Revelation 10 and 11 exist to answer the question that Revelation 8 and 9 created. The overarching theme of both the seven seals and now the seven trumpets is that God repeatedly shows His mercy to rebellious humanity by pouring out something called warning judgments to show that He is the true God, that His power is inescapable, and that following after the serpent king will ultimately lead to suffering and misery and destruction.
That is because God created the world good as an expression of His goodness. Rebelling against Him inevitably breaks the goodness of the world and leads to suffering, death, and despair. All of those warning judgments that we see throughout the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven bowls are images that are communicating this.
And yet, as both the seals and the trumpets come to an end, the clear takeaway that John lays down is that neither of these things have led rebellious humanity to repentance. Warning does not lead the rebels to repentance and salvation. Discipline does not lead the rebels to let go of their rebellion.
And so the obvious question that it raises is: if pouring out immense suffering by allowing rebellious humanity to face the consequences of their cosmic mutiny will not bring them to repentance, what will?
Chapters 10 and 11 answer exactly that question, but they answer it in a way that requires us to lay down some groundwork first. No surprise there, right?
The Beast From the Abyss
First, John paints a kind of picture of the fallen and broken world system that is in rebellion against the Lord, that is warring against the Lord and His people. His vision describes this rebellious world system as a beast from the abyss.
Revelation 11:7 says:
“When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them, and kill them.” — Revelation 11:7, WEB
Now, this is interesting because this is the first time Revelation explicitly uses the term the beast, but it’s going to be an important image all throughout the rest of the book. But it’s really important to grasp that the image of the beast is not a new thing that was created for Revelation. This is a running theme throughout the entirety of God’s Word from Genesis to Revelation.
All throughout God’s Word, but especially in Daniel, the image of the beast is used to describe powerful and influential humans who use their power and influence as a way of opposing the Lord and attacking His people. That term the beast is sometimes used to describe individual human rulers or kings. Other times it’s used to describe whole empires.
It’s used not only in the Bible itself, but also in a lot of the ancient Jewish apocalyptic literature outside the Bible that was from the centuries kind of leading up to the time of Jesus. And the most famous example comes from the book of Daniel within the Bible itself, where Daniel describes this kind of cycle where God’s people are taken captive by one beastly empire after another.
First, he describes the beast and he identifies it as Babylon, the empire that had taken the most powerful and important Israelites and Judahites captive after they were expelled from the land. Then he describes the beast once again and he identifies it as Persia, the nation that ultimately subsumed Babylon and took the Israelites captive.
Yet again, then he describes the beast another time and he identifies it as Greece, and then again this time as Rome, and so on and so forth. The point is not that there is something special or unique about Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. The point is that all of these empires are fulfilling this kind of role that Scripture calls the beast.
The beast is what we call it when powerful people or nations or empires or cultures or whatever give themselves over to be tools in the hands of the devil and oppose the Lord and attack His people.
Sometimes the beast attacks the people of God in the form of persecution or outright opposition, like in places like parts of the Middle East or parts of Africa where Christians are literally killed today for their faith. Other times, the beast attacks God’s people in the form of deception or derailment by trying to draw us away from God’s will and God’s ways, like in the modern West in which there are all kinds of counterfeit forms of Christianity that not only tolerate but actually encourage us to reject parts of God’s command and design and desires whole cloth while still claiming the mantle of Christianity.
A similar thing is on display in places like China today, where there are official state versions of Christianity that are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, like the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. Churches within the Three-Self Patriotic Movement are not allowed to preach any passage from Scripture that could be interpreted in a way that would be critical of the Chinese government. They are required to repeat Romans 13’s command to submit to the government constantly in their worship services and stuff like that. They are required to praise the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party leaders, and so forth frequently in their services.
And so the beast usually takes the form of some sort of political power, whether that is a ruler or an empire or, in most cases, both. As we’ll see, early Christians and first-century Jews often referred to Emperor Nero in particular and the Roman emperor Caesar, the office of Caesar in general, as the beast because he required citizens to worship him with titles like Lord and God, Savior, the divine bringer of peace, and so forth.
And so in the case of Revelation, the seven churches John is writing to are living through the reign of a specific iteration of the beast in the form of Caesar and Rome.
The Spiritual Power Behind Beastly Empires
But just like the rest of God’s Word, Revelation tells us that it actually runs deeper than that because it says that in some sense this political power that is operating as the beast in the first century is somehow empowered by dark spiritual forces. It says that the beast comes up out of the abyss just like that demonic-like locust horde image that we get in the vision from chapters 8 and 9.
And so beastly political systems are not just evil political systems. In some sense, they are influenced by and empowered through the devil and the forces of darkness. And in one way or another, they are carrying out his plans and purposes.
The Great City: Sodom, Egypt, and Jerusalem
At exactly the same time, John’s vision uses another image to describe this exact same thing. His vision here in chapters 10 and 11 paints a picture of this fallen and broken world system that is at war against God and His people as the great city.
Revelation 11:8 says:
“Their dead bodies will be in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.” — Revelation 11:8, WEB
And so this vision names three famous cities. First it names Sodom. Then it names Egypt. And then it names Jerusalem. It says, “where their Lord was crucified.” That obviously does not refer to Sodom or Egypt because He was crucified in Jerusalem.
And so what is the point that this vision is making?
The point is that all three of these cities are clear images of places that chose to abandon God’s will and God’s ways and instead serve as tools in the hands of the serpent to oppose the Lord and attack His people. This is once again a running image throughout God’s Word.
Think back to the literal city of Sodom. It was destroyed by the Lord because of its idolatry and its wickedness and injustice. In Genesis 19, we see Sodom filled with roving bands of young men who violently rape every stranger, every foreigner who passes through their town.
Ezekiel 16 shines an even brighter light on Sodom by declaring that it was a place where there was immense wealth, but it was concentrated into the hands of just a few people who owned everything and forced nearly everyone else to live as slaves in all but name. All while piling up its wealth not through hard work, which is good, not through industriousness, which is good, but through violence and oppression and conquest.
So Sodom is a prime example of the beast in action. It’s a prime example of the running theme of the great city Babylon in action.
That same exact thing is true for Egypt. Exodus tells the story of how the Israelites were enslaved to Egypt, which was the world’s superpower. It was the wealthiest nation in the world at the time.
But just like Sodom, its wealth was not built on hard work or industry, which is good. Instead, it was built on conquest, violence, theft, oppression, and above all else, it was built on its slave economy. It became wealthy only by impoverishing and exploiting the weak.
It is a prime example of the beast in action because on top of all of these other injustices, just like Sodom, it not only opposed the Lord and His will and His ways, but it also oppressed His people, enslaved His people.
And finally, the curveball: Jerusalem.
Jerusalem historically was not a place where the Lord was honored and glorified through the obedience of His people. Instead, Jerusalem was a place in which His people rejected and opposed His voice and His will and His calling and continually refused to listen to the prophets that He would send, usually going as far as killing them to stop them from calling them to repentance.
The running theme throughout the Old Testament was that Jerusalem and the nation of Israel overall that it represented gradually became just as idolatrous and wicked and unjust as the surrounding pagan nations. It was meant to bring the pagan nations to faith and repentance, but instead it joined them in faithlessness and unrepentance.
It became no different than Sodom or Egypt.
Babylon, the Great City
In other words, all three of these cities are examples of Babylon, the great city in action. And so, just like the beast, this running image of Babylon, the great city, throughout God’s Word refers to the human empires, human cultures, and human rulers who oppose the Lord and attack His people.
So at the outset, John is telling us the purpose of the seven trumpets, the seven seals, and eventually we’re going to see the seven bowls is to shake rebellious humanity loose from its worship of the beast in its current form and its devotion to Babylon, the great city in its current form, and transform rebellious humanity from enemies of God who are destined for destruction in the judgment into the people of God who are destined for redemption, rescue when the judgment comes.
And so the seven trumpets, just like the seven seals, have been narrating history using flowery and poetic apocalyptic images and symbolism to describe the entire history of the serpent’s war against God and His people through the beast and the great city in each of their forms through the ages, spanning from the time of Jesus all the way through the end when He returns in His glory to end the war once and for all.
The Seventh Trumpet and the End of the Delay
And as we reach John’s vision of the final trumpet, he makes it clear that the actual end of all things does draw near. Just like the final two seals, the final trumpet makes it abundantly clear that it is describing not just wars or famines or economic collapse, but now, unlike the rest of the trumpets and the seals, it is describing the actual end of all things and the glorious defeat of the devil and the forces of darkness.
Revelation 10:5–6 says:
“The angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land lifted up his right hand to the sky, and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and the things that are in it, and the earth and the things that are in it, and the sea and the things that are in it, that there will no longer be delay.” — Revelation 10:5–6, WEB
In other words, the final trumpet is not like the others because the point of the previous trumpets was that there was going to continue to be a delay and delay and delay until as many people from rebellious humanity are brought to repentance and faith as possible.
But now, as we reach the final trumpet, the time for delay is over.
Why?
Revelation 10:7 tells us exactly why:
“But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, then the mystery of God is finished, as he declared to his servants, the prophets.” — Revelation 10:7, WEB
The Mystery of God
Now, this is an easy verse to misunderstand because of that word mystery. But the word mystery as it is used in the New Testament just in general does not mean a weird riddle that only prophecy nerds can solve. It does not mean a riddle or a secret or anything like that.
Consistently, when the New Testament uses this term mystery, it’s talking about God’s eternal plan to redeem humanity and restore our world. You see that in Ephesians chapter 1, in Ephesians chapter 3, and beyond.
Just like in Ephesians, it says that God’s plan to redeem humanity and restore our world was once hidden.
Why was it hidden?
Because God hid it from us?
Absolutely not.
Romans 16 talks about the way that this mystery of God’s plan has been revealed. Ephesians chapter 3 dives really deep into the way that this mystery has been revealed. But then both of those books go on to explain that the mystery was actually never meant to be hidden from us.
God clearly revealed it to us from the very beginning.
He says this mystery was actually revealed in Genesis 3:15 when God promised that He was sending a Savior who would destroy the serpent king. He promised to Abraham in Genesis 12 that He would send a Savior who would cause all the families of the earth to be blessed. He promised in 1 and 2 Samuel that through David’s line, He would send a Savior who would restore the world and rule in perfect justice forever.
And on and on and on.
He says this mystery was revealed in Genesis 3, Genesis 12, and 1 and 2 Samuel and so on and so forth. He never hid His plan from us.
We hid it from ourselves.
We shut our eyes and our ears and we refused to hear the mystery of His plan. But now He is forcibly revealing His redemptive and restorative plan in a way that is impossible to miss or ignore.
The Mystery Will Be Accomplished
He says that as the seventh trumpet is sounded, all of what God promised through the prophets will be revealed, will be fulfilled. All the arrogant beastly Babylon-style empires will be judged and destroyed. His people will be gloriously restored.
The rebellious nations that have rejected and opposed Him for so long will repent and come to Him in faith. His kingdom will be established in its fullness. All of creation will be renewed.
The entire storyline of God’s Word will be fulfilled fully and finally and forever in the Lamb.
That vision from Isaiah that we keep talking about of the new heavens and the new earth that have been refined like gold in the fire will finally come true. The vision from Ezekiel of God with us in a restored creation that is like a temple that makes up the whole universe is going to become a reality. That glorious kingdom of the Son of Man that is filled with unvarnished joy that Daniel describes is going to become our day-to-day experience.
This vision says that as the last trumpet is sounded, the final stretch of God’s plan will be fully in motion. Nothing will be held back, and this drawn-out period where God patiently waited and delayed His return so that rebellious humanity could repent will come to an end.
And He will finally pour out His good, righteous, holy wrath on the devil and the forces of darkness and everyone who persists in following after them all the way to the end.
And so trumpet number seven is the final destruction of all darkness and the restoration of all things.
“The Kingdom of the World Has Become the Kingdom of Our Lord”
Revelation 11:15 says:
“The seventh angel sounded, and great voices in heaven followed, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. He will reign forever and ever!’” — Revelation 11:15, WEB
And this is actually really important because that phrase doesn’t make any sense if this is just another round of judgments that God is pouring out before He comes and pours out another one when the seven bowls arrive.
It makes zero sense to say that as of Revelation 11:15, the kingdom of our world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Messiah, and He will reign forever and ever, if there was still another round of judgments to go through in the form of the bowls.
This phrase makes no sense if the seals and the trumpets and the bowls are each describing different events. This only makes sense if the seals and the trumpets and the bowls are each describing the same events: God’s merciful warning judgments poured out throughout history to bring humanity to repentance, ultimately leading to the final destruction of all darkness and the restoration of all things.
And so the seventh trumpet is the same event as the sixth seal. And it is the same event as the final bowl.
This is describing the actual victory of King Jesus over the devil and the forces of darkness and His victorious enthronement at the end.
Psalm 2 and Daniel 7 Fulfilled
This is the final fulfillment of Psalm 2 where the psalmist describes the victory of the Messiah.
Psalm 2:1–2 says:
“Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth take a stand, and the rulers take counsel together, against Yahweh, and against his Anointed.” — Psalm 2:1–2, WEB
But it says just a few lines down:
“Yet I have set my King on my holy hill of Zion.” — Psalm 2:6, WEB
In exactly the same way, this is Daniel 7 coming to its fullest fulfillment in real time at the very end.
Daniel 7:13–14 says:
“I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him. Dominion was given him, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which will not pass away, and his kingdom that which will not be destroyed.” — Daniel 7:13–14, WEB
So in the seventh trumpet, this angel is declaring all of these things have become a reality.
The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.
The Final Judgment
And just to make absolutely sure we cannot possibly misunderstand, the vision says in Revelation 11:18:
“The nations were angry, and your wrath came, as did the time for the dead to be judged, and to give your bondservants the prophets, their reward, as well as to the saints and those who fear your name, to the small and the great, and to destroy those who destroy the earth.” — Revelation 11:18, WEB
This is a picture of the final wrath of God being poured out on everyone who persists in rebelling against Him all the way to the very end so that the way can be opened up for the final restoration of all things.
And we see that in Revelation 11:19:
“God’s temple that is in heaven was opened, and the ark of the Lord’s covenant was seen in his temple. Lightning, sounds, thunders, an earthquake, and great hail followed.” — Revelation 11:19, WEB
What’s happening here is he’s smashing two very different images together at exactly the same time. As the vision describes God pouring out His final righteous wrath on the devil and the forces of darkness and everyone who has continued to align with them to the very end, it now also describes the ark of the covenant being opened.
And that matters because throughout the Old Testament, the ark of the covenant symbolized something very specific.
The Ark of the Covenant and God’s Promises
It essentially represented God’s presence with His people.
When you saw the ark, you remembered that your God is present with you, not far from you. And at the same time, when you saw the ark, you remembered His commitment to keep His promises.
You remembered that the Lord is going to give you everything He promised you. You would remember His promise to redeem humanity and restore the world.
You would remember that He has purchased this promise for you, that He will not abandon you or take this promise away from you. He will be faithful to His covenant with you.
And so here in this vision, the ark is suddenly opened, which to us is super confusing because suddenly this random thing is showing up out of nowhere. But to these seven churches who were steeped in the Old Testament, it would have made perfect sense.
They would have heard this vision and immediately recognized that the Lord is saying:
“Everything that I promised from My promise to Adam and Eve, to My promise to Abraham, to My promise to David, to the prophets and beyond is now coming in its fullness. I have not forgotten My promises. I am here to keep them no matter what it takes. And I am fulfilling them now in the fullest and deepest and richest sense.”
How Does Christ’s Victory Actually Happen?
Which leads back to the question that gave birth to these two chapters and the vision that is found in them.
How does He actually do that?
How does Christ’s victory actually happen?
How does the Lord defeat the devil and the forces of darkness?
The answer is that Revelation 10 and 11 gives the same answer that Revelation 6 and 7 give. And that is that Christ’s final victory happens through the suffering servanthood of His people.
Christ wins His final victory over the devil and the forces of darkness through the testimony of God’s people amidst their persecution. God ultimately defeats the beast, the great city, and the false usurper serpent king who influences and empowers them to carry out his will through the way that He leads and empowers His people to bear witness to Him with love and grace, not only amidst persecution, but to their persecutors.
I say this a lot, but if you grasp this, then you will understand the entire book of Revelation. If you can grasp this, you will understand the entire Bible.
The Mighty Angel and the Message of God
The vision lays down a really fascinating kind of progression.
First, John receives a vision where we as God’s people are given the message of redemption to declare to the world. The vision starts in a really fascinating way. It describes a mighty angel.
Revelation 10:1 says:
“I saw another strong angel coming down out of the sky, clothed with a cloud. A rainbow was on his head. His face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire.” — Revelation 10:1, WEB
These are, once again, very common apocalyptic images that the Christians in the seven churches in the first century would have almost immediately recognized.
A very common theme in the ancient Jewish apocalyptic writings was that the messengers the Lord sends kind of visually look like the Lord. They describe His messengers in very similar visual language to the way that they describe the Lord Himself. They describe it in a way that matches how He is described.
So this angel here is described in a way that sounds really similar to the way that they describe Yahweh Himself.
Why is that?
It’s because it essentially sends the message that this angel is carrying God’s own message that bears God’s own authority. Listen to what this angel says as if it came from the Lord Himself because it does come from the Lord Himself.
And so it says just like Yahweh is robed in a cloud, so also this angel is robed in a cloud. Just like God’s throne was described earlier in Revelation as having a rainbow wrapped around it, now also this angel is described as having a rainbow over his head.
Just like Jesus was described in Revelation 1 as having a face like the sun, now also this angel is described with a face like the sun. Just like the pillar of cloud and fire that led the Israelites in the wilderness throughout Exodus, this angel is clothed with fiery pillars.
Specifically, just like the feet of Jesus were described as blazing with fire in Revelation chapter 1, these fiery pillars are the legs of this angel.
Now, as always, none of this is meant to be taken literally. This does not actually tell us anything about what angels literally look like. The point here is that when this angel speaks, the Lord is speaking through him.
And so this angel is bringing a message directly from the Lord to the people of God.
Why?
So that we can bring that message from the Lord to the world that persecutes and rejects us.
One Foot on the Sea and One on the Land
Revelation 10:2 says:
“He had in his hand a little open book. He set his right foot on the sea, and his left on the land.” — Revelation 10:2, WEB
Now once again, this sounds really, really weird to us. But this is actually a very important image that once again they would have immediately recognized in the seven churches that John is writing to.
Just like in the ancient world they would use the phrase the heavens and the earth to describe the entire world, all of creation—that was called a merism—they would do the same exact thing with the phrase the land and the sea.
And so if you said that someone ruled over the land and the sea, you were saying they ruled over all things, all of creation.
In the same way, now this angel has one foot on the sea and the other on the land. That means this angel is standing over the entire created order with this little open book or scroll.
We are going to see the same thing later in Revelation when it says that there is a beast who comes from the sea and a beast who comes from the land.
And does it mean that there are literally two separate beasts?
Not necessarily.
The point is that in some sense, the beast is at work in all of creation, all over the world. Every aspect of the fallen and broken world system that is warring against the Lord is in some way influenced by the beast in its current form at any given time in any given generation.
But this angel is essentially planting his feet in all of the places where the beast is at work all over the world, holding this scroll with a message from the Lord that he will then give to God’s people to declare to all of humanity under the influence and power of the beast.
The Collision Between the Lamb’s Kingdom and the Beast’s Empire
So essentially the great collision between the Lamb’s kingdom and the beast’s empire is going to be fought not primarily with swords, knives, guns, tanks, but through the people of God declaring the truth about God and calling people to repentance and salvation versus the beast and the great city Babylon pulling people in the other direction.
And we see that in Revelation 10:11:
“They told me, ‘You must prophesy again over many peoples, nations, languages, and kings.’” — Revelation 10:11, WEB
When he says that, he’s echoing that same phrasing from Revelation 7 and so many other parts of the book. He’s echoing the vision that Daniel laid down that we talked about of every tribe and tongue and nation surrounding God’s throne in worship and celebration.
In other words, we as God’s people have been commissioned as a kind of prophetic witness to the world. We’ve been commissioned to proclaim the redeeming grace of God to the world in order to draw people who are in rebellion against the Lord to repentance and faith so that they will stop being enemies of the Lord destined for destruction and instead become the people of God destined for redemption.
The Little Scroll: Sweet and Bitter
We see that exact thing just a few verses earlier.
Revelation 10:8–9 says:
“The voice which I heard from heaven, again speaking with me, said, ‘Go, take the book which is open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the land.’ I went to the angel, telling him to give me the little book. He said to me, ‘Take it, and eat it up. It will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.’” — Revelation 10:8–9, WEB
So essentially what’s happening here is that this little scroll or this little book represents John’s specific role in making God’s plan known. It represents John’s role in announcing the church’s call to be God’s prophetic witness to the world.
It represents his role in announcing our calling to introduce rebellious humanity to this redeeming and restoring God. And it represents his role in making it clear that the beast will oppose us, but ultimately God will vindicate us.
This vision is specifically written in a way that kind of echoes Ezekiel chapters 2 and 3.
In Ezekiel 2 and 3, Ezekiel is given a scroll and he’s told to eat the scroll. And then he’s sent to go speak the words from that scroll that he just ate to the people of God who are in rebellion against God, who are pursuing the idols of the pagan nations, who are joining into the wickedness and injustice of the pagan nations.
The scroll is sweet because it is from the Lord, but it’s full of hard judgment, lament, mourning, and woe. Not because God is being harsh, but because the rebellion of His people brings woe, lament, mourning, and judgment.
And so the vision in Ezekiel 2 and 3 is figurative. It’s a symbolic, metaphorical image of God commissioning Ezekiel as a prophet to rebellious Israel and rebellious humanity.
And now in the same exact way, John is being commissioned as a prophet to rebellious humanity.
But not just John.
All of God’s people like John.
The Church as a Prophetic Witness
John is essentially a representative of all of the people of God, both the people in the seven churches that this vision is primarily intended for and also the rest of God’s people through all of space and time.
Just like Ezekiel, we have been given this message from the Lord. And we’ve been commissioned as prophets to a world that is under the thumb of the beast, the great city Babylon, and ultimately the serpent king himself.
And just like with Ezekiel, the message that we have been given to declare the grace of God and draw rebellious humanity to repentance is both sweet and bitter.
It is sweet because it is from the Lord and from the mouth of the Lord we proclaim the gospel of how King Jesus is here to redeem us and restore us. It is sweet because it declares the reality that there will be a new creation where all things are made right, that God will win, that the Lamb will reign, that Babylon will fall, that one day there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.
But it is also bitter because it will bring persecution onto us. It will move us to lament the death and destruction of rebellious humanity as they follow after the serpent king.
It inevitably confronts false teachers and warns them that if they do not repent, they are going to be destroyed along with the serpent, along with the beast, the great city, and so forth.
If you love people, which we are meant to, there is a genuine bitterness to that.
And so the message that we have been given to proclaim to the world is joyful to receive, but it is costly and painful to proclaim.
And living out that calling will cost us.
Our calling will harm us as we proclaim it to a world that is resistant to the truth.
The Two Witnesses
But as we go about this mission, John’s vision uses another similar image to describe the mission God has given us. His vision paints us, God’s people, on this prophetic mission we’ve been given, as the two witnesses.
Revelation 11:3–4 says:
“I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy one thousand two hundred sixty days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two lamp stands, standing before the Lord of the earth.” — Revelation 11:3–4, WEB
Now, this is important, but it’s also easy to misunderstand because this is not a prophecy that there are going to be two individual prophets sometime in the end who will do something very important.
This is not a literal prediction of two literal specific prophets in the future.
And we know that because Revelation has already told us that that is not what the lampstands are.
Remember Revelation 1:20:
“The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lamp stands. The seven stars are the angels of the seven assemblies. The seven lamp stands are seven assemblies.” — Revelation 1:20, WEB
So this term lampstand in Revelation chapter 1 refers to churches, not individual people.
The Olive Trees and Lampstands of Zechariah
But it actually goes even beyond that because the phrasing that Revelation 11 is using here is taken directly from Zechariah 4.
Zechariah 4:2–3 says:
“He said to me, ‘What do you see?’ I said, ‘I have seen, and behold, a lamp stand all of gold, with its bowl on the top of it, and its seven lamps on it; there are seven pipes to each of the lamps, which are on the top of it; and two olive trees by it, one on the right side of the bowl, and the other on the left side of it.’” — Zechariah 4:2–3, WEB
Zechariah asks, you know, what do these things represent? I can’t make any sense of this.
And in verses 11–14, he gets a pretty clear answer:
“Then I asked him, ‘What are these two olive trees on the right side of the lamp stand and on the left side of it?’ … Then he said, ‘These are the two anointed ones who stand by the Lord of the whole earth.’” — Zechariah 4:11, 14, WEB
Now, in the context of Zechariah’s own life, it was a reference to Joshua, the high priest, and Zerubbabel, the governor over the people of God at that particular point in time.
They were a kind of priestly-kingly leadership who were specially empowered by God to rebuild the destroyed Israel after the exile. But most importantly, as they were rebuilding the destroyed cities of Israel and gathering God’s people back together, they were able to do all of these things not because they were smart enough and well-organized enough and charismatic and inspiring enough to make it happen.
Instead, Zechariah 4:6 tells us exactly why:
“‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says Yahweh of Armies.” — Zechariah 4:6, WEB
And throughout the rest of God’s Word and the history of God’s people, this image of the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the Lord of the earth was used repeatedly as a kind of catch-all image of God’s people as a whole doing what?
God’s people as a whole being empowered by the Holy Spirit to be the priestly-kingly agents of the Lord on earth.
It represents God’s people bearing witness to the truth of God before a watching world that is in rebellion against Him.
And so in this vision of the two witnesses, they are called the two lampstands like the lampstands of Zechariah.
The point here is not that there are two special little guys who are going to come and do a special job in the very, very end.
The point is that all the way to the end, all the way until the moment King Jesus returns, the people of God on earth will be His witnesses to a world that rejects and opposes Him.
They will proclaim the truth about Him and invite people to repentance. And we will be empowered by God’s Spirit to do exactly that.
We will be empowered by God’s Spirit to persist amidst persecution. And we will be empowered by God’s Spirit to break through people’s walls.
His vision says essentially, we will have a special Spirit empowerment that enables us to melt the ice around people’s hearts, to open up their hearts and bring them to faith and repentance.
The Witness of Moses and Elijah
Revelation 11:5–6 says:
“If anyone desires to harm them, fire proceeds out of their mouth and devours their enemies. If anyone desires to harm them, he must be killed in this way. These have the power to shut up the sky, that it may not rain during the days of their prophecy. They have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with every plague, as often as they desire.” — Revelation 11:5–6, WEB
This phrasing is actually really important because this vision is specifically modeling the prophetic ministry of God’s people on Moses and Elijah. During the lifetime of Moses, God used him to bring plagues on Egypt, to turn the waters of the Nile into blood, and stuff like that.
During the lifetime of Elijah, God worked through Elijah to bring fire down from heaven to humiliate the false gods of the Baal worshipers and so forth, to bring a drought on the nation of Israel for following after Baal and leaving behind the true God, to bring Israel to repentance. All of these Spirit-empowered signs and wonders and plagues that the Lord worked through Moses and Elijah were meant not to impress people or to be like fireworks, but to draw people to repentance.
They were meant to draw the Egyptians to repentance when Moses performed them. They were meant to draw the rebellious Israelites and Judahites to repentance in the case of Elijah.
And it worked.
When Israel left Egypt, it wasn’t just a bunch of ethnically Jewish people descended from Abraham leaving Egypt. Exodus quite literally says that a multiethnic multitude left Egypt with them.
That means what?
That means that a bunch of Egyptians saw the signs that the Lord worked through Moses and said, “I want to worship that God and I want to be part of His people.”
The same exact thing is at work here. The people of God are going to proclaim the truth about God the same way Moses and Elijah did in their day. And it is going to draw people who are currently under the spell of modern Egypt, modern Babylon, the modern beast, out of their rebellion and into faith and repentance.
Fire From Their Mouths
Now, does all of this mean that at some point in the end the people of God are going to have the power to literally create droughts, to bring plagues on demand, to breathe fire?
Probably not. No.
The images that are used in these visions are exactly that. Like all the other images in Revelation, these are images. They are meant to remind us of something that goes way beyond pyrotechnics.
If you were someone in the seven churches, you would hear this and you would immediately think of Jeremiah 5:14. It says:
“Therefore Yahweh, the God of Armies, says, ‘Because you speak this word, behold, I will make my words in your mouth fire, and this people wood, and it will devour them.’” — Jeremiah 5:14, WEB
Now, is this saying that the Lord enables His prophets to set people on fire with their mouths?
Of course not.
What it’s talking about is fire coming from their mouth is a kind of common apocalyptic and prophetic image that describes the reality that when God’s people speak God’s Word, it has real supernatural power. It is as if that Word is burning away the chaff. It is as if God’s Word spoken through His people exposes the deepest recesses of the hearts of the people we are proclaiming it to.
And so for people who are insistent on continuing to rebel, it is going to harden their hearts like it did with Pharaoh. But for people who refuse to repent, it’s going to bring their judgment like it did with Nebuchadnezzar.
But at exactly the same time, for people whose hearts have begun to melt and begun to soften, it will bring faith and repentance. It will bring them to redemption and restoration.
In other words, this vision means that all the way to the end, God’s people will proclaim His grace to rebellious humanity, empowered by the Spirit, wielding His authority, the same way Moses proclaimed God’s Word to Pharaoh and Elijah proclaimed God’s Word to Ahab and Jezebel.
And when we do that, we are waging war on the serpent, the beast, the great city Babylon.
But we are not waging war on rebellious humanity itself.
The point of this calling is not plagues or signs or wonders.
The point is repentance.
Clothed in Sackcloth
That’s what Revelation 11:3 is talking about. It says:
“I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy one thousand two hundred sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.” — Revelation 11:3, WEB
Just like before, these images matter. In the Old Testament, you would clothe yourself in sackcloth as a way of visibly showing that you are in mourning.
Now, there were multiple different reasons why you might be mourning in sackcloth and ashes. Sometimes it meant you were mourning over some tragedy you experienced, something that happened to you. But more often than anything, you were signaling that you were in repentance for some sin that you had let go of.
The image here essentially is that the people of God are clothed in sackcloth. They are proclaiming repentance. They are talking about their own sin that they have turned over to the Lord and have been forgiven for and now set free from.
And they are inviting sinful humanity to experience the same thing they have.
When Grace Feels Like Torment
But as they do that, Revelation 11:10 says that hearing the truth proclaimed by God’s people will be like a torment for so many of the people who are still in rebellion against the Lord.
Revelation 11:10 says:
“Those who dwell on the earth rejoice over them, and they will be glad. They will give gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth.” — Revelation 11:10, WEB
Those who dwell on the earth, remember, means people who are still rebelling against the Lord, not everybody on earth.
As the people of God proclaim repentance and salvation, as the people of God offer God’s forgiveness to rebellious humanity, rebellious humanity hears the offer of forgiveness as torment. It is not that we will literally torment people. It is not that we will torture or attack or be cruel to people.
The point is that when your heart is hardened against the Lord, the truth feels like torment. Even the offer of grace feels like torment. The truth about sin and idolatry and injustice quite literally feels like torture to you when you are still in rebellion against the Lord.
And so this vision is not talking about a couple of special superhero prophets with superpowers. This is talking about the people of God as a whole, continuing to carry out the same mission we have had from the very beginning, proclaiming the truth of King Jesus and inviting rebellious humanity to come experience His grace through faith and repentance.
The Witnesses Will Be Persecuted
But the result of all these things is not that we will be celebrated. It’s that we will be persecuted.
The result of all of this is that we will be viciously persecuted, specifically as it approaches the end.
In some sense, that persecution is going to intensify.
Revelation 11:2 uses a really bizarre image that illustrates this:
“Leave out the court which is outside of the temple, and don’t measure it, for it has been given to the nations. They will tread the holy city under foot for forty-two months.” — Revelation 11:2, WEB
Now, just like we talked about earlier, one of the images that Revelation uses to describe the people of God on our prophetic mission is the image of God’s temple. It describes us as God’s temple on earth.
We are God’s temple on earth because of Jesus Christ, because of the Spirit that He has sent to dwell within us. So we experience God’s presence at all times like you would in the temple, and we usher other people into God’s presence by drawing them into faith and repentance like what happened when you entered His presence in the temple.
And so here in this vision, it says that the temple, which is God’s people on prophetic mission, will be trampled by the nations, by rebellious humanity.
Forty-Two Months, 1,260 Days, and Three and a Half Years
And it says that this is a unique trampling. It’s an intensified persecution that goes above and beyond the persecutions that came before it.
But it also says that it takes place within a temporary period.
He uses the image of forty-two months or 1,260 days or three and a half years. That’s an important image because this is a common ancient Jewish apocalyptic image that described a limited but intense period of oppression or persecution.
Today we wonder whether this means three and a half literal years or it’s representative of some other length of time. We wonder when it’s going to happen and stuff like that.
But the seven churches were steeped in ancient Jewish apocalyptic literature, so they would have immediately recognized that that is not what this is about. This is not telling us anything about how long this period of oppression and persecution is going to last.
The point is very simply that this unique and intense persecution is going to be horrific but temporary.
The same thing is true each time we see this time frame come up in Revelation. In Revelation 11, it says that God’s people are trampled for forty-two months, 1,260 days, a three-and-a-half-year period. In Revelation 12, it says that the woman who has given birth to the child is nourished in the wilderness for forty-two months, 1,260 days, three and a half years.
In Revelation 13, it says the beast’s authority lasts for forty-two months, 1,260 days, three and a half years.
A lot of people try to map that out into like a seven-year period or something like that. But the point is not that there is some special seven-year period.
The point is all of these things are temporary.
We will experience an intensified, unbearable season of persecution that goes above and beyond anything we have experienced before as a result of our continued work to draw rebellious humanity into repentance.
But it will come to an end.
God Protects His People Until Their Work Is Finished
And most importantly, the vision tells us that none of that persecution or opposition can stop us from fulfilling the mission that God has given us.
It says that because we are God’s people on prophetic mission, we are under God’s protection until our work is finished.
Revelation 11:1 says:
“A reed like a rod was given to me. Someone said, ‘Rise, and measure God’s temple, and the altar, and those who worship in it.’” — Revelation 11:1, WEB
Now, this is important because this is using the language of Ezekiel chapters 40–48. That’s a lot. It’s using the language of Zechariah chapter 2.
There’s a lot to be said there, but we’re just going to kind of get to the point.
In those passages, God is measuring Jerusalem as a promise that He will protect them and keep them secure. Measuring the old temple in Ezekiel and Zechariah was a sign that He was going to protect the temple until its purpose was done.
And in the same way now, measuring His people is a sign that He will protect and preserve His people, and He will carry us through all of the horrific things that we go through during that temporary period of intense persecution.
This vision is using that exact same language to describe us on His prophetic mission.
“When They Have Finished Their Testimony”
Revelation 11:7 says:
“When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, overcome them, and kill them.” — Revelation 11:7, WEB
It says that we have been protected until our mission is done. And then the moment that our work is done, we are overcome and then killed.
It says God’s people will ultimately die as a result of their witness. We will be persecuted and ultimately killed, but only after we have finished our work.
The beast cannot kill the witnesses until after they have finished their testimony.
In other words, we are unkillable until our role in the mission is complete.
And even more than that, the vision says that this persecution and death that God’s people will experience is actually not a deviation from the mission. It’s not a disruption of the mission.
Our persecution and death is part of the mission.
Dying as a result of our witness is part of our mission, and it is part of how the Lord defeats the darkness and claims the final victory.
The World Celebrates the Death of the Witnesses
This plays out in a really fascinating way in Revelation 11. It says:
“Those who dwell on the earth rejoice over them, and they will be glad. They will give gifts to one another…” — Revelation 11:10, WEB
So first things first, we see rebellious humanity celebrating our persecution and death. They are literally cheering that we have been killed so we can no longer point them toward King Jesus and invite them to faith and repentance.
But that celebration very quickly turns into something else.
The Witnesses Are Raised
Revelation 11:11 says:
“After the three and a half days, the breath of life from God entered into them, and they stood on their feet. Great fear fell on those who saw them.” — Revelation 11:11, WEB
What’s happening here?
Well, in the context of this vision, what’s happening is that John is giving us an image where after being killed for testifying to King Jesus, these two witnesses, God’s people, are raised from the dead in front of their persecutors and their executioners.
And this is really important because again, this is a passage that is often misinterpreted.
This is often preached as if this is about some kind of secret rapture, that either during or after or sometimes before the tribulation, the people of God are taken away from the world so that we cannot be persecuted anymore.
But that is not what this is talking about.
This is not a secret escape.
This is a public vindication.
God is publicly demonstrating that the two witnesses, God’s people, speak for Him and that everyone needs to listen to them.
“Come Up Here”
Revelation 11:12 says:
“They heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, ‘Come up here!’ They went up into heaven in the cloud, and their enemies saw them.” — Revelation 11:12, WEB
This is taking the language of Daniel 7 once again that says the Lord will come on the clouds, and it’s using that exact same phrase now to describe God’s people on prophetic mission being raised up publicly before all of our persecutors.
After we are persecuted and ultimately killed for our witness, we will be raised up in front of everyone. We will come, not go. We will come on a cloud in front of rebellious humanity, and they will see the people they have just killed for our witness alive and well and exalted.
Now, is this meant to be taken literally?
Very good question.
Honestly, it could go either way.
But the point is not really about whether there is a literal prediction or an image just meant to communicate this general concept. The point is that as a result of having endured the persecution poured out on us by rebellious humanity with grace and peace, the people of God are both exalted and glorified by God.
And the people of God become the tool God uses to melt the hearts of rebellious humanity and set them free from their rebellion.
The Earthquake and the Repentance of the Nations
It says that two things are happening at exactly the same time in one moment.
Revelation 11:13 says:
“In that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified, and gave glory to the God of heaven.” — Revelation 11:13, WEB
This is once again a warning judgment like the previous trumpets. And yet this time it is different because at exactly the same time as this warning judgment is happening, God is visibly glorifying, exalting, and vindicating the people that rebellious humanity has just killed to shut them up.
And so there’s a really weird pattern.
In the previous trumpets and seals, plagues would fall, suffering would increase, warning judgments would proliferate, but humanity did not repent.
But here, the people of God who have been killed for our witness have been in some sense raised up and made visible.
And all of humanity is terrified.
And they immediately start to give glory to the God of heaven.
What Actually Brings Rebellious Humanity to Repentance?
In other words, this is the answer to the question chapters 8 and 9 raised.
Judgment alone will not bring rebellious humanity out of the spell of the serpent and the beast and the great city Babylon. Discipline alone will not bring rebellious humanity out of the spell of the serpent and the beast and the great city Babylon.
There is exactly one thing that will ultimately bring rebellious humanity to repentance and faith, that will set them free from their rebellion so that they will cease to be enemies of God and instead will become the people of God.
And that is watching God’s people endure persecution, accept persecution, embrace persecution in order to proclaim the truth about God and invite the world to repentance.
As rebellious humanity watches us endure arrests and beatings and tortures, but continue to show love and mercy and grace and invite them to faith and repentance, it will chip away at the stone around their hearts.
As they watch God’s people endure marginalization and rejection and abandonment and mistreatment, but continue to show love and grace and invite them to meet the God who wants to redeem them and restore them, it will slowly melt away the ice around their hearts.
As they watch us continue to love rebellious humanity all the way to our deaths, all the way to the point where they not only arrest or beat or torture us, but sometimes even kill us, and yet we still continue to show them love and invite them to redemption, it will ultimately be the tool that the Holy Spirit uses to break through, open up their hearts, and make them new.
And that is true all the way up to the end.
A Final Harvest of Repentance
In some sense, the point seems to be that in the end, there will be a mass conversion of countless people who have spent their entire lives rejecting and opposing and even persecuting and killing God’s people.
But at the sight of our continued love and grace, bearing witness to the God who wants to redeem and restore them amidst all the most horrific things that they throw at us to the point of death, they will finally lose the ability to keep running from God, keep resisting God, keep rejecting God.
And they will fall on their knees and declare that He is Lord. They will give Him glory. They will submit to Him as King. They will worship Him as God.
They will throw themselves on His mercy.
And in that moment, they will cease to be His enemies, destined for destruction with the serpent. And instead, they will become His people, destined for redemption and restoration.
And that will be a glorious day.
What Revelation Does—and Does Not—Tell Us
What will all this look like exactly?
I don’t know.
Revelation doesn’t tell us.
It gives us these apocalyptic images that communicate these concepts to us, but it does not give us a roadmap with the exact details of how it is going to look or how it is all going to play out.
But what it does give us is the absolute certainty of knowing that if we persist on the mission God has given us, we will have the joy of seeing humanity turn away from the serpent and the beast and the great city Babylon and instead turn toward the Lamb and join us forever in His presence in a renewed world with Christ enthroned forever as King.
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