidence of an orchestrated assault on the Lord’s public witness, coming from the ruling establishment of the West, and I submit that such began at least as far back as the high profile quarrels being picked with Christians in western nations for refusing to bake cakes for gay weddings.¹⁶

I would also point out that the "finishing of their testimony" applies not simply to the terminus of the 1,260 year era that began in 765, but to the end of any requirement for their "sackcloth testimony" to exist at all, which fits with the imminence of the glorious Philadelphian church age (coming around the end of the present decade) and the destruction of all false religions (including atheism) that will occur in its opening period; that is to say, just the year 2025 marked the projected closure of the Two Witnesses' mission, so it also represents the "tripwire" date for the events that will bring on Sardis' transition into Philadelphia, meaning, the Seven Last Plagues of Revelation (that culminate in terrible world events that will "wipe the slate clean" through the massive loss of life of the ungodly, in accordance with Joel 3:13-16, Revelation 16:14-21, Ezekiel 38-39, etc.), will prepare the way for Philadelphia, when the Lord's public witness will no longer be clothed in sackcloth and ashes, but exalted to "heaven" (i.e. elevated to government and high esteem in society - Revelation 11:12).

But in the meantime, between 2025 and the fulfilment of the terrible world events that complete the Seven Last Plagues, the elites' scarlet ideology’s hatred of the Lord’s cause, mediated though the western governments, has been stripping away all forms of resistance – legal, constitutional and self-defensive – to the civic gagging that follows, leaving the Lord’s public witness unprotected and powerless.

And thus shall the power of the holy people finally, after 1,260 years of witnessing against apostate Christianity and other errors, be scattered, like chaff in the wind, leaving the Lord’s public witness disarmed and ready to be slain.

“And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times, and an half [1 year + 2 years + half a year of prophetic time = 360 + 720 + 180 literals years = 1,260 years, the duration of the Two Witnesses' mission in Revelation 11:3]; and when he [the fourth Beast system of Daniel 7, which by the timing of Daniel 12 will be in its scarlet, Revelation 11 + 17 phase] shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people [the godly and their public witness, styled the Two Witnesses in Revelation 11, will lose all power to operate], all these things shall be finished [i.e. the beast system of Daniel 7 and the kingdom that follows upon its demise shall be about to come to pass, so that the saints of the most High will begin to possess the Kingdom under the whole heaven (Daniel 7:27)].” (Daniel 12:7)

And this disintegration of their protection, this disempowerment, shall abide in force until the Lord shall miraculously restore His public witness during the dreadful events of the seventh of the Seven Last Plagues, whereupon “all these things shall be finished”, as Daniel 12:7 puts it.

Their Dead Bodies will Lie on the Street of the Great City

“And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city...” (Revelation 11:8)

“...when the slaying of the witnesses will be over [Gill means accomplished], at which time there will be a great scattering of the saints; they will be as sheep without a shepherd, their pastors being smitten, slain, or removed into corners [Gill here has gone too far with the scattering of the holy people's power; instead, it means that they will simply have no rights to publicly protest against error and sin any more in case it violates "hate speech" laws or offends some leftist or Muslim; but their pastorate will still exist, able to operate in private or within their own meeting houses, all of which gives the impression to the onlooking world that the Lord's public witness - the Two Witnesses - is "dead", with "lifeless" bodies (silenced ministries) still visible to all who care to look]; all which things will be fulfilled about the end of the date ["around" the expiry of the 1,260 year era, i.e., circa 2025] before mentioned” (John Gill on Daniel 12:7)

Now we come to the sad details of the Two Witnesses' immediate fate upon their slaying.

And that amounts to their dead bodies being left to lie, or rot, in the street of the "great city", "spiritually called Sodom and Egypt" (i.e. the West, as explained further below).

Their "dead bodies" points to their lifeless state, i.e. their inability to witness, yet the visibility of these metaphorical corpses lying on the street denotes something left behind for the scorning world to see.

The dead bodies are thus the visibly gagged faithful ministers and laymen, since the Two Witnesses themselves are the ministries, the messages, the "voice" of those ministers and laymen.

Though some ministers and faithful laymen have found themselves incarcerated, the most part have not and will not, but instead either keep their heads down knowing that within moments of trying to speak in public or online against sin and error, they will be cautioned, arrested or censored, actions thereby maintaining, for all intents and purposes, the dead state of the Lord’s public witness against sin and error.

The Lord’s faithful flocks are therefore being permitted to subsist (perhaps with a view to being dealt with more robustly at a later date) on the edge of society, as self-exiling outcasts, refuseniks with respect to the evil, woke value set that constitutes the Mark, soon to be restricted from public services and every aspect of mainstream societal life and commerce (but not completely, lest the Lord's people perish from the face of the earth).

And the fact that the Lord has provided such an in-depth warning to His people for this time as that constituted by Revelation 11, and that Jesus has an additional very special message for them as the time of their oppression draws near its end (i.e. Revelation 16:15's last message to Sardis), and further, that His people will be needed to man the promised "resurrection" of His public witness, all speak to the fact that the mass extirpation of His children that Goodwin (and others) feared is not part of the coming distress, and so the "killing" of those who refuse the Mark refers to restriction, fines, punishments and other forms of civic "death", just as the killing of the Two Witnesses does.

..."Sodom and Egypt"

“...the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.” (Revelation 11:8)

Now, what of the Great City which the text plainly says "where also our Lord was crucified", seemingly suggesting Jerusalem as that city?

The answer is that we are dealing with symbolic language, and must not default to the foolish literalism of the Jesuit-futurism eschatology.

And the clue is there in plain sight with its spiritual name:

Sodom and Egypt.

This means we are given a spiritual identifier for the term "the great city" in the context of the time at which the Two Witnesses were to be slain (i.e. the present age), and if we combine that with it also being the realm in which our Lord was crucified, we know what it really means:

The modern day continuation of the Roman Empire of old (which crucified Jesus), viz, the territory or domain of Daniel 7's fourth beast system in its final, scarlet, from-the-bottomless-pit phase; the modern-day West, in other words, that "Sodom" (for obvious reasons) and Egypt (for its hedonism).

And indeed, "Sodom and Egypt" is effectively how the people of the East view the West.

To them, the West is indeed a morally decrepit cesspit of LGBT, whorish women, fornication, etc., given to the kind of excess, hedonism, narcissism and indulgence that Egypt of old was associated with:

“...Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin [i.e. Egypt's pleasures]for a season” (Hebrews 11:24-25)

Returning to the metaphor of the street, this denotes no literal physical thoroughfare, but rather confirms a visible, public aspect to the demise of the Lord’s public witness.

Some of the old writers, notably Goodwin, proposed the street to be a specific region within the Great City, and he, not grasping the timing of this event, naturally confined the Great City, as all the old writers did (even as recently as Hislop writing in 1848's The Red Republic) to western Europe alone.

Goodwin concluded that the prime candidate for any specific region as the Street probably would be Great Britain, if the street-as-a-country theory were to hold any merit.

But the term street ought not to be seen as implicitly containing a clue as to any specific country, but less distractingly, points adjectivally to the exposed nature of the Two Witnesses dead bodies in the West.

Consider that, in Russian, “in the street” is “на улице” ("na ulitse"), which, from my observations living among the Russians in the past, is very commonly used as a metaphor simply for “outside”.

And so here it simply denotes much the same: outside, in the open, that is, in the public concourses, the public realm, or civic life if you prefer, in the West, for all the ungodly to openly observe and take wicked delight in.

Their Bodies Shall Lie Openly Dead for 3.5 "Days"

“And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half...” (Revelation 11:9)

When the Lord's public witness is killed, it is to lie silent for three and half "days", that is, 3.5 literal years, before the Lord will miraculously restore it (Revelation 11:11).

But is this timespan to be reckoned from the 1,260 year expiry date of their testimony (some point in 2025, which we come to below), or when the last of their mission is silenced in the West?

Because of the nebulous-timing aspect (mentioned above) of the process that was to begin killing them ca. 2025, and because it is unknowable when the last public preacher against LGBT, wokecraft, Islam, etc., will be silenced by arrest or online censorship, the only ready and obvious anchor for me - for now at least - is the year 2025 itself, which in turn poses the question as to when in 2025 marks that date?

Here we might speculate as to some formal events in the world involving the Scarlet Beast and / or the Whore (the Antichurch) it bears upon its back.

That pretty much leaves two standout events:

1. The formal recognition at the United Nations of Palestine as a state by France, Britain, Canada, Australia, and numerous other countries, on 12th September 2025, which if the correct datum point, would mean the beast system ends and the Kingdom of Daniel 7:18,22, etc., begins in 12th March 2029, making that also the month in which the "great hail" (WW3) falls. NOTE: Just because the US voted against this, it does not follow that America is not beholden to the same elites as the rest of the West is; rather, perception-management and other expedient considerations were at play there and America will certainly also forsake Israel in accordance with the conditions set out in Ezekiel 38:13.
2. King Charles, as key member of the globalist hydra that is the Scarlet Beast system, visiting Pope Leo on 22nd October 2025, the Pope being the Antichrist at the head of the Antichurch borne aloft on the Scarlet Beast's back. The significance of this event is that the beast-and-whore symbolism of Revelation 17 was seen in formal symbiosis with this meeting during the very year in which the Two Witnesses were projected to start being killed by the beast system, and so if that be admissible as the 3.5 year starting point, then the beast system ends and the Kingdom of Daniel 7:18,22, etc., begins on 22nd - 23rd April 2029.

WARNING! The foregoing is, of course, highly speculative and even though we observe (by way of confirmation), some of the gloating Revelation 11:10 describes, in action right now, on social media with regard to Christians being hauled away by police for speaking against Islam, LGBT, etc., is it conclusive?

Only time will tell, but if we arrive on the brink of Israel being invaded by Russia in early 2029 and the world ravaged by the first six of the Seven Last Plagues, then we will have full confirmation.

The Masses Will Not Allow Their Dead Bodies to be Buried

“...and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves.” (Revelation 11:9)

Forbidding to bury a dead corpse has historically been done as a salient reminder to all and sundry as to the notoriety of the deceased, and is accordingly a traditional way of showing great contempt for the victim and his cause; see for instance, the cases of Oliver Cromwell (exhumed, beheaded and displayed), Richard Cameron (executed, beheaded, displayed and abused), William Wallace (executed, beheaded and displayed), et al.

In the case of the Two Witnesses, whose "dead bodies" are the still-living literal ministers and laymen gagged from public witnessing against sin and error by the evil laws of the beast system, burial would amount to a respectful removal from the public gaze of their defeated state, so that no further hate-filled attention would be brought to them, their message, etc.

But no, the ungodly masses within the West (i.e. "they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations") were not to simply rest in the defeat of the Two Witnesses, but to increasingly gloat about it on social media and in each other's company, and so they accept those ministers and laymen who exercised the Lord's public witness being at liberty, so as to (a) take peculiar sport in their downfall and (b) set them forth in their diatribes as a warning to anyone who seeks to advance Christ's cause in public.

Note further that it is the mass of wicked humanity in the West, rather than the elites (the beast system) or the governments (the ten horns on the beast), that maintain this open act of humiliation; accordingly, it seems there will be no further formal censures against those ministers and laymen, but that they can continue to be "free" in their private and work lives, while living as a defeated, enfeebled foe to the world.

Part of this, I take also, to be a final judgment from Christ upon Sardis (see Revelation 3:3), designed to prepare it for (a) the glorious resurrection of its public witness, (b) that witness' "ascent to heaven" (Revelation 11:12) and (c) Sardis' entrance to Philadelphia via a belated return to the Reformation, which I take to be the sense of Revelation 16:15.

The Ungodly Shall Rejoice at Their Demise

“And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.” (Revelation 11:10)

“They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly." (Amos 5:10)

With His public witness against sin and error silenced, the Lord will, for the first time in the history of western civilisation, have no servant free to cry out wisdom in the streets (Proverbs 1:20).

Thus the ungodly will no longer have that thorn in their side, that contrary voice, condemning their wickedness and appealing to them to repent:

“not because they were [literally] tormented by them, but because they were now freed from their tormenting ministry; they had tormented them by the preaching of the Gospel, which is foolishness, and the savour of death to natural men, and gives them pain, and fills them with vexation and wrath; by their testimony which they had bore for Christ, and against Antichrist; by their sharp reproof of them for their false doctrine and will worship, and their impure lives and conversations; by their own holy lives, which would sometimes flash light into their consciences, and make them uneasy; and by their foretelling the calamities and ruin, temporal and eternal, that would come upon them; but now they are silenced, and they hear and see no more of these things at which they rejoice.” (John Gill on Revelation 11:10)

While I agree with Gill’s assessment on the meaning here, the grandest reason why the ungodly will be happy to see the Lord's faithful ministries silenced has far less to do with pangs and pains of conscience (since the atheist majority are those "that dwell carelessly in the isles" (Ezekiel 39:6), i.e., without care for their souls and therefore having seared consciences), but rather more to do with the temporal plagues brought upon them, ranging from discomfort at their false views being challenged, all the way up to the wars that have bedevilled the world from the dawn of time, due to the fact that the Lord’s faithful few ministries have the metaphorical power “to smite the earth [the West] with all plagues, as often as they will” (Revelation 11:6) which, as we saw above, culminates in bloodshed on both microscopic and macroscopic scales.

Civil strife and wars, in other words.

It may be the case, therefore, that not long after this slaying of the Lord’s public witness West-wide, the atheistic majority (and the apostate Christian minority) shall have the illusion of “world peace” at hand, which for them would amount to peace to sin unchallenged and without prospect of painful repercussions.

If that theory is correct, we might speculate on a great - but doomed to be very brief - lull in international hostilities between East and West, bringing a “peace dividend” and feel-good factor, just when it seemed the nations were poised to plunge into a World War Three mêlée.

The world therefore – if this speculative theory is correct – might expect to experience a momentary relief from the menace of full spectrum threats that was hitherto always present while the Lord’s public witness was there to be rejected by the ungodly; in that case, the ungodly would rejoice in the new peace and sense of optimism and some or many of them, especially at elite levels, might take delight in the irony of it all correlating with the total removal of the voice of those “evil, doomsaying, naysaying, killjoy conservative Christians”.

This outcome would be the realisation of the dream of the late blaspheming leftist, John Lennon, who wrote these horrible words in his song, Imagine:

That song could be the national anthem of the Scarlet Coloured Beast system and could just as easily have been penned by Klaus Schwab or Karl Marx.

Regardless, Lennon here encapsulates the sentiment that the atheistic party, especially their intelligentsia, wish to experience; that is, they rejoice at the restrictions imposed on the Lord's public witness, seeing in it even Lennon’s own prediction:

“Christianity will go, it will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that. I’m right and will be proved right.” (John Lennon in a Newsweek interview, 1966)

And in Lennon’s depraved mind, as indicated in his song, Christianity’s disappearance would be organically connected with the communist (globalist, i.e. of the Scarlet Beast that kills the Two Witnesses) “utopia” depicted in those lyrics because communism always sells a godless paradise, even though not once in history has it delivered anything but misery to those masses who believed in it.

The questions naturally arise, if there is to be such a window of world peace for the ungodly to revel in, then:

• Would it entail formal peace treaty signed by the rival East and West factions?
• Would it be the famous peace treaty of Daniel’s 9’s “70th Week”, and if so, would its broker be the Antichrist?
• How long would such a peace last?

I think for such a peace to be sold by the media as a triumph of diplomacy, it would have to be formalised as a treaty, which means one or more high profile individuals would likely be positioned to receive the credit for it.

Naturally, that sequence of events would, in the context of the times, bring most evangelicals (at least in America, where Jesuit futurism has them in an eschatological headlock) to consider the individual most directly responsible as the end-of-the-age Antichrist... what a deception that would prove to be!

However, there are some potential flaws to that line on thought:

1. It might be the case that no such peace could truly be brokered by just one man, though one might be portrayed by the world’s media as the sole broker; given that Russia to this day argues that it fought World War Two alone¹⁸, or as it calls it, “Great Patriotic War”¹⁹, no western supremo is going to receive any revenue of glory in the East for a negotiated world peace. But a Russian leader with great PR leverage in the West might be able to pull it off. A leader such as, say, Vladimir Putin.
2. The definitive Antichrist of the Word of God is the “man of sin”,²⁰ and stands as the rival to Christ’s exclusive claims of both temporal authority over the nations and ecclesiastical authority over them; a peace-brokering politician is unlikely to make either claim in the modern atheistic ecosystem, and besides, there already is one office that has been making those claims since 765, and it resides in the Vatican in Rome.
3. The “man” of Revelation 13, whose number is 666, is not a single individual, just as the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11 are not two distinct individuals, but in the former instance, it is the ungodly ruling elites of the West and in the latter, the Lord’s faithful ministries; accordingly, focussing all that paranoia and suspicion on a single high profile person is a dangerous diversion from the collective that is the ruling oligarchy of the West.

As for the connection to Daniel’s 70th Week, I agree with Gill’s assessment of that prophecy, i.e., that it refers not to any future event, but to the siege of Jerusalem under the Emperor Titus, and direct the reader to Gill for detailed particulars.

But why am I raising this peace treaty speculation at all, given that no hint of it is included in the rejoicing of the ungodly at the demise of the Lord’s faithful public ministries in Revelation 11:10?

The answer is because I see in Ezekiel 38 strong evidence, if not proof, of a very near future Middle East peace treaty that will impart to the nation of Israel a false sense of security, and the imminence of this arises from the fact that the Gog-Magog War of Ezekiel 38-39 is scheduled to fall under the latter of the Seven Last Plagues of Revelation 16.

And adding to that, I also see potential evidence that “Gog”, the leader of Russia (“Magog”) shall be the one who shall broker this peace:

“Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say unto Gog, Thus saith the Lord God; In that day when my people of Israel dwelleth safely, shalt thou not know it?” (Ezekiel 38:14)

Therefore, try to imagine a very near future scenario in which the world would have been brought to the brink of global war through the conflict between Israel and its regional neighbours (especially Iran), only to breathe a mighty sigh of relief at a monumental peace deal that incorporates Iran being released from US sanctions (as a goodwill gesture granted through gritted teeth in Washington, given that Russia might have outflanked the US with this move), Russia itself agreeing a peace line in Ukraine and thereby saving face, showing itself reasonable after all and willing to compromise, and thereby securing an exit from that debacle, and a guaranteed security arrangement in which Russia would uphold the peace through its strong influence over the Islamic nations (which it genuinely exercises at present) and through infrastructure investment in Israel’s Leviathan gas field.

Imagine all of that coming at the same time that, in the West, all harbingers of “hate” (i.e. the Lord’s faithful ministries) have been gagged by law, and you have the appearance to the ungodly of world peace ahead: peace to sin and peace to live without fear of nuclear war.

Finally, as to how long such a peace might last, I can only say it would be brief and counteracted by the rapid onset of the first of the Seven Last Plagues, commencing in the wake of the slaying of the Lord’s public witness; the ungodly may have a window of “world peace”, that is, a suspension of the present stand-off between East and West, but domestically things will start to spiral into the abyss, first in the West and then in the East, as those Seven Last Plagues get underway.

After 3.5 "Days" They Rise From the Dead

“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.” (Revelation 11:11)

Mercifully, the Lord's public witness against sin and error shall only lie silent for three and a half "days", i.e., 3.5 literal years as discussed in the section above, Their Bodies Shall Lie Openly Dead for 3.5 "Days"), whereupon the spirit of life from God shall enter into it, so that it stands upright again.

And it is plain why the Lord should provide us with this detail, namely, so that we are encouraged in advance of this trial by knowing that the hardships will be relatively brief and that the glory that follows so astronomical that it will make us “forget” all the ills we endured beforehand.

But during those sad three and a half years in which the ungodly will have no contrary voice speaking against them in the public sphere, far more dreadful things will strike them, once their very brief illusion of world peace (if that potential prediction proves correct) falls apart.

For make no mistake.

If all the wars, famines and diseases that came upon the West were a consequence of its ungodly masses rejecting the Lord’s public witness during the 1,260 years from 765, what might one suppose should follow for the slaying of that witness?

And thus the thological argument is set, by the silencing of the Two Witnesses, for the Seven Last Plagues of Revelation 16 to fall upon this world, as some of the old writers, including Gill, correctly concluded.

But what is meant by the "spirit of life from God entered into them"?

Before answering that, it seems pertinent to first ask when will the Lord’s cause have been more dead than at the time of its public witness against sin and error being dead (i.e. now), and its name stolen not just by the Antichurch of Rome, but by her harlot offspring in the Arminian camp that dare to call themselves Protestant?

At no point in church history has God's cause cause been as seemingly lost as it is now, for now the professing Protestant church is variously dead, as follows:

1. Being still Sardian, it is already, before the Two Witnesses’ slaying, dead by Christ’s own standards, as Revelation 3:1 proves, for despite having a name that it lives, it is “dead”, having failed to grow in, and nurture, the brotherly love that it should have in the wake of the Reformation, being instead largely cold and legalist. This is, from my experience in Reformed circles, the grand condemnation directed at the majority of those who have, nonetheless, wisely and correctly professed and espoused the doctrines of sovereign grace so wonderfully enunciated by the early Reformed faith.
2. Now additionally that the Lord’s public witness is slain, and still being slain, by evil laws and police harassment, that other side of church life in the Sardian age, i.e., that which consists of the faithful ministries of the Lord’s public witness, is likewise increasingly seen to be dead.
3. The vast majority of so-called Protestantism, being now intoxicated with soul-killing Jesuit Arminianism, is doubly dead, insofar as it thinks it is saved while being still "dead in trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1).

Hence we have arrived at the point at which Sardis has never been so emphatically dead.

I would, therefore, request that you retain in your mind this concept of double (or triple) death upon the Lord’s cause so that the particulars surrounding its recovery become so much more obvious when we come to review them.

In the meantime, it must be impressed upon us that it is from such a depth of defeat and disappointment that the Lord’s public witness shall be miraculously restored, through an act of God so profound and unambiguously from the Divine, as to instil great fear upon those who observe the event.

For what it consists of shall be an emphatic foreshadowing, and type, of the coming bodily resurrection of the saints, when Christ will make His literal return.

The grand query here, though, is in what regard will the Lord’s gagged, reviled and powerless public witness in the West dramatically come alive again and “stand upon its feet”, so to speak?

To explain the how of the restoration, along with the where, requires us to examine the Seven Last Plagues of Revelation 16 in detail, from whence it can be deduced that the Jewish conversion to Christ in the midst of the Gog-Magog event of Ezekiel 38-39 (which ends with a Messianic reconciliation of that nation to Jesus) is vital to the how of the "resurrection" of the Two Witnesses (in accordance with Romans 11:15), while the where of it appears to probably be the United States of America, for reasons I cover in my treatment of the Seven Last Plagues.

“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.” (Proverbs 13:12)

Knowing the prophetic time in which they stand, having been purified and refined by the distresses they will have endured during the Seven Last Plagues (which, though directed at the ungodly, will also have collateral impacts by way of chastening on the Lord's people, which much may be suggested in Revelation 3:3's sudden and stealthy visitation by Christ "like a thief" on an unrepentant Sardis), and finally repenting in accordance with the Sardian-worded appeal in Revelation 16:15, the Lord’s faithful ministers and laymen will see their desire finally come into view.

And they will know it is that time when they observe something else: the promised miraculous Jewish Epiphany, when the millennia-old blindness upon Israel to Jesus as the true Messiah will have been lifted, in the most astonishing circumstances, in full view of the world.

In other words, at the end of those three and a half years, the Jews will dramatically turn to Christ, en masse, at a moment when the eyes of the world will be upon them and their historical homeland for reasons detailed in my expositions of Ezekiel 38-39, and this event will stir up, by the Lord’s promised enabling, the hearts of His silenced pastors and laymen in the West to such an extent as to raise them back upon their feet, so to speak, right in the Street, that is, the public view and discourse, in the West which, by then, will be in a state of unprecedented civil turmoil and systemic failure.

And this will be, or will inspire, the promised “life from the dead” for the Gentile church in Romans 11:15, because:

1. At no point in history up until that time will the church transcendent be as doubly (or triply) dead, being dead in both the Sardian sense and in terms of its witnessing capacity, and,
2. At no point in the future after the Philadelphian age begins will the church transcendent ever be dead again (not even in the Laodicean aberrancy), whether in the Sardian sense or in the slain-witness sense, because the Kingdom of Daniel 2:44 shall be everlasting in nature, and,
3. At no point in history have the Jews as a people, rather than simply in small numbers, been Christian, and,
4. Joel 3:18-19 contains the promise of a doctrinal quantum leap, a flow of waters of sound doctrine, tied to the conversion of the Jews, and is no less than the Second Reformation that Goodwin predicted in the 1600s would come at the start of the Philadelphian church era that begins when the Two Witnesses are restored.

All of the above points to the inescapable conclusion that there is no other possible window for the Jewish Epiphany than at the point of the restoration of the Two Witnesses.

And so the resurrection of the Two Witnesses is confirmed by them "standing upon their feet" (triggering great fear on those observing this), in a very public demonstration of their recovery, with this consisting of the publicly silenced faithful ministers and laymen being moved by the "Spirit of life from God" (Revelation 11:11) to boldly speak out again in public declaring God's glory in converting the Jews and pronouncing that the Kingdom of Daniel 2:44 and 7:18,22 and 27, aka the true Philadelphian church age, is a matter of days of not hours from beginning.

This will be set against worldwide shock and awe at the Lord's intervention on behalf of a very visibly and newly Reformational Israel delivered through a supernatural act from what looked like certain destruction at the hands of the Russians (Magog), Chinese and North Koreans (Gomer), Turks (Togarmah) and Iranians (Persia), to the end that "they shall know that I am the LORD" (Ezekiel 39:6).

That is, atheists, apostate "Christians", Islamists and all the other heathen, shall know that the Lord has moved in jealous anger to redeem the Jews and join them with the Gentile believers into one Reformed, Calvinist church of the Lord, with the doctrines of Calvinism confirmed beyond dispute by the mass conversion of the Jews at once to Christ, the whole event - including the terrible strait Israel the nation will find itself in just prior to its conversion - summed up in Isaiah 66 as follows:

“A voice of noise from the city, a voice from the temple, a voice of the Lord that rendereth recompence to his enemies. Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child. Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children. Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth? saith the Lord: shall I cause to bring forth, and shut the womb? saith thy God. Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her: That ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory.[here the Lord addresses the Gentile believers and promises the tremendous blessing Paul spoke of in Romans 11:15] For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream: then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.[again, the promise of great spiritual bounty ensuing from the Jewish conversion to Christ] And when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like an herb: and the hand of the Lord shall be known toward his servants, and his indignation toward his enemies. For, behold, the Lord will come with fire [in allusion to the fire the Lord will send to the major cities of both East and West in Ezekiel 39:6, i.e., the nuclear war that forms part of the "great hail" of Revelation 16's final plague(Revelation 16:121), which is the outworking of the Armageddon event primed in the sixth of those plagues (Revelation 16:16)], and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh: and the slain of the Lord shall be many. [as shall be the case when the godless cities of the major nations are stricken in the nuclear war]" (Isaiah 66:6-16)

Hence, "great fear fell upon them which saw them.” (Revelation 11:11), that is, the Lord's enemies will realise that the very voice they silenced was, all along, a proxy voice for the Lord Who just performed all those wonderful and terrifying things in the Middle East, and that His judgments upon the nations are about to greatly exceed all the wars and plagues that the Two Witnesses, insofar as their message was rejected, effectively brought during their 1,260 years mission from 765-2025.

Called up to Heaven in the Sight of Their Enemies

“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.” (Revelation 11:12)

The public voice against sin and error now active again, being revived by the Lord, emboldened by the conversion of the Jews, and energised far beyond its state during the 1,260 year mission, that is, in "resurrected bodies", far superior to the sackcloth-and-ashes condition prior to the Two Witnesses' silencing, that voice is suddenly beckoned to "heaven".

This invitation to “heaven” comes from those in the political heavens, that is, faithful Christians now suddenly in charge of a major western nation (which I take to be the US, although the English Puritans and more latterly, Alexander Hislop in the 1800s, thought would be the UK), inviting those newly recovered faithful ministries to join them at the helm of power on the basis of the fortitude and sagacity they proved in the days before their silencing by wicked laws, and so this will see the Lord’s faithful few pastors, writers and laymen join in government during the event Daniel 7 describes thus:

“... the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever.” (Daniel 7:18)

“Until the Ancient of days came [in an intervention, not Christ's literal return], and judgment was given to the saints of the most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.” (Daniel 7:22)

“And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him. [Here, earthly governance is wrenched from the hands of the beast system and given to the godly]” (Daniel 7:27)

But by what mechanisms shall the godly come to power in the major western nation?

I submit that there will be either (a) a coup d'état performed by the godly in the US or (b) a decapitation of all the western governments, or minimally, the government of the "recovery nation" (again, probably the US), during the nuclear assault of Ezekiel 39:6 and Revelation 16:21, i.e., Armageddon, leaving a power vacuum that the elites in their bunkers will not be able to step into to fill, since their modus operandi has always being to hide behind frontmen elected governments.

This charade that they have enacted ever since the Restoration, this pretence of "government by the people for the people", will prove their Achilles' Heel, for with a destroyed government hierarchy, the rulership of the recovery nation is up for grabs.

And God will providentially ensure that His people - not a single ungodly wretch - shall step into that vacuum and assume authority on His behalf.

And more than that, His people at that point will have become transformed from their defeated Sardian state into a life-from-the-dead, supercharged, wise, pure-hearted, no-nonsense-taking, Christ-honouring condition, ready for government, that is, ready to begin Christ's spiritual reign over the nations, in which the "stone cut out without hands" (Daniel 2:34-35) grows into a mountain filling the whole earth, as nation after nation falls into the hands of godly rulers in the aftermath of the terrible war that is the "great hail" of Revelation 16:21, the "valley of decision" of Joel 3:14, the "fire" of Ezekiel 39:6, and of course, the consummation of Armageddon of Revelation 16:16.

This ascent of the godly few who always publicly opposed sin, and the errors of apostate Christianity, shall itself rather fittingly be a very public event, for "they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them" (Revelation 11:12).

And who is chiefest enemy to the Two Witnesses?

The very beast system who killed them in Revelation 11:7, that is, the oligarchy hiding behind the masquerade of accountable democracy in the West.

And then those elites - royals and all - will begin to tremble inside or outside their expensive bunkers, and with good reason, given what follows.

A Great Earthquake - One or Two?

“And the same hour [i.e. just as the Lord’s public witness ascended up to the political heavenlies] was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell [i.e. a major western government falls into the hands of the godly"]...” (Revelation 11:13)

““...and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. And the great city [i.e. the West]was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell.[both in a literal sense where they are destroyed by the nuclear "great hail" and in a symbolic sense where "cities" are blocs and alliances]” (Revelation 16:18-19)

The "one tenth part of the great city" is a reference to a single western nation, or more specifically, to its governance, with the number ten being the spiritual number of western government, since the West as a bloc is depicted as "ten toes" in Daniel 2:41, and its governments as "ten horns" in Revelation 13:1 and 17:3.

For me, that the nation cannot be my own (the UK), but rather can only be the United States of America, for the following reasons:

1. Despite the present lamentable state of professing Christianity there, with even the best of pastors blinded by Jesuit futurism, I believe the Lord’s children are more numerous and visible in America than in the remainder of the West combined (and in this I invoke the same arguments the old writers did when they projected that the UK would be the recovery locale, since Britain in their time was the godliest country in the world).
2. America is militarily the most powerful nation in the West and, indeed, in the world as a whole, and since the restoration comes at a time when the nations will entering a terrible global conflagration, and in which godly rulers may be used, as speculated by Gill, by the Lord to rain justice upon the enemies of the newly converted nation of Israel, America best fits that profile.
3. Deductively, from the present day unrelenting hatred directed towards the Anglo tribe as a whole, and towards the American branch of that tribe in particular, from the utterly depraved Left in the West and from the Eurasianist, Marxist party in the barbarian Sea, which has been fixated on America’s demise from the beginning of Bolshevism, showing Satan’s hand in all manner of rabid anti-Americanism, whether foreign or domestically fomented, because Satan knows and understands the prophecy.
4. Also deductively,

   “The place where the last of the witnesses fall must be that part of the Roman empire [he perhaps should have said “the West”] where liberty and religion linger the longest.” (Alexander Hislop in The Red Republic, Chapter 6)

   Hislop imagined that country would be the UK and, like the older writers before him, connected the recovery locale with the region where the last embers of the Lord’s public witness would be extinguished. Plainly, however, the last western nation with any meaningful semblance of liberty remaining is the United States of America.
5. The contemporaneousness of the restoration of the Lord’s faithful ministries (and their ascent to a “heavenly” position of power and influence) with Israel’s conversion draws us to observe from the Scriptures covering Israel’s future return to the Messianic fold that the principal Gentile, that is, non-Jewish, nation or nations involved with that happy event would be Anglo Saxon, that is, of Tarshish, as per Isaiah 60:9, which reads:

   “Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee.” (Isaiah 60:9)

   (Gill understood this of British naval ships being used to ferry converted Jews to their ancestral homeland upon the Jewish Epiphany; it is God the Father speaking to the nation of Israel (and the references to the Name of the Lord and the Holy One of Israel pointing to Jesus Christ), and I think that the context points to (a) the Kingdom beginning in an Anglo nation, (b) that nation being the first to aid the newly converted Jews in establishing a church in Jerusalem and (c) that nation perhaps being host to a large number of Jews (the United States’ Jewish population sits at around 7 million, the largest outside of Israel). The old writers further surmised the nation would not just be a naval power, but the predominant naval power at the time of the Jewish Epiphany.²¹ If that view holds merits, it would not be Britain, as they thought, but America.
6. The faithful public witnesses are called up to heaven; now, if they be fallen in the West as a whole, but are to be elevated in honour and called to serve the Lord in a western nation’s governance, it would be a far lesser political heaven if it were in any nation other than the most militarily and economically powerful one in the West; being beckoned to, say, the Dutch government, or even to the French, German or British, would be so much less of an elevation and carry far less respect, shock and awe among the Lord’s people’s enemies, than would be the case with America and so it would not amount to such a definitive earth-shaking elevation to the political heavens unless it were to occur in the US.
7. The fracturing of the remaining parts of the Great City into three parts (in Revelation 16:19) bespeaks a factionalism built around pre-existing geopolitical fault lines that are presently papered over and held together by the unifying glue of the senior partner in the West, namely, America.

However, if I were to have one grand reservation about America being the land where the turnaround begins, it would be the lamentable, soul-vexing state of understanding of prophecy amongst American Christians, almost all of whom appear to be addicted to Jesuit futurism (and I know I am repeating this lament here!)

The futurist delusion is so strong and all-pervading, even among the most faithful that I am aware of in the US, that it stands as a potential impediment – should it abide without being refuted – to the Kingdom’s emergence there (which I assert is its actual prime purpose); but that concern would be groundless if the Lord will proceed to use His servants there to turn the tide before they come to understand these things properly.

Finally, we come to consider the other great earthquake reference in Revelation.

The opening act of the seventh of the Seven Last Plagues of Revelation 16:18-19 sees a "great earthquake", that is, an earth-shaking political-cum-governmental event or series thereof, that sees a transformative reordering of the geopolitical and societal landscape which is evocative of the language surrounding the restoration of the Lord’s public witness in Revelation 11:13.

Contrary to Gill’s view and that of pretty much all the older writers I am aware of, I submit that yes, these are indeed two references to the same earthquake because both of them concern events that are mutually contemporaneous: the restoration of the Lord’s public witness in the Revelation 11 case and the opening scenes of Armageddon in the Revelation 16 case.

That is, I am saying that the Lord’s public witness will be restored and elevated to the political heavenlies during, or close to (before or after) the geopolitical earthquake breaking forth as Armageddon gets underway.

The West being split into three parts I think happens right after the one tenth part of the Great City falls; that is, if America suddenly undergoes a godly coup and splits from the rest of the West (for real this time, not in the staged fashion Donald Trump has been dallying with to build consent in Europe for war prpearations), it would plunge its NATO allies into panic, stress lines for which will by that stage perhaps have been primed during the discord and probable factionalism amidst the West's elites under the fifth of the Seven Last Plagues.

That three-way split is, I suspect and reasonably confidently predict (albeit this prediction is supposition, not exposition, and therefore could very well be wrong!) as follows:

1. An Anglo faction led by the United Kingdom, with Canada, Australia and New Zealand, following, plus possibly Ireland also. Apart from Ireland, this forms the core and bedrock of the present western military alliances, especially NATO. When the one tenth part of the Great City falls, which as you know by now will, in my assessment, consist of the United States falling under the control of the Lord’s children, its historically closest and culturally-linguistically nearest allies will probably be the first to join with it, when the Lord’s people in those lands will likewise ascend to power, but before they do, I am inclined to think they will look to nuclear-armed Britain as their natural “parent” and leader.
2. A German-centric faction, since Germany ranks as the greatest of the continental European nations in terms of population, wealth and economic potential and has often seen itself as unspoken, unofficial leader of the European Union; under this model, one might expect Holland, Scandinavia, Finland and perhaps Poland and the Baltic states, if not by then annexed by Russia, to all align with Germany.
3. A French-centric faction, since France is the only nuclear power on the continent and is best fitted to lead a southern European or Latin contingent consisting chiefly of Spain, Portugal and Italy. France has always been a natural rival to both Germany and Britain, and so the longstanding cultural and political fault lines for a three way split as proposed herein already exist and are thus primed, at least in my view, to fall out in this pattern during the greatest geopolitical earthquake in the history of humanity.

I would reiterate that this earthquake will be confined to the West, not the world as a whole which, even though made up of three predatory blocs (the West, Russia and China), is nonetheless too expansive to be one and the same as the Great City whose spiritual name is Sodom and Egypt, descriptors that only apply to the West, as we have seen earlier in this article.

This three-way split will occur just before the nuclear war and will probably (again, I am speculating) not endure for long.

But it will be significant and add to the general sense of bedlam and turmoil in the West.

Seven Thousand Slain

“...and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.” (Revelation 11:13)

The seven thousand slain in the great earthquake, Gill in his commentary on Revelation 11:13 perceived to refer to the terrible war breaking forth at the time of this great earthquake (that war being Armageddon).

But I think there is a different interpretation to be had and indeed, a different one intended.

And that different interpretation has to do with justice being meted out to the elites.

That would mean that the seven thousand slain will constitute the bulk of the ringleaders in the Scarlet Beast system, specifically, those elites resident in the United States of America when the Lord’s public witness ascends to power.

Accordingly, I envisage the immediate arrest and swift trial and execution – for their crimes against the American people and the people of the West beyond – of that clique; their crimes including:

• Socially engineering society into tolerating and then embracing all that constitutes the Image and its Mark.
  
  
  
• Fomenting communism (under the guise of globalism) and atheistic wickedness that murders the soul.
• The mass genocide of countless millions of unborn infants through abortion.
• Gender-change operations for toddlers, even without parental consent.
  
  
  
• Genetic tampering with the food supply, leading to diseases and early death in countless numbers of people.
• The mRNA vaccine deployed to the destruction of countless lives during the overblown COVID pandemic.
  
• Promulgating lies about an imaginary climate crisis and plunging innumerable people into poverty in pursuit of “net zero” via artificially inflated energy and food prices, destroying marriages, spoiling childhoods, and causing premature deaths to vulnerable people who can’t afford to eat or to heat as normal, etc.
• Gagging the Lord’s faithful public witness, which I think is probably is the last straw provocation against the Lord.

Moreover, I think there is a hint in the original wording of Revelation 11:13 that the elites in that major western nation are indeed intended as the seven thousand slain:

“...slain of men seven thousand...

...as it is in the original text, "the names of men seven thousand". Now it is observed by some, that the smallest name of number belonging to men is a centurion, or captain of an hundred men; and supposing that to be meant, then seven thousand names of men will imply, that in an hour, or about a fortnight's time, may be slain throughout all Europe, in battles and massacres, about seven hundred thousand men, which is a very large number: or “names of men” may signify men of name, of great renown, as in Numbers 16:2 (“And they rose up before Moses, with certain of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown”); and then if seven thousand men of name, officers in armies, should be slain, how great must be the number of the common soldiers?” (John Gill on Revelation 11:13)

Setting aside Gill’s notion of this referring to great loss of military life (which will almost certainly occur during the conflagration that follows, as Armageddon’s devastation spreads to the West), I think there are enough pointers there in his observations that Revelation 11:13 can also be translated thus:

“...slain of the names of men seven thousand”, that is, “seven thousand men or people of renown”, or “seven thousand important or high profile individuals”, or, “seven thousand persons of the elite”.

It is also striking, or even enticing, to me at least, that in his 2008 book Superclass,²² author David Rothkopf assessed the whole number of wealthy, globalist elites to be around six thousand individuals, which is by no means an order of magnitude removed from the seven thousand of Revelation 11:13, which verse is set not in 2008 but around twenty years later, circa 2029.

And so I am confident that there will be a swift and necessary mass execution of the complicit elites in America, to be followed by the same fate for their fellow elites - our wonderful senior royals included - in the remainder of the West when the other western governments likewise fall into the hands of the godly.

There will be no long, drawn-out trials and no protracted death row appeals processes.

No, this will be swift justice because their guilt has already been established, confessed and documented in their very writings, their public speeches, their policies and the ruination and pain they have brought upon untold millions of people.

Their self-incriminating voice is being heard now, so there is no case for them to answer come the time.

And when the gallows or the firing squad or the lethal injection (especially appropriate for those of them fixated on vaccinating us all to oblivion) intersects with their paths, it will be done very publicly, for the world to behold, so that justice is not just done, but seen and known to be done.

Immediately upon this shocking administration of Divine justice, we note that “...the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.” (Revelation 11:13).

I don't take this to refer to any residual elites in America, for all there shall be likewise put to death, and justly so, for they deserve it and justice demands it; but rather, I think this refers either to the remainder of the oligarchy clique in the rest of the West who, in a state of abject dread (since this would be a “remnant” that would be affrighted, that is, stricken with terror rather than the holy fear of God, which holds no such terror), might openly acknowledge the Hand of God in this turn of events and hope themselves to be spared, or it refers to unbelievers in the conservative camp who likewise see the Hand of God in these events, are moved to terror by this, and fall in supplication before Him, thereby giving Him the glory that is His due.

Finally, if anyone objects and prefers Gill’s interpretation (i.e. that the seven thousand slain refers to something else), let me point out this: there is no way that the Lord’s people, once in power, will simply allow the globalist elite clique to continue living in society without justice being done to them; for all the innocent blood shed by their genocidal schemes alone, they deserve to be put to death, never mind all their other crimes against humanity, for turning every western city into a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, and especially their enormous crimes against the Lord’s public witness, and so Divine law requires capital punishment for them, it being a pre-Mosaic ordinance going back to the immediate post-Flood age that murderers, proven to be such, are not given lengthy prison sentences, or treated as misunderstood victims of circumstances, but rather, simply to be executed:

“And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” (Genesis 9:5-6)

We can only conclude, therefore, that the beast system's operators, the elites of the West, starting with those in the blessed first nation of the restoration of the Lord’s public witness (i.e. almost certainly America), will be swiftly arrested and publicly executed, without protracted trials and appeals processes, because their guilt is openly known, presently openly confessed by them (and done so with alacrity and self-incriminating arrogance), and manifest in the death and ruin they have brought to western society; their coming execution at the hands of the godly governments of the West is deserved, necessary and mandated by God.

The elites, in other words, have it coming to them, because they deserve it, and they shall know they deserve it.

And in all of this, God will be glorified as the kingdom of Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 gets underway, and the beast system, along with its false prophet, is terminated forever, marking the irrevocable end of the ungodly operating in government upon this earth.

They have told us that, by 2030, we will own nothing and be happy.

But I rather fancy God will tell them, by 2030, that they will not even own their very lives, and that they will never experience happiness again.